The Color of Distance (12 page)

“Tell me about the new creature,” Ukatonen said.

Anito told the enkar everything that had happened since they found it dying in the forest. Ukatonen watched Anito speak, eyes bright, ears wide, taking in her words the way a leaf drinks in sunshine. When Anito was done, Ukatonen sat beside the new creature. It was curled into a tight ball against the side of the nest, one arm over its face, the other arm extending across the floor, wrist spur pointing up. Before Anito could stop him, the enkar linked with the new creature. The enkar flared pink with excitement and broke the link. The creature slept on, undisturbed.

“You shouldn’t have done that!” Anito was angry, her words tinged with red. “I promised it that no one would link with it. What if it woke up? I could never get it to trust me again! That creature is my atwa until I get it back to its people. I don’t want to have to tie it up and carry it to Lyanan!” She realized that she had just spoken sharply to an enkar, and browned in embarrassment.

To Anito’s surprise, Ukatonen’s brilliant pink color faded to a subdued muddy blue, half reassurance, and half embarrassment. “I am sorry, kene. I only looked at its cells. I don’t think I disturbed it.”

Anito looked up, startled. Ukatonen had addressed her with the formal title of an elder. It was the first time anyone had done that.

“I’m on my way to Lyanan,” he went on, “because the enkar have heard about a group of strange creatures tearing up the forest. Your creature sounds like the ones on the coast. Perhaps it can help me understand that’s happening out at Lyanan. If these creatures are your atwa, you may r»e obligated to help repair the damage they have done.”

“I don’t know anything about the other creatures on the coast,” Anito replied. “I have no control over the creatures at Lyanan. I only know about this one here. I’m not ready for such a responsibility, en. I don’t even know how to be an elder yet.”

Ukatonen placed his hand on Anito’s chest, deep blue with reassurance. “You know more about these creatures than any other Tendu alive. “. hadn’t even seen one before I met you. I know it’s a great deal to ask of you, but someone must take responsibility for bringing things back into balance. That is the most important thing about being an elder, Anito.”

“But how can I bring things back into balance? I’m barely out of werrun, and I’ll be a stranger as well. No one will listen to me.”

“We won’t know how to balance things until we see what’s happened. And people will listen to you. They have to. After all, these creatures are Your atwa. You know more about them than anyone. You have already ;aught me a great deal that I didn’t know, kene. I am obligated to you for that.”

A cloud of grey regret crossed Anito’s skin. Already the web of debt and obligation that entangled every elder was beginning to bind her. It would never end, she knew. The rest of her life would be spent incurring debts, and paying them off.

“You won’t have to fix everything by yourself,” Ukatonen assured her. “You’ll have powerful allies. I’ll help, and so will the other enkar. The villagers will listen.”

Anito flickered her thanks, trying not to think of all the obligations she would create in the process of bringing the new creatures back into balance.

“It’s been a long, difficult trip. Your body needs rest. You should sleep, kene,” Ukatonen said. He lifted the glow-fungus off the branch where it hung, sprinkled it with nutrient solution, and put it back in its gourd.

Anito settled herself between the new creature and the enkar, and fell asleep.

Juna watched Spiral and the new alien discuss her, wishing that she could understand what they were saying. Her name sign was the only recognizable word in the complex blur of skin-speech patterns. Juna shook her head. She was too tired to even try to follow what they were saying. She gave up and went to sleep.

The next day Spiral told her they would remain here for a while. Whether that meant an hour, a day, or a week wasn’t clear. When Juna protested, Spiral merely turned over and went back to sleep. The new alien, whom she had dubbed Lizard since its name sign resembled a stylized lizard, stopped her attempts to waken Spiral.

When it was clear that further protests would get her nowhere, Juna sat with her computer, working on the aliens’ language. After about an hour the low power warning came on. Juna sighed. Oliver’s computer was wadded up in her pack. She pulled it out and told it to get ready to receive data. When it extruded the proper ports and cables, she linked the two computers and backed up her files. Then she put her own computer in one of the mesh gathering sacks, and climbed to the top of the tree, where she tied the computer securely to a sunny branch and left it to recharge.

