Becalmed by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

is
thin, reedy, beautiful according to our culture—long blond hair and classic
features— but strange to the Quurzod, whose features are thicker, hair
generally a dark, almost orangish red. I cannot quite tell how old Klaaynch is.
She’s one of those girls who looks the same at thirteen as she will at
twenty-three.
     
    I’m guessing she’s eighteen or
so, very curious, with a gift for language. She already speaks some Standard
poorly, learned through overheard snatches of discussion.
     
    She reminds me of myself. All
ears, wanting to know what everyone is saying, no matter what language they
speak.
     
    Her family won’t host, so she
watches me from afar. I eat in the prescribed visitor restaurants, and stay in
the visitor hotel when I am not with my host family. The Quurzod agreed to host
families, but balked at overnight stays, and frowned on sharing meals. “Host”
is not really a good term for what they’re doing, but we have no other. They
are sharing as much as they can.
     
    Klaaynch cannot sit with me in a
visitor restaurant, and I cannot go to a Quurzod-only place. Sometimes she sits
beneath one of the arching trees that mark every intersection. I have learned
to eat outside in the visitor restaurants, at the table closest to the tree.
Klaaynch and I talk, or try to, and she has promised me she will teach me
familial Quurzid.
     
    She says in diplomatic Quurzid
(the only Quurzid I know fluently), They cannot tell me who my friends are.
They cannot determine whom I care about and whom I do not. If they try, I shall
challenge them.
     
    I admire her reasoning.
     
    And her courage. She wants to
step outside her culture and learn other cultures. She wants to become more
than who she is.
     
    Is this what Coop says he saw in
me? This desire for knowledge, the desire to add to the core by reaching beyond
the training, beyond the culture?
     
    I sit and murmur to Klaaynch, not
knowing that her face—
     
    — is the first one I see,
rolling toward me, eyes open, mouth gone, as if someone cut it away, those
cheekbones crushed, her hair wrapped around her neck. She is buried just above
me, thrown on top of me, her blood on my skin —
     
    ~ * ~
     
    I
gasp, and this time I am thinking of escape long before I vocalize it. I claw
the floor, the needle poking my skin, the darkness holding me. I climb out and
crawl toward the door, nearly there when Jill reaches me. She drags me out of
the room as if she’s dragging me out of that pit.
     
    I stumble and fall against
Deirdre who asks me what’s wrong, asks me to talk to her, asks me what I need.
     
    “Leona,” I say. “Please. Find
Leona.”
     
    And then I pass out.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    And
wake in one of the hospital beds, like I found myself in after they rescued me
on Ukhanda. Leona is there, but not there. She flits in, she flits out. She won’t
talk to me in the medical wing. She forces me to wait until I am well enough to
sit in a conference room without any medical equipment at all. She is even
going to bring the chairs.
     
    She knows that I know. She doesn’t
know what I know. Just that I know.
     
    And I ache because of it.
     
    I ache.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Cultures
do not invent languages and traditions overnight. They evolve over time. And
while some linguists believe that the language comes before the culture, I
believe that the language serves the culture.
     
    Think of a culture that has
developed four different languages, each with a prescribed purpose. The Xenth,
who wear formal clothing and have precise traditions about who may have windows
and who may not, who may look to the left and who may not, have but one
language, without much more complexity that most human languages. Twenty-eight
letters, millions of words, a simple sentence structure followed in infinite
variations.
     
    But the Quurzod, who wear little
to no clothing, and have windows everywhere, and few walls in their homes, the
Quurzod divide the world with their language. Language is