The Color of Distance

Chapter 30

Wu s heart attack did change things. Four days after it happened, Bremen called Juna into a staff meeting.

“After discussing the situation with doctors Wu and Baker, I have decided to lift your quarantine, and remove your security escort. I think you’ve proved that you are not a danger to the rest of the crew. I understand that Captain Edison has already assigned you a cabin. You may move into it immediately.”

Juna was stunned. “Th-Thank you, sir. I appreciate this,” she managed to say.

Bremen smiled. “I apologize for making you wait so long, Dr. Saari, and I thank you for your patience and understanding. You are released from duty for the rest of the day so that you can get settled in your new quarters.”

Juna spotted Dr. Baker as she emerged from the meeting.

“Dr. Baker,” Juna said, “I wanted to thank you for helping to get me released from quarantine.”

“It was no problem. There’s absolutely no evidence that you pose any danger to the crew. Actually, Dr. Saari, I’m the one who owes you some thanks. I had that spot on my bladder biopsied. It was a very small precancerous lesion, so small they had trouble finding it. They burned it out with a laser, and I wanted to ask you to thank Anitonen for me.”

“Of course, Dr. Baker,” Juna said. “I’d be happy to. I’m sure she’d be glad to check and make sure that the laser surgery got it all.”

“If you could ask her to do that, I’d appreciate it. This allu-a is a fascinating phenomenon.”

Juna went back to her quarantine quarters. Laurie stopped by as she was bundling up her few possessions and helped her carry them up to her new cabin. It was a large, airy room with two wide windows looking out on the coastline. Captain Edison had given her a cabin in the quarters reserved for high-level staff.

“Please thank the captain for me,” Juna asked Laurie.

There was a knock on the door. It was the captain.

“Looks like you get to thank her yourself,” Laurie said, slipping out the door. “See you later.”

“Captain,” Juna said. “I appreciate the room assignment.”

The captain shrugged. “This was one of the few cabins with a bathtub,” the captain told her. Dr. Baker mentioned that you suffered from the lack of humidity aboard ship, and I thought this might alleviate it somewhat. Besides, I thought you’d like the view.”

Juna smiled. “I do. Thank you, Captain Edison.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll leave you to get settled.”

Getting settled took only half an hour. She had very little to arrange: a few clothes and toiletries, the holograms her father had sent her, a polished na seed from Narmolom, a bamboo knife, and her computers. There was almost no material evidence of the time she had spent among the Tendu. The only changes were in her body and mind.

The bathtub was a Japanese-style ojuro, small, square, and deep enough for the water to reach up to her neck. With a sigh of relief, Juna started the water running, slipped out of her clothes, and stepped in. She turned a clear, bright turquoise as the hot water embraced her. Juna relaxed in the hot water and spent the next hour contemplating the joys of indoor plumbing and hot water.

It was nearly dinner time when she emerged from the tub. Someone had delivered a fresh set of uniforms while she was bathing. Juna hung them up, pausing, as she always did, to admire the deep forest green and black dress uniform of the Interstellar Survey. She decided to wear it to dinner, in celebration of her release from quarantine.

She put it on and appraised her reflection in the mirror. The deep green of her uniform clashed oddly with the yellowish celadon of her skin, and her bald head seemed naked and out of proportion to the rest of her trim, neatly clad image. Her features were leaner than she remembered, and her eyes seemed huge without her eyebrows. She looked delicate and fey. She darkened her skin till it was close to the shade of her original, brown skin. It wasn’t bad, she decided, just different.

A chime sounded, announcing that the mess hall was open for dinner. Juna closed the wardrobe door, and tugged the sleeves of her shirt out from under the cuffs of her jacket. She was looking forward to sharing a meal with other human beings.

Everyone in the mess hall stood and applauded as Juna walked in. She looked around in amazement.

“Thank you,” she said, as the applause died down. “Thank you very much. It’s good to be out of quarantine.”

