Finally, Nadim said, "The Elders began by choosing scholars and mathematicians, and for a while, that was what was needed. But now they think we need different strengths."
"Different how?"
"I don't know why they picked you, Zara, but you clearly have many qualities that will be of use."
So now they need tech-savvy and a scrappy attitude? Sure. "I'm a good mechanic, but you could get that anywhere. What else?"
"I can only tell you that when the Elders find there are gaps in our knowledge, in our needs, we seek those that can fill them." He seemed uncomfortable now. His tone had gone flatter, and the warmth of his presence had dialed down to room temp.
"You want to hear what I think? I think there's more to this than cultural exchanges and bullshit like that. You're picking our brains. My question is, why? Why do you need to learn from me?"
"What's wrong with you?"
"I'm not hearing a denial, Nadim."
"I wouldn't ask my partners to do anything that wasn't for the greater good."
"Psht. Maybe in Leviathan speech that plays better, but let me tell you, back on Earth, a ton of humans have murdered for the greater good. And I'm not here for it."
"I suppose then the question is: Why are you here, Zara? If you don't believe in the mission of our partnership?"
"Because--" I hesitated, and smoothed the fabric of my uniform over my thigh. There was a scar there, one of many from fights in the Zone. Reminders that safety was an illusion. "Because it's a way out."
"Out of what?"
"Everything that shuts me in."
Nadim was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "I don't understand that. I don't think I can. My whole life has been seeking contact, not escape. And I live in . . . a very large space. In that way we are quite opposite."
"Good. This would get pretty boring if we were all the same."
I felt that flutter of amusement again, a kind of unfiltered delight that made the pull of artificial gravity feel lighter. Too much of that, and I might lose my own weight. I resisted the lure of feeding his feelings, and the delight faded. Then Nadim said, very seriously, "I can't tell you what waits out there for us, if that's what you want to know. We call this year-long voyage the Tour; we take you to predetermined places where you will gather geologic and biologic samples and evidence of defunct civilizations for your scientists to analyze. For us, we chart the regrowth of the destruction and hope to someday witness a civilization rise again. But this route is familiar to us. Safe. I've told you before that I'm still in training. I'm not to deviate from our itinerary until I am released for the Journey."
"Okay. So if all this is preparing you for the Journey, then what happens on the Journey?"
Silence fell, and it seemed heavier than before. Emotional gravity, shifting again. Finally, Nadim said, "The Journey is a mission that lasts a lifetime. And I won't know what it is until I am ready."
"So you trust them that much."
"The Elders would not betray us."
I didn't tell him that on Earth, it was our elders who sold us out all the damn time--that the young were sacrificed for whatever cause, whatever war our old leaders thought important at the time. I'd trusted my father, once. I'd ended up pinned to a table, with a crazy woman holding a scalpel.
Trust your elders didn't cut it with me.
After all, at this point, whatever hurt Nadim would mess me up too--during the Tour, but still. I had to make him realize that trust had to be earned, not just given.
Part of me pretended it was just self-interest, but deep inside, I also had to admit that there was something so unguardedly honest about Nadim that I just . . . wanted him to be safe.
"Sure," I finally said. "But you know the old Russian proverb, right?"
"I do not."
"When the storm comes, pray to God, but row for shore." A nicer way to say don't be a mark.
He thought that one over. I put Billie Holiday on my H2. She was singing a different song this time, and I had to explain what it meant to him. Explain the shit my people had gone through and still did sometimes. He didn't comment, but his mood shifted, soaking up the buried outrage, sadness, and horror hidden in the notes of the music.
Nadim and I listened to her voice, and sometime in there, I stretched out on my bed and drifted off, and I forgot to tell him to get out of my room.
I slept the best I ever had on the soft, warm mattress, with the whisper of Nadim's presence like a mist near me. I'd learned how to sense him, whether he was paying attention to me or not. It felt a little like a memory I had of my parents watching over me. Of sleeping with my crew in the Zone, knowing they were there if anything kicked off.
Safe.
I dreamed of stars.
