Damia Read online

  Cheswina smoothed her daughter’s hair in a brief, loving gesture and smiled.

  “You bring honor to our family.”

  “Afra will bring more,” Goswina said, looking fondly down at him.

  “That remains to be seen,” Cheswina said, her expression bordering on the severe, for she did not believe that it was right to praise a child for what he or she could be expected to do. Reward should never be a consideration of effort. However, Goswina did merit some special indulgence for having brought honor to the family, so her favorite dishes were served at dinner that evening and she’d be allowed a visit from Vessily Ogdon.

  On returning from his Tower shift that evening, Gos Lyon smiled in benign approval at his daughter. When everyone had eaten a sufficiency of the excellent meal, he handed her an official note. He contained his pride as his overjoyed firstborn communicated to everyone at the table that Capella had appointed her to the staff of the southern Tower, one of the busier local FT&T facilities.

  That means you’re going away again! Afra cried out in distress.

  Silly! I won’t be so far that we can’t keep in touch all the time. “Forgive me, Father, Mother,” Goswina added hastily, blushing for such a gross social lapse, “but Afra was so disturbed . . .”

  “Afra must learn to control his feelings,” Gos Lyon said, bending a stern gaze on his youngest. “Tower staff must always contain their emotions. To splash about personal reactions exhibits a woeful absence of discipline and an abysmal lack of courtesy and consideration. I’ll have no child of mine so ill-mannered. One can never learn respect too early in life.”

  Later, dear. Goswina shot the very private thought tightly to her brother, so fast her parents would not have caught it, being less telepathically Talented than herself. But she had to do something to relieve the woeful expression on Afra’s face and unwind the tension of his small, thin body. Shriveled by the parental disapproval, he had curled in on himself, arms clasped tight across his chest, head down.

  Prior to her course at Altair, she would never have dared even think of criticizing her parents. She didn’t entirely approve of Altair’s social manners but she had also seen a different sort of society that apparently worked quite well. And Afra was so very sensitive to his father’s disapproval and, sometimes, very privately, Goswina thought her parents could be a trifle more lenient and understanding. After all, he was the most Talented of them all and needed extra, specially astute handling.

  “Now, now,” Gos Lyon said, realizing that perhaps he had been too severe with Afra, “I know you meant neither disrespect nor disobedience, Afra. Tonight is a time for rejoicing.”

  His soft words and gentle tone, as well as the shaft of love and reassurance directed at his son, had the desired effect on Afra and he was soon smiling when Goswina began her almost day-by-day accounting of her Altairian sojourn.

  Afra also “heard” unfinished sentiments and, once, caught her remembered alarm. He fervently hoped that her “later” would come soon so he’d find out all those bits and pieces she left out of the public recital.

  “Later” was going to really be later, for Vessily Ogdon arrived at the door, on time as usual, palpably eager to see his betrothed. Afra didn’t like staying in the same room with Vessily and Goswina because he was acutely aware of their attachment. Since Vessily was a T-6 and even older than Goswina, Afra thought that he ought to know how to control himself. He was amazed that his father didn’t say anything about leaking emotions to Vessily.

  As Afra retired to his room, he heard the depth of Vessily’s discontent with Goswina’s posting to the Southern Station. But he heard Goswina’s telepathic reassurance—and Gos Lyon, who was chaperoning the couple, said nothing about that! Afra was also vexed to hear Goswina say exactly the same things to Vessily that she’d said to him—only her tone was much different.

  Afra puzzled over that. How could the same words sound so different coming from the same mind? Goswina loved him, but he knew that she also loved Vessily. Afra understood that everyone should have love enough to give special friends, even many special friends. Goswina loved him and she had a special tone for him, but she also loved Vessily—and hadn’t wanted to leave Capella for Altair because of Vessily, or so she’d said out loud—and she had another special tone for Vessily. That was very strange, and Afra went to sleep pondering that mystery.

