Dreamhearth Page 8

  Vasiht’h snorted. “It could describe anyone. What’s your birthday say about you?”

  A pause: gathering thoughts, Vasiht’h thought. Jahir said, “I am purportedly emotional and intuitive. And enigmatic.”

  Vasiht’h laughed. “Great. So basically you’re an Eldritch?”

  A winsome smile, apologetic. “Just so.”

  Shaking his head, Vasiht’h finished the first glass and moved to the next. “Come get your lemonade. And tell me what you want to do with your birthday money. I assume it’s enough to buy a small starship.”

  Was that a blush? He’d made his friend’s cheeks color. “Not so much as that. But I have been adjured to celebrate in some fashion.”

  Tempting to ask Jahir what season it was on the Eldritch homeworld. Would that be too much prying? Maybe. If he waited enough years, he’d have a sense of the length of the Eldritch year, though, based on how Jahir’s birthday moved across the starbase calendar…what a thought! To have to work so hard to learn such a tiny detail. Thaddeus didn’t seem inclined to explore the mysteries of his crush’s background, and Vasiht’h couldn’t fathom why. The not-knowing was part of the pleasure of having Jahir as a partner… that sense that he’d be forever uncovering new things.

  Come to think of it, that was why Jahir was in the Alliance, wasn’t it? The Goddess had definitely known what She was doing.

  Which made it obvious what they should do to celebrate. “I know just the thing, if you’re willing.”

  Jahir glanced at him. “Ah?”

  “Leave it to me,” Vasiht’h said with a grin.

  “Oh, but no, arii,” Jahir said immediately on entering the train station. “You must allow me to pay for this. It is why I was sent the gift!”

  “I promise I’ll show you the bill,” Vasiht’h said complacently, padding alongside him. Jahir’s wonder was bright as new sunlight and so strong he swore he could feel the warmth on his back. Vasiht’h snuck surreptitious glances at the Eldritch as they joined the throng heading onto the platform, and the wide-eyed solemnity was everything he’d hoped for when he’d bought the tickets, because nothing less would have done than to take his friend on the same train tour that had convinced him they belonged here, on this station.

  Come to think of it, he could use the reminder himself.

  The station was worth seeing all on its own, because it was three stories high. One entire wall of it was a flexglass portal to the interstellar view, overlaid in translucent schedules and tags as ships passed in and out of view. Since the station abutted the civilian docking facilities, there were a lot of ships; one of the starbase guides Vasiht’h had read recommended the train station as the best place to shipwatch, and from the brisk business being done on the cafes on the balconies above them, plenty of people came to do just that.

  “I admit I don’t know why there should be trains,” Jahir said, keeping close to him. “Surely Pads are more economical?”

  It should have been an easy question. Instead, it made Vasiht’h realize just how little he understood about the Alliance himself. He took for granted that Pads weren’t used for every kind of transport but had no idea why. “I don’t know. But I know at least one reason the trains are here.”

  Jahir glanced down at him.

  “Tourism,” Vasiht’h said firmly. “Come on, that’s ours over there.”

  They threaded their way through the throng, with Vasiht’h leading a little to open the way for Jahir so he wouldn’t have to bump into anyone. It was a lot of fun, species-spotting. The races that were uncommon on Seersana were still rare elsewhere, but the port brought a lot more of them through than planetside did. /Look, that’s a Phoenix child!/

  Said child was in front of them, with its parent: mother, Vasiht’h thought, though it was hard to tell with the tail and wings obscuring the line of the torso. The Phoenix were mammals, but they weren’t as dimorphic as some of the other races.

  The child, though, was as perfect as Vasiht’h could imagine, a little miniature in copper and burnished brass, each feather’s edge shimmering as if honed, with a short beaked face and enormous eyes a luminescent aquamarine.

  /I have never seen the like,/ Jahir said, wonder suffusing the words.

