The Color of Distance

Chapter 28

Floki fought the urge to claw off the restricting suit he was wearing. He felt as if he were being smothered. Concentrate on what’s going on around you, he told himself sternly. This is important. Eerin had gotten permission for half a dozen Tendu to visit the humans’ Survey ship. It was fascinating, though the e-suits kept them from saying much. He had to talk to the others through the clear coverings over their faces, so it was hard to understand what they were saying.

Moki looked up at Eerin, who was also wearing an uncomfortable e-suit. Her height and her obvious ease in the confining suit made her stand out from the Tendu. He wondered how she managed it. The other humans escorted them down a long cave called a hallway. It was like a hollow tree trunk turned on its side, with doors opening on two sides instead of all four like the trunk of a na tree. It was lit with hot yellow globes of light, much harsher and brighter than the cool blue light of glow-fungus. Moki paid close attention, trying to memorize every detail of the humans’ ship.

Humans peered out of the doorways at them. They looked like Eerin, but they had hair all over the tops of their heads, and little furry caterpillars over their eyes. Some of the male humans had hair on their chins and over their mouths. Moki wondered why some males chose to grow beards and others removed them. Did it reflect some kind of status? Was it an indication of their willingness to mate?

The humans looked either pink and excited or different shades of embarrassed-looking brown. They were hugely tall, even bigger than Eerin. One of them, a female named Laurie, followed Eerin everywhere. She had bright orangey-red hair that looked like it couldn’t decide whether to be frightened or angry. At one point, she knelt down and let Moki touch it. He could feel almost nothing through the thick gloves of the e-suit, but it seemed short and bristly. She made a sound like the one Eerin made when she was happy or amused. Eerin called it a laugh. Moki decided that he liked Laurie, despite her funny-colored hair.

They stopped outside the doorway to Eerin’s room. It was different from the other doorways, thicker, and more imposing. Laurie opened the door for them. Eerin led three of the Tendu into a small room and closed the door. A red light came on, then turned green again. When the door opened, the room was empty except for Eerin. Moki’s ears rose.

“The others* are inside, waiting for us. This is an airlock, like the door we used to enter the ship,” Juna told him.

She motioned the rest of the Tendu in. The room was small, and dimly lit. It was a pleasant change from the harsh yellow light of the hallway. Eerin closed the door, and a red light came on. She took off her helmet and gloves.

“All right,” she said in small patterns on her scalp. “You can take off your suits now.”

Eerin removed her suit, then moved to help the others off with theirs. As soon as their suits were off, they flickered with bright bursts of relieved talk. Moki took his suit off last.

“Oh, it’s wonderful to get out of that thing!” he said. “Did you see those funny lights in the corridor? And all that hair on the humans’ faces. And the—” Moki stopped himself with a ripple of laughter; he was babbling too.

Then Eerin opened the inner door, and they were in her room. It was cold, dry, and too bright. All the surfaces were shiny and wet-looking. Moki reached out to touch the wall. He was surprised to find that it was dry. Ukatonen wandered into a smaller room and started playing with the silvery deathstone knobs. All of a sudden he jumped and chittered in surprise.

“Water’s coming out,” he said. “It’s hot!”

Moki followed Eerin into the room. She twisted one of the deathstone knobs and the water stopped. The other Tendu crowded around as she turned knobs and pushed buttons and showed how the bathroom worked. The other Tendu took turns in the shower, letting the hot water spray down their backs. It felt good, although the water had something in it that stung his eyes.

Finished with his shower, Moki wandered out into the larger room and began looking around. He heard a rustling and saw a small white animal, covered with hair, inside a box made of shiny deathstone. It sniffed curiously at his wet hands, completely unafraid. He opened the door of the box. The animal sat and watched him as he slowly moved his hand toward it. It seemed neither afraid nor angry. Moki scooped it up gently and placed it over his allu. It jumped and squeaked as his spur pierced its skin, then relaxed bonelessly on his arm as he tasted its cells. It tasted like Eerin, only different. It was absolutely fascinating. He took it over to the others. They crowded around it curiously, eager to taste the small creature’s cells themselves.

