accessible only by plodding up several steep stairways. There was a service elevator, he eventually realized, but that was locked, restricted for use only by the police authorities or emergency medical teams. The winding stairs served to keep the inhabitants either physically fit or indoors.
He spent the next few months watching his neighbors, listening, wandering the streets for clues. He learned where to buy his food from following other white-garbed naekulam, how to pick up extra money on his card by leaving the complex before dawn with an eye out for shopkeepers willing to pay naeqili te rhowghá, the ostracized class of familyless outcasts, for such odd jobs as sweeping the storefront or hauling away the previous day’s rubbish. Hiring a human being for such manual labor, before the computerized cleaning machines keeping the city scoured and pristine arrived and automatically totaled the charges, was not only cheaper, the Vanar considered it a charity to recognize the men’s existence at all. The little money he earned with such menial labor supplied a bit more luxury than the state stipend allowed. He was grateful for any such jobs, his size and strength and cheapness occasionally winning out over the shopkeeper’s wariness of him.
While the other residents had no objection to his trailing them, so long as he maintained a safe distance, his first few attempts at friendly gestures were utterly rebuffed. Offers of a shared meal or simple company earned him only nervous, hostile silence. After his initial tentative approaches failed, his personal contact with his fellow naekulam was reduced to wary nods in passing. While he had no friends in the complex, at least he had made no enemies, either. But the sound of laughter made him even lonelier.
He tried to ignore other sounds, the soft, urgent moans in the night. He listened with passive incomprehension to quarrels usually conducted with muted hostility, not knowing how to cross the isolation even enough to enjoy arguing with his neighbors. He watched as they passed by in the hall, pretending not to see him. Despite his long isolation, he craved the illusion of privacy and used his spare linen sati to hang across the doorless entrance to the room, another feature of Vanar architecture he could not get used to. Then, instead of his fellow residents ignoring him, he was subjected to having his makeshift screen twitched aside at any moment, curious eyes peering in to see what he could possibly be hiding. He finally took it down.
He practiced folding the long sati into intricate patterns in his hands and tying the pleats he’d made from it around his body, as Pratha Yaenida had taught him. Eventually, Nathan’s technique improved so that the knots didn’t unravel to leave him standing in the one-piece mati with a pile of cloth tangled around his ankles. In the confined privacy of his small room, he walked in circles and trained himself to balance on one leg while hooking his foot around the edge of the sati to move it from around his knees before he knelt, just the edge of the mati showing over his knees. Too little and the cloth would be trapped under his legs and jerked out of its intricate folds. Too far, and his thighs would be bared, the mati hitched up indecently.
Other simple things—the nuances of gestures and body language, the unspoken minutiae understood by everyone but himself—continued to elude him. Or blindside him. Razors, for example, were not a common item. Vanar men were as smooth-faced as the women, keeping their face and bodies denuded by using the various depilatories supplied at public baths in the complex. He had watched one afternoon in amazement as one resident subjected himself to having all his body hair removed, the hair on his chest, back, legs, and groin ripped away with a gluey paste embedded in cloth. The man had not made a single sound, his bored expression one of habitual practice. Nathan chose to shave in private, as the public
He spent the next few months watching his neighbors, listening, wandering the streets for clues. He learned where to buy his food from following other white-garbed naekulam, how to pick up extra money on his card by leaving the complex before dawn with an eye out for shopkeepers willing to pay naeqili te rhowghá, the ostracized class of familyless outcasts, for such odd jobs as sweeping the storefront or hauling away the previous day’s rubbish. Hiring a human being for such manual labor, before the computerized cleaning machines keeping the city scoured and pristine arrived and automatically totaled the charges, was not only cheaper, the Vanar considered it a charity to recognize the men’s existence at all. The little money he earned with such menial labor supplied a bit more luxury than the state stipend allowed. He was grateful for any such jobs, his size and strength and cheapness occasionally winning out over the shopkeeper’s wariness of him.
While the other residents had no objection to his trailing them, so long as he maintained a safe distance, his first few attempts at friendly gestures were utterly rebuffed. Offers of a shared meal or simple company earned him only nervous, hostile silence. After his initial tentative approaches failed, his personal contact with his fellow naekulam was reduced to wary nods in passing. While he had no friends in the complex, at least he had made no enemies, either. But the sound of laughter made him even lonelier.
He tried to ignore other sounds, the soft, urgent moans in the night. He listened with passive incomprehension to quarrels usually conducted with muted hostility, not knowing how to cross the isolation even enough to enjoy arguing with his neighbors. He watched as they passed by in the hall, pretending not to see him. Despite his long isolation, he craved the illusion of privacy and used his spare linen sati to hang across the doorless entrance to the room, another feature of Vanar architecture he could not get used to. Then, instead of his fellow residents ignoring him, he was subjected to having his makeshift screen twitched aside at any moment, curious eyes peering in to see what he could possibly be hiding. He finally took it down.
He practiced folding the long sati into intricate patterns in his hands and tying the pleats he’d made from it around his body, as Pratha Yaenida had taught him. Eventually, Nathan’s technique improved so that the knots didn’t unravel to leave him standing in the one-piece mati with a pile of cloth tangled around his ankles. In the confined privacy of his small room, he walked in circles and trained himself to balance on one leg while hooking his foot around the edge of the sati to move it from around his knees before he knelt, just the edge of the mati showing over his knees. Too little and the cloth would be trapped under his legs and jerked out of its intricate folds. Too far, and his thighs would be bared, the mati hitched up indecently.
Other simple things—the nuances of gestures and body language, the unspoken minutiae understood by everyone but himself—continued to elude him. Or blindside him. Razors, for example, were not a common item. Vanar men were as smooth-faced as the women, keeping their face and bodies denuded by using the various depilatories supplied at public baths in the complex. He had watched one afternoon in amazement as one resident subjected himself to having all his body hair removed, the hair on his chest, back, legs, and groin ripped away with a gluey paste embedded in cloth. The man had not made a single sound, his bored expression one of habitual practice. Nathan chose to shave in private, as the public
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