The Strangers were predictably jealous of my new title. I didn't tell them about it myself; I didn't have to. I arrived at breakfast the next morning to find them already discussing it.
"Come on, Avery," Kylie said as I sat down. "A rank and a uniform? Are you going to have all the luck? Fucking leave something for the rest of us, can't you?"
I shrugged and repeated my final waking thought of the night before. Kylie scoffed. "Right. They're transporting you halfway across the known universe to be a bloody janitor."
"Well, they could be. Councillor Seidel did say it was 'effectively a service role.'"
"Avery Alcott," Scott murmured. "Bringing harmony to the galaxy, one toilet at a time."
I pointed a French toast stick at him. "That's Novi Alcott to you."
Rajani said skeptically, "So they're just going to hand you a uniform and hope for the best? An alien civilian, with no relevant training and no clue about their policies or procedures? Are they giving you a sidearm too?"
"No sidearms," Scott said. "They don't carry weapons on board. Their fleet is quasi-military at best. Their ships are only armed enough to destroy asteroids in their path. They covered all this in yesterday's briefing, you know." I thought there was an unwarranted edge to his tone. Judging from the sharp look Rajani gave him, she thought so too.
In an attempt to smooth things over, I said, "Anyway, it looks like I won't be completely untrained." And I filled them in on what Elena had just told me: that arrangements had been made for a member of the Pinion's crew to spend the day prior to launch training me in the rudiments of my tasks as a novi.
"Which crew member? Do you know?" I understood Scott's interest; he had been one of the men interviewed during the morning sessions with the Pinion's crew.
"Not yet. But it probably won't be a senior officer."
"Not Saresh, then?" Kylie teased.
I rolled my eyes. "You're as bad as Elena. If it's Saresh, I'll find a way to introduce you, I promise."
"Don't count on it," Rajani said. "Whoever it is, they're not just going to let him wander around the facility. Quarantine procedures will be airtight until we know more about the risk of cross-species contagion."
Kylie waved a hand. "Whatever. I'll spy on him through a window. I don't care, I just want to see one!"
"They're not fairies," Scott said testily. "And you'll be seeing plenty of them soon enough. It's not like you're going to be stuck on an orbit crawler." He glanced at his watch and pushed his chair back from the table. "First session in five, people."
After he had gone, I looked inquiringly at Kylie. She shrugged. "Preliminary assignments come out at the end of the week. There's a new arrival who's supposedly tearing it up in one of the other training groups—some kind of linguistic savant, I guess. Scott's worried. For no reason, but try telling him that."
I made a face. "Maybe I shouldn't have talked so much about my thing."
"Don't worry about it. He knows he's not competing with you." She looked thoughtful. "Not any more."
As I rose to carry my tray to the dish room, Rajani caught my wrist. She was frowning. "Listen, Avery, I know you're excited. But you know what they say about things that seem too good to be true. Be careful, okay? You're not like the rest of the Strangers. We're paranoid assholes. We had to be to get here. You're a different breed—a gentle soul. And you can bet the Vardeshi saw that in the interview. They may be from another planet, but they're not blind. They may be trying to take advantage of you somehow. Don't let them. Even if it means . . ."
"Being a paranoid asshole?" I nodded. "I'll try. Seriously."
My final training sessions had a perfunctory feel to them. I had learned as much Krav Maga as I could in two weeks, which to me was a depressingly inadequate amount. My food and gear were packed and ready for transport onto the Pinion. Anton had numbed my right wrist with an anesthetic spray and inserted a tiny medical transmitter under the skin. A second transmitter had been inserted on my left hip, below the line of my underwear. Anton had checked a dozen times to make sure both devices were functioning properly, which they were, sending a constant stream of medical telemetry to designated locations in the cloud and the Villiger Center's data banks.
Tristan was finally satisfied that I would be able to at least approximate our covert signals under real strain. "Don't worry about getting the codes wrong," he said, deadpan as ever, at the conclusion of our last session. "The important thing is to keep sending messages. We know the Vardeshi have glitches in their communications network. No message doesn't automatically mean there's a problem. Silence isn't a signal."
I thanked him and left. The hours seemed suddenly to be accelerating toward the moment of my departure. I had the same unsettling feeling I'd had on the flight over from California of being a fixed point at the center of a vastly complex machine, a maze of tiny whirring parts ceaselessly clicking over. The sensation wasn't entirely unpleasant, but it was peculiar.
