Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

  ‘Didn’t Rat tell you I was coming? He knew, you know. Ynn and Marta are waiting outside. But we thought it would be better if only one of us showed up in vivo. Though Ynn is just wild about your place here. I practically had to restrain her. We didn’t know anything about the party, other than that it was for some offworlders. We don’t know anything about their allegiances and we don’t care. But if they’re from one of those worlds with select unlimited space travel, such folk can get awfully paranoid if too many high-ranking Web officials just happen to be on the welcoming committee. I’ve seen it happen before, and we aren’t here to make problems.’

  I laughed. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got it. They do have unlimited space-fare on their own world. Actually, we’re wondering why they’re here. Two of them showed up … yesterday, I guess it was. And now the entire stream has come torrenting down on us.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Japril and touched my arm with a complicitous sigh that, from past years, I knew meant little.

  ‘Was Rat supposed to tell me you were coming?’ I paused. ‘But then, I didn’t ask him.’

  Japril sighed. ‘I see you’ve learned a lot about our tall friend in twenty-nine hours – I dare say Rat’s learned a lot about you too. Shall we take a turn around the hall?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  She looked at me a moment, then laughed. ‘Well, it’s good to see you both, again and together. Come.’

  We moved through the hall, passing relatives, friends, Thants conspicuous in their clouds.

  ‘All those people outside. Your guests of honour this evening must be quite something.’

  ‘The Thants? Oh, they come to visit perhaps twice a year. Usually only a dozen or so people come to watch – mostly those intending to take a vaurine tour of some other world who want to see what an offworlder looks like – in vivo.’

  ‘There’re certainly more than a dozen or so people out there now. When we came up, Ynn said there were seven hundred eighty-four, with another hundred-seven coming.’

  Only the Web. ‘They’re here for Rat.’

  Japril raised an eyebrow. ‘All eight hundred ninety-one?’ The question had a falling inflection.

  ‘As far as I can tell.’

  Japril looked down at her hands. We passed between modest and ornate fare. ‘You know we advised him to discourage any public announcement of his arrival.’

  ‘There wasn’t any announcement,’ I said. ‘As far as I can tell, it’s all through word of mouth.’

  ‘Rumour?’ Japril’s long, efficient face fixed itself between dislike and worry. Not good. But then, we’ve come here for a party – you’re sure it’s a word of mouth?’

  I shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Japril took my arm again. ‘“These flavours have been arranged for your guests of honour and we must sample.”’ A line from the most famous opera composed in our hemisphere during the past fifty years, which Japril quoted courtesy GI. I was charmed. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Introduce me.’

  I looked up to do it. ‘… All the Thants are still in privacy apparatuses.’ Thadeus will sometimes drift in in a cloud; but though I’ve always realized Eulalia’s trailing jewels could gather round her and close out vision, I wondered now that I’d never seen her use it. ‘This is formal. So we just have to wait.’

  As we walked, I looked about and realized others wondered too. Perhaps half our guests had met the Thants on other occasions. Now Abrak’d or Mammam’m would glance towards the hovering metallic green or parti-coloured swirls; they and the other guests were intrigued as well. Perhaps the Thants were indulging some obscure holiday custom. Perhaps it was simply a random gesture they themselves never envisioned might cause concern. Or perhaps it was an aesthetic decision calculated to elicit respect and pleasure. And yet I could not avoid thinking that it had something to do with yesterday’s encounter on our green porches.

  Egri came up beside us, carrying a candelabrum (called a krutchk’t) stuck about with seared and pickled kharba leaves. ‘Ah, an officer of the Web, and no doubt a friend of my child’s.’

  ‘Egri, this is Japril,’ I said. ‘I’ve mentioned you both to one another, I’m sure. Egri used to be an ID before she retired1.’

  ‘How pleasant to have you join us,’ said Egri. ‘Tell me, are you familiar enough with our customs to feel comfortable taking my food offering about for a bit while I confer with the youngster?’

  ‘I only know what GI has been able to teach me,’ Japril answered. But I could tell she was pleased to be asked.

