Meeting (7 page)

“Benjamin said they were going there for medical training,” said Maya.

“Yeah, I admit Svivani doctors are good to know when you have medical emergencies.”

“How can they doctor people from another planet?”

“Their senses are all geared toward understanding other organisms, how circulatory systems work, muscles, stuff like that. They were champion predators before they civilized themselves. They could always tell the sick prey from the well prey. As a consequence, some of their prey animals evolved into fast, intelligent people, too. They share the planetary government now. So anyway, the Svivani have these extended senses, and they can tell things about plants, too. By now they have huge lists of how plants will act to strengthen or weaken body systems. Some of that they can teach and some they can’t.”

The power picture chimed. Columba put down her napkin and went to tap it. Noona’s voice spoke. After a short conversation, Columba turned to Maya. “Your company has come. They’re in the tea room now.”

Maya wrapped an
extra piece of spicebread in a napkin and tucked it into her backpack. She stood up, and so did Travis.

“Do you know where the tea room is?” Columba asked.

“Nope,” said Maya.

“I’ll get you both down there, and I’ll get Travis out afterward,” Columba said.

“What’s the tea room?” Maya had heard of the tea room on the first day of school—a fairy had escaped from it and come to Maya’s room in the middle of the night, and that was how Maya got involved with the Janus House people in the first place.

“It’s one of the places where we entertain travelers,” Columba said. “We have several, with different atmospheres and refreshments, depending on what the travelers need. The tea room is for people who can process Earth air and food.”

“Ah,” said Maya. They went down the stairs to the tunnels under the apartment complex.

Columba turned down a dark corridor off the main route. Glowing dots of green and blue made spirals and light trails along the walls and ceilings, with an occasional flash of purple or red. At the end of the short spur corridor, Columba paused at a black door with complicated lines of purple, lilac, and lavender inlay. The symbols there looked like some of the symbols Maya had seen in the floor of the portal room, and the writing she’d stared at in the books written in Kerlinqua, which she couldn’t read yet.

Columba sang a short phrase of song, repeated it, traced a pattern in the center of the door, and gave it a gentle push. It swung open, letting out soft glowing greenish light and a whoosh of heavy air that smelled like autumn leaves burning.

Sarutha’s sister, Noona, stood waiting for them on the other side of the door. “Maya-Rimi, Travis,” Noona said, her voice formal. “Please meet Kachik-Vati.”

Rimi tightened around
Maya, an embrace from many overlapping hands.

The tea room had softened corners and a low, round, central table. The dark wood of the tabletop glowed with bits of mother-of-pearl inset in a glittering random scatter. The table stood on a thick carpet patterned in swirls of green, purple, and rose. Around the edges of the room were puffy pillows covered in cloth of the same colors, some large and some small. A door in the left wall was ajar.

Noona stood with her hands clasped in front of her, and beyond her stood someone taller than Maya, taller even than Noona, a person who looked like a stretched pyramid with its base toward the ground and its point toward the ceiling. His skin was the color of bricks, and he had three pale eyes just below the pointed end of the pyramid. He had a lot of arms lying against his body, long, softly furred brown limbs with their hand-ends pointing downward, as though he wore a coat of foxtails. Maya couldn’t see if this person had feet. One of his arms was twice as long as the others, and it was a darker color, too, and almost in the center of what might be his chest.

The dark arm rose. At its end was a whorl of tentacles. “Greetings,” said the pyramid person from a mouth Maya couldn’t see, and the tentacles whirled one way, then the other, then drew their ends together in the center so that they looked like a flower.

“Greetings,” Maya said, and gulped. She felt a little dizzy.

“Hiya, big dude,” said Travis. Maya glanced at him. He had gone pale, but he was smiling. She hadn’t talked to him much about his training to be a
giri
, a human helper to the people who lived in Janus House and their guests, but she guessed some of it must be about encountering people who weren’t human. Travis was holding up better this time than he had the first time he encountered otherworlders.

“Greetings to you, smaller dude,” said the pyramid person.

