I thought it was you, I wanted to tell her. I thought it was you that I needed like that. Now, I just don’t know, and I thought if I saw you again, I might find out. “I understand,” was all I said.
“I hope you do,” she said, slinging the pack over her shoulder, then her voice and her face softened. “I never wanted to hurt you, Tomio—I hope you can believe that, at least. I’m sorry I wasn’t the type of person who could share her life with you, and maybe that was more my fault than yours.”
I shrugged back at her. “If you had been that person, I probably wouldn’t have wanted you so much,” I told her.
She lifted her chin at that, then her gaze slid over to Hasalalo. “Make the arrangements, Hasalalo,” she told the Venusian. “I’ll come to you tomorrow with the final part of the fee, and we’ll do this.”
“Yes, Avariel.” Yessh … With a hiss and a lisp. The liquid affirmation came wafting over the table laden with the odor of cinnamon. Avariel nodded once before turning and leaving.
After Avariel had gone, I looked at Hasalalo; it looked at me. “So you were the other human who descended with her,” it said, halfway between question and statement. “You were the reason she never reached the bottom of the Great Darkness, and saw the ancestor-bones or the Lights-in-Water.”
“Yeah,” I told it. “It was my fault.” The words tasted far more bitter than I intended, and I tried to temper them with a smile that I wasn’t sure the shreeliala would understand. It only nodded.
“I’ll never see the Great Darkness or the Lights-In-Water either,” it said, and it touched the pale bar tattooed on its head. Its gill bubbler hissed; it sounded like a sigh.
I didn’t quite know what to say to that. I knew from my time on Venus that when a shreeliala dies anywhere on this world, no matter how far away the colony might be, its body is carried out to the Great Darkness—a deep canyon just off the shore of Blackstone Mountain—with great ceremony by a group of shreeliala dedicated to that task: “priests” might be the best term, but given that the shreeliala don’t have organized religions in the sense that we think of them, it’s also a very wrong term. (Hell, I wasn’t entirely certain how the shreeliala even reproduced, though I’m certain some of the scientists stationed here could have told me.) The body is released over the Great Darkness with a prayer—or maybe it’s just a ritual statement—and, shreeliala bodies with bones-of-stone being heavier than water, the dead one drifts steadily down through the blackness of the waters into the depths toward …
… well, toward whatever’s at the bottom, which no human has ever seen. We know what the Great Darkness is: once a long, vertical hollow in the volcanic rock, perhaps a lava tube reaching up from the plumes far, far below. But the thin roof of the vertical cavern collapsed under the corrosion and weight of the water above it, leaving the Great Darkness. Beyond that, the shreeliala are closemouthed about it, and they refuse to allow any of our cameras or robotic instruments to accompany any of the bodies on its journey: as sentient beings, we have to respect that, and we have. To them, it’s a sacred place, and not to be violated.
But they did, once, allow Avariel and myself to undertake the journey, on our own. And we failed. Or, rather, I failed and therefore Avariel also failed.
I saw a flash, or thought I did, and something like an undersea wave pummeled me and I hit the side of the canyon. Rocks began to fall, and I shouted for Avariel, but then I felt the crushing pain, and … When I awoke again, I was back in Blackstone, in the hospital. Or, at least, half of me was …
I must have spent too long in reverie, because Hasalalo’s bubbler hissed again as it spoke. “You and Avariel were … lovers? That’s not a relationship we can understand.”
“Neither can we, most of the time,” I told it.
Hasalalo burbled more to itself, its large eyes blinking and its hands spreading so that I could see the translucent, speckled webbing between the long fingers. The skin glistened with the gel the shreeliala use to retain moisture when they’re on land. “Why did you want to see the Great Darkness and the Lights-in-Water?” it asked. “Before.”
“I didn’t, particularly.”
Hasalalo blinked. It seemed to be thinking through the English. “It … If … How …” It stopped. Breathed. “Then why?” it asked.
“Avariel wanted it. And I wanted Avariel.”
Hasalalo shivered. I seemed to remember that was the Venusian equivalent of a human shrug. “That is the explanation?”
I grinned at the shreeliala. “It’s all I got,” I told it. “Maybe my grandmother could explain it better for you—if you ever meet her.”
The memories flooded back with that.
—–—
The affair was more or less in honor of Avariel. I say “more or less” because back then Obaasan Evako arranged gatherings every month or so whether there was an excuse or not. Avariel had just completed the ascent of the previously unconquered eastern cliffs of Olympus Mons on Mars, an expedition sponsored by the family company Norkohn Shuttles—our PR department was already churning out ads trumpeting our involvement. I’d been on the support team, my own climb confined to a leisurely ascent of the lower lava flows. I had shivered a lot in the shelter of Base One while Avariel and her support team of genuine climbers went on; they’d go to Base Two, and Avariel would finish the climb solo—as she always did.
She and I were lovers already; I’d wondered about that at first, suspicious that the primary reason she’d come to my bed was because I’d been the one who had talked Obaasan Evako into parting with the grant for the climb. Still, we were good lovers, comfortable with each other. We were friends. I was well on the way to considering making the relationship more permanent, in love with the idea of being in love.
Mobile fabrics were the fashion that season. Most of the people wearing them shouldn’t have been, though I thought Avariel looked fine. Her blouse, restless, crawled slowly over her shoulders. I’d be talking to her, but my gaze would be snagged by her neckline slipping suggestively lower: that was a good time for voyeurs.
The evening was turning cool and I was getting tired of smiling at people I really didn’t like that well. I found Avariel in the garden and detached her from the gaggle of admirers around her. The hover-lamps had just turned themselves on, flickering like huge fireflies around the lawn while Mount Fuji turned golden on the horizon. Touching her arm, I inclined my head to the blaze of lights that was the house. “Let’s go inside. I’ve a few people you should meet.”
She nodded and made polite noises to her crowd, but when we were away from them, she sighed. “Thanks. I’ve been trying to lose them for the last half an hour. I have to say that sometimes I miss being all alone up on Olympus Mons. Shame on you, Tomio, for leaving me to those wolves.”
“Part of the bane of being the host.”
The party was noisier and brighter and more crowded inside: lots of glitter, meaningless laughter, and full glasses. As we stood watching in the doorway, Obaasan Evako waved to us from where the caterers were setting the buffet. “Tomio!” she called loudly. “You’ve been hiding the guest of honor from me all evening. I refuse to be neglected any longer. Bring her here.”
An imperious gesture accompanied the command. Those nearby tittered and smiled before turning back to their drinks.