She turned and joined the line waiting for food. Laurie came up beside her.

“We’ve saved you a seat,” she said, “over by the window.”

“Thanks,” Juna replied. She loaded her tray and followed Laurie to a long table near one of the windows. Bruce, Kay, Marguerite, and Patricia were there.

“I’ve been getting all kinds of requests for time with you,” Patricia told her. “Everyone on the ship has questions. Perhaps you should schedule some seminars with various divisions.”

“We’ll work out some kind of schedule tomorrow,” Juna decided.

The talk turned to shipboard gossip. Juna listened intently. She knew very few of the people involved, but it felt familiar and the sheer human-ness of it was comforting.

She turned to Bruce. “Tell me more about your nephew,” she said.

They spent most of the meal talking about their families. Like her, Bruce came from one of the satellite colonies. His family lived in one of the colonies clustered in the L-4 region. His parents had died in a shuttle accident, and his sister had married into a line marriage. His in-laws had adopted him as part of their extended family, and he spent most of his leave with his sister’s spouses and their children.

Juna told him about her father, how her mother died, how the harrowing experience of the camps had made her feel like an outsider among the sheltered children of the colony. She had joined the Survey, drawn by the thrill of new discoveries as well as the chance to be an outsider among other outsiders. Bruce was here because the pay was good. After another couple of trips, he would have enough saved up to buy a place in one of the better colonies, and maybe even enough for an extra fractional child-right, enabling him to become the father of two children.

Juna smiled wistfully. She had wanted children, but her marriage hadn’t worked out. She had been gone too often and too long. Bruce nodded, his warm brown eyes glowing with understanding.

Dinner was drawing to a close when Captain Edison and Dr. Bremen rose and walked to the podium at the front of the mess hall. The crowd grew silent.

“Dr. Saari, would you please come up here?” Bremen asked.

Juna rose and walked to the podium. She felt the weight of the Survey crew’s gaze on her, and was suddenly glad that she had chosen to wear her dress greens.

“In recognition of your great service to the Survey, and in honor of the difficulties you have endured, the Survey has decided to promote you to the rank of Research Director,” Bremen announced. “Congratulations, Dr. Saari.”

Juna turned magenta in astonishment. They had jumped her two full rankings. If she had not been marooned, she might have been promoted to Associate Researcher in another year or two, but this promotion made her one of the youngest Research Directors in the Survey.

Captain Edison handed her a small flat case. Inside were the insignia of her new rank.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Juna said. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“May I help pin them on?” the captain asked.

Juna nodded, and Captain Edison took the little gold galaxies out of the box and pinned them to her collar and chest.

“I’m going to recommend to the Survey that they make this promotion retroactive to the time your flyer went down,” the captain told her in an undertone. “It would make quite a difference in your back pay.” She smoothed Juna’s collar down and stepped back. “Congratulations, Research Director Saari.”

“That’s very kind of you, Captain Edison.”

“The Survey owes it to you for all you’ve accomplished,” the captain told her.

Juna shook Dr. Bremen’s hand, then stepped up to the podium. She stood for a moment, looking out over the assembled crew. Alison was standing at the galley door with a towel over one shoulder.

“It’s good to be out of quarantine,” Juna said. “It’s good to be back—” She paused, considering her words. “I would like to thank Dr. Bremen, Captain Edison, Ensign Laurie Kipp, Dr. Paul Wu, Dr. Robert Baker, Dr. Patricia Tanguay, Chef Alison Vladimir, and Technician Bruce Bowles for their trust, support, and friendship.” She glanced over at her friends’ table and smiled at them. “And thanks to everyone else for coming back to get me.”

The crowd laughed in response to her last remark. Juna smiled, waved, and stepped back from the podium. Everyone in the room rose to applaud as she walked back to her table. She was crying so hard by the time she got there that she could hardly see. Patricia handed her a napkin, and helped her sit down. Laurie patted her on the shoulder. She finally felt that she was truly back among her own people.