Like Nadim, I drank the light and felt their radiance on my skin. Unchained from my flesh, I flew like a Leviathan--stars and galaxies spun around me in a kaleidoscope of colors--and the pleasure that roared through me nearly cracked my skull.
And then I felt alone. So alone. It was a void that sucked all the life and love out of me, a dark longing so profound it hurt.
Trembling, I woke with morning light streaming in my window. Damn, there was no morning. No window. Nadim must have turned the lights up in my room. At least he hadn't banged the alarm gong this time.
I felt breathless and strangely sad. On the verge of tears. And, oddly, I didn't think it was Nadim, or at least, not completely. Following my first instinct, I fumbled for the intercom. "Bea?" The short form of her name slid out, and she didn't object. "You okay?"
"I'm . . . here. Just got up."
"You sound . . ." I didn't know if I should say it, but her voice came across tremulous. "Have you been crying?"
"A little. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. What's wrong?"
"There's a word in Portuguese, saudade, it doesn't translate well."
"What does that mean?"
"It's like nostalgia, only . . . more. Longing for something."
"Something that's gone away?" I guessed. I knew that feeling, saudade. During that dream, it permeated me from head to toe, which was batshit. I'd felt it. And so had Beatriz.
"Yes," she said. "How could you know that? Are you saying you felt it too?"
"I think it's coming from Nadim. Sometimes I can feel what he's feeling." Crap. I should have said that before now; I hadn't been keeping it from her deliberately, but in a sense, I'd relished it being a tiny secret, too.
"You--you what?" She sounded less offended than baffled, which was good. "We're not supposed to do that, Zara. They said--"
"Yeah, yeah, I know all that. I look like some tight-ass rule follower to you?"
She just shook her head. "Why is Nadim sad?"
"No idea. Nadim!" No answer. I put my hand to the wall by the bed. "Nadim!"
"Good morning, Zara." He sounded all right. Probably too much so, as if he was working at it. "It's time to get up."
"Are you okay?" I asked. I felt his answer coming through the wall, into my skin, a wave of emotion, of sadness, of loss. It made me shiver. "Nadim?"
"I'm well," he said. "Thank you." He was pretending to be fine so hard that I could feel the strain of it vibrating through his skin.
"You don't have to put on an act," I told him quietly. "Not with me. Not with us. What is it?"
He was silent a long time, so long I thought he'd gone away except that I could still feel his emotional presence. He finally said, "I'm fine, Zara. Beatriz, please don't be alarmed. I had--what you would call a bad dream, I think. So we will put that behind us now." His tone sharpened into briskness again. "Now. Zara, you've completed your tasks for today, which is why--"
"Hey, if I didn't have work you could've let me sleep in." Right now, acting like I didn't know something was up with him was the best gift I could offer to keep him on track. I was an old pro at pretending to be okay.
"--why I have reconfigured your schedule," he finished. "You'll be learning navigation today. In the event it falls
to either of you to pilot, you must be able to back Beatriz up."
"Don't you pilot yourself? I mean . . . it's who you are, right?"
"In case of emergency. Please get ready. You are due on duty in one hour."
The H2 on the table next to me chimed and scrolled with instructions. With a scowl, I picked it up. "Really? A full day on navigational drills? You're a jerk," I said, and he laughed, a bright silver burst. I felt the pulse of his amusement run from the crown of my head down through my toes, in a singular shiver. "You understood that? Who taught you slang, anyway?"
"You all do," he said. "I learn from each one of you. Some more than others."
"Yeah, I'm colorful as shit. Nadim?"
"Yes?"
"Get out of my room."
The shower was phenomenal, better if I didn't think too hard about the filtration system. My Honors haircut hadn't grown out, so I freshened my curls with some leave-in conditioner and finishing oil. The WHSC had stocked the stores up with everything I'd need for the year, so I didn't even need to skimp to make it stretch. I moisturized my brown skin too, no getting ashy in space; the lotion was perfect, and it made my skin feel like it was sighing in relief. Finally, with a faint flicker of pride, I dressed in my uniform and met Bea for breakfast. For her, a double espresso, and I made a bowl of oatmeal.
