Fugitive From Asteron (18 page)

“Never.”

I took a note pad and pen from my pocket
and drew a picture of Feran’s cargo. “Have you ever seen a metal box like this,
about two feet high, closed on all sides, with no visible controls except for a
large pin on the side near the top?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea what such an
object might be?”

“None at all.”

I slipped the pad back in my
pocket, then put my jacket on. Frank thanked me for the ride, and I thanked him
for the information.

Before I left, I asked him about
another matter that confused me: “I am unfamiliar with some of the words you
use here. Could you tell me what term you would use to describe a female who
looked, say, like Kristin Merrett?”

He smiled. “Kristin’s
beautiful
.
Definitely beautiful.”

When I asked what
ugly
referred to, his reply made me realize why Kristin was angry. So many things
seemed upside down on Earth, or were they inverted on Asteron? Good and evil,
beautiful and ugly. Why had the meaning of words from the same language been
flipped over on Asteron, like a plane rotated 180 degrees?

“And we call only
animals
males and females, not
people
, unless we’re in a biology class,” Frank
added. “Humans are women and men, or ladies and gentlemen. And the ladies are more
touchy about that than we are.”

Again I saw that Earthlings
distinguished themselves from the animals in the names they reserved for humans
only. Their beings went beyond the mere physical references of a biology class
to deserve new titles, ones that were fading from the same language spoken
across the galaxy.

“What would you do, Frank, if you
mistakenly told a woman that she was ugly when you really meant the opposite?”

“Apologize. Apologize
profusely
.
Ask for her forgiveness, and hope you get it.”

“I see.”

“Oh, and by the way, Alex, if
you’ve got any designs on Kristin, don’t be too disappointed if they don’t pan
out. Every guy here tries to date her, but she ignores all of us.”

A few more inquiries that day
taught me something about the thing Kristin told me I lacked—
manners
.
I found that when Earthlings dealt with one another, they used manners as a
sign of respect. Animals growled and clawed, but men and women said
please
and
thank you
. Animals devoured each other, but men and women apologized
for so much as stepping on someone’s toe. There was little use for manners on
Asteron. The guards there never said
please
or
thank you
when
they shoved us around. Their violence seemed as jarringly out of tune with life
on Earth as manners were with life on Asteron. But the way of the Earthlings
was supposed to be the rule of the jungle, whereas the way of Asteron, I was
taught, was supposed to be humane. Why, then, were the guards without manners over
there?

I had an opportunity later that Tuesday
to use some of my new information. With Reckoning Day fast approaching on
Friday, Kristin and I had scheduled another practice session to rehearse our two-plane
demonstration. As we performed our preflight checks, with our crafts facing
each other on the airstrip, she did not wave to me, as was her habit. After
strapping my harness and putting on my helmet, I looked at her in the cockpit
across from mine.

“Hello, Kristin,” I called to her
through the radio transmitter at my mouth.

A flat voice I hardly recognized
came over the receiver. “Hi.”

“You are angry with me.”

“I’m not angry. I just don’t want
to see you any more outside of work. I want you to stay away from me.”

“Oh, really?”

“I indeed do not want to see you,”
she replied, imitating my speech.

“Kristin, I will not fly with you
while you are in such a state.”

“If I couldn’t fly perfectly well
in what you call my state, I wouldn’t be in this plane.”

“I still will not fly with you
until you give me what is called forgiveness.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I apologize. You were
right when you said I was rude, but I did not mean to be. And you were right
when you said I was mixing up my words—”

“You were?” A note of hope lifted
her voice.

“Yes. But you are wrong when you
say you want me to stay away.”

“Am I?”

“You do not want me to stay away,
Kristin.”

“Did you say you were mixing up
your words?”

“Yes, and I apologize
profusely
.”

“You mean you don’t really think
I’m ugly?”

I looked across the field at a
dainty figure with a helmet inside a large, powerful plane. “I think you are
beautiful, Kristin. Amazingly beautiful.” I paused but heard no response,
leaving my words to linger in the space between us. “Now let us fly together,
so we can feel the thing you call
closeness
.”

