Over the days that followed, my apprehension lessened a fraction as the disparate pieces of my departure began, incredibly, to come together. The gear room now contained a steadily growing pile of bright orange plastic crates with my name printed on them in neat black letters. Max and I had assembled, tested, and disassembled my portable stoves, cooking utensils, and water filters a dozen times over. I had extras of everything in case of breakage. We had designed a menu that was as appealing as it could be in the total absence of fresh foods. I had a full supply of unscented toiletries, bedding, and towels. The boxes from my apartment had been delivered a few days before, and we had sorted through them to assemble a wardrobe that fit the somewhat vague specifications provided by the Vardeshi. There had been a few upgrades, as well; some of my favorite companies had been more than happy to trade free clothing for the promise of photos of me sporting their products on my journey. There was a crate full of photographs and other items to decorate my private quarters. I liked my stack of orange crates. Looking at them made me feel safe.
A couple of crates were labeled Medical in both English and Vardeshi. These contained everything from vitamins to antibiotics to antiseptic wipes, as well as EpiPens, oxygenators, and a handheld device that analyzed the surrounding atmospheric content. I knew the location and purpose of every item in the kits. Anton had coached me exhaustively in their use. He had also assembled an impressive library of medical texts and videos for the Vardeshi doctor on board my ship.
I continued to attend my morning Krav-Maga sessions with Davnah, accruing bruises but no discernible skills. I asked her point-blank at the end of one session if she thought I was progressing.
"Well," she said, "you're certainly trying. And remember that the first principle of Krav Maga is situational awareness. The most important step in protecting yourself is avoiding potentially violent situations."
"So . . . basically you're saying I should try not to get attacked?"
"More or less," she conceded. We both laughed. There wasn't much else we could do. The Vardeshi prohibited weapons of any kind on their ships, and it was more or less guaranteed that all my belongings would be thoroughly searched. In terms of physical safety, I was entirely at their mercy.
After a challenging start in Covert Signaling, I had begun making real progress. The signals Tristan had designed for me were simple and memorable, and I was starting to get the hang of working them into my regular body language. He filmed me delivering the same basic scripted message—everything is fine, cooperation with the Vardeshi is going well, their culture is fascinating—with a number of different subtexts, from everything is actually fine to I'm in danger, please send help. Then we watched the videos together, and he coached me on improving the clarity and subtlety of the gestures. I was still far from adept, and I would never be able to tell a credible lie. It just wasn't in my nature.
"Remember," Tristan said, "the Vardeshi probably won't be able to read your facial expressions the way another human would. They'll be looking for obvious signs. You'll do well enough as long as you remember to keep talking. Don't freeze in the middle of a sentence while you're trying to remember the code."
"Like I did the last three times, you mean," I said ruefully.
My meetings with Dr. Okoye were paradoxically the most soothing and the most intimidating. In the sheltered quiet of her office, I admitted that I wasn't at all sure I had the independence or resiliency it was presumed I would need to survive the coming year.
"What happens if it's just horrible?" I asked her in a particularly dark moment. "I don't mean violent; I already know I can't prepare for that. But what if . . . If they don't talk to me. If we hate each other. If, halfway in, it's clear that it's never going to work, humans and Vardeshi together, and they turn the ship around, but I'm still months away from home."
"You establish your routines and you stick to them," she said. "You do your workout every single day. You do something relaxing, something just for you, every single day. You look at photos of your family. You listen to your favorite songs. You think about the first meal you'll have when you get home, the first place you'll go, the first friend you'll call. You dig as deep as you can until you find what you need to get you through those days."
"But what if I can't?"
She didn't answer me directly. "If a Vardeshi ship landed outside on the lawn, right now, and a door opened, and you knew that this was your only chance to go to Vardesh Prime, would you do it?"
I didn't hesitate. "Of course."
She nodded. "Then I think you'll do just fine."
