The Strangers of Kindness (15 page)

“All this talk is doing nothing,” Pasha said suddenly. “And our dinner awaits. Jared, will you serve?”

So he did. He took the cloth off the tray, revealing his and Anna’s plates of meat and rice and vegetables, and Pasha’s
nalsha
full of sand. “Here we go,” he thought, “First proof.” Anna stared at the
nalsha
, ignoring her own plate. Pasha gave her a smile, and taking hold of its left hand with the right, began rolling the morphed flesh back, just as it had done at Jared’s first meal. Anna shot backward into the couch, her arms and legs pushing her against the cushions. Pasha’s slender tendril, exposed, made its snaky movements. Jared heard the girl’s breath whistling in fear.

“It’s all right,” he murmured, and speared a steaming potato and bit into it. Pasha’s tendril dipped into its sand meal; Anna whimpered. Jared munched and watched them.

Anna was as awe-fully fascinated with Pasha’s eating as Jared had been. But after a few minutes she evidently decided that the creature across from her wasn’t going to lunge at her, and she shot a glance at Jared. Half of his dinner was gone, and his expression was placid. He winked at her.

The tension left the lines of her body, and she looked at her own plate for the first time. “So much,” she breathed, looked again at Jared, questioning.

He waved at her plate. “Eat.”

She picked up the flat spoon and dug into the rice. For a moment she looked a little faint. “Thank you, Master Pasha,” she whispered, and she ate.

That night Pasha did most of the talking. It explained that it needed an array of
nalshas
, each with a particular lining of metal-dust mixture, each a particular size and shape. Somehow this collection of special bowls would get Jared’s master home, wherever that was. The two slaves understood little of its explanation. It sounded like a marvelous story for children. But Pasha’s yearning for its home was real, and something they could understand. Jared remembered Pasha’s grief, the first night he’ d come to this house.

“You’ll get home, Master. I’ll do anything you want, anything you need me to do.”

Pasha smiled at him fondly. “You have been. I know I’ll see my home again, and not so long from now. But what’s to become of you when I’m gone? That’s what worries me.”
 

Jared shook his head. He didn’t know, either. “You’ll find someone to buy me, and my life will be as it always has been.” But his heart was heavy, thinking of Anna, and the misery her life would continue to be. He restrained an urge to reach for her hand.

The three of them sat silently for awhile. Then Anna said, “Is it time for me to go back?”

Her hosts exchanged surprised glances. Had the evening really fled so quickly?

“Well, my dear, I think you are the best judge of that. If you think it’s time, we’ d better decide. Do you want to change places, until just before dawn?”

Disbelief played with her features again, but she’ d seen Pasha eat... “Why would you do this?”

Pasha reflected. “Because—I can. I can’t do anything to get you out of their clutches for good, and that’s a terrible frustration. But I can give you a little relief, maybe. And—I’m not entirely unselfish in this, don’t think it. I’m very interested in your people, you ‘ human beings’ . This would let me learn more.
 

“My people would say this is wrong. They would say I have no business interfering in the lives of this world, where I was after all not invited, and I know now, would certainly be feared and reviled if the rest of this population knew who—what—I am. But my
frombur
tells me it’s not wrong.

“Jared’s given me his trust and friendship and hard work, even knowing I am different, even in his difficult position. A good heart calls out for answering kindness, some reward, and this is all I can do. It would make him feel better—not only for you to have a respite, but also to have more time to spend in your delightful company—” Here Jared flushed dark red. “And I myself am intensely interested in widening my experience of your human life.”

Anna regarded the alien with softer eyes. Jared watched her small fingers lace and un-lace in her lap. Her hands were callused, the nails bitten or worked down to the quick, the skin red and rough. She would be old before her time. “But now, oh now,” he thought, “you’ re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
 

“Anna?” Pasha said gently. “What’s your choice?”
 

She shrugged. “Why not? If it’s a game, so I’m the fool, and I’m no worse off, am I? What do I have to do?” Pasha stood up and held out a hand. “Come with me. Now it is your turn to decide if you trust me.”

