1. Introduction (Blue, Arun, Liadan)
His first meeting with the biologist is when he rolls over the man, who flops, half-unconscious, but tries to punch him anyway. Stubborn annoyance. Blue winds the tape on his ankles and wrists liberally. There, free hair wax.
And then he looks up, and sees the breasts first -- small, firm, perky. The tail only registers a couple of seconds later, but when it does, he forgets the topless girl it's attached to. It's a long coil of gray-pink, which ends in two bad-horror-movie spidery hands. Or feet, maybe.
"Night sky," she says softly.
She means his hair, he understands eventually.
He sneers at her, postures and growls; she nods and stays. She never does look afraid. He never does tie her up.
From the floor, the hogtied man sulks at them both.
--
8. Innocence (Blue, Arun, Liadan)
They reach for her when she resurfaces. She's bruised and scratched, her braids in disarray, a few trinkets ripped out.
"Lìadan!" "Are you okay?" "Where is he?"
She looks at them, grave and so innocent. "Down below," she says.
Arun knows her words better, but Blue gets it first anyway. "...Holy fuck. She drowned him."
Arun snarls at the pirate -- how dare he -- but, "What is 'drowned'?" she asks, predictably.
Blue rubs his temples and gives her a mildly sarcastic look. "When you make 'em breathe water until they die."
"Oh." A pause. "Yes."
Arun sits down a bit too heavily. She looks -- solemn, vaguely somber. But that's it. She doesn't look like she deliberately held down a trashing grown man until he stopped moving. "Shock'll set later," he tells himself.
Blue snorts, forcing away the loss of balance. Girl's alive, asshole with gun isn't. "You're in shock. She isn't."
"But she's not violent at all," Arun protests.
"She's a survivor." Blue turns away. "They all are, in this place. That or dead."
"Lìadan?" Arun pleads.
She pats his hand soothingly. "He died. Safe now." He can see in her eyes how much she doesn't understand his sorrow.
--
9. Drive (Blue, Arun, Liadan - post-story?)
Lìadan's huge monstrosity of a wheelchair comes to a screeching stop at Arun's feet, only missing his toes because by now he knows to dodge. She chuckles at him when he mock-glares.
"One of these days, you'll crash," he says. He says it everyday. It's another of their games.
Today she doesn't play. She smiles, deftly spins the wheelchair around, and revs the engine. "Get on."
Arun's feet are barely on the bar that doubles as a foothold when her wheelchair jumps forward, and he grabs for the backrest madly. She laughs at his protests, as the wheelchair races down the road. The wind whips her braids into his face; he almost loses his briefcase over a bump.
"Where are we going?" he yells; she might generally drive fast, but she drives well. This... is more hurried than usual.
"I told you!"
"No you didn't -- oh. Comm?" Well, that's what he gets for not emptying his pockets properly. "Would you believe a squid ate it?"
"I would. They're evil."
"It was crawling all over the ceiling, it was the damnedest thing -- really?"
"They are! Can we eat calamari tonight?"
Arun bursts out laughing, and leans forward until his chin rests on his wife's shoulder. "Mm, evil has never tasted so yummy. Sure!" He leans to the left cautiously, feeling inside the pockets, and emerges with her own comm.
"Get enough for three," she says as he selects the number.
She's smiling, that tiny, mysterious, serene smile he sees so rarely.
So when they screech to a halt by the train station, and there's a tall, lean, pasty-white guy with a black three-days beard and a blue ponytail waiting, Arun isn't too surprised. He gives the other man a wry smirk, plops a marine bag and his own briefcase across Lìadan's lap, and moves over on the foothold. "It's a good thing strays don't eat much. We might be able to squeeze you in with the luggage."
Blue rolls his eyes, even as his hand brushes Lìadan's on the armrest. "It's a miracle there's enough space for you. You're as large as you're tall."
Blue climbs just as she starts, again, and Arun swears at him as the taller man grabs for his elbow, almost throwing both of them down.
"Hey!" Arun doesn't know who to glare at. Lìadan is laughing, not sorry at all; and when Blue finds his balance, he wraps his arm around Arun to catch a hold over his back.