  ‘Then honour us.’ Smiling, Egri presented the three-handled food form to Japril, who silently debated which two handles to hold it by – while GI gave her no help.

  ‘Those two …’ I whispered. ‘If you would honour our stream …?’

  Japril took the form, beaming, and walked off with the adorned krutchk’t among the guests.

  ‘Watch a moment,’ Egri whispered to me.

  Japril walked four steps forward and, with a circular movement of her head, turned sharply left and started again.

  I smiled. Apparently GI had given her some old, formal display pattern-paths to walk, of a kind I’d last seen at a formal dinner up in Farkit when I was twenty. In Morgre, they more or less went out by the time I was ten. But like the body-jewels, they would impress our guests who recognized the old custom – which would not be Thants; or Rat.

  ‘Let’s get Lars and Alyx,’ Egri said. ‘I’m not exactly sure what’s going on.’

  When I looked where Egri was looking, I saw three of the privacy clouds: Clearwater’s little storm, Eulalia’s jewelled nebula, and Nea’s flickering green foil. As I watched, Alsrod’s aluminium refulgence and Thadeus’s multi-metal moved towards them: George’s bronze flitter moved away.

  ‘You said to join you,’ Alyxander said.

  ‘And here,’ Black Lars said with one tongue; and with another, ‘we are. What is going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Egri said, while I realized she had called together all of us in the stream who were ID’s.

  ‘Why the diplomatic conference?’ Alyxander said.

  ‘Shoshana and V’vish are worrying about how to start serving while the Thants are still sequestered.’

  ‘Are the Thants saying something to us?’ Black Lars asked.

  ‘Well, they’re certainly not saying it very clearly.’

  ‘That’s why I thought we’d better take over as interpreters,’ Egri said. ‘It’s considered highly impolite on Zetzor to communicate with someone who’s sequestered herself in a cloud at the beginning of an evening. And on Velm, you don’t start a formal dinner without telling people personally that you’re going to. I’m taking Thadeus and George. Lars, you take Eulalia and Fibermich. Marq, you take Clearwater and Alsrod. And Alyx, you take Nea and keep an eye open to see if any of us needs back-up.’

  ‘Now just what are we supposed to tell them?’ I asked.

  ‘Apologize for intruding, and say that dinner is served.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ Alyxander said.

  And we all turned, dispersing.

  Thunder on the left. I looked to see, through guests and stream members still treading their display measures (an old-fashioned phrase that doesn’t really mean anything, left over from when Japril’s display steps were the rage), some with food and some without, the storm flickering and abroil.

  I approached it as the grey and light-shot privacy cloud halted its movement; someone within had stopped to watch me.

  I wondered whether I should use the praiseful form of address (‘Thant Clearwater’) or merely the formal – opted for that: ‘Clearwater Thant: I am presuming both on your presence and your patience, I know. Still, I would ask that you forgive me and accept our announcement that dinner will be momentarily served and to prepare to receive your placement.’

  Thunder rumbled.

  A brief flicker.

  The cloud darkened.

  ‘There are some rudenesses that are simply unavoidable, am I right?’ Acc
ompanying Clearwater’s voice was the sound, from within, of rain.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Rain is not a natural phenomenon at this latitude on Velm.

  ‘I have heard what you have to say.’ The thunder was very different from an evelm whisper. ‘Still, that does not make it any the less rude.’

  I paused, then lowered my head – an evelm making the polite gesture before tasting a great sculpture; and because a similar gesture was a remark of respect among humans on Zetzor – turned, and walked away to look for Alsrod.

  Looking, I saw Black Lars had already reached her second goal, Fibermich’s cloud, shiny, black. The cloud’s glitter reflected on the scales about her flat, black eyes. ‘Thant! Fibermich! Thant!’ one tongue began and went on chanting, ‘Thant! Fibermich! Thant! Thant! Fibermich! Thant! Thant! Fibermich! …’ The first continued, and another took up: ‘No doubt you wonder why I address you in such an insulting form. But since I know that to violate the signs of privacy is in itself an insult, I feel that anything else would be an equivocation. It saddens me that I do not understand your motivations. Nevertheless,

  dinner is served.’