From my distance I could not
perceive any expression beneath Kristin’s helmet. Then I heard her engines start.

“I forgive you,” a soft voice
whispered in my ear.

Chapter 14

I walked quickly through the corridors of Space Travel,
holding the new item that was now always with me, a well-worn paper that went
back and forth between my pocket and my hand numerous times a day: Mykroni’s
checklist. I had to rush to complete the week’s tasks that he had assigned.
With Friday being a day off for the Earth holiday of Reckoning Day, I had only
two days left to finish my work. As I was about to enter one of the simulators,
a hand from behind me squeezed my shoulder. From long-standing habit, my body
froze in dread.

“Hey, Alex, I want to tell you
something.”

I turned, relieved to see Mykroni,
his warm smile instantly melting my fear.

“Since you and Kristin seem to be
friends, I thought you’d want to know that today’s her birthday.”

I looked at him blankly.

“Here we
celebrate
a
person’s birthday,” he explained.

On Asteron we celebrated only
events important to the rulers, like military victories. “You mean Earthlings
celebrate their birth anniversaries as if they were state holidays?”

“No. As if they were more important
than state holidays.”

“Really?”

“You see, if a person is special,
then the day the person was born is important. We acknowledge it.”

“How?”

“By buying the person something, a
present.”

“What kind of present?”

“Something we think the person will
like.”

Following this advice, I gave
Kristin a present. But the results were
not
as Mykroni had led me to
believe, which I told him later that day. Forgetting my new manners, I
anxiously entered his office and sat down before being invited. “I gave Kristin
a birthday present as you recommended, and it has gotten me into trouble.”

“Oh? What did you get her?”

“You said to get her something I
thought she would like. Not only did I think she would like the thing I got her,
but I knew for sure that she would like it tremendously.”

“And?”

“And she did not like it at all.”

Mykroni smiled. “What’s ‘it’? What
did you get Kristin for her birthday?”

“An Ultimate Sub from Big Eats.”

“You didn’t?” Mykroni’s smile
widened.

“My affairs seem to amuse you.”

The smile turned to laughter. I
waited patiently.

Finally, he spoke. “I’m sorry for
laughing, Alex. I guess I forgot to mention one key thing about a birthday
present.” He leaned forward across his desk, as if trying to touch me with his
words. “A present has to have value, which doesn’t mean it has to cost a lot,
but it has to be something prized, something more interesting than a common
sandwich you can get anytime. Do you know why, son?”

I thought of the other differences
I already had discovered—between bread and cheesecake, between rags and a
wardrobe, between weeds and a garden, between life as cheap and life as . . . prized.
“Kristin is special, so her present should be too.”

Mykroni nodded the way he did when
I completed an item on his checklist. “You got it, pal.”

I arranged to take Kristin to what
was called a
good
restaurant, and I got her a better present, perfume—a
luxury item that women with only the highest connections could obtain on
Asteron. Tonight we would celebrate an event more special than a home run by
Alexander: Kristin’s twenty-first birthday.

That evening Kristin let me fly her
plane on our outing. As we headed for the restaurant I had chosen, a site I
recognized caught my attention. It was the baseball stadium. It looked calm and
peaceful now, a massive, hollow oblong with many rows of seats encircling the
dormant field and with vacant parking lots stretching outside of it. The empty arena
was a stark contrast to the packed, noisy scene the other night when we were
there.

“The stadium is deserted now,” I
commented.

“With the season over, there won’t
be any sign of life down there till next spring.”

“Even though we are close to the
ground, I see no guards. Is the stadium not protected by guards or security
systems in the off-season?”

“The stadium is an old landmark
building—baseball’s been around for quite some time—so it wouldn’t surprise me
if it was never updated with modern security systems, at least not in the open
field. There’s really nothing down there to steal.” She stretched her slender
neck to observe the arena below. “The seats are bolted down, and the concessions
look like they’re boarded up.”

