North Wind (20 page)

Be discreet, he remembered.

he submitted. (anyone who could understand English chuckled. The rest quickly followed suit).

There was a murmur of approval.

Sarvanga deliberated.

Bella felt that he was now free to retire. But he wasn’t sure: because at the moment his medication was only confusing him. Before he could ask the nurse, another member of the Expedition, brilliantly robed, swooped on him, and warmly took his arm.

<“Bella,” my dear! How wonderfully fragile you look!>

It was Aditya the Beauty, the Aleutian the locals long ago had nicknamed “Beautiful Girl”; by far the most fascinating of the Landing Party veterans who were serving at Uji in this life. He wore a robe of dark blue local silk, trimmed with gold tassels: a fashion that would be sweeping Uji by sundown. Bella turned with abject relief to a face that he knew. Maitri and Aditya had never been close, but they had served together.

longing
to hear your stories! I’m so jealous. I adore adventures!>

In the passage outside the “main hall” (ex-cocktail bar) Sid was hunkered down with his back to the wall. No one had stopped from him coming in, despite the fact that he was human and unquarantined Aleutians were passing to and fro. Sid suspected that Total Quarantine Enforcement was on the slide. Under the new regime, it would only matter when the Aleutians wanted it to. He was holding Roger: who squirmed silently, doggedly intent on escape. Lydia hopped around, stepping on stray wanderers. She imagined, vindictively, tiny pinpricks of pain going through the owners of those little bugs:
ooch ouch, eeech.

“Daddy, how could she trick me like that? I’m just a little girl.”

“Not to Bel. To Bel you’re the person you always were: just a little shorter at present.”

“I hate her. I hope I never see her again.”

“I think you’re going to get your wish, after today.”

She danced off down the passage. The flooring was red, squishy and warm to the touch. Walking on it was like walking on warm raw flesh. Sid was obscurely glad that the returning aliens had set themselves up, without knowing it, in the one honest-to-God brothel in the whole Community State of Kerala. But he was afraid the insult was lost. They wouldn’t understand and they probably found the gruesome “sexy” decor cozy.

It was the Fat Man’s idea that Sid should act the beggar. This charade was supposed to reassure the aliens about the strange behavior of a halfcaste interpreter. If he turned up like an idiot, demanding a reward for saving the immortal’s life, they’d know he wasn’t a spy. Or so the Fat Man claimed.
Hopskip, hopskip.
Lydia was driving him crazy.

She came back and asked. “Why do people have white skin. I mean, the white that turns red, like yours?”

“Dominance display selection. I’m a fashion victim.”

“You could go and live in Sweden, you’d look ordinary there.”

“I don’t want to live in Sweden.”

“So it’s a glitch. Why don’t you get it fixed?”

“I don’t do gene therapy.”

“You had me vaccinated against periods.”

“Vaccinations are different.”

She stood, arms folded harridan-wise. The mother-demon in miniature. The aliens were right. At six she was almost adult, lacking nothing except height and a trifle of experience.

“Talk out loud. Don’t speak in the Common Tongue in here; it’ll lower your guard. You’ll tell them things without knowing it.”

Figures appeared at the end of the grisly corridor. The heel-drumming was over.

“Shut up, Lydie. Shut up and look pathetic!”

chattered Aditya, arm in arm with the isolate. own flesh and blood.
Technically that’s not true, but one can’t help feeling—>

agreed Bella, conventionally. He saw Sid and stopped dead. It was terrible to see him like that: his courage and his power buckled down under his misery.

He stared defiantly.

Aditya looked back, as he swept Bella away. <“Gosh”> he marveled.

said Bella.

6 
Beautiful Girl

i

The damage of the Protest, at the manor house at Uji, had been quickly repaired. This secluded valley, in Karen State north of Thailand, had been the Aleutian headquarters on Earth since the earliest days of the Expedition: little had survived of its local character. In the main hall of the house, the single original feature that had remained before the Protest was a large bowl of glazed earthenware known as Clavel’s Fountain. A natural spring that rose from under the foundations, kept it full of water. It had been respectfully restored: but the “earthenware” itself was an artisans’ imitation now.

