Theta Mars was assumed empty, as was every new place humanity found in their ventures across the stars. It was not.
-Abalone Shell on the White Beach, A New History Of Theta Mars
The emissaries sat on the paneling in the centre of their rooms. The wyrm poised cat like, wing folded against her back and forelimbs tucked between hindpaws before the arch of her deep chest and lean stomach. The woman sat cross legged on the edge of the shadow the sunlights cast below the diamond of the wyrm’s jaw. Her white cloak fell in folds around her legs, long hair trailed down her back, disobedient wisps framing her face and sliding along her neck under her ears. Her hands were folded in her lap, eyes burning unconcernedly into the doorframe as the entrance hissed open. An array of smooth black river stones were laid out on the floor in front of her, a tea tray sat to her right, a book of grey recyc, bound in skin, to her left.
“Welcome guests, you may enter,” said the woman. Sister Young, Felsdam, and DuCourt crossed the threshold, and took seats on the paneling at a gesture from the emissary. Sister Young considered briefly if this choice of the flooring as meeting place was symbolic. The wyrm towered over them here. Chairs and tables had of course been provided for the emissary’s use, and were still folded and strapped against the wall.
The woman had turned to the tea service, shifting from her seat to crouch with one knee drawn up, steadying her elbow against it. “We understand that there are matters that you wish to discuss?” she led. She did not glance at them while she worked.
“There are many, yes,” said Sister Young, unfolding the legs of her desk, and laying out blank pages. Still the woman did not attend, even when the desk, through a deliberate misplacement, slipped and knocked loudly on the paneling before Sister Young righted it.
She merely smiled, nodding faintly as she poured from the kettle into a plain pot. It was glass-ceramic, one of the crew standard vessels. The captain had commented on a spartan austerity. Perhaps that was why they were meeting on the floor.
“We were told humanity favours conversation,” she said, as steam billowed around her head. The water was far too hot to brew with. Sister Young prepared to drink the fumbling attempts at tea service of a child. She could feel the eyes of the wyrm following her movements. There was a dry heat to the air in the emissaries chambers, the sunlights set to replicate the star Eros. Sister Young looked into the wyrm’s reptilian gaze and saw nothing.
The woman approached Sister Young on her knees and held a cup out to her. As she took the cup from her hands, she saw the same nothingness in the deep brown of her eyes. An animal emptiness.
“We have time. We are told the voyage is a long one,” she said, withdrawing as Sister Young took the cup. It was very hot to the touch. The emissary moved in such a way that her fingers never met with Sister Young’s skin.
The tea she had prepared for them was brewed from the buds of flowers, vibrant blue. It held a bitterness Sister Young found unpleasant as she drank in unison with the scholars and their hostess.
“There is no weather to discuss aboard a star ship,” said the emissary, a hint of a smile playing about her mouth. “We ask then, are our guests well?”
“I find my health agreeable at present. No illness besets me,” Sister Young answered, setting the hot cup on the corner of her desk.
“And yourself? Wedded ones?” asked the emissary.
DuCourt smiled, pained and tired, staring through the steam into her cup. Its warmth seemed sustaining to her. Felsdam answered, “space is not unkind, though with age, we are made weary. And our host, Abalone Shell on the White Beach is well? The ship has a doctor of considerable knowledge if any malady plagues you.”
The woman dipped her head, “no malady, we are keeping our footing as well as we may, without proper gravity. We find it odd,” said the emissary, “that we do not wake up stuck to a different wall than the one we went to sleep against. We will learn the gravity mechanisms soon, to better understand.”
“You don’t mean to—?” DuCourt blurted, stifling herself by pressing fingers over her lips. Tears glistened unshed in her eyes.
The wyrm thrummed, a rumbling note emanating from its chest as the woman looked on at DuCourt’s outburst. She spoke a series of clicks and trills, the redolent vibrations of the wyrm underscoring her words. Their meaning was evident to DuCourt, a sob dying in her choked throat as she nodded, pressing her hands to her eyes and hunching forward over her knees. Felsdam’s hand hovered over his wife’s shoulder, trembling, as he stared up, not at the woman, but at the wyrm.
“What message do you give her?” asked Sister Young, “if it is not of a private nature?”
The emissary turned empty burning eyes on her. “It is.”
“Many pardons, but may my wife and I be excused?” asked Felsdam. Sister Young was unsure of whom he had begged this permission. It was at the emissary’s gesture that he gathered the now weeping DuCourt and bowed his way to the door.
Sister Young and the emissary sat in charged silence for a moment. The room echoed with the absence of the wyrm’s voice. The animal had returned to near frozen stillness.
