Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (30 page)

‘Certainly not,’ Egri said. ‘You’d be guilty of treason – and caught for it in the beat of a pearlbat’s wing.’ Still squatting she put one foot down on the next inlaid platform, toes curling on the ornamental side.

‘Or should we stay where we are, working on the Family’s side to change their – ’

Egri simply laughed, flexing the toes of both feet. ‘Soon you will have things too complicated for anyone to follow. No, let’s try something more straightforward, more in touch with what you feel.’

‘But I don’t
know
what I feel!’ Nea declared. ‘I’m frightened! I’m confused. How am I to know what – ’

‘Are you hungry?’ Egri asked. ‘Are you sad – ’

‘I don’t …’ and here Nea gave a little shudder, her fists and her lips held tightly. (I have been told that children, in the livable climes of Zetzor, are quickly taught not to cry: stoicism is a great virtue there and is expressed in all sorts of flamboyant ways.) ‘I don’t …’ she repeated. ‘I can’t …’

Then, beside Mother Dyeth’s silent personality column, light turned riotous in the entrance mirrors; mirrors swung in.

Bucephalus came lolloping inside, turned, and took the stance of an evelm dragon hunter many years older than she. On the other side of the door, Tinjo (who is a love, but also a bit of a coward) peered around the edge.

Small Maxa ran up to stand right by the jamb.

Bronze head, bronze feet, bronze hands, bronze torso bright with Iiriani outside: heaving up a brazen forearm, George Thant shoved Small Maxa across the chest back against the multiple hinges and strode through, going from bright to umber. ‘There! You
are
there! Nea Thant! Thant! Nea! Thant! …’ (Have I explained how the folk of northern Zetzor use the order of your names to render crushing insults both to intimates and strangers? Oh, never mind.) ‘Treacherous pupa! You
are
claimed as a sister to me! But you are as a drop of yellow poison in the clear currents of our Family’s love!’

‘You have come here to betray your kin to the viper and the ant. You have disgraced your ancestors and your progeny. Your treachery has shamed me, hurt me, confused me, and I would weep tears of hot vinegar if I could!’ (Stamp, stamp, stamp – a reference, I believe, to a curse contained in an oral epic from equatorial Zetzor which, for the last few decades, had been popular at the poles.) ‘You have squandered ice and soil, jeopardizing the entire custom of unlimited space-fare, won for you by the work of your illustrious father, Thant Thadeus – ’ (You can also proffer resounding compliments that way too.) ‘– and your melodiously sung mother, Thant Eulalia. As you know, and that knowledge must be your shame, unlimited space-fare
is
limited only to those uses which will broaden minds and enrich cultures. If one is caught abusing it, it can be rescinded at any moment!’ (Stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp – five stamps, I think, was an allusion to some parodic use a Zetzorian academic poet of the south had made of that equatorial epic.) ‘You have besmirched two parents’ joy at your birth and deepened the memory of pain your bodily mother, Thant Clearwater, still bears from her womb-work. Four siblings’ shouts of laughter and cries of pleasure have stilled in a night of fire and chagrin. Oh, Nea – ’ (Stamp; which I guess was just George – ) ‘What did you call yourself
doing
, coming here like this? Now I am burdened with hauling you back. Thadeus commands it. Who knows what crazed notions you’ve left with your friends, the glaucomas and retinitises and cataracts with
which you’ve infected their eyes so that whenever they gaze again in our direction, all their vision will be obscured by disease … !’ George stalked back and forth, vituperating and stamping like some brass engine whose proper use no one can divine but which is nevertheless clearly malfunctioning.

Nea opened her mouth, then closed it and her eyes. She opened her eyes, her expression for a moment nearing rage – once she actually got out a ‘No … !’ She closed her eyes again, touched two foil fingers to her dark forehead, and shivered.

