The Best of All Possible Worlds (5 page)

“Mm-hm,” I replied with deep sarcasm.

Dr. Mar, like any urbanite, was sufficiently cultured to tune her natural enthusiasm
to a volume and frequency that would be appreciated by her new colleague, which is
to say they seemed to
have a fair rapport at the end of the first two hours. Still, I was fairly impressed
the following week when we got out at one destination a little ahead of the others
and we distinctly heard
singing
, loud, full-on opera singing, coming from the second groundcar. Of course, by the
time the car stopped and the doors opened, there was only mild professional chatter
between the two.

I looked at Dllenahkh in shock. He merely raised his eyebrows in a way that was as
good as an
I told you so
.

“How did you pull this off?” I demanded when the others were out of earshot.

“Pull what off?” he asked coolly, his tone mildly mocking the colloquialism.

“How did you know they’d click? That requires a level of intuition that seems to me
unlikely to reside in the methodical Sadiri mind.”

“I extrapolated from what I knew of Dr. Lanuri’s late wife. She was very similar in
both manner and appearance to Dr. Mar. Lanuri has found it … difficult since his wife’s
death. I had hoped that he might find solace in Dr. Mar’s company and, let me admit
it, perhaps even consider the possibility of marrying again.”

On another day that might have meant more teasing about being a matchmaker, but today
I was in a grumpy mood.

“So even Sadiri men find women interchangeable,” I scoffed under my breath.

“That is not what I said,” he murmured, looking at me oddly.

I waved my hand, trying to brush away the words. “Forgive me. I was thinking of something
else, something irrelevant. So the second spouse is often very close in temperament
and appearance to the first spouse.”

“Yes. The first bond is, in a way, never completely broken and constantly seeks the
absent partner. Marrying someone similar assuages some of the shock and helps with
the grieving process.”

“Some people think widowed Sadiri pine away and die,” I remarked, referring to a common
trope in Cygnian literature and drama.

“That would be inappropriate,” Dllenahkh said, infusing the word with a measure of
distaste that was new. “There are degrees of depth of bond. All Sadiri experience
a bond with each other, and there are rituals that deepen the connection, the marriage
ceremony being but one. However, one can be telepathically connected to one with whom
it is difficult to live peaceably. The ability to know another’s mind does not preclude
the likelihood of misunderstanding it.”

“Good point,” I said. Unsaid but also understood was that no Sadiri would take the
selfish luxury of choosing death as a way to escape emotional pain. All were bereaved,
and now life was the priority.

The following week’s inspections were routine. Dr. Lanuri looked slightly less depressed,
and Freyda was cheerful and professional as always. It wasn’t much to go on. I caught
Dllenahkh frowning to himself.

“They’ve only just met,” I told him. “Did you really expect love at first sight?”

“Hmm,” he replied. “Has Dr. Mar given any indication …?” He was unable to finish the
sentence, but I realized what he was asking.

I was aghast—only slightly aghast, really, but I played it up because there are so
few times when Dllenahkh is anything but the consummate Sadiri savant. “I can’t believe
you asked me that. That’s rude even by Cygnian standards.”

He frowned some more and dropped the subject.

But I did find out. Not by asking—I’m not that inquisitive—but by alcohol, and not
even
my
alcohol, so it really wasn’t my fault. The last day of our inspections together,
Freyda showed me a
bottle of some fortified Cygnian vintage hidden in her knapsack. We got a groundcar
to ourselves and put nav and autopilot in control.

Then we got chatty. I told her my thoughts on the mission, that it was essentially
a waste of time, but at least I was getting paid to travel the world for a year, and
the Sadiri would have the satisfaction of knowing they’d investigated every possibility.
She told me she was tired of academia and taking a sabbatical to write a book seemed
a bit tame, so this way she’d be out for a year and
still
have the sabbatical year to write, thus staying away from the university for two
years instead of just one.

The wine went down rather smoothly. I discovered that she did, in fact, have a fair
bit of taSadiri in her background. She found out that I had just enough Ntshune in
me to start people off on a giggle loop. You’ve heard of someone’s laughter being
infectious? Well, many Cygnians of Ntshune stock have the knack of giving people the
giggles in a serious way, probably some unintentional emotion-feedback thing.