The next day was the one set aside for me to see my parents. The visit didn't go as badly as I'd anticipated. I wondered if someone—possibly Dr. Okoye—had cautioned them against upsetting me so close to launch. They didn't question me or make me feel guilty or urge me to change my mind. I showed them around the facility, and they made polite comments about it, and equally polite conversation with the Strangers we met on our way. We toured the local winery and had dinner at a little bistro in the village. To me it all felt as perfunctory as my last few training sessions. There was a hollowness to our interactions, a sense of artifice about the day, with its carefully composed itinerary. Inside, I was counting the hours until tomorrow, when my real training started, and from then until the next day. Launch day.
The good-byes were real. I hadn't expected that. After dinner, we walked along the main street of the village to the end of the sidewalk and back again. It took only a few minutes; there wasn't much to see, only a cluster of storefronts, a café, a train station. The café was warmly lit and inviting, the other buildings dark and shuttered. When we returned to the restaurant, the inevitable black sedans were waiting by the curb: one to take me back to the Villiger Center, one to take my parents to the airport. My father began to cry. I had never seen him cry before, and I was horrified. I looked at my mother. She wasn't crying. She was looking at me. Her expression was sad and intent at the same time. I understood. She was trying to fix my face in her mind. She was afraid she would never see me again.
She said quietly, "Avery, the hardest thing about being a parent isn't the sleepless nights or the tuition bills. It's that you have to trust so many people. So many strangers. And the leaps of faith just keep getting bigger. First day of school. First sleepover. First boyfriend. First trip abroad."
"First trip offworld?" There was a catch in my voice: a laugh, maybe, or a sob.
"You have to believe, over and over again, that other people mean no harm to your child. And you have to do it knowing all the while that we live in an imperfect world." She sighed. "At least all the people we had to trust before were human."
"I trust the Vardeshi," I said.
"You made that choice for all of us. Without asking us." There were still tears on my father's face, but his voice was steady.
"Dad . . . I can't promise you that everything's going to be fine. I don't know that. But I do know that absolutely everything I've done has been leading up to this. I'm not saying it's meant to be. I hate all that destiny garbage. You know that. But Dr. Sawyer picked me, and the Vardeshi asked for me, and I'll be damned if I'm going to walk away from them just because I'm scared."
"So you are scared," said my mother.
"Of course I'm scared! How could I not be? Jesus, Mom, they're aliens!"
"Well, good. I was afraid you'd lost all your common sense." Her tone was matter-of-fact, but she wrapped me in a tight embrace and held me for a long time.
At breakfast the next morning I was nearly silent. The Strangers were preoccupied too. That evening they would receive their assignments to the various ships and starhavens the Vardeshi had designated as suitable for human habitation. Immediately following breakfast, they would be assessed on the linguistic progress they had made in two weeks of intensive TrueFluent sessions. Language skill wasn't the only or the most important predictor of placement, but it was the only one that could still be altered. The Strangers knew this morning's examination was their last chance to climb (or fall) in the rankings. I wasn't surprised to see that most of them were bent over their notes. Scott and Rajani were studying together, at least at first. Halfway through breakfast, their collaboration degenerated into an argument. I listened for a few moments and then asked diffidently if they wanted a third opinion. By the time Elena arrived to collect me twenty minutes later, the discussion had turned into a full-on review session. It took me a few moments to process what she was saying.
"He's here," she repeated. "Zai? Zhey? I'm probably saying it wrong. The officer from the Pinion?"
"He's here? Already? I thought he was coming at nine!"
"Apparently he wanted to get started. He's waiting for you in the conference wing."
I leapt to my feet and started stacking dishes on my tray. Elena waved a hand. "Don't worry about that, someone will take care of it. Are you ready?"
I picked up the tote bag that contained my laptop, spiral notebook, and pens. I wasn't sure exactly what form my novi training would take, and I wanted the freedom to type, hand-write, or sketch as the situation required. I nodded to the Strangers. "You'll be fine, guys. Scott, remember to adjust your seventh tone if it comes after a third. Kylie, try not to reverse your demonstrative pronouns. I'll see you tonight.
"So what's he like?" I said excitedly as Elena led me down the hall.
"You'll have to tell me. I haven't met him yet, I just got a message that he'd arrived. It's down this corridor, second door on the right. I'll be back at noon to bring you to lunch. Good luck!"
