Meru, page 11
“That’s terrible,” Jayanthi said. “Tag that with sympathy and outrage. I saw on your profile that you’ve been alone since you were ten, but I didn’t know all the details. Seems like it’s all worked out, though, right? Now you’re the pilot your maker designed you to be. Zie should’ve had more patience.”
Vaha took some solace in Jayanthi’s more upbeat tone. At least zie had distracted her from her own melancholy, though it had transferred onto zirself. Zie tried to match her earlier unhappy way of speaking and said, “I’m much better than I used to be, but I’m nowhere close to the evolutionary leap my maker had hoped for. I very nearly cheated my way through the final exam for my pilot’s license.”
Jayanthi lifted her eyebrows. “You did what? Tell me more!”
So Vaha did, spilling the truth about Kaliyu’s help that zie had never intended to tell her or anyone else. When zie finished, zie waited and wondered if it would dim her opinion of zir.
“You think I should have a better opinion of humankind?” she said. “I think you need to have a better opinion of yourself. I think you were raised by a cruel maker, then befriended by an overachieving friend. You worked hard, and you passed. So what if Kaliyu had to show you what to do in an unorthodox way? There’s no shame in needing extra help. The true error is to give up, and you never did that. You should be proud of yourself.”
Vaha’s vents constricted, and zir tear ducts prickled. “You’re kind, but you don’t understand the world I live in. We’re meant to express our genes in novel ways. That’s the legacy a maker leaves to their child, the whole point of being an alloy. Wasn’t I your last choice of pilot? Kaliyu told me that zie rejected Hamsa’s offer.”
“Well, not quite last,” Jayanthi said in a tone zie couldn’t interpret. “But we were using scores to base our choices. If I’d known you, I would’ve chosen you first.”
“I don’t entirely believe you, but I appreciate the sentiment. It’s all right. I’m well aware of my own shortcomings. If we’re lucky, our work on Meru will get both of our names published in the Nivid alongside some marvelous new discovery. Then you’ll achieve one of your dreams.”
Jayanthi reached out and laid her hand against the entry valve. Vaha felt it as the barest bit of pressure inside zirself and almost shivered. Her touch had an intimacy that was out of proportion to the physical sensation. Zie found zirself wanting the two to match, to feel more of Jayanthi than zie ever could.
“Perhaps you’ll get to prove your maker wrong and fly perfectly in Meru’s atmosphere,” she said softly.
A smile spread across her face, transforming it like sunlight at a planet’s terminator. How had she come to understand zir so quickly?
You’re wrong about humans, Kaliyu. Some of them aren’t terrible at all.
By day ten, Jayanthi had tired of seeing the stars. At first, they had stunned her with their intensity. And the texture! She had no idea the light of the universe wove such a tapestry of patterns. The darkest place on Earth wouldn’t provide a view like Vaha’s window did. It was glorious! But she missed sunshine and blue skies and, if she were honest with herself, the company of Mina and her parents. Vaha was a good host and had been far kinder than she’d dared to expect, but zie was a disembodied voice. All she saw of her parents and Mina were two-dimensional images. She wanted a physical presence beside her.
She felt alone much of the time, with the exception of when she had to change clothes or use the toilet. Those made her acutely aware of her lack of privacy, and she’d turn off the cameras and microphone whenever she did either, but she kept them on the rest of the time. On Earth, her parents had made sure they could always communicate by instilling her with emtalk. She hadn’t realized how much she’d unconsciously relied on that. Even those brief periods of shutting out Vaha, the only living being around, filled her with stomach-knotting anxiety. If Vaha noticed, zie hadn’t said anything. Zie had asked about her desire for privacy at those times—yet another difference between alloys and humans—but zie hadn’t expressed any concern. Being an interplanetary pilot would necessitate years of solitude, something she couldn’t imagine tolerating.