We spent the next inspection choking back snickers while the Sadiri gave us puzzled
looks.

The next journey was for more sober talk. She said she’d been engaged, but there’d
been a mutual decision not to marry after her academic career took off, leaving her
tied to the city and her fiancé still wanting the life of a homesteader. I said I’d
been engaged too and also broke it off by mutual agreement, though my career was nowhere
as illustrious as hers.

“You still have time,” she said generously.

At first I thought she was talking about my career, and I was flattered, but then
I realized she meant time to have a family, and I felt a little less flattered.

“Well, what about you? Have you considered early retirement and going back to be a
housewife on a homestead?”

She looked embarrassed. “I suppose I could register my name with the Ministry of Family
Planning, but I keep falling for the wrong men and getting distracted.”

The words were general, but there was something in the guilt that crossed her face
that made me gasp and blurt out, “Lanuri?”

For the first time, I heard bitterness in her laugh. “I hope I’m not that obvious!”

“No! No, you’re not. It’s just … well, you do seem to get along quite well together,
and … hmm … how do the Sadiri show they care, anyway?”

She pushed back the rough bangs of her hacked-off hair and scowled. “Well, I’m sure
they don’t do it by constantly mentioning how beautiful and intelligent and completely
irreplaceable their late wives are!”

“Oh,” I said sadly.

“Yeah, I’m a sad, sick person, jealous of a woman who died in the greatest genocidal
attack since … well, since Cygnus Beta was founded. And if you so much as breathe
a
word,”
she concluded sharply, and it was time to change the subject.

We got back a little earlier than the other two, and rather than sit and wait outside,
we persuaded Joral to let us move the farewell party into Dllenahkh’s office. The
rest of the place was empty—inspection tours often took us past the usual work hours—so
we left the door open, put our feet up on his desk in a kind of rebellion against
all Sadiri sensibilities, and set to finishing off the wine.

After a short half hour had passed, we heard Joral’s hushed voice through the open
doorway. “Dr. Mar and Second Assistant Delarua seem to be engaged in some kind of
female bonding ritual.”

“In my office?” came Dllenahkh’s bemused reply. I think
both of us were picturing the expression on his face, because we went off into another
giggle loop that put paid to any lingering illusion of professionalism.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the final farewell. We had a nice, sober proper seeing-off
a week later at the main train station in the city. Gilda was there, and Dr. Lanuri
and Freyda. I hugged Gilda hard, making a mental note to send many souvenir trinkets
to her kids, and got cheek smooches from Freyda, all the while thinking,
I’m drinking buddies with
Freyda Mar!
How cool is that!
We clasped arms briefly and exchanged looks. Hers said,
Don’t tell anyone how pathetic I am
, and mine said,
Hang in there, you’re not pathetic, you’ll be fine
.

The three Sadiri men, Lanuri, Dllenahkh, and Joral, stood slightly apart, making their
somber farewells, far more absorbed in the meaning of the mission and their hopes
for its success than in any trivial sadness over the temporary absence of a colleague.
I felt a little jolt when I looked at them, a sudden awareness of the insane reality
that had brought them here, a flash of insight into how death and devastation had
completely reshaped their lives and destinies. Like Freyda, I suddenly felt foolish
for being annoyed at them over a small matter of unrequited love.

We boarded and found our seats. I leaned my head against the window by my seat, looking
at Freyda as she lingered to give us a final wave and blinking back tears. Silly matchmaking—and
now she would have a year to suffer through, pretending her feelings didn’t exist.
I was vexed with Dllenahkh. Dangling an emotionally unavailable Sadiri male in front
of her—hah; that was a tautology if there ever was one—was more than cruel, it was
irresponsible. I thought of the messed-up attempts at courting that had left tangles
even the ministry wouldn’t be able to unsnarl. Would any of them be capable of forming
normal unions, unions based on more than a desperate need to keep their cultural
and genetic heritage alive? Did the Sadiri
ever
admit to needing therapy?

My struggle with my emotions did not go unnoticed.

“You will miss Dr. Freyda Mar very much,” said Joral, examining my face curiously.

“Yes,” I said, my tone firm, calm, and neutral. “I wish I could have had more time
to work with her.”

