Tacenda Read online

  Tacenda

  Christine Jayne Vann

  by Christine Jayne Vann at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2015 Christine Jayne Vann

  All rights reserved.

  Discover other titles by Christine Jayne Vann:

  When Disconnected

  When I Was Not Myself

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  What is left to explore?

  Foreword

  This pair came into existence with no prior warning. It has been interesting, although harrowing in places. Life doesn’t fall into the neat pieces we would sometimes wish.

  This is my first time with them on their journey, and I hope it is one you enjoy.

  They have a lot to share, although not always much to say. I hope they take me along again in the future.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Differences

  Seedbank

  Maylith Tara

  Understanding

  Lily: All the things are strange

  Complications

  Lily: All the things are scary

  Urgency

  Lily: We can do it

  Finality

  Transfer

  Another beginning

  Lily: Happy people

  Not an ending

  About the Author

  Differences

  “You need to change!” Kerris called to her companion as they raced through the plain, grey corridors of steel. This part lacked any windows, cutting her away from the star-filled views she loved. As her short legs kept to the line in the middle of the floor, she glanced at Arucken.

  He matched her step for step, his longer stride eating up the featureless corridor with ease. He stood taller than her, the loose brown coat hanging oddly on his form and hinting at the differences beneath. Longer arms with graceful fingers, held tight against his body as he ran. His large, luminous eyes swallowing what little light the corridor gave. He blinked, too often.

  He made an annoyed noise, deep in his thick throat, a dry, dusty sound. He raised a single appendage, halting it in the hollow of his throat. His legs kept to her frantic pace with no signs of struggle, looking as if it were a stroll in the park. She envied that. Not for the first time, she wished the entrance rules for the Earth colony were less restrictive. If they missed this window, the next one would not open for months.

  His skin glimmered with shades of purple, suggesting to another of his kind he’d be a gorgeous myriad of colours. She couldn’t help but wonder what lay outside her visual range. The Concordat had denied her the augment surgery, as human-nestling pairings did well enough without. Trapped away from her stars and freedom, she wished they had allowed her that extra beauty. She caught only echoes of it from his thoughts.

  When they reached the doorway, they halted and she passed the image from her mind again. It settled upon him like a shroud, eating away his true form. It emerged from him like a broken chrysalis, transforming into female features, dark-skinned and with a lean, runners body. Eyes the colour of burnt ochre shone bright with humour. Unkempt brown hair sprouted from a bare skull, hanging behind the young woman in a loose plait, almost to the waist. When had it grown that long?

  She cursed.

  “Not monozygotic!” Kerris said as she glared at her mirror image, her voice echoing in the empty corridors. “I told you! Take it again. How can you never remember this?”

  Arucken made an annoyed rumble again. It suited her body not at all. Then she watched the image subtly changing, the eyes widening into darker ovals. Hair more black than brown fastened behind in a smart ponytail, with no strands escaping. The simple coat moulded with him, as the body curved into a form more used to flight navigation than travel afoot.

  Aludra. She pushed down the grief that rose in her, a wave threatening to drag her down. This was not about her, or even Arucken. This was about the treaty they had signed, and what her parents could not know.

  “Better!” Kerris said in approval as the image of her twin stepped beside her. Arucken did not understand the idea of non-identical twins. It wasn’t possible for his species, although he’d never been able to explain why. Neither of them had been attentive to the science classes of their university; waiting only for the freedom to explore and run.

  Although she agreed that the star-filled canvas of space was beautiful, nothing could match the thrill of setting foot on a new planet. To gaze upwards from a new land and see your ship glittering above you, a single star amongst billions.

  Her sister Aludra rarely set foot on the planets she visited. She spoke of those times with affection, of plotting routes amongst the stars as she waited for her crew to return from their visits planetside.

  “Take.” Kerris commanded, passing the memories to her partner. The relief of it leaving her was strong. Arucken nodded to confirm he’d caught the feelings. It was vital they got it right today. She tried not to think of why.

  In her sister’s guise, Arucken rattled off the entry sequence and the outer set of doors began opening. The rush of stale air was unpleasant. Her partner raised a single eyebrow at her, something her sister had been unable to do. She shook her head at him. He sighed.

