She sat at her desk again the next morning, calmly working on her continuing research, refusing to be distracted by the fascinating bumps and noises following the ship's setdown at Phor 17. She focused on the telescreen, drawing from the habit of long hours to keep calm, to focus. Restlessly, she flipped through her tape of Phor 17 tantalized by the beautiful carvings, a depth of beauty she would be proud to call her people's own, if only it were.615Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRa799qHMrb
The torrid tropical setting and the monumental stone of Phor 17's small third planet had reminded the Project scientists of the ancient Khmer jungles of Cambodia, and the convenience of the nomenclature had stuck. A distinctive row of glyphs, transliterated into Khmer syllables, had named the Narbong as a race; the Phor 17 site itself the Project had named Longvek, after a minor but bellicose Khmer city, yet unaware that even greater ruins were yet to be discovered on Ciravis, first great Ankgor Wat itself, then its seven homegrounds, each outlying site another magnificent study in carved stone and a spired temple rising above the treetops, outrivaled solely by Angkor Wat's vaster size and complexity. With such wonders elsewhere, the Phor 17 glyphs had become a minor study, a token nod beside the fantastic and intricate carvings of Ciravis's larger site.
Had the humans erred in their excited Khmer naming, she wondered, finding connections where none truly existed? But the artwork did seem curiously reminiscent, enough to prompt a few speculative papers about early Narbong contact with Earth, a theory Kira doubted. It was a human thing to look for connections to help understanding, as she did herself with her own Khmer preoccupations, and so the Project scientists had found multi-armed goddesses and cranes, dancer halls, fire halls and Queen Rainbow among the strange shapes carved on every Narbong wall. A cross-shaped structure around a portal became a gopura or entrance building. A bas-relief carving of a strange multi-armed creature became Shiva,the Lord of the ascetics, the Great Sage, the Meditator of universal Wisdom and Power. A cylindrical tower that was found on top of one Narbong pyramid became a linga, the traditional Khmer structure that presents Shiva in the form of a phallus, though none really believed it to represent a reproductive organ and the naming had sparked dissenting papers.
To name is to own, she reminded herself, and so they believed.
She stopped at a favorite statue, the Bird King, an emerald and fantastic creature, with the beak of a kite, roundish eyes, golden wings, and four arms and with a breast, knees, and legs like those of a kite. Stalking on those legs, the beautiful bird-man led a procession of five scaly squat creatures, suspected to the Narbong themselves, each named after an ancient Khmer king. "Jayavarman II, Yasodharapura, Suryavarman II, Jayavarman VII, Jayavarman VIII," she whispered, tapping each with her finger.
She leaned her chin upon her hand and smiled at the procession, wondering about each of the Narbong depicted there---who they were, what they had known, what age they had lived in, what stars they had seen. If they were Narbong at all. In the fierce tropical climate of either Narbong planet, little survived the biotic corrosion of the jungle; of the Narbong, no certain biological traces had been found, not even bones in graves. Yet she agreed that these lizardlike figures, dancing gracefully behind the Bird King, were Narbong. Maybe her mother had once pointed out the statue and named it so; perhaps she merely guessed like the humans and found certainty in her own willing---her dreams weren't clear enough to be sure of a chance memory.
She scrolled through the glyphs that dominated the smaller site at Phor 17, a complex dedicated to the Naga and a Crocodile Goddess. Perhaps the symbols were the Narbong name of the place, a single-temple complex near an exposed mine-face. The Narbong had sought diamonds, gold, silver, and other technological minerals here, and some of the components of Angkor Wat machines had been traced by mineralogical analysis back to this site. There was a clear connection in that link, proven by objective fact beyond beloved assumptions: maybe Phor 17 was an outpost like the outlying homegrounds on Angkor Wat's peninsula, not a separate colony but part of the Angkor Wat complex as a whole. A few Urban Map writers had thought so.
