Chapter Twenty-Four Arturo
Twenty-Four
Arturo
When we reached the bend in the river where we’d originally spotted the barge, we pulled our canoes over to the bank and stashed them in the trees.
We’d hidden the ships well enough that we had to tromp through the forest following one of the recovery beacons on our acclivity rings before we found them.
“Is there any way to know if scions are nearby?” I asked Dayan. “We encountered one near here before, but a barge crew hauled it off to fight in the arena.”
“They are territorial,” Dayan said. “If you met one here, you aren’t likely to run into another. At least not right away.”
That was good. “Everyone eat some rations, if you haven’t already,” I said.
It had been a long day. Under normal circumstances I would have recommended we sleep before flying again, but if we convinced Ivy to let us leave, we could be sleeping in our own beds in a few hours.
It felt worth the risk of pushing through.
Everyone scattered, some to eat, some to change into fresh flightsuits, others to relieve themselves in the woods. Gilaf offered Dayan some rations from his ship. Dayan settled down on a log on the far side of our starfighters, staring at them.
Oh, right. Our ships would look impressive to someone who’d never seen one.
Alanik let Suki out of her pack, and she settled into her dash seat, still working on her tablet.
“How is the report?” I asked.
“Almost done,” she said. “Just adding some finishing touches.”
We’d better be ready to go when she was done.
I set about clearing space for Dayan behind my seat.
It wouldn’t be comfortable, but it was technically possible to fit a person back there, and we had cargo straps for tying down loose objects that could work as a makeshift harness so Dayan wouldn’t become a pancake on the inside of the canopy the minute I dove.
Still, I’d better not get shot out of the sky, or Dayan was toast.
“You need a flightsuit,” Alanik said to Dayan.
“You are about my height, so come, borrow one of mine.” Alanik led them to the storage compartment on her ship and held a flightsuit up in front of them.
Nedd and Gilaf sat in their ship, scarfing down some rations while Dayan headed into the woods to change and Alanik prepared her own ship for the mission.
I grasped at loose ends—we had a plan, but once we made the call to Ivy, any number of things might go wrong.
I needed to keep my mind on the mission.
I was leading my team into a precarious situation against a well-armed enemy.
But I could only concentrate on the incoming danger so much before the buzz of anxiety got too loud and my brain started looking for something else—anything else—to focus on.
The more I worried, the more I wanted to orbit Alanik, just to be near her. That meant something I wasn’t fully ready to admit to myself, but I couldn’t fight the pull of her gravity. I wandered over to her ship.
“Do you want to talk about the call to Ivy?” Alanik asked.
“Stars, no,” I said. “I want to talk about anything else.”
Alanik smiled, sitting in her cockpit. “Have anything in mind?”
And maybe it was the stress, or the exhaustion, or my desperation to talk about literally anything but the upcoming mission, but I let this sentence fall out of my mouth: “I’ve been thinking about an ethical question.
” Oh, scud. Was I really going to start this conversation that way?
Even Nedd thought it was a bad idea, and he was Nedd.
“Okay,” Alanik said. She waited.
I didn’t want to keep going, but apparently I was doing this. “What do you think the ethics are of dating outside your species?”
Alanik considered this. “It probably depends on the sapience of the species in question.”
“Assume both species are sapient,” I said quickly.
“Then I think it depends on what the purpose of dating is,” she said thoughtfully.
“Mate-pairs across species don’t make a great deal of sense, because the purpose of a mate-pair is to conceive children, and cross-species breeding is impossible.
But some of my people pair for companionship, and that is possible between species.
” She shrugged, like this discussion was entirely academic.
“What is the purpose of dating between humans?”
Alanik looked at me expectantly, like there was absolutely no subtext to this question.
Scud, if she were even a little bit interested in me, shouldn’t she feel more awkward about this? Stars, Nedd understood what I was saying when I didn’t want him to. Why didn’t she?
“I guess there are a lot of purposes,” I said. “Companionship is one. Having children is another. There’s physical…”
“Enjoyment?” Alanik suggested, like she was talking about the weather. “Yes. That is another purpose, certainly. So I think your question needs to be more specific.”
It clearly did. I should just come out and say, Hey Alanik, I’m interested in you, and I’m wondering if you think that’s wrong on some deep, unforgivable level.
What I actually said was “What do you think the purpose of dating should be?”
“I think they’re all valid purposes,” Alanik said. “You had a…girlfriend.” She said that word in English. “What was the purpose of that?”
Another complicated question. “Our families wanted us to get married,” I said. “We knew each other growing up, and they thought it was a good match. She came from another wealthy family, and our parents were friends. I loved her, but not like a sister, so that was convenient.”
“Ah,” Alanik said. “Social convention. That’s another purpose. I don’t think most relationships between alien species would serve that one.”
