FSF, March-April 2010 (35 page)

Vúdrir looks around. Warmth has come into the huge eyes of all the nearby centaurs, and gold highlights into their silver fur, and Pink finds herself holding her breath. “How do Humans smell to us?” the Fourther asks in cos three voices. “After our long years of seeking you in our loneliness, and having found you, Dreaming for this day when together we may talk and eat and smell and lick and embrace in harmonious enquiry? Why, you smell to us only of one general thing and that is
tívi
."

"Sorry, what does this
tívi
mean?” asks handsome rugged Sven, running a veined hand through his platinum hair.

"Joy,” says Pink Sévigny. She is feeling very small in the grass, very small and very alone in her cloneness. The big sculptor blinks down at her as though noticing her for the first time. “
Tívi
means joy.” And then she bursts into tears.

Sitting by herself on the edge of her Marseilles playground at l'Écôle des Enfants Surdoués, nine-year-old Juliana is putting the finishing touches on her sandpainting when a shadow falls over the work and her. “
Va-t'en,
” the future Pink yaps [Get lost!].

"
Que peins-tu, Cigogneau
?” [What are you painting, Little Stork?]

"
Mêle-toi de tes oignons, Bernache.
” [Mind your own beeswax, Barnacle.] Without looking Juliana knows her interlocutor is a very short, dark, muscular, extremely hostile female named Bernice Azouzi. Bernice will grow up to be a highly respected judge in northern France, but at this stage in her development she is aware only of the injustice of her height, and she vents her rage—whenever the nuns aren't looking—on Juliana, the tallest child in the form.

"
Bébé-éprouvette!
” taunts Bernice. [Test-tube baby!] “
Ton frère est un Bunsen et ta soeur est une cornue!
” [Your brother is a Bunsen burner and your sister is a chemical retort!] Titters arise from a knot of girls standing not far away. Bernice is very smart for her age. They are all very smart for their ages, and they know about Juliana being a clone, how she is not certain; probably one of the novices spilled the beans, despite the Headmistress's stern warnings to the staff and Andrea Sévigny's distant kinship (through her Italian fatherline) with the current Pope and the official opinion of the Vatican that Human cloning is permissible in cases of spousal demise and maternal infertility.

The future Pink does not respond to the short girl immediately. She is pondering what Sister Skylark would do in her position. The image of Brother Róbberámmerdoc, the Hammerhead Man, comes into her head, saying, “
ADN, q'il aille au diable! Nous tous sommes l'essence des étoiles!
” [DNA be damned! We are all starstuff!] So she carefully picks up her sandtray; gets to her feet; looks into the child's black eyes with her green ones; and says, “
Tu as bien raison, Bernice.
” [You're right, Bernice.] Then, instead of smashing the sandtray over the Barnacle's head, which was Pink's original plan, she walks away with the tray still in her hands.

Pink, lying on the turf of nosehair, senses her near-decapitation by the Firster's tail as a whoosh of wind and a loud thump and powerful vibration very close by. She also becomes aware of a strong organic scent, not dissimilar to that of recently boiled menudo in a poorly ventilated kitchen. “
Madre de Buda,
” she says, wrinkling her nose, and opens her eyes to find a silver-furred mountain with enormous worried liquid gold eyes peering down at her from about a meter away.

She has seen larger creatures, but none this close. She knows at once it is a Firster, and not a happy one. Cos huge, limpid eyes are lilac-lidded with anxiety; cos massive, muscular, unmaned torso is streaked with purplish-brown; and half of cos chests are undeveloped (secondary D'/fü lungs not fully maturing until Seconder—
dyéñe'te
—stage). The Firster is wearing a complex equipment belt-slash-rucksack, tattered and filthy, and when co sees her eyes open co says, “
Zhóktet,
” in a deep, deep single voice. It is precisely the sort of voice a mountain would have were it capable of speech. “
Zhóktet!
” The smell of boiling intestines grows stronger. [Safe! Safe! Pink translates.]

"Pleased to meet you,” says Pink, gagging slightly. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes. The scenery ‘round about has not changed—it is still completely incomprehensible—but the air is slightly colder than she remembers it having been, she is feeling very light, and the nosehairlike sward upon which she has slumbered has grown unpleasantly moist and springy. “Um,
Tyénst'h'ko'dnesk djinsh, hwehbállu
,” [Howdy, pal], she says, sounding the glottal stops carefully. She hopes she is using the right polite forms. “Can you speak Brenglish?"