I took a deep breath, smoothed my hair nervously, adjusted the strap of my bag, and opened the door. This was it—my first encounter with a crewman from the Pinion since becoming one myself. I was suddenly acutely nervous. What if he had some impenetrable regional accent? What if I couldn't parse his descriptions of Novi duties? What if he didn't like me? Khavi Vekesh clearly hadn't, and he'd only been in the room with me for five minutes. I was going to be closeted with this Zai or Zhey or whoever for an entire day. And the year that followed it. I had to make him like me. Somehow.
The individual who met me was the least intimidating of the Vardeshi I'd seen thus far. For one thing, he was smaller than any of the others, a full head shorter than me. He looked younger too—scarcely out of his teens, though I had yet to learn how their ages mapped onto ours. His features were elfin, delicate; he had wide dark eyes, the characteristic high forehead, and a pointed chin. A shock of artfully spiky silver-white hair stood out from his head like a halo. He studied me with frank curiosity. I liked him immediately.
"Hey," I said by way of greeting.
He shook his head, placed his right hand on his chest, giving me a clear glimpse of a tattoo similar to the other ones I'd seen, and said, slowly and clearly, "Zey."
I laughed and explained in Vardeshi, "'Hey' means 'hello' in English."
"Vai," he breathed. I recognized the word, an exclamation of surprise which appeared in several of Dr. Sawyer's recordings. "You really do speak Vardeshi. I didn't believe it."
"I speak a little." I held out my hand. "I'm Avery Alcott."
"Eyvri," he repeated carefully, taking my hand and shaking it like someone who's had the procedure described to him but never seen it. He gave my name the same Vardeshi lilt I had heard from Khavi Vekesh; I liked the sound of it. "My name is Zey. Zey Takheri."
"Takheri? Really?" The shock of hearing that particular surname snapped me back into English.
Zey stared at me, dismayed. "My name . . . angers you?"
"No!" I said hastily, returning to Vardeshi. "No, no. I'm not angry, just surprised. One of the officers who interviewed me was named Takheri as well."
"One? You mean two. You met both of my brothers at the interview."
"Your brothers," I repeated.
"Saresh and Hathan."
I frowned. "I met Saresh. He didn't give his family name. He's a Takheri too?"
Zey nodded. "He's the oldest. Then there's Hathan."
"About my height? Gray hair?"
"Right. Then me."
"Huh." I looked again at the bright hair and fine features. "I guess I can see the resemblance to Saresh. But Hathan doesn't look anything like you."
"Saresh and I look like our father," Zey explained. "Hathan looks like our mother. If you saw us all together, you'd understand."
"Are you sure . . .?" Still unconvinced, I took out my notebook. We spent a few convoluted minutes sketching out family trees and confirming my translations of father and brother. Over the course of the discussion, we oscillated between languages, finally settling on Vardeshi liberally salted with English as the most conducive to communication. At last I gave a resigned shrug. "Okay. You're telling me that Novak Takheri—the same Novak Takheri who recorded the messages sent to Earth twenty-five years ago, yes?"
"And visited," Zey said. "On the Seynath."
"Right. That same guy has three sons, and somehow all of them ended up on the same ship, on the same mission? How is that even possible?"
"Why wouldn't it be possible?"
I fumbled for words. "On Earth . . . First of all, we wouldn't put three people from the same family on a ten-man ship. If there were an accident . . ."
Zey waved a hand dismissively. "We do that all the time. Space travel is difficult. Long trips, huge distances. It's commonplace to send families starside together."
"Okay, but even so, how did all three of you end up on this particular mission? Bringing the first human to Vardesh Prime? It's a pretty"—I wanted to say "historic" but settled for—"important mission. Wasn't there a lot of competition?"
"We didn't know we'd be chosen. The Echelon only made the final decision a couple of months ago."
"The Echelon," I repeated.
Zey explained that the term referred to the governing body on Vardesh Prime. "It could have been any number of ships," he went on. "We knew we'd be hosting a human, but that was all. And also I think my father might have pulled some strings. He's a senator. Oh, and Saresh wasn't even assigned to the Pinion. He was transferred here at the last minute, just before we launched from the last starhaven. He was originally supposed to stay on Earth. So it would have been just me and Hathan."