  Goswina kept her word to him, even if “later” was the next morning at first light. He woke the moment he felt her mind brush his. Of course, she no longer slept in with him as she had when he was a baby, but her room was adjacent to his. As had long been their custom, he put his hand up on the wall that separated them, knowing that she did the same thing. Not that they needed contact, but it was a friendly remnant of childish habit.

  What bothered you, Gossie, that you couldn’t tell Father and Mother? He shot her a glimpse of the scene of her panicky flight to the parking lot.

  Well, it wasn’t anything . . .

  Huh? That’s not what you really think.

  Well, one evening, we got permission to go to a concert in Altair Port. She showed him a picture of them all driving off together, but she was still concealing something. You don’t need to know every cross on the t’s and the dots on the i’s, Afra.

  Sorry!

  It’s just that Altairian concerts are different from ours. And I don’t mean the music they played. I mean, they have a much more . . . flamboyant way of performing.

  How? Since his encounter with the freighter chief, Afra had taken every opportunity his duties afforded him to meet other crews, with their variety of skin shades and physical attributes. He also liked hearing the different languages, and the odd things crews said from time to time, most of which he didn’t exactly understand. It was often hard to find someone willing to explain variations to his inquiring mind. Some Talents had a way of wriggling past public shields to the real truths, but he didn’t expect to be able to do that for some years to come. Now that Goswina was back, maybe she’d tell him. But he wouldn’t interrupt her with his questions now.

  They are . . . far more demonstrative than we would be, and Afra could tell that she was carefully editing the thoughts she let him see. She was falling into his parents’ habit of “protecting” him. He wasn’t a sissy. He was over six—nearly seven.

  No, you’re not a sissy, Afra, and you’re a very clever nearly seven or Hasardar wouldn’t let you run errands for him. It was an adult concert, Affie, and not something you would understand or enjoy. Afra caught her mental disgust.

  It’s not as if I’d start acting like a nutty Altairian, Gossie. Please let me see!

  Oh, don’t push me around, Afra. I have absolutely no intention of contaminating an impressionable young mind like yours. I said, and Goswina’s mental touch unexpectedly firmed against him, don’t probe, or I won’t tell you anything else.

  Afra projected compliance because he couldn’t bear for Goswina to shut him out and not tell him the exciting thing that was at the edge of her mind.

  So Goswina did tell him about her dismay at what she would only term a lewd public display of affection, her mind so tightly shielded that he couldn’t catch a glimpse of what had made her leave the concert arena so abruptly. Afra hadn’t heard “lewd” before, but it couldn’t be an acceptable word, considering the way she colored it in her mind—a slimy muddy yellow brown.

  The music had been wonderful. Music always is, Goswina continued, and then they had to spoil it. Rowan left with me. I was glad because she was much too young to see that sort of thing, even if it is her native planet and she might be accustomed to such displays. That’s when I found out that she was the reason so many Talents were invited to go to Altair. You see, the Rowan is really a Prime, so of course she couldn’t leave Altair, what with the way space travel sickens Primes, so FT&T set up the course to introduce possible Tower crew to her, when she’s old enough to have her own Prime Tower.

  You didn’t get space sick, did you? Afra would hav
e been disgusted, even with his beloved Gossie, if she had.

  Of course not, but I’m a T-6. The sickness only affects Primes. All of us on the course thought the Rowan was just a T-4. Goswina’s thought brightened with delight at having been the first to learn the truth. She’s not much younger than I am but ever so much stronger. She’s being trained in her duties by Siglen, just as our Capella was. I suppose all Primes were young once, like the Rowan, Goswina added thoughtfully. She’s an orphan. All her family, everyone who knew her, were killed in an avalanche when she was only three years old. They said that the whole planet heard her crying for help. Goswina did not add the other things she’d heard about how Siglen had behaved at that time because it wasn’t proper to criticize a Prime for any reason whatsoever. But the Rowan is very strong, and so clever, and generous, and brave. I could have never done what she did when those awful boys attacked us.