She touched the pebbly skin of the Crocodile who danced among smaller reptilian figures, her snout held impossibly high, her clawed hands beseeching the Naga King who twined its coils around the scene. It was a beautiful carving, intricately repeating upon itself, meaning upon meaning. Like her dreams, she thought, and about as impenetrable. Vainly she wished for someone who would listen about her dreams, who would understand the apartness they brought to her, would care about the needs of a person cast apart from all that meant anything.
Why can't Dr. Bashir just let me be? she wondered and rubbed her face tiredly, letting her sensitive fingers ease the muscles. Her back cramped suddenly, stiff from her hours of bending over the desk viewer, and she got up to pace to and fro for a few minutes, stretching from side to side in slow bends, bathed by the warm reddish glow of the darkened room. The telescreen shed its pale light in a dim cone into the reddish shadows, illuminating small specks of dust. She dipped in and out of the light, watching the glow move on her skin. One bend led to a turn on a foot, a half crouch as she completed the turn, her arms rising in smooth arcs to shoulder height; she brought in her arms and turned again on the other foot, keeping her balance easily in the slow dance.
Smiling slightly, she paced through the rest of the exercise she was inventing, inspired by a vague memory of the Black Starship. She bent forward, brushing the floor with her fingertips, then pirouetted slowly as she reached upward, stretching the long muscles, realigning her bones, calming her space. I am a stalk-spider, she thought. I weave my web like this and that.....
She stopped her dance abruptly, almost remembering that spider-form----butt he image darted away into the mists, as always. A pet? Livestock? She couldn't remember. She sighed and sat down at her desk, then stared at the screen blankly.
More footsteps tramped by her closed door, more of the muffled thumps and voices of the ship landing she had not been allowed to see. She ground her teeth, then bent forward again to her viewer, blocking away the anger. He wins if you're mad, she told herself. Still, she was too aware of her metal prison, of the city that lay about the ship, a city she had seen only in videotape, photos, the few artifacts Ben had collected for his shelves. Not the right city, not the one she awaited, but a Narbong city.
It's not fair. She leaned her forehead on the cabinet of her viewer and wished she could smash something---freely, without punishment, just for the satisfying smash. She wished she could run away forever into her daydreams, to dance with Tiger, to trade fierce posturing with the Naga King, to sit comfortably within the circle of the Mantis's arms. My friends, she thought, why can't you be real and this reality the fantasy? She wished---for too many things she couldn't have. Where is the answer?
Queen Rainbow, the Tiger growled, enticing her, will you come dance with me? He posed proudly in his jungle glade, his tail flashing. Behind him, the Mantis God turned and beckoned to her, then invoked the mist and the Naga within, not the Khmer terror that had frightened her in dreams, but the friend who knew her better than anyone else, not even Soma. Beloved, the Tiger called, leave this place and live forever with me, on Mount Meru...….
Beloved, she answered wistfully, could it be forever, truly forever?
You need only wish it, my queen.
She heard new footsteps outside in the hallway and tried to ignore them, seeing the Tiger in her mind, vibrant and real, a god of destiny. She reached out her hands, as if she could touch them from this world, as if the doorway had truly opened and all she need do is step through it----One moment later, to her startlement, her cabin door hissed open behind her.
"Quiet!" a voice whispered urgently. "Ramon, get off my foot, you clod."
Kira turned her chair quickly and saw three human shapes crowding in the doorway, the bright light of the corridor vivid against the darkness of their shapes, blinding her.
"Is she here?" another voice whispered. "Hit the lightswitch, will you?"
Kira stood. The ceiling light flashed on and she blinked dazedly against the sudden brilliant light. The visitors quickly shut the door behind them.
"I don't have much tape to run in front of the camera," a third voice said irritably. "Make this fast."
Kira blinked again against the dazzlement of the lights, then her vision cleared to show Jo and two young men, one of them the dark-haired man she had seen on the ship dock. He smiled at her warmly; the tall sandy-haired young man beside him did not. Jo spread her hands dramatically. "There you are. Where have you been?"
"Under house arrest," Kira answered sourly.
