“As always.” Josh waved toward the front window. There was the holotank and the People’s display device, which Vee had come to think of as “the holobubble.” Next to them, waiting patiently on her perches, sat T’sha.
At first, D’seun had spoken to them, along with T’sha. The ambassadors were always accompanied by at least three others who were all called “engineers” and seemed to be responsible for looking after the kite and the translators, as well as making sure their imagers were holding up.
After the third day, however, it had just been T’sha.
Where are the others? Vee had asked the first time she’d woken up and T’sha had been out there alone.
A compromise has been reached, T’sha said. D’seun has left me with the translators while he returns to speak to our…wait…colleagues. T’sha still had to pause frequently to argue with her translator on interpretation. At first, Vee thought T’sha had meant that figuratively, but now she knew better. The things controlling the holobubble were, in some way, alive.
Why did you need to compromise on that? Vee had asked.
T’sha had inflated, just a little, a gesture Vee had come to learn meant a mild emotion, such as annoyance. A full inflation was full emotion, such as anger or happiness. Vee wondered if they played poker on Home.
It is politics, T’sha had told her, and I think I should not discuss that yet.
You have politics too, do you? asked Vee.
Yes, we decidedly have politics too.
I’m sorry.
T’sha deflated, sinking, and causing her crest to flutter around her wings. So am I.
T’sha’s engineers had rigged her what Vee understood was their version of a tent—a couple of balloons floating up near the cloud line, where T’sha was most comfortable. They were held in place by long brown tethers that appeared to have rooted themselves to the ground.
It turned out that the People didn’t sleep. Every few hours, T’sha would vanish to “refresh,” a physical activity that Vee couldn’t quite make out but seemed to combine meditation and afternoon tea. Each trip took about an hour. Except for that, T’sha was always there and ready to talk.
Mostly it was Vee who talked back. They talked about T’sha’s older brother, who seemed to be either a contracts lawyer or a court recorder, and about her little sisters, who were still in school. They talked about Vee’s five siblings, and her parents and grandparents back home, and about the costs and problems of caring for a family, especially when you were the one with the most resources. They talked about marriage as a basis for the family structure, and it turned out T’sha was expecting to have several marriages arranged for her all at once, which Vee found delightfully practical. She had a hard time explaining courtship, romance, love, and individual, serial monogamy. T’sha thought it sounded like a lot of work.
They talked about seeing the stars, which T’sha had done only once in her life. She was fascinated to hear about living in a world where you could see them every night. They talked about cities, and Vee was stunned to hear T’sha speak about hers with the same words she used to talk about her family or her future lovers, until Vee remembered and quoted some old Sandburg poems about Chicago and New York. T’sha was fascinated by the poetry, and soon Vee was reading her Keats, Angelou, Shakespeare, Dickenson, and all the haiku she could dredge up. In return, T’sha told Vee stories of the ancient Teacher-Kings and riddles that had no answers, to which Vee replied with some Lewis Carroll and then had to explain what ravens and writing desks actually were….
And on and on and on. They showed each other pictures of their worlds like proud grandparents showing off images of the latest addition to the family. Thanks to Josh putting himself through serious sleep deprivation, the humans had added two new lasers to their projector and they now had full color capabilities. T’sha asked Vee to show her things that were beautiful, and Vee did her best—great buildings, fine statues, forests, the Grand Canyon, and then she found that many times she had to explain what was beautiful about them.
T’sha showed her Ca’aed, the canopy, the clouds thick with things that might have been fish and might have been birds, and Vee did not have to be taught that these were beautiful.
For everything she learned, Vee was left with a thousand more questions. It felt like the only thing she knew for sure was that she liked this winged person who flew through a world that would kill Vee dead, and still had brothers and sisters and a home she loved, and a wicked sense of humor.
It was dizzying. It was magnificent. It was exhausting. Vee slept like the dead at the end of her shifts and was only vaguely aware of what else was going on in the scarab.