by Rand B. Lee
Rand Lee’s previous stories of the D’/fy (or D’/fü as they’re termed in this story) include “Coming of Age Day” (Dec. 2003) and “Picnic on Pentecost” (Sept. 2008). This new one, in addition to containing some of the most daring linguistic gymnastics ever attempted in our pages, introduces us to the charming character of Pink. Mr. Lee notes that this story is dedicated to Ms. Taylor Rhodes Jones, “Polymath elf-stork and adventurer.”
Gather ‘round, te’ném, gather ‘round. Vlíbit, you are treading on your sib’s tail. Now, now, Swúkilip, don’t weep; there! One tail, as good as new! Áñadhu, what is that you have in your mouth? Come here; spit it out; let me see. Don’t pretend you can’t understand me; you speak better Brenglish than anyone here but Pwémmad. Aha! I see. You’ve been raiding the mineral stores again, haven’t you? After class we’re going to march right up to Mrizh Klévyamwel’s and you’re going to give it right back. Yes, I am well aware that diamonds are common but that is not the point; it’s the principle of the thing. Oh, yes you are. Well of course that is your choice. But if you refuse to return the diamond you stole, you will not be permitted to experience today’s story time with the rest of your tek. All right, then. You are forgiven. Yes, of course, Yútha. [Group snuggle ensues.]
Everyone consoled now? Vlíbit? Swúkilip? Áñadhu? Blopéllüz? Yútha? Pwémmad? Very well, let’s begin. We will proceed, as we have begun, in Brenglish. Sorry? Yes, Pwémmad, there will be other languages, too, in our story. [Note to self: We may have a budding zhüdhvu here in Pwémmi; let Borm know.]
All right, class; everyone relax, now, into the lovely, lovely dream-bath. How lovely the dream-bath feels rising about our toes, and tails, and knees, and haunches, and tummies, and—yes, Áñadhu, that’s quite right, I have no tail; but then I’m not lílyo, am I? After all, I am Human, not of your species, the Damánakíppith/fü. Yes, Yútha, despite this, we are all Family here, including myself; after all, different species may still be Family, may they not? No, that’s all right; no need to apologize for an honest observation. Where was I? Ah, yes.
This is a story about a very young Human named Juliana “Pink” Sévigny, who lived in an experimental interspecies space community, a space station that your species called Óllowe/Dvyénnu, the New Place, and that my species called Concord Station. Where was Concord Station, Blópi? Well, it was located roughly halfway between the Human home star-system of Sol and that of Dám/Hihívo, the star ‘round which our great friend Ámash/Bórmwu, your ancestral Shiphome, circled at that time. Yes, Blópi; Humans have a name for Shiphome’s star, too; two names in fact: Rigel Kent or Alpha Centauri A. It is a very beautiful star, one of three which circle one another, in fact: Dám/Hihívo, Dám/Fnikkírh, and Dám/Bnéthu. I very much hope you will see them someday very soon.
You have gathered, I expect, that our story takes place rather long ago, before Ámash/Bórmwu migrated to the Sol system, where co is now. Oh, no, Vlíbit. No, it took many years, nearly a hundred and twenty Earth-years, in fact, for your fü to convince my fü to let Shiphome move to Sol. Why did it take so long? The answer to that question is rather complicated, I’m afraid, but I suppose, put simply, it is that we Humans were afraid of you D’/fü. I know, I know; it was very very silly of us Humans, but we did not know your fü so well back then, and we assumed that you would kill us or eat us or make us work for you. Why did Humans fear this, Pwémmi? Because Humans tend to have a sickness called fear-of-anything-different—the Brenglish word for it is xenophobia—and in the very old days, when some of us met other Humans, we would kill them or eat them or make them work for us. So some of us could not imagine that your fü would not do the same to us if you got the chance.
Attributing to others feelings we have ourselves is called projection, and it is a habit that has gotten many Humans in a lot of trouble over the millennia, let me tell you.
But let us get back to Pink. Yes, Pwémmi, “pink” is the name of a color in Brenglish, red with white mixed into it. Was Pink pink? Well, as with most Humans, her skin would turn pink when she was sunburnt or excited or embarrassed, but no, that is not why she was called that. She was called that because of the color of her hair, which was very orange. What is “orange,” Yútha? Orange is red with yellow mixed into it. You’re quite right, Blópi; calling someone Pink because her hair is orange makes no sense whatsoever, but that is how it is sometimes with language; words get thrown against one another until they begin to take on shades of meaning they wouldn’t otherwise have. Suffice it to say that “Pink” is often a love-name for Humans with orange hair, which, to confuse matters even more, is usually called in Brenglish “red” hair. Perhaps it is because orange-haired Humans often sunburn easily; I don’t know.
How young was Pink, do you ask, Swúki? Well, we’ll cover that in the story, but for now let’s just say that Pink was the Human equivalent of lílyo’te, just like all of you. That’s right, just like you, although of course, Áñadhu, being Human, she had no tail.
Oh, come, come, Vlíbit, you know very well what the word “she” means; no, Pwémmi, let Vlíbit answer. That’s right, Vlíbit; good for you. “She” refers to the type of Human who under normal conditions keeps cos seed inside co, in contrast to the “he” type of Human who is capable of ejecting cos seed from cos body. Why do hes eject their seed, Swúki? For fun, I suppose, and sometimes to combine their seed with the seed of a she inside the she’s body, so that together the combined seeds can begin forming a new Human.
No, hes don’t eject their seed all the time, Vlíbit; well, most of them don’t, anyhow. No, there will be no seed-ejection in this story. In any case, class, this will all be much easier to understand when we’ve let the dream-bath take us there to experience it directly.
Where was I? Ah, yes.
This is the story of how Pink traveled with her Work Partner Orientation Class from Concord Station to Shiphome (an historic occasion); got lost in the Tangles (an extremely easy thing to do, as you can imagine); met her new D’/fü workpartner, who nearly decapitated her with cos tail (a very near thing indeed); and encountered the Vigilant Bird, who ate her. The End.
Everyone ready for our dream-journey? Remember, we will be experiencing Pink’s story from her Human point of view, which will be a little mixed up by her adventures in the Tangles; so don’t worry if you don’t understand everything straightaway—we’ll have lots of time afterwards to talk all about it. Ready? All right, then, class, on my count, submerge yourselves in the dream-bath completely. Here we go! Vóh’te, hwépp’te, gdéss’te! Submerge! Let the dream-journey begin!
* * * *
1. The End of the Story.
“How very exciting,” says Sister Skylark, after it is all over, patting Pink’s hand in a sympathetic manner. “And how very dull life will seem now that you are back home. What is your Firster partner like?”
“Big,” says Pink. “Very, very big.” They are sitting on the bridge of the fictional starship Beatific Vision, with all the fictional crew standing ‘round: Brother Róbberámmerdoc, the Hammerhead Man, Vision’s weapons specialist, all muscle and armor plate; Sacred Sib Flénya’rényarah, communications specialist, with hisher writhing head of sensor tentacles for hair; Tubular Russia Dog, the cyborg atheist science officer (handsomely scarred, half-man, half-machine, all poet—a dreadful tale); and Sister Alexandra, the chief navigator, who is so hideous (or so blindingly, maddeningly beautiful) that, according to the rules of the Order to which the crew belongs, she can never permit herself to be seen as other than a head-to-foot-enrobed blur. There is also Meep, zizzing around somewhere. They are all the same person, really—the AI of Concord Station, the space station where Pink and her mother have been living for nearly three years—but they have been Pink’s favorite VR scenario since she was a toddler and she sees no reason to change this now just because she is sixteen. “Big,” Pink adds loyally, “but really sweet. Co tries really, really hard not to knock into things and break them. And co’s really polite.”
Sister Alexandra says, “Doessss thissss one possessss a name?”
“Slídhadhrup,” says Pink. “Slídhadhrup/Jéjno’Lílyo/fü.” [She pronounces it SLEETHE-ah-throop-JAYJ-noe?-LEEL-yoe-fü?, with a rising tone in each syllable following a “/”; the “th” voiced like the “th” in “soothe”; and the “ü” in fü like the “u” in French “tu” or the “y” in Danish “Holeby” or the ü in German “hübsch.” To pronounce the “ü” in fü, set your mouth to say a nice long “oo,” then, while you are blowing out the air to say “oo,” and without moving your lips from the “oo” position, change the inside of your mouth to try to say “ee” instead. Or just give up and pronounce it “foo,” to the scorn of all French and German persons—Danes will be far too polite to laugh at you.]
Brother Róbberámmerdoc barks a laugh. “Slither-droop,” he says, and they all laugh, then, even Sister Skylark, though she immediately apologizes for it.
* * * *
2. The Beginning of the Story (We Warned You about the Tangles).
“You will not be going alone, of course,” says Pink’s parent. They are sitting at the breakfast table in their shared apt in the Human Habitat Area on Concord Station’s Fourth Ring. Pink’s parent is Doctor Andrea Sévigny, the Station’s Chief Exozoologist, which is someone who studies animals from planets other than Earth. “The entire Orientation Class will be taking the trip, chaperoned by Doctor Ziomek and Mrizh Borm.”
“Placid,” says Pink.