I had to smile at the image of Saresh on Earth, earnestly trying to understand why most of the women (and some of the men) h(e spoke to instantly grew flustered and incoherent. Maybe that was why the Echelon had pulled him out of the program. I also had to admit, grudgingly, that what Zey was telling me was starting to make sense. To be selected as the spokesperson for an entire planet, Novak Takheri would have had to be a prominent figure. It followed that he would have the political connections to engineer an advantage for his own children when the time came to choose a ship to ferry the first human back to Vardesh Prime. It also made sense—given his manifest belief in the promise of further contact between our people—that he would have taught his children to speak English.
Zey was grinning at me. "Do you have any other questions about my family?"
"No. . . Wait. Do you have any sisters on board?"
His laugh was so infectious that I couldn't help joining in. It was the first time I saw—or heard—a Vardeshi laugh. To my overwhelming relief, he sounded exactly like a human, although unlike us, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut and wrinkled his nose. I had been mentally readying myself to accept some eerie alien facsimile of laughter, but the familiarity made things much easier.
"Let's get started," he said when he'd recovered. "We have a lot to get through in just one day."
I opened my notebook. "Tell me what I need to know."
Zey turned out to be a veritable fountain of (somewhat haphazardly organized) knowledge about life aboard the Pinion. The first and most important thing he taught me was the name and rank of everyone aboard. We started at the top and worked our way down. The title of khavi, as I already knew, translated to commander or captain. Each ship had one khavi. Then there was the suvi, or second-in-command. Some ships had more than one of these; the Pinion, being small, had only one. Next came rhevi, which was similar to lieutenant. This was the most common rank. Lastly, there was novi. "I'm a novi," he explained. "The lowest-ranking person on the ship." He brightened visibly. "Until tomorrow. Then it's you!"
"I don't mind," I said. "I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I'm just excited that I get a rank. And a uniform."
There was one more title, Zey explained, but it had no obvious analogue in English. The Vardeshi word was hadazi. We talked around it a bit and settled on mentor or monitor. The role of the hadazi was to provide guidance and support for the other members of the crew, particularly the younger ones. Serving as hadazi wasn't obligatory; officers could apply for the role or be recommended for it. It was a temporary title, typically held for a single year by those transitioning from suvi to khavi. The hadazi wasn't directly within the chain of command, but in dire circumstances he could step into a position of authority either above or below the suvi, as the khavi decreed.
"Huh," I said. "Sounds vague."
When I had written everything down, and Zey had checked my Vardeshi script, we added names. "Khavi Vekesh," Zey said. "His first name is Reyjai, but you'll never use it."
"Vekesh." I wrote it down. "I met him. The one with the black hair."
"Next is Hadazi Takheri. That's Saresh."
"Oh, good." I was relieved. "He seemed friendly."
"He is. We're lucky. He's a good hadazi—and I don't just say that because he's my brother. He'll help you. Then Suvi Takheri."
"That's Hathan?"
"Right."
I looked at my notes. "Hadazi Takheri. Suvi Takheri. And you're Novi Takheri? This is . . . unseemly." I was going to need a word for ridiculous.
"It's really not that bad. You can just call me Zey. And for the others, most of the time you'll just use their titles. That's what we do for superior officers." Zey sighed. "Which is everyone."
Next we ran through the rhevis: Ziral, Daskar, Khiva, Vethna, Sohra, Ahnir. I dutifully wrote them down. "You'll meet all of them tomorrow," said Zey. "And then there's me. Novi Takheri. And you."
"Novi Alcott," I said.
"Novi Alkhat," he repeated, his accent transforming the name.
I wrote it out carefully in my still-tentative Vardeshi hand: Novi Eyvri Alkhat. A new name. A new identity. There was a rightness about it that went bone-deep, even though I had never heard it before that moment. Maybe, I thought, this was the person Dr. Sawyer had awakened when he played that first recording on his patio all those months ago. Maybe Avery had been fading imperceptibly into Eyvri all along. I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to become Novi Alkhat. I wanted to be her today. Now. I wanted to put on that uniform and see my humanity recede in the white lights of my bathroom mirror. The long slow turning away from my own kind that had begun last year in California was now complete. I was ready to leave. I had the language, the gear, the skills, the uniform, and the title. All I had been missing was a name.
