I grinned. Avariel, glancing from me to my grandmother, smiled uncertainly in my direction. Obaasan could be intimidating to those who didn’t know her; I could feel Avariel’s fingers digging into the skin of my arm. Obaasan Evako was a small, thin woman; half Japanese and half northern European, with short, white hair, and a well-wrinkled face. She exuded energy and purpose, carrying a habitual frown on her lips. To those she wanted to leave with the impression, she was hard, brittle ice; most of the family knew better. “Don’t worry,” I whispered to Avariel. “She’s really a lamb.”
Avariel’s glance told me that she didn’t believe me. We made our way over to my grandmother, who stood waiting, one foot tapping the carpet. “Counteffia no Regentia Norkohn,” Avariel said, using Obaasan’s full title from the Asian Liánméng, and bowing as proper etiquette required.
Obaasan looked Avariel up and down as if she were a piece of furniture. Then she glanced at me. She spoke in Mandarin, not Japanese or English. “I’m surprised at you, Tomio. She’s not your type. When you talked about this Olympus Mons business, I expected to see one of the usual pieces of pretty fluff you drag down here.”
“I’m not fluff, Counteffia”—that from Avariel, who had straightened and now looked more irritated than flustered—“I can talk and I even understand what people say about me,” she answered in heavily accented Mandarin.
That snapped Obaasan’s head around. She stared at Avariel with line-trapped eyes, then nodded. “Good. See that you manage to stay unfluffy. It’s too damn easy to become comfortable. By the way, I assume you realize that your outfit doesn’t flatter you at all. Stay away from fashions unless they enhance your image. I’d use simpler and more classic clothing with that body.”
Avariel blinked. “Counteffia—” she began, but Obaasan cut her off with a wave of a thin hand. “Call me Evako. Anybody who can make Tomio behave sensibly deserves the courtesy of familiarity—he’s been paying more attention to the business lately, if only because I told him that he needed to pay back the sponsorship of your climb.”
“I want to thank you for that.”
“It was a waste of money.”
Another blink. “I’m sorry you feel that way …”
“Let me finish, child. It was a waste of money unless it’s finally taught Tomio what can be accomplished when you want something badly enough. He’s had everything too easily, and it’s ruined him. I told his parents it would.”
Avariel glanced back at me and saw that I was still grinning. She managed to look puzzled and faltered into a defense. “Tomio was a great help to me. Without him—”
“Bah!” With another wave of her hand. “Without him, you’d still have managed the climb, one way or another. You’d have found some other funding. Don’t delude yourself on that. Having Norkohn’s backing was convenient, but the loss of it wouldn’t have stopped you.” Then she gave her the briefest of smiles; it smoothed her face. “Gods, child, if you don’t allow us elders our bluntness, how am I ever going to convince the idiots around here that I’m not someone they can walk over?”
“I … don’t think that’s anything you need to worry about.”
“Oh, you’d be wrong. You’ll need to do the same. Let me tell you another truth. What you do is ultimately meaningless. You climb a thing or attempt things so that you’ll be the first one to accomplish it, so you’ll get to engrave your name in the record books. But that’s emptiness. You also climbed Rheasilvia’s central peak on Vesta, four years ago, and two years ago were the first person to take a submersible down through Europa’s ice pack to the liquid ocean below. But beyond that, do you know either Europa or Vesta? You climbed Olympus Mons, yes, but do you know Mars as a result? No—you made your climb and you left. You’ve no relationship with the places you’ve gone. Just like you have no real relationship with my Tomio.”
It was my turn to protest at that. “Obaasan,” I began, but she lifted her hand toward me without taking her gaze from Avariel. “I can tell that you’d be pretty if you wanted to make the effort,” Obaasan said to her. “You’re neither beautiful nor stunning, mind you, and I’m sorry if that bothers you, but you really don’t want false flattery. Still, you’d be easily as attractive as most of the people here tonight if you’d taken the hours they did to get ready. Yet you didn’t bother: very little cosmetics, no gloss, no fakery except that mistake of a blouse, which you probably chose because you thought it was expected. All that’s good. You look like someone out of the ordinary the way you are, while if you tried for looks, you’d just be one within the multitude. Well, I’m like that, also. I act just differently enough that no one makes the mistake of treating me like all the people I’d resemble otherwise. It’s a good trick. Keep it. Teach it to Tomio, too, while you’re about it. He’ll try to learn if only because he’s in love with you.”
“Obaasan—” I tried again, and this time I got a glance.
“Oh, she already knows it, Tomio. She’s too smart not to have seen it, and you’re just damned lucky that she’s not taken more advantage of your vulnerability. You should try to keep her, if you can, but it’ll take some doing. I don’t know if either of you are up to the task. You’re another little cliff she needed to scale, and though I love you, Tomio, you’re still trying to figure out what it is you want in life.”
Obaasan Evako gave a little start then, her mouth twisting back into a frown. “I’ve forgotten to check with the caterer about the wine. He’ll try putting it on ice again, and it should be served chilled, not cold. I want to talk to you later, Avariel; you can tell me how Norkohn’s going to get its money’s worth from this Venus expedition. Tomio, play host while I convince the caterer that it’s his decision to serve food the proper way.”
With that, she left us, moving away with her quick, unstoppable stride, already calling out loudly for the head caterer. Avariel laughed once, more in relief than anything else. “Good God. You might have warned me,” she said, staring at Obaasan’s wake.
“Hey, she likes you.”
“What does she do when she hates someone?” I saw her face scrunch into a scowl. “She doesn’t know me as well as she thinks she does.”
“You’d be surprised at what she probably knows.”
“Uh-huh.” Avariel glanced toward the bar and the restless tide of people around it. I couldn’t tell if she believed me or not. “After that, I think I need a drink,” she said.
I waved the bartender over to our table as thunder from outside rattled the windows and Hasalalo burbled in its gill bubbler. “What do you have that passes for Scotch?” I asked her. She was another adapted human native: even though her skin was brown, there was still a sense of pallor to her that only came with the eternal lack of sunlight here; her eyes had been surgically altered, the iris and pupil widened and a protective underlid added much like that of the shreeliala. There was webbing between her long, extended fingers also, and the twin lines of gills were on her neck, with long, scarlet fronds that said they’d been there a long time.
“If you want genuine, it’s expensive,” she told me. “If you’ll take the local variety, it’s cheap enough.”
“Expensive,” I told her. “I’ve had the local.”
She sniffed and glanced at Hasalalo. “Hasalalo?” she asked—which told me that she knew it fairly well. Hasalalo didn’t reply immediately, and I prodded its arm.
“Nothing?” I asked the shreeliala. “I’m buying. Or rather, my pension fund is buying.” Hasalalo shook its head, and the bartender left. “You’re sure?” I asked it. “I know you shreeliala don’t care for our particular poisons, but I knew a few of you who could slam back sugar water like crazy.”