“Please, Juliana; no slang at the breakfast table.” The Orientation Class is composed of new Human Station staff who have not yet been assigned D’/fü work-partners. Pink is by far the youngest, by a good twelve Earth-years; and she is also the most experienced with Station life, the first Human subadult (as she then was) ever to join the Station staff. In the past, Shiphome has assigned D’/fü crew to their Station counterparts. But recently Shiphome’s presiding te’ürye—whom, as Pink knows, are Damánakíppith/fü in their seventh, final (and from the Human viewpoint, weirdest) morphological cycle—have made an unexpected announcement. They have decided to invite this latest shipment of Humans to come to Shiphome, mingle with its inhabitants under controlled conditions, and see what pairings develop. Thus the class trip, the first of its kind.
“After all,” says Doctor Sévigny, “if the United Nations ever lets the D’/fü settle on Earth, that is how relationships among the races will form naturally. And even if this trip does not affect the outcome of all that, it is significant in its own right. Shiphome has not permitted Humans such intimate access to coself since this station was completed in 2178. That was six years before you were born, ma petite.” She smiles fondly at her daughter and takes another piece of toast from the toast-rack.
“Will you be coming with me, maman?” Pink asks.
“Non, you are a big girl, and I have my work here to do.” Pink’s heart leaps. “As we have discussed, the Shiphome population in which you will find your partner will be the lilyo’te; and your partner, whoever co ends up being, will be the very first lílyo ever permitted aboard this facility. You have studied lilyó’te in Orientation, one presumes.”
Pink nods rapidly, and her voice assumes a professorial tone. “They’re Family in their first morphological cycle. That’s why we call them Firsters. They stand, on average, three meters tall; have big tails that fall off when they get older, but no manes or wings, not yet. They also have the mass of a small commuter transport and can benchpress a quarter ton.” And they have nothing whatsoever between their legs besides sematophores, she thinks, but does not say. As recently as a year before she chattered on artlessly about the luridly hued D’/fü scent glands, and even engaged in crotch- and neck-sniffing with the friendly D’/fü around the station. But now that she is sixteen, and having her menses (which came so late the Station physicians were very worried), she is finding it difficult to speak of such matters to anyone but Sister Skylark, and she no longer leaps into Borm’s arms for nuzzle-wrestling.
It was her menses that made Pink realize how alone she was on Station. This upset her greatly, for when she first arrived with her mother, in 2195, she thought she had died and gone to Heaven. For the first time in her life she found herself surrounded by incredibly interesting and friendly people who were interested in her not because she was a clone but because she was young, and smart, and funny, and endearingly freckled, and brave, and Human; and she made friends instantly, particularly with Borm; the Station AI (in cos Sister Skylark persona); and Nandi’s father, Alan “Andy” Ziomek, Crew Relations Facilitator, the oldest Human on the Station, everybody’s unofficial grandpa, and the only Human on Station besides Pink to lack a workpartner.
She soon discovered that loneliness is an emotion nearly foreign to the D’/fü. Very early on, following their emergence from their Shiphome crêches, Firsters group (or are moved to group by forces at the time of our story still improperly understood by Human biologists, psychologists, and ethnologists) into ték’te— sextets—that is, groups of six; and, barring accident, all the individuals in a given tek mature together from morphological stage to morphological stage.
Changes from one stage to another can be very dramatic even by D’/fü standards. Powers come and go; organs grow and are discarded; size gradually diminishes (though mass does not). Second Cyclers (dyéñe’te) or Seconders are randy, winged, haloed, supercurious shapechangers mad to touch, smell, lick, probe, rub, and mess with anything and everybody that takes their fancies. With discipline, however, they can make good peacekeepers, like Chiriósso, the centaur half of the Orientation Class’s Security escort. Third Cyclers (nuplásta’te) or Thirders are supercreative empaths integrating and expanding upon memories and skills from prior embodiments. Many of the D’/fü counselors, artists, musicians, craftspersons, and techies on Station are Thirders. So was Borm when Pink first met co.
Fourth Cyclers (unésta’te) or Fourthers are calm, focused, controlled grown-ups (except for Borm, whom Pink cannot imagine ever becoming calm, focused, controlled, or for that matter grown up, no matter how old co gets). Many develop specialized body-shapes suited to their biologically and spiritually ordained roles in the D’/fü community. Fifth Cyclers (shórya’te) or Fifthers are semiaquatic, eyeless, web-digited, phociform hermits who spend most of their time on Station in the marine habitat on Ring Seven surfing the D’/fü Dreamtime or chatting with the porpoises and giant octopi. Sixth Cyclers (tümüta’te) or Sixthers are healer-leaders, devoted to identifying and setting right problems that disturb the harmony of the fü. Pink once heard one of the oldsters on Station refer to Sixth Cyclers as “yodas,” which resulted in her spending the better part of three workshifts scarfing popcorn with Grandpa Andy, giggling at old flatscreen vids.
The seventh morphological stage (ürye’te) is the biggest Change of all, and it is so weird Pink doesn’t like to think about it. At the time of our story, even after a hundred years of Human-D’/fü contact, still very little was known about Seventh Cyclers, partly because there are very few Awake on Shiphome at any one time, and those who are, seldom communicate with anybody but Shiphome and Sixthers. It was only a year or so prior to the events of this story that Humans learned that an ürye is in fact a composite individual made up of the six merged members of a matured ték.
What would it be like to have an ürye as a workpartner? thinks Pink, watching her mother butter toast. Safer than having a Firster, probably. Because Firsters are the largest of the D’/fü, Firsters can do a lot of damage without meaning to. So lilyó’te are drilled from crêchehood in D’/fü etiquette, which consists of 374,360 Expressions of Emotional Commerce, most of them apologies.
Co will crush me like a fly, thinks Pink sadly, and weep bitter tears over my corpse. And then, of course, co will eat me, because that is what D’/fü do for one another when one of them dies, an exceedingly rare event. They do this not only as an act of spiritual homage to the deceased, but also to ingest and assimilate cos memories and experience. Not that Pink imagines she has much experience to assimilate. The image of Sven, the artist from Orientation Class, swims fetchingly into her mind, and she shoves it out of sight hurriedly.
When she does, another thought pops up in its place, one so dreadful that she has not permitted herself to entertain it until now: What if I get to Shiphome and nobody wants me? And it is this thought that causes Pink to exclaim to her toast-buttering mother something that will make Pink writhe in embarrassment for months afterwards recalling it. “But I don’t have anything to wear!”
Her mother smiles. “Shall I order you a pressure suit from La Pleiáde? They are all the rage in the Lunar Republic these days, I understand.” Her daughter glowers. “Come, come, now, chérie, no need to put on such a face. We shall find you something colorful. Firsters adore color. Besides, it is high time you graduated from the gamine look.” Pink brightens, only to lapse back into sourness when her mother adds, “No implants.”
* * * *
3. Halfway through the Story.
In the Tangles, Pink crawls wearily through a landscape that shifts at every susurrus of her thoughts. Her makeup is smeared and she has long ago lost her shoes, wig, hat, and bulbils. Every once in a while, when she stops and yells, “Borm?” the word flies out of her mouth and manifests as three-dimensional Roman alphabetic characters, which immediately shift to Cyrillic, then Ogham rune script, and Vévrelljójodstan, then pop like soap bubbles in the blue green chartreuse yellow gold brown orange red burgundy purple violet turquoise air.
She tries to remember the precise sequence of events that has led her into this pickle, but everything seems jumbled up. She remembers talking to Sister Skylark about it all, but surely that cannot have happened yet. She remembers the children teasing her about being a clone, on the playground of the French school she attended before her mother moved them to Canada, though why that memory should come to her, here, in this place, is beyond her comprehension. She remembers walking upon the surface of a planet where the plants sing her a welcome, though she has never been anywhere but Earth and here. She remembers the Shiphome airlock opening to welcome the Bifurcated Androgyne. She remembers some sort of explosion, although (as far as she knows) she has never witnessed an explosion in her entire life. She remembers coming out of the incubator into a cold, fuzzy world peopled with careful giants. She remembers lovers, none of them Sven; playground fights; taking a bath with a bunch of gigantic Firsters; being so old she cannot lift her head. Then? Nothing; only many stars; and Borm saying, “Dorothy! Dorothy! There’s no place like home,” in an obscure language not unlike Finnish.
Who in hell is Dorothy? thinks Pink. Suddenly it is all too much. She lies down on a surface that has abruptly assumed the characteristics of deep fluffy moss, if you can imagine moss composed of trillions of nose hairs. I guess this is it, she thinks. She has not eaten in a while, and you could go crazy in a place like this. Little things run over her on their way to somewhen else. She does not stir, and after a while (if you can call it that) she sleeps.
She is still sleeping when Slídhadhrup/Jéjno’Lílyo/fü, blundering blindly through the madness of the Tangles, nearly decapitates her with cos tail.
* * * *
4. Much earlier in the Story.
In the bathroom of the Concord Station apt she shares with her mother, Pink stares at her chest in the mirror, silently willing something, anything, to happen thereupon. Pink’s chest is flat, like her mother’s. Pink’s hair is red, that is to say, orange, as her mother’s was before it went gray. Pink’s nose, like her mother’s, is snubby. Pink’s face, like the maternal face, is freckled, and pale (except when it is sunburnt or excited or embarrassed). Like her mother’s, Pink’s limbs are slender (though well-muscled), and Pink’s feet, like her mother’s, are immense. “I look like an elf crossed with a stork,” Pink complains to her friend Borm.
