This is the conclusion to Groundside and for those who are interested, you can read the opening half of the story HERE. *** Meals have always been a matter of quiet simplicity with Jonas. There are two times in life when a man should not speak he’d said, once. When he eats, and when he sleeps. Always remember that, because Aurigan women will kill you if you talk rather than enjoy their cooking, or break their night-dreams with senseless prattle. Now, after salad and wine, Saren stands before the window-wall, staring out at the city, at the lights like stars in the colors of halogen and neon and the occasional, errant diamond. Jonas has extinguished the room lights, and stands—now—beside Saren in cryptic, brooding silence. There is a strange tension in the air: something like electricity, like fear, and a little like desire. It is a familiar presence, the ghost-thing that Saren remembers from each of Jonas’ previous visits. He knows what it means, and what follows it. He waits for Jonas to move, to speak, to break the tension with the smallest of gestures. It comes as a caress: shy and halting. Saren kisses Jonas’ fingertips as they brush his lips. “Why do you wait for me?” Jonas asks, quietly and with a tone of wonder. “Why do you always come back?” There is a single word to answer each of their questions, Saren thinks, but he isn’t brave enough to speak it. “Sometimes, I don’t want to come back.” “Then why do you?” Silence. Jonas’ fingers wander a great distance, find the cuff of Saren’s sleeve and prod gently—oh, so gently!—at the flesh of his wrist. “I’ve made my home in a city called Hsesh. It’s on the southern coast of a continent called Iib. Hsesh means bottom, as in the inner part of a fisherman’s basket where dry leaves settle when broken from a branch. The Hetha’aa have over two-hundred words for our single bottom. My favorite is Hsesh, because it’s the name of my adoptive city. But I also like the word a’alat which is the bottom of an empty cup, once you’ve drunk heated water poured by your mate. A’alat is a word that you always say slowly, even if you must speak quickly. It’s a word that defies economic necessity.” Saren nods. “I enjoy your messages to me. I always wait for that one day of the month when your transmission lands in my inbox. You always have something to say about Hsesh.” Jonas laughs. It is a low, rolling sound with the warmth of heated brandy spiced with peppercorns. “I never know what to tell you. I just fake it and try to keep your interest.” It is Saren’s turn to laugh. “You live among creatures that make me think of opinionated lemurs made from the spare parts of fish. Anything you say about them will be interesting.” The tension in the air has been dispelled. It remains, attenuated. It is easier to breathe now, easier for the smile Saren feels to remain on his face. “Auriga Orbital-3 is 30 light years away. I don’t want to go, but I have to. I’d rather stay here.” “So, why go?” Jonas shrugs. “Because of what the Hethet’aa call su’sueh.” In the dim city light, Jonas’ features carry stark and inviting warmth. Saren turns to face him. “Soo-soo-way,” he says, tasting the alien word. “It’s another bottom?” Jonas nods. “Yeah. It’s the floor of a salt-house in winter.” It’s all that he says. He offers no explanations. Silence. “Saren.” “Yeah?” “Will you come to the bed with me? There’s something I need to share with you, it’s…important, and it’s complex. I want to hold you when it happens, because that’s important too. Please, Saren. Say yes. Say you’ll lie down with me, like a mammal.” Saren nods. He cannot speak, and so in lieu of words, he brushes a kiss across Jonas’ lips. * * * It is Jonas’ habit to share data tabs. It is a common Service custom, Saren reasons. Though life on any deep-interstellar cruiser might fall within the range of the explainable, life among aliens is something different all together. The ‘tabs are a necessity, an almost mundane thing between Saren and Jonas. With each offered ‘tab, Saren learns something of Jonas’ off-world life and gains the memories that sustain him in the inevitable two-year absence. Now, he is afraid. Jonas seems tense. Uncertain. Jonas—though not for the first time—is a stranger. “We don’t have to do this,” Jonas says, quietly, as if sensing Saren’s distress. “We’ve always done this,” Saren says. “Why change the custom now?” The bluff leaves a bitter taste, but Saren keeps his expression neutral “Something will change after this,” Jonas says. Saren swallows past the sudden lump in his throat. “Show me,” he says. * * * Saren closed his eyes when Jonas applied it