  ‘… Thant! Dinner is served!’

  I guess, as I said, it’s the way you make some people feel at home.

  I walked on and, between Vol’d and Vo’d’ard’d, saw Egri talking to Thadeus and knew that she had used the superlative-polite, ‘Thant Thadeus’, that she had taken the longest time with her communication, and that she had probably produced results equal to if not better than Lars’, Alyx’s, or mine. She had trained us all. She had inculcated into us that each be sensitive to her own diplomatic style. She had been brought up in a Sygn monastery in the north, however much she rebelled against it, and she used to tell us: There is only one right thing to say in any crisis situation, as there is only one trunk to a cyhnk; yet there are more ways to say it than there are branches leading away from the trunk to the bright and scattered gems of truth. When we were older, she announced: If you can list for me everything wrong with that very seductive and profoundly wrong-headed statement, you are ready to deal with diplomacy, as the art, rather than as the science, that it is.

  The click of aluminium disc on disc: ‘Marq Dyeth?’ Her voice, a child’s I’d almost forgotten, undercut the metallic susurrus: ‘The greatest rudeness on my home world – in our particular geosector of it, at any rate, among the particular people we associate with, from our particular range of acquaintances in 17 – is to act in such a way as to compel rudeness from others.’

  I turned to her. ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘such unkindnesses are necessary. But it is still kind of you to explain the custom to me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alsrod said from inside swirling aluminium. ‘I suppose it is. But it is such a complicated concept that I was afraid without an explanation you wouldn’t understand what: we were doing at all – this being another world and everything.’ Momentarily I looked for the bald young woman I could not see in the chattering metal. ‘Alsrod, you are kind.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she said. ‘But our gesture, which we have put so much thought into preparing, would be absurd if you could not follow its intent because of cultural differences. I said to Clearwater, and Eulalia, both: I said, there’re geosectors on our own world where what we are doing would not be understood. How can we hope for comprehension on a world sixty-eight thousand light-years away? But nobody listens to me.’

  I smiled, hoping she could see it from inside. ‘Will you forgive me if I counter your kindness with another small rudeness? Dinner will be shortly served.’

  Alsrod sighed. ‘I knew it was going to be something like that. Food, eating, meals, they’re just not going to be as flexible on your world as they are on ours. I told them that too. But they never hear.’

  The cloud chattered its brittle commentary to our odd, yet oddly typical, interworld converse. ‘I think you’ve given me more of an entrance to the hive-cave complexities of all of this than any of us have had till now.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Alsrod said. ‘I said it was too confusing to deal with like this. We should just come out and say what we mean – that’s what I said. “Well, we are,” is what Eulalia said back. “At least in a way that anyone with a grain of either civilization or sense should understand.” And I said – but then, I’m the youngest, and nobody ever … only you don’t even know what that means! I got connected up with your local General Info this time; and it says that because of the age differentials that automatically exist between your two major races, the age-based hierarchies that obtain in most human cultures throughout the universe don’t apply here.’

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. But just then Japril, from her round of food display, came hurrying up with Egri’s krutchk’t. ‘Marq, is anything wrong? I’ve gone through the formal steps twice complete, and GI said that anything more than two or three steps beyond a single cycle usually heralded some major problem …?’

  ‘Frankly, I still don’t know if the problem’s major or not. Japril, this is Thant Alsrod, there inside her privacy cloud. Alsrod, though once more I risk rudeness, this is my longtime acquaintance from the Web, Japril –’

  ‘Oh!’ declared Alsrod. Or that’s what I think she declared. It was more a squeal. Chitter became clatter: flying discs flew faster. Somewhere within it, Alsrod turned and hurried it away.

  ‘What world did you say your friends are from?’ Japril asked. ‘A fascinating cultural pattern!’