“Elf,” muses Bormwéthu/Havévno’Unésta/fü in cos three voices. “A powerful mythological creature, frequently portrayed as possessing diminutive size. Ah, just so seemed Humans to us when we first encountered you! Stork. A large wading bird of the zoological family Ciconiidae, possessing long legs and a stiff gait. I should like to see a stork one day. I experienced no storks when I visited Ohio, but of course I was only a Thirder then.” Borm has only recently gone through cos Change and consequently has been putting on airs.
“Maybe I should get implants,” says Pink.
“Forgive me for saying so, as I am merely a Nongendered Outer Space Alien with no direct experience of such matters, but it seems to me that having storks implanted upon your person would create an effect more outré than décoratif.”
“Ha, ha,” says Pink. They have been trying on makeup together in Pink’s bathroom. It has been a tight squeeze, even given the liberal dimensions granted by the Concord Station architects to the Human Habitat apts. Pink stands a little over one and three-quarters of a meter tall, but Borm stands over two and a third meters, with shoulders triple the average Human width, and massive, haunchlike, goddess hips. These characteristics, along with the somewhat prancing gait caused by the fact that D’/fü knees flex fully in both directions, have earned Borm and cos kin the nickname of “centaurs” among some Humans. Australians, rather unkindly, prefer to call them “‘roos.”
So for Pink, sharing a bathroom with Borm is a bit like sharing a bathroom with a Shetland pony, or with a big-eyed, silver-furred gamboling lamb that just happens to weigh one hundred eighty-seven and one-third kilos and in cos case smells (thanks to the D’/fü sematophores) like a very rich blend of roasting coffee beans. “More blusher?” inquires Borm. Pink eyes co critically.
“I shouldn’t,” she says. “Maman always says that less is more.”
“How very D’/fü of her!” exclaims the centaur, patting the girl massively on the head with cos long nailless six-fingered hand. Borm has a high fluting tenor voice, and—like all D’/fü from Seconders on up—whenever co speaks, two other voices seem to be speaking softly in unison with cos main one. “From my study of your kind I gather that there is a grammar to mammaries, and your journey—small and powerful though you may be—has barely begun. Have patience. You know not what delicious secrets your DNA may reveal in its due time.”
“Yes, I do,” says Pink. “I’m a clone. I’m doomed to look just like my mother.” The one time she has mentioned this fact, casually, in her mother’s hearing, Doctor Sévigny did not even look up from her cell-slide as she replied, “Consider it a blessing, chérie. Men will never be distracted from the beauty of your eyes.”
Borm says, “In any case, your new fwet’héttaha will not care what size your bassoons are. Fortunate Pinklet, to be traveling to our dear Ámash/Bórmwu! I cannot wait to show you the place. Watch out for your new partner’s tail,” the linguist adds, taking a powderpuff from the dresser and dusting cos harsh-planed gray face with fluorescent powder (all the rage last year on Luna). “Firsters are notoriously clumsy. Which reminds me, I have a going-to-Shiphome gift for you.”
“Really?” says Pink, suspiciously. Co passes back the powderpuff, reaches into a duffle, and pulls out a lurid orange tangle. “Um, wow, Borm. Um, it isn’t alive, is it?”
“Non, non, ma petite blagueuse. Behold!” Co shakes the tangle and it resolves itself into a heavy-looking henna-red dreadlocks wig. “Do not soil your knees with prostrations of thanks. Try it on!”
Pink puts on the wig, which settles down over her forehead, engulfing her head, shoulders, upper chest, and most of her back. “I can’t see,” she complains.
“No matter,” says Borm gaily. Cos own silver mane, which is interlaced today with writhing turquoise ribbons, has expanded in Fourtherhood and now reaches to cos waist, a fact of which co is inordinately proud. “You will make a glorious first impression upon your poor maneless Firster. How envious co will be! Take my advice: whenever possible, let co carry you. That way, you’ll run much less risk of getting stepped on.”
* * * *
5. A Little Closer to the Middle of the Story, But Still Pretty near the Beginning.
Pink is lying on the greensward in the Human Habitat Area of Ring Four with the rest of the Orientation Class, listening to various Station workpartners talk about their experiences of meeting one another. It is nearly a month before the class is scheduled to leave for Shiphome. She is slightly bored, because little of this is new to her; and she is trying very hard not to watch the pseudosunbeams from the fake Ring Four sky glitter through the hairs on the forearms of veiny blond sculptor Sven Larssen.
A stern voice in her head reminds her that she is living on the biggest space station ever built, interacting daily with extraterrestrials; she should have better things to do with her time than mooning over some Scandinavian mesomorph. Mort XXXIX, her pet fandy, zizzes past on cos rotary wings, twurpling to beat the band. This makes Pink sad, because she knows that soon Mort, like all fánd’te, will enter cos parthenogenetic birthing stage, and be eaten up (like an Earth spider-mommy) by cos hatchlings. “And then co got so drunk, co tried to eat my chest,” someone says.
Everyone laughs, and Pink’s attention perks. The speaker is a short, plump, merry, large-chested, saried Indian woman, Pooja Niruja by name, who has been serving as Concord Station’s Chief Human Sociologist for some years. Her D’/fü partner, a long-maned, green-eyed Fourther named Vúdrir/Háttra’Unésta/fü, protests good-naturedly over the laughter.
“Kek, kek, kek, she is very wrong in her words to you all,” co exclaims in cos chorused tenor. “One was not attempting to consume said mammaries, but to determine whether or not they were part of ü’Pooja’s person, a symbiont, a parasite of some kind, or a decorative adjunct to her clothing. And for such determinations my fü employ the tongue.” At which point all the centaurs listening ‘round about stick out their very, very, very long, bright cerulean blue tongues, which makes everybody in the class laugh even harder.
Other stories follow. Mimmi Navarrete, a Chilean cryogenicist, describes how long it took her to become used to the D’/fü’s strong body odors. “When I first met Údhi,” she says, referring to her centaur partner, “I kept smelling strawberry jam all the time. ‘What is this strawberry jam?’ I thought. ‘Who is making strawberry jam?’ It turned out to be Údhi sweating.” He Pengfei, a gray-haired Chinese botanist, says that when he first met his partner, Üra, the centaur’s scent put him in mind of the aroma arising from the freshly shaven root of Angelica archangelica. Aeltje Claes, a Flemish woman assigned to Station Traffic Control, pipes up that her partner, Dhórhen, made her think of smoked eel. “And that was before co showed me cos tongue,” she adds, which makes everybody laugh again.
“Pardon me.” One member of the Orientation Class, a scholarly-looking older Englishwoman named Gwendolyn Rice-Chakrabarty, who displays keen interest in everything but seldom speaks, turns heads. “Would it be an effrontery for me to ask our D’/fü friends here what Humans smelled like to you when you first met us? Of course we must each possess a distinct, er, pong or range of scents, varying with our body chemistries. But I mean in general? Did you find our scents distasteful? Reminiscent of something from your own culture? Surprising in some way? Or simply alien? I hope that my question does not offend.”
All Human eyes turn to the centaurs gathered ‘round about. Quiet settles over the group. A couple of the students cough. Then long-maned, green-eyed Vúdrir/Háttra’Unésta/fü rises onto cos massive haunches. Cos partner, the Indian sociologist, smiles tenderly at co and places a hand on cos broad silver shoulder.
Vúdrir looks around. Warmth has come into the huge eyes of all the nearby centaurs, and gold highlights into their silver fur, and Pink finds herself holding her breath. “How do Humans smell to us?” the Fourther asks in cos three voices. “After our long years of seeking you in our loneliness, and having found you, Dreaming for this day when together we may talk and eat and smell and lick and embrace in harmonious enquiry? Why, you smell to us only of one general thing and that is tívi.”
“Sorry, what does this tívi mean?” asks handsome rugged Sven, running a veined hand through his platinum hair.
“Joy,” says Pink Sévigny. She is feeling very small in the grass, very small and very alone in her cloneness. The big sculptor blinks down at her as though noticing her for the first time. “Tívi means joy.” And then she bursts into tears.
* * * *
6. Interlude: Long before the Beginning of the Story.
Sitting by herself on the edge of her Marseilles playground at l’Écôle des Enfants Surdoués, nine-year-old Juliana is putting the finishing touches on her sandpainting when a shadow falls over the work and her. “Va-t’en,” the future Pink yaps [Get lost!].
“Que peins-tu, Cigogneau?” [What are you painting, Little Stork?]
“Mêle-toi de tes oignons, Bernache.” [Mind your own beeswax, Barnacle.] Without looking Juliana knows her interlocutor is a very short, dark, muscular, extremely hostile female named Bernice Azouzi. Bernice will grow up to be a highly respected judge in northern France, but at this stage in her development she is aware only of the injustice of her height, and she vents her rage—whenever the nuns aren’t looking—on Juliana, the tallest child in the form.