Then Bruce, who was sitting next to her, reached down to take her hand. Juna slid her hand eagerly into his. It would be the first time that they had ever really touched. She saw him flinch as he felt the moist, alien texture of her skin. She drew her hand back into her lap, fighting to keep a sudden sense of shame from darkening her skin as she realized that despite everything, there was still a deep, uncrossable gulf between her and the rest of her people.

Juna walked into the^ Resource Utilization seminar. It was her fifth seminar this week, and she felt tired and drained. Dr. Nazarieff, the director of the Resource Utilization department, greeted her politely, escorting her to the head of the table.

This trip must be frustrating for her, Juna thought. Contact protocols forbid exploitation of a sentient species’ planetary resources. It was, she thought with an ironic smile, rather a turnaround. Usually it was the Resource people who were busy and the Contact people who had to sit on their hands. She wondered what they wanted from her.

“Thank you for coming, Dr. Saari,” Nazarieff said when they were all assembled. “I know your time is very valuable. I’ll get right to the point. This is Gerald Nyimbe, one of my graduate students. Gerald was studying your list of Tendu trade goods, and he thinks that he may have a potential solution to your trade problems. Gerald?”

A tall, slender young African with three rows of tribal cicatrices across his cheeks, rose. “Yes, Dr. Saari,” he began in musically accented Standard. “One of the trade goods mentioned in the daily notes of the negotiations was guano, which the Tendu transport from outer islands to use as a fertilizer. In going over the first expedition’s reports, I noticed many large seabird colonies located on islands in the subpolar regions. I did some satellite surveys and visited several different sites.” He pressed a button on his computer, and a map of the northern subpolar region appeared on the wall. “These three sites have the richest, most accessible guano deposits,” he said, indicating three islands in the middle of the northern ocean. “We could harvest them with relatively little disturbance to the local wildlife.”

Juna sat up, her weariness forgotten. It looked like an excellent solution to her problems. “What about the Contact Protocols on mining? Won’t we be in violation of them?”

“There’s an exemption for small amounts of internal trade. We would need permission from the Tendu to proceed with the mining, and there are very strict regulations about environmental degradation that we would have to follow, but we’re talking about very small scale, temporary mining here. My most liberal estimates indicate that we can meet our obligations to the village of Lyanan with about 1.5 metric tons of guano. With the equipment we have on hand, we could probably dig up and process that much material in one day.”

Juna scrolled through the report on her computer screen, fighting back rising excitement. “This looks very good, Mr. Nyimbe. It may prove to be the solution that we need. I’ll talk to the Alien Contact people about it tonight.”

It was indeed [[ihe]] solution to the trade problem. Everything fell together with amazing rapidity when Juna introduced the proposal. Once Dr. Wu had confirmed that it wouldn’t significantly affect Tendu trading patterns, he gave his approval. After some face-saving hesitations, Lalito also accepted it. By now it was clear that the humans were not going to yield any further on her demands for their technology. Lyanan would receive enough guano to meet its needs for the next two years, cover all the outstanding obligations that the village had incurred in replanting the forest, and still have a small surplus to trade with.

Juna took Anitonen, Ukatonen, Lalito, and Moki up to see the proposed mining site. They stopped briefly at the shuttle base for refueling. Moki made a beeline for the space shuttles as soon as he climbed out of the flyer, and remained there, peppering the amused techs with questions while Juna showed the other Tendu around the shuttle facility. She smiled as she retrieved her errant bami from the bowels of the shuttle.

Moki was fascinated by aircraft of any kind. The bigger it was, the faster it flew, and the farther it went, the more interesting it was to him. Juna’s nephew, Danan, was similarly fascinated by planes and shuttles. He was eleven now, she realized with a sudden pang of sadness; she had missed most of his childhood, marooned here with the Tendu. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back. The sun glowed redly through her eyelids. She wanted to go home.

