So Long Been Dreaming (40 page)

“Why are you not home on the station?”

“I am at home. But not the same home.”

“Home is always the same. Only the –” Enrishi thought of the picture she should make. “– only the river changes, but the water is still always water.”

“Yes, but sometimes salty and sometimes sweet.”

“Sometimes cloudy and sometimes clear, but always water. That is life’s crossing.”

“Yes,” Jonah answered.

“Yes.” Golden tendrils danced on Enrishi’s lips. She covered her mouth with her hands. “You have given stories and we have received. We have given stories and you have taken.”

“You have let us see star charts and our scientists are very pleased. We would like to know how we can repay you.”

“We would have you in our home.”

“Excuse me?”

“We would have you in our home.”

“You want me to visit.”

“We would share a stream for a time. We give and are given.”

“One cannot trade life stream for water.”

“But do you not sell each other?”

“No,” Jonah said calmly as if speaking to a child. “We do not sell each other. Long ago we did. On my birth continent we had slaves into the twenty-first century, but not now. We are all free now.”

Jonah realized that he was out of his depth. He found the earplug and put it back in his ear. He hoped he had been discreet.

“You are an idiot!” the commissioner yelled. Then a spew of angry epithets followed. “Get a price that we can negotiate. This is no time for a history lesson,” the commissioner screeched, “Get a price, don’t accept it, just get it.”

“Your ear whines. I see it run colours. Perhaps you would cross tongues with those who cut roadways.”

Enrishi got up to leave. Jonah jumped up after her. “Did I offend you?” he asked.

“No, Jonah,” Enrishi spoke very softly. “But the one who lives in your ear crackles and hisses and does not share home.”

He scrambled for the right words. “I am sorry, but I do not know how to negotiate trade, so they are helping me. I am a translator, not a trader.”

“We are all traders.”

“Not on Earth.”

“All is trade, Jonah.” Enrishi moved towards the door.

“We have,” Enrishi unrolled a note hidden in the cuff of her sleeve and read, “one metric tonne of water. The coven has written out the details of trade.”

“Damn.” The commissioner was laughing.

“That’s what I want to hear.” The science officer chortled.

Jonah’s eyes grew big as he began to read the paper. Enrishi said nothing as he read, just stood at the door. Then she resumed: “These are the seeds we would trade. We want no more or less from this sharing.”

Enrishi turned and left the chamber.

5.

Jonah sat grim-faced. He had been on the Voyager’s ship for hours, maybe days. The last thing he remembered were the harsh words of the commissioner before he went to sleep. They were repeated for hours: “duty . . . responsibility . . . desperate measures . . . hero . . . no choice . . . only choice.” He had stopped listening after a while, heard the phrases only as discordant chords that irritated his spirit. Jonah left the meeting with the word “no” emblazoned in his stance, on his lips. He had, in fact, quit the project. When he went to sleep, it was in his own cabin. When he awoke, he was in a strange room with weights wrapped around his ankles and wrists that let him lie softly on the bed. There was also a shelf protruding from the wall and a computer console. The light was muted, as if it were dusk. There was a window that showed the stars, a window that showed his space station as a small green blinking dot in the corner of the oval frame.

Jonah was surrounded by crates that he at first thought were trade goods. He was surprised because there had been no discussion with him. He thought the Voyagers had indicated that he would be the only translator. Who on the team had arranged this transfer? The air was dry and cool. He got up to move and found himself much lighter than he had been on the station. He bounced around the room, hovering a few inches from the floor on each large stride. He began to open the boxes.

The first one was full of foodstuffs. What a surprise! What would the Voyagers want with dried apricots and marinated artificial meats? How could they digest grains, and what in the world would they do with fine cognac? Jonah began to tremble. He opened a third crate. He found his books and music disks, instruments and hologram portrait book, clothes and toiletries, and a communications radio.

There were six more boxes. He did not bother to look. What did it matter? It was obvious the trade had been made. He was sold for water. He was alone on an alien ship that never docked.

Jonah heard a soft chime and then saw a door open. Enrishi entered the room.

“Jonah, you have awakened. It is good. We are, excuse me, welcome home.” She saw that he was stiff and did not offer the handshake.

“This is not my home.”

“We are always home.” She bowed her head and let the cloth fall off her. He saw that she was frowning, that soft red tendrils glistened close to her scalp.

“It seems I am never to be home,” Jonah replied, his lips dry and cracked.

Enrishi carried a jug with five litres of water. She placed it at his feet. “We are always home.”

“This is kidnapping, you know,” Jonah sullenly responded.

“If you would drink, we would drink. If you would fast, we would fast.”

Jonah needed the water, but did not move.

Enrishi opened the squat jug and daubed the corner of her sleeve into the water. He saw it turn from a pale yellow to a deeper saffron. She then moved to him and put the cloth on his mouth.

“You are home to water,” she smiled. Then she put a small ladle into the jug and put the rim at Jonah’s mouth. He opened his lips and let it in. He had dreamed this water the night before, dreamed it as melting snow that he had rolled in, as a cresting river that he had rode, as a rainstorm that he had walked in open-mouthed, clothes drenched. Not one drop was wasted. When he emptied the ladle she refilled it and again fed him. Jonah could not resist. It was so sweet, slightly chilled without a trace of chemical aftertaste.