“Bébé-éprouvette!” taunts Bernice. [Test-tube baby!] “Ton frère est un Bunsen et ta soeur est une cornue!” [Your brother is a Bunsen burner and your sister is a chemical retort!] Titters arise from a knot of girls standing not far away. Bernice is very smart for her age. They are all very smart for their ages, and they know about Juliana being a clone, how she is not certain; probably one of the novices spilled the beans, despite the Headmistress’s stern warnings to the staff and Andrea Sévigny’s distant kinship (through her Italian fatherline) with the current Pope and the official opinion of the Vatican that Human cloning is permissible in cases of spousal demise and maternal infertility.
The future Pink does not respond to the short girl immediately. She is pondering what Sister Skylark would do in her position. The image of Brother Róbberámmerdoc, the Hammerhead Man, comes into her head, saying, “ADN, q’il aille au diable! Nous tous sommes l’essence des étoiles!” [DNA be damned! We are all starstuff!] So she carefully picks up her sandtray; gets to her feet; looks into the child’s black eyes with her green ones; and says, “Tu as bien raison, Bernice.” [You’re right, Bernice.] Then, instead of smashing the sandtray over the Barnacle’s head, which was Pink’s original plan, she walks away with the tray still in her hands.
* * * *
7. A Little past the Middle of the Story.
Pink, lying on the turf of nosehair, senses her near-decapitation by the Firster’s tail as a whoosh of wind and a loud thump and powerful vibration very close by. She also becomes aware of a strong organic scent, not dissimilar to that of recently boiled menudo in a poorly ventilated kitchen. “Madre de Buda,” she says, wrinkling her nose, and opens her eyes to find a silver-furred mountain with enormous worried liquid gold eyes peering down at her from about a meter away.
She has seen larger creatures, but none this close. She knows at once it is a Firster, and not a happy one. Cos huge, limpid eyes are lilac-lidded with anxiety; cos massive, muscular, unmaned torso is streaked with purplish-brown; and half of cos chests are undeveloped (secondary D’/fü lungs not fully maturing until Seconder—dyéñe’te—stage). The Firster is wearing a complex equipment belt-slash-rucksack, tattered and filthy, and when co sees her eyes open co says, “Zhóktet,” in a deep, deep single voice. It is precisely the sort of voice a mountain would have were it capable of speech. “Zhóktet!” The smell of boiling intestines grows stronger. [Safe! Safe! Pink translates.]
“Pleased to meet you,” says Pink, gagging slightly. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes. The scenery ‘round about has not changed—it is still completely incomprehensible—but the air is slightly colder than she remembers it having been, she is feeling very light, and the nosehairlike sward upon which she has slumbered has grown unpleasantly moist and springy. “Um, Tyénst’h’ko’dnesk djinsh, hwehbállu,” [Howdy, pal], she says, sounding the glottal stops carefully. She hopes she is using the right polite forms. “Can you speak Brenglish?”
“Brenglish, yes, yes, this one has been so schooled,” roars the mountain. “Harmed art thou, Master Small Individual? Canst thou rise? Is thy tiny wise head intact? For one came upon thee of a sudden, and one’s tail, alas! Came near to bifurcating thee.” And then co breaks into an elaborate lamentation of which Pink understands perhaps three memes out of twenty.
“Ke’zhéggha’a! Ke’zhéggha’a!” cries Pink [Grieve not! Grieve not!], a trifle desperately, for the nosehairs have begun sucking at her skin like little questing siphons. “Would you mind helping me up?” The creature breaks off cos lamentations and, with the slightest of efforts, tugs at her outstretched arms, whereupon she sails through the air, halting her progress by desperately grabbing the featherlike branches of something resembling a tree fern. The Firster gives another howl of despair, certain co has killed her this time, so she is forced to yell, “Ke’zhéggha’a!” several more times until co calms down.
She climbs down from the tree fern, which is filled with minute coral slugs that flee her with unsluglike rapidity, peeping their dismay. The sobbing mountain approaches her with great care, in the process knocking over or aside with cos tail three iridescent blobs, a beige cheesy hexagon the size of Pink’s mother, and what appears to be a bright purple radio antenna, which screams slightly as it falls. “Hey, now,” says Pink, patting cos immense furry paw. “It’s okay, truly. Low gravity plus big muscles plus stork equals flight, no prob.”
“One hungers,” co says.
“That makes two of us.” She looks around. “So. Let’s use equal-to-equal conversation mode, okay? Fefréllyo yoyók Pink. Fefréllthre ñeñék/donnét?” [Person-of-equal-rank, I call myself Pink. What do you call yourself?] Cos reply sounds like molasses gurgling out of a jug. Pink says, “Um, hwesh?” [Again?]
“Fefréllyo Slídhadhrup/Jéjno’Lílyo/fü yoyók,” says the Firster. [My name, person-of-equal-rank, is Slídhadhrup, Current Era, First Cycle.] “Thou art the first Human ever I have smelt. How camest thou hither? Art thou from Óllowe/Dvyénnu [The New Place]?”
“You mean Concord Station?”
“Djádthre,” co says [Agreed], and taps cos elephantine right ear [the D’/fü equivalent of a nod of assent].
“Djádthre,” replies Pink [You betcha!], doing the same. The creature’s huge puppy eyes grow wider with wonder. Hastily she explains, “Vyen’jéssatye blefzhúzhü fwet’héttaha yek.” [I came here, person-of-equal-rank, to meet my worklifepartnerfriend.]
“To Kyíghenhássdrumderr [The Tangles] thou camest this one to meet?” exclaims the Firster. Cos sick lilac-browns are beginning to be replaced by healthy flushes of rose-orange.
“Here? Oh, no,” says Pink. “Kek! [No!] I mean, not on purpose. Coming here was sort of an accident. You know, a m’shyéghen.” [An unintended error.]
“My teacher say, No te’m’shyéghen there be,” roars the Firster solemnly.
“Yeah? Well, vyen’jéssatnéne Kyíghenhássdrumderr lópdhik?” [Why did you come to the Tangles, person-of-equal-rank?]
Co launches into a long and mostly incomprehensible tale involving much chest pounding and tail thrashing, which when all is said and done appears to boil down to the fact that cos teacher told co to. “But I thought,” says Pink, “that you folks—your fü—don’t go walkabout until dyéñe’te [Seconderhood]?”
“Djádthre, djádthre, djádthre!” replies Slídhadhrup. [Absolutely! Correct! YES!] Co is squatting, now, before her, cos tail stretched out behind co, so that she actually comes up to the place where cos navel might have been had co had a navel. “Nonetheless, teacher saith, ‘Go find Úüv’élleblét/immo,’ and so Slídhadhrup goeth!”
“Bien,” says Pink, and then falls silent, for she can think of nothing else to say. She is lost in an incomprehensible wilderness with the centaur equivalent of a bright ten-year-old, and she hasn’t the slightest idea what to do next. Then she turns and looks at the creature again. “Wait a sec. Zhádnónnet-nónnet?” [What did you just say?] “Tümüta’ñék dámmas-dámmas blíspfü górmn’shde?” [Whom did your teacher tell you to find, person-of-equal-rank?]
“Úüv’élleblét/immo,” says the Firster.
“You mean the Bird? The Vigilant Bird?”
“I know not these words.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Úüv’élleblét/immo, she thinks desperately, trying to recall what she has learned in Ethnology. “Got it!” she exclaims. “Hwehbállu [buddy], can you take us to Úüv’élleblét/immo? Do you know the way?”
“Teacher saith, the Way is within us,” intones the Firster. “And all places are this place.” Then the lilac-brown leaks back into cos fur, and co buries cos huge face in cos huge paws and weeps. It is such a Human way of weeping, so deeply recognizable, that before Pink knows what she is doing she has climbed into the mountain’s huge lap and is putting both her slim (yet well-muscled) arms around co. And they sit this way, the Human child holding the alien one, for ten thousand years or so.
* * * *
8. Second Interlude: Long after the End of the Story.
“This sure feels familiar,” says thirty-nine-year-old skipship navigator Juliana “Pink” Sévigny, wading hipdeep through the field of singing flowers.
* * * *
9. Near the Beginning of the Story Again, but after the Bassoons Discussion.
“Ah don’t get this wet-head ceremony,” says Bad Boy Mitch. All twenty-four members of the Orientation Class are sitting around the holotable in the big briefing room on Ring Five, waiting for their facilitators to show up, and Mitch, as usual, is pretending to be stupid just because he comes from Texas. “What happens? Me and my workpartner, do we get it on, or what?” To the embarrassed silence that follows his question he replies, “Come on, you people. You cain’t tell me ah’m the only one heyah who’s been wonderin’ that.”
“The word is fwét’het, not ‘wethead’,” says a cool, cultured female voice. “And if by ‘get it on’ you mean ‘engage in genital congress,’ then I fear you face disappointment.” Professor Elena Magdalena Velasquez-Villareal, Chief of Xenoethnology for Concord Station, has walked into the chamber, followed by her partner, Vállanévra/Háttra’Unésta/fü. She is a dark-skinned, dark-haired Brazilian of astonishing beauty, attired in an impeccably tailored business suit. Her partner, who towers over her, is a pale-eyed Fourther with a disc-plaited, spinelength mane. “What precisely is your speciality, Mister Henderson?” the profesor says, fixing Mitch with her cool, cool gaze. “Plate tectonics? Olfact adhesion? Underwater basket weaving? Destroying ecosystems?”
“Ah happen to be a famous writah,” says Mitch with dignity.
“Romance holos,” pipes up Pink. “I looked it up.” Mitch gives her a glare and the rest of the class tries not to laugh, with varying degrees of success.
