Silent Dances (2 page)

desperation, he threw back his head, voicing a dying call to his people.

The sound tore through Scott's body, making him jerk like a puppet whose

strings had been yanked. He fell across the ground, arms askew, the nullifier

pinned beneath him. Rivulets of blood flowed from his ears.

5

"What
is man without the beasts?

If all the beasts
were gone
,
men would die from a great loneliness of
the spirit. For whatever
happens to the beas
ts
soon happens to man."

Chief Seattle
1854

Rob Gable looked up from the clutter on his desk, startled yet relieved. A tall,

dark woman was storming into his office, fuming, her anger and frustration

barely held in check.

Boy, she's pissed!
Rob thought as she came around the desk toward him,

barking her shin in the process. That stopped her, and blinking from the pain,

she rubbed her abused leg.

"Tesa, where've you been?" he began tentatively in her
language
. "I looked for you everywhere." The slightly built, dark-haired psychologist moved

around his desk to diminish the height advantage she had over him. "I

wanted to find you before the ceremony, but I was in meetings up to the last

minute
. When I finally got to the Arena, there was too much of a mob.
"

"What happened, Dr. Rob? Why wasn't I tapped?" Her hands moved almost

too quickly for him to follow the subtleties of her complex language,

American Sign Language. ASL had its own grammar structure, but Rob

couldn't help translating it into English, the language he'd grown up with.

"The other students were tapped on schedule. Why didn't you tell me mine

was canceled?"

6

Rob looked at her startling,
pale hazel eyes
-
large, almond
-
shaped eyes
that seemed almost golden
.
Staring at them, you could almost miss her

high cheekbones
,
strong jaw,
an
d b
ri
lli
an
t white teeth set against
smooth brown skin
.
The young Native Ame
ri
c
an
wom
an
towered
over Rob at 1.85 meters
.
(
Six foot one
,
Tesa insisted
,
since Old
NorthAm had never fully accepted met
ri
c
.)
At nineteen, Tesa
'
s broad
face and hawkish nose couldn't
be
conside
re
d
be
autiful
,
but once
you saw those eyes you'd never think about that
.
Having watched her

grow from a gangly fou
rt
een-year
-
old, Rob was sor
ry
he wouldn
'
t
be
around to see her figu
re
out what she could do with those eyes.

Holding up his hands placatingly,
the doctor motioned for her to take a

seat
.
She drew herself up, declining the offer. Clothed in the dress

version of StarB
ri
dge Academy's uniform, Tesa had offset its classic

pants
an
d jacket with a quillworked leather pouch on her waist
an
d

three white-tipped eagle feathers tied into her long, wavy black hair
.

Richly hued turquoise brought out the warm highlights of her skin
.
The

effect of the new and old lent her an aura of wildness.

Should I have paged her?
Rob wondered.
Made
an announcement that every
one but she could hear
?
He still felt selfconscious about her

deafness. "I sent a message to your voder
,"
he told her, his signs
much slower th
an
hers
. "
Didn't you see it?"

She seemed to deflate as she dug around in her pouch for the small

translator most human
students kept on their wrists. When she finally ret

ri
eved it, its tiny red telltale was shining.

Tesa looked ruefully at its message. "
Well, I should've
be
en wearing it
."

She looked at Rob
,
disgusted,
an
d settled into a chair
. "
But that still
doesn
'
t explain why I wasn
'
t tapped."

Explain,
he thought
,
w
an
ting to gro
an
.
Where do I start?
Tesa was one of StarBri
dge
'
s older human students
.
Bicultural and multilingual
,
she'd grown up on the plains of Old NorthAm
in the multitribal "living

museum
"
that sprawled across millions of acres of parkland and

wildlife prese
rv
e. Before she'd been recruited for StarBridge
,
Tesa
had vacillated
be
tween
be
coming a Native Ame
ri
c
an
histo
rian
or a
linguist, an inte
re
st she'd discovered when she went east to study at

Gallaudet.

This well
-
known educational center for the deaf and hearing
-
impaired
had expanded over the centu
ri
es until it had

7

SILENT DANCES 7
become a small town
,
a cultural
cornerstone for

people who did not consider themselves deaf, but Deaf. It was at Gallaudet

that
Tesa had discovered
her natural
aptitude for languages, a
talent that
had brought her to the Academy at StarBridge.

"What about my pair project with the Ashu Mizari?" Tesa
signed
, looking more dejected now than angry. "Don't tell me all my work's been for

nothing."

The tapping and the pair project were the culmination of a
StarB
ri
dge

student'
s training
. Each student would learn his or her alien partner'
s

language
and culture
, and in tu
rn teach the other theirs, while completing a special project that required
each
partner's cooperative
abilities
. Tesa had been trained to be teamed with one of the reptilian, multitentacled

Mizari,
eldest and
founding
members
of the Cooperative League of

Systems.

Rob plopped wearily into his chair. "The Ashu are very disappointed, Tesa,

believe me."

The Ashu,
a sea
-dwelling race of Mizari, who lived off an
island continent

on Shassiszss, their homeworld, had only vestigial auditory organs, and

communicated with an elaborate
sign language
. Tesa was to have been

paired with one of them and travel to Shassiszss. Now all those careful

plans were shot.

Rob sighed. "I've got lots to tell you, so be patient." Bast, Rob's small black cat, chose
that minute
to leap into Tesa's lap, and the young woman gave

her a friendly embrace.