Bella spent many hours here, in undisputed possession of the stepped plinth and the melancholy indoor pool. It was a good spot to lurk in peace. The post-Protest company of the Expedition on Earth found “Clavel’s Fountain” gloomy, and avoided it.

Today the full company had assembled, because Yudi was receiving visitors from the shipworld. Bella’s haven remained quiet. The grieving murmur of the spring water, trickling away in a hidden pipe to join the Uji river, reminded him of B.K. Pillai’s fish tank, and of Sid: “Why are rivers ‘melancholy’ in Aleutia?” he had asked once. “Why do you people hate running water? Is it because it moves and isn’t alive?” They had been somewhere on the journey through the wilderness, beside a most welcome stream.

Bella had told him.

Everything about his adventure had “flowed away” now: except that he couldn’t seem to leave Earth. He’d made a tactical error in Trivandrum. Because he’d collapsed, he’d become the invalid again. If he’d realized how he would be trapped, he’d have struggled to stay on his feet. Now it was too late. “We,” the implacable Aleutian “we,” had decreed that he was not strong enough to travel. He was Maitri’s librarian again, and he couldn’t fight the verdict; he did feel ill.

It would be a sad return. The household would be much depleted: by the loss of the frontier Trading Post company, and by the inevitable drift of people finding positions elsewhere, while their lord was away. But he longed to be home.

He knew none of the new Uji staff, recruited to make up numbers after the Protest. To his weary ignorance they seemed a dull crew: silly too. It had become the fashion for everyone to go about surrounded by personal commensals; it was important for the prestige of the Expedition, they said. The most minor trader had a jostling entourage. At popular times the hall seethed with walking wastebins, writing desks, snackboxes. It was a long way from the stark, gallant romance of the landing parties. Bella didn’t know who they were trying to impress. Negotiation with the Government of the World had been reduced to an exchange of recorded messages. In the present mood of the Expedition, it seemed likely that no locals would ever be allowed in the valley again.

It was necessary but sad. When Mr. Kaoru, the Aleutians’ first patron, had willed Uji manor to the Aleutians, it had been a gift of friendship: a gift to his friend Clavel, who had loved the valley in its native, melancholy beauty. What would Kaoru think of the way things had changed?

He noticed a stir, up near the dais. Yudisthara’s speechmaker (Yudisthara himself was Silent) had risen to propose a vote of welcome to the honored visitor. Traders with their comic retinues pressed closer to the action: Bella stayed where he was.

Yudisthara’s visitor was minor royalty: he was also a notorious supporter of the Dark Ocean movement, the clique who wanted Aleutia to abandon Earth and return to the hopeless search for Home. The Dark Ocean people were enemies of the Expedition and all it stood for. Maitri’s librarian, and lately Maitri’s child, was amazed and
disgusted
to see a friend of that crew beside Yudisthara; getting a groveling welcome. But he seemed to be alone in his feelings. At the end of the speech the whole company, Signifiers and Silent both, broke into a vocal and chemical chorus of approval: thrilled that the Expedition was getting attention from someone important. If you pointed out the Dark Ocean connection, they’d brush it aside. They’d say they “weren’t interested in politics.” What could you do with such people?

It was perhaps fortunate that Bella’s medication didn’t diffuse the tincture of his bitterness very far. In the Common Tongue, he kept his response neutral.

the company answered: in their patent indifference and in the chemical touches that drifted by.

It was the verdict he wanted. Indifference was balm to his shattered nerves. A carrier commensal had come into the hall, with something in its mouth.

Bella started. “Oh no!”

He didn’t know he’d gasped aloud, until heads turned. He tried to pretend he wasn’t there, but it was useless. He was taking his medicine. A genius of disguise like Seeker-after-truth could suppress or alter his chemical presence: Bella was helpless. The commensal arrived at his feet, glowing with triumph. Poor thing, it didn’t know any better.

From somewhere in the crowd came a sharp warning, in English. “Don’t touch it, Bella!” It was good advice. But he ignored it, driven by an idiotic need to behave as if nothing strange was happening. It wasn’t the first message that had come to Uji. He’d just been lucky, until now. They’d been delivered to his room in the sick bay.

