SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

"I didn’t know."

I shook my head while running thumb and middle finger down my glass, rubbing condensation off. "Not well-developed. It tends be just outside our awareness and is usually disregarded, at least consciously. There are pheromones—smells—as well, but we’re hopeless in understanding those."

"I see. It is helpful that you understand there can be…levels. Ours is highly developed. In some ways more so than the words we use."

"Telepathy?"

"No. It’s a common understanding of sensory perceptions." He sat back in his chair and looked away over the water, as if trying to decide how to explain.

I had been hunched forward, elbows on the small table, tense. I sat back too, and breathed in the tangy smell. His words moved me; scrambled pieces of myself shuffled into a more orderly arrangement.

A language of perception . Of course. I had known that could be possible even though those words had never formed a sentence in my head. A shiver went down my spine. I leaned forward again.

"You perceive something…a sound, a sight, a smell, the combination of several of these and it means the same thing to you as it does to the tender in there or any other P’twua?"

His head turned slowly back to me. He put his graceful, long-fingered hands on the table, faced me directly and took his time responding. "How is it that you get this so quickly? I have attempted to communicate it to Earthens and they do not understand."

"I have some…ways of perceiving that most of my people either do not have or ignore. It’s called synesthesia and has never been of much use because earthhumans who have this trait don’t necessarily agree on the words they use to talk about it. In me, it is an intersection of emotions and color."

He didn’t have eyebrows, but his forehead wrinkled as his yellow-brown eyes widened. "I’m completely stunned. I had no idea."

"But it’s not a form of communication between us. It’s…internal. Private."

Now his forehead wrinkled downward in a serious expression. "Yes. Ours too, but I think in a different way. We have much to learn about each other. And we have not even been introduced properly. I am Ruk Tur*ki’tua."

I extended my hand across the table. "Carinth Kellen."

He smiled. "Sonjec is your sister?"

"Half-sister. The illustrious Ambassador is our mother, but we have different fathers. Do you know where Sonjec is?"

"No. Don’t you?"

I explained the situation.

He took out his communic and began to make calls.

I waited, thinking, not about my missing sister or the looming inter-planetary diplomatic incident, but the concept of a common awareness of sensory perception.

"She was seen at my home earlier. We should go there."

"Mother thinks she was kidnapped."

"Why?"

"You tell me. What pissed everyone off?"

"I never anticipated what happened. The vocals and sounds that her instrument remixed and produced were deeply insulting."

"How?"

He struggled, and then said, "Translating is proving impossible. If there are English words, I don’t know them."

"Let me tell you how I was feeling."

He nodded.

"Do you know the word chartreuse?"

He shook his head.

I took out my communic and pulled up a color chart I often referred to. I pointed to the sharp yellow-green.

"What is the word?" he said, nodding vigorously. "I must remember. This chart is excellent."

"I’ll send it to you. That night, I felt nervous and that built to a high-tuned uneasiness on the edge of danger: chartreuse."

He looked at me wide-eyed. "Are you part P’twuan?"

I smiled and shook my head. I didn’t know much about my father, but I knew he was an earthhuman.

"This is right," Ruk said. Chartreuse—our word is n*dua’k'ti—was present for me as well. It is a complex feeling for us. Risk, yes. Unease, yes. But also a—" He raised his hand and ran his thumb over his fingers repeatedly. "—a feel."

"Slimy?"

"Yes!"

"Oh gods. This is crazy. I understand you. So…but just that wouldn’t cause a riot."

"No. I have thought of nothing else since it happened. When Sonjec took our vocalizations—what is our public communication—that went well. But her frequlet also picked up our sub-communication, this emotional-sensory layer the meaning of which is in our voices, but with no words. And she collected it and suddenly, there it was, this non-public thing, being transmitted, broadcast for all to hear."

"Communicating what?"

He shook that question off. "What’s important is that we didn’t like even that much. Perceptual communication is wordless, therefore private. Something we all understand but rarely talk about because…what would be the point? We felt exposed by her music and then when everyone began to express that vulnerability and displeasure, she picked that up and put it in the mix. By the time the riot broke out, the room was full of what I will call, because my English is not perfect, orange-pointy."

I stared at him with my mouth open. "Ruk, everyone’s skin color changed."

He looked down and I knew I’d inadvertently evoked a strong emotion in him.

Yellowpale-muddy: shame.

"We do," he said, softly, "upon occasion, have tinges of color change in our normal complexions. It showed?"

"To me. But why is this shameful?"

"You are so direct, Carinth. It’s a bit hard to handle."

"My apologies. I don’t want to offend. Teach me."

"No, I like it. It’s just different…and amazing. You pick up so much."

I couldn’t respond. His words filled me up as nothing ever had.

His eyes narrowed. "I’m getting a perception that I would not mention if you were P’twuan. We would both simply know."

"Tell me."

"Let me look at your chart."

After a moment he said, "Orchid."

I smiled and then laughed. "Brilliant. Purple-orchid: gratitude, joy, fulfillment."

"A pure, uncommon emotion."

"We understand one another."

"So back to our evening of music…"

"Oh, god. Yes," I said, "orange-pointy is what I would call

coral-sharp.

He took in an audible short, crisp breath. "Exactly. I would explain this as ridicule, which mixed with our shame at having our private thoughts broadcast. Our reaction was re-mixed and blasted out of the frequlet in a complex perception that I will attempt to communicate as…passionate contempt."

"Wow."

"Yes. What color is that?"

"I don’t know."

He sat back, nodding. "It is complicated."

Neither of us needed to say another word.

We took the chairway to Ruk’s neighborhood.

I messaged Mother. She responded that she hadn’t heard from Sonjec and asked if I’d seen the local news. Ruk and I put on a feed to find out that the protests in front of the Earth Colonies Embassy had grown.

"This is getting out of hand. Mother seemed rattled and that never happens."

"I’m communicating with everyone I know," Ruk said, "but my friends are not influential. I can’t believe this all started from those music-heads at the bar. They’re not political."

"Don’t have to be. They only had to tell their story. It would be picked up and used as a weapon by those who do have an agenda."

"How do you know so much about politics?"

"I don’t. You just absorb stuff when you’re the daughter of a diplomat."

After he unlocked the sliding door to his one-room apartment, he stood back and motioned for me to enter. "As you see, she is not here."

I turned to him. "I didn’t think you had her."

He shrugged. "You don’t know me."

Oh, but I do .

A young P’twuan woman came to the door. "Ruk?"

He introduced us. She looked at me suspiciously and asked Ruk to come out in the hall.