  ATTACKED YOU? There’re indent gangs on Altair? So that was what Goswina hadn’t told the parents. Not that Afra blamed her. They’d’ve been very upset at the insult to their daughter and there could have been embarrassing repercussions. What sort of a barbaric place is Altair?

  Now, Afra, it isn’t barbaric. It’s really very—very sophisticated; much more worldly than Capella is with no Method to guide them. And I wasn’t hurt. I was scared. Anyway, the Rowan took care of them. Afra could hear something akin to righteous satisfaction tingeing Goswina’s thoughts. She just flicked them out of the way as we’d brush sandflies, and without any gestalt to help her. Then cool as you please, she ordered a cab and we got back safely to the Tower complex. That’s when I told her all about you.

  Me?

  Yes, dearest brother of them all, you. Because your minds will match. I just know they will. Afra heard her hand slap the wall for emphasis. And she has promised me that she will see that you take the course at Altair, too, when you’re old enough.

  She will? But I’d have to be away from you . . .

  Afra, dearest, Talents like us aren’t more than a thought away.

  I couldn’t think at you when you were on Altair.

  Well, I’m home now . . . and the Southern Station is well within your range, brother dear. Now, it’s time for us to be up. And for you to study hard so you’ll be ready when the Rowan needs you.

  * * *

  As Afra grew up, that promise began to assume more and more significance—mainly as the passport off Capella and the strict, almost stifling, code of conduct expected of him by his parents. His interactions with freighter and passenger crews, with occasional visitors whom Hasardar had him conduct from their personal capsules to the Tower, had broadened his experience of different cultures and systems.

  He encountered the gallon-sized brown chief on a regular basis over the next nine years. Chief Damitcha liked the odd dignity of the pint-sized greenie, though that description rarely crossed the chief’s mind after he learned Afra’s name. It was Damitcha who introduced Afra to the art of paper folding, origami, which had been part of his ancestors’ culture.

  Afra had been fascinated to see Damitcha’s thick fingers deliberately and delicately creasing, folding, and producing the most elegant creatures, objects, and flowers from colored sheets.

  “Old-fashioned sea sailors used to carve things in their off-duty hours,” Damitcha explained, deftly making a bird he called a heron, with outstretched wings, long legs, and neck. “Scrimshaw, they called it. Have museums of the stuff on old Earth, and I seen it once on leave there. But spacemen gotta watch weight, and so paper’s perfect. Beats the hell outa watching fractiles or such like. Keeps my fingers supple for finicky board repairs, too.”

  When Afra begged to be taught how to do origami foldings, Damitcha produced an instruction tape for him and even gave him several sheets of his special colored papers. Afra told Goswina about this hobby, but Goswina was so involved with being a new Tower technician and wife that her response was more automatic than enthusiastic: all part of her detachment from her previous ties. Afra did understand that she had other claims on her time, that she still loved him but that working in the Tower was far more exciting than listening to her little brother. Hasardar was handier and could be relied on for approval and amazement at what Afra could create out of a sheet of paper. He pinned samples of Afra’s handiwork on his bulletin board and took the manipulable ones home to amuse his children.

  On his next trip into Capella, Damitcha presented Afra with a box of origami papers, all sizes and many beautiful shades and patterns. He brought historical tapes about Oriental arts and even a small paper book on Japanese brush calligraphy.

  As Afra grew older, and assumed other duties, Damitcha would join him in Hasardar’s office for chats, for meal breaks, for long evening discussions. So Afra learned far more details about other systems than were taught in his classroom.

  Damitcha retired from active service with the freighting company and, though he frequently sent messages to his “pint-sized greenie” to which Afra usually responded, the boy did not find another so congenial. The curiosity that Damitcha had generated in the young Afra would never fail, and the boy continued to make far more contact with other cultures than his parents knew, or would consider advisable for their impressionable son.