Arun didn't miss him at all. And as soon as the wheelchair stops, Blue will be shouldered off with great haste. He's Lìadan's boyfriend, not his own.
Besides, he's holding on too tight, his ribs dig into Arun's shoulder, and his heavy spacer boot pinches the side of Arun's tennis shoe.
"...Hey, Lìadan, you're driving way too fast. Slow down a little,
will ya?"
--
16. Questioning (Blue, Arun, Liadan - post-story)
"What's your name, again?"
"Blue."
"Your real name."
Blue scowls. "I never said."
"I need to know." Arun's fingers wriggle over the keyboard, impatiently.
Blue wants to say nothing, passport into Hindasia space be damned.
"Blue's name is not Blue?" Lìadan tilts her head, considering. "Like a war name? None as blue as you."
He sighs; talks to her, because it's easier than talking to him. "... It's Kem. Kem Sevag."
She repeats, slow, careful; he nods. She sounds slightly awkward, the end of his last name not quite curt enough, but he doesn't care. He doesn't use the name anymore, anyway.
"Planet of birth?"
Arun is detached; Lìadan is expectant.
Blue tells her about his homeworld, and if he happens to sneak in relevant information amidst the little tales of mother and neighbors, he doesn't watch Arun enter it.
--
19. Gray (Blue, Arun, Liadan)
"Their natural hair, seriously? I thought no green-blue-purple colors could be spliced in. Not and be passed down, anyway."
"They can't, technically. This -- it's genius." Arun shakes his head. "Such subtle work... To give them prettier hair."
"Hm?"
"Basically... their hair's been modified so that the minerals floating around in the water will settle on it. This one guy's got green with orange streaks because it's corroded copper."
"... Huh. And hers? What is it, silver? Iron?"
Arun chuckles. "No, actually. See, hair color is produced by a stem cell at the base of the hair that's -- anyway, when it dies, the hair goes gray. And the more subtle the gene tweaking, the more likely it'll mess up. I suspect most people in her family go gray very, very early."
"So really, she's a young grandma." Blue smirks. "...I feel cheated. I planned on clipping her braids to sell them as souvenirs."
Arun blinks placidly. "Eh, you can still do that. Most tourists won't know the difference between a melanocyte and a gold nugget."
They dodge hurriedly to let Lìadan's comb sail past their heads.
--
21. Vacation (Arun, Sunil - pre-story)
"Are you sure? It's not really next door. I mean, sure, Simin's team is only one sol-system away, but that's still at least five days of lag if anything happens, and then there's no one else for weeks."
"Aw, come on. You worry too much."
"You don't worry enough. Just wait for someone else to volunteer. I promise you won't die."
"I'm already dying! I waited two years before Neela was at a point in her life and doctorate where she could come with me. There was no one else before her, and there's no one else right now."
"You're kidding, I have seven kids who are going for their master's in marine exobiology this year."
"Half's gonna flunk out. Statistics! And betcha they want marine beasties or marine flowers, not marine-creepy-crawlies-that-happen-to-like-volcanoes. 'Sides, once I hit thirty, I can say goodbye to my scholarships. The University won't fund the whole trip. I'd sell my parents but they're already in debt, I wouldn't touch a dime. So either I go now, or I don't go at all. And then my pretty, pretty water world with its pretty, pretty tectonic tango will sit there, alone and miserable, for I don't know how many eons."
"That won't happen, that world is too interesting. Think about what the ecosystem must be like, with native and Earth-originated wildlife competing for resources for the latest centuries!"
"I am, thank you."
"... Heh, sorry. Anyway, Doctor Hùong was talking of setting up a team, I'm sure they'll have a place for you."
"As much as I love and revere Doctor Hùong, she always takes several geological ages to set up her trips. I'd like to get my doctorate before I'm fifty."
"... You're annoying, you know. You're the only guy I know who'd rather get into even more debt and risk his life than pass up work."
"Work? Sunil, Sunil, Sunil. No partner to bug me, no kids to babysit, no other researchers to do the 'my field-of-study-is-bigger-than-yours' routine with. A whole world to explore. Water everywhere! It's like a vacation."
"Oh, fine! Just don't complain if you end up vacationing at the bottom of a whale's stomach, Jonas."