When she got back to the nest, Lizard was examining Oliver’s computer. Spiral was still sleeping soundly. Lizard handed the machine back to her, then pointed up at her recharging computer. “
Something something
not good,” it told her in skin speech.

Juna shook her head. She didn’t understand. Was the alien talking about the computer, or something else entirely? Had she done something to cause offense? Were they bothered by her computer? A surge of fear passed through her. She hoped not. It was essential. Without it, she had no way of communicating with the aliens. Still, Lizard didn’t seem troubled by the computer he’d examined. She shrugged. If it was important, :t would come up again.

So who, or what, was Lizard? It was larger than any alien that she had seen thus far. Was that due to age, nutrition, gender, class, or racial differences? Spiral seemed respectful, even deferential to the other alien. Spiral’s colors were subdued, and it spoke to Lizard in complex patterns. The computer indicated a possible correlation between levels of formality and the complexity of the patterns used. It certainly seemed logical.

Why was Lizard coddling Spiral? Was Spiral sick, or was this a mating ritual? What did it know about her people? When would they start traveling again? Each passing day made it more likely that she would be marooned here.

Lizard touched her on the shoulder, interrupting her reverie. It nudged the computer and pointed to her, ears wide, purple with curiosity. Juna picked up the computer and pulled it out into a wide flat surface, then instructed it to assume a large-display format. It smoothed out into a rectangle and went rigid. Lizard ducked its chin, flickers of magenta surprise crossing its skin. Juna smiled at the alien’s reaction.

Leaning the computer against the side of the nest so that Lizard could see it, Juna called up the visual linguistic program she had been working with earlier.

“Computer,” she told it, “display symbol for food.”

The aliens’ word for food appeared on the screen. Lizard turned completely pink. It looked at her and back at the computer in amazement. The symbol for food appeared on its chest, and it picked up a piece of fruit and put it in front of the computer. Juna picked the fruit up.

“Computer, display gratitude symbol and affirmative symbol.”

They soon ran through all of the words Juna knew, and then she began questioning Lizard about the immense collection of unknown words that she had recorded.

They worked all day, with a break for lunch when Spiral woke. Then they continued on into the evening. It was very exciting and productive. Lizard tripled Juna’s stock of known words. The alien was much more attentive and patient than Spiral. Perhaps it was less bored with her.

Lizard woke Spiral for another meal around sunset. Juna, still tired from the exertion of the trip, fell asleep after dinner, her head swimming with alien words.

To Juna’s immense relief, they started traveling again the next day. Lizard assumed leadership of the group, determining their direction and pace. Although they started earlier in the morning, they stopped more often to rest.

They moved through an endless green gloom. Every day the sun rose, dispelling the heavy nighttime fog. The thick canopy filtered the few hours of morning sunlight into a dim greenish glow. Rain clouds began gathering around noon. Every afternoon it rained for a couple of hours.

Juna had no idea how far they traveled. Even with her compass, the jungle seemed directionless. The days were all alike. Without her computer she would have lost all track of time. How many more days before they got to base camp? Would she be too late?

Lizard paused often to teach her a new word or show her a new plant or animal. Her computer, wrapped around her neck to keep her hands free for climbing, recorded everything. Her stock of words grew. Soon she could understand most words pertaining to basic survival and could identify many concrete objects, especially if they were not alive. The aliens spoke slowly and clearly to her, but conversations between Lizard and Spiral were still impossible to follow.

The computer was also constructing a phonetic analogue to the aliens’ patterns. Having verbal keys for the aliens’ words made it much easier to learn to think in their language. She now had names for people and things that had some connection with the aliens’ visual language. Spiral became Anito, Lizard became Ukatonen, and Knot and Ripple became Ninto and Ilto. Ukatonen’s name for her was Eerin, which meant “stone speaker.” It was a reference to her computer, which the aliens thought of as a stone.