to the flesh of his neck and kissed him softly. They lie together in bed now, naked to the torso— —but as afferential data bleeds into his bloodstream, Saren is no longer on Kethane, no longer with Jonas in a dark and expensive room that smells—faintly—of Terran eucalyptus. There is a point at which both realities merge—the plastic world and the world of chemical data. Saren feels his step across that strange threshold, feels himself opening his eyes, though he knows that his eyes—his real eyes—remain firmly shut. He is with Jonas. In bed. He is alone. On an alien world— —naked to the waist with the strange, powdery grit of sand biting at his bare feet. He looks down. He looks around. There are buildings behind him: a ragged skyline of blocky, angular shapes and thin, tapering spires—like steeples, like knives, like rose-thorns set to prick the sky. He senses immense age, as if the city (is it a city?) has stood for eons longer than he can imagine. But everything seems new, vibrant, alive. There are voices in the distance, hooting, sonorous voices that recall the noise of geese and oboes and something that growls comforting, ursine sounds from deep in its throat. He understands words: snippets of conversation. Something about vatat’aola and he knows that there is no term in Human Standard that matches. He translates it as fish-to-eat-after- purchase. Fish is an imprecise term. It describes only the aquatic nature of an edible, nightmarish mass of teeth, tentacles, and chitin-based armor. Someone approaches. He recognizes that particular shuffle and the silence that follows. He smiles, turning to face the welcome intruder. The Hetha’aa do not naturally smile, but they have learned the habit from humans. They aren’t very good at it: too many teeth and half-reptilian faces that glint with minute scales in the colors of silver and clamshell. Their eyes, enormous, black, and round convey what humans may recognize as friendly sentiment, but their teeth, their scales, and the muscles of their snout-pointed faces imply something alien and inscrutable. “Jonash,” the creature says, bobbing his head from side to side. Saren feels himself repeating the gesture. “Psettem,” he says. “You will walk tomorrow, so why look at the ocean today?” “I’m human, Psettem. It relaxes me to see the ocean.” “Even before you walk?” All journeys are walks: in the Hetha’aa mind, you walk by foot, by auto-carriage, by flyer and by starship. You walk by boat, upon the water, but only if the sea remembers that you should float. It is all the same. Walking. “Especially before I walk.” Pettem flexes his brow: the minute scales shimmer like oil-slick rainbows stirred in a muggy breeze. His high, cranial dome—proof of a large and convoluted brain—is brilliant with vaguely ferrous iridescence. Males tend to redden with age. “Humans. So strange.” Saren says nothing. He is in a hotel. In bed. Beside Jonas. He is here, speaking with an alien who calls him by Jonas’ name. “When you return, you will live in the Envoy’s House. This will be an important walk for you.” Psettem speaks in a rich and sonorous tenor, marking his words with the cooing trill that marks the accent of Hsesh. He points skyward. “Your interstellar boat will remain there when you return, but in the Envoy’s house, you will have no need of it.” He rolls his shoulders in a complicated shrug. No human can mimic the gesture. “And before this, you look at the ocean?” There is amazement in his voice. “You will understand, one day, Psettem.” Though average for a member of his species, Psettem is diminutive. Elfin. Child-like in stature. He wears a searing, red poncho. Red has been popular for the past few months: proof that the Hetha’aa expect vast change to sweep the face of their world. Red is, after all, a fortuitous color in the face of profound cultural shifts. They have started. There are colonies on one of the moons and successful business ventures that have opened a prodigious export of fish. Hsesh is a richer city for the fish ships that thunder into orbit, connect with the orbital station at L5 and fling themselves moon-ward to feed the colonial demand for a taste of home. Soon, the Melville will depart. For Kethane. For Tegmine, and the Orbitals at Auriga. Crew will disperse, as is required, and reconverge when the Melville reverses her loop and returns here. To Othala. Upon her return, the Contact Seniors will call themselves by another name. Envoys. They will live permanently on the moon-locked colonies, on the L5 Station, and in Envoy houses in three Hetha’aa cities. Envoys. Jonas will be one of them. Here. In