“I see,” Ukatonen said. “So, Eerin, Moki, and I need security escorts because we are changing your world by healing people, yes?”
“I’m afraid so, Ukatonen,” Dr. Andraia agreed.
“I see,” Ukatonen said once again. “Then we have violated Contact Protocols by healing people. I must think about the implications of this.” He rose and walked out of the meeting, ignoring the doctors’ attempts to call him back. Eerin and Moki scrambled to follow him.
He said nothing as they were shown to their new quarters. He remembered the man who had grabbed his arm and begged him to heal his wife. He should have wondered why this human was acting so desperate, but he had been so eager to get to Earth, to set foot on a real world, that he had forgotten all about the Contact Protocols. He had violated his own judgment, dishonoring himself and casting doubt on all of the other enkar. There was only one honorable way out.
“En, tell me what you’re thinking,” Eerin asked when they had reached the privacy of their quarters.
“I had hoped that healing those people and working with the doctors would help us get to* Earth. I let my desire to go to Earth cloud my sight.” He paused, the deep brown of his shame clouded by grey regret. “I have failed in my judgment as an enkar. The only honorable thing for me to do is to die.”
“You can’t die, en,” Eerin told him. “We need you, Moki needs you.”
“It is a question of honor,” he said with a shrug.
“How are we going to explain your death to the Tendu?”
“The enkar will understand,” Ukatonen told her.
“And my people,” she said. “What about them? What do you think they’ll do when you commit suicide? They’ll slap a Non-Contact order on Tiangi. It’ll be impossible for Moki. Either he’ll be sent home without me and die, or have to stay here with me and never see another Tendu for as long as he lives. Yes, you tampered with the protocols, but that’s my fault as much as yours. I was the one who should have taken the protocols into account, not you.”
“Why didn’t you?” Ukatonen demanded.
Eerin looked down, her dark skin reddening slightly with embarrassment. She lifted her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I wanted to do something that would show my people what you were capable of. I wanted them to understand how much they had to gain from the Tendu.” She shook her head ruefully. “I succeeded too well, I’m afraid. But,” she said, looking up at Ukatonen, “the point is that this is not your mistake. It is mine.”
“But I am an enkar. I should have seen this.”
“Ukatonen,” Eerin said, “you became an enkar because you knew your people and your world inside and out. You spent years in training, acquiring knowledge that the Tendu had gathered over many millenia. Humans are something completely new and strange to your people. We don’t work by your rules. There’s no reason for your judgment to be perfect. We humans survive and learn from our mistakes. So should you, Ukatonen.”
Ukatonen felt the first stirrings of doubt. He looked away, not wanting to hear any more. He was afraid she was right, and that made him feel like he’d been covered in dung. He was caught between his honor and his duty.
Moki touched his shoulder. “I need you to show me what it means to be a Tendu, every bit as much as I need my sitik to show me what it means to be human. What good will I be to our people if I am too much a stranger to them? Eerin is right, en. We must take what we learn back to our people. What you have learned is more important than your honor. Dying before you pass along what you have learned to the other Tendu would be selfish.”
The disadvantage to sound speech, Ukatonen realized, was that you had to listen to it. With skin speech, you could look away and not see it. A flicker of regret passed over his body, and he reached out and touched Moki affectionately on the shoulder.
“It is not often that a bami has something to teach an enkar,” Ukatonen said in skin speech, taking care to keep the colors of his words soft and gentle.
“Forgive me, en.”
The black bars of negation flickered over his skin. “Being right does not require forgiveness, Moki.”
“Then you are not going to kill yourself?” Eerin asked.
Ukatonen shook his head. “Not now.” He found himself turning the idea of living over in his mind, and discovered that he was relieved at the prospect.
Eerin let out an explosive sigh and relaxed. “Thank god,” she said. “You really scared me.”
“I know,” Ukatonen said.
“What now?” Eerin asked.
“I haven’t thought that far yet,” Ukatonen confessed, brown with embarrassment. “I was too busy dying.”
“I think— ” Eerin began.
Ukatonen looked up at her questioningly.
“I think we should stop healing people,” she finished. “We’ve shown what the Tendu are capable of, and that’s enough for now. The problem is how to break the news. We’ll need to speak to Analin about that.”
Seven
Ukatonen stood looking out a hospital window at the garden below, letting the small patch of green refresh his eyes and his spirit. This was their last day at Snyder Hospital. They were meeting with the doctors on their team to discuss the best therapies for the people he and Moki had been healing.
He had learned a great deal in this place, but little of it was what he’d expected. A grey cloud of sadness passed over his skin as he turned away from the window. He could do so much good here, but now was not the time to do it. Later, perhaps, when humans and Tendu were more in harmony.
“Our security escort is waiting,” Eerin said. “Are you ready to go?”
Ukatonen nodded and turned to follow her down the long hallway.
Suddenly a man darted out of one of the rooms and pulled Eerin inside. He pressed a scalpel against her throat.
“That’s my daughter in the bed there,” he said, “and you’re going to heal her, or”—he pulled Eerin’s head a little further back—“I’ll slit her throat.”
“I don’t understand,” Ukatonen said, puzzled and frightened. “Why are you doing this?”
“My daughter’s dying.”
“I see,” he said. “You want me to heal her. And if I do not?”
“Then I kill the woman.”
Ukatonen glanced over at Moki, whose skin was a roiling turmoil of red and orange. He reached out and touched the bami. “It’s going to be all right, Moki,” he said aloud. Meanwhile, in skin speech he was saying, “I’m going to try to get you close to the man. If you get a chance, grab his knife hand and pull it away, and sting him unconscious.” Ukatonen saw Eerin’s eyes widen fractionally as he said this, and knew that she would be ready when the chance came.
“Moki’s very scared,” he told the man. “I’m afraid of what he might do. It would be best if you let him stand near Dr. Saari. She’s his adopted mother, and he will be calmer when he’s near her.”
“Please, sir, don’t hurt my mother,” Moki said, in a frightened child’s voice. Ukatonen flickered approval; clearly Moki knew what he was doing.
“He’s only a child,” Ukatonen said. “It will make it easier for me to heal your daughter if he’s kept out of the way.”
“Ukatonen, what’s happening? Why is that man scaring my mommy?” Moki asked, an almost human quaver in his voice.
The man’s eyes traveled from Ukatonen to Moki to the security escorts clustered around the door, weapons bristling, and then back to Moki again.
“All right,” he said, after a long, dangerous silence. “He can come and stand between me and the door. That way if the security people try shooting me, the bullet will have to go through him and his mother first.”