As we ate, we compared lists. I was supposed to learn how to accurately chart a course using the data interface by the end of the day, with various goals to measure my progress. The prospect was daunting.
"Do you feel prepared?" I asked Bea. Because hers had something to do with attending to some experiments that were going to be underway during our journey, courtesy of various Earth labs and scientists. It all looked very complicated.
Her laugh came out tinged with panic. "Not remotely."
"We got this." It was becoming second nature to reassure her, and I didn't hate the feeling when she smiled and offered me a fist bump on her way out. I didn't understand it. I'm not a trusting person. So what, she could sing, she was nice, she made a good cup of coffee. I wasn't used to sharing my space with anyone I didn't know well. What was making me befriend her? I kept coming back to Clarice. When I turned my back on Bea, was she going to slip a cord over my head?
Why would she? some calmer part of my brain asked me. She's got no beef with you. Just be normal for a while.
Normal. Sure. Or maybe this wasn't normal at all. I could feel Nadim's moods. Maybe that closeness was bringing down defenses I'd spent years building, brick by brick. Got to fight to keep your distance, Z. If you let him in any more, you'll have no defense at all. Because why would I trust an alien? A ship who could get in my head, mess with my moods? One who could, if he got really angry, blow me out into space? I depended on him for air and water and food. That was one hell of a lot of trust to ask me to give.
So I made it a mission to ignore Nadim for the day. Completely. I threw myself into the data console like it was a game I was determined to win. I was crap at 3D math, but I was good at visualization, at least. It took me four hours to develop the ability to see the course in 3D space, and then another two to figure out how to enter all the coordinates.
Then levels of difficulty started up. First, varying gravitational influences from close-in stars. Then a hidden black hole. Then fuel warnings; Nadim wasn't infinitely powered, he needed regular infusions of starlight to be able to keep moving. He had to keep his courses close enough to star systems to angle his solar sails and catch the energy, or he'd go dark, like he'd shown me in the video. So plotting courses wasn't as simple as getting from one spot to another. It was more like tacking with the wind on an ocean, judging just how far your food and water would take you.
The last level of simulations put us through a meteor field, and I couldn't keep the images out of my head of the Russian girl on the bridge, of the fog, the choking coughs, the blood. The whispering, silky rope of air fraying away into space, and Nadim waking up somewhere injured and alone with his dead.
I couldn't get the sim right. I tried and tried, pushed myself until it was clear I wasn't going to get it right, and then I shoved back from the console and let out a frustrated yell. I wanted to punch a wall, not Nadim. So I hit the metal side of the console, which hurt me a lot more.
After a long, panting silence, Nadim said, quietly, "Your heart rate is quite elevated, Zara. Do you need help? Shall I get Beatriz?"
"No," I snapped. "Leave me alone."
I grabbed the H2 and checked to see what was next. One level I hadn't conquered wouldn't matter much, I hoped. I was scheduled for a tour of the medical facilities, which were mostly automated and featured a doc bot that could be activated for emergencies. When I went in, Beatriz was coming out, wearing a mischievous grin. I didn't ask what that was about, just worked my way through the entire rotation, making sure I knew where every drug was kept, every medical instrument. I didn't activate the doc bot. I remembered how they worked from med clinics in Paradise, and my hand wasn't that bad. I was used to punching things.
I joined Beatriz for dinner, and she first proposed we watch a holo. Afterward, we played a combat sim game. Once I'd soundly beaten her two out of three rounds in the sim, I said I was tired and went to my quarters.
I'd just opened the door when Nadim said, "What am I doing wrong, Zara?"
"Nothing," I said. "Look. Just let me be, okay?"
The pain I caused him wasn't something he intended to share. I could tell, because it was just a brush, a whisper, quickly gone. But it was breathtaking.
I stopped on my way into the room. I didn't apologize, because I couldn't; I just put my hand slowly out and touched the wall. "Nadim . . . I feel like you--this--is changing me," I told him. "Making me forget to be who I am."