"...Arun Jonas Zlatanec. Got a kind of neat rhythm to it."
--
23. Cat (Blue, Lujayn - pre-story)
Lujayn reminds Blue of a cat. Goes where she pleases; doesn't take shit from anyone, size difference be damned; damn quick with a knife -- even quicker with a gun; and can ignore you loud enough to deafen.
She fucks like a cat, too. No sign of interest for months, and then she'll be in your bunk, twisting in your sheets and arching her back like there's nothing else in the world.
She yowls and claws too; he isn't surprised.
The morning after, it's like nothing happened. It's fine with him. He's never been much of a pet person.
--
31. Flowers (Blue, Liadan)
"What's this?"
"Motor, you won't be interested."
Blue thinks those words are the only ones she's honestly unable to understand.
"What does it do?"
"Makes objects move. Or it makes stuff move inside objects."
She crawls closer, tail coiling behind her, careful not to get between the lamp and his project. She's already fascinated. "Hard to explain?"
"Yeah," he says, and falls silent. He's busy.
She doesn't disturb him. But when he asks her to hold the screwdriver, she beams.
Blue rolls his eyes, throws his hands up. "Other girls, you get them flowers."
He smiles a tiny bit wider.
--
34. Stars (Blue, Arun, Liadan, end of story)
She still prays to the Matron and the Girl-Child and the Amazon. Even there, floating in front of the front bay like she leaped to touch the stars and the air forgot to let her go. She's dry and she breathes, even as she twists and flips upon herself; and Blue and Arun watch her like they think she's upside down. They're silly. "Down" is that planet she left behind, but it's so far away she will never find the bottom-of-the-sea again. They're in the Sea-Above now, and it's up all around.
They tell her that those stars are suns; "like the Father," Arun says, voice soft like he thinks he will hurt her. He's so silly. He thinks that because things are balls of gas burning brightly in the cold depths, that they cannot be gods as well. He doesn't realize that fire is a miracle.
The Father is not her Father anymore, though. She has drifted away from His pod -- his "system," as they say. There are many, many others Fathers around -- and lots of other pods. Blue says he'd never been to a world that had three moons quite like hers, though. She figures that other systems have other moons, other Mothers. Perhaps people born under them are different.
She is still very much the Matron's child; she's learning how to pilot the ship. And how to read and write. And speak Blue's language. Still the Amazon's, as well. The other day, she slapped Arun across the face. He deserved it. Still the Girl-Child's, sometimes -- like now, when she dances in zero-grav.
Her gods are so far away and she doesn't live under their gazes anymore, and she isn't even sure they can still answer her prayers; but she doesn't care. They shaped her, and here she is. Drifting farther than she ever imagined. And so she dances there, before the stars, and dreams about the worlds she still has left to see.
--
75. Mirror (Blue, Liadan)
She watches him from the small tub, topless and wet, coiled with the end of her tail flopping out. He pretends he didn't expect the scene to feel more intimate than it does. It's nothing personal; she's just waiting for the end of the daily gravity time. She could have spent it in the dolphins' water tubes; he isn't sure why she chose to hang out in the bathroom instead. Perhaps she ran out of time.
He stands by the sink without a word, pretends he doesn't see her in the mirror as he bends over. She watches, solemn, silent. She was confused when his brown roots grew back; but he has no money to have them gene-tweaked like Arun's.
"Oh. You're putting the sky back in."
He thinks about doing what Arun does -- correcting her, giving the real words, explaining the process of dyeing; but in the end it's true enough, and he doesn't say anything.
--
100. Relaxation (Blue, Arun, Liadan)
Arun slips in the hot, steaming pool cautiously. At the other end, Lìadan floats boneless like so much seaweed, a blissful smile on her too-stern face. Arun chuckles. Hundreds of bubbles run up his skin, his thighs, his back.
It would be better if that guy stopped lurking between two rocks, shotgun propped up on his shoulder. Arun can't tell if he's watching over them or just watching them.
"Just come in already. There's no one on this island, or the next, or the one after that."
"Sorry," Blue replies dryly. "Playing lobster isn't my idea of a relaxing time."