a city named for the bottom of a fisherman’s basket when dead leaves have fallen into it. The Melville will serve another purpose, one more local than its current Service charter. It will stand as humanity’s first Envoy-ship. A different crew will roam the corridors and work-spaces. Some among them will be alien. Hetha’aa. Others will be specialists. Engineers. Scientists. Xenologists like Jonas. The trade of ideas will open between humanity and the first-discovered of its interstellar neighbors. The Hetha’aa have developed a hunger for all things human. Likewise, humanity has tasted the alien, and sees a future in trade and scientific exchange. Saren feels a subtle intrusion: something of himself not constrained by the chemical-memory now budding permanent synapses in his brain. He hears Jonas’s voice: Come away! You have an engineer’s rating. You have experience; we can use you on board the Melville. I’ve got the captain’s ear, she’ll accept your application. Psettem knows nothing of the voice. He glances at Saren, and seeing Jonas in his place, the diminutive, glistening creature flashes another toothy failure of a smile. “You will eat night meal with my family?” “Yes, Psettem, I would enjoy that.” “When will your space-boat depart?” “Tomorrow. Nightfall.” “You are prepared for the walk?” “No,” Jonas says, with Saren’s voice. He shuffles his feet and powdery grit gnaws at the spaces between Saren’s naked toes. “My belongings are packed, and when my…boat arrives at the world of Kethane, I will sweep the salt-house floor in preparation for summer.” “This is complicated.” There is concern in Psettem’s cooing, inhuman voice. A second set of vocal cords growl and purr, adding an emotional weight to the statement, but only the Hetha’aa understand this significance. “It is necessary?” Sweeping a salt-house floor is not a matter taken lightly. “I will speak with one who is important to me.” “Your mate?” “In a manner of speaking.” Psettem spreads his palms—face up—in a gesture of complicated meaning. “My mate,” the diminutive gentleman-alien says, “will prepare saa. You will eat the eyes. This is a good thing when you must sweep the salt house floor in winter.” Saren knows the significance of saa and its numerous black eyes, poached until they cloud. Jonas has tasted saa and so Saren knows this flavor. Jonas likes it. Saren gags at the thought, thankful that Psettem can only see Jonas and not a pale stranger-human puckering with distaste at so cherished a local dish. “It is a good thing, indeed,” Saren says, because it is what Jonas has said. * * * It takes an hour for the memory to unravel in Saren’s bloodstream and lodge in the meat of his brain. Jonas is silent at his side: a warm presence beneath the sheet and the comforter. He breathes evenly, as if sleeping, but Saren knows that he is awake. Watching him. Listening. He can say nothing. This is normal. Jonas shifts, leaves the bed, and returns with water in two glasses. “Do you remember the word a’alat?” Jonas asks. The bottom of an empty cup when you’ve drunk heated water poured by your mate. Saren nods. “I want you to come with me. I’ll live in the Envoy House in Hsesh. You can live there too. If it’s what you want. But I know that it could be difficult. There’s a berth on board the Mellville and the associated need for a drive engineer. You’ve trained for the post, and you’ve only taken Pit-monkey work because something has scared you off of the ships. I’ve never known what, and if it’s not my business, I won’t ask. But this is your chance, Saren—to do what you’ve trained for and to get something out of it. “You don’t have to sit locked on some backwater planet, watching the ships come and go. You can be a part of a crew and see things that most humans can’t imagine…even with those same ships booming into orbit and out. “You can stay here if you want. You know this place. You have a life here. But things have changed—for me. I won’t be back every two years. I don’t know why you wait so long for my visits, and why you don’t pursue anyone else. I know that I’m the only guy you ever dally with; it’s in the way we go at each other on the few nights that we see each other. And you know the same about me. I live among aliens. A different species, and I’m not really into my crew-mates, not even the other members of my team. You wait to see me every two years for exactly the same reasons that I come back. Kethane isn’t my world. There’s nothing for me here. But there’s someone…and that’s what makes the difference. You are why I come back. But I’ll be an Envoy when my ship heads back out