"I suspected as much," Jo said, making a face. " 'Delicate nerves,' my ass. Isn't Bashir a total creep-out? These hunks, by the way, are Ramon Gil and Dag Nordberg, our fellow peons. Naga's the brunette, Dag's the Norwegian---it's easiest to remember that way."
"Hi," Ramon said. 'You're prettier than your videos."
She blinked, then smiled back at him. "That's what they tell me."
"This is stupid," Dag said to Jo, ignoring the interchange. "We can get in serious trouble."
"So?" Jo retorted, tossing her head. She gave Dag a look of disgust. "Excuse the troll, Kira, but we needed Dag---despite his adjustment problems. Dag's the tech who's playing a movie for the guard camera on down the corridor---you do know you have a camera?"
"I'm not surprised," Kira said. Ramon took a long step forward and bent to look at her computer screen, then smiled down at her. He seemed taller than his middle height, lean-limbed and brown in his shortsleeved jumpsuit, the clean planes of his face and high cheekbones reminding her Southeast Asia, not just Cambodia. His scents of dust, warm human flesh, and a faint cologne washed over her, and he stood so close she sensed the heat radiating from his skin. Emerald feathers would become him well, she thought confusedly, like all Khmer of those ancient glades. He raised an eyebrow. "Glyphs," she said awkwardly.
"I can see that."
"Why are you here?" Kira asked, bewildered.
Jo waved her hand airily. "We're collecting you. That's what archaeologists do, after all---and we don't have much time, either." She stepped forward and tugged at Kira's sleeve peremptorily. "There no help for it, Kira---you're stashed."
"This is stupid," Dag repeated.
"Then go home," Jo said impatiently. "Go the whole sixteen light-years, if you must!" Dag scowled ferociously, drawing his narrow face even narrower, his mouth pursed angrily. "Nobody forced you, Dag."
"Oh?" Dag said, his face sour.
Kira shrugged disdainfully and tugged again at Kira's sleeve. "Want to see a real Narbong city, Kira? I thought so. Grab your jacked and let's take a tour."
Kira hesitated. Well, she hadn't actually promised Ben to stay put.
"Is that a 'no'?" Jo looked deflated, her voice rising in disappointment.
Kira shook her head. "Are you joking?" she said. "Let's go."
"Great!"
"The going will be a little delicate," Ramon warned. "Wait a sec." He eased open the door and looked in both directions, then waved them out into the corridor. "I'll leave you to dismantle your movie, Dag. We'll wait outside the airlock."
"I'm not going any farther."
"Suit yourself, buddy."
Kira looked up at the contraption near the corridor ceiling as she slipped out of the room, marveling that they would take the risk. The hallway was empty in both directions, through she heard voices around the bend. Were they coming nearer."
"Come on," Jo whispered. "This way.
She and Ramon each took one of the Kira's arms and hurried her down the corridor and the bay-port, then down the ladder to the exterior hatch in a quick clatter. A few minutes later, they crowded into the outermost airlock and waited for it to cycle.
Doorways, she thought suddenly, her heart pounding. A moment later, the metal door slid open, admitting a wash of moist air from the darkness beyond, heavy with warmth and the scent of greenery. Kira threw her head back in surprise as the scents washed over her, then stepped automatically after the others onto the ladder platform, looking to the right and left, her skin tingling. The airlock door swished shut behind her. Jo clattered briskly down the ladder after Ramon, and both turned at the base and looked up at Kira, but she could not move, not yet.
On every side of the well-worn clearing grew a dark tangle of trees, vines, and underbrush. To the right, extending under the trees, were metal buildings of Earth manufacture, with the shadowed movements of people moving around them. She heard the whine of a ground car, the indistinct murmur of voices. Towering beyond the camp, just visible over the treetops, was the multi-leveled pyramid that was the Narbong temple, its pink stone glinting dully under starlight. She looked at the shadowed square of the Doorway and the stars it framed, its stone still radiating the heat of the daytime hours after the sun had set. All her life among the humans, she had lived in the artificial environment of Aemnoa's bubble-city, never knowing the reality of a truly living world beyond the small botanical garden at the city park and in her imagined Khmer jungles. She stood still, drinking the darkness.