Eerin came over to see what they were looking at. When she saw the animal sprawled on Moki’s arm, she turned a horrified shade of orange.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Please, Moki, put him back exactly the way you found him. If he dies, I may never get out of quarantine.”

Moki made sure that the animal was unchanged and unharmed; then he gently lifted it off his allu and placed it back inside the box while the other Tendu watched. In a little while it woke up, sniffed itself thoroughly, and began to walk. It was a little groggy, but otherwise it seemed fine.

A ripple of relief passed over Eerin. “Good,” she said. “I’m glad it’s all right. If it died, it might keep me from getting to go out into the ship without a suit.”

“What does the animal have to do with your suit?” Garitonen asked.

“They put the mouse in here to see if I would make it sick. If it stays healthy, then I’m safe to let out among the other humans.”

“Why?” Lalito wanted to know.

“When Anitonen’s sitik found me, I was dying. The world was killing me. I was allergic to substances in pollen and in the mold and fungi spores in the air. Those strange substances made my body fight so hard that it threw itself out of harmony. My breathing passages were so swollen, I couldn’t breathe. I was having convulsions. We humans are allergic to every living world but our own. The other humans are afraid that I will make them sick the same way, because I’ve been here so long.”

“We could fix them,” Moki suggested.

Eerin shook her head. “They won’t let you. They’re afraid of linking.”

“Besides,” Ukatonen said, “we should wait until we understand the humans better.”

Just then there was a strange, high-pitched noise. Eerin picked up something and held it to her ear. She began to make human sound speech into the thing, pausing occasionally to listen. Moki thought he recognized the word “Tendu.” Then she stopped talking and put the object down.

“That was Dr. Wu. The people who study the Tendu are waiting to meet you. We should go and see them.”

Moki’s ears lifted. “What do you mean? Dr. Wu is too big to fit in there.”

Eerin laughed. “No, Moki. Dr. Wu is somewhere else. He has a telephone, just like that one, and he uses it to carry his speech to me.”

“Oh, like a radio,” Anitonen remarked.

“Exactly,” Eerin agreed. “Now we have to put on our suits again so that we can meet more of my people.”

Regretfully, they entered the small room, and put on their suits. Then they followed Eerin to another room where a crowd of humans were waiting to meet them. Moki shook hands with dozens of humans, feeling awkward and rrmffled in his suit. He could recognize a few of the humans’ sound speech words: his name, the term they used for his people, and their words for yes and no. One of the humans took out a flat rectangular object and sat in the corner watching the assembled people. She was doing something to the surface of the rectangle. Intrigued, Moki went over to see. The human was making pictures on the white surface of the rectangle with a small stick. She held it out so he could see what she was doing.

Moki nodded, and handed the thing back. She drew on it, and as he watched, a shape emerged, a plant with a flower. She pointed to the plant and then to herself. Then she handed him the rectangle and the stick, pointing to him, and then to the rectangle.

Awkwardly he drew a rough version of his name sign. Then he drew “My name is Moki,” underneath in human skin speech. She replied with, “My name is Marguerite Mee.”

Soon they were drawing messages back and forth to each other. He would point at something and she would write the name for it. Underneath his uncomfortable suit, he would shape the word in human skin speech. The stick was called a pencil. The rectangle was called a pad. It was made of paper.

Each time the paper surface filled up, she flipped to an empty sheet beneath the one they had just been drawing on. It was a really interesting thing. His fingers twitched; he longed to touch and smell the paper.

“You will come visit us soon?” he asked.

Marguerite nodded.

“Bring pad?”

“We talk with pad again,” she drew in reply.

Eerin came over and rested a hand on Moki’s shoulder. Marguerite showed her the pad. Eerin nodded. Moki could see her skin turn deep green with approval. She picked up the pencil.

