Phoebe North - Starbreak

The door slid open. There was Vadix. His mouth formed a silent line. Beneath the bright light, his skin was as translucent as a jewel. His lips, slightly wet, parted. But he didn’t speak.

“Vadix,” I said, testing his name against my tongue again. He flinched; it was a surprisingly human reaction.

“How do you know this name?” he asked. His voice was high and clear—it made it that much easier to hear his offense.

“I don’t know,” I said helplessly, lifting up my hands and dropping them against the paper. “You tell me—”

“Terra.”

He said my name. My name, two syllables so ripe they dripped juice down onto the metal ground below. It was almost enough to shake my resolve away, to make my hands dart out, lace his fingers in mine, and draw him close to me. But not quite. My hands were still in my lap, and he stayed frozen near the door of the little room. Not breathing at all.

“This cannot be,” he said at last. “You are an animal. You are made out of meat .”

Despite the gravity of the situation, I wanted to laugh at that. The absurdity pulled at my stomach, drawing all the air from it. But he seemed so serious . To him it was no laughing matter. His narrow earslits widened as he waited for my response.

“They say you’re a plant ,” I said. “Do you know how strange that is? A talking plant?”

He shook his head. It was a very human thing to do. Maybe it was something he’d picked up from watching the shuttle crew over these last few weeks. From watching us.

“There are no thinking animals here. When the Guardians found your people, they did not believe it. They thought them dinner.”

“But not you?”

“The Xollu do not partake of flesh.”

My cheeks began to heat. It wasn’t until I pushed a tangle of hair back behind my burning ear that I realized he was talking about diet and not sex. In the wake of my embarrassment, I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Why have you brought us here?” I demanded at last. The words tumbled out, as sharp as an accusation. I winced at the sound of my own voice, but Vadix didn’t.

“To study you. There is a Xollu pair, scientists. Ardex and Aile. They wish to see if there are any chemical differences between the human sexes, as there are among Xollu. The other females will have their bodies scanned today. Aile believes that despite your beastly nature, some females may have ethylene receptors—”

“We’re not lab rats,” I said, but my words sounded dull—passionless. I knew that we would do the same if we were in their position. Shove them into cells, study them. Slice their skin down to slivers and hold them under a microscope, as I’d done to so many other plants, so many times before. Maybe we were more alike than I cared to admit.

Vadix’s lips lifted, showing a thin line of teeth.

“No. You are not. We are only trying to understand you. Your nature. The Ahadizhi, they have not believed that animals are capable of language, of logical thought.”

“No?” I asked. “But they’ve heard us. They should know by now that we’re not just animals.”

“Does the hunter believe that sounds a beast makes constitute more than growls and grunts? Of course not. But perhaps if we listened, we would find the beast believed differently.”

“You’re a philosopher?”

“No. I study the meaning behind words. Foreign words—foreign languages. Yours, for instance.”

“Translator,” I said, angling my chin up. “Linguist. That’s what Hannah said.”

Vadix nodded. “I study for many years in Aisak Ait. South of here, where the summer is longer. I learn to listen. But—”

He reached a long finger up, touching his earslit. I watched him, wondering at the strange precision of the gesture.

“But what?” I asked.

“I understand more than I should. In the days after the first probe landed in Raza Ait, I was called to translate the glyphs atop it. It was easy, too easy. And then your shuttle crew arrived. I was summoned too. The words that spill from my lips? Too swift. I should not be able to speak to you so simply now.”

I fell silent. The dreams—it had to be the dreams. They’d scattered knowledge through my mind too, images I should have never seen, words I shouldn’t have understood. But here we were.

“Vadix—” I began, but, waving a three-fingered hand through the air, he cut me off.

“No matter. The senate has grown weary of these experiments. You will not find yourself this ‘lab rat’ soon. They have asked me to call your ship’s botanist to the surface. She will speak to us, negotiate your people’s place on our world, if they might have any.”

“Wait,” I said. My tongue felt suddenly heavy. “What?”

“Your ship’s botanist. I have spoken to her myself, a ‘Mara Stone.’ She speaks to plants, does she not?”

I brought my hands up over my mouth, smothering my shock. “Mara Stone?” I asked, through a web of fingers. “Vadix, she’s no diplomat.”

“She is not?” He stood with his broad shoulders squared, his wide mouth firm. I saw then that he was stubborn—proud. He was the type of boy who didn’t like to be told he was wrong.

“No,” I said carefully. “She studies plants. Where we’re from, plants don’t talk.”

A pause, a long one. Hurt and confusion bruised his full mouth. “No?”

“No. Mara Stone is my teacher, and she—well, she’s not even very good at talking to people .”

“She is a scholar, then? A scientist? Surely it will be fine.”

I thought of my haughty little teacher, the diminutive woman with the crooked nose who liked to taunt and tease. And I cringed at the memory. But before I could warn Vadix, the door behind him shivered open, revealing a stern-faced Xollu.

“Sale xaullek esedh, dora zhiosouek.”

“Ehed sale!” he shouted back. “Vaulix aum xaullek razi.”

The door closed. He turned back to me.

“What did she say?” I asked

“She said that the sproutling—a girl, I believe you call it? Her scans were quite unusual. High concentrations of phytodistress receptors. It is quite unusual, unlike anything they have seen in man.”

“Phytodistress receptors? Like plants use to communicate damage?”

The way his mouth opened was almost like a smile. It did something to me, for all that his lips were too wide and too full of far too many teeth. My belly and rib cage swelled with warmth. Yet he began to turn toward the door. “Yes. You understand. I should go translate for them before—”

“Wait!”

I reached out, setting my hand on his slender wrist. We both flinched at the spark that flew between us, but this time neither of us drew away.

“Vadix,” I said, my voice low. Passionate. “You asked them to bring me to you because I knew your name. I shouldn’t know your name. I shouldn’t know anything about you. And you shouldn’t know anything about me, either.”

For a moment the light that flashed at the back of his coal eyes was gentle. I felt certain he would bend his head down, press his lips to mine. My heart was beating very fast. But then he pulled his smooth wrist out from my fingers’ grasp.

“Phytodistress receptors. The sproutling has them. You are young, are you not? Perhaps it is nothing special.”

He spoke in a rush, like he was trying to convince himself. Trying to convince me. But he was wrong. I’d never met anyone who had dreams like mine—dreams of a crowded jungle, filled with vines, where flesh touched flesh across hundreds of kilometers. It was special. It had to be. I shook my head.

“Please, Vadix. If I mean anything to you, let me speak to the senate with Mara Stone. My people are in danger. I’m in danger. If you don’t help us, I don’t know what we’ll do.”