By the end of that morning, I had amassed several typed pages of notes and a sheaf of hastily drawn sketches. Zey talked fast, and I had kept pace with him as best I could, but I knew I'd missed a lot. Every other line was starred or underlined or had IMPORTANT written next to it. Zey's official mandate was to introduce me to my novi duties, but we spent most of the morning talking about Vardeshi culture and, more specifically, how to show proper deference. There seemed to be an appalling number of ways to give unintentional offense. Zey took it on himself to steer me clear of them as best he could.
"Although," he said cheerfully, "I'm sure there are lots of things I'm forgetting."
I sighed. "Well, if you see me doing any of them, stop me."
Before the morning was done, I had learned the correct way to greet a Vardeshi, which was not unlike a salute—posture straight, left arm folded behind the back, right hand held vertically beside the face, fingers together, palm facing in.
"It's to show the other person your house sigil," Zey explained. "See?" He extended his right hand to me, palm down. I hadn't wanted to risk offense by asking about the decoration earlier, but now I inspected it closely. An intricate symbol had been painted or tattooed in crisp, bold strokes onto the back of his hand. It was about two inches across and roughly circular in shape. The color of the ink was dark blue, not black, as I'd thought previously. Another, more delicate version of the same symbol had been overlaid on top of it. The second symbol didn't look like paint. It looked like gold. I wondered how it had been affixed to his hand—some kind of adhesive?
"They're beautiful," I said. "What are they made of?"
"The first one is a special type of paint. It's painless to apply, but it never fades or rubs off, and it can't be removed. It's designed to last a lifetime. The second one is a precious metal, similar to your gold or silver."
"It's metal? Is it uncomfortable?"
By way of reply Zey flexed his hand. "It moves with your skin—see? The alloy is designed to be flexible."
"What are they for? Do they mean something?"
"The ink sigil is the symbol of your birth house. Everyone gets that one when they reach adulthood. You don't get the gold sigil until your marriage has been arranged."
"Wait—you're married?" I said.
"Not yet. Just engaged." He grinned. "You sound surprised."
"You seem . . . young."
"I'm older than I look. I've had my ink sigil for nine years. I've had the gold one almost that long. I probably won't get married for another few years, though. That's pretty typical for us."
"Did you say your marriage was arranged?"
He nodded. "All Vardeshi marriages are. Well, you get the occasional love match, but those are incredibly rare. One in a thousand, maybe."
I was writing furiously. "Hang on. Okay, I've got that. Tell me more about the sigils."
"If you're marrying into a higher-ranked house, you take the symbol of that house. If not, you keep the symbol from your own house."
"Yours are the same," I observed.
"Takheri House is ranked pretty high."
"How many houses are there?" I began sketching the symbol in my notebook.
Zey put his hand flat on the table to give me a clearer view. "Nineteen ancient ones. There are probably thousands now, but everyone can trace their ancestry back to one of the Nineteen, so we still wear those sigils on our hands. Takheri House is one of the originals," he added with an unmistakable note of pride.
"Okay, so when you greet someone, you look at their sigils and they look at yours, and then what happens?"
"The person from the lower-ranked house lowers their hand to their side, to show their palm. The person from the higher-ranked house closes their hand into a fist. That completes the greeting. If your houses are equally ranked, or you're from the same house, no one has to lower their hand. Unless one of you married into that rank and one didn't."
"So someone who married into Takheri House would have to defer to you, if they were from a lower . . . birth house?"
"That's right."
"Even your wife?"
"Even my wife."
I frowned. "Isn't that a little divisive?"
"Not really. Not now, anyway. A thousand years ago, when the caste system was still in place, your sigil dictated your entire life. They don't have that kind of power anymore. Now they're just glorified ornaments. And the ritual is just a social reflex. A relic."
I looked down at my own unmarked right hand. "So what about me? What am I supposed to do?"
"Just drop your hand for everyone," said Zey. "You don't have a birth house, so you're unranked. You defer to everyone." He paused. "Oh, sigils. That's not going to be a problem, is it? You're not offended by that? Because it really is just a custom."
"I'm not offended," I assured him. "Honestly, it makes things simpler. I don't have to try to memorize nineteen different symbols overnight. And anyway, I'm already deferring to everyone. I'm a novi. That's what we do, right?"
"That's right." He sounded relieved.
"A minute ago, when you were upset, you said, 'Oh, sigils.' Is it a curse word?"
"Yeah. We have a lot of swears about sigils. Sigils and emblems, by the nineteen ancient sigils, sigils of our forefathers . . . Come to think of it, they're all about sigils."
