Mukoli

Tea for Two

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A fragrance of freshly-cut hay welcomed Marina as she stepped out of her shed, oil can in hand. She held the small door, worn over the edges, as the creaking echoed all over the narrow mountain valley. It hadn’t faded yet when she’d already finished oiling both the rusty hinges.

She pushed, and pulled, and pushed again. A soft squeal was the only, barely audible noise.

“Not bad,” she considered. “I wish all the fixings were so easy.”

She lifted her gaze at the sound of soft steps approaching. From the gravel path came her guest, a tall man in his late seventies, the bright, gentle eyes contrasting with the sloppy, dirty brown clothes.

Even if she mustn’t judge on appearance, here more than ever, she allowed herself to be optimistic.

“Please, come and sit,” she told the visitor, gesturing at the narrow table. A small vase with fresh violets and daisies held in place a flowery cloth. Two simple, chipped and leaning chairs surrounded the table, one each side.

She hid the oil can behind her back, not willing for it to look even remotely as a weapon.

“I’m Marina, by the way.”

The visitor seemed to hesitate, his gaze bouncing around, apparently studying every single flower, and bush, and tree in the courtyard. A bee buzzed a small eight in the air in front of him, then flew away.

“What’s this place?” the visitor asked.

Marina waved a hand. “Just a quiet haven, for a little talk.” She couldn’t help wondering how the newcomer was feeling. “You’re Ke’ne’voor, aren’t you? You came a long way from home.”

The man gulped in surprise. Soon, twitches shook the large body, the wrinkled features growing wary. A side effect of the acclimation, probably.

Marina pulled the closest chair back, stifling her surprise as she found the handle wet with dew.

“Please, sit,” she suggested, calm. “It’ll take you a little more to properly adjust to the new environment.”

She stepped back, leaving some space and broadening her smile as Ke’ne’voor started approaching, still cautious, the table and chairs.

“As you take your time, I’m making tea,” Marina added, already turning, but hearing some promising movement behind her.

The door squealed as she opened it. It wasn’t fixed, yet. Also, stepping inside the shed, the chaos of rusty pans and dirty pots made her wonder how such a crammed place couldn’t defy the laws of physics. While listening to any unusual noise from the outside, she both managed to get rid of the oil can and make room on the stove.

She’d studied how to use it, but the real deal felt different. The heavy copper machinery hissed and puffed, glaring red from its narrow opening. She filled the teapot with well water, then sighed in relief as she managed to put it on the scorching hot surface without burning herself. Fire definitely wasn’t part of her upbringing.

“Almost ready!” she announced, as she found the metal tin holding the leaves. 

She picked some, letting them slip into the teapot. The way they floated over the warming water felt soothing. Marina nodded to herself. Her mood was good, which was crucial. She’d told everybody many times, back in the planning stage, how their guest must feel comfortable, or they were all doomed from the start.

Proud of herself, she put two cups and the warm teapot on a silver tray, then headed out of the shed.

She almost stumbled as she crossed the doorway.

When the full tray landed on the table, far enough from the vase not to hit it, Marina let out an embarrassed giggle.

Ke’ne’voor was sporting a grin.

“I’m not from here, either, as you may guess,” Marina confessed, pouring tea and then pushing the smoking hot cup in front of her interlocutor. “But I’m doing my best.”

Ke’ne’voor’s gaze only briefly brushed his cup before bouncing back at her. “I appreciate it,” he said, jaw straightening, “since I’m not here of my own free will.”

Marina took a sip, only to hide her face long enough to think, but she drank too fast and the tea burned her tongue. She somehow managed to stifle the groan.

A tiny ladybug crawled through the cloth, as if it was avoiding the drawn flowers on purpose. 

When Marina faced her visitor again, cup back on the table and both her hands visible, she offered a guilty smile.

“No, you’re not,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Curiosity glimmered behind the sternness.

“How did you do it?”

Marina shook her head gently. “A mixture of sleeping gases in your exosuit,” she explained, her memory feeling light-years away. “We could have done it before, but they didn’t let us. They were right, I guess.” She frowned at her interlocutor. “But then you blew our eleventh attempt at a negotiation–”

Ke’ne’voor scoffed. “There have never been the right conditions!”

Marina had been studying the recordings over and over, doing research, comparing their cultures. She’d always thought there was a wall between their peoples, and it was even creepier the fact that she could feel it right now, even besides the cozy scenery and her welcoming clumsiness.

She pointed at the untouched guest cup.

“Not having it?”

She sipped again. This time, as the temperature of the liquid had lowered, she let the strong flavor spread all over her mouth. It felt unique, and nice.

Ke’ne’voor bent forward, sniffed the tea, and pulled back.

