Chapter 23
There is a peculiar manifestation of social cohesion that I have, with some dread, observed in most societies I have visited: “small talk”.
It is fascinating how many people experience a measurable physiological response to the smallest of small talks.
“Isn’t the weather foul?” or “I see the shuttle is late again”, and “Oh I know!” comes the reply, and if you were to scan for blood pressure, sweat production, hormonal response, etc.
, you would observe noticeable relaxation.
I myself have developed several algorithms for doing small talk when it is required, in order to help other people feel secure in my presence and thus improve my overall well-being through social cohesion.
But what I struggle with is how this simple thing often escalates into a whole cultural performance.
For having expressed “Hello, I see you, and you see me”, a veritable avalanche of small talk must then continue in which the participants go to extraordinary lengths to continue to talk about absolutely nothing of any significance or merit whatsoever, in a process that neither party seems to enjoy past the initial moment of connection.
It is as if having established that each sees the other, they then agree by mutual consent to not look too closely, just in case they see something vulnerable, hurting, true.
Or stranger still: you open with “Hello, isn’t the weather foul?
” and before you know it, that little open door results in a flood of “Well actually my mother died yesterday and I’ve got a dreadful lung infection and it’s not getting better and I’ve been struggling to get out of bed in the mornings and my children won’t speak to me but you know, you know, it is what it is, isn’t it? ”
Under no circumstance must you say something meaningful in response to this; merely listen politely and reply, “That must be hard for you”, even if what you are hearing is a kind of death.
A little connection, but never too much.
This is the normality of the interaction, but the rules on how little is too little, how much is too much are never clear or explained.
You are meant to “feel it out” and woe betide you if you get that judgement even marginally wrong, for then all connection is lost and you are other, other, other, and must alone continue, shunned for breaking a law that was never codified, violating a trust whose limits were never clear.
Gebre never bothered with small talk. I don’t think it occurred to ter to even try.
I told my story, and at the end of it, te shook ter head, clicked ter tongue three times in the roof of ter mouth, and ter hands danced in anger and indignation even though ter voice was level and low. Finally te said: “Your accent has got worse.”
These are placeholder words. They are the words you say because, on Adjumir, silence is almost as rude as pointing.
“I did a refresher – Assembly Adjumiri.”
“Of course,” te tutted. “The whole Accord is going to think we all sound like that, in a few years. All those Adjumiri children trying to teach off-worlders… or perhaps I should say all those off-worlder Adjumiris trying to teach the children of the worlds on which they now find themselves how to speak proper Adjumiri, and all the lessons are going to be boring Assembly norm. The dialects, the nuances, the songs – they’ll be gone in a matter of years, just footnotes in an archive. ”
I couldn’t disagree, knew better than to try.
“At least you remember some vocabulary,” te added, brightening a little. “And your etiquette, should you ever go to a bathhouse on Adjapar, will be old-fashioned but excellent.”
“Gebre…”
“I didn’t send for you. I have received a device, and I did alert the Assembly. But I thought they would send someone… military. Someone from an agency. Or no one at all. Not you.”
“Well,” I replied. “Well. It seems we have both been tricked.”
“It seems so.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
“I do not. Perhaps your… your other nature. Perhaps it was thought that at times like these, being… as you are… It is a possibility.”
This thing that is shame. This shame that is my every waking moment. This thing that is me.
“It’s the end of the world,” I sighed. “This time, for real, the actual thing. Somehow never thought it would actually happen.”
“It’s the end of the world,” te agreed, without rancour. Then: “You look awful.”
“You look older.”
“Well, obviously. You don’t, though; just awful. I thought being of the untold darkness, you might heal faster, that what the numberless did to you…”
“I need to be unseen for that to happen. I need people to forget. If I am watched, people will imagine I am human, and so, in a way, I am. Even you – even with what you know – you see me as a person.”
“Should I apologise?”
“Please don’t. I am grateful for how you see me. Even if it doesn’t help with the swelling. It has been… I was always grateful. It’s good to see you, even if we have been deceived.”
“You too, Mawukana na-Vdnaze. In a way. You too.” Te sighed, sat back, stretching ter arms across the heavy stone table, rolling out each finger one at a time. “Well, as you’re here, I suppose you want to see it.”
“See what?”
“The interface. The thing for which you have been sent halfway across the galaxy. Goodness, did they tell you anything?”
“They told me your name.”
A flicker of something that might have been pain, wiped away too hard to be anything other than a deliberate hiding, a deliberate smothering of feeling. “Well. That was irresponsible. The relevant data is this: that what I have in the basement could destroy the Shine.”
The deepest parts of the archive are illuminated by panels in ceiling and floor.
They light up in front of us, faded out at our backs so that quickly we are subsumed by dark.
The air grows cold as we descend. At some point while being beaten, while being asked, Where’s your ship, where’s your ship, where’s your ship?
my exoskeleton broke, and the clean clothes that Gebre found for me are too wide, too short, made of some animal wool.
They were left behind by someone who is gone; te cannot remember if their number was called, or if they took Grace.
Every part hurts. I do not know if Gebre notices.
Te has changed, I have not; te does not look at me the same.
Down this mouth of a hall, past endless locked doors to forgotten workshops and labs, curators’ halls and archives, to a door as black and featureless as any other.
Beyond: a room filled with what I take to be junk; but no, look again.
Half burned in the space-scarred remnants of the chunks of metal across the wall are familiar markings, the blob-scratch symbols of a place I have tried very hard to forget.
A scoured-out instruction; a debris-scratched direction – the language of the Shine.
In the middle of the room: a table, and on it a Pilot’s interface.
It is immediately recognisable, familiar, a thing I have worn, albeit of a different design to the less bulky interfaces of the Xi.
It looks undamaged. It is in a small white polymer box.
Gebre offers me a pair of gloves to handle it.
They are too big, but I wear them anyway.
I pick up the interface. Turn it over. Put it back in the box, put the lid on.
“Well?” te barks. “Do you know what it is?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I do.”
“And is it what I think it is? Is it the beginning of the end?”
“I honestly couldn’t say.”
Ter lips curled into a scowl. I had forgotten how big and how deep the faces of Adjumir liked to move, when they had a point to make.
“Mawukana na-Vdnaze,” te barked, “I will be dead soon. I would very much like to die without this… curiosity hanging over me. I am sure you of all people understand.”
“I do. The only reason I hesitate is because I think what you have is a Tryphon-class blackship interface. And if you do, we are almost certainly in immediate and thundering danger.”