When she opened her eyes, Moki was looking at her questioningly.

“Let’s go,” she said.

They walked back to the dock and climbed into the flyer. The Tendu looked out the window intently, ears spread wide in wonder, all the way to the island. The island rose from the dark blue sea like a lost piece of some gigantic jigsaw puzzle. They had chosen this site because of its remoteness. The only creatures that lived there year-round were a few species of flightless birds and some crustaceans. But in the summer, the rocky island was home to millions of nesting seabirds.

Clouds of birds exploded upward as the flyer passed overhead. The pilot set the plane down in a cove on the lee side of the island. While he assembled the landing craft, Juna bundled the Tendu into warmsuits to prevent them from getting hypothermia.

When the boat was ready, Juna opened the door of the flyer. A blast of icy gale-force wind nearly pulled it out of her hand. The Tendu flinched from the cold, their mittened hands fumbling at the hoods of their unfamiliar clothing. She helped them pull up their hoods and tighten them around their faces, then assisted them into the boat as it bucked and heaved on the choppy swell. They huddled in the boat, their faces turned away from the bitter wind. Juna had never seen the Tendu look so miserable before. The pilot beached the boat and Juna hopped out to pull it up out of the swell. She helped the Tendu off between waves. A tumble into this icy water would be disastrous for them.

Juna led the Tendu up a sloping rise to the top of the cliffs, threading their way between colonies of nesting birds, their chicks nearly grown. The birds honked and hissed at her, clacking their beaks together, wings spread, the feathers on their necks and backs raised threateningly. Crushed and mummified corpses of baby birds crunched underfoot. The stench of bird shit and death was overwhelming. Juna fought back a wave of nausea. The Tendu held their mittened hands over their noses.

Already the incredible numbers of birds were thinning. When Juna had visited the island the week before, she had had to wade through a solid tide of black, white, and grey, hissing and fighting furiously at the disruption of their territory. Waves of squabbling birds had spread in their wake, some bloodied from fighting. The noise was deafening. Now you could actually see the ground between the nesting birds, and it was possible to walk between the nests.

They reached the top of the cliff and paused. Spread out before them was a wide plain of packed brown soil, covered with nesting birds. The island had once been a live volcano. Now the crater was entirely filled with guano, which one of the geologists had estimated was over three hundred meters deep. Ukatonen pushed up his sleeves, exposing his spurs, and grabbed a struggling, hissing bird. It threw up on him, its vomit bright pink from the crustaceans it had eaten. He sank a spur into it, and the bird went limp. The other enkar followed suit, picking up birds, and sticking them with their spurs.

“What are they doing?” asked the pilot, as Ukatonen released his captured bird.

“Sampling the cells of these birds. They do that when they see a new or interesting plant or animal. Now they’ll have enough information to build a whole new bird if they wanted to.”

“Why are they doing it?”

“If you had a chance to fly a new kind of plane, would you do it?” Juna asked the pilot.

He nodded.

“Well,” Juna explained, “that’s why they do it. No Tendu has ever seen birds like these. They’re new and strange to them.”

The bird Ukatonen had released woke up and waddled back to its nest, braying in alarm.

Juna found a. rock outcropping that sheltered them from the cold wind. She opened the front of her warmsuit, letting in an icy blast of wind, and began explaining the guano mining operation, pointing out where the Survey was going to dig, and how deep they were going to go. The Tendu watched her words intently, then huddled together, conferring among themselves. When they were through, Anitonen turned to her.

“The damage to the rookery will be small. The birds should recover within a year, and the Tendu will profit greatly. This is not perfectly harmonious, but I accept on behalf of the enkar. We ask that you seek approval from the lyali-Tendu, as well, since this negotiation will affect their trade. We also ask for some of the fertilizer as part of our fee for helping to negotiate this trade. We also thank you for taking us here. We have learned much today.”