The saving grace of those long days of preparation was the presence of the other Strangers. I saw them only at mealtimes, but those few minutes were a desperately needed release. My training sessions were constant reminders of the solitude that lay ahead. As I fell asleep each night, the word alone, alone, alone reverberated in my mind, the beating of far-off war drums in the dark. I could trust no one but myself. Rely on no one but myself. And it seemed to me that the separation had already begun. With the launch still days out, I felt myself pulling away from the world. Those snatched hours of conversation with my fellow Strangers tethered me to humanity.
Kylie and Scott and the dozen others I'd met on my first day of training had quickly formed a tight-knit clique. It wasn't the most harmonious of groups; they gossiped and competed and quarreled like children. For the most part, the endless infighting was all in good fun, but sometimes there was a darker edge to it. The Strangers had yet to be assigned to their destinations among the Vardeshi. They were still competing for what they regarded as the best placements: those farthest into Vardeshi space, those on long-ranging ships and populous starhavens. They were all being closely watched, and they knew it. A slip-up during training could cause even the most promising candidate to be downgraded to an "orbit crawler" making a slow, tedious circuit of our solar system. There was some trading of friendly pranks, and of less friendly ones. I heard stories of deleted language notes, "accidentally" reset alarms, and so on. I listened to the stories with outward sympathy and inward gratitude toward Dr. Sawyer for sparing me all of it.
Kylie was my favorite of the Strangers, with a quick sense of humor and an acerbic comment always at the ready. We fell into an easy friendship, seeking each other out whenever our training schedules aligned, which was frequently. She and Rajani shared a dormitory room down the hall from mine; I inferred that the voices I'd heard on my first night at the Villiger Center had been theirs. Most mornings the three of us walked to breakfast together. Kylie asked endless questions about my solo training sessions and my interview with the Vardeshi. Her interview had been scheduled immediately after mine, and she was desperately jealous of the fact that I had been in the same room with them, even for a few minutes.
"Couldn't you have been a bit less impressive? Just enough to make them put off the decision for one more interview?"
"Two," said Rajani, who had been scheduled to follow Kylie.
"I don't know that I was all that impressive," I said. "I'm not being modest. I know they picked me. But I'm not sure they liked me very much." I repeated their comments about my deficient technical skills and our primitive language.
Kylie shrugged. "Only one of those things is actually about you—and they chose you in spite of it. And as for the rest, well, maybe that's just how they talk."
"That's what Councillor Seidel said when I asked him."
"I don't know," Rajani said thoughtfully. "It's true that we don't know anything about their culture. But they've apparently been sitting out there for decades, watching our television, listening to our messages. They probably have a fairly good idea of what counts as rude to us."
"That's what I thought. And it just seems odd that they would choose a ship to transport a human all the way to Vardesh Prime whose commander thinks that listening to English for a year is 'intolerable.' I mean, isn't that kind of the point? And they didn't know going in that any of us would speak Vardeshi. Couldn't they find anyone who was maybe a little bit excited about the exchange program?"
"You're overthinking it," Kylie said. "Everything's going to be fine."
"I know. It's just that the more I think about it, the weirder it seems."
Kylie rolled her eyes. "That's why it's called overthinking. But if you want to back out, I'll take your place. I'd make that sacrifice for you."
"Thanks," I said irritably. "You're a real friend."
Rajani said, "Remember, you're just there as a passenger—an observer. Taking notes, taking pics and videos, asking questions about language and culture. You'll probably spend half your time in your quarters typing up your observations. You might go days without interacting with the khavi at all. It isn't as if you'll be reporting to him."
"Right," I said, still unconvinced.
"How would you like to go into the city tomorrow?" Elena asked me that evening as we walked back from the dining hall.
"The city? You mean Zurich?" I laughed. "Sure. Sounds great. We can sleep late, get espresso, do some shopping. Why not?"
"I'm serious," she insisted. "Councillor Seidel wants me to take you into Zurich for the day."
I stopped short, frozen with horror. "What? Why? Am I being thrown out of the program?"
"What? No! Of course not. You're doing exceptionally well. But it's been a long week, and your trainers all agree that it's time for a break."
"But the schedule . . ." I said helplessly. "I'll fall behind."
"The schedule is theoretical. It was always meant to be flexible."