  However, that same curiosity troubled Afra, for it made him uncomfortably aware that he found great interest in matters his family considered quite trivial or useless. Afra spent hours in his early teen years examining his inner self, trying to find the flaw in him that wanted more than he could have on Capella; that was fascinated by “otherworldly notions”; that resented the loving supervision of his parents and the path they had chosen for him to follow. The fact that he knew they loved him burdened him in his striving to be different. Their main concern was to keep the family’s honor unsullied, which meant adhering to proven ways. With their love, wisdom, and (they thought) insight into the characters and abilities of their children, Gos Lyon and Cheswina were convinced that they knew what was best. Especially for Afra.

  From Goswina on down, his siblings were quite willing to have their lives ordered by their parents. As minor Talents, they each moved serenely into secure careers in the service of FT&T and that was as far as any of them looked. Goswina’s happy marriage and her skills as a technician made her conclude that following parental example would also lead Afra to happiness. So she did not understand his rebellion, nor that he had been exposed to different standards over the years.

  Certainly his interest in “other-worldly” things extended to unusual species, like the barque cats on the liner Bucephalus. Damitcha had told him about these strange, space-faring variants of Terran felines.

  “We don’t have one, but next time the old Buc cradles down here, ask the chief—a woman named Marsha Meilo—if you can see theirs. They gotta new litter, but—sorry, lad, they’re not planet beasts. They stay in space.”

  Afra looked up “barque cat” and the screen showed the current prize-winning sire, Garfield Per Astra, a magnificent beast of tawny brown with his undercoat a tan, with black stripes, and face markings that made him look both benign and exceedingly wise. His eyes were yellow, like Afra’s, but that wasn’t what endeared him to the boy as much as his air of arrogant independence did.

  There were many holos of the unusually marked felines, long histories of their pedigrees, breeding, and nurture, their deftness in finding tiny holes in hulls and giving warning to the crew, their almost incredible talent for survival in spacewrecks. FIND THE BC! was the motto of every space salvage group. Any vessel harboring a barque cat would have BC ABOARD in huge letters in various positions on the hull.

  The next time the Bucephalus rocked into a Capellan cradle, Afra deserted his immediate task and was in the group hovering by the crew gangway.

  “Whatcha got, kid?” a spaceman asked, noticing Afra who was almost dancing about in his anxiety to get someone’s attention.

  “Chief Damitcha of the freighter Zanzibar gave me a message for your Chief Marsha Meil
o.”

  The crewman vacillated between annoyance and curiosity.

  “Yeah? What’s the message?”

  “I’m to give it to her, he said.”

  “Oh, he did, huh? Didn’t know he knew . . . What’s the matter, kid?”

  For Afra had just seen the barque cat, who strolled indolently to the gangway to peer out in as supercilious a manner as the highest Methody preacher.

  “Oh, that’s Treasure Island Queen,” and the crewman’s pride in the beast was obvious.

  Afra extended his hand to the cat, for they were on a level, Treasure on the ship and Afra on the ground. The crewman kicked his hand away and Afra jumped back in alarm and hurt.

  “Sorry, kid, we don’t like our barquie picking up any planetary germs. No touchee. Just lookee. She is a beauty, ain’t she?” and the crewman, rather ashamed of his defensiveness, hunkered down to pet the cat.

  Afra, hands clasped tightly behind his back, could not tear his eyes off the sleek and elegant creature. Treasure, luxuriating in the crewman’s caresses, murmured her appreciation and turned her aristocratic face toward the wide-eyed boy.

  “Hmmmmrow!” she said, plainly addressing Afra.

  “Hey, kid, you rate. She don’t usually speak to landlubbers.”

  Afra listened with all his heart and heard the satisfaction of Treasure’s mind for the caresses she was enjoying. Delicately she sniffed, as much in Afra’s direction as in general at the atmosphere of Capella, but he took it as a personal accolade and desperately wanted to be able to stroke her, to have such a lovely creature for his own.

  You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen, Afra dared to say.

  Mmmmmmrow! Mmmmmrrr!

  There seemed to be no mental equivalent for that except pleasure. Abruptly she leaped away from the door and out of his sight. Just then a group of uniformed men and women emerged and quickly the crewman gestured for Afra to make himself scarce as he stood to attention, saluting those who filed out of the ship.