It's beautiful. O' mighty Naga, can you see this? She lifted her arms, blessing the forest, as cranes again flew up the mountain in brilliant sunlight.
The warm air carried a dozen scents, a few sharp and bitter, some redolent with sap, others briefly sensed and gone. A warm breeze tickled her cheek, riffling her fine hair; she turned her face into it and breathed deeply, the touch tingling along her skin. She heard a murmur in the trees far to the left, the sharp cry of an animal, the sibilant movement of the forest on every side. I remember this, she thought, sorting the impressions. But not here, in another place---places. yes, places: the memories stirred beneath her mind, like fish in a turbid stream, gracefully darting, sinuous, alive. She let her arms fall and filled her lungs with the warm air, every sense tingling.
Tiger, she thought ecstatically, are you here?
Jo gestured impatiently below her, her shadows warmly red in the pleasant darkness. "Quite a sight, huh? Let's go sightsee---out of sight, so to speak." She stamped her foot. "Kira, will you come?"
"Come on, Kira!" Ramon called, and Jo plunged away from the lighted buildings, heading for the trees. Kira moved her feet reluctantly forward and descended the ladder. Ramon tugged her off the last tread, his smile flashing in the darkness, then pulled her into a run. They ran into the trees and along the twistings of the path, following Jo's sure guide. After 100 meters, Jo abruptly slid to a halt, nearly causing a collision, and pointed excitedly to a profusion of pale flowers just overhead. "Look: orchids!"
Ramon snorted. "Collect later, you. Kira wants to see the glyphs---don't you?"
"I want to see everything," Kira said simply.
The three moved along the path, following Jo's slower speed as the young woman scanned the branches overhead. The forest enveloped them with a warm darkness, subtle movement in every direction that teased. Kira walked along the path, conscious of the slight jar of each footstep on the hard-packed dirt, of the measured rise and fall of her breathing. Life here: life everywhere. It's beautiful. She looked up at the darker pattern of branches against a moonless sky, remembering her dream of another path, where she had walked naked under the starlight as the Queen Rainbow.
"Beautiful," she breathed.
Ahead of them, Jo crashed off path, chasing another flower. Ramon sighed. "She gets that way."
"It's all right." She half-turned and smiled up at him. "This is wonderful."
"That I can see, and long overdue, I think," Ramon said. "Jo had a good idea in stealing you. Why does Bashir have it in for you, anyway? You don't seem to me."
"Is that what he's been saying?"
"Well, not exactly---but the upshot adds up to mental problems. Liftoff panic, general emotional collapse, a hothouse flower in need of her glass protections."
"Hmmmmph."
"Tough being an alien pet," Ramon said casually, making Kira stop short and turn to him.
"How did you know?" she asked in sharp surprise.
"Bashir's been on the videos almost as much as you, Kira. Let's say I can recognize a certain kind of academic avarice. I grew up in an academic family and I know all the usual types---hell, half my relatives fit certain slots just fine. Dr. Bashir is a particularly distinctive type. I'm surprised he let you loose onto Survey."
"Ben did that. That's my foster father." As Ramon smiled and tipped his head at her, she sighed. "Well, of course, you know that. It's odd, everyone knowing me and I don't know them back."
"You'll get the chance."
"How nice of you to be so confident." They walked slowly along the path, their footfalls muffled and lost among the murmurs of the forest.
"So, how do you like being a celebrity?" Ramon asked.
"I don't."
"Well, there are the lesser versions. Here I'm one of the token Khmers----everybody thinks I should understand this place just because my ancestors built similar temples a thousand years ago."
"You are a Khmer?" She turned and looked at him more closely, then remembered her manners. Ramon might not like that kind of stare; she surely didn't. He shrugged, his white teeth flashing in the darkness.