Rimi, a faint pressure everywhere against Maya’s exposed skin, sent a couple of small jolts into the back of Maya’s neck. Maya recognized the calm Rimi could give her when she felt off balance. Her mind steadied; she let her confusion fade and set her brain on memorize so she’d be able to draw pictures of all this later.

“I am Kachik,” said the pyramid person, his voice deep and dark. “This is Vati.” The darker arm in the center of his—chest?—made a graceful rippling motion. It didn’t have elbows; it was many-jointed, like a snake. The tentacles at the end spread into a multi-rayed star, then drew back into a flower shape.

“I’m Maya,” Maya said. She swallowed, straightened her shoulders, and reached for the stability Rimi had given her. She gestured toward her friend. “This is Travis. Rimi is—”

Rimi rose up, in shadow form, a stretched version of Maya, translucent, a dark stain in the air, still attached at Maya’s feet, but beside her now, a wavery twin.

“Rimi is here,” Maya said.

“Oh!” cried Kachik. “Never have I seen such a flower shape!”

The darker arm, Vati, wound around Kachik, then unwound and reached toward Maya and Rimi. Kachik’s own arms ended with clusters of tentacles, but there weren’t as many tentacles per cluster as Vati had.

“Vati says Rimi is beautiful,” Kachik said, “like smoke shaped by wind.”

I told you they would appreciate me, Mayamela
, Rimi thought. She sounded a little shaken.

Maybe you should compliment them back,
thought Maya.

Maya repeated this aloud.

“We thank you,” said Kachik-Vati. “We greet you. We would know you better if we could. Will you allow it?”

“Travis, it is time for you to leave the tea room,” Noona told him.

“Huh?” Travis straightened, took one more look at Kachik-Vati, and then saluted. “Aye-aye, Aunt Sir. Nice to meet you, K-V. Hope to see you later.”

“My hope lies there as well,” Kachik-Vati said.

Columba opened the door, and Travis went through it. Columba followed him out and closed the door.

Maya looked at Kachik-Vati, then at Noona. “Now what?” she asked.

“Kachik-Vati would like to study you and Rimi. The
sissimi
bonded have a cache of knowledge they share about how
sissimi
have gone out into the universes, what has become of them. They would collect your bond, and tell you what other bonded have done. Ara-Kita took first news of you to Rimi’s home planet. Kachik-Vati is here to take second news of you. In return, Kachik-Vati will help you with
sissimi
issues. They have already given us some help about this.”

Maya felt Rimi tense, a vague tightening in the shadow self beside her. Rimi was anxious to find out more about what she was and what she could be, but she and Maya were afraid of having anyone else find out their abilities. “What kind of help did they give you?” Maya asked.

“They have, for instance, told us whom to call should Rimi fall ill,” said Noona. “None of us knows how to doctor a sick
sissimi
. She was sick when you first connected to her, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah,” said Maya. When she had stopped being scared of Rimi, she had worried about her, it was true. Maya had been the cure, though. Easy.

“We have a contact we can call now,” Noona said.

“Good.”

“Younger two, will you touch selves with me?” Kachik-Vati asked.

“Would that be like it was when Kita and Rimi touched?” said Maya.

“Each
sissimi
is different. Each touch-to-touch, each fusion, is different. It is sharing, though, and it is something we all treasure.”

Maya studied Kachik-Vati, who stood quiet, except for Vati’s tendrils, which whirled and stopped, whirled and stopped, weaving into different flowery shapes.

I want to touch them
, Rimi thought.
I want to learn. I want—Vati is my Peter. Well, maybe I’m Vati’s Peter and he’s my Maya.

Is Kachik my Candra?
Maya wondered.

“Okay,” Maya said slowly. “Okay. Let’s . . . get to know each other.” She and Rimi might reveal their secrets. Maybe they’d get new secrets in return.

Two of Kachik-Vati’s arms reached for the round table between them. “Noona, your permission to move this?”

Noona inclined her head. “Of course.”

Kachik lifted the table and moved it out of the way. All his arms curled against him, the tendrils pointing upward.

Maya straightened up and took three steps toward Kachik-Vati. Rimi moved with her.

