Grail - Elizabeth Bear [41]
Perceval fished out the half-eaten noodle packet she’d stowed back in the basket, for something to do with her hands. She should have seen it. Too much grief—
Nova interrupted, only hesitantly. “Captain?”
Nova was kind, and permitted Perceval to swallow her moment of sorrow before continuing.
“Oh, dear.” She stuck her chopsticks through the safety loop and allowed the packet to snap closed.
Tristen sighed and set his food back inside the picnic basket.
Nova said, “It’s not a crisis, but I did want to alert you that we’ve received a return transmission from the leader of the people of Grail.” The Angel paused. “It’s … friendly, as far as it goes.”
“But it doesn’t go far—? No, never mind, Nova. Play it, please,” Tristen said. “What does the Fisher King have to say for himself?” Tristen glanced at Perceval for her permission, but it was strictly a formality. She hadn’t yet had a need to gainsay him. All evidence suggested that he had no ambition beyond being the perfect first lieutenant, confidant, and friend—and, if that was his ambition, he fulfilled it.
“Play it,” she confirmed.
Nova resolved an image against the blank wall of the tent opposite. The man who appeared was the color of burnt sienna, one of the brown rainbow tints of corroded metal, his skin darker than any Perceval had ever seen with her own eyes. Perceval at first tried not to stare out of politeness, until she was reminded by Tristen’s fixed gaze that the object of their attention could not witness her rudeness.
His skin was healthy, glossy, almost gleaming. The whites of his eyes were ivory, with a warm undercast from a Mean’s red blood. The irises were a brown so dark it was difficult to see the details and variances of pigmentation.
Besides the color of his skin, he had a broad face, well-fleshed, with a low-bridged nose and high forehead. His black-brown hair, receding like any older male Mean’s, was kept short, and from the texture it looked like it curled in tight spirals that gave it a plush appearance. And he was big, big and broad, with thick fingers and wrists, and heavy bones and muscles that spoke of a life lived under oppressive gravity.
His shoulders must be as wide as Head’s.
“Is that from the sun?” Perceval asked, wondering.
“Hello,” he said, his words halting and strangely accented but understandable. “I am Administrator Danilaw Bakare, City Administrator of Bad Landing on the independent and Earth-allied world of Fortune. It is my surprised delight to greet you, and to assure you that you are welcome in our system.”
He took a breath and glanced down. Scanning notes, Perceval realized with a painful shortness of breath that wasn’t just due to the lack of oxygen. That, more than anything, brought home to her what she had known intellectually: this alien man was a Mean.
She was still shocked at her own egocentrism that she found herself surprised to be treating with a Mean. Cynric had not developed the symbiont until long after the world left Earth behind, and she had cannibalized an alien life-form to do it. So why had Perceval expected that Earth would have produced the same technology?
She stilled herself, and paid attention to what followed. It was elaborate in the extreme, leading her to wonder if the diplomatic protocols of these alien beings were more focused on ritual and poetry than those to which she was accustomed.
“When humans first took to the sea,” Danilaw said, “they crept around the edges of the land masses. They clung to the shallows and sailed within sight of the coasts. But a few adventurers were more daring. In longboats, on rafts, in outrigger canoes, and in lashed reed boats they braved the deep ocean, navigating through storm and peril to find new lands. Many—perhaps most—did