Her attempts to make her skin form meaningful patterns remained fruitless. By controlling her emotions, she could change her skin color, but she still could not make her skin produce patterns. The best she could do was make a cloudy dark blob appear on her chest.

One night about ten days after Ukatonen had joined them, the alien touched Juna’s arm, indicating that it had something to say to her. Juna looked at it and nodded.

“You speak with skin?” Ukatonen asked her, touching her on the chest.

Juna concentrated and made a dark blob appear on her chest, then shook her head no.

“You want speak?” it asked.

Juna nodded yes.

“You want speak, I teach,” it said.

Juna nodded again, suddenly hopeful. It would be wonderful to be able to converse freely, without the clumsy interface of the computer.

The alien held out its arms, red spurs upward. “You want speak, you must
allu-a.”
The computer had no analogue for what the alien wanted, but Juna knew immediately what it meant. She shook her head, flushing bright orange, and backing away, to emphasize the depth of her refusal. Her stomach was heavy with disappointment.

“Why fear?” it asked her. “No hurt. You learn speak with us.”

Juna shook her head, unable to explain her fear of allu-a.

Anito touched Ukatonen’s arm, and began talking to the other alien, explaining something about Juna’s unwillingness to link spurs with them.

Juna stretched the computer out into a display screen. The aliens broke off their discussion and watched as the computer became a smooth, rigid rectangle alive with color. Juna touched the aliens’ arms as a signal that she wanted to speak.

“Translate,” she told the computer. She selected the word
allu-a,
and tied it to the word
link. “
I link before. Was bad. I fear link,” she said.

Ukatonen looked at Anito, its ears raised in a question. Anito said something in reply. Juna recognized the word for “link” joined with the odd little hook that indicated past tense, and the name signs for herself, Ninto, and Ilto, and guessed that Anito was telling Ukatonen about that first link.

“Why link bad?” the computer translated for Ukatonen.

“Not want link. Cannot leave link,” Juna said, frustrated by the limited vocabulary available to her.

Ukatonen looked back at Anito. Anito explained something to Ukatonen. Yellow irritation flickered down Ukatonen’s back.

“You link with me, it not bad. You can leave. I show you how. You learn speak. Link good. Learn fast. You not need stone-speaker,” Ukatonen said, pointing its chin at her computer. “You
t’al
me.” The symbol for
t’al
resembled a stylized braid. It was a word that she had a phonetic for, but no definition.

“What means t’al?” Juna asked.

“You leave village alone. Ninto, me find you. You
t’al
us. You come back to village with us,” Anito explained. “Your people want find you. I say we go. You
t’al
us. We go your people now. You link with us. You
t’al
us.”

Juna untangled the meaning from the semi-translated hash the computer made of their words.
T’al
either meant believe or trust. She entered the possible meaning into the computer for it to cross-check against other recorded occurrences of the word. The response was “Possible. Not enough data to confirm.”

She had trusted the aliens when they said they would take her back to her people, and now Anito was taking her there. She had gone back to the village with Anito and Ninto. She had trusted Anito enough to go with the alien alone in search of her people.

Juna rubbed her forehead. If
t’al
meant what she thought it did, Uka-tonen was asking her to trust it while it rummaged around inside her and changed things. It was asking a lot, especially if she was only a few days from base camp.

“No,” Juna replied. “My people find me soon. Not need learn speak you.”

A ripple of olive disappointment washed over Ukatonen’s skin. The alien’s ears drooped. Its expression was comical, but Juna was too tired to manage much more than-a weak smile.

“You want link, ask me,” Ukatonen offered.

Juna nodded, and crumpled the computer into a small ball. She’d done all she could. Her brain was worn out from trying to understand and communicate with the aliens. She was exhausted by the physical demands of the trip. Once she got back, she’d turn the aliens over to Kinsey and go back to being a biologist. That is, if the Survey’s doctors could make her look human again. Juna’s throat closed tight with fear for a moment at the possibility that she would look like an alien for the rest of her life. Then she shut her mind firmly against contemplating that possibility.