"Not all of me. My father was a Filipino. I was born in Manila." Ramon took her sleeve and pulled her into a side path as they passed it, "Jo, stop doing that stork dance and come this way."
"Who's a stork?" Jo asked indignantly from somewhere up ahead, but she came back to them, anyway. "Ramon," she said severely, "you have no sense of adventure."
"I'll differ with that: I'm just more focused." He smiled lazily, then laughed as Jo stamped her foot. "Hell, Jo, go stork-dance if you must. I'm easy."
"You think you know so much, Ramon Gil," Jo said airily. "Someday you'll get yours." And she bounced off again.
"Is she angry with you?" Kira asked as Jo vanished up the path. "Why?"
Ramon shrugged. "Don't fret about it. Jo just emotes for emoting sometimes, and she gets pissed when I don't react the way she wants." He broke off a leaf and smelled it, then put it behind his ear. "Dag's a total prick, so I'm the expectable romance, I guess---affairs are traditional for pretty grad students on these jaunts, especially grad students from upper-class British backgrounds who think certain things come naturally with life." She shrugged again, but not unkindly. "She's Lady Joanna Harris, by the way, but only call her that when you want to piss her off."
"I don't understand."
He grinned. "She thinks she's so unconventional, too. It'd help if Jo was sure about what she wanted."
"Hm."
Ramon laughed. "That's a nicely noncommittal sound."
She bit her lip, then decided she was out of her element. He laughed again, but a nice sound, not mocking. "Sorry, Kira. I'm just kidding."
"That's okay." As they walked down the path in the soft darkness, the forest's aliveness surrounding them, she looked at them surreptitiously. "So what do the temples really mean, O' Token?" she asked.
"Beats me," he said lightly. "I suggested, just to get Roddenberry's goat---I'm on his Angkor Wat Metals team---that we put on a Khmer birth ritual to find out, but Dr. Roddenberry never did have a sense of humor. And I doubt he'd have gone much for the killing fields part, even if we had the convenient political prisoners."
"I can think of a good candidate for these 'killing fields.'" Kira said pointedly.
"Now that's neo-Freud, for sure---what would Dr. Bashir say? But let's not forget Dr. Roddenberry---Or Mrs. Chapel, that's a thought. Look ahead, Kira. You're gonna like this."
The path widened into a sward of close-hugging ground plants and an open dark space dominated by the bulk of a stone archway. Kira hurried ahead and touched the carved stone. "The Celestial Archway!" she cried, then heard Ramon chuckling behind her. She turned, smiling as broadly as he. "Thank you. I've seen it in photographs, but..." She turned back and ran her fingers over the smooth planes, then traced a curving groove of the alien bird-man's feathered tail.
The stone stood four meters tall, intricately carved in the distinctive Narbong iconography; she cold recognize the design in the shadows and caressed it delightedly. Why the young grad students had absconded with her into this night-dark city, she couldn't say, but suspected a basic kindness, a perception that most of the humans she had met seemed to ignore. She paced around the arch (gopura, really), checking the panels, recognizing them all. The temple compound must be very near, concealed by the forest trees that ringed the little glade. Overhead, the night sky was strewn with stars, in a different pattern than she had seen at Aemnoa.
Ramon joined her at the stone and ran his hand over the glyphs, then glanced over her shoulder at Jo, who had darted into the clearing to chase after something in the grass several meters away. "Monomania. All that energy suppressed for years, waiting for this. It may be a bit hectic around Jo for a while, but she's okay, Kira. You can trust her." He looked back at the shadowed stone. "It really does look Khmer, doesn't it? My father wrote dozens of papers comparing the iconography. You've probably read them all---Talong Gil?"
"You're his son?" she asked in surprise.