‘… spawn of a sewage pump, descendant of a slime mould, all genetic congruences we share are discredited by your infamy and actions. How
could
you, female son of Thant! See how I wring my hands and wring my hands once more, till the flesh goes raw on my palms. I have searched swamp, dry-plain, and canyon for appropriate execrations, and have yet found none for the nuance of my distress …’

Shoshana and I glanced at each other. Years ago, along with V’vish, Kelso, and Alyxander, we had taken a vaurine-projection tour of Zetzor, basically to learn something of our friends’ world. ‘Probably saw more of it than any of
us
ever will,’ was Thadeus’s curt comment, on their next visit when we began to ask what we thought were polite questions. But while we were touring the ever-light south, we had gone to a theatre in the well-touristed city of K and seen an evening of energetic satire in the public theatre about the northern Zetzori. (Not that the southerners aren’t strange.) One particular skit concerned a northern mother, from a Family enclave, going after a runaway child; it wasn’t unlimited space-fare that was in jeopardy that time but some local county tax-rebate the youngster’s presence in the mother’s labour cooperative assured. Still, the gestures, phrases, even the
stamps were practically the same. And there was George, from north Zetzor’s 17, raving on and acting like a South Zetzorian parody of herself. It was funny and scary.

By now some of my other parents – Jayne (who is human), Kal’k (who is evelm), Sel’v (evelm), Hirum (another human), and Hatti (human), and finally my sisters Alyxander and Black Lars (one human, one evelm; both IDs like me) – had come up on their various lifts to watch, quietly and wonderingly, at the scene taking place in our west court vestibule.

‘I do not know my actions,’ cried George, ‘yet what I have done and must do is lit by the reflections of starlight-gathering mirrors along the thousand-kilometre glacial fields.’ She marched back towards the door, then stalked forward again, stepped to the side (stamp, stamp), then back. ‘I do not know my feelings, yet the feelings I have already anent this matter, as well as the feelings I know are to come, rack me as lava from Kromhatch Kone shatters frozen scalings collected on the south face. Oh, Nea – ’ She seized her sister’s shoulder and pulled her towards the entrance – ‘let’s go!’

The doorway, anticipating their exit, had not bothered to close. George dragged Nea stumbling out across the patio. Small Maxa, as the shimmering plates swung in, crouched in the doorway and began to cry.

Large Maxa swayed, platform by platform, down from her perch, her wings showing now and again their inner scarlet. First Jayne, then Black Lars, next Hirum moved to Small Maxa. The earlier shove from George she had taken fairly well. But she knew the Zetzori’s aversion to contact. When George had grabbed Nea’s shoulder, her reserves had broken. She squatted in the doorway and sobbed.

One, and another, we went to my crouching white sister, stooped to pat at (but not touch) the ivory fists
bunched on her bony chest, to lick at (but not touch) her lightly veined ears, to rub at (but not touch) her knobbly human back.

‘Marq Dyeth …?’

I stood, surprised.

At the top of the ramp, he had one hand on the rail. His call was oddly hoarse; also, oddly, hollowed by the height; and grossly accented.

He said: ‘Your students are here now … many of us.’

And I knew somehow he had not come in to tell me that. Knowing it, I also knew he’d been standing there a while – though how much he’d seen of George’s and Nea’s altercation I didn’t know.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Of course.’ I knew too his choosing to speak then was absolutely not what it would have been from me: the discreet throat clearing, the diplomatic cough, the reminder to people caught up in a private moment that they are, in fact, observed.

I cast apologetic looks about me. Only gold-clawed V’vish and bushy-haired Hirum caught them; they glanced at the stranger on the ramp, glanced back at me. I hurried across the vestibule and started up.

He stood just in front of the reflecting south court doors, not waiting, his long body burned a red-brown Iiriani could never match. As I reached the ramp’s crest, he turned, and, with movements that (however awkwardly they nudged his wide shoulders, tilted his pelvic blades whose wings jutted above his ravelling pants-waist) were completely familiar, he went through the swinging mirrors in the same motion with which, minutes ago, I had fled the polarized chamber.

As I neared the doors, the panels’ silver gave me back, waving, only the thickset little male whose swagger is just a bit too much for any real elegance – but with the wreckage of a joy between short beard and heavy brows
which, even seconds come to pieces, transformed what should have been the most familiar of faces: when the mirrors swung aside for me, I was not sure who walked out under the stone arch (he was gone … !), who walked down the steps, stepped wide of the grill, gambolled out on to the amphitheatre skene, for I felt as though I were no longer who I had been.

In those few seconds, he’d vanished …?

They
were there – scattered up around the top ten tiers.