“I only ask,” says Velasquez-Villareal, “because if you are—with the rest of this class—to represent the Human race to the Damánakíppith/fü of Shiphome, it is important that you get some basic terms correct.”
In cos three baritone voices, Vállanévra says, “As perhaps, my small friends, you have already been informed, the fwét’het is what in Brenglish may be termed the workpartner bonding ceremony. Fwet’héttaha is the term in Mánafu/túrrü for the workpartner with whom one bonds. The terms denote togetherness, opening to inclusion.” Co circles the room with the distinctive D’/fü hop-stride that Pink at first found funny but now scarcely notices, while from the alien arises a pungent, sweet scent not unlike that of lavender. “Kindly do not confuse the fwét’het with the tek bond. On Ámash/Bórmwu, the fwét’het ceremony is employed when individuals from one tek must join in intensive but temporary partnership with individuals from another tek removed in distance from the home crêche.”
From her place near the door, Velasquez-Villareal says, “The ceremony involves six stages. The first stage is the gwann, the search or hunt for the suitable workpartner. When you arrive at Shiphome, most of you will be taken on a tour of those portions of Shiphome that are equivalent to your current Station departments. There you will seek out compatible potential workpartners, so it would be well to have prepared beforehand a mental list of qualities you feel would be suitable in a fwet’héttaha.
“Once you find a suitable candidate, the second stage of the ceremony begins, the tyúnsten or greeting, which traditionally consists of the ritual expression, ‘Mággizhen tívvi üwéwn,’ that is to say, ‘Health, joy, and honor!’ Thereafter follows stage three, the bórmgwann, or invitation to fwét’het.”
“‘Most’ of us, you say, Professor?” puts in Ndidi Nwosu, a brawny basso composer from Nairobi. “Who will not be included in the department tour?”
“That’d be I,” says Pink faintly.
“Djádthre,” says Vállanévra, hop-striding over to where Pink is sitting. Cos pale eyes are shining, and the discs on cos mane are chiming faintly. Co puts cos hands on her thin shoulders, and the scent of lavender grows stronger. “Citizen Sévigny is our very very special nem, are you not, Citizen? Great things of her we expect, I think. She will be taken on a special tour all her very own.” Pink thinks this has a slightly ominous ring to it, but nobody else seems to notice; they are all looking at her a trifle enviously, except for Mitch, who whispers loudly to the classmate seated next to him, “Special? That skinny little thing? Why, ah’v got hemorrhoids older than her.”
The beauteous Velasquez-Villareal gives Mitch a cold stare, then looks at her partner. “We were speaking of the bórmgwann, I believe?” she says.
“Djádthre, djádthre,” agrees Vállanévra merrily, skip-hopping ‘round to take up a position behind Mitch’s seat, which causes the Texan to crane his head up and around to catch a glimpse of the big creature’s face. “Now among my fü,” proceeds the Fourther, smiling down at Mitch with cos huge moist loving eyes, “the bórmgwann or invitation to fwét’het is normally communicated via a specific cascade of te’rúllmann or sematophore expressions. Since your admirable species does not possess sematophores capable of directed emission—at least, not unless you have been consuming dried legumes—” [polite laughter here] “—each of you will be given, prior to your departure for Ámash/Bórmwu, six small vials or bulbils containing a chemical amalgam similar to the scents my fü emit for the bórmgwann.
“When you encounter an individual whom you wish to invite to come to Concord Station as your fwet’héttaha, you simply remove the bulbil from its pouch, hold the bulbil in your cupped palm for no more than three seconds to allow the warmth and scent from your hand to penetrate its membrane, then release the bulbil before your chosen candidate.”
Annikki Mäkelä, a tall Finnish hydraulic engineer, raises her calloused hand. “Will we be the only ones doing the approaching, or will our hosts also be initiating the bórmgwann?” she asks.
“For this first visit,” replies Velasquez-Villareal, “Shiphome is permitting this class to take the initiative. If all goes well, subsequent visits may be coordinated differently.”
“Why six bulbils?” asks Deng Bochao, a handsome young Chinese studying nanosuturing at the Station teaching hospital.
“Because as you know, we D’/fü do everything in sixes,” replies Vállanévra/Háttra’Unésta/fü. “And because six bulbils give one the opportunity to approach more than one potential fwet’héttaha. For the bormkwúnaha, the one approached, may reject or accept the bórmgwann as co wills.”
Velasquez-Villareal says crisply, “The response to invitation constitutes the fourth stage of the ceremony, the zhóllaven or assessment of suitability, in which both the bormkwúnu, the approacher, and bormkwúnaha, the approachee, must spend a certain amount of time together, weighing carefully their mutual suitability. The time spent varies, but usually is taken up by conversation and mutual grooming, the object being to achieve rüzhruven and fwónnuven: intellectual and emotional intimacy. Thereafter comes stage five, the háhlhlappen or choice aye or nay; and the final stage, the fwét’het proper.”
“Is that when we get it on?” quips Bad Boy Mitch.
“Now, now, honored wee one,” says Vállanévra, slapping the Texan’s cheeks fondly. “You would not have us disclose all our mysteries, would you?” With long silver nailless fingers co tweaks Mitch’s nose, then hops on. “The proceedings of the fwét’het vary from partnership to partnership, but one factor common to all such is paired dreaming, what my fü call hwérrik/vurráhn. I trust you have all completed your preparatory dream-practice? Yes? Ah, very good. Then you should have a very easy time of it indeed. Following the hwérrik/vurráhn, you will experience flénnen, a scent-marking by your fwet’héttaha, and with this the fwét’het ceremony will conclude.”
Derek Wright, a goateed New Zealand astronomer of compact build sitting on Pink’s other side, leans close to her and whispers, “What sort of dreams do you think our Texan has?” which because of his accent comes out like, “What sort of drames d’ye think our Tixan hez?”
Professor Velasquez-Villareal clears her lovely throat. “One more important matter remains to be discussed,” she says, “and that is the matter of your safety whilst you are in Shiphome. The class will be accompanied to Shiphome by your chaperones, Chief Linguists Nandi Ziomek and Bormwéthu/Havévno’Unésta/fü, and by a Security team made up of Officers Alexella Sanhueza and Chiriósso/Vevbróta’Dyéñe/fü. But as there are twenty-four of you and only four chaperones, their presence will not be sufficient to ensure your safety unless you keep the following points firmly in mind.” She stares at Mitch as she says this.
“Firstly,” she goes on, “do not wander off by yourself. Stay with the group until it is time for your Shiphome guide to lead you to meet your D’/fü work-peers. Thereafter, stay with your guide, who will accompany you as you navigate the pre-fwét’het procedures. When you settle upon a fwet’héttaha who accepts your bórmgwann, stay with co through fwét’het until flénnen, when co marks you with cos scent; then let your new partner lead you back to the disembarkation bay. The reason for these precautions is that like all lifeforms, Shiphome possesses internal defense mechanisms that guard against infection and predation by foreign organisms. Until your fwet’héttaha marks you with cos scent, you run the risk of being mistaken for an invader by Shiphome’s immune system. And I assure you that cos immune system is extremely efficient in disposing of invaders.
“Remember, class: whatever you do, whatever befalls you on Shiphome, do not wander off.”
* * * *
10. Back in the Tangles.
They wander and wander and wander and wander and wander and wander and wander, Slídhadhrup taking very small steps so that Pink can keep up with co, until Pink can walk no more. Then Slídhadhrup picks her up and puts her upon cos wide hairy silver maneless back, and trots and trots and trots and trots and trots and trots and trots. Occasionally weird things divebomb them from the trees? giant pseudocorals? techno-organic art installation projects? towering overhead, forcing Slídhadhrup to stop, put Pink down, and fend the weird things off. It gets so cold they can see their breath in the air; then it grows so warm Pink nearly faints with the heat, though the lílyo appears unaffected. Gravity fluctuates, too, making footing and pacing dangerous. “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” yells Pink to Slídhadhrup. (A nearby bush is screeching like a Mumbai cobra-rock band, making it difficult for her to hear herself speak.) “Saklósso brísh-brish,” is the Firster’s roared reply (“The road is the road”). In other words, thinks Pink, who the hell knows?
Along the way Slídhadhrup unhappily sniffs and samples all manner of potential edibles (bdéd’zhuzhahá’te): leaves (or what look like leaves), bark (or what looks like bark), blossoms (or what look like blossoms), insectoids. Pink, figuring she might as well die full as die hungry, samples them, too, and though none of them kill her and a few taste vaguely pleasant they all go right through her and she ends up with hours of smelly diarrhea which leaves her weak and severely dehydrated. Slídhadhrup roars so many apologies over this that she ends up yelling back, “Samálla! [STOP!] Samálla, for Buddha’s sake!” with such rudeness that the Firster flushes greenish-lilac with shame and sulks for what Pink’s watch calls several hours. [The correct polite form ought to have been Yemállfye, “May we both stop, person-of-equal-rank.”]