The wrapping was the same as before: thick, dead and slightly abrasive to his fingertips. He looked for the tab, meaning to avoid it at all costs, but he’d already touched it. An ethereal
something
leapt into existence. Briefly, a huge glistening bubble shone in the air. Then no margin could be seen or felt. A local stood among the Aleutians: angular at the shoulder, scanty at the hip; taller than some, smaller than most. His short light-colored hair was roughly upstanding over his head. His lifeless skin was scoured red. His eyes, deep-set under craggy brow ridges, were hidden by a fur of pale lashes. He made a speech.

“Gentle aliens, this is a letterbomb. It’s a harmless form of photochemical communication, developed in the early twenty-first century. The letterbomb had always been used by innocent people denied the normal means of making their contribution to public life…. Are you watching this, Bella? Also known as Maitri’s librarian, also known as ‘Goodlooking’?”

cried a trader, excitedly.

Bella wished the floor would swallow him. The ghost stared ahead blindly. “I want you to know that I’m thinking of you. I think of you every hour of every day. I want to remind you that you have unfinished business on Earth. Don’t go back to Aleutia, Bella. Please! Don’t leave! I need you desperately—”

Someone sobbed (it wasn’t Bella),

The image vanished. Bella swooped and stuffed the whole packet into the maw of a passing wastebin. The commensal made frantic choking noises and its owner exclaimed indignantly, Stop
that!>

gasped Bella,

A babble of comment rose up.

I see! Haven’t I heard they were…close?>

Someone ran up to Bella, arms wrapped dramatically around his belly. You
were responsible for the Protest! Kill them all! Reprisals! Revenge the babes unborn!>

Bella was in despair. But rescue was on its way. Aditya the Beauty elbowed his way through the press, caught the shaking invalid in his arms and turned on the last speaker.

he snapped. you
who make the locals think we’re spineless. Babes unborn! What nonsense.> His generous nasal narrowed in spite.

The traders were wearing formal robes. Aditya, forever a leader of fashion, had come to the reception in his plain overalls, with a few scraps of bizarre decoration. He made the rest of them look overdressed. But his passage through the small crowd, Bella in tow, was conducted with an imperious sweep and swirl.

It was commonly believed by Aleutians that the mysterious process of conception was triggered by stress. It was therefore argued by some that everyone who had died in the Protest had died pregnant: thus doubling the death toll.

Bella was being swept towards the steps of the dais. He made a feeble attempt to escape, but Aditya wouldn’t let go. Taking a wanderer from the bounteous supply on his own throat, he popped it into Bella’s mouth. He bent, and delicately nibbled one of Bella’s synthetic messengers. He would gain little from the exchange; the isolate’s prosthetic wanderers didn’t convey much information. But the gesture was kind.

To Bella’s horror, this remark was from Yudisthara himself. He shot the Beauty a glance of shocked reproach. Aditya screwed up his shapely nasal in cheerful mockery. ; and pushed the librarian forward. Bella had to creep up, obediently, to the Chief Executive’s couch.

The Silent merchant either had not noticed the furor by the pool, or he was pretending he hadn’t. As Maitri used to say: Yudisthara wasn’t a bad sort, but he was a dreadful coward. He’d ignore anything, for a quiet life. The visitor from orbit leaned across from his place beyond Yudi, his robe clinging to him in splendid glossy folds.

Bella had been thinking of the important visitor as an enemy of the Expedition…and none of his concern. He suddenly realized that this person had command over an outward-bound spaceplane.

Aditya’s glorious presence completely swamped the librarian’s groveling.

Yudisthara produced a sheet of flimsy mauve tissue. The librarian, who, in his modest dependent’s life, had rarely seen a bank note, stared at it in bewilderment.

Maitri was dead because Yudisthara had abandoned the frontier posts to save himself from unpleasantness. Bella kept his eyes lowered. Reproaches were useless, everything has to be forgiven, or how can life go on? But he couldn’t smile. Poor Yudisthara, flustered, gave a hopelessly inappropriate chuckle, and tucked the folded tissue into Bella’s unresisting palm.

The august visitor had forgotten his fleeting desire to hear the survivor’s tale. He thought enough attention had been given to this distraction. He raised his voice.

“Will somebody tell me something about the local scheme called ‘taxation’?” He was a linguist, and spoke excellent English, but he pronounced the unfamiliar term with caution.