“Very good, Moki,” she drew in Tendu skin speech. “You’re learning a lot.” Her words seemed flat and unemotional on the paper, but he knew by the color of her face that she was pleased. She turned and said something in sound speech and everyone came over to see what he and Marguerite had done. The others, both Tendu and human, were impressed. More paper and pencils were produced. Soon everyone was busy writing back and forth. This was enjoyable, but it wasn’t helping Moki learn what he needed to know. He needed to get out, to see more of the ship.

“Where’s Bruce?” he asked Eerin.

“I don’t know, Moki,” she said. “He wouldn’t be here. He has a different atwa.”

“Can we go find him?”

Eerin looked at the others, who were busy with pencils and paper. Another knot of Tendu and humans were clustered around a computer. “All right, Moki, I don’t think they need me for a while. Let’s go.”

Eerin picked up a pad and pencil, then beckoned to her friend Laurie, and the three of them set off down the hall. They walked past the food place and through a door, and down a long passageway with steps in it. They came out in a noisier, slightly darker passageway. Eerin talked to the first person they saw. He pointed down the hall. Eerin nodded and they set off again. They entered a room full of deathstone pipes, and mysterious, big stone objects. Somewhere there was a deep throbbing noise. It sounded as if they were inside the heart of a giant beast. Eerin spoke to a woman, who nodded and went off.

“She’s going to get Bruce,” Eerin wrote on the pad. “We’ll wait here.”

At last the woman returned with Bruce. He was liberally covered with dirt, and was wiping his hands on a piece of cloth.

He said something to Eerin, then bent and shook Moki’s hand.

“Hello, Moki,” he said in human sound speech.

“Hello, Bruce,” he wrote on the pad, pleased that he could understand the human’s greeting. “It’s good to see you. Will you show me the ship?”

Bruce looked at Eerin; she nodded. He took one of Moki’s hands and Eerin took the other. Laurie followed them. Bruce showed them the machine that circulated the air through the ship, the main computer for the ship in its mesh of cables, and many more rooms full of strange machines and people. Moki paid close attention to where they were going; he didn’t want to get lost the next time he visited the ship.

Then Bruce led them down some stairs and through another hallway, and opened a door into a large room. He led them over to a wide window covered with the same clear stuff that covered the top of the raft. They looked out at a water-filled cave inside the ship. Inside it were many strange human machines. Bruce pointed at one that looked like a giant deathstone insect.

“That’s called a flyer. It flies like a big bird,” Bruce wrote. “We climb inside it, and then it leaves out that big door there. Then we fly north and land at another floating island. We get on a bigger plane, called a shuttle, which takes us to the sky raft.”

Moki looked at the flyer, trying to memorize every detail.

“Could I ride in the flyer?” Moki asked. “Could I see the shuttle place? I would like to see the shuttle climb up to the stars.”

Bruce shook his head. “No,” he said, then used human sound speech Moki didn’t understand yet.

“You need to stay with your people, Moki,” Eerin wrote. “The shuttle place is far away, in the north. It’s too cold for the Tendu there.”

“If you were with me it would be all right.”

“No, Moki, it simply isn’t possible,” she wrote in Tendu skin speech. “I can’t get permission to take you there.”

Moki shrugged, a gesture he had learned from her, and a useful one in this suit.

“We should go back now,” Eerin wrote. “It’s getting late. They may need me, and Bruce has work to do.”

“Goodbye, Bruce,” Moki wrote. “Thank you for showing me the flyer.”

Bruce shook Moki’s hand. “It was fun. I hope I see you again.”

Moki nodded and rippled blue, then turned and took Eerin’s hand. He had learned a lot of important things today. Together with Laurie they headed back upstairs. Moki paid close attention to the way back. It was important. Under his suit, where no one could see his words, he kept repeating, “I will go with you. I will go with you.”