“Not at all,” I said.
“So,” Alanik said, “cross-species relationships are not practical for purposes of breeding or social conformity. That leaves pleasure and companionship, both of which are possible. Though I suppose the former depends on the anatomy and preferences of the alien species in question.”
Oh, stars. I made a very specific point of not looking at her anatomy. I was pretty sure preferences wouldn’t be a problem, though I supposed I didn’t know all the details.
I hoped she didn’t notice my face getting flushed.
Alanik studied me, and suddenly I felt like maybe she was gathering a whole lot more from this conversation than I’d initially thought.
“I’m curious,” Alanik said, in a tone that indicated her interest was purely objective, “about human romantic arrangements. You had a girlfriend, but now you don’t. Is it a complicated process to dissolve a relationship with a girlfriend?”
Stars, any minute now Suki was going to finish her report and interrupt us in the middle of…
this. At least Nedd and Gilaf seemed happy to recline in their own cockpit, oblivious to our conversation, and Dayan and Sadie were still off in the woods, hopefully not running into any scions, if Dayan was correct about their habits.
“No,” I said. “A girlfriend or boyfriend is like…a temporary relationship. It means you have romantic inclinations toward each other, so you’re trying out the relationship to see if it can eventually become a marriage. Or not.”
“Ah,” Alanik said. “So if you had another romantic relationship, it would be temporary.”
She seemed oddly disappointed by this, and I wondered suddenly if not one word of this conversation had ever been hypothetical for her.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I guess it’s temporary with the hope it works out to be more.”
Alanik smiled, and I suddenly felt like I’d said too much. “How is it for your people?” I asked. “You talked about mate-pairs, but are those similar to marriages? Or having a girlfriend?”
“Somewhere in between,” Alanik said. “Sometimes pairs will split and match with other people. And having children with multiple partners isn’t really a complication. Often our children will be raised by different principal caregivers anyway, if they have more than one grandparent who is able.”
That’s right. The UrDail didn’t raise their own children, but relied on their parents to take on that responsibility.
“So do you choose a partner based on genetics?” I asked. “Or…”
“Affection, mostly,” Alanik said. “You want to match with someone you like, someone you’re fond of and want to spend time with.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s similar to us.”
Alanik nodded, like we’d agreed on something, but I wasn’t entirely certain what it was.
I tried to sound casual, though the veneer was quickly peeling. “What about you?” I asked. “What are you looking for in a…relationship?”
Alanik considered me, and I thought she understood exactly what I was asking. “I’m open to a relationship for pleasure and companionship, if an attractive option presents itself. Social expectation doesn’t concern me in the least. What about you?”
She looked at me with those bright violet eyes.
What about me?
I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her.
“My last relationship was all about social expectation,” I said, “and I’m not interested in starting another like that.
I cared about her, but she was right to call it off.
We wouldn’t have been happy. The feelings weren’t strong enough.
” I missed the comfort of knowing that part of my life was already figured out for me, but not her as a person.
That alone said enough. “But yeah, enjoyment, companionship, and hopefully love. That sounds nice.”
Alanik nodded. “So, for those purposes, a relationship between species would be ethical.”
“Right,” I said.
“All done!” Suki called from my ship. “I daresay this is a masterpiece in bureaucratic forgery.”
“Go, Suki!” Sadie said, emerging from the woods and heading for her ship. Dayan had also reappeared, leaning against a tree and studying our ships again.
Alanik turned to me, a smile ghosting across her lips, and I thought for a moment she might be laughing at me.
Had we just agreed that we wanted to date each other? Stars, I thought we had, but I couldn’t be sure, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask her now.
“Do you have any other questions?” Alanik asked me.
Do you want to give this a try? I thought. And also: What are the chances this will end well?
It felt a little morbid, asking about the end of a relationship that hadn’t yet begun. The appropriate thing was probably to run headlong into it, damn the consequences. I didn’t know how to do that anymore. I didn’t know if I ever did.
“Later,” I said.
When we were alone. When I could kiss her if I wanted to, which I sure as hell wasn’t going to do in front of the entire flight.
Alanik settled back into her seat, and I thought maybe she was disappointed. “Okay,” she said quietly. “Let me know.”
I looked around at my team. Nedd and Gilaf packed away their rations, and Dayan looked skeptically at the cargo space behind my seat. It would be serviceable for a flight off planet, and survivable if we got into combat, as long as things didn’t go terribly wrong.
“Last chance to back out,” I said to Dayan.
“I know,” Dayan said, “but this isn’t the first time I’ve put my life at risk.”
Alanik watched me quietly, and I wished we’d gotten to finish that conversation.
We would, I promised myself. Later.
“All right,” I said. “Everyone prepare for takeoff.” I called to Sadie: “You’re up.”