Juna sighed with mingled regret and relief. The treaty was almost concluded, bringing her closer to going home. She glanced at Moki, longing for a solution to his need for her.

The next day the lyali-Tendu came to the landing dock to negotiate their portion of the agreement, floating on their backs so that Juna could see their words. Juna sat with her legs in the water, listening and translating for the suited human negotiators. The sea people were tough traders, and they drove a hard bargain. At last they agreed to accept an amount of fertilizer equal to half the amount the people of Lyanan received, to be delivered to their trading islands up and down the coast. It meant more work for the Survey, but it was certainly possible. Besides, Juna thought with a smile, it was time the Survey did a little work.

The treaty was finalized two days later, at a meeting on the beach attended by representatives from all the concerned parties. The Survey signed a document agreeing to the provisions of the compact, and Anitonen rendered a formal judgment that the Tendu would accept it, signaling this by drawing her name sign on the treaty.

Juna returned from celebrating with the Tendu several hours after sunset. Bruce picked her up in the boat. They rode back in silence. The tropical night air felt like warm milk against her skin. It was a rare, clear night, and the stars shone so brightly that it seemed as though she could reach up and pluck them out of the sky. Night birds flickered like shadows across the stars.

Juna glanced up at Bruce. He was watching her. She closed her eyes, aware of a growing warmth between her thighs, feeling a flush of golden arousal stealing up her back. She stroked her arm; her skin was wet and warm and slimy. She remembered Bruce touching her skin, and flinching away, and her arousal vanished. She had done her best to avoid him since then. The worst part was that she still wanted him.

The boat pulled up j:o the dock. Juna got out, and started up the steps.

“Juna, wait a minute,” Bruce said.

“What is it?”

“I— It’s just that you’ve been so busy with the talks lately. We haven’t had much chance to talk. I’ve missed you.”

Juna ducked her head, feeling her skin turn brown with awkward embarrassment. “Thank you, Bruce. I’ve missed your company too. I like you very much.”

“I thought, maybe, there was more to it than just liking me,” Bruce said, putting his arms around her. In the darkness, his face was a pale shadow inside his face plate.

“Oh, Bruce,” Juna said, fighting the urge to rest her head against his shoulder. “Not while I’m like this.”

His embrace tightened. “Why?”

“Because I’m ugly, slimy, alien.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Yes,” Juna said. “You tried to hold my hand, just after I got out of quarantine. I saw the look on your face when you flinched.”

“I’m sorry, Juna,” he said. “It just surprised me. Give me a chance. I’ll get over it.”

Juna shrugged and looked away. “I don’t want to be something you have to get over.” She slipped out of the warmth of his arms and fled up the stairs. She dogged the lock behind her, stripped off her clothing, and stepped into the soothing warmth of the shower. Finished with the decontamination process, she dressed and headed for the lonely refuge of her cabin. She lay awake for a long time, listening, irrationally hoping that Bruce would come, would apologize, and would hold her.

With the reparations to Lyanan resolved, it was time to turn to negotiating a Contact treaty between the humans and the Survey. The enkar had learned a great deal from the reparation negotiations. They understood what the humans would accept, and they had enough information to begin to define their own needs. What they chiefly needed was time in which to learn more about humans. The Tendu wanted a short-term, highly restricted Contact treaty, allowing very limited and supervised research on the planet, with an emphasis on linguistic and cultural research. All contact with the Tendu would be supervised by the enkar. Trade would be strictly prohibited for the first five years. A second research base could be set up off the coast of one of the enkar reserves. Exploration of the area outside Tendu control required the consent of an enkar in charge of human contact, a position currently shared by Ukatonen and Anitonen.

The treaty was more restrictive than the research people wanted, but it was the Tendu’s planet, and the humans had to abide by their wishes.