  The air was awful though, he was right. She hated the decontamination, but she couldn’t argue against the need for it. She took the shallowest breaths she could, already counting down the time till she could leave again. The adjustment down to just ten minutes this year, and a subtle timer to the right of the chamber began ticking down.

  It would be worse for Arucken; his senses were always heightened whilst under the shroud.

  “Why do you bother?” her sister asked, on a rare meetup. Their last. “She’d hate every aspect of your life if you told her the truth. So would Dad. They would hate that slug you run around with - and you know it! They are from the wrong time. Why lie?”

  With a ship under her skilled fingers, Aludra had a crew to command, and goods to trade. She’d left the homestead long ago.

  And Kerris herself was a paired messenger with skills many coveted. Nestling-human mixes were rare and useful, too many before them had failed in their partnership. Soon their time filled with missions taking them to places they had not yet explored.

  Aludra left their parents far behind with no signs of regret. The pretense had been hard on Kerris, harder still on Arucken but it was part of the agreement humans had signed with his people and the other species in the Concordat. Not all humans could cope with the knowledge of alien life, and her parents were amongst those trapped in a human community that were denied that knowledge. Signing the documents had been hard, she had been unable to make herself watch the memory wipe. It had been one of the few times she had seen Aludra cry, then afterwards, she had seemed so cold. She had refused to visit their parents.

  “It’s done now. They can’t accept.” She had said. “How many lies will you have to tell them, to keep them safe? They don’t know us.”

  And now they never would. She wondered if Arucken’s people had a similar bubble of the past, where his people were wound back to the times before contact had been made.

  Arucken stood close beside her. His hand took hers and squeezed. It was a careful gesture, and Kerris noticed he’d even replicated the calluses on her sister’s pilot fingers. When Aludra had refused to visit, he’d agreed to take
her form so he could accompany her to the painful visits. She and Arucken had made this journey so many times before, but this was the first since her sister’s murder.

  He’d never been discovered under the guise, although he could use it only rarely. The higher the danger, the more alert they became. It set their hearts pounding in sync and allowing a depth of communication they’d never held with another lifeform.

  They downplayed it at the yearly tests that Arucken’s people put them through. The rigid structure made them easy to fool.

  She’d have told her sister if she’d asked. But with the stars at her fingertips, Aludra had never seen past the alien creature beside her sister.

  They’d drifted apart not long after Kerris and Arucken paired.

  Being alone in her head pained her, her thoughts refused to settle. The steady breathing of her sister’s form was too loud, and rapid. Unique to his species, small spaces were difficult for Arucken. He’d never told her why.

  Had Aludra been like that, at the end? Lungs trying to find oxygen in the void, body spiralling unprotected into the stars she loved. The vision of it was so close to the surface, Kerris saw it each time she tried to sleep.

  A few of the marauders had been captured, not all. The majority had escaped the Concordat’s reach, continuing their piracy and killing, in the further reaches of space. The few caught were imprisoned, not killed as she would wish. They had robbed Aludra and her crew of her remaining years. Why should they keep what they had taken from so many others?

  Her anger was like molten lead inside her, her insides writhing with it. She breathed in deeply, battling to keep under control. She would not endanger them.

  The timer chimed, and the second set of doors opened, revealing a clean and sterile white corridor. It reminded Kerris of a hospital, but one empty of life and urgency. Technology kept the older humans alive with ease, and issues were rare.

  The automated greeting began, but neither of them listened, having heard it many times before. The green light ran across them but the scan was not powerful enough to break a nestling’s shroud. Few things were.

  Kerris strode out across the lonely corridors with her partner before she remembered to hold back. Lost in her own thoughts, the Kerris they remembered would always be a step or two behind.

  Coloured lines painted on the floor guided them to their parents’ apartment. Arucken tapped three times to announce them. A needless courtesy from a time that this small planet still remembered.

  The door slid open to the sound of her parents arguing. It was a familiar rant about a holiday they could not agree on and would never take. In the many years they had lived here it had never got past the planning stage for them to discover the restrictions the Concordat placed on travel.

  “Salute to family!” she announced, stepping inside the small room. The air was less glaring here; a warm glow came from several lamps on small wooden tables at the edges of the room. Family photos adorned the walls, and she tore her eyes away from the sight.

  “My dear ones!” her father said, rushing from under the arched corner and into the lounge where they stood. A short and round figure with an eager voice, dressed in a pale blue shirt and dark trousers. His eyebrows were thick and bushy but the hair to the top lay sparse. “What news? What news?”