"I don't know what you mean."
"I'm not friendly. I'm not trusting. I don't like people."
"But you like me. And Beatriz."
"That's my point!"
"You think I'm doing something to you," he said. I didn't deny it, and I felt that hurt again, distant and almost hidden. "I'm not. But still, you don't trust me."
"I don't trust anybody." Not true. I trusted Derry, once. But look where that got me.
"Then how can you live, so alone?"
The question hurt, because it sounded so bewildered. It made me want to fire back an angry justification, but I swallowed that and said, "Safe. I live safe."
"But alone."
"I thought Leviathan traveled alone most of their lives. So what?"
"We're never isolated. Not completely. The stars sing. Even planets sing. And we sing to one another, across the long reaches, for comfort." He fell silent for a few seconds, and then said, "If you want me to stay away from you, then I will. It's difficult, because you are so--"
"Bright?" I said, a little bitterly.
"Loud," he clarified, which made me smile a moment. I deserved that. "I'm not changing you, Zara. You were a seed, surrounded by hard shell and stony ground. Now you can grow any direction you wish. I will leave you alone until you see that."
Alone suddenly didn't have as much appeal. I imagined walking through this space and not feeling Nadim around me, not talking to him or having him talk to me. I wondered how Chao-Xing did that for a whole year. It would break me.
"I don't want that either," I said. "And I don't know why."
"I think there's something in you like me," Nadim said. His voice was quiet, and I felt he was looking at me. Seeing me. "Like tuned strings, we vibrate to the same frequency."
Music, again. And it felt right to hear him say that. "Yeah, well, probably the biotech patch they put in my head when I was a kid. Right?"
"That's possible."
"It's just that I need to stay myself. Make sure what I'm feeling is really me. You get that?"
"Yes, Zara. I do. I--" He hesitated, and I felt the uncertainty again. "I don't know how much communication with you is too much. Is this?"
"No." It felt a little too good, a light,
gentle flicker of emotion, like light against my skin. I imagined him turning down a dimmer switch on his broadcast. "That's okay. But when I say back off--"
"Then I will," he said, and instantly, he left, and I was drowning in cold silence. I hadn't realized how accustomed I'd gotten to the sense of his presence. His absence was . . . shocking.
I pressed my hand on the wall. "Nadim? Come back?" He did, and it felt like some anxious knot in my chest eased. I didn't invite him into my room again--it seemed wrong--so I went outside and sank down against the wall and sat there, legs out blocking the corridor. "How did your people ever learn to get along with us? Did they teach you in school?"
He sighed. Actually sighed. "Zara, we are not like you. We don't have a homeworld. We don't have buildings where we learn. This is my school. Here. With you. I learn by making mistakes. Don't you?"
"So many," I said, and leaned my head back against the wall. "And I'm going to make a hell of a lot more."
"As am I," he said. "But perhaps we can learn from them together."
"When do we get a day off?" I asked on Day-I'd-Lost-Count of work. Working sucked. I'd discovered that in the Lower Eight, where I occasionally turned my hand to honest labor. It hadn't taken me long to figure out that I'd rather lift a purse or a wallet than scrub toilets. Up here, though, there were no shortcuts.
There was, on this day, a seemingly endless list of repairs to make to the equipment of the human-built section of the ship.
"Days off are a human concept," he said. "Careful of that part, please. It's delicate."
Putting the thin, breakable data module down, I cursed under my breath, and he asked me what the words meant. I told him. Somehow, it wasn't as satisfying when you had to explain the mechanics of it, and all Nadim said about my definition was that it seemed strange. I guessed it would, to a being without sexual organs as humans understood them.
I was on my back inside a console, checking circuits to make sure everything was working properly, since Nadim had reported a glitch in the interface. Well, what he'd actually said was that one part of the console had gone deaf. But I interpreted that to mean something had burned out. It took me an hour of patient testing to find it, which was ratshit nonsense; diagnostics hadn't caught it at all and should have. I was still cursing when I crawled out from the dark, cramped space and braced myself against the wall to stand up.