Fifty-five days might feel like a blink to a long-lived alloy, but in her case, the first part of their long journey had already stretched into tedium. To pass the time, she’d brought along her genetic-engineering project. She might never work as a tarawan, but she enjoyed the art of designing a living being, and should she get access to Vaha’s womb, she needed a set of Meru-specific human chromosomes to simulate. Hearing that zie wanted zir name in the Nivid had buoyed her hopes. Like herself, Vaha’s true dream lay elsewhere—in proving zir multimodal piloting skills—but she suspected zie would take some satisfaction in registering a novel human genome in the knowledge repository.
“I don’t know anything about genetic engineering,” Vaha had said upon learning what she was doing. “If you were able to work with Hamsa, you must be quite proficient.”
Vaha kept making her blush with zir compliments. Was this how Anita felt about the alloy who patronized her art? Maybe being “kept by an alloy,” as Mina always put it, wasn’t so bad.
As considerate as Vaha had been, she hadn’t yet dared to ask about borrowing the womb. From zir stories of zir childhood, it was clear that the gift from zir maker was something zie treasured even if it had associations with unpleasant memories. Zie had shown only a polite, cursory interest in her project. Patience, she counseled herself. Think like an alloy. There’s plenty of time to earn Vaha’s trust.
“Jayanthi,” Vaha said, “can I have your attention for a little while?”
“Of course.” She slow-blinked and cleared away the data that had overlaid the viewing wall. “And please, call me Jaya. My full name sounds so formal.”
“Jaya,” Vaha said slowly, as if tasting the word. “After we land on Meru and set up our base camp, I’ll need to leave the planet. My body can’t handle being in gravity for the duration of our assigned stay. I have permission to create an incarn, but the womb will take a few weeks to grow one. I should start it soon. I was hoping you could help me choose a form that you like. It has to be one that I can express from my genes but that still leaves considerable variety.”
Did Vaha sound shy? Zie had picked up a lot of tonal cues and conversational pauses, but she hesitated to read too much into them. “I’d be happy to.”
“May I project into your visual?”
Jayanthi nodded and shifted her gaze to the blank viewing wall.
“I asked the womb to simulate some humanoid body types with images of what the finished form will look like. What do you think of this one?” Vaha asked.
An image of a naked male human with dark-brown skin filled the viewing wall.
“Oh!” Jayanthi flung a hand up to block the image, which superimposed her hand over the penis. She snatched it back to her side.
“My research indicated that it’s a good one for a pansexual like yourself. From your tone, I’ve chosen poorly. Perhaps this one?”
The display changed to a small-breasted female.
Her cheeks and ears grew hot. What could she say that Vaha would understand without offending zir?
“I’m not sensing much enthusiasm.”
“That’s not—”
“My apologies. Let me show you a few others.”
More images flashed by, some larger, some smaller, but all of them entirely nude.
“Vaha, stop, please!” Jayanthi closed her eyes, which did nothing other than change the backdrop for the figures to the inside of her eyelids. She severed their shared visual connection.
“What’s wrong?”
She gestured in the direction of the viewing wall. In a strangled voice, she said, “Can you please generate some images with clothes on?”
“But how will you judge their appeal? You’ll have to spend many months looking at my incarn. I want to make sure you find zir pleasing.”
“Vaha, do you know why humans wear clothes?”
“To maintain a comfortable body temperature,” zie said promptly.
“Did they teach you that in school?”
“No, I inferred it from watching human shows.” Zie sounded proud of zirself. “They’re a lot more entertaining than I expected, though I suspect I’m missing some context.”
“Maybe a bit. That’s sarcasm, by the way.” She blew out a breath. “Okay, how can I explain this in a way that makes sense to you? Humans also wear clothes for social reasons, and nudity . . . in certain contexts . . . is highly inappropriate.”
“Oh.”
A long pause. She’d figured out that those meant Vaha was looking up some information, so she waited quietly for a response.
“Oh! Oh no. I’m so sorry. I see what you mean now. That is not the effect I intended. I should’ve done more research before I showed you these. Alloys also engage in . . . intimacy, but we can regulate our hormones to control whether we want to. Both people express their desire first, then engage their . . . well, never mind. Please accept my apologies and pretend that you never saw those.”