"Yeah," Ramon said, a little sourly. She looked at him more closely, wondering at the sourness. Talong Gil had founded an entire school of glyph interpretation and had named all the primary Phor sites; his decades of scholarship had become the foundation of Glyphs at the Narbong sites. "Archaeology comes with the genes," Ramon answered with a shrug. "We still have distant relatives in Cambodia, living the ancient life in the jungle, as much as the Khmers manage these days." His slender fingers caressed the stone a moment more before he withdrew them determinedly.
"You love those glyphs."
Ramon looked around a moment, a faint smile on his lips. "I love this place, but not because it's Khmer. It's not---it's Narbong. And that is something very special." He turned back to her, his dark eyes intent. "I've always wanted to meet you, Kira, our one living alien. Not that I mean to make you feel odd at that," he said hastily. "I don't---and not that I just see you as a nonperson, you know..."
"I do tend to become an icon myself." Her fingers traced another curve.
"You can be both---just like me and the other token types on this project. I got into computers when I was a kid and spent the next two years talking microcircuits and databoards and nothing else---it just baffled my father, and we never did work that out. And out here, some academic types think Khmers and computers are an odd mix---to his credit, Dr. Roddenberry isn't one of them. The others think I should be wearing a crown and a scepter and standing around looking picturesque." He grimaced, then shrugged away the irritation. "We get our own acclaim. They really do think we must know something they don't."
"How I know the feeling." She ducked her head shyly. "Thanks for bringing me out here, Ramon."
"Sure. Of course. Listen, Jo can bounce her way around like she will---be sure to go along for the ride, it's great fun---but some of us understand more than you think. And a lot of us don't approve of the way that they've kept you hidden away like some kind of hothouse flower. You must've been very lonely."
She smiled up at him. "Sometimes."
"Well, not anymore---grad students don't have much pull, but Dr. Crusher does, even with the captain. There have been big arguments among the Powers about Dr. Bashir's decision, and I think she'll back us up. So perk up---this won't be your only escape."
"Optimism! I like that."
"Yeah, naïve, I admit, but what the hell. Listen, we don't have much time out here---let's not push our luck and give Dr. Crusher too much to defend---but before we go back, let's catch Jo and go over to the temple compound. The gopura is famous, but the temple glyphs---well, you know all about that."
He called to Jo and they tramped through the darkness down another path through the warm moist air. Kira sniffed appreciatively, smelling the cool moist earth, the multiple scents of the vegetation, the occasional aroma of orchids overhead. Though she had visited the arboretums on Aemnoa and knew the smells of such a profusion of living things, a cultured garden wasn't the same as a real forest. After the Narbong died out, the surrounding rain forest had grown inward, covering stone, breaking pavement with their roots, remaking the land. She looked around at the tree branches overhead, looking for the movement of animals, then asked Jo.
"Most of the animals here stay out in the hinterland," Jo replied, sounding regretful. "Probably too much activity here; we've been too long making noise and bulldozing where we pleased. The site preservation here hasn't been very good." Jo clucked her tongue in disapproval. "This strip of forest is the only jungle they left on site---everything else was cleared. They could have been more careful."
"You can't study a site without digging," Ramon commented. "Nor land a spaceship on treetops."
"I admit that, but preserving a site means just that---preserving," Jo said passionately. "The ecosystem is the most fragile component of a site, and it's so easy to destroy it. We have the techniques and sensors now to be more careful; we don't have to dig pits all over. BioSurvey hasn't seen a tiger here for years." She sighed and caressed a nearby leaf, then touched a cascade of tiny blossoms that gleamed dully in the darkness. "All if it's so beautiful---not just the stone and metal, but this, too. Why can't we respect all of it?"
"It's better at Angkor Wat, Jo," Ramon said. "You'll see."
"I bloody well hope so."
Ramon swatted suddenly at his face. "Yeow! Damn, it bit me." He inspected his hand, then wiped it gingerly on his tunic. "Sorry, Jo," he added as his bug murder earned himself a reproving scowl from the young British woman. "Well, not all of the animals stay away---the bugs are still here."