The treaty took less than a month to draw up. Most of that time was spent oh details of grammar and translation. Once the agreement was signed, Juna took a week of leave and went on a fishing trip with Ukatonen, Anitonen, and Moki. They floated down the river, reminiscing. Juna and Moki played and splashed and linked. There was an overlay of sadness to it all, a sense of endings, of last times. Moki clung to her tightly one minute and was withdrawn and sullen the next. Still, Juna enjoyed this quiet time with her Tendu companions.

The last night of the trip, Juna sat up late with Anitonen and Ukatonen.

“I’ve learned so much, living among the Tendu. There are times when I’ve wanted to stay here with you forever, but—” Juna stared off into the thick, humid darkness of the jungle. “I miss being human,” she said. “I’m tired of being different, tired of feeling like an alien among my own people. I want to touch and be touched, without the other person flinching away.”

“Do you want me to change you back?” Anitonen asked. “It wouldn’t be hard.”

Juna’s heart leapt within her at the thought of looking human again. “Oh, Anitonen, that would be wonderful! But I can’t change back—the Tendu need me, Moki needs me.”

“And you are out of harmony with yourself,” Anitonen told her. “You have given us five years of your life. It is enough. Patricia knows enough to serve as a translator now, especially if you help her. It is time to return fully to your people.”

“But Moki—” Juna began.

Ukatonen laid her arm on Juna’s. “Moki has known that this time would come since you chose him as your bami.”

“But what about you?” Juna asked. “If Moki doesn’t accept you as his sitik…” She trailed off, unable to finish.

“I am responsible for my own judgments,” Ukatonen told her. “I will live with the consequences. Even Moki knows that you need your people. Waiting only delays change; it doesn’t stop it.”

They were right, Juna knew. It was time. Delaying this transformation any further would only prolong her own misery without really making things better for anyone else.

“Will it take long?”

Anitonen shook her head. “I could start the change now. By the time you return to the ship, it will be almost complete. Your hands and feet will take several weeks to return to normal. They will ache while the transition is going on. I Gan also make it possible for you to go outside without an e-suit. You will be a little out of harmony, your eyes will burn, your nose will run. Once you go back inside, you will feel better. If you like, you can retain your improved eyesight, hearing, and balance.”

“That would be good.” Juna looked down at Moki, sleeping curled beneath a blanket of leaves. “Should I wake him?”

“It will only hurt him to watch, and he might try to disrupt the link,” Anitonen said.

Juna touched Moki lightly; he stirred and rolled over in his sleep. At least this painful waiting would be over for them both. Perhaps Moki would finally bond with Ukatonen. She held her arms out to Anitonen. “Please, en, make me human again.”

Moki lay snug in his nest of leaves, listening to the sounds of the forest, not wanting to face the morning. They were going back to the coast today. His sitik would be returning to her people. A cloud of regret passed over his skin. He wanted to stay here and pretend that Eerin’s people had not returned and taken her away from him.

He sat up. Eerin’s nest was empty. He found her swimming in the cool, clear river. The sun slanted down through the early morning mist in thick golden bars. Moki wanted to memorize this moment, to take it with him when he followed Eerin off-planet. He would miss the jungle. Eerin stood and walked through the shallows toward the beach, shedding brilliant drops of water. Moki clambered down a curtain of vines to greet her.

He ran to embrace his sitik, but stopped a few paces away. Something was wrong. Her skin was cloudy and off color.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You look sick.”

Eerin shook her head. “I’m changing back, Moki. I asked Anitonen to make me human again.” Her words were fuzzy around the edges, and it took her longer to say them.

Moki backed away. “No!” he said. “No, no, no, no!”

He turned to flee, but Eerin caught him by the shoulder and turned him back around.

“Moki, please stay,” she said. He relaxed, and she released him. “I’m still the same person I was before. Only the outside is changing.”

Moki held out his arms, asking for a link. Eerin shook her head. “I can’t, Moki. Not by myself. We need someone to monitor me. Let’s go ask Ukatonen if he will help.”