“It’s just part of the pleasantries,” she said. “Won’t affect you in any way.”

He briefly opened his hands wide. All the visitor’s body language felt slightly off, but only to a keen observer.

“Like everything else?” Ke’ne’voor asked.

“Like everything else,” Marina agreed. “We’re in a simulation, as you may have already guessed.”

“May I ask why?”

Marina took a long pause, toying with the vase of violets and daisies. She pulled one flower up, the closest to the edge, in an attempted rescue.

Acclimation was over, even part of the show had become irrelevant, now. Time to play.

“I might say that you left us no other choice, but it would be incorrect,” Marina considered. “There always is one, one alternative to violence, something smart, and blunt, and too crazy to even think about.”

Ke’ne’voor blinked. “A kidnapper talking of alternative to violence–”

She had his attention, at least.

“Your body wasn’t harmed in any way,” Marina explained. “When this is over, you’ll leave with nothing but a small headache.”

“I’ll leave, you say,” Ke’ne’voor held his breath. “If the conversation reaches the goal you aimed for in the first place.” Another significant pause. “What if it doesn’t?”

Marina gulped. It had felt like a good plan, on paper. The technology was available, and it would allow to overcome many, if not all, of the issues the negotiations had had to undertake until then. Also, time was running out, her people were dying and those in charge had become desperate enough to approve any desperate attempt.

But, as Ke’ne’voor had just pointed out, this wasn’t a negotiation. One of them was a prisoner.

“I’m sorry,” Marina exhaled, trying to let her own startle show as much as possible. “It was my fault, and my fault only.” She sighed. “What if we set up different ground rules, and we do it now?”

Mixed feelings blinked on the mature man’s face. Again, curiosity was among them.

“Please, continue.”

If she needed any more proof that her interlocutor was a truly intelligent, healthy-minded and sensitive being, there was the very fact that their conversation had lasted so long, even despite the odd circumstances.

Marina realized how the wall among their kinds had been physical. Definitely not intellectual.

“What about two-thousand yars from now?” she suggested.

“What’s a yar?” Ke’ne’voor asked.

It was an intellectual wall, also, since the way they measured time, along with everything else, was completely different. She’d studied the conversion of units, back in the planning stage, but now she felt too restless to do any math.

Pulling her cup towards her, she realized most of the heat was already gone, and the rich flavor along with it. Too quickly to be helpful. Her heart raced even faster as she avoided her guest’s expectant eyes.

She needed a way to measure time, one simple and easily shareable, and she needed it now.

“Anything wrong?” the guest asked.

When her eyes bounced over the horizon, she realized subtle shades of yellow had started appearing by the horizon. Also, the light was softening. Soon, the valley would get dark. It was a way to measure time, too.

“Let’s try this,” she began, retrieving some optimism. “We’ll talk until the sun disappears behind the mountains over there.” Her gestures were a bit too grandiose. “It’s called dusk.”

“I know that,” Ke’ne’voor replied. Marina prayed it was irony that she’d just caught.

“Sorry again,” she said. “For me, instead, it’s new.” She grinned. “Seeing the sky, I mean.”

Ke’ne’voor kept still. “Understandable.”

For someone about to set a countdown, she was wasting a lot of precious time.

“Whatever the result of our conversation will be, when the light is gone,” she announced “you’ll be free.”

A nearly invisible crease appeared in the corner of her guest’s mouth.

“Fine.”

He took a sip from his cup.

Marina let out a soft giggle. “It would have been tastier, if you’d had it when it was still warm.”

A further shimmer of empathy. “Nothing is perfect,” Ke’ne’voor commented. He seemed to enjoy the liquid in his mouth, before swallowing it. Next, he glanced at the horizon. “Shall we begin?”

Marina felt lighter.

“We are dying, Ke’ne’voor,” she began, words gushing out. “The lake we settled in, our very home, is more and more poisoned every day, because of your spills.”

“I’m aware of that,” her guest replied, the square jaw coming back. “I believe our first negotiation started from that very point, but I might be mistaken. Us ancient civilizations sometimes bend the memory at our own will.”

It was an opening, and it wasn’t.

“You’re not stopping the spills, in any shape or language we request it, are you?” The light seemed to be softening at every word.

Ke’ne’voor shook his head, making Marina feel small and insignificant. “It’s not that we don’t want,” her guest explained. “We simply can’t.” He blinked. “I hope you understand.”

From the way he looked at the horizon, he was counting the time, too.

“But we were on the planet—I mean, there’s few of us left, now, so let’s say in the area—first!”

A stifled groan. “That, too, has already been discussed,”  Ke’ne’voor said. “Wedenna has always been under the jurisdiction of the Batraci Empire.” He raised his voice. “Come on, even a young kind like yours should know that!”