"Bugs aren't so easily dislodged," Jo said, arching her eyebrow. Ramon pretended to fend off her glare, and Jo laughed, then looked over her shoulder at Kira. "They've done some comparison studies between Narbong rain forest and the forest reserves on Earth: the proportions are about the same. If the bugs ever knew their business better, they'd take over in no time." She snapped her finger at a bush and set off a rustling as a minute shadowy form darted deeper into the bushes. "Stink bug. Watch out for them---they're an improvement over the Earth variety."
They emerged from the forest barrier into a wide space of paved stone fronting the site's temple pyramid. The Survey had burned and slashed the forest that had half hidden them, with new incursions by creepers and grass kept strictly under control. The square had a disheveled look of crumbling stone and occasional tufts of vegetation, but much of the original magnificence still remained: the Narbong had built massively in stair-stepped stone, decorating every vertical surface with their swirling glyphs of strange design. On the far edge of the square stood a series of standing towers, 37 in all, most (but not all) sporting four carved faces oriented toward cardinal points, mute faces that watched the city decay by centimeters, oblivious to the human visitors.
"The Gods," Ramon murmured, pointing. In the shadows the Naga King seemed to stir under starlight, the eyes in all of its seven heads gleaming. Kira looked away uncomfortably; her dreams came too close in this warm and humid night. She contented herself with just looking from the edge of the square, letting her eyes roam freely from pavement to temple to the geometric horizon of the small residential city, block shadows beyond the temple. A breeze blew steadily against her back, bringing its many scents of lush forest---and in the far distance, a faint chiming. She turned abruptly in that direction.
"What is it?" Jo asked, noticing her swift movement.
"I hear a chiming."
"Chiming? From where?"
Kira pointed beyond the south face of the temple.
"There's nothing down there that chimes," Jo said, confused. Her companions looked at each other, and Kira abruptly relaxed and turned to them with a smile. She didn't want either one to think her strange. She smiled more broadly at her own irony. Well, more odd than usual. She laughed out loud, confusing them all the more.
"I'm sorry. This is delightful." She waved her arm at the temple square. "I know all the glyphs so well---and I know that it'd take hours to look at them properly 'in the flesh,' so to speak. Maybe we can come out again tomorrow."
"No 'maybe' about it," Jo said stoutly. "All we have to do is sneak you back again---assuming Dag didn't get caught."
Ramon shrugged. "Sorry about Dag's attitude, Kira, but he's a conservative type that worries about...." he dropped his voice dramatically into a whisper, "---breaking the rules." he made a face of mock terror, and she giggled. "Come on."
The took another route back to Santiphap, skirting the north edge of the pyramid and plunging back into a brief fringe of forest. At the edge of the ship clearing, concealed by forest shadow, Ramon calmly inspected the largely deserted scene.
"I don't see any outraged academics, do you, Jo?" he commented.
"I knew we'd pull this off." Jo turned to grin at Kira, then bounded forward to the airlock ladder and vanished inside the ship.
Kira met Ramon's eyes. "Thanks," she told him, then hesitated and plunged onward. "I saw you at the ship dock," she said hurriedly. "I wanted to talk to you then." She flushed. "I'm glad we had the chance after all."
"You're welcome, Kira."
"I---well, I suppose we should go in."
As they walked to the ladder, she tried to think of something else to say, discarded six possibilities, and so said nothing at all, like a stick. But Ramon didn't seem to mind. With ceremony he conducted her back to her stateroom, waved blithefully at the corridor camera, then swept her hand to his lips for a brief kiss.
"Queen Rainbow," he murmured, and she gasped and yanked her hand away.
"What?" She stared at him, eyes wide. "What did you say?"
He looked startled in his own turn, and then flushed a deeper brown in obvious chagrin. "I'm sorry, really. I was trying to be too cute. I know that you like Khmer myths and---oh, hell." He sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."
"It's just that...." She stopped, unable to go on. Should she explain how a Tiger danced with her in an imaginary glade? Show how alien she really was? She was suddenly aware of her nose ridges, her reddish hair, her difference in nearly everything from him. She tried to smile, guessing it looked more pained than reassuring. "It's all right, Ramon."