It seemed to think that its slave would accompany them to the sleeping-room but he shook his head, sinking back on the couch, and turned his face away toward the window. Anna looked at him with round eyes. Then she turned and took Pasha’s out-stretched hand, and they left the room.

In the back of his mind Jared expected to hear—something—a cry—but the time crept silently. After what seemed like hours, he heard a soft cough, and he turned around.

Two Annas stood in the doorway to the common room. Even their ragged clothing was the same, down to the grubby twist of unravelling thread at the hem. Two pairs of ebony eyes regarded him with mock solemnity. They were holding hands. Jared gasped and stood up, superstition burning his insides.

The Anna on the left said, “So, Jared, which of us is Anna?”
 

The voice was Anna’s.

“You are,” Jared whispered.

The other Anna laughed. “Wrong. It’s me. Isn’t this witchery? I always thought it would be ugly, bloody stuff, magic. But it’s a joke! Isn’t it, Jared?”

Jared looked at the Pasha-Anna, neither of them smiling. In that voice so impossibly like Anna’s, Pasha said, “It’s past time I went across. What do I do, Anna? Do I knock at the door?”

“No, he’ll be waiting.” The pleasure had gone out of her eyes. “I still think this is too dangerous, Master Pasha. If he discovers . . .”

“Disaster for all of us,” Pasha-Anna finished. “But he won’t. I will make sure of it. You are always very quiet in his presence, I believe, are you not? The few words I’ll give him won’t reveal anything.” It went to the door, and left the two young people staring at each other in the faint eddy of cool night air.

“Why is this so important to him?” Anna asked Jared.

“I don’t know.”
He wants us to have time alone together.
“It’ll be all right.”

They went to the window by the front door. In the darkness they could dimly see two figures moving in the deeper shadows of Kalda’s awning. Kalda’s unpleasant voice murmured across the street. There may have been a humble reply. The sound of chains clinking turned Jared away from the window, his eyes shut in a scowl of pain.

Suddenly he said, “He’ll be cold out there,” and turned back to the window. Anna was still watching, though Kalda had gone back inside. They could barely make out a low hump, near the entry to the spice store. “He doesn’t stand the cold well.” He felt Anna’s fingers creep over his hand on the sill.
 

“He shouldn’t be doing this for me,” she said, and she left his side to go huddle on the chair Pasha had abandoned.
 

 
“He’s the Master,” Jared pointed out from his watching post at the window. “What he wants, he can do.” Then he said in a different tone, “Look at that . . .”

Anna rejoined him. They peered into the gloom. Across the way, where before there was only an indistinct heap of darkness on the porch boards, there was now movement. Anna blinked. Pasha had grown a tail!

“What—?”

Jared’s amazement spread to a smile. “The dogs,” he said. There were two tails now, wagging in delighted recognition; no disguise could fool the noses of the night-time cohorts from Pasha’s first nights in this town. Another dog trotted around the side of the store, joining the pile, and another from up the street, and yet another. The small mound lying on the porch had grown. After some arranging and settling, the heap went quiet.
 

“He won’t be so cold after all,” Jared said with satisfaction. At last he pushed away from the window and turned to his guest. “So, Anna, you have a few hours of your own. What would you do?” He saw the uneasiness in her eyes. “You’ re tired. As long as the Master is gone, why don’t you sleep in his bed?”
 

“Oh, no! He’ d find out, wouldn’t he? Surely he—”
 

“He doesn’t even sleep. He won’t know the difference, and besides, he won’t care. He wants you to have some comfort. Come on, we’ll get you settled. I’ll stay out here and wait for him to come back. You can sleep in peace.”

He led her to Pasha’s room and turned down the blanket for her to crawl under. She made a very small lump under the cover. He smiled down at her. “Anything else for my lady?”

She giggled. “‘ My lady’ —now you’ re teasing. No. This is, is, wonderful.” She wriggled under the blanket. “So warm!”
 