Sulking, Slídhadhrup leaves her under an apparently innocuous, purplish-blue, magenta-tasseled bushlike object and goes off to find them both some water. Pink falls asleep under the bush-analogue and dreams she is back on Concord Station, describing to her Orientation Class her experiences in the Tangles. She is just coming to the part where she encounters the Vigilant Bird when a U.F.O. descends into the middle of the room and a queer six-headed creature sticks its head(s) out and says, in perfect French, “Non, non, mademoiselle, au jaune! au jaune!” [No, no, Miss; to the yellow! To the yellow!]; whereupon she wakes up to find the ceiling or sky or firmament far, far above lit up green in one direction and gold in another, and the “bush” licking her legs in a leisurely manner with its “tassels.”
Weeping with fear and self-disgust (she smells like a sewer), she struggles away from the pseudobush’s mild attentions and trips over Slídhadhrup’s tail. “Thou wakest, honorable wee insulter!” roars the Firster, not apparently unhappy to see her. “Vrórrimwa!” (Drink!) Co hands her a shining transparent globule textured like plastic, flanged by vestigial winglike bits, and possessing a sphincterlike pucker at one end. It is a smaller twin to the huge one in the Firster’s other hand. “Suck at the anus, ah! Thou seest?” co instructs, demonstrating, and Pink is so thirsty she does so. Liquid trickles into her mouth, skin-temperature and very slightly salty. At first she gags, thinking of urine and menses and snot and seminal fluid and other examples of mammaliana. Then she remembers she is the daughter of an exozoologist, and sucks away womanfully. It starts to taste wonderful, and she has to force herself to drink it slowly.
Slowly her mind, fuzzed with dehydration, returns to a measure of alertness. The bag deflates until it is nothing but a limp rag in her hand. Following the Firster’s example again, she sets it on the “ground” and, employing its winglike bits, it burrows swiftly out of sight. What in hell was that thing? she thinks, then decides that she does not right this moment wish to know. She touches the Firster on cos thigh. “Urrióñene, hwehbállu,” she manages [I thank thee, buddy-my-equal]. “Sorry I was rude earlier.”
“K’háss’hul,” replies the Firster [Nothing, nada, forget it, no worries], with an offhand wave of cos tail. Then, on mountainous impulse, co sweeps her up in cos furry silver arms and licks her all over her face and neck with cos ridiculously phallic blue tongue. When co lets her, gasping, go, she is startled to see tears welling from the sides of its enormous golden eyes.
“Aw, don’t cry,” says Pink. She lifts her hand and wipes away the tears. “Everything will be all right, I promise.”
“Slídhadhrup feared thou wert dying,” blubbers the mountain. “Slídhadhrup knows not what to do for to rescue a dying one.”
“I’m not dying, Slídhadhrup,” says Pink firmly, hoping it is true. “I’m just a little weak, that’s all. But the water you brought me really, really helped, and I had a dream just now. I think it was an ürye. It came to me and told me to go toward the yellow.” She points toward the gilded area of the Tangles’ horizon. “I think that’s where we’ll find Úüv’élleblét/immo. Or it, us.”
* * * *
11. Earlier than the Middle of the Story, but after the Fwét’het Discussion (We’re Sorry, but This Is How the Tangles Work).
Pink is sitting in the big media room on Ring Five with the rest of the Orientation Class, plus Andréa Sévigny, who is having a mother’s second thoughts about permitting her daughter to go on the class trip without her. It is the final class meeting before the big embarkation to Shiphome, and Shipnet drones are floating around recording everything for historic and P.R. purposes. Present are the two Ambassadors from Station to the Concordat Security Council, the Honorable Dvorah Franzheim and her Sixther partner, Awéwet [Honored] Píttu/Háttra’Tümüta/fü; linguists Borm and cos partner Nandi Ziomek, the class’s official chaperones; Gerda Rappesdottir, the scary Concord Station P.R. Chief, with her Fourther partner, sweet lilac-eyed Fást/Hahánno’Unésta/fü; and the two Station Security reps who will be accompanying the class, Alexella Sanhueza and her Seconder partner, huge Chiriósso/Vevbróta’Dyéñe/fü.
Gerda the P.R. lady has taken center stage and is saying, “If any of you people screw this up I will kill you with my bare hands.” Somebody waves. “What?”
It is Mitch. “Can we take vids?” he drawls. “WorldNet’s already beatin’ down mah door and I need to know what to tell mah agent.”
“Recording equipment of any kind is forbidden on Shiphome,” says Gerda, “as well you know, and the transportation and discovery of same will result in your immediate dismissal from this community and deportation back to Earth.” Mitch smirks but subsides. Americans, she thinks. “Other questions?”
Sven stands up, the better to show off his two and a fifth meters of height. Sven is a platinum blond, ruggedly handsome, with ice-blue eyes, and he is dressed in worn navy blue jeans and a stained embroidered artist’s smock, from which his sculptor’s powerful arms and hands protrude veinily. He says, “Will we be permitted to tour the Archaics while we are visiting Shiphome? Will we be permitted to experience the Tangles?” He has a very deep voice.
“No,” says Gerda.
A brief toilet break is called. Pink finds it difficult to stand, and is glad when her mother appears at her side. Doctor Sévigny says, “Are you all right, ma chérie?” Pink replies, “Bien sûr, maman,” [of course, Mom], and tries not to fall over. Pink is wearing a smart emerald silk suit, a necklace of black cultured pearls, and high heels dyed to match the necklace. Her orange dreadlocks have been pulled back from her face a trifle, and she has a lot of fluorescent makeup on, the effect of which is slightly spoiled by the enormous peacock feather hat she is wearing. “Don’t worry about me, maman,” adds Pink into her mother’s shoulder (they are nearly of a height). “What could happen with Borm as chaperone?” And they both laugh in not-entirely-mock consternation.
The break is soon over. When the class has reassembled, little, old, blonde, exquisitely dressed Ambassador Franzheim says in her soft, cultured, riveting voice, “I need hardly remind you all that this is an historic occasion. For the past twenty-two years of this Station’s existence, the Human staff has been assigned D’/fü partners by Shiphome. As a system, it has worked on the whole very well.” She smiles up at her partner, and Awéwet Píttu, one of the few Sixth Cyclers Pink has ever seen, smiles down at her D’/fü-style: lips pursed, dark violet eyes aglow with love and humor. Like all Sixthers, Píttu is short, only a bit over two meters tall, and winged, cos mane curiously liquid in appearance, like strands of blondish mercury. Pink thinks, And I’m going to be stuck with a stupid Firster! Then shame floods her, and she hangs her head.
“However,” Ambassador Franzheim continues, “as the United Nations Security Council winds down what we all hope will be its final session of debates on the Shiphome-to-Sol System immigration question, Shiphome has agreed to invite you, the first Orientation Class of 2200, to meet and find your D’/fü partners on their own home ground, as it were. Awéwet Píttu?”
Politely Awéwet Píttu places cos hands upon cos chests, the D’/fü equivalent of a bow, opens and closes cos silver-blond wings, and says, “All of my fü hope that you will feel yourselves as welcomed by our beloved Ámash/Bórmwu as we have felt welcomed by you here.” Co has a glorious, mellifluous triple-voice, underscored by a faint, sweet scent not unlike that of a Madonna lily Pink once smelled in the gardens of the Catholic girls’ school she attended as a child; and at cos first words the assembled class is enthralled. “It is my singular honor to convey to you a personal message from Shiphome’s guiding council, Hássdruv’myémyemye Sútchdhu/Tá’Ürye/fü.” Co pronounces the honorific HASS-droov-MYAY-myay-myay, which (recalls Pink) means “The Many In One.”
Gasps are heard all over the room, because everybody knows that direct Seventher communication with Humans is vastly rare. The Net-drones make a tight circle around the assembly, like sharks sensing prey. Ambassador Píttu gestures, the lights in the meeting room dim, and a holo springs up at the center of the meeting table.
The figure revolving slowly in the holo scarcely resembles a D’/fü at all. The Seventher measures a mere meter and a quarter from end to end, a height Pink herself has not enjoyed since she was five. The ürye’s torso is faintly furred, and cos scent organs appear as pale lilac ovals scattered over the surface of cos translucent skin, through which Pink can see Hássdruv’myémyemye Sútchdhu/Tá’Ürye/fü’s internal organs pulsing. In place of two arms and two legs co possesses four clusters of tentacles, not round like rats’ tails but flattish and flexible. And like the seraphim witnessed by the Jewish prophet Isaiah, the ürye possesses two pairs of wings: one above (that is, one wing-pair issuing from the Seventher’s upper shoulders) and one below (the second wing-pair issuing from the base of cos spine).
But Sútchdhu’s eyes are pure D’/fü. As Pink watches each set come around, new beauty assails her, though afterwards she cannot remember the color of any of them. One face’s eyes appear supernally calm; looking into them, Pink feels her fears of the trip melt away. Another face’s eyes seem sharply assessing; Pink feels herself quail as their gaze appears to fall upon her. A third face is alive with such mischief that Pink giggles. A fourth glows with such passionate love that Pink feels her cheeks burning in response. And a fifth face’s eyes are so sad Pink struggles to keep from bursting into tears.
But when the sixth face comes around, Pink feels a chill pass up her spine and the hairs at the back of her neck stand erect. For the eyes of this face are closed tight, their lids silver ovals, the only parts of the creature’s body that are not translucent. Yet when they turn in her direction, Pink knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are seeing her. This is a holo, she reminds herself. A recording. They can’t be seeing you.