"Brenglish, yes, yes, this one has been so schooled,” roars the mountain. “Harmed art thou, Master Small Individual? Canst thou rise? Is thy tiny wise head intact? For one came upon thee of a sudden, and one's tail, alas! Came near to bifurcating thee.” And then co breaks into an elaborate lamentation of which Pink understands perhaps three memes out of twenty.

"
Ke'zhéggha'a! Ke'zhéggha'a!
” cries Pink [Grieve not! Grieve not!], a trifle desperately, for the nosehairs have begun sucking at her skin like little questing siphons. “Would you mind helping me up?” The creature breaks off cos lamentations and, with the slightest of efforts, tugs at her outstretched arms, whereupon she sails through the air, halting her progress by desperately grabbing the featherlike branches of something resembling a tree fern. The Firster gives another howl of despair, certain co has killed her this time, so she is forced to yell, “
Ke'zhéggha'a!
” several more times until co calms down.

She climbs down from the tree fern, which is filled with minute coral slugs that flee her with unsluglike rapidity, peeping their dismay. The sobbing mountain approaches her with great care, in the process knocking over or aside with cos tail three iridescent blobs, a beige cheesy hexagon the size of Pink's mother, and what appears to be a bright purple radio antenna, which screams slightly as it falls. “Hey, now,” says Pink, patting cos immense furry paw. “It's okay, truly. Low gravity plus big muscles plus stork equals flight, no prob."

"One hungers,” co says.

"That makes two of us.” She looks around. “So. Let's use equal-to-equal conversation mode, okay?
Fefréllyo yoyók Pink. Fefréllthre ñeñék/donnét
?” [Person-of-equal-rank, I call myself Pink. What do you call yourself?] Cos reply sounds like molasses gurgling out of a jug. Pink says, “Um,
hwesh
?” [Again?]

"
Fefréllyo Slídhadhrup/Jéjno'Lílyo/fü yoyók,
” says the Firster. [My name, person-of-equal-rank, is Slídhadhrup, Current Era, First Cycle.] “Thou art the first Human ever I have smelt. How camest thou hither? Art thou from
Óllowe/Dvyénnu
[The New Place]?"

"You mean Concord Station?"

"
Djádthre,
” co says [Agreed], and taps cos elephantine right ear [the D'/fü equivalent of a nod of assent].

"
Djádthre
,” replies Pink [You betcha!], doing the same. The creature's huge puppy eyes grow wider with wonder. Hastily she explains, “
Vyen'jéssatye blefzhúzhü fwet'héttaha yek.
” [I came here, person-of-equal-rank, to meet my worklifepartnerfriend.]

"To
Kyíghenhássdrumderr
[The Tangles] thou camest this one to meet?” exclaims the Firster. Cos sick lilac-browns are beginning to be replaced by healthy flushes of rose-orange.

"Here? Oh, no,” says Pink. “
Kek!
[No!] I mean, not on purpose. Coming here was sort of an accident. You know, a
m'shyéghen.
” [An unintended error.]

"My teacher say, No
te'm'shyéghen
there be,” roars the Firster solemnly.

"Yeah? Well,
vyen'jéssatnéne Kyíghenhássdrumderr lópdhik
?” [Why did
you
come to the Tangles, person-of-equal-rank?]

Co launches into a long and mostly incomprehensible tale involving much chest pounding and tail thrashing, which when all is said and done appears to boil down to the fact that cos teacher told co to. “But I thought,” says Pink, “that you folks—your
fü
—don't go walkabout until
dyéñe'te
[Seconderhood]?"

"
Djádthre, djádthre, djádthre!
” replies Slídhadhrup. [Absolutely! Correct! YES!] Co is squatting, now, before her, cos tail stretched out behind co, so that she actually comes up to the place where cos navel might have been had co had a navel. “Nonetheless, teacher saith, ‘Go find
Úüv'élleblét/immo
,’ and so Slídhadhrup goeth!"

"Bien,"
says Pink, and then falls silent, for she can think of nothing else to say. She is lost in an incomprehensible wilderness with the centaur equivalent of a bright ten-year-old, and she hasn't the slightest idea what to do next. Then she turns and looks at the creature again. “Wait a sec.
Zhádnónnet-nónnet
?” [
What
did you just say?] “
Tümüta'ñék dámmas-dámmas blíspfü górmn'shde
?” [
Whom
did your teacher tell you to find, person-of-equal-rank?]