“Have a good sleep.”

But half an hour later Jared’s unintended doze on the front room couch was broken by Anna’s soft touch on his arm.
 

“What?” he sprang up, all alarm.

“No—it’s only me,” she whispered. “I’m just... After you left, the room seemed so big, so dark. I’m always alone, Jared. Can’t I stay out here with you, until he comes back?”

Before dawn’s first feathers brushed the stars, Pasha came home and found them sleeping on the couch, sitting side by side. It shook Jared’s arm. “Wake up! We must hurry!” Jared insisted on going across the street with her, leaving Pasha fretting in its doorway. “Two Annas would be sorcery, Master; if it’s just me caught, they’ll maybe leave you alone.” Anna settled herself upon the porch and held out her foot for Jared to fasten the chain to it. He couldn’t look at her; it was the ugliest thing he’ d ever had to do.

Before he stood up to leave, she put a hand on his arm.
 

“It’s all right, Jared. Don’t feel so bad. And thank you.”

“For what.”

He couldn’t see her face but saw her shoulders shrug. “For a peaceful night.”

He put his hand on her cheek, the first time he’ d given in to the impulse to reach out for her. She turned her face to touch her lips against his palm. Then she pushed his arm to send him home.

For Jared the ensuing days passed with a maddening, jerky rhythm. Pasha kept him busy making bowls for the store-front but since they were at the mercy of Kalda’s whims, he couldn’t know when he would see Anna again in the freedom of Pasha’s house. Every day that she didn’t come was an eternity, and he’ d go to bed aching with disappointment. But then, those nights when her knock at the door sent his heart crashing around in his chest, the hours passed like seconds.

Pasha regaled them with stories they couldn’t understand about its traveler’s life among the stars, made them laugh with its naiveté about human customs. It told comic tales from its daily chats with the children who had made his store-front a gathering place. The charming and, to them foreign, bowls drew them like bees to flowers. Pasha couldn’t tell the children of its life in space, but it listened avidly to their prattle. Such attention inevitably made Pasha Sands their idol. “They’ re so different from you big humans,” Pasha marveled. “They laugh so easily, and have such energy! And I believe they’ re even more curious about everything than I am! Is there a rite of passage, when you become so dull and serious? What makes the change?”

“Life does it,” Jared told it. “Children don’t have to make a living, most of them, if they have parents or masters to feed them. Until they get bigger, they aren’t able to be serious and dull about anything, unless cruelty or misfortune befalls them.”

Pasha scowled at him, deeply puzzled. “So they really are different than the adults? How strange . . .”

Jared and Anna smiled at that. “Aren’t your children different than your adults?”

Pasha’s response was a blank expression. “No. Of course not. How could they be? They’ re part of us.”

They blinked at it. “So are our children, part of us,” Jared said. “But you can’t expect an infant to behave like an adult!”

A keen expression spread over Pasha’s features. Jared had seen it before, when the alien fastened onto an enigma that it hadn’t realized existed. Its mind zeroed in on the puzzle and wouldn’t let go until it had achieved understanding. “You know my species is sexless.”

Anna gaped at it. “How do you have children then?”
 

“Not all of us do. There is a choice-point in one’s life. Myself, I have chosen the other path. But when one wishes to continue its line, there is a regimen of study, of meditation, of building up one’s health. When elders have decided the time is right, why, one simply thinks! And you’ve seen my true body. It is quite pliable. Somewhere on one’s body a new growth begins. Eventually, the growth takes on the characteristics of a new being, and the body separates from the parent, an occasion of much joy and more rituals. The new one is much smaller than the parent, as are your children, but it is fully self-sufficient. It grows as time goes by.”

Pasha smiled at their open-mouthed wonder.

It changed the subject, adroitly keeping the conversation light. Sometimes Jared would see adoration in Anna’s eyes when she looked at the alien, and felt what he knew was a completely unreasonable stab of jealousy.