Jayanthi bit her lip to keep from grinning, though her cheeks still burned. Poor Vaha sounded so embarrassed. Zie really had learned a lot from watching “human entertainment,” and zir speech patterns conveyed far more than they used to.
“I’ll erase it all from my mind,” she said.
“You can do that?”
She laughed. “Not literally.”
“I can load and unload information to my extended memory, but not my organic brain. I would’ve been jealous if humans could do that.”
“No need. I don’t even have extended memory.”
“Give me some time to generate more appropriate images of the incarns. Then we can talk about this again.”
“My parents have incarns that are androgynous in appearance, without any external sexual organs. They’re missing several internal organs, too, for that matter. Maybe you can find something like that?”
“I had hoped to inhabit a more traditional body so I could understand you better.” Zie sounded shy again. “Will that be a problem? Would it make you uncomfortable? Or do we not have enough food and supplies for a second person?”
“We should have plenty of food. My parents and Hamsa insisted on planning for worst-case scenarios. There’s probably enough to feed three of us. The real problem will be the air. The high oxygen levels in the atmosphere are likely to cause problems for a typical human body, so I’d worry about your health.”
“Hmm. All right. Let me see what the womb can do.”
“Could you—” She hesitated. Now she was the one feeling shy. “Could you grow an incarn that resembles your true face? I can sketch a human adaptation of it, if you’d like.”
Vaha was silent.
“I’m sorry. Did I offend you? Never mind—”
“You like my true face?”
She couldn’t parse zir tone at all. If only she could see and understand zir chromatophores, she’d have a better idea what zie was thinking.
“I like all of your true body,” she said, her cheeks growing impossibly warmer. Those nude images had flustered her. “It’s beautiful.”
Another long pause, then: “Thank you. Most alloys think I look strange because of my wing structure and light-colored eyes. Please, sketch what you’d like for my appearance. I’ll do my best to find a match within my DNA.”
Like every human with a good education, Jayanthi had learned various forms of art, including drawing and painting. She hadn’t enjoyed them as much as math and biology, but she had a competent hand. She started with Vaha’s profile image as a reference, then traced over it with her finger, adding layers to make zir appear more human. She drew in corneas around zir violet eyes and lids that matched zir blue-black skin. She created two heavy, dark brows and then a line of pale dots from their tips to the jawline for chromatophores. If Vaha could learn to vocalize speech for her sake, she wanted to improve at her phoric, at least the portions that her eyes could sense. She reshaped the chin and nose to have more pronounced shapes, gave the lips more fullness, and, as a final touch, added a mane of dark, tight curls that stopped at zir chin.
“It’s done,” she said aloud. She opened their thought-shared visual again. “Can you see it?”
She worried at her lower lip as she waited for Vaha’s reaction.
“I like it,” zie said softly. “What are those dots along the side of the face?”
“Chromatophores. I don’t know if you can put those in your incarn, but I’d like to learn more phoric while we’re on Meru. My parents never taught me much.”
“Interesting idea. I’ll see what the womb can do.”
By the time Jayanthi climbed into her sleep sack for the “night,” Vaha had a result. The image zie projected had a leaner face with higher cheekbones, but otherwise, it bore a fair resemblance to her drawing, including the chromatophores. Below the neck, a tunic draped over the rest of the figure with a flowing A-line. She couldn’t tell what lay under it, and she didn’t ask.
“It’s perfect,” she said. She fell asleep with Vaha’s human face watching over her.
Vaha decided to pause growing zir incarn as they neared the transit point. Zie had managed the umbilical that ran between zir body and the womb while also navigating thamity gradients, but zie had exhausted zirself in the process. A reality transit needed zir full attention, and zie wanted to be well rested for it. With only a few days lost, the incarn would still be ready by the time they arrived at Meru.
In spite of the incredibly awkward start, zie was glad zie had asked for Jayanthi’s input on the physiology. Zie could have opted for a mostly synthetic being with a token amount of zir biological material for continuity of consciousness, but that wouldn’t have provided Jayanthi with the human companionship she obviously needed. She wouldn’t admit to it, but zie could tell from the way her expression lit up whenever they spoke that she felt lonely. A mostly human form meant zie would see that joy with zir own eyes, something zie wanted to do, perhaps because of so much time spent observing her.