I looked around the empty seats far longer than I usually do. (He
could
have gotten back to the chamber …?) Finally I said: ‘Good afternoon. I see most of you have gotten here. My name is Marq Dyeth …’ (Thinking: Why am I telling them?
He
knows.) ‘We’ll be talking together about an hour, maybe two, possibly more, to orient you and answer your questions. But first why don’t you all come down from your perches to the front rows here where we can make out each other’s faces. Yes, that’s it. Come on, now. I won’t urinate on you.’ (Suffice that it’s an evelmism and would take a page and a half to explain fully. But they laughed, which was the important thing; and began to gather up their readers, recorders, miniscreens, and calculators.) ‘Just a second, I’ll start the moving stair …’ on which, among them, he did not come down.

2.

I’m tempted to give you an account of the whole three-hour orientation session
₂
(they
do
go on), if only because I know now that from his hiding place, he saw it all. I’m also tempted to omit it entirely – as I want to omit from thought all moments when he was not available to my
sight, my tongue, my hand. But the truth is it was a student orientation session
₂
like any hundred others. There was the big-shouldered, short-tongued algae farmer
₁
from even further south – an embarrassingly healthy creature who smiled at everything and took down everything on a portable notator that wept an endless curl of paper into her scaly lap. Every minute or so she would wind it rapidly on another little red plastic spool, tear it off, and push it into another of the numberless pouches on her long vest. (‘And do we have any other algae farmers,
₁
, or
₂
, with us this morning …?’ There were three, wouldn’t you know: one from Ly’el Complex a few dozen kilometres away; two others from some geosector on the other side of this world.) There were the four evelmi with steel-coloured claws from somewhere in the far north and shy of giving their professions
₂
– where human/evelm relations are much less tranquil. They came and sat at the edge of the stage and were quiet, diffident, and probably hugely suspicious. The largest one now and again turned to whisper something to her smaller companions in a voice through which individual words were indistinguishable but which nevertheless sounded like a passing propeller platform; and I tried to pretend it wasn’t an interruption. There was the ebullient little fifty-year-old med tech
₂
(‘… this workshift, that is. Last job
₂
I had was in a wildlife preserve in the comb-caves in the upper plateaus of the Veng’n’n Range, just about – well, quite far east of here. I loved it. Might even consider going back. But there’s also a possibility of going to work
₂
in the bauxite mines out east – in accounting, of course. Not actually
in
the mines. Even with GI, that’s a primary job
₁
of course …’ One suspected she’d been retired from her own job
₁
, whatever it had been, for at least ten years. ‘But it still sounds fascinating. Or then, I could always go into …’)
One had come to study the sculpture of Bybe’t Kohimi (
That’s
the name – I remember now – of the artist who did the synapse-pillar’s pedestal and capital), of which Dyethshome happens to have the largest collection on the two worlds where she worked. Another had come to explore the documents in one of our libraries on simulacrum technology as it segues into bioengineering. (Our libraries are both vasty and selective on many subjects.) Another was here to learn more of the early stage production techniques used in the folk theatre of Jae’l Bazerat, many of whose performances were first presented in this very amphitheatre just over a hundred years ago. (Yes, extensive theatre records are all on store in one of our numerous basements.) By now most of the affable, interested, and really rather bright group were perching or sitting or squatting around the stage edge. (Maybe five out of the two dozen had gotten stuck out in the first row of seats.) I sat in the skene’s centre, suggesting to Ryla that she not try to see the Kyga-jewellery collection in the north court until after she had visited the G’har gallery in the west court; or reassuring R’eb she needn’t worry about her various religious food prohibitions while she was here; or dictating for the third time – just so Vagia could make sure she’d gotten it down right – the access number to activate the food choppers in the student kitchen downstairs, since it had been accidentally misprinted in the last brochure. Iiriani rolled like a flaring tread gear behind high-coloured glass, lighting us now deep orange, now pale green, now a scalded yellow. But as I sat, naked and cross-legged on the old planks, every few minutes I would realize that, though he was not among their number, if he
had
retreated to some hiding place, he was still watching me. And I would halt on a word, then rush on among the coils of whatever explanation I was ensnared in, while my ears and knees
flushed redder than the freestanding panes about the amphitheatre of our rhetoric.