"
Úüv'élleblét/immo,
” says the Firster.

"You mean the Bird? The Vigilant Bird?"

"I know not these words."

"Sorry. Sorry.”
Úüv'élleblét/immo,
she thinks desperately, trying to recall what she has learned in Ethnology. “Got it!” she exclaims. “
Hwehbállu
[buddy], can you take us to
Úüv'élleblét/immo
? Do you know the way?"

"Teacher saith, the Way is within us,” intones the Firster. “And all places are this place.” Then the lilac-brown leaks back into cos fur, and co buries cos huge face in cos huge paws and weeps. It is such a Human way of weeping, so deeply recognizable, that before Pink knows what she is doing she has climbed into the mountain's huge lap and is putting both her slim (yet well-muscled) arms around co. And they sit this way, the Human child holding the alien one, for ten thousand years or so.

"This sure feels familiar,” says thirty-nine-year-old skipship navigator Juliana “Pink” Sévigny, wading hipdeep through the field of singing flowers.

"Ah don't get this wet-head ceremony,” says Bad Boy Mitch. All twenty-four members of the Orientation Class are sitting around the holotable in the big briefing room on Ring Five, waiting for their facilitators to show up, and Mitch, as usual, is pretending to be stupid just because he comes from Texas. “What happens? Me and my workpartner, do we get it on, or what?” To the embarrassed silence that follows his question he replies, “Come on, you people. You cain't tell me ah'm the only one heyah who's been wonderin’ that."

"The word is
fwét'het
, not ‘wethead',” says a cool, cultured female voice. “And if by ‘get it on’ you mean ‘engage in genital congress,’ then I fear you face disappointment.” Professor Elena Magdalena Velasquez-Villareal, Chief of Xenoethnology for Concord Station, has walked into the chamber, followed by her partner, Vállanévra/Háttra'Unésta/fü. She is a dark-skinned, dark-haired Brazilian of astonishing beauty, attired in an impeccably tailored business suit. Her partner, who towers over her, is a pale-eyed Fourther with a disc-plaited, spinelength mane. “What precisely
is
your speciality, Mister Henderson?” the
profesor
says, fixing Mitch with her cool, cool gaze. “Plate tectonics? Olfact adhesion? Underwater basket weaving? Destroying ecosystems?"

"Ah
happen
to be a famous
writah
,” says Mitch with dignity.

"Romance holos,” pipes up Pink. “I looked it up.” Mitch gives her a glare and the rest of the class tries not to laugh, with varying degrees of success.

"I only ask,” says Velasquez-Villareal, “because if you are—with the rest of this class—to represent the Human race to the Damánakíppith/fü of Shiphome, it is important that you get some basic terms correct."

In cos three baritone voices, Vállanévra says, “As perhaps, my small friends, you have already been informed, the
fwét'het
is what in Brenglish may be termed the workpartner bonding ceremony.
Fwet'héttaha
is the term in Mánafu/túrrü for the workpartner with whom one bonds. The terms denote togetherness, opening to inclusion.” Co circles the room with the distinctive D'/fü hop-stride that Pink at first found funny but now scarcely notices, while from the alien arises a pungent, sweet scent not unlike that of lavender. “Kindly do not confuse the
fwét'het
with the
tek
bond. On Ámash/Bórmwu, the
fwét'het
ceremony is employed when individuals from one
tek
must join in intensive but temporary partnership with individuals from another
tek
removed in distance from the home crêche."

From her place near the door, Velasquez-Villareal says, “The ceremony involves six stages. The first stage is the
gwann
, the search or hunt for the suitable workpartner. When you arrive at Shiphome, most of you will be taken on a tour of those portions of Shiphome that are equivalent to your current Station departments. There you will seek out compatible potential workpartners, so it would be well to have prepared beforehand a mental list of qualities you feel would be suitable in a
fwet'héttaha
.

"Once you find a suitable candidate, the second stage of the ceremony begins, the
tyúnsten
or greeting, which traditionally consists of the ritual expression, ‘
Mággizhen tívvi üwéwn
,’ that is to say, ‘Health, joy, and honor!’ Thereafter follows stage three, the
bórmgwann
, or invitation to
fwét'het
."

"'Most’ of us, you say, Professor?” puts in Ndidi Nwosu, a brawny
basso
composer from Nairobi. “Who will not be included in the department tour?"

"That'd be I,” says Pink faintly.