  ‘Really, I don’t know quite what this is about. But we’ll be serving soon, I’m sure.’ I took the krutchk’t’s third handle to add my help. ‘Come with me while I find Egri and the others.’

  We started, in step, across the floor.

  Black Lars walked away from a green cloud. She raised her head as she neared us. ‘Well, I’ve done my bit – ’

  V’vish rushed up, pushed at my hip, booming: ‘7a-12c – that’s right over there!’ I glanced at the ceiling, with its silver grid, let go of the krutchk’t, and moved off to take place without finishing my sentence. I didn’t even glance to see if Japril understood where she was to go. (‘You! 3a-44r. Hurry!’) But if General Info had given her the classical display pattern, it had most certainly imparted the import of serving placement coordinates. As Shoshana and V’vish bustled about the hall, both tapping the people present and calling out their placement positions beneath the carefully marked silver ceiling pattern – V’vish’s multiple tongues booming louder and louder, Shoshana’s human voice becoming shriller and shriller – I looked for Rat.

  And saw him.

  He gazed up – no, he was not connected with local GI, but his Web instructors had been. They’d surely told him such things. (You wanted to know how Vondramach managed to assassinate Secretary Argenia in the north court two hundred years ago? She whispered her the wrong serving coordinates for dinner.) Still holding the Hunters’ Beacon rack, abandoned by Santine who had gone off to take her own place, Rat – ‘There, Santine: 72r-4c, quick, quick, quick!’ – moved a little to the left, a little to the right, aware of the importance of his position.

  Under me the floor thumped.

  By Rat, flame shot high as his shoulder, then retreated while the grilling plates on their thin chains plummeted down beside him, to be caught by the four spear-headed spikes that jabbed up from the floor.

  The tiles in front of me had folded up two small trap doors. Twin eyebolts snapped out, just as the two hooked cables swung down from the ceiling and – ch’chank’nk – caught. (I’ve been at one formal dinner, thankfully not here, where a cable missed and flew on to tear into the leg of a woman standing just one serving position behind me.) Refuse trays, on supports and wheels, came clattering down, hit the stops just at hip level. To my left someone gasped. I looked. A student had been splashed a little when the rinsing fountain jetted up beside her as the deflecting vanes, on their various pulleys, clamps, and cables, slung down from the ceiling into the freshet. But by now the whole hall was a roar of
chains and running ropes, rumbling wheels, fluttering flame, riffling waters. I looked off at Rat again, through stationary and swinging haul-lines, through ranks of lowering shelves and rising implements on thin, hydraulic stems. The charred walls of the old-style furnace had come chankchanging up on three sides of the flame beside him. And off by the student the base of the fountain had closed around the protruding nozzle to restrain the splashings. Trays flew, thrown and caught by mechanical grapples. Pulleys dropped from the ceiling and swung out to pull taut the slack cables hung with serving implements. I saw Japril, food aloft, face triumphant, and, thanks to GI, undaunted. I didn’t see any more Thant clouds, which probably meant they’d turned them off. ‘On my world,’ an acquaintance light-years away once told me after visiting mine in vaurine, ‘we eat with a knife, perhaps an enamel spoon, and two sticks of wood manipulated in the hand to pick up smaller morsels. On your world – at least at formal affairs – you use the whole dining hall!’

  One or two people, now the more dangerous equipment was in place, had begun to step about. Were Rat from the north, I would have been mildly embarrassed for our provincial impetuosity.

  I waited – like the students, who, here and there among the other guests, craned and gawked – until the first spit, a rod about two metres long, travelled by on one of the overhead cables that had lowered from the ceiling. I tapped it lightly to set it swinging and started off, three steps beside it, and then headed for Rat.

  Another spit came by, this one already set with food, a few leaves hooked on the small barbs, dressed with aromatic oil. I grasped it and lifted it down from the cable, turning it to the other end. Wanting to reach Rat, I stepped around a high display case that, still empty, had just risen from the floor. Around it from the other side lumbered ancient Abrak’d; and manners, after all, are manners. ‘A pleasure to see you at dinner. You are so old.’