  /We should child-spot on our trip./ Vasiht’h grinned. /Could even play the traveling game my sibs and I did when we were younger. You count up the number of things you spot./

  /Ah, so, whoever sees it first…?/

  /Right./

  /Then you are one point ahead of me, but you shall not remain so long! As I am taller, and that makes it easier for me to see./

  Vasiht’h chortled. /Yeah, but I’m closer to their level. See, look, over there: two Asanii kids. Look at that pelt!/

  /Looks a great deal like Lennea’s,/ Jahir observed. /The gray with the stripes./ He shook his head minutely. /Three points. But I am on my mettle now. There, an infant in that Tam-illee foxine’s arms./

  Vasiht’h glanced that way and saw the little face swaddled in a blanket, and the tiny pointed ears, and thought the cuteness would slay him. /Look at the little nosepad./

  Jahir smiled a little. /This game would have pleased our friends./

  That came twined with the smell of the hospital, and the sound of voices: Meekie, Kayla, Amaranth, Kuriel. Vasiht’h smiled too. /Yes. I think so./

  Jahir nodded, a dip of his chin. “There, our train, arii.”

  “The starbase awaits,” Vasiht’h said. Grinned. “And it’s still three to one.”

  The train was a marvel, and stepping into it Jahir knew at once it was not intended for mundane transport. Each roomy car was composed almost entirely of flexglass windows that extended up into the curved ceiling. Padded benches lined the walls and there were two circular sofas in some smooth, leather-like fabric in the center aisle. He claimed one of the benches, and Vasiht’h settled on the floor beside him. As the other passengers entered, he looked down the row toward the next car and found its adjoining door only by the enclosed bathroom facilities.

  “There are sleeping cubbies, I’m told,” Vasiht’h said. “And a car for working, with desks.”

  “I cannot imagine working through a trip even of this duration,” Jahir said.

  “No,” Vasiht’h agreed, looking out the window at the people jogging past on the platform. “Me neither. You’ll see.”

  And he did ten minutes later, when the train pulled smoothly from the station. The car darkened as it entered a tunnel close enough that he could see the veins of the starbase’s ducting along the inside wall, and then streaks of blue and green lights as they accelerated. And then they burst free into a faerieland of lights and ships. Their train was running along the exterior skin of the starbase, one entire side and its ceiling exposed in the transparent tube, and the rate they were traveling was dizzying and yet the starscape barely moved. The ships before it did, though.

  Would it ever cease to astonish him, the audacity of the Alliance’s engineering? To have flown here on one of the Queen’s couriers was one matter, and had seemed astonishing enough. But he’d been enclosed in a cabin for the entirety of that flight, and the portals had been engaging but he’d been aware of experiencing his journey from a remove. This… this was naked somehow. He felt close enough to those ships to touch them, and their stars.

  “Oh, arii,” he whispered.

  Vasiht’h just leaned against his bench and smiled.

  His birthday train ride was two days long, and took them past the civilian docks and over the skin of the starbase alongside one of the colliders used by Fleet to create fuel for their ships. Those enormous tunnels were not open, of course, but they were lined with emitters that reported their status, and when someone had noticed how striking those lights were from space, they’d been enhanced. Now there were “light sculptures” programmed to entertain passengers, their patterns and colors prompted by the particles that happened to be bouncing in the tube at the time. Some of those sculptures were stationary, helices of light or fireworks
displays that the train slowed to observe; others paced the train in showers and ripples, sometimes dancing over the tube entirely so that the passengers stood in the center and pointed up at the ceiling and gasped or laughed. There was, inevitably, a stop at what was surely a distant workplace, a bubble of a market with its useable hemisphere facing the starscape, and there the passengers could descend to shop, nap, or eat at any number of restaurants from the very fine to diners with counters that faced the void.

  Vasiht’h chose their lunch, a small restaurant run by enthusiastic Aera who stopped every ten minutes to perform dance routines, long ears waving and long limbs undulating. The music was mostly drums. Jahir found the whole experience invigorating, as was no doubt his partner’s intent from the grins he kept receiving over their fried fish. (“Why fried fish?” “Because we’re at a port? Sort of? It made sense to them.”)