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“You will remain Sister Young? Shall we converse? Or would meditation suit you?” asked the woman. She sounded sharp and trilling, her shaping harsh, as though speaking her native tongue required a different state than the trade pidgin.
“You must know I have come to ask questions of you,” said Sister Young.
“And we have come to seek knowledge,” the emissary replied. “We will allow you your questions, Sister Young. Perhaps they are our sought answers.”
Sister Young adjusted her pages and took up her graphite. “What are the names of your parents?”
“We have one mother, the Inferno That Consumes All. We have no father.”
“Do you know the names of the human colonists who birthed you?”
“No.”
“Do you know the name you were given by your human parents before you were abducted?”
“No.”
“Do you wish to seek out knowledge of your human parents?”
“No.”
Sister Young glanced up at the woman and the wyrm. Both watched her. The woman sipped from her cup of blue floral tea.
“Are the ninety nine remaining hostages in good health?”
“Yes. Prayer to the Sun broke her arm in the winter, and it has healed well.”
“What were the circumstances of this injury?”
“She slipped while fishing and landed poorly.”
“Was she helped?”
“Yes.”
“Who by?”
“Her guardians, ourself, and several of our siblings who were also fishing.”
“Who are her guardians?”
“Wind Over the Grasslands and Mountain’s Shadow.”
“Are they wyrms?”
“Yes.”
“Describe their role to me.”
“They protect and nurture her, as they have since she became a child of the Empress.”
“Do all the hostages live amongst wyrms?”
“Our siblings are wyrms.”
“Define wyrm for me, please.”
“Wyrm, a human word for the true people of Theta Mars.”
“Are you a wyrm?”
“In part.”
Sister Young turned over her page to the blank side. “Were you taught the facts of the Expulsion?”
“Yes.”
“Recite them to me, please.”
“The human colony was informed that their presence on Theta Mars was no longer tolerated and they were asked to leave. At the appointed date, all remnants of their colonial infrastructure were removed.”
“Were human colonists still present on the planet’s surface at this date?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to them?”
“Those that did not leave were destroyed along with their infrastructure.”
“Does this fact disturb you?”
“No,” said the emissary. “Does it disturb you?”
Sister Young looked up from her shorthand. The emissary bore an expression of neutral attention. Her eyes blazed. That fire in them burned and raged and gnawed away at Sister Young’s mind, conjuring sensations of the ship ignited. They sucked up the air, leaving the room stifling with a dry heat, breathless and deadly. She blinked.
“Do you have any more questions, Sister Young?” she asked. She was only human. Only a young woman alone on a starship, leaving the solar system of the only home she had known. The heat was in the wyrm that loomed behind her. The white scales that framed her silhouette.
“May we speak in private?” asked Sister Young. There was no denying the wyrm had a deadly grace to it. Etched in its every line was the evidence of a dangerous animal.
“We are alone,” said the woman.
“My meaning was,” Sister Young said, cautiously framing her conditions. “Without your wyrm companion present.”
“To be without the wyrm, we would have to be dead, Sister Young,” explained the emissary. Her lips curled around ‘wyrm’ as though it was sour on her tongue.
“Who are you?”
“We are Abalone Shell on the White Beach.”
“Are you human?”
“In part.”
Sister Young was not fond of obtuse informants. It was tedious to sift their words, often they held only scant meaning.
“Are you happy with your life on Theta Mars?”
“Yes.”
“Did you voluntarily choose to embark on this voyage as an emissary?”
“Yes.”
“Now that you have escaped custody of the Teeth of the Lion, do you wish to remain with human kind?”
“No.”
“Would you answer differently if a wyrm were not privy to this discussion?”
“Sister Young, who do you believe you are speaking with?”
“A human named Abalone Shell on the White Beach.”
“We understand, you may go now. Thank you for this conversation. It has been quite elucidating,” said the emissary, dipping her head in a gesture of gratitude.
Sister Young stood in the passageway with her desk slung over her shoulder. The door hissed shut behind her, enclosing the emissaries in their solitude.
A crew member stood up from where she had leaned against the wall. “Scholar Felsdam said to get this to you, Sister,” she said, handing off a scrap of recyc and continuing down the passage.
The note read: Sister Young, please excuse our exit. This news though not unexpected was still a blow to my wife and to myself. The emissary’s message to us was as follows: We will of course gain permission first, do not have fear for them. Teacher Tranquil asked that we remind that it cannot be you or your mate. The bond is too volatile, the risk to all parties too great. She asks that you understand and forgive her. The thoughts of the Triad are often on you, their students. In another life, Tranquil tells us, you would have made true seekers.