If zie’d kept in contact with Kaliyu and told zir about zir new attitude toward humans, no doubt zir friend would have been horrified. Good thing we aren’t friends anymore. It still hurt to think about their argument, that final image of Kaliyu’s back receding away as Veera’s had so many years before.
The instrumentation in zir belt pouch notified zir that they had almost arrived at heliopause. The Sun had dwindled to a speck, a spot brighter than the thousands of stars around it but otherwise unremarkable. The planets of the Solar System had disappeared entirely.
The last time Vaha had been this far from home, zie had all of zir Nishadas cohorts along, plus their reality-transit instructor. This time, zie would make the journey alone. Not truly alone. Jaya will be with me. But she was a passenger, not someone who would pop up beside zir in some light-years-distant system.
Before zie could make the transition, zie needed to course-correct so that zir path followed the leading edge of the solar wind.
“Jaya,” zie said softly.
She was deep in her genetics work—zie could tell by the way she kept the tip of her tongue between her lips—and zie hated to interrupt, but zie had no choice. “I’m afraid I need to ask you to take a sedative and secure yourself in your sleep sack.”
Her gaze flew to a speaker, then down to the window in zir belly. “We’re here?” she asked.
“Almost. I’ll make the transit in 2.4 hours.”
She slow-blinked a few times, then took the drug that would help her stay asleep.
“What’s it like?” she asked. “Will I feel anything before or after?”
“I don’t think so, but I don’t know how an RT feels to humans. Are you nervous?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “And curious and excited, too.”
“Try not to worry. I’ve made plenty of successful reality transits. It’s one thing I’m actually pretty good at.”
“I wish I could feel it happen,” she said. Her eyes drooped. “I wish.” Her words softened and blurred. “I could be. Like you.”
Vaha tried not to take Jayanthi’s words to heart. After all, she was a human. She didn’t know that zie wasn’t worth her admiration. But zie couldn’t help the Neptune-blue glow of embarrassment that crept across zir phores.
“Sleep well,” zie said softly.
Zie pulled the oblong womb in close and hugged it in zir arms before thrusting into a trajectory that followed the curve of the heliopause. Ahead, zie could see a small cluster of alloys—the emergency crew with their own womb and other medical equipment. Any pilots in transit would, like zirself, be traveling farther along the curve.
Once in position, zie began to enter the meditative state that would let zir perceive the universe’s underlying structure.
Close the eyes. Bring the body to rest. Relax each muscle, from the crown of the head to the tip of the tail.
Vaha had to repeat the relaxation process twice. Zie prodded at the source of unease and discovered Jayanthi at its center. Zie had never made transits with living cargo, especially one so precious. You’re good at this, zie reminded zirself. Zir instructor’s words came to mind: Accept any fear as natural. Let it sit with you as a companion. Do not resist its presence.
Once zie acknowledged the anxiety, the tension drained from zir muscles. Zie entered the first stage of a clear mind. Everyday sensory modalities—vision, pressure, temperature, radio—all faded away. Conscious thought focused on the slow pulse of zir heart deep within zir core, the steady trickle of electricity from zir wings, zir lungs filling with water, the pressure of hydrogen in zir vent bladders.
Zie moved on to the second state. Picture all consciousness shrinking, smaller than the self, smaller than every particle, until it’s but a point in space. Then, withdraw from thought and engage the shashtam. The sensory organ—unique to pilots and other massive beings—flared open inside Vaha. Embodiment is an illusion, a convenience for a being to comprehend itself. Nothing exists where everything exists.
Through the shashtam, zie could perceive the universe’s true, probabilistic, quantized nature. Space and time became irrelevant, illusory. Vaha meant nothing except for zir consciousness. Matter and energy united, dissolved into infinite combinations, every possibility superimposed, permanent and eternal.
