Humanity made planetfall during the reign of Mozark IV, universal cycle 33159.87. The sky seemed dark to them, the sun pale and lurid. The grasses were indigo and the forests violet and gold. The blood in the beasts they killed to eat ran black. They had left behind the green of their mother world. Their coming was noted by the People, knowledge of them was sought. Learned first, by the Seekers, was that their blood ran red.
-Abalone Shell on the White Beach, A New History Of Theta Mars
The second lieutenant was off duty, running laps around the track that circled the outside of the ship gymnasium. Most other activities were suspended or their participants only half attending to them. The emissaries had emerged from their seclusion to dance.
In the central court most often used for group games, the woman and the wyrm twirled about one another, inscribing spectral patterns in the air. It resembled no tradition of dance the second lieutenant had ever witnessed, but the woman moved with grace and precision. It would have been a thing of rare beauty to watch her, hair and white robes fluttering, if not for the matter of the wyrm.
The animal danced in utter silence, sinuous body twining around and through the path of its human partner. Its clawed feet left no scoring on the rubberized floor, gusts of wind moved soundless across the gymnasium from the sweeping gestures of its wings. There was something in the knowing of its careful steps, the leaps and twirls and serpentine flicking of its tail, that was more than instinctual. Intelligence permeated every twist and abrupt pause, every fluid pace that matched in every regard the lithe steps of the woman that spun in the currents it made, a leaf in the air, a shell caught up in the undertow of a wave. A white beach and a wave and a shell of abalone.
An intimation of its nature was suggested here, by this power and control over its movements and presence. An animal of that size should not be silent, warned the human mind. An animal capable of such secrecy is dangerous. This was undeniable. The second lieutenant recalled how they had appeared from a clear sky as though they hadn’t been there before at all. He thought how a planet of deep forests and jungles and crag laden peaks would suit the wyrm in every silent, deadly endeavor. How it would make mice of mankind, should any will to hunt them be present. Disinterest on the part of the wyrms was all that had kept the peace on Theta Mars, in the colony days. Disinterest that had not lasted.
“Why do they do it, do you suppose?” The second lieutenant overheard a crew member say to a friend by a bench of weights.
“Why are we doing this? ‘Sides, looks fun enough, she’s smiling.”
“Yeah, uncanny that. Looks almost regular from afar.”
The second lieutenant moved out of earshot of the crew members. The Scholar and the Journeywoman were hovering by the entrance, eyes locked on the emissaries, conversing furtively.
“The sync is practically instantaneous, there is no response delay.”
“I can’t define origin.”
“No, it’s both.”
“Learned as a pairing?”
“Or practiced as such, or—”
“But the iterations change, as though improvised.”
“Yes, seamlessly.”
“Meaning that they both—?”
“I can’t explain it any other way.”
“But does that—?”
His lap took him beyond their flurrying words. The colonial expatriates were odd. The second lieutenant wasn’t sure it was more than planet sickness. Space acted on those not born and raised in it harshly, on occasion. The festering of past tragedy lingered in them, that too, could explain their strangeness. They were glued to each other, like young people in first love, and had lifetimes of book learning etched on their hands and faces. They carried their knowledge around like a curse laid over them, something best not shared.
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The wyrm and the woman came to a sudden, effortless stillness. A feather landing on water. The gymnasium held its breath, the second lieutenant’s steps slowed a fraction, as he willed himself not to freeze. When they moved, turning as one to the fountain at the end of the high ceilinged hall, the tremulous waiting passed with them.
“It’s not right to see an animal move like that,” said the crew member to her friend, speaking softly, as though afraid now to be overheard. The emissaries still moved as they had while dancing, in velvet lined silence.
“Like what?”
“Like it knows things.”
“Are you having a stroke? Of course it knows things. Why’d you suppose it was on the ship? It’s not her pet.”
“Yeah, I hear, I hear. It’s just hard to parse, what with how it looks and all. It never does anything, just follows her around.”
The fountain was a tap that supplied running water at a twist of a dial, issuing forth through the air to fall into a wide basin with a drain. It was the only place where the liquid was dispensed uncontained aboard the ship, a holdover from the luxuries of planet living. Divine Messenger was nothing if not a luxurious vessel.
The emissaries crouched shoulder to shoulder by the basin, the woman plugged the drain with the flat of her hand and allowed the basin to fill. Both she and the wyrm dipped their heads to drink.
“—could be the same as James and Inferno.”
“You know it’s not. There is no separation between them, she doesn’t even have her own name.”
“If we’re right—”
“—we are.”
“—do you think they would have done this to all of the children?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“The implications—”
“Perfect communication of their intentions, faces and voices that we would listen to.”
“But the minds, if she is completely subsumed—”
“We’re groping in the dark, my love, we can’t know until the return.”
“If they even want to continue communications.”
“If the Empress decides—”
“She won’t! She can’t!”
“But if they’ve truly done this, it is unforgivable.”
“Then both sides will be beyond redemption.”
The second lieutenant’s lap brought him around to the space beside the fountain, where the wyrm lounged, laying on its side, back legs extended, torso supported on its elbows, front paws folded. It regarded him from between half closed eyes. The woman shook wet hair from her face, having drenched herself in the flow of the fountain, before closing the tap. The second lieutenant rarely saw humans wet. In space, there were much more efficient means of cleaning that were not so hard on the water recyclers.
He paused, a reprimand on his tongue, as he would have given to any member of the crew under his command if he had found them engaged in such frivolous, and potentially life threatening waste. She turned to him, water glittering in the sunlights like a skin of iridescent scales.
“Second lieutenant Christoph Grenlivt,” she dipped her head to him, droplets sliding down her nose. “We meet again.”
The reprimand could of course not be given. She was a passenger of the highest esteem. The second lieutenant fumbled through his mind for something else to say, as the emissary raked her fingers through her hair, and squeezed water onto the flooring.
“You are very skilled, it is pleasant to see you dance,” he said.
She smiled, “it is pleasant to watch you run.”
The second lieutenant felt as though his skin were heating where her eyes traced. The light clothing of his offduty hours was suddenly too warm for the gymnasium, already kept cooler than the ship’s ambient temperature. “What is the name of your dance?”
“It has no name. It is an exercise, to practice what we cannot without a sky.”
“You dance in the air?”
“It is the only place for it.”
“I should like to see that.”
“Record of it was taken, when the colonists were expelled. We are told you have copies of all Theta Martian documents aboard,” she said, dropping to lay alongside the wyrm’s stomach, her head on the folded forelimb. “You could see it if you like anytime, second lieutenant Christoph Grenlivt.”
“You may call me Christoph, if you wish, and,” he paused, eyes tracing the unfamiliar contour of fabric sopping up water from the puddle around her, eyes snagging on the hooked black of the wyrm’s talons. Five to each forelimb, rounded pads under each finger that kept it silent in movement. “My meaning was that I would wish to see you dance.”
The wyrm purred and the woman smiled. “We do not dance to be watched, second lieutenant, but to feel, to learn, and to know. That we might be seen is only a consequence, not our purpose.”
