Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book One)

Chapter Nine

I was expecting Khavi Vekesh to call the meeting to order, but to my surprise it was Hathan who spoke first. He made a few brief remarks related to navigation before calling on Rhevi Vethna to report on the engines. I lost the thread of Vethna's speech almost instantly. My attention started to drift. I looked around the table, caught by the strangeness of the assembly. My eyes wandered from one attentive face to the next, from one sigil to another, all of them perfectly visible because the hands they decorated were perfectly still. Humans at a meeting of this type would have fidgeted, checked their messages, sipped their coffee, or taken notes. Someone would have tapped his foot; someone else would have shifted in her chair. The collective immobility of the Vardeshi was a bit unnerving. I felt even more disquieted when, halfway through the meeting, I ventured to retrieve my water bottle from my bag. Ten pairs of eyes swung around to stare at it. After drinking, I set the bottle carefully down on the floor and left it there until the meeting adjourned. It probably didn't help that its lurid turquoise finish was the brightest thing in the room.

One of the last items on the agenda was an update on my novi training. As the end of the meeting approached, I steeled myself to ask Hathan to speak more slowly. His questions to the other crew members had been crisp and concise, and I hadn't been able to parse more than half of them. To my relief, however, he directed all his inquiries to Zey. I was accustomed by now to the rhythms of Zey's speech, and I was just able to keep pace as he narrated the events of our day. Laid out so simply, our achievements sounded a little meager. Was that really all we had done—wandered around the ship, signed me up for a shower, and shifted some crates around? I repressed a sigh.

Zey had finished talking and I'd just begun to relax when Saresh said, "Novi Alkhat, would you like to add anything?"

"No," I said, too quickly. He and Zey both laughed. I hurriedly corrected myself. "I mean, no, sir. Hadazi."

"Tell us what you think of the ship," said Khavi Vekesh.

He spoke lightly enough, but I knew a command when I heard it. "It's . . . very beautiful," I said. "And very different." Everyone seemed to be waiting for more, so I added, "Everything is much more . . . natural?"

"Organic," Saresh murmured.

"Right. More organic than on an Earth spaceship. Not that I've been on any of those. I like my quarters. And all the designs in the hallways."

"And the showers," Zey added. Someone snickered. I was almost positive it was Vethna.

"They're nice," I said defensively. "But the computer system is . . . intimidating."

"Well, your people are still working with electronics," Ziral said, and several people murmured knowingly, as if that explained a great deal. I looked down at the luminous symbols on the table in front of me. Until this moment I hadn't known they weren't powered by electronics. What did the Vardeshi computers run on, then? To my mind the words computers and electronics were synonymous. We must seem like such troglodytes to them.

"How was hydroponics?" Sohra asked.

The question was innocent enough, but at the mention of hydroponics, Zey tensed slightly. In the silence that followed Sohra's words, a number of people trained critical looks on him. The one I noticed was Hathan's. Just as during my initial interview, it was the movement of those arrestingly light gray eyes that drew my attention. I'd had a moment to study the suvi's features covertly earlier in the meeting, searching for a resemblance to the other two Takheris. If it was there at all, it was too subtle for me to detect. Hathan's face was narrower, his features sharper than those of his brothers. I had also decided that the reason he'd made so little impression on me at our first encounter was that his expression disclosed nothing of his thoughts. "You took her to hydroponics?" he said quietly.