"It was?"
She nodded firmly. "Trust me, the last thing anyone wants to do is send an exhausted and overwhelmed human into deep space on an alien ship. Alone. If nothing else, a mental breakdown on your part would look terrible for Earth. We need you fresh and alert on launch day. If you want, you can look at this as another part of the training—the part we didn't tell you about."
"Oh," I said, vastly relieved. "In that case, I'd love to go into the city. What time do we leave?"
"A car will be waiting to take us to the train station at eleven. We'll be in downtown Zurich by lunchtime."
"I thought leaving the Villiger Center was against the rules."
"Officially, it is. There will be a security detail. You probably won't even notice them. The risk is minimal. No one looking at the two of us would guess that we had anything to do with the Vardeshi. Just as a precaution, though, it's been leaked that the training complex is somewhere in western Canada. Banff, I think. Oh, and I'm meant to ask if there's anyone else you'd like to bring along."
"Yeah," I said. "Kylie."
And so it was that I found myself sitting on a mostly empty commuter train shortly before noon the following morning, flanked by Elena and Kylie, watching the Swiss countryside unrolling through the windows on either side. It was a perfect autumn day, clear and cool, and in our sweaters and jeans and boots we must have looked like any other trio of young women out to enjoy a carefree day in the city. Elena was under strict orders to have us back at the train station by eight o'clock, and "not obviously intoxicated," which she insisted were Councillor Seidel's exact words. That gave us seven hours to spend in downtown Zurich. After the strictly regimented days at the Villiger Center, it felt like an eternity.
"What do you want to do?" Elena asked as we stepped off the train.
"Get drunk," Kylie said instantly.
Elena smiled. "That's easy. What else?"
"You're the local," I said. "Pretend it's Saturday afternoon and you're out with your friends. Show us the sights."
"But no tourist garbage," said Kylie. "And no museums."
We didn't go to any museums. Instead we ate pastries and drank espresso in a café by the river. We explored the winding streets of the old town, stumbling upon a tiny courtyard with a delicately carved stone fountain, where we sat and drank wine in the sun. We wandered through a deserted botanical garden, bare and austere in its autumnal golds and browns. When we felt hungry again we gorged ourselves on Indian food and Swiss beer in a crowded restaurant whose other patrons were too absorbed in shouting at the soccer match on the television to pay us any attention. Comfortably drowsy, we stopped to revive ourselves with more espresso, then wandered onto a row of boutique clothing stores. We spent a rapturous hour trying on designer evening gowns. I actually bought one, seduced by floor-length azure silk, an irresistible price cut, and the combined assurances of Kylie and Elena that I would probably need a formal dress on Vardesh Prime. As the brightness of the day faded, we sat on a bench beside the lake, cradling cups of hot chocolate, watching the light on the water. It was a perfect day—a perfect Earth day. It was exactly what I needed after the sterile white calm of the Villiger Center. I wondered how they had known.
We had been sitting there for twenty minutes or so when Elena's phone rang. She answered it, listened for a moment, said something clipped in Swiss German, then rose with a decisiveness that caught me off guard. "Let's go. Security wants us back at the center."
In unison Kylie and I got to our feet. "Something wrong?" Kylie said.
Before replying, Elena glanced up and down the lakeside promenade. It was thronged with people, some walking or running, others sitting on the benches that faced the water. No one was close enough to overhear our conversation. "There's an anti-alliance protest beginning in Bern right now."
I said uneasily, "Isn't Bern an hour away from here?"
"Yes, but there was a march yesterday in Munich."
Kylie frowned. "They're hitting quite close to home. Lucky guesses, do you think? Or has someone twigged the real location of the training complex?"
"I don't know," Elena said quietly. "Either way, it's time to go."
I turned in the direction of the train station where we'd disembarked that morning. Elena shook her head. "Not that way. A car will take us home." She led us toward the main thoroughfare running parallel to the lakeshore. Just as we reached the curb, an unprepossessing acid-green hatchback pulled up in front of us. "That's our ride?" Kylie said skeptically.
