Amy Thomson - Through Alien Eyes

“All right,” Moki said.

Anetta got down some small wineglasses, and Teuvo solemnly filled everyone’s glass. A reverent silence fell as they swirled, sniffed, and then tasted it. Moki took his first sip warily. Then he turned blue, and spread his ears wide.

“You like it?” Teuvo asked him.

“It’s better than most wine. Sweeter, and like— like flowers, roses perhaps, and a little bit like honey. But there’s still that alcohol in it.”

“Can you isolate that flowery taste[[ pikkuinenV ]]Teuvo asked. “Memorize it in your spurs?”

Moki stuck a spur into his glass. He closed his eyes in concentration for a long moment, then nodded.

“Could you re-create it, if you had to?”

“I think so, Isoisi. Why? What do you want me to do?”

“That wine is rare and precious because of a certain mold, botrytis, that grows only under very special conditions. Autumns have to be long and dry, and warm, and the botrytis mold must be present. If it is, then you get that amazing flavor, but up here, there is no botrytis, because it gets on other fruits and makes them rot. So, we can reproduce the weather, but without the mold”—he lifted his hands and spread his fingers—“all you have is sweet wine.”

Teuvo leaned forward. “Could you build me a grapevine that would make wine that tastes like that, without the mold?”

“I’m not sure, hi” Moki said. “But I could try.” “Then instead of bothering the chickens, let’s see what you can do with a grapevine.”

The comm chimed.

“Comm on, speaker on,” Ukatonen told it. He was used to ordering the human’s machines around by now.

Eerin looked tired and tense.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Moki,” she said.

He sat back and listened while she told him what Moki had been doing.

“I’m going to try to spend at least a full morning or a full afternoon with him every day, but I think he also needs you around. It’s been months since we last saw you, en.”

Ukatonen looked away, browning with shame. Spending time with the musicians had been fun, but he needed to remember his duties as an enkar.

“I’ll try to come up at the end of the month,” he said. “I’m working on a project in Brazil until then.”

“Why don’t we come down and visit you?” Eerin suggested. “Mariam’s getting close to being weaned. Moki ind I could come down when you’re done there. We’re •yy\h dying to see the projects you’re working on, and I -ant to see you perform. Manuel hasn’t said anything ioout what you’re like on stage.”

“I’d like that,” Ukatonen told her.

They talked of inconsequentials for a while, and then rerin signed off.

Ukatonen stood up and stretched. It would be good to [[‹e]] Eerin and Moki again. It was time to focus on his [[:_:›.]] he thought, regret misting his skin with grey. Hu-.ins came closest to understanding harmony in their art. -e had felt it in the Motoyoshi garden, and sometimes, eetingly, looking at a painting or a sculpture in one of their museums. Music had been the easiest for him to josp, and it came the closest to his own concept of harmony. Indeed, the Standard word for harmony had a second, musical meaning, and this carried over to many of humanity’s other languages as well. It seemed ironically appropriate.

Music was certainly one way to achieve harmony with the humans, but it was a fragile, tenuous link at best. He needed to find a more compelling connection. Certainly there was the promise of better medical care, but how many Tendu would be willing to leave their cozy jungle to spend time in the aseptic environment of a hospital? No village elders, and very few enkar, he supposed. Perhaps a few of the stranger hermits, but they needed hundreds of experienced healers. But providing better medical care would only help more humans live longer at a time when they desperately needed to slow their population growth.

Ukatonen shook his head. It was all too complicated. It would be so much easier just to make music and forget all about trying to achieve harmony with the humans. He was tired of trying to untangle the whole mess. So much of it made no sense. He longed to be back on Tiangi faced with understandable, solvable problems.

Juna saw the man eyeing her as they got off the train in Sao Paulo, and smiled to herself. Her figure had returned to her pre-pregnancy slenderness. It was too bad that she didn’t have a lover who could appreciate her new figure on a more intimate level. Now that she was away from Mariam, and the demands of breast-feeding, the demands of her own body were making themselves felt. Not, she thought wryly, that there was anything she could do about those demands. Still, it was nice to have someone look at her like she was more than a mobile milk factory.

John Savage, their security escort on this trip, stepped down beside her. The Survey had tried to get her to accept three security guards, but Juna had insisted on only one. John was easier to take than some of the others she’d been saddled with. He managed to be vigilant without the obtrusive nervous paranoia of many previous escorts, some of whom were continually cutting in front of her, or pushing her back in order to inspect a car or a room they were about to enter. John seemed to be content to let her set her own pace, and simply watch the people around them.

Moki stepped down from the train. “I’ll go get a porter!” he announced and scampered off toward a group of porters standing near the doors into the station. John tensed and reached to stop Moki, but he was too late. Then Juna saw a man, the same one who had been watching her, move through the crowd toward her bami, his expression grimly intent.

“Moki! Wait!” she called and moved toward him.

There was a sudden loud crack. John grunted and fell, people screamed. Someone grabbed Juna from behind. She tried to pull away and felt something hot pressed against her temple. She could smell the acrid scent of gunpowder.

“Hold still or I’ll shoot,” a voice growled in her ear.

Juna froze. Moki had turned toward her, his skin a blaze : orange. Just then, the other man grabbed him around -e shoulders. Moki struggled, hissing and squalling like angry cat, his claws extended. He stuck a spur into the .roat of the man who’d seized him, and he folded bone-rssly to the ground.

“Tell him to stop fighting now. Or I’ll shoot you,” said the voice in her ear.

“Moki, stop. He’s got a gun. Hold still or he’ll shoot [[ sac." ]]

Moki stood immobile as a statue.

“What should I do, siti?” he asked in skin speech, his don flaring red with anger. “Should I distract them?”

“Don’t try anything, Moki,” Juna called, warningly.

“Good,” called the man behind her. “This way. You’re :::fining with us.” Juna could see several other men wear[[- -■£ ]] hoods and carrying pistols fanning out around them. [["re]] crowd backed away. Out of the corner of her eye, :»ae could see their escort, John, lying in a spreading pool [[r red]]. There was so much blood! She should have taken the Survey’s advice and gotten two more guards. Perhaps John wouldn’t have gotten shot.

They were blindfolded with rough black hoods and shoved into a waiting truck. Juna felt the prick of a needle in her arm, and then everything slid into darkness.

She awoke in a small, whitewashed cell with a heavy metal door. There was a battered tin pail in one corner, and a small stack of brown paper squares in a niche beside it. There was a single, unshaded lightbulb and one small, high window. The glass in the window was frosted white, but she could make out the shadows of the bars on the other side. She was alone.