“Enrishi, I am a translator. I have trained for years. I am not a Voyager, I am a scholar. I have lived on the station for years. I don’t stay on a ship. In fact, I was to return home on the next freighter. I had given up my position. You understand, I was going home. I don’t want to be here, but there are others who would love to go with you. We have a captain who can navigate. We have a ship’s doctor, we have a –”

“We carry stories. That is our purpose. We need one who unfolds tongues. We need you.”

“How could you make me an object of trade?”

“There is always a giving. We have given a metric tonne of water to the station. We have given a communications device that will work so that you may talk to your friends for several Earth years. We have given star charts. We have asked only for you. Only for another with a tongue that can carry stories. It is a good trade. We have made a doorway for you. You have said that your blood is made of travel. Now, you do not have to work for credits. You are truly free. What you need we will give.”

“I was already free.”

Enrishi ignored him. “We will fill the Hall of Being with your stories. Our artists will braid your tales into the ship. You would become the forever of our journey. In time you will be engraved on the Tunnel of Passage.”

“Are there others on your ship who are not Voyagers?”

“We are all Voyagers.”

“Others who are not from the planet of your homebound?”

“We have traded for forty-one generations. We have known others. We have welcomed others.”

“Now? Now are there others?”

Enrishi again ignored him. “Our ship has been tethered for months. Our people grow restless for the swells of the sky winds. They want to move on. It has been decided. Do not worry, we will cross other life streams. If you choose you will join them and leave us. Perhaps one will be an Earth ship again. As the wave rises, we rise too.”

“So I am the sacrifice for the station.” Jonah spit out the words.

“What do you sacrifice?”

“My home, myself.”

Enrishi shook her head. A few of the red tendrils drifted and landed on Jonah’s cheeks, prickling him slightly. “But we do not take your home, we give one. Come, let me show you around. We will meet with my grandfather. Did I tell you he walked on an asteroid once, as a child? And wait until you see the Hall of Being. I believe you will like it. You and I are already there.”

Enrishi reached out and took his hand. He looked out the window and saw that the beacon light from the station was becoming smaller and smaller. “Come, Jonah, let me show you home.”

“Home?” Jonah began to cry.

“Yes, yes. It is so. We are always home.”

Carole McDonnell
is an essayist, fiction writer, and writer of devotionals. Her book and film reviews appear online at
thefilmforum.com
,
compulsivereader.com
, and
curledup.com
. Her devotionals appear in Christian online and print magazines and also on
faithwriters.com
. Her short stories and essays have been anthologized and published in publications including the essays “Oreo Blues” in
Lifenotes: Personal Writings by Contemporary Black Women
and “That Smile” in
Then an Angel Came Along
. She is putting the finishing touches on an SF novel called
The Daughters of Men and on Father Gorgeous
, a Christian horror-romance. She is also currently finishing a Bible study called
Scapegoats and Sacred Cows in Bible Study
. She lives in upstate New York with her husband Luke (an illustrator) and their two sons.

Lingua Franca
Carole McDonnell

Mist removed two large coins from the blue money box on the counter and walked outside her shop. Closing the door, she reached for the ideograph placard which read, “Closed, but unlocked. Take what you need and leave your payment in the coin box.” The signboard in place, she stuffed the “D” volume of her interplanetary
Webster’s Dictionary
into her quilted backpack, strapped it on her back, and walked into the dusty bustle of the open-air market.

The market still basked in the heat although First Dusk had already come and Second Dusk had begun rolling across the sky. Using her marriage scarf to shield her face from the dusty streets, Mist headed towards the fruit stands where the Federation-approved traders sold exotic foods gathered from across the galaxy.

In the distance, near an ormat tree, four Federation off-worlders with ear-caps on their heads talked among themselves. One man carried something long and metallic on his shoulders. Another had a metallic box with a glass tube on one side. The only woman among them was looking through a metallic tube at the reddening sky. For several seconds, Mist studied the movement of their lips, but could decipher nothing.

The purple warning lights of the market flashed: three slow blinks, then two long ones. Mist felt a cold chill run down her back. A dread unsettled her mind and she glanced nervously at the Town Square stage. Two women with children strapped in chest-sacks raced past her.

I’m getting old, Mist thought as they rushed past. Fifty. Even with children on their chests, they fly past me. But age comes to all of us. The Creator was hard on me. But, at last, I had my child. Only one. And at forty, when most women are past their prime. That child, though, is a true blessing. Worth a million others. Flowers-in-the-Sun has extended my youth. Before her birth, I was a “ghost” – a childless woman.

Two more women raced past Mist. She caught a bit of their signed conversation. Their hands spoke of the cutting, about mouth-speech. To her left, two young mothers with small children strapped to their chests were also signing about the implanted children and the encroachment of the mouth-speaking Federation.

“These Earthers are not like the other off-worlders,” one woman signed. “They do not accept us as they find us. Look at them. Not content with fixing our ‘problem,’ now they say they’re ‘fixing’ our air. As if anything was ever wrong with our air. Why do the elders allow it?”