"Okay." Now that the moment had come, Rob could barely suppress his

excitement. "A doctor on Earth has perfected an electronic nerve relay. She

says she can give you hearing."

"That's
why you canceled my tapping and my pair project
on Sh
as

siszss
?" Tesa was plainly surprised-and irritated. She wasn't the only one.

Rob's eyes widened as he signed,

"You don't think that's important?"

"No!" She shook her head angrily. "I've spent two months preparing for this project.
That's
what I was looking forward to. Not a one-way ticket back to

Earth to become hearing. How's that supposed to help me with the Ashu?"

Tesa had been born with only partially formed ears, due to "improper fetal

development," a favorite catch-phrase of baffled physicians. She had no

eardrums, and her semi circular canals were imperfect, giving her

occasional balance problems. Both ear
canals
were sealed, and her ears

were un

usually small.

8

"I've got a film that will explain the technical aspects," Rob signed. "The doctor came to our attention because someone on a planet called Trinity had

an accident that involved nerve damage. She was deafened but now her

hearing has been restored."

"Well, that's different than ...

"I know," Rob interrupted her, "but I've talked to Dr. Volski. She says she can do it!" He felt frustrated in the face of Tesa's indifference. "Well,
I'm
excited about it!"

Tesa's mouth twitched up on one side. "Sure,
you
are." As much as Tesa respected Rob's struggle to learn ASL, she felt that he would always define

her by her deafness. She'd told him that he could only see her as someone

who
was missing
something, instead of as someone with different abilities.

He couldn't help it, Rob told himself. He was an M.D. as well as a

psychologist. He believed in repairing things that didn't work.

"Tesa," Rob signed, "you'll be able
to hear.
Can't you imagine what that will mean to you?"

The young woman looked at the small cat curled in her lap, purring. Tesa

touched Bast, then signed, "Can you hear that?" Startled, he nodded.

"Well, I can, too, with my body, my eyes. Not
less,
Rob. Just
different."

"Come on, Tesa, that's semantics. You can't hear Mozart."

She looked impatient. "Mozart! Hearing people are always throwing him up

to us. Well, I have so
heard
Mozart, at Gallaudet, in a special auditorium. I

heard him through the seats, the floors-I heard Mozart in my
bones."

"Okay. But you've never heard birds, or wolf calls ..."

"True"--one corner of her mouth turned up--"but there are other ways to hear spirit songs. Ask Doctor Blanket."

Technical y, "Doctor Blanket"--an alien who was a powerful telepath that

looked like nothing more than a plush baby's blanket--couldn't hear either.

But Tesa wasn't an Avernian, she was a human. "Aren't you even curious?"

Rob asked, baffled by her attitude. "I can't believe you're this disinterested."

She shrugged. "Would
you
become a telepath if you could?"

"That's not the same issue. Besides, I can experience telepathy with Doctor

Blanket. And I don't find being a nontelepath any less desirable than being a

telepath."

9

"Same
issue," she insisted. "
I c
an
expe
ri
ence hearing
through vibrations, and I don't find being Deaf any less desirable than being hearing.

If I had this surgery, I'd have to completely
redefine
myself. Who would I be,

with hearing?" She stroked the cat gently. "Dr. Rob, the elders of my tribe

believe. I've been marked by the Wakan Tanka-the Great Mystery-for a

special task. I was given a significant name."

Tesa's full name was Ptesa' Wakandagi.
Ptesa'
meant "White Buffalo," but implied more, since the white buffalo was not only rare, but sacred. And

Wakandagi
indicated someone unique.

"Growing up with
that
hanging over you," she continued, "is hard. When I was selected to come to StarBridge, everyone felt it was a sign for my
nagi-my
soul-to follow its path. It's not a good idea to fool around with your
nagi."

She looked tired. "And what would my friends at Gallaudet say?"

The mention of the school reminded Rob of the conversation he'd had with

Tesa's former adviser just the night before. "To you," the woman had signed,

"deafness is a physical condition. Tesa sees
it
as
a cultural
one.
"

"Tesa," he argued, "you're light-years away from Gallaudet. You might never see those people again.
"

She looked at him curiously. "The same could be said of
my family
.
I

wouldn
'
t stop being Indian
.
Of course, you'd never suggest that
.
But
being Indi
an
is part of what makes me who I am ... my cultu
re,
my

identity
.
Well, so is being Deaf."

"That stubborn
st
re
ak is going to get you in trouble someday," he
signed grudgingly
.
He wondered if he w
as
giving in too e
as
ily
,
since
he had a hidden agenda
. "
If that's the way you
re
ally feel
,
I'll push my
hearing prejudices aside. But I'm glad you mentioned your family
,

because this talk with me is just a warm
-up. Your parents
will be calling

in less th
an an
hour."

"My parents!" Tesa stood abruptly, dumping the cat off her lap. "You called my parents! Oh,
shit!"
In signing the expletive, she accidentally swept a disorderly pile of flimsies off the
edge of Rob's desk.

"I had to, Tesa..." Rob gave up signing while they grabbed at the dri
fting
forms slowly flutte
ri
ng to the floor.

"I'm over eighteen, Dr. Rob,"
she signed
abruptly, before snatching
a
wafting sheet in midair
. "
You should've
as
ked me first
.
If I c
an
't
explain this to you
,
how c
an
I make
them