Joral nodded in understanding. “Dr. Lanuri speaks of her often. I believe he finds
her to be almost Sadiri in her clarity and depth of thought. Furthermore, he says
that her appearance is very pleasing and in many aspects reminiscent of his late wife—”

“Joral,” Dllenahkh chided.

“But it is true. I am only repeating what Dr. Lanuri has said on several—”

I stared at him as suddenly all the fragments that I knew came together in a gestalt
that looked
nothing
like what I had at first assumed.

“Joral,” said Dllenahkh sternly. “It is not appropriate to discuss—”

“Joral, you’ve got more sense than any of us!” I cried. I jumped up and ran to the
door, paused with a skid, went back to grab the startled youngster around the face
and plant a kiss on his forehead, then took off again. Freyda was just turning to
leave the platform. I thundered toward her, and she looked back at me in shock.

“He loves you, you
remind
him of his wife, he’ll never admit it, it’s a stupid Sadiri thing, it’s up to you—go,
go
, GO!”

She gaped at me, her eyes gradually widening during my whispered babble and ending
up filling with tears, the jaw drop becoming a wide grin. I squeezed a quick hug around
her shoulders and ran back to slither through the carriage doors before they slid
shut.

I returned to my seat with a small smile of bittersweet triumph. Dllenahkh looked
at me with a strange expression that I couldn’t quite read, but I didn’t care. I was
thinking about the year ahead and hoping for at least one happy ending for a friend.

Joral leaned forward and said earnestly, “You seem to be very sad about leaving. It
is all right if you wish to cry, First Officer Delarua. We will not think badly of
you. We understand that this is common behavior for many Terran females.”

“Well, I’m Cygnian,” I snapped. “And I wasn’t going to cry.” I swear, nothing irritates
me more than being overemotional in front of a Sadiri. They make you feel so silly.

Dllenahkh coughed almost apologetically. “First Officer Delarua, at one stage you
suggested that I had complicated your life by asking for you to be assigned to this
mission. Is it now the case that you are beginning to enjoy the complications?”

“That’s an almost Cygnian streak of smug-bastardness you’re displaying there, Dllenahkh,”
I warned with a small, rueful grin of acknowledgment.

He straightened slightly, and his eyebrows rose by a fraction at the sly insult. Then
the train pulled out and we were off to start our grand adventure, around the world
in one Standard year.

Zero hour plus eleven months twenty-eight days

Standard Time was invented by Sadiri pilots. Most Sadiri procedures and quantification
followed straight lines and linear progressions, created for the convenience of the
ten-fingered. But Time … Time belonged to a higher realm. It could not be carried
in human hands, not while it constantly carried human minds. It was all circles, wheels
within wheels, a Standard year of three hundred sixty Standard days coiled up in twelve
months, which in turn were composed of the small whirlings of twelve hours day and
twelve hours night, tiny spinning minutes and seconds, ever-cycling breaths and blinks
and beats.

To be described as having a pilot’s mind was both curse and compliment; it could mean
being unable to tell the difference between prophecy, memory, and mere déjà vu.

Dllenahkh knew that it was almost one Standard year since the destruction of his home
and his life. He knew it not like a memory but like the vague dread of a possible
death, a death yet to come. He left the thought and the feeling while he could still
breathe and focused instead on the present. The train vibrated gently, its windows
filled with the rich black of a moonless night in deep country. Delarua had already
retired to the sleeping car, leaving them to continue their work. Dllenahkh looked
into the soothing darkness, then made himself examine his handheld screen once again.
The ambient light was too dim and the screen overbright, but perhaps, he admitted,
that was not
where the fault lay. The minute tension around his eyes might be caused by the fact
that he was staring too intently at the reports and briefs, as if willing them to
create the world he wanted to exist.

Behind closed doors, the council had wrangled over the mission proposal with a pettiness
and lack of direction to rival the callow youths they claimed to represent and govern.
Then again, from what he had heard and seen, the Government of New Sadira was hardly
doing any better, something that he found reassuring and dismaying in equal measure.
If the Cygnian Government’s response had been the least bit lukewarm, the mission
would have been dropped for good, but they had been enthusiastic, offering specialists,
funding, and resources until the project gathered unstoppable momentum and even the
most cynical councillors softened.