"I think the point is to be discreet." I tried to match her casual tone, but I felt unnerved. The abruptness of our departure was a false note in an otherwise idyllic day. On the ride home, I asked Elena, "Have there been lots of other protests?"
She looked momentarily surprised. Kylie said, "They took our phones, remember? And none of the dormitory rooms have TVs."
Elena said, "I'm sorry. I'd forgotten. Only a few protests have been big enough to make international news. And they're mostly who you'd expect. God's Green Earth and so on." I nodded. God's Green Earth was the neo-Christian group that had spearheaded the original anti-Vardeshi movement. "Most people around the world are in favor of the alliance," Elena went on. "But there's a new group called the Liberty Coalition that's staged a number of rallies. All peaceful, so far. Their claim is that any advanced power, no matter how well-intentioned, always has its own agenda, and that to allow another species to steer the course of our development is a betrayal of humanity."
Kylie was looking out her window. Without turning her head she said, "Tell that to all the kids out there dying of diseases the Vardeshi can cure."
"Obviously I agree with you," Elena said. "But the movement is gaining ground in some of the same countries that opposed the creation of the Unified Earth Council."
"Isolationists," Kylie said dismissively.
I didn't say anything. In my head I counted off the seven days that remained before I launched for Vardesh Prime. How many more protests would happen in that time? And how many would it take before the Council—or the Vardeshi—started to pay attention? I reminded myself that the Vardeshi themselves were divided on the topic of the alliance. Surely they weren't expecting the entire human race to welcome them with open arms. Still, the knowledge that there were people on my world who thought we should reject their overture rankled. As if we could do better. As if a partnership with us wouldn't be a massive step down for them in every possible way. For us to refuse them would be so ... the word that came to mind was insolent. An instant after I thought it, I wanted to laugh. Maybe I was more of a Vaku than I'd thought.
As I got out of the car in front of the training complex, I caught sight of the man who stood waiting for us, and surprise drove all other thoughts temporarily from my mind. It was Councillor Seidel. I had passed him once or twice in the halls of the Villiger Center, but we hadn't spoken since the day of my interview with the Vardeshi.
"Avery," he said. "Welcome back. I trust you had a pleasant day in the city?"
"It was perfect. Thank you."
He smiled slightly. "I'm glad to hear it. There's a matter I'd like to discuss with you. Privately, if possible."
"'Night," said Kylie. "Thanks for the day off."
Elena scooped up my shopping bags. "I'll take these back to your dormitory for you."
When they had both gone, the councillor gestured to the far side of the green, where a gravel path led to the vineyards. "Shall we walk?"
"Sure." We went down the steps to the green. I could see that Seidel was preparing to speak. I preempted him. "Elena told us about the protest in Bern. Do you think there will be others?"
"Of course." I glanced over in surprise. He said, "Nothing on this scale ever happens cleanly. You shouldn't let the news concern you. Those who hold decision-making power in the Council are almost universally in favor of the alliance. But it would be naïve to think that the promise of interspecies cooperation would speak to everyone on Earth in the same way that it speaks to you and me. You're American. Think about your own countrymen who reject vaccines for their children. Some people simply will not be helped."
"Some people are idiots," I said.
"Precisely. We live in a society that embraces free speech. The protesters have the right to express themselves. Thus far the unrest has been on par with our predictions."
"You were expecting people to protest?"
Seidel said again, "Of course."
"The launch won't be affected?"
"Absolutely not."
I nodded, marginally reassured. He said, "Avery, the reason I wanted to see you is that the Vardeshi have proposed an adjustment to the terms of the exchange. This adjustment applies only to you. As you know, the role of the Strangers"—I was amused to hear that he had adopted the nickname as well—"is to live among the Vardeshi, observe their culture, and teach them about our own. You're basically passengers on their ships. You'll work among them, but not with them."
I nodded, then, realizing that it was dark, said, "Right."
"In light of your unique abilities, Commander Vekesh has—"
"Vekesh?" I couldn't help interrupting.