Marina couldn’t help but picturing the underwater city, the corral pillars and the algae finishing that had held up their house, sustaining the water pressure, for at least nine generation of her family.

“And we’ve always lived in the lake,” Marina objected, weakly.

Ke’ne’voor squinted. “So you tell me you weren’t there, when our delegation arrived?”

Marina’s heart started racing again at the memory of the huge amphibian vehicle that had entered the lake, affecting their biome forever. There had been a time before the arrival, a time after, and apparently very little chance to combine the two.

After the first, bloody attempts at fighting against the overwhelming Batraci forces, diplomacy had been attempted, with little success. Until Marina’s crazy fixation for forgotten alien technologies had offered an even crazier possibility.

“From our point of view, you just came back,” Marina explained to her visitor, now stiffer than ever. “We’ve been living in the lake for generations.” She shivered. With the light, heat was fading, too, apparently robbing the beautiful place of all its charm.

“It’s sacred ground to us,” Ke’ne’voor explained, just a little gentler. “You don’t live or build houses on sacred ground, you go when it’s time. When the Great Council says it’s time.”

Oh, yeah, the Great Council, Marina remembered as she hammered her fingers on the table. Another branch of the Batraci Empire, ruling from the distance and impossible to contact.

“Couldn’t you just choose another lake?” Marina suggested.

“Not all lakes on the planet are sacred ground.”

“What about the planet surface?”

“Its atmosphere is poisonous to us,” Ke’ne’voor continued. “But you could leave the lake. Ignorance is not guilt, if you choose to go.”

Marina was on the brink of desperation. And the changing hue of the once bright sky wasn’t helping. “We can’t live on the surface, either.”

“What about moving to another planet, then?”

Ke’ne’voor seemed truly interested in the conversation.

“Nah,” she recalled. “Don’t you remember how easily you fought back? We once were a space faring civilization, capable of impressive things, but then we split, we scattered, we—dumbed down. We wouldn’t be able to migrate.”

Saying it inside of a virtual simulation, created by an ancient, retrieved piece of tech, as a final attempt at communicating with people so biologically different from her kind, didn’t make it less true.

Ke’ne’voor made a sad smile. “Sometimes, younger kinds like yours do that,” he mused out loud. “Bouncing up and down their technological level in a cyclical fashion.”

Like her, her visitor had adapted so much to the alien body that, apparently by pure instinct, put his hand on hers. It felt warm, and coarse, and–

“Wrong!” Marina blurted, pulling back. “You still don’t need to keep poisoning our lake just because of your silly beliefs!”

A hint of threat glimmered in Ke’ne’voor’s eyes. “I’ll pretend I missed the mocking undertone,” he said. After a pause, he softened again. “What you call poisoning is a chemical process to adapt the waters of the lake, for us to be able to bathe during the Great Event.”

Marina laughed with no happiness. “Oh, yeah,” she hissed. “It’s always grand, when it’s something of yours. You have an empire, you have technology–”

She barely could see the courtyard, now. Dusk had arrived and she’d failed. Her people will keep dying and she’d have another story to be ashamed of.

“You have everything! All you lack is mercy!” she accused.

She stood and turned, feeling too much energy to hold it back. Her shed felt small and useless and those who had built such things must have been pure idiots.

“Marina, please.” Ke’ne’voor’s calmness felt unnerving. “We can assist your migration with our ships. We do have the technology and the resources to do it.”

Marina turned to her guest, still trembling in anger. The light was dim but he looked sincere.

“Would you do that?”

No negotiation had ever gone so far. She scrambled in her memory, through every single recording, but she was certain. The Batraci had never offered to help her people leaving the lake. All negotiations had ended with scorn, insults and misunderstandings. Mostly, misunderstandings.

But, somehow, the wall between them had now a tiny window.

Night was almost wrapping the whole valley, but Marina allowed herself to hope again.

“How long do you think it would take, for all of you to leave?” Ke’ne’voor asked.

Marina was prepared for such an answer. It was something their scientists had gone through, as an option, before realizing they didn’t have the resources.

“Approximately three million yars,” she said.

Ke’ne’voor blinked.

“Oh, sorry,” Marina said.

The conversion units were now clear in her mind. She did some quick math to adjust to the way the Batraci measured time, then uttered the result out loud.

“Oh, no,” Ke’ne’voor said.

Marina winced at the cold.

“The Great Event is much closer,” Ke’ne’voor explained.

Marina had to guess the other’s expression, because the courtyard had sunk into darkness.

“How closer?” Marina managed to ask.

“A quarter of the time?” Ke’ne’voor replied, sounding unhappy.

Marina asked him to repeat the time span, in Batraci standards, but it was still much shorter than what they would need to pack everything and kiss their native lake goodbye.