The face of the ürye with the closed eyelids revolves on, and she is free again. She peeks around the table. Everybody in the meeting room, Human and D’/fü, is standing as still as a statue, attention entirely absorbed by the image floating over the center of the table. Nobody is twitching. Nobody is farting. Nobody is doing or saying anything. And inexplicably, there is no sound issuing from the recording at all, but nobody seems to notice except her.
Suddenly Pink is afraid again and she does not know why.
Pink sits in her seat at the table in the petrified room, not looking at the holo, wondering why she of all those present cannot apparently hear any sound from the recording. She thinks of how Catherin Castleton, the WorldNet commentator who accompanied the First Human Expedition to Shiphome in 2117 (before skipflight, before Concord Station, before anything), described the ürye she met as “fairylike, in the oldest sense of the term” and (in one of her final recordings, when she lay dying of supercancer in a D’/fü healing annex) as “saints”—not selfless warriors of the Good, like the holy women Pink tried to emulate in her early years at school, but (Castleton explained ramblingly) “ones set apart” from normal spacetime, “whose experience and conception of reality is radically different” from anything a Human or even most D’/fü could understand.
“I am convinced,” Castleton said, “that ürye’te exist only periodically in spacetime,” about which a sarcastic professor in Pink’s secondary school Physics class once remarked, “So who doesn’t?”
Pink peers up at the holo again. Slowly the creature in the holo revolves, and then Pink gets the uncomfortable feeling of eyes behind her—not ürye’te eyes, but some other’s. So she turns in her seat, and there, standing not a meter and a half away, is a thin, thin, tall old sunburnt Caucasian woman with a snubby nose and freckles and short white hair and beautiful green eyes saying, “Ne sortis pas! Ne sortis pas!” [Don’t go! Don’t go!]
“Pourquoi non, mémé?” Pink responds [Why not, Granny?], for she sees no reason why she should be respectful to an unsolicited vision addressing her in the French familiar form. She notices then that the crone is wearing some kind of uniform, tattered a bit, but with a slightly altered Concordat sigil affixed to one shoulder: Human and D’/fü hands joining, supporting not the Earth between them, as in the sigil she knows, but the Milky Way galaxy. This gives her such a strange feeling that she nearly misses the next thing the old bat says: “Parce que si tu sortis, tu n’auras ni mari ni les enfants, mais l’univers seulement!” [Because if you go, you will have neither husband nor children, but only the universe.] “Décides!” [Decide!]
There is a disjoint; a snapping. Pink jerks. The holo of Hássdruv’myémyemye Sútchdhu/Tá’Ürye/fü is gone. There is all around her the odd sound of grownups weeping. The elderly Englishwoman is looking very, very thoughtful. Mitch the class bad boy is sitting with a stunned expression, chewing on his cuticles. Handsome Sven has fallen forward onto the meeting table, his ice-blue eyes tightly shut, leaking tears out of their edges. Ambassador Franzheim and Awéwet Píttu are moving around the table, bending over this one solicitously, whispering in the ear of that one. Nandi and Borm, the chaperones, are nowhere to be seen, and all the StationNet drones are hovering near the ceiling, recording lights conspicuously OFF.
At the front of the room, Gerda the P.R. lady is in fierce sotto voce consult with her partner, Fast, and the Security team, and Gerda being Gerda, this means that her voice can be heard all over the noisy chamber, saying, “What the [slang term for sexual congress] do they expect us to do now? Look at these people! They’ve been traumatized, and they’re [slang term for sexual congress] due to leave in half a [slang term for sexual congress] hour, for Buddha’s sake!”
“Juliana?” At first Pink thinks it is the crone back again, and she flinches, but it is only her mother the exozoologist, crouching near her chair. “Oh, maman,” Pink says, and for the first time in a very long time flings herself into her mother’s arms and hugs her close. “She warned me not to go!”
“Who? Who warned you not to go where?”
“The old lady,” Pink replies. “She warned me that if I went on the class trip today, I would be given the universe but denied a husband and children.”
“An old woman appeared to you?” Pink nods. “And she told you you must choose between the universe and a family?” Pink nods. An odd look comes over Andrea Sévigny’s face.
“Maman,” says Pink, “I think that the ürye, or maybe Awéwet Píttu, did something to us.” Pink points with her chin across the room, to where Ambassador Píttu is stroking the hair of a sobbing, bull-necked young military type whose name, Pink recalls vaguely, is Vanya.
“So it would appear,” says the exozoologist. “And to answer the question on your face, no, I experienced nothing extraordinary beyond witnessing the holo of a Seventher with the most exquisite voices imaginable speaking incomprehensibly in Adult Mánafut.”
“Pardon.” The Sévignies turn and give Ambassador Franzheim identical looks of mutually protective belligerence. She blinks. “I’m sorry. May I speak with you?”
“No,” says Andrea Sévigny, at the same time Pink says, “Okay.” Pink hesitates, then, but seeing her mother clamping lips tight, Pink throws caution to the winds. “Ambassador,” says the elf-stork. “Was this some kind of test? Was that really an ürye who spoke with us?”
The trim old blonde woman nods. “Disorientating, I’m afraid. But thrilling, thrilling! History is made here once more! Did you, too, Miss Sévigny, have a numinous experience during Sútchdhu/Tá’Ürye/fü’s message?”
“I’m not sure,” replies Pink, partly because it is the truth, and partly because she is unwilling to admit that she does not know what “numinous” means. So she tells Ambassador Franzheim all about it.
As Pink relates her vision, the Ambassador’s eyes grow brighter and brighter and more and more intent. When Pink is finished, Franzheim says, “And what is your response, Miss Sévigny? Will you choose les enfants et un mari or l’univers? Hássdruv’myémyemye Sútchdhu/Tá’Ürye/fü is waiting for your answer.”
* * * *
12. Well on the Way to the Middle, Now. (Yes, This Is Rather a Long Story, But It Will soon Be over, You’ll See).
The journey to Shiphome from Concord Station on the skipship Bifurcated Androgyne takes, relativistically speaking, no time at all. Most of the time that elapses during the trip is taken up with getting the twenty-four classmembers and their chaperones aboard; settling everybody into their seats along the walls of the communal passenger bay; seeing to passenger hydration (“Nipple’s on the wall”); putting the Human passengers to sleep so their untrained monkeybrains won’t interfere with the slédhdha/máttawi [skiptrance, mystical skipunion] of the sledh [six-member skipcrew, three D’/fü, three augmented Human]; and revving up the impulse engines so the Androgyne can get far enough away from Station to cause no untidiness when the skipshift occurs. Elena Belicista, a particle physicist from Spain, explains to Pink that the ship is driven by “what we in Spain call an NVAC drive.”
“NVAC? What’s that stand for?” asks Pink.
“No Viene Al Caso,” says the physicist, a motherly middle-aged woman who, despite possessing similarly glossy black hair and similarly snapping dark eyes, is as approachable as Velasquez-Villareal is terrifying. “Which means in English, Beside-the-Point.”
The skip is uneventful. Pink closes her eyes, having taken off her shoes and hat and permitted her seat’s webbing to envelop her snugly; and the next thing she knows Borm is saying, “Look, wee powerful Human friends, look!” The webbing has dissolved, and there, filling the bay’s realtime holoscreen, is Shiphome, with yellow Rigel Kent and its red dwarf partner Alpha Centauri B hanging not far off in the close, star-smeared distance. (The third partner, Alpha C, is too far away for easy notice.) Pink cannot speak at first; it is all too thrilling and beautiful for words: Shiphome, Ámash/Bórmwu, the artificial living planet in which the Damánakíppith/fü have traveled the galaxy for thousands of Human years.
“Madre de Buda,” whispers the particle physicist.
The Androgyne’s impulse engines chug onward. It takes about an hour to come within docking distance of the satellite, and long before then Shiphome has ceased to resemble a perfect, glowing, featureless, iridescent pearl and has been revealed as coated with three thousand years’ worth of accretions, add-ons, and detritus: some resembling Human-comprehensible huts, waystations, tracks, and portholes, others incomprehensibly writhing with cilia, or puffing with balloonlike attachments that expand and collapse at regular intervals, or fluttering, fluttering, fluttering in the solar winds. Closer still, and Pink is able to point out to the physicist spacesuited D’/fü applying starglop in wide shining smears to the shining hull. “Star glop?” says the Spaniard.
“Plasta de las estrellas,” manages Pink, who knows just enough Spanish to get by. “It’s a kind of biomedicine and growth stimulant some of the unésta’te make to help heal Shiphome’s skin when it gets burned or punctured.”
Belicista observes her with bright eyes. “How strange it must have been for you these past few years, on this Station all alone with only your mother and other adults and los centauros.”
“It’s been okay,” says Pink, wishing this part of the conversation were over. As if sensing this, the woman does not speak again, and they sit in silence watching the living planet grow larger and larger and larger until it is swallowing them and the Androgyne and the universe beyond.
* * * *
13. Third Interlude: Beside the Point.
The old woman peers out from the protective cover of the tanglefern, watching her younger self snore. Borm was right, she thinks, smiling. There is a grammar to mammaries.