"Yes. The commander of the ship you'll be traveling on. Apparently he's proposed to his superiors that you be given additional responsibilities. There have been some changes to his crew complement, and he's looking to fill a low-ranking position on the Pinion. The vacant position seems to be effectively a service role. The word he used was novi."
"That's the lowest rank in the hierarchy of their fleet," I said. "I don't know any more than that. Aren't there plenty of Vardeshi in this region of space who could be brought in to fill the vacancy, even on short notice? Or couldn't we pick someone up along the way?"
"That's precisely what I said. Vekesh thinks his people will have no difficulty training you to carry out the duties of a novi, which are apparently quite simple. He sees no reason why a fluent Vardeshi speaker should sit idly by as an observer instead of contributing to the work of the crew. In his own words, it's a waste of resources. His superiors seem to agree with him. They've granted provisional approval to the idea."
"And the Council?"
"The Council has also given provisional approval. Pending your acceptance, of course."
"These things happen fast," I said.
"They do. So what do you think?"
We were passing under one of the lamps that intermittently lit the path, and I could see his expression clearly. I thought I detected an eagerness there beneath his habitual reserve. "You want me to do it," I said.
His reply was swift. "Of course. This offer represents an unprecedented level of intimacy with their people. You're already our strongest asset. You proved that in the interview. But think how much more you'll be able to learn if you're actually working alongside them. It's an incredible opportunity for you. And, by extension, for Earth."
"Tell me how it would work."
He nodded. "The term of the contract is one standard Earth year. You would be employed by the Vardeshi stellar fleet, like anyone else who works on their ships. You'd be ranked in their hierarchy, you'd wear their uniform, you'd answer to their officers, just like any other novi. But your primary allegiance would be to Earth. The contract grants you the right to refuse any command that violates your ethical obligation to Earth. And you and the Vardeshi both have the right to terminate your employment at any time without penalty. Naturally, the contract is being examined by every legal expert on the planet—Earth, that is—but so far, it appears legitimate." He smiled. "And it goes without saying that you won't be signing anything that's not in English. We don't want to accidentally sell you to the Vardeshi as a slave."
"No," I said emphatically. "We don't want that."
"The contract also guarantees you safe and humane working conditions. You'll be exempt from any duties or punishments that violate those expectations. So if, for example, they're accustomed to beating their officers for incompetence, they won't be allowed to do that to you. And your duties will be adjusted to fit the requirements of your schedule. One rest day out of every four, thirteen hours between shifts, and so on. Everything you've been told during training still applies."
I took a deep breath. "Well, in that case . . . Where do I sign?"
Seidel smiled again. "I'll make the call. Congratulations—Novi Alcott."
It took me a long time to fall asleep that night. My thoughts veered wildly between exhilaration and terror. I had just begun to feel comfortable with the thought of living among the Vardeshi. Now I was going to be working among them—and for them. Had it been a mistake to accept their offer? What if our lawyers overlooked some small but crucial line of the contract and I did end up enslaved, or shoved out an airlock for insubordination? What if the commander was wrong about my capacity to learn the duties of a novi, and I made a fool of myself—or, worse, did actual damage to the ship or its crew? What if I just couldn't handle the workload? It would be mortifying to fail and be relegated to a mere observer after serving, however briefly, as a crew member. Everyone on both sides of the alliance would know I had failed to make the grade.
Then again . . . They had chosen me. And now they had promoted me. Vekesh or one of his officers must have seen something in our brief interview—even if it was only my facility with their language—that made them think I was capable of doing this work. And the councillor was right: this was an extraordinary opportunity. To live among them not as an outsider, an observer, but as a comrade. A peer. If there was any chance, however slight, that I could rise to their expectations, then I had to take it. I would have accepted the offer on any terms. It wasn't in me to refuse. When the Vardeshi had chosen me a week ago, I thought I had gotten what I wanted. Now I knew better. This was what I wanted, what I had wanted from the beginning. To belong.
And maybe, I thought as I drifted off to sleep, it was all a colossal joke, and the novi's role was even more menial than they had told us, and I had just agreed to spend the next year cleaning alien toilets.