Greykey Exercise One:
The Rain on the Roof
Keylittn:
My shift in Transport was over. Spider’s still had two and a half hours to go, at which time he’d promised to take me to a matinee at the Starhall Theater, an interest we seemed to have in common.
I was glad that Tal Diamond had gone off to the Kestrel for there was business to take care of. Two and a half hours would not be enough, not even to make a good beginning, but I might start to get my feet wet. Anyway, my survival as a Greykey required that it no longer be put off.
I entered my room, pulled off my boots, and tossed them in a comer. The quarters were spartan—narrow bed, chair, a small table for my personal books. No provision for clothes, but perhaps Outsiders weren’t expected to come with much or stay for long.
I turned off the lights, sat on the floor in the middle of the room, and began the Exercise of Incorporation.
I began with the physical: Imagined being 180 centimeters tall; imagined being male in a familiar sense, so that one was aware of it but didn’t have to think about it; imagined walking with Tal’s walk, how that felt, what it meant. He walked very quietly.
Imagined being without kin. Imagined looking like one’s fellows but not being of them. Imagined being under sentence of death outside the Three Cities.
Aphean, Aphean … how to deal with that. This was tricky. I had been many people in my time, but all of them had been people. Even the wolves in the hills are people, part of a continuum of clan, with postures of defense and attack that are clearcut.
After an hour I got up and paced about the quarters, still meditating. I took care to walk very quietly. It was a pity I didn’t know more of his childhood—usually that was not necessary; the pattern existed, how it came into being was interesting but irrelevant. Clues would be helpful here, though. I was working without markers. They expected too much of me at home….
Intrusion of self. Bury it.
And I was still in the trap of objectifying … face it, cadet, because you are reluctant to enter Tal’s viewpoint. It would not be a pleasant universe, but it did have points of congruity with my own, and it was to these points I must fasten myself and revolve the world at an angle until I was in that other universe.
I sat down again and pressed my hands against the floor. Sentence of death. Different species. People were, on the whole, hostile and unpredictable, so where could correct data be found? The Republic … dangerous. And over here, in one small comer, were the handful of people whose interests coincided with one’s own. A pitiful few. If not for them, social life would be unbearable. I considered the paradoxes involved; Adrian must be one, Spider another; where did that put an unknown Greykey?
And what of Belleraphon? I tested the name, briefly imagined killing him, how I would react emotionally. The vision had a pointless feel to it. But here was an interesting scenario: To be surrounded always by full humans, unreliable and deceitful but not even predictable enough to be motivated by their best interests … Perhaps … perhaps he wanted to find Belleraphon just to ask him some questions. Just to talk to him. Just to see what the future might hold for an Aphean with every intention of growing older.
I became aware of a pounding at the door—Spider, come to get me for the theater. I sighed, got up, and turned on the lights.
But probably I was way off base.
Chapter 12
I have something more to do than feel.
CHARLES LAMB
Tal’s stateroom aboard the Kestrel was terribly correct by Republic standards: The walls were off-white, the table was off-white, and the bed sheets, in a fit of eccentricity, were sand-colored. He remembered someone explaining to him long ago, “The Republic gets nervous when people have too good a time.” Tal cut that association off; the past was painful and irrelevant, a drag on clear thinking. He did not choose to indulge it.
On his papers the “reason for travel” was listed as “pleasure.” Which didn’t really explain why he was scheduled to return to Baret Station so quickly, but also didn’t necessitate the creation of a false business connection that wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny.
He stowed his things in the cabin and headed for the dining salon. Whoever the SP was on this voyage, he’d want a look at any new passenger, and staying out of sight would only cause attention. The Secret Police were a nosy lot. “Lunch” was the meal they claimed to be serving at this time; by Tal’s internal clock it was closer to midnight.
He slid onto a bench beside a man in a brown jumpsuit. There were a few obvious Empire passengers sitting here and there, but it would probably be better not to sit by them—the SP might think he knew them, and one never knew what got under the skin of an SP.
He glanced over at the crew tables, searching for Cyr Vesant’s contact. Nobody fit the description. A group of senior officers sat with passengers at the other end of his own table; to be safe he looked them over, too. Nothing. He pulled the cover off his “lunch”—preconstructed meatloaf and a baked apple, all produced by Intercorp. He ate slowly. Ten minutes into the meal there must have been a shift change; crewmembers started filing out and new ones came in and pulled out benches, laughing and digging happily into their food. The Diamond had spoiled him, apparently, when it