  With his eidetic memory, Arucken launched into the stories they’d prepared. Her mother interrupted to gesture them to sit on the large sofa to the centre. “Be comfortable, be at home!” she insisted.

  Her mother was taller, bent from the weight of years and wrapped in a robe of silver and black. A black teardrop earring hung from one ear, a tiny diamond set inside it. She rested her face on her hand as she smiled at seeing both her daughters.

  Kerris surprised herself by the little leap of emotion at seeing them both, feeling sick at the enforced pretense. Arucken chattered away without noticing, he could not share her feelings under the guise.

  “We aren’t complete alone.” Arucken had mentioned before “So I do so only at great need.”

  Right now, that need felt dishonest and wasteful. Aludra had died, gasping for breath in the void of space, her beloved ship pillaged and stripped for parts.

  But she’d also lived, a bright and active life full of adventure and meaning.

  “Do what you like.” Aludra had shrugged when Kerris begged her to return to visit. “I don’t speak to them, as I don’t want their judgement. But I wouldn’t lie like you do, and I hate that you do it in my name.”

  They’d parted on those angry words, the last communication before the news had come through. For days Kerris curled up in the hammock on their ship, unresponsive.

  Arucken tended the aerating plants, drove and managed the engine, alone. He’d given her the time to mourn before he’d rousted her angrily out of the bunk and back towards the engine.

  “Do you want to see what is left, if you leave me to it?” he’d asked, in exasperation. “It needs you!”

  Without audible sound he’d added, And so do I, my friend. Come back.

  She looked at her parent’s content faces, and the items scattered around the small apartment. She breathed in the strong, heavy scents from the herbs, burning slowly on a shelf in the corner. In the years her parents had lived here, nothing had changed.

  They refused the foods offered to them, made their excuses and left. Her parents hugged them both with vigour, wishing them well.

  “Looking forward to photos?” Arucken asked once the door had closed behind them, the smirk odd in her sister’s voice. She didn’t reply.

  They were soon back on their ship, and she was relieved to see Arucken drop the guise. She rested her hand against the smooth, cold wall of her ship and breathed in. Octavia was a beautiful ship, well adapted to their different needs.

  Arucken collapsed in a mass of appendages and colour into the foam sofa behind him. It moulded against his shape and he sighed out, a long pained sound. Rapid flashes of light purples and whites raced across his skin, like lightning seen through misty windows. His eyes closed, the thick eyelids spilling colour.

  Without words Kerris darted to the kitchen, pulled open the countertop to remove the prepared fluid of earlier. She brought it to her partner. As he drank the substance, his colour darkened, the changes becoming slower and less urgent.

  “I’m sorry.” She said in a low voice. “I nearly told them this time.”

  Arucken straightened, frowning at her. A strong surge of alarm came from him, echoed in a flash of deepest coral across his neck and arms. His voice filled her mind.

  It’s hard I know. But the decision is not ours to make!

  Can it ever be? Kerris wondered, but did not share her thoughts.

  ***

  The chime of a dispatch alert called to them both. Kerris moved to the panel, scrolling through to information about an earth colony laying on the fringes of known space. They’d seen the main settlement on Maylith Tara, but not the rest of the ocean planet. Small islands broke up the oceans and one had begun a new settlement. The offshoot requested new materials, supplies from the seed bank to help them establish crop rotation.

  The main settlement held the only place with an established landing grid. Once landed they could skim across to the islands using lightweight ski-boats. The dispatch sounded eager for help, mapping out each stage of the journey as if they were attracting tourists.

  Not for the first time Kerris wished her sister had joined her profession. Few people interfered with messengers; they were the beating heart of interspecies communication. Despite testing high on the aptitude tests, Aludra had rejected the idea.

  “You lease a ship; I’ll own my own!” Aludra claimed when they were awkward teens. Owning a ship had been a lofty goal then, less so when Kerris saw the ancient, sprawling mess of a ship that Aludra had scraped together enough credits to buy.

  Yet her sister owned it free and clear just as she’d boasted. It had been incredible near the end, a beautiful ship that rivalled Octavia�
��s body if not her soul. It would be in pieces now, the insides sold at various black markets with people fighting over the remains.