In her hand she cups the thing with which she has intended to slay the past. She is still not sure she will use it. If she does, then sleeping Pink will never know the worlds upon worlds which the old woman and her sledh have found, explored, mapped. She will never know the excitement of observing sentient races in their infancies, adolescences, maturities, or of being the first to welcome the three who have joined the Concordat. The old woman smiles again, thinking of Sister Skylark. The Flex!tibb, the Údh, and the Háharaháhahárraha do not resemble in the slightest the crew of the Beatific Vision, or, for that matter, the crew of the Indolent Tesseract, her own vessel. How very provincial of us to have always assumed that alien sentients would have faces, she thinks wryly.
She is irritated to realize that she is weeping. They have always been an embarrassment to her, her sudden tears. Sleeping Pink mutters and turns over in the circle of young Slídhadhrup’s protective tail. Seeing co alive and well has been the hardest thing of all, for adult Juliana knows the terrible fate that awaits co if she does not release the thing she holds. Whom do I love most, she thinks, myself as I am, myself as I was, or Slídha? God damn Sútchdhu for Dreaming up this little scenario! There is no hope for it. She must decide, and very soon, before the Tesseract falls out of phase with this nexus of the Tangles.
On cue, she feels a touch on her right shoulder, and a faint perfume of curry. Yes, yes, I’m coming, Vuwénno, she subvocalizes.
Her partner’s soft voices sound in her cerebrum. We love you, dearest lung, but Taugie’s anxious to be gone, and Pléppli does not wish to go through cos Change here in the Tangles. Let us know soon, add the voices, what you decide. Are you going to kill us all, or aren’t you? Then the voices, the touch, and the curry are withdrawn.
Are you going to kill us all? A simple enough question, thinks old Juliana. For weeks, Tesseract-time, she has hiked the Tangles, seeking the proper nexi, planting her warnings throughout Pink’s main probability-lines; and now, here before her old eyes lies ur-Pink, the most probable Pink, the Pink who most closely resembles the Pink she recalls herself as having been: Pink, lying leggy and logey before her. All it will take is for old Juliana to release the nanoplex carried in her hand, and it will seek out just the right neural bundle in little Pink’s orange cranium, and sleeping Pink will wake, shorn of the curious brain-tweak that might have made her into the most highly skilled Human skip-navigator known to history so far. Then Pink and dear Slídha will find their way back to their disembarkation bay and go on to live long, long, productive, domestic lives. Old Juliana finds that she cannot imagine Slídha as an unésta.
It was, she realizes, an impossible choice. Impossible. On the one hand, Slídha. And some sweet handsome Human, someone like what-was-his-name, perhaps: Swann? Hans? Sven, that was it, Sven, with the veins—and then, bébés born of their mutual conjoined DNA, luck-of-the-gloriously-random-draw progeny, not test-tube monuments to an exozoologist’s vanity and fear of surprises. On the other hand, Vuwénno. Thájjarup. Andrew. Pléppilil. Taugie. Herself, too, of course. And one thousand seventy-nine worlds of wonder.
Time to choose, thinks Juliana. “Au revoir, ma chérie,” she whispers to the sleeping elf-stork, and makes her decision.
* * * *
14. The End of the Story.
“But what about the Bird?” demands Bad Boy Mitch “The what-d’you-call-it, the Vigilante Bird? And how could y’all have these so-called adventures in the five whole minutes from the tahm we-all first stepped into Shiphome’s disembarkation bay from the An-dro-gyne and the tahm you caught up with us from the rear?” (He pronounces it “re-yah.”)
“It’s Vigilant Bird,” snaps Gwendolyn Rice-Chakrabarty, who by now thinks she has had enough of Texas to last her a lifetime. “And the Tangles is not a reality so much as a kind of dream. Isn’t that correct, Mrizh Borm?”
“But ah thought the Tangles wuz a place,” complains Mitch.
“Pink?” says Borm with cos three tenor voices. Cos eyes are bright, bright. Pink looks down, flustered; then up again, directly into the centaur’s face.
“It’s a sort of place,” she says. “But it’s an indecisive place. It’s a place that hasn’t made up its mind what to be, or when.”
“And how did you get out?” asks Elena Belicista, who is wondering, in an offhand way, why the girl smells distinctly of menudo.
Pink shrugs her thin shoulders. They are back on the Androgyne, all twenty-four classmembers and their chaperones, awaiting departure for Concord Station. Everybody stinks. “I’m not really sure. Slídha and I kept walking toward the yellow, as the dream told me to, and then, when we couldn’t walk any farther, we sat down and waited for the Bird to find us. I guess we fell asleep waiting.”
Silence drops over the group. They have all found their partners, even Mitch (an exuberant dyéñe much given to poking and grabbing and licking and rubbing), and they are all excited; but something else has happened; they all feel it. Pink wonders whether the Bird came and found them asleep and went away again, but Slídha has explained kek! kek! [no, no!], that is not how it occurs, when one encounters Úüv’élleblét/immo one is always consumed, always. Though what precisely that means, if it means anything, Slídha has not been able to explain to her.
The skip-navigator’s voices sound over the comm. “Time to strap in, friends. We shall have you back home before you can grow an hour older. Goodnight for now.” Straps slide into place all over the passenger bay. The workpartners will be following in a separate skip.
A fog of nano mist rises briefly around them: sleeptime! In the berth next to Pink’s, the Spanish particle physicist says to Pink sleepily, “And your partner? Slídhadhrup? What is co like, niña?”
“Big,” murmurs Pink. “Really, really big.” And she falls asleep, but not before she is pierced with an inexplicable deep sorrow. Then night falls, and the starfields open wide before her, familiar and unknown.
* * * *
15. Long before Anything You Have Witnessed Thus Far (Don’t Fret; We Are Almost Done with the Story).
“Qu’est-ce que c’est un clone, maman?” [What’s a clone, Mama?] asks little Juliana. It is New Year’s Eve, 2188. Pink is a few days shy of five years old, and the two of them are sitting together in the parlour of Professor Sévigny’s Paris apt, while fireworks burst over the Seine and the Turtle rattles dishes in the kitchen.
Andrea Sévigny stiffens at her daughter’s question, then asks, “Où entends-tu parler de ce mot-là?” [Where did you hear that word?]
“De la Tortue.” [From the Turtle.] The Turtle is their teenage au pair. Juliana’s red red hair is sticking out all over her head as she plays with her Doufí-Bébé, her D’/fü doll. “Il dit que je suis ton clone. Qu’est-ce que c’est un clone?” [He says that I’m a clone of you. What’s a clone?]
From the kitchen there comes the sound of something frangible being dropped upon a hard surface. Andrea kisses her daughter on the top of her head and smoothes her fine hair. “Eh bien,” says the soon-to-be-tenured Professor Sévigny. “Sais-tu bien que Pierre jamais fait pousser une rose d’une bouture? Souviens-toi cela?” [Well, you know how Peter always makes a rose grow from a cutting? Remember that?]
“Oui,” says little Pink. “Dans le jardin.” [Yes. In the garden.] Peter is the gardener in charge of the building’s rooftop gardens.
“C’est exact,” says her mother. [Just so.] “Pierre enleve une pièce de la rose-maman, et il plonge la pièce dans le gel de bouture. [He takes a piece of the mama rose and he dips the piece into rooting gel.] Il nourrît la pièce afin qu’elle développe les racines, et finalement, voilà! Une petite belle rose précisement comme sa maman!” [He nourishes the piece so that it develops roots, and eventually, look! A little pretty rose exactly like her mama!] “Comprends-tu?” [Understand?]
Her daughter has not looked up from her doll. Eventually she says, “A-t’elle un papa?” [Has she a daddy?]
“Qui, ma chérie?” [Who, my dear?]
“La petite belle rose.” [The little pretty rose.]
“Non. Elle vient de sa maman toute seule. Voilà pourquoi la petite et sa maman se ressemblent.” [No. She comes from her mama only. That’s why the little one and her mama look alike.]
“Jésus vint de sa maman tout seul. Les soeurs le dirent à moi.” [Jesus came from his mama only. The nuns told me.] “Jésus et sa maman, se ressemblent-t’ils?” [Do Jesus and his mother look alike?] Pink looks up at her mother then. Her innocent green eyes are the color of a Petri dish culture. Andrea shrinks ever so slightly away from her daughter, then immediately readjusts, wrapping her arms even more tightly about her; but Pink unconsciously notes the momentary withdrawal, and many years later she will remember the entire scene vividly as she raises the nanoplex capsule and makes her irrevocable choice.
* * * *
16. Beside the Point for the Very Very Very Last Time.
When she gets back to the Indolent Tesseract, old Juliana is greeted by the others with licks, caresses, nuzzles, sematophore farts, warm voices of pleasure. For a crew that has placed their entire probability-line in the hands of a flat-chested madwoman, they are remarkably cheerful. Lying back in their dreamchairs, the five observe her calmly while she silently plugs herself into the nav console.
“Right,” says Taugie in his Scots burr. “We’re still here, it seems.” Old Juliana smiles fondly at him, her old, old friend, and thinks, How could I have ever thought I could give them up, my five sweetest loves, for a load of soiled nappies and a bloody pension? Forgive me, dearest Slídha. Dear Buddha, forgive me.
Vuwénno rustles cos golden wings. “Brúshfye/ásvyennu, Bórmwu/te’dámik?” [Where to, star-swimmer?]
“Óllowe/dvyénnu,” replies the old woman. [Somewhere new.]
And off they go again.