  They returned to the train, and ended the external trip by circling the Fleet base at the starbase’s pole, where they could see the warships clustering at the slips or gliding in and out of the ingress to the spindle, where the more serious drydock and building facilities were sheltered. The base was a riot of colors and movement, even from the distance permitted a civilian tour, and their viewing was narrated by a retired Fleet officer who came by later to shake hands and answer questions.

  Afterwards, the train dove back into the wall and began its tour along the interior skin. That segment took them to the agriculture and aquaculture spheres, where they stopped again for shopping and sightseeing. More food (“Fish again.” “Makes more sense, this is the aquaculture dome.”), more browsing in stores and people-watching. The train stopped overnight at the agriculture dome, and they slept in a room off the station’s platform, which was mounted high enough over the land that they were afforded a spectacular view of the croplands and forests. Jahir left the windows open, and though the smells and sounds were foreign, the superb quiet of it, and the freshness of the growing things on the breeze, almost made him feel that he was home again.

  The journey back to the Veta city sphere was considered a low point for most of the travelers, which was why there were several events scheduled within the train: parties, games, awards ceremonies for the children who’d played the scavenger hunt throughout the trip. Jahir found it as fascinating as the rest of the journey, as it took them through some of the empty cradles. Those would hold spheres as the starbase expanded; seeing them, he had some sense for why the administrator had insisted the inauguration of new ones was not a minor undertaking. The scale of those hollow vaults beggared his imagination even as he stood looking down into them, his mind struggling to make sense of the distances when the clarity of vacuum made details so crisp even so far away.

  And yet, the Alliance had created this starbase, and had such a sufficiency of power that it could afford to install follies solely for the delight of tourists. The light sculptures were purely pleasure, as were so many of the other things they’d seen. The entire train trip… he wouldn’t be surprised to discover that almost the entirety of the train industry on Veta was based on such tourist trips.

  He had believed that continued exposure to the Alliance would help unravel some of its puzzles, and yet, sitting on a bench that had no doubt been engineered by some team to be comfortable, durable, and easy to clean, in a train car that had been designed and rigorously tested by another team for safety and maximal exposure and then no doubt re-engineered by a team that had assessed it for its ability to earn back the money spent on staffing, cleaning, and maintaining it, being carried through a starbase that he literally could not imagine the first detail of its construction, Jahir found himself even more mystified than before. The economy that had created this immense marvel was also the economy that could drive his partner to fretting over coins.

  He wondered if he would ever understand it, and some part of him was glad. How tiresome it would be, and how disappointing, to know everything!

  One of the most memorable sights of the journey was not provided by the company running the train, however. They were nearly home when a clot of people passing revealed another traveler several benches down, and at his feet….

  “Is that a dog?” Jahir asked.

  Vasiht’h craned his head past the bench Jahir was on. “It is, yes.”

  “It is strange to see one,” Jahir said, realizing it. The Eldritch did not keep pets, for the good reason that few had survived the transition to their new world. Livestock they had in plenty, for the maintenance of that livestock had been essential to their survival, and so he had handled in the course of learning his duties everything from goats and pigs to sheep and horses. He had not become attached to them, for such behavior was discouraged. His cousin Sediryl had kept bees, but the Seni had never had an apiary. Of the remaining animals available, birds were the only ones cultivated for pleasure, and one could not call them companions. They were never kept indoors or trammeled in cages, but rather fed by indulgent nobles who liked to see their colored feathers in the gardens. But he had read stories of the faithful companions of early Eldritch, and the sight of a dog was strangely affecting. It was a large animal, leaning against the knee of its owner, with dark coat, pointed ears, and gray hairs brindling its long muzzle.