“Are there any property break-ins
in Rising Tide?”

“Rarely. We don’t worry much about
that, unless it’s a company like MAS, which of course has lots of security.”

“Did your father worry about
break-ins?”

I detected an edge to her voice.
“Not in recent years, and I certainly don’t worry about them on my birthday.
Alex, you ask the strangest questions!”

Although her tone told me that our
discussion of the topic I obsessed about was finished, my thoughts lingered on
it as we flew to a secluded restaurant a distance away, where I hoped no one was
likely to look for me.

Having left my evening’s attire to
my selection, Kristin was pleased with the outfit I had picked: dark silk
slacks, a jacket, and a bright-colored shirt. These were clothes from the
wardrobe she had helped me to choose—soft, well-fitting fabrics that moved and
breathed with me in the utmost comfort.

“Because you’re tall and slim,
those clothes fall just right on you,” she said flatly, like a tailor assessing
her work. “And with your looks, you could model clothes, Alex.” Upon seeing the
question on my face, she elaborated. “A model is someone a seller hires to wear
clothes so that potential buyers can see how they look. But on second thought,
you wouldn’t make a good model at all. Your eyes are too . . . penetrating.
No one would notice the clothes.”

From the sky, the restaurant looked
as if it were carved from the Earth itself, a piece of jagged stone hanging
over a mountain cliff east of Rising Tide, with sharp, angular lines defining
the walls and roof. I carefully adjusted the controls to lower the plane
gently, so that it sank vertically to the ground like a red blossom falling
from a tree on a windless evening. In the twilight we walked toward the expansive
quadrangles of glass that were the windows. I peered inside to see a large
fireplace cast flickering gold lights against the walls and ceiling.

“Kristin, is there a word for the
pleasing way the restaurant looks, the way it seems to invite us to come in?” I
looked into eyes that danced with the same fiery sparks as the hearth.

“Enchanting.
It’s called
enchanting
.”

When I opened the wooden entrance
door, the shocking sights beyond it carried me to a distant clearing by a lake
where a sweet voice was humming music. Removing Kristin’s coat, I saw clothing
of a thousand shimmering circles that seemed to have been poured over her body.
The dress was a thin sheet of white metal that ended well above her knees,
covering the pleasing landscape of her body with sparkles, which she called
sequins, from her neck to her wrists. The back of the dress was another matter,
because there was none, only a spread of suntanned skin from shoulders to
waist, smooth, supple skin that felt warm against the cool, hard strip of dress
that framed it.

As we were seated at a table by the
fireplace, I saw the rest of the scene described to me in another age: the
crisp, white linen, called a tablecloth; the glasses with the long handles,
called crystal; the flowers, special ones called orchids, prized for their
beauty; the shiny wooden floor where couples danced together to music—the whole
of the scene painted for me in a time that seemed so long ago!

I stared incredulously at Kristin
in the golden glow of the room. “Is there a man named Honey on this planet?”

“What?”

I knew the answer already, as well
as the dark conclusion it implied: The images Reevah had seen in the spies’
quarters meant that Feran’s agents were studying the Earth! Why?

“Kristin, somewhere far away,
someone described a place just like this to me, where a woman wore a garment
that sparkled just like yours, a dress that was enchanting, and—”

“You think my dress is enchanting?”

“Indeed. And the woman with the
sparkling dress danced very close to a man, so their bodies touched and swayed
to the rhythm of music in a way that was . . . it was . . . is
there a word . . .”

“Romantic. It was
romantic
.
Through the dancing they showed how they cared for each other.”

“Yes,
yes! And the man’s name was
Honey
.”

She smiled. “Lots of people are
called honey by folks who care about them. It’s a term of fondness and
affection, even love.”

“But, Kristin, how can a sticky
substance oozing from an insect be used to express love?”

“Have you ever tasted honey?”

“No.”

On Asteron, there were bees in the
rulers’ fields, but the people were not given honey in their rations. It was
one of the many foods cultivated for our leaders, with their protruding
bellies, who kept their eating habits a secret from the citizens, with their
protruding ribs.