into Hetha’aa Space. I’ll live among them until I retire from the Service.” The urgency in Jonas’ voice is a jellied presence in the air between them. He sits, poised, on the edge of the bed, two glasses of water on a tray. Two glasses. Both for Saren. It is obvious. Saren’s thoughts spiral back to the question that marks this moment. —Do you remember the word a’alat? “You don’t have to speak,” Jonas says, and the words are ominous in their existential weight. Even before he touches the glasses, he knows that one holds warm water. The other is cold. “I’m asking a lot of you, Saren, and it’s selfish of me. You don’t have to say anything. Just pick a glass. Drink from it. No matter which one you choose, I’ll abide by that. We’ll take each other tonight, as we’ve done in the past. But please, Saren, please understand what this means.” * * * Kayler Street is loud with off-shift Pit-monkeys and spacer crews in gray overalls open over crisp white undershirts. There is hover-car traffic. Rickshaw bells clatter in the humid, summer air. Sunset: a flare to the west colors the sky in all of the shades of gold and butter, dust, and ashen, soot-tinged salmon. Saren walks, approaching the intersection of Eighth: where pylons stand like up-thrust ribs, supporting twin maglev ribbons and boarding/departure platforms. The trains are quiet above. Darling Darling is crowded when he enters, and like the street on which it stands, the bar is noisy. Magda is on duty. She frowns with apparent confusion when she sees him. He doesn’t question what she sees, what he must project. He can feel it—a faint blush of heat climbing his neck and warming his cheeks. For once, he feels as if he is a misfit in this crowd: too scruffy, too blond, too much the backwater hick for the half-time scum that takes to drinking at the tables carved with cryptic names and numbers. He shoulders his way to the bar. “His ship’s pulled out,” Magda says. “I saw the departure logs. Outbound to the Auriga Orbitals. It’ll be there for three months, then it loops back here. You’re three months early, Saren.” He smiles, though he is sure Magda sees sadness in his eyes. “How about a beer?” he asks. She pulls his traditional brew and he watches her work. The first swallow—when it comes—is heady and cold. He savors it. “So,” Magda says. “D’you need to talk?” Saren considers the foam-head of his beer. “Yeah,” he says, quietly. He shifts his focus and touches her gaze with his own. “In three months, things will be different. The Melville is swapping crew. You’ll hear about it in the news, probably next week. Members of the ship’s contact and xenology teams will transfer to diplomatic posts on Othala. Engineers, technicians, trades-people from various disciplines will take up billets on board the ship as…I don’t know what you’d call it…trade-ambassadors to the aliens. Some aliens will also go aboard.” Magda nods. “Sounds like you’re talking about tech-exchange. We teach them how we build batteries, salt shakers, and nail clippers, and they teach us how to…what…build innovative new plumbing using fish spit and positrons?” Saren laughs. “Something like that.” “Which means that the Melville won’t be coming here very much, and not with the same crew when it does.” “Yeah.” A pause. A sip of beer. “I’m quitting the Pits, Magda. In three months, I’m gone. It’s all set. Next week I’m off to Keth-L5 for cross-training and conditioning. An intensive program. When the Melville hits orbit, I’ll get to see Kethane one last time.” Silence. A complicated play of emotion dances across Magda’s face. She smiles, sadly, wistfully, and in a manner Saren has never seen before. “So it’s already in the works?” “Yeah.” “Do they know?” It has been three years since he has spoken to any member of his family, three years since he’s heard anything from them. What they know of him, they learn through Magda. Saren nods. “I sent word today. Haven’t checked my inbox, but I’m sure they’ll say something.” “And you’re okay with that?” “I’m okay with it.” Magda smiles. “Mags—“ “Saren. This is right, and you don’t have to explain anything.” “I know.” “But tell me one thing, Saren. Tell me what made you finally decide?” Saren smiles. “Warm water,” he says. “I drank a glass of warm water, and then I looked at the bottom of it. There’s a word on Othala for that, and when I get there, Mags, I’ll send you an email…a long one…and I’ll tell you what that means.” THE END *** Hopefully, you've enjoyed this brief foray into a couple of alien worlds, and as always, thank you for reading and commenting, and I hope you're all having a great week.