"Those are swears?" I said. "They don't sound very . . . profane."
"I guess it's all in the way you say them," Zey said.
At noon I went to the dining hall for lunch. Kylie intercepted me just inside the door and dragged me over to our usual table. She was practically vibrating with excitement. "Scott was wrong!" she crowed. "They are fairies! I saw that little Pixie you've been talking to. He's adorable! I want one! I want to scoop him up and carry him around in my pocket. Do you think if you finish out the year you get to keep him?"
I laughed. "I don't know about that, but I do think they sent him on purpose. They must have been worried I'd be scared off after the interview. Now I know there's one person on the ship who's friendly."
I went to assemble my lunch, tote bag tucked securely under my arm. I felt intensely protective of my few pages of scribbled notes. When I returned with a full tray, Rajani had joined Kylie at the table. "How was the exam?" I asked.
Rajani shrugged. "Fine."
Kylie dipped a French fry in mayonnaise. "Ours were fine. Scott thinks he completely tanked his."
"Where is he?" I looked around.
"Probably off brooding on his own somewhere. He said he was sick of listening to people talk about Simon."
"Who's Simon?" I said blankly.
"The prodigy—I told you about him, remember? He's on Level Two of the TrueFluent program."
"Already?" It had taken me a month to reach Level Two. I knew for a fact that none of the other Strangers was anywhere near it. "Still, the first level is the easiest, and he's had two weeks—"
"One week," said Rajani. "He arrived last Friday."
"Oh. That's . . . really fast."
Kylie said around the straw of her soft drink, "Scott thinks he's going to wreck the rankings. Push everyone else down. Someone's going to get stuck on an orbit crawler who wasn't before, and Scott thinks it's going to be him."
"What do you guys think?"
Rajani speared a tomato with her fork. "Honestly? I think that if this Simon is as good as everyone says, he deserves to be at the top."
"Yeah," said Kylie. "Who cares? We're all still on the List."
"What time do the rankings come out?" I asked.
"Eight o'clock," Rajani said. "They're posting them outside the dining hall."
"On paper? That's old-school."
"Hackers," Kylie said succinctly.
I glanced around the dining hall again. "So is he here? Simon?"
Rajani scanned the other tables. "I don't see him."
"He's probably polishing off Level Two." Kylie stirred the ice at the bottom of her cup. "You should meet us tonight. See where we're placed. You must be stopping off at a couple of starhavens. Who knows, maybe you'll cross paths with one of us on your way home."
"I hope so." I wondered if the words rang as hollow as they felt. They ought to be true, but they weren't. I didn't want to cross paths with another human—not even a friend. I wanted my year among the Vardeshi to be whole and intact. I wanted them all to myself. I knew the impulse was selfish, and probably irrational. It was impossible to imagine how I would feel six months from now. I might be desperate for the company of another human.
I raced through my meal. As I began stacking dishes on my tray, Kylie grinned at me. "Leaving already? Go on, then. He's more interesting than us anyway."
"I just have so many questions—"
Rajani waved at me. "Go. You can tell us all about it tonight. Eight o'clock."
"I'll be there," I promised.
When Zey entered the conference room, I stood up and tried out my Vardeshi salute. To my dismay, he laughed before returning the greeting. "What is it?" I said. "Did I do it wrong?"
"No, it's just—strange. It's like greeting a child. I keep looking for a sigil that isn't there."
"So tomorrow morning, when I meet everyone else on the Pinion, they're all going to laugh at me? That's not exactly the first impression I had in mind."
"It'll be fine. They're going to be completely thrown by you anyway—I was. Most of them have never seen a human at close range, let alone one on our ship, wearing our uniform, speaking our language—which, by the way, you do much better than anyone said."
"Really?" I said eagerly. "What did they tell you?"
"Not much, actually. Khavi Vekesh just said he'd chosen a human, a female, and that you were 'the best of the lot.' He said it like he didn't think much of the selection. Saresh said he thought you'd fit in well. He was the one who said you spoke a little Vardeshi. But he didn't tell us you were fluent. I think he wanted to let you impress the others."
"That was nice of him."
"I told you, he's a good hadazi. He's already looking out for you."
"And what about Suvi Takheri?"
"Hathan? He didn't say anything."
"What does that mean?"
"It doesn't mean anything. It's just Hathan."