"I am sorry. Maybe later you can tell me what I did wrong, exactly." He glanced aside distractedly as they heard voices around the corridor turn. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"Okay. Good night." He hurried away.
Kira turned and stepped into her room; as the door swished shut, she belatedly noticed that the ceiling light was off. She was sure she had left it on. She reached for the switch, and brushed against another hand, sensing him an instant later in the gloom. The light snapped on.
Bashir looked at her with contempt. "Enjoy your little jaunt?"
Kira stared back at him bleakly.
"I gave specific orders," Bashiir continued when she said nothing. "I expect them to be obeyed."
Kira turned away from him and walked to her bed and sat down, then studied her hands in her lap. She had learned many forms of denial over the years. Now the posture fitted the slow beat of despair that caught at her breath. I'll never get free, she thought.
"I assume you heard me."
She raised her head and looked at him, and felt a flash of defiance wash through her body. I am Soma, the Moon-king, she thought. What would Soma do? The dramatic, as befitting a goddess.
"What would happen, Dr. Bashir," she said, "if I didn't keep to your regiment of sanity? What if I had shaking fits, gales of laughter, bloodied head-beating on the wall? I've often thought about turning autistic again; how long do you think you'd last before they replaced you? After all, I'm Earth's celebrated alien child---how long would your precious alienist career last if I went nuts?" She smiled at him, showing her teeth.
"You aren't nuts," he threatened.
"Nice to hear that, especially from you." She stood up and pulled herself to her full height, lifting her chin. "What if I killed myself? That's a thought." She saw the sudden flash of fear in his face and smiled grimly. "A few papers on cause and theory, and then you're just another Project psychiatrist, psychoanalyzing the other dead aliens like everybody else---if you even stay on Aemnoa. What if I did kill myself? Personally, I think it a better choice more and more."
"This is nonsense." He turned angrily toward the door.
"Let me out!" she cried after him. "Let me out, or you will see what I can do."615Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ85dCvrcMzz
He whirled and glared at her. "Stop it!"615Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk6GjImW0k3
"Among my people," she told him savagely, "all I need is to stop---and all the worlds stop with me." She raised her hands in ceremony, a gesture she'd seen her mother use in her dreams; it strengthened her now. "I claim the True Dreaming; I lay the pattern of the future. This is no idle threat, Doctor. Believe it."615Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlB4XAbgP4o
Dr. Bashir snorted and crashed out of the doorway; the door hissed shut behind him, entombing her in the glare of the ceiling light. She lifted her head and faced the light squarely, then padded across the floor and snapped off the switch. The warm reds of the room enveloped her, scented by the tang of the ship's scents, the dust tickle of the air currents that slid slowly around her room from vent to vent. She moved around the room, slipping gracefully through her spider dance, and knew Bashir believed her threat---and would not dare tempt her into it. To risk all required a certain courage, and Bashir didn't have it.615Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0K6PXP0Q4B
Do I have the courage? she wondered, stretching her arms outward in the graceful pattern of a creature worlds away. Suicide is not a test I'd care to try, personally. She smiled and stopped her dance, letting her arms fall loosely to her sides.615Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5dBNDAehED
It wouldn't have worked before, she realized; there wasn't enough of a crisis. But now, through Jo and Ramon, the crux gave the opportunity. She felt grateful to her new friends for their daring, knowing full well how academic punishments could descent on both of them for defying the Powers. With a flutter of her hands, she included them within the scope of her threat to Bashir, if he felt tempted to retaliate in another direction.615Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHZ7rMDioBV
She danced across the room, her feet beating a gentle rhythm on the carpet. Maybe she would tell Ramon about Soma; perhaps he would understand even that. The hope swept her clean and she spun in place, dancing gracefully in the imagined shimmer of Queen Rainbow's robes. We rise, she thought; yes, it is much like that.615Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1uHcaDOPbw
ns 15.158.61.37da2
