prewritten text, and he wondered if she’d done her own translation. This charity shelter, he managed to work out, was one of several in the city for naekulam, men without families. It was one of the better ones, she informed him, reserved for the elderly, the disabled, and other nonviolent residents. Any infraction and he’d quickly find himself in less pleasant accommodations where his independence would be severely restricted. No violence, she warned with an insistent edge. She glared at him, and he realized her arrogance wasn’t skillful enough to cover her fear of him. He wondered if she knew where he had just spent the last six months of his life.
“Hae’m, l’amae,” he said with heartfelt sincerity.
The pahlaqu would come to observe him, see that he had enough to eat, make sure he got medical treatment if he was unwell. No one was homeless on Vanar. No one starved. Although no one would much care if he committed suicide or not, as he would discover later. There were usually one or two a month, with the resulting mayhem as tenants scrambled to swap their own rooms for one better, a noisy, heated restructuring of the social hierarchy.
She demanded his datacard, flipped it open, and painstakingly showed him how to use it. Even as a naekulam, Nathan would have a nominal government subsidy to draw from. It was enough to cover food and small luxuries such as tea and coffee, soap and bath fees. In the meantime, his limited funds precluded anything much more expensive than wandering the streets for entertainment. Her lecture finished, she smiled scornfully at him. “Do you have beings to asking of no questions?”
He smiled back. “Máat, l’amae.”
She snapped her reader shut and left. He heard her speaking with several other men, tones of entreaty or admonishment more eloquent than the words.
Even armed now with food and a few guidelines from his pahlaqu, he was abandoned to his own devices. He had no more lessons with Pratha Yaenida. Other than the pahlaqu, no one ever came to see him, no one questioned him. But he knew that if he had any hope of ever escaping, he would have to learn as much as he could about his prison, find the chinks in the walls, learn the rules before he could break them. Not an easy job when you couldn’t even ask directions to the nearest airport.
His new life, although better than prison, was not that less Spartan. A small crate made of thin woven reeds held what few possessions he owned: his spare mati and two worn hand towels, his toiletries, the handful of bookcubes Yaenida had given him along with a secondhand reader. He’d found a discarded pot and planted a hydrangea cutting he’d furtively taken from a public garden, the plant just now sending out roots from its place on his windowsill.
He spent much of his time struggling to learn Vanar from simple bilingual children’s stories translated into painstakingly correct Hengeli. Obviously translated by someone whose Hengeli was slightly less than fluent, sometimes the mistakes were amusing, sometimes simply puzzling. A woman’s voice read the stories in the most basic audio Vanar: “The girl has a ball. The ball is red. See the red ball.” He tried to decipher the ornate squiggles matching the sounds before giving up and simply listening to the stories, repeating the words. More than a few nights, he would end up with the reader propped on his chest and an empty cup on the floor beside him, sound asleep despite the strong tea.
The charity shelter had been built wedged into a rock cleft running down the side of the far west bank of the river. Twenty layers of boxlike rooms balanced one atop the other, latticed with haphazard staircases. Roofing overshot narrow porches barely wide enough to allow space for a single man. Passing another habitant along the balconies often meant squeezing by while avoiding looking over at the sheer drop below. His was one of the less-desirable rooms, a tiny cell at the top of the complex
“Hae’m, l’amae,” he said with heartfelt sincerity.
The pahlaqu would come to observe him, see that he had enough to eat, make sure he got medical treatment if he was unwell. No one was homeless on Vanar. No one starved. Although no one would much care if he committed suicide or not, as he would discover later. There were usually one or two a month, with the resulting mayhem as tenants scrambled to swap their own rooms for one better, a noisy, heated restructuring of the social hierarchy.
She demanded his datacard, flipped it open, and painstakingly showed him how to use it. Even as a naekulam, Nathan would have a nominal government subsidy to draw from. It was enough to cover food and small luxuries such as tea and coffee, soap and bath fees. In the meantime, his limited funds precluded anything much more expensive than wandering the streets for entertainment. Her lecture finished, she smiled scornfully at him. “Do you have beings to asking of no questions?”
He smiled back. “Máat, l’amae.”
She snapped her reader shut and left. He heard her speaking with several other men, tones of entreaty or admonishment more eloquent than the words.
Even armed now with food and a few guidelines from his pahlaqu, he was abandoned to his own devices. He had no more lessons with Pratha Yaenida. Other than the pahlaqu, no one ever came to see him, no one questioned him. But he knew that if he had any hope of ever escaping, he would have to learn as much as he could about his prison, find the chinks in the walls, learn the rules before he could break them. Not an easy job when you couldn’t even ask directions to the nearest airport.
His new life, although better than prison, was not that less Spartan. A small crate made of thin woven reeds held what few possessions he owned: his spare mati and two worn hand towels, his toiletries, the handful of bookcubes Yaenida had given him along with a secondhand reader. He’d found a discarded pot and planted a hydrangea cutting he’d furtively taken from a public garden, the plant just now sending out roots from its place on his windowsill.
He spent much of his time struggling to learn Vanar from simple bilingual children’s stories translated into painstakingly correct Hengeli. Obviously translated by someone whose Hengeli was slightly less than fluent, sometimes the mistakes were amusing, sometimes simply puzzling. A woman’s voice read the stories in the most basic audio Vanar: “The girl has a ball. The ball is red. See the red ball.” He tried to decipher the ornate squiggles matching the sounds before giving up and simply listening to the stories, repeating the words. More than a few nights, he would end up with the reader propped on his chest and an empty cup on the floor beside him, sound asleep despite the strong tea.
The charity shelter had been built wedged into a rock cleft running down the side of the far west bank of the river. Twenty layers of boxlike rooms balanced one atop the other, latticed with haphazard staircases. Roofing overshot narrow porches barely wide enough to allow space for a single man. Passing another habitant along the balconies often meant squeezing by while avoiding looking over at the sheer drop below. His was one of the less-desirable rooms, a tiny cell at the top of the complex
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