Kristin ordered honey, and I was
surprised to see it served by a human, not a robot. “Being served by a live
person is a more pampering experience; that’s why you pay more,” Kristin
explained.
Pampering
. The word intrigued me because that night I felt
as if I was indulging my every whim more than any ruler on Asteron. But what I would
have considered a disgusting display by them had the most sublime meaning to me.
Was it paying for my pampering with my own money and leashing no one’s neck to
provide it that made all the difference?

I learned so many new things that
night, such as the remarkable taste of different foods, including honey. I
learned about the savoring of a prized wine, and the clinking of the glasses in
a kiss that Kristin called a toast.

“Because a toast, you say, is to
honor someone, and today is your birthday, should I give a toast to you?” Her
face was radiant in the flickering light of the fireplace, somehow reflecting
my own excitement toward the whole of my new universe. I held up my glass: “To
the most beautiful pilot in the galaxy.”

Our glasses touched in a chime of
resonating crystal, which seemed to be the most civilized sound in the
universe. Then I blinked at her with one eye, and she laughed like the woman in
the story from another age.

“What does the blink with one eye
mean, Kristin?”

“It’s a wink. It’s a way for two
people to give a secret signal to each other. Were you giving me a secret
signal, Alex?”

When we rose to dance, we stared at
each other for a long moment, then our bodies touched with a sudden urgency
that also seemed to be a secret signal.

From the grassy spot on a
mountainside where we later sat, the distant towns below were reduced to dots
of light shimmering in the night like the sequins on Kristin’s dress. After we
had left the restaurant, I brought the plane down on this secluded spot to
catch its remarkable view. We sat on a blanket, gazing at the countryside,
which was in sharp focus on that cloudless night. Could the fog obscuring my
own existence be lifted too? I wondered. We sat awhile in silent contentment, and
then Kristin turned to me. The white sparkle of her dress formed a stunning contrast
to the red-brown hair that shone like the polished wood the Earthlings called
mahogany.

“Alex, thank you for making my
birthday . . . enchanting.”

She drew near me, her hand curving
my face. I felt her mouth on mine in a touch too soft to be a kiss, a touch
that was merely the promise of one. As she withdrew, my mouth followed hers,
deciding without me to fulfill the promise right away. Within moments she was
in my arms, the intoxicating scent of the perfume soaking into my lungs, my
hands memorizing the rhythm of hills and valleys in the soft skin of her back,
my mouth locked on hers. I was calm, I was safe, I was on Earth, I told myself.
I pulled her down on the blanket, my hands stroking her breasts, my head buried
in her hair, my body pressing against hers. I felt her body answer me, her arms
embracing me, her head arching back.

Suddenly, I sat up, my resolute
face meeting her astonished one. “Kristin, I know this is rude, but we need to
go.” I began to rise, but her arm on mine stopped me.

“Alex,” she said softly, “aren’t
you going to ask me what it’s called when one part of you wants something, but
another part says no, and you go back and forth with these two parts tugging at
you?”

I waited quietly for the answer.

“It’s called a problem. What do you
do if you have a problem on a spacecraft, when one computer tells you to go one
way and the other tells you to do the opposite?”

I stretched across the blanket,
listening, staring at the sky, weary from the thing Kristin called my problem.

“The things you like, Alex, things
that are enchanting and romantic . . . and closeness. . . . Well,
to have those things, you have to talk to the other person.”

I rolled on my stomach, searching
for a way to explain something I could not talk about.

“Tell me what’s wrong. Will you,
Alex?” she asked softly.

I sighed. She waited. I propped
myself up on my elbows. “Kristin, where I come from, women are
punished—punished
severely
—for choosing their own men.”

“Was there a woman? Did you have
someone you were close to?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go out with her?”

“We were not permitted to go out as
you do here, but I saw her secretly.”

“Did you like her?”

“Yes. She was the one who told me
of the scene between the Earthling woman in the sparkling dress and the man she
danced with.”