'What did she do to you?' Yalnis whispered.
Zorar took a deep breath, and drew up the gauzy hem of her shirt.
She carried the same companions as when she and Yalnis first met: five, the same number Yalnis had accepted. Yalnis would have expected someone of Zorar's age and status to take a few more. Five was the right number for a person of Yalnis's age and minor prosperity.
'You noticed this scar,' Zorar said, tracing an erratic line of pale silver that skipped from her breastbone to her navel, nearly invisible against her translucently delicate skin. 'And I shrugged away your question.'
'You said it happened when you walked on the surface of a planet,' Yalnis said. 'You said a flesh-eating plant attacked you.'
'Yes, well, one did,' Zorar said, unabashed. 'But it didn't leave that scar.' She stroked the chin of her central little face. Just below her navel, the companion roused itself, blinking and gnashing its teeth. It neither stretched up aggressively nor retreated defensively. Yalnis had never seen its face; like the others, it had remained nearly concealed, only the top of its head showing, while Yalnis and Zorar made love. Yalnis had thought the companions admirably modest, but now she wondered if their reaction had been
fear.
Zorar pressed her fingers beneath the companion's chin, scratching it gently, revealing its neck.
The scar did not stop at Zorar's navel. It continued, crossing the back of the companion's neck and the side of its throat. 'Seyyan claimed she behaved as she'd been taught. As she thought was proper, and right. She was horrified at my distress.'
She stroked the companion's downy scalp. It closed its eyes.
Her voice hardened.
'I had to comfort her, she acted so distraught./ had to comforther. '
'She accused me of teasing and deceiving her,' Yalnis said. 'And shekilled Zorargul.'
Under Zorar's gentle hand, the scarred companion relaxed and slept, its teeth no longer bared.
'Perhaps she's learned efficiency,' Zorar whispered, as if the companion might hear and understand her. 'Or ... mercy.'
'Mercy!' Yalnis exclaimed. 'Cruelty and sarcasm, more likely.'
'She killed Zorargul,' Zorar said. 'This one, mine, she left paralyzed. Impotent.'
Yalnis imagined: Zorargul, cut off from her, unable to communicate with either pleasure or memory, parasitic, its pride destroyed. She gazed at Zorar with astonishment and pity, and she flushed with embarrassment. She had felt piqued when Zorar created Zorargul with a secondary little face, instead of with her first companion. Now Yalnis knew why.
Yalnis laid her hand on Zorar's. Her own fingers touched the downy fur of the damaged companion. Involuntarily, she shuddered. Zorar glanced away.
Could I have kept Zorargul? Yalnis wondered. No matter how much I loved Zorar ...
She thought Zorar was the bravest person she had ever met.
Would it be right to say so? She wondered. Any more right than to ask the questions I know not to ask: How could you—? Why didn't you—?
'What do you think, now?' Zorar said.
'I'm outraged!' Yalnis said.
'Outraged enough to tell?'
'I told you.'
'You confessed to me. You confessed the death of Zorargul, as if it were your fault. Do you believe Seyyan, that you deceived her? Are you outraged enough to accuse her, instead of yourself?'
Yalnis sat quite still, considering. After a long while, she patted Zorar's hand again, collected herself, and brushed her fingertips across Zorar's companion's hair with sympathy. She kissed Zorar quickly and returned to her own ship.
Preparations, messages of welcome to old acquaintances, greetings to new ones, occupied her. Zorar's question always hovered in the back of her mind, and sometimes pushed itself forward to claim her attention:
What do you think, now?
While she prepared, the ships moved closer, extruded connections, grew together. Yalnis's ship became the center, till the colony obscured her wide vistas of space and clouds of stars and glowing dust. She felt her ship's discomfort at being so constricted; she shared it. She felt her ship's exhilaration at intense genetic exchange: those sensations, she avoided.
She continued to ignore Seyyan, but never rescinded her invitation. Yalnis's ship allowed no direct connection to Seyyan's glittering craft. Seyyan remained on the outskirts of the colony, forming her own connections with others. The ships floated in an intricately delicate dance of balance and reciprocity. As the people exchanged greetings, reminiscences, gifts, the ships exchanged information and new genetic code.
Most of their communications were cryptic. Oftentimes even the ships had no idea what the new information would do, but they collected and exchanged it promiscuously, played with it, rearranged it, tested it. The shimmery pattern of rainbow reflections spread from Seyyan's craft's skin to another, and another, and the pattern mutated from solid to stripes to spots.
Yalnis's ship remained its customary reflective silver.
'The ships have chosen a new fashion,' Yalnis said.
'True,' her ship said. Then, 'False.'
Yalnis frowned, confused, as her ship displayed a genetic sequence and its genealogy tag. Yalnis left all those matters to the ship, so she took a moment to understand that her ship rejected the pattern because it descended from Seyyan's craft. Her ship led her further into its concerns, showing how many new sequences it had considered but rejected and stopped taking in when it encountered Seyyan's tag.
'Thank you,' Yalnis said.
'True.'
That was a long conversation, between ship and human. She was glad it had ended without misunderstanding.
The ship did understand 'Thank you,' Yalnis believed, and Yalnis did understand its response of appreciation.
Maybe Seyyan was right, Yalnis said to herself. Maybe Iam naive. I feared direct assault, but never thought of a sneak attack on my ship.
She wondered if her encounter with Seyyan had changed the balance between the two ships, or if their estrangement had its own source. She wondered if she should try to exclude Seyyan's craft from the colony. But that would be an extreme insult, and Seyyan had more friends than Yalnis, and many admirers. She was older, wealthier, more experienced and accomplished, more limber of voice and of body.
'I trust your judgment,' she said, remaining within the relative safety of simple declarative statements. She would leave decisions about Seyyan's craft to her own ship.
'True.'
The shimmering new fashion continued to extend from Seyyan's to other craft, each vying with the next to elaborate upon her pattern.
Seyyan's popularity created a second center for the colony, decreasing the stability of the delicate rotation, but there was nothing to be done about it. It was ships' business, not people's.
Yalnis was ready. She made her last decisions, dressed in intricate lace, took a deep, shaky breath, and welcomed her guests.
Zorar arrived first, too well-established to concern herself with being fashionably late. Yalnis embraced her, grateful for her presence. Zorar kissed her gently and handed her a sealed glass ampoule.
'For your daughter's vineyard,' she said. 'I think the culture's improved even over what I gave your mother, when she launched you and your ship.'
'Thank you,' Yalnis said, honored by the gift. She put it on the central table, in a place of distinction.
More guests arrived; an hour passed in a blur of greetings, reunions, introductions, gifts. People brought works of art, stories, and songs. They brought ship silk as refined as fog, seeds of newly adapted plants, embryos of newly discovered creatures, unique cultures of yeast and bacteria. Yalnis accepted them all with thanks and gratitude. Her daughter would be well and truly launched; her ship would be rich, and unique.