Kachik-Vati said, “You look young, as your species looks young. Very young to have established a
sissimi
bond.”

“Is there an age limit?” Maya asked.

“Usually
sissimi
bond with people who have spent several years studying for such a gift. There is shared vocabulary that goes across all languages. Some the
sissimi
will know, and some it is the other’s job to teach. Only certain people receive the gift of the
sissimi
bond. There are tests one must undergo. You didn’t go through them, did you?”

“No,” said Maya.

Noona stepped between Maya and Kachik-Vati. “You are to know this child and this
sissimi
bonded out of necessity. The
sissimi
was dying with its original host, and Maya took it over and saved it. She had no training at all.”

“Yes,” said Kachik. “One of our Lost. We are all grateful the bond succeeded with someone unprepared. Especially since the Lost was too young to leave the vine when it was taken. It is the good kind of chance-meet. All our longing is to help you learn, grow, and be together.”

Vati’s arm curled and uncurled in an elaborate and graceful dance, its tendrils waving almost hypnotically.

“May we touch now?” Kachik asked.

Maya lifted a hand. “Okay.”

Kachik-Vati glided across the floor somehow. Maya still wasn’t sure if Kachik had feet. She couldn’t even tell if he wore clothes; some kind of skirt hung down to the floor beneath the lowest of his dangling arms, but whether it was part of his skin or an overgarment, Maya didn’t know.

Kachik-Vati stopped when they stood two feet from Maya. She looked up into Kachik’s eyes. He was two heads taller than she, and his face wasn’t very facelike.

“Greetings, small sibling,” Kachik said. This close, his voice sounded soft and furry, and seemed to come from somewhere in the middle of him. “I reach to you.” Vati curled into a tight spiral, then uncurled, slowly, the tentacles at his tip bunched tight into a spearhead. “Will you reach to me?” Kachik said. Vati paused about five inches from the shadow that was Rimi.

Rimi reached her shadow arm toward Vati’s tentacles. As Rimi’s edge touched the tips of Vati’s tentacles, Maya felt a jolt, a crackling shock that traveled from her chest out to the ends of her fingers and toes. Her hair rustled. The flow Maya had felt when Rimi and Kita touched came again, a caress, a flood of information like light, like heat, the flow going outward and coming in, sipping and sipped. She felt it dimly. Clearer was Rimi’s fireworks explosion of joy in the transfer.
Oh, yes, tell me more. Oh! That opens worlds. Oh, that makes more sense than what I thought. Oh! Thank you!

Oh!
Rimi’s voice vanished into a thrum, joined by another thrum in a different pitch, perfectly harmonizing, both of them ranging up and down but constantly matched. Some of the wonder of the harmonic overtones reached Maya, how the sounds wove into and out of each other, made a song from their mix that belonged to neither voice. Colors stroked parallel tracks across a wide, blank place in Maya’s mind, and she reached in with a mental finger to add another shade to the wash of color that wavered back and forth across the endless landscape, a clear yellow that contrasted with their exuberant stripes of green, gray, orange, coral, lilac. She zigged when they zigged and zagged when they zagged, and then their colors bled into hers, and a great humming, jingling, singing warmth swept her up. She heard songs, words, languages, saw images flashing of other places, people, planets.

Her fingertips sizzled. She so wanted paints and paper right now.

She reached out, felt her fingers lace with soft nests of wriggling things, like stroking her fingers through a bunch of warm, spineless snakes. The sensation was pleasant. The snakes wrapped gently around her hands, caging them in building warmth. She knew this was Kachik, that they were embracing now as their
sissimi
embraced. The connection magnified until she was riding a river of memories and information with Rimi, Vati, and Kachik. She couldn’t sort it and stopped trying after the initial confusion of the rush. She held on tight to Kachik’s tentacles and opened to the flood, trying to capture images to draw.

The song swelled and grew, and the colors spread out and mixed and formed images and shifted again into new shapes and shades.

A flicker of something else broke the flow, which parted around it and rejoined beyond it. Something like a red-tipped thorn. They tried to pause, to study it, but the conversation, the images, the music moved on, and the thorn vanished behind them.