  /Human, of course,/ Vasiht’h said of its owner. /Pelted rarely keep pets./

  /Ah?/

  /Cultural thing,/ Vasiht’h said. /The original Pelted species were bred as pets. It’s given most of them a distaste for it. Sentients are meant to be free./

  Studying the dog, so patient under the gentle hand of its master, Jahir offered, /There are animals that prefer companionship./

  /I’m sure. But it’s slippery-slope material for a lot of Pelted, where ‘it wants to be kept’ starts becoming an excuse to keep things that shouldn’t be kept./ Vasiht’h shrugged, a flutter of his lower wings and a lift of shoulders. /I don’t really have an opinion on it, and I suspect most people don’t either. They just don’t do it because no one else does it, and it’s become a habitual reaction./

  /So only humans keep pets./

  /Only humans keep pets regularly,/ Vasiht’h said, emphasizing the final word. /There are Pelted with pets. Just… not a lot of them./

  /A stigma?/

  Vasiht’h flicked his ears back. /I wouldn’t call it anything that strong. It’s not a taboo./

  /Even though other passengers are looking at the man askance?/

  Vasiht’h looked past Jahir’s leg. /Are they?/

  /It is not so much a look,/ Jahir conceded. /As a not-look. If you understand. No one is paying them any attention, and it is a lack of attention that requires effort./

  “Huh,” Vasiht’h said aloud. “Nice catch.”

  “I have had practice interpreting such things,” Jahir murmured, thinking of the veiled disdain of the courtiers of Ontine.

  /Maybe it’s one of those signs of human prejudice Ametia keeps talking about,/ Vasiht’h said.

  /We should ask her./

  Vasiht’h sighed. /Won’t she like that./

  Jahir smiled. “We should think about aught else.”

  “Like?”

  “Like where we shall dine at the final stop of our trip.” Jahir hesitated, then let his gratitude through the mindline… carefully, so as not to overwhelm, because his joy over the experience was complex and expansive. “This birthday gift… I have never had one like it.”

  Vasiht’h’s flush of pleasure felt like the first sight of flowers after a long winter. “I’m glad you liked it.” And then, satisfied, “I thought you would.”

  “You know me well,” Jahir said. “Though you have set an impossibly high standard for future gifts, I fear.”

  “Oh, that’s not a problem,” Vasiht’h said airily. “If we stay, it’s concert tickets, all the way. Veta’s got an arts complex you’re going to have to see to believe.”

  “Oh,” Jahir said, reining in his avarice with difficulty. “Then… you shall have to show me, so that I might try.”


  Vasiht’h grinned. “Dinner, then.”

  “Mmm,” Jahir said, innocent. “One last chance to catch up with my score in our impromptu game of ‘spot the child.’”

  “Goddess, send me a field trip!”

  Chapter 8

  “Prejudice? Against dogs?” Ametia snorted as she fluffed up her pillow. “Ridiculous. Dogs are fine. No one can hate a dog. But no, most people think pet-keeping is in poor taste. Yet another ridiculous holdover from our origins. And they say we don’t hold grudges.” She snorted. “Not a dog’s fault, any of it.”

  “I see,” Jahir said, his bafflement a faint peppery taste in the mindline. Vasiht’h wondered at the aggression of the spice… usually his partner’s confusion was milder. “Are you sleeping, then, alet?”

  “I am,” Ametia said. “I’ve had a long few days, aletsen, and if you don’t mind I’d like to spend my session unconscious.” She pulled her bag over and dragged a brightly colored afghan out of it. “Look, I decided to help you decorate.”

  “You brought a blanket?” Vasiht’h asked.

  “I brought you a blanket, because one blanket isn’t enough. What if you have clients with thin skins? Like me?” She poured herself onto the couch. “You’re trying to keep it professional, I understand. But there’s nothing professional about sleeping. Even when you try to apply scientific rigor to it. Especially then. I don’t know why they bother with clinical sleep trials when it’s patently obvious that people aren’t going to sleep in a hospital room the same way they sleep in their own bedrooms.” She yawned and pulled both blankets over herself, the motley afghan on top. “No offense, aletsen. Go away. Come back when I’m unconscious.”

  Outside, Vasiht’h said, “She brought us an afghan.”

  “She makes afghans?” Jahir sounded curious.

  The mental picture of their restless client sitting somewhere long enough to crochet one granny square, much less seventy, was so funny that Vasiht’h laughed. “Oh, I hope so. That would be too good.”