Ukatonen was sitting on a rock upstream, gutting two big lorra fish for breakfast. Eerin asked for him to help them link.

“Let’s eat first. Your sitik is probably very hungry.”

Eerin nodded. Moki turned brown in shame. He had been selfish, forgetting his sitik’s needs.

“Let me help,” he said. “What else do we need?”

Ukatonen flickered approval. “You can skin and slice this fish while I go gather some greens.”

“What should I do?” Eerin asked.

“Rest and wait for breakfast. Changing is enough work for you today.”

“I’ll sit with Moki, then.”

They sat in wordless companionship while Moki sliced the fish and laid it neatly out on a fresh leaf. Eerin touched his shoulder as he finished. He looked up, ears spread wide.

“Are you angry with me for changing?” Eerin asked.

Moki shook his head as he pitched the fish guts into the undergrowth. He wasn’t angry. He just felt empty and hollow inside, like the husk of a deserted na tree. He had dreaded this moment for a long time. Now it was here and he felt only an aching emptiness.

“You need your people,” he told her with a shrug. There was nothing else left to say.

“I’m sorry, Moki,” she said.

“I know,” he replied. “It has to be this way. It’s all right.”

At least they would be together. He had managed to steal the suit that kept him warm when they went to the island. All he had to do was get on the shuttle, and it would take him to her people’s ship. He could hide there until it was too late for them to take him back to the planet. Then they would be together and everything would be all right.

At last breakfast was over, and Ukatonen held his arms out, ready to link.

“It will be a very short link, Moki. Eerin needs to save her energy for her change.”

Moki rippled acknowledgment. He held out his arms, a cloud of sadness passing over his skin. Eerin clasped his arm and Ukatonen’s. Eerin’s spur was soft and mushy-feeling. He tried to link through her spurs, but all he contacted was a mass of dying cells.

“Link through her skin, Moki. Her spurs don’t work anymore,” Uka-tonen said.

Moki shifted his grip. He sank his spurs into her skin, and succeeded in linking. Ukatonen was there, monitoring them both. He felt Eerin’s mix of grief and relief at her transformation. Moki let his love for his sitik rise above his grief. If this was to be their last link, he wanted to leave her with good feelings. They reached an equilibrium full of bittersweet longing and love.

The trip downstream passed quietly. Eerin lost the ability to speak around mid-morning. No ene said much after that. She spent most of the day in the water, clinging to the side of the raft, soothing and softening her dying skin. By the time they reached the beach where the humans would pick her up, Eerin’s skin was coming off in great patches. She radioed to the humans’ ship, letting them know that she had arrived, then waded into the ocean, where Anitonen helped her strip away her remaining Tendu skin. She emerged from the ocean as someone else, clean and brown and human. Her hands had flat nails on them instead of claws, and her palms were smooth and unridged.

Unable to face his sitik’s alien appearance, Moki looked away, out over the slate-colored ocean at the grey clouds, heavy with rain that blocked the setting sun. He felt like one of those clouds, grey with grief. Off in the distance, he saw a black speck rounding the point. It was a boat, coming to take Eerin away. Even though he knew he would see his sitik again, there was a finality to the boat’s approach. Nothing would be the same after she left.

Someone touched him on the shoulder. It was Eerin. She held a stick in one hand.

“I love you, Moki” she drew in skin speech on the damp sand.

Moki nodded. “I love you too,” he replied. “My sitik.”

Eerin brushed his shoulder, and they stood together on the beach, looking out at the grey ocean and sky, waiting for the boat that would take his sitik away.

At last the boat pulled up onto the beach. Eerin put her gear in the boat, and embraced Ukatonen and Anitonen. Then she turned to Moki and stroked his face. That wordless gesture conveyed everything there was to say. Then she climbed into the boat. Moki watched as it headed out to sea, the waves from its wake washing away the words she had written in the sand.