"I don't think he liked me," I said. "He told the khavi to pick someone else."
"He was probably just worried that you'd be out of your depth. They didn't interview very many civilians." Zey paused to see if any more questions were forthcoming, then said brightly, "All right, what's next?"
"Next I think you need to tell me something about the Fleet. Is it military? Commercial? Who runs it? How does it work?"
Zey explained that the Vardeshi Stellar Fleet was essentially the merchant marine of their vast territories, facilitating commerce and transport on a massive scale. Nearly every ship that traveled in Vardeshi space was a Fleet ship, save for a handful of privately owned vessels and the small military force operated by the Echelon. Fleet ships were crewed by civilians and served civilian ends.
"Lots of our ships are passenger craft. Some carry cargo, some are mobile research stations. Most of them do a little bit of everything. Our territory is constantly expanding. Starhavens and colonies need resupplying. People need to get from one place to another. Crew jobs are competitive. There's always work, it pays well, and if you're young and want to travel, it's the only way. Cross-system tickets aren't cheap. 'You'll reach the stars, your credit bill won't'—that's one of the Fleet slogans."
Zey told me that although crew positions were technically civilian in nature, the training regimen was intensive and highly standardized. The first and largest Fleet Institute was located on Vardesh Prime. He and his brothers had attended that one, along with most of the Pinion's crew, but there were a half-dozen other Institutes scattered across Vardeshi space. Institute training comprised three years of instruction in everything from celestial navigation to computer programming to systems repair.
"Everyone learns the basics of every discipline. After graduation, you're assigned to your first ship. You spend a year or two as a novi. During that time, you intern in one field and then another until you choose your specialization. Then you find a mentor who's willing to take you on as an apprentice. For a few years, you follow your mentor from one ship to another. Eventually you're ready to work on your own. Assuming you stay in the Fleet, that is. Lots of people find that after five or ten years of floating around in the dark, they're ready to settle on solid ground."
"The rank system seems pretty hierarchical for a civilian organization," I said.
Zey nodded. "It has to be. Long-range space travel is incredibly stressful. Confined spaces, fraying tempers. The early years of expansion were chaotic. We learned pretty quickly that discipline has to be absolute or it's worthless. The Fleet may be civilian, but it's run like a military. Don't forget that. If you're given an order, follow it. Don't question, don't argue, don't think you have a better idea. They teach you at the Institute that a good novi is punctual, respectful, and obedient, and human or not, that's what Khavi Vekesh will expect. What's wrong?"
While he'd been talking, I had slumped slowly forward until my forehead came to rest on the desk. Without moving, I said, in English, "This is impossible."
"Impossible means . . . it cannot be done?"
"That's right. It cannot be done. Not by me." I switched back to our improvised argot. "The only reason I can understand anything you say is that you're willing to say it three times in Vardeshi and once in English. And I know I'm still missing things. Khavi Veketh—"
"Vekesh," Zey said patiently.
"Oh my God," I groaned.
The sight of my distress sobered Zey for a moment. He reached out, very shyly, and placed his hand on top of mine. His touch was cool and light. I stared down at the elongated fingers and the double sigil stamped dark and gold against the milky blue-white of his skin. Is that it? I thought distractedly. The first touch of an alien hand? It sounded like the title of yet another overwrought Vardrama. I would have watched that one in high school, but I would have pretended that I didn't. I fought down the hysterical laugh, or shriek, that was rising in my throat.
"Eyvri," said Zey in careful English. "Hear me. It will be fine. You will be fine."
"You just told me I'm supposed to be punctual, polite, and obedient! I don't know how to be any of those things. We ran out of time to talk about the Vardeshi clock. You spent the whole morning teaching me manners, but all I remember is seventeen different ways to insult someone who outranks me. And I can't obey orders I don't understand. It's not going to be fine. It's going to be awful."
"This was only the first day. We have many more things to talk about, true, but we will talk about them. We can talk to each other. That is what matters."
"But I have so much to learn. And it's going to take me so long. And Khavi—whatever his name is—will probably shove me out an airlock before I have time to learn anything."
"Time," said Zey, "is a resource we have in very great supply. Don't worry. Just wear your uniform, bring your"—he gestured—"writing book, and be ready to work hard. That will be enough. And," he added with a gleam of irrepressible humor, "perhaps . . . practice saying 'Vekesh.'"