“Crap!” she yelled. “We were almost there! We—communicated!”

“We did,” Ke’ne’voor admitted, a silhouette sitting at the table.

Marina looked up, and around, and up again. The endless lights in the black vault—she knew it was the stars—would probably be as beautiful as the courtyard in the daylight, if she still had more time.

Yet, she hadn’t.

“You did good, you know,” Ke’ne’voor said, his voice warm. “You tried, and it will always be a point of honor. I think I can  persuade my government to assist at least part of your people to migrate to another planet.”

He stood, and Marina refused to look.

“Now, I think it’s time for you to send me back.”

Marina took a deep breath. She was getting used to the alien, surface-dweller respiratory system, not to mention the strong and steady, fin-less lower limbs.

“You’re right, it’s time.”

She turned toward her shed. The passage out of the virtual simulation was the doorway itself. That was why she’d been surprised finding such a mess on the inside. All she had to do was count the exact steps in, push the door open and–

“Wait!”

Her voice sounded shrill.

“What?”

“Over there.”

She pointed at the stove. From a side window, the red light still glimmered. She’d made tea with the heat from the fire inside the copper stove, and she’d get some extra time thanks to it.

Ke’ne’voor stood by her side. In the dancing light of the flame, puzzlement mixed once more with a tiny bit of curiosity.

“What should I see?” he politely asked.

“I don’t know,” Marina replied. “What do you?”

Ke’ne’voor seemed to ponder. “An ancient heating machine, I guess,” he considered.

“And?”

“A little light.” He groaned, but he was smiling. “I see where you’re going, here.”

Marina locked her eyes into his. “You agreed the negotiation would be over when the light would be over.”

“I did.”

“So there’s still a little light,” Marina continued, barely believing her own words. “So the negotiation is still going.”

“It won’t last much further,” Ke’ne’voor pointed out.

“Enough for me.”

Ke’ne’voor sighed. “I’m listening.”

It was all about math. And conversion. She wouldn’t be able to make an ancient technology work, one so much based on chunked pieces of information, if she’d not been good with math in the first place. Ke’ne’voor had told her how soon the Great Event would be in Batraci standards, and she had assumed the conversion was correct.

Surprise: it wasn’t.

“You just did the math wrong,” Marina explained, fighting her excitement. “The time span you think we will need to evacuate the lake is not the same as what I told you, according to the way we measure time.”

Ke’ne’voor looked away, apparently testing the math. “A little mistake, indeed,” he admitted. “It doesn’t change much.”

“It does,” Marina announced. “You came to our planet too early.” Even in the fading stove flame, she counted a full array of emotions in the eyes of her guest. “Your Great Event, if you do the math right, is not due before the end of what, for my people, is a generation.”

Ke’ne’voor stood there, blinking, pondering.

“Do you think the Great Council would be happy if you celebrated the Great Event so much ahead of its time?”

Before Marina could speak, or act again, Ke’ne’voor was on her.

If that had happened before all the talking, the back and forth, the shared experience, she would probably fear for her life. Even if this was a projection with unusual, alien features, instead of her real body, she could still be harmed.

But Ke’ne’voor hugged her. In an awkward, too long, yet eloquent way.

In the clumsy embrace, Marina let the awareness of her discovery, and its good consequences, settle.

“Do I just have to cross the threshold, then?” Ke’ne’voor asked, pulling back, still showing unusual energy.

“Yes.”

His eyes glimmered under the stars.

“The negotiation went well, I guess,” he continued. “It’ll take a formal exam from the Batraci central government, and then the priests of the Great Council will need to check it all once more.”

“Some more time,” Marina replied.

“Yes,” Ke’ne’voor admitted. “Also, the math works, and that’s all that matters, now.”

After the unexpected joy, the painful memories of what was still happening in the lake flashed before her eyes. “Will you stop the spilling?” she asked.

“That I can arrange.”

It was dark, and cold, but Marina now maintained her position. “How soon?”

“Twenty-thousand yars,” Ke’ne’voor replied. “Hopefully, less.”

Marina chuckled, recognizing her guest was using her unit. But it wasn’t enough.

“Can you add some drugs in the mix?” she asked. “Many children of ours are sick.”

Ke’ne’voor nodded. Marina wondered if he, like her, would find it odd to abandon this alien body. “It’ll take a little more, but consider it done.”

He smiled.

“I should go, now,” he said. “Thank you for the tea.”

Marina smiled back. “You’re welcome.”

Ke’ne’voor was about to enter the doorway when he stopped. He turned toward Marina and the curiosity, this time, had a quirky edge.

“Why this, among every other possible virtual simulation?” he asked.

“It was in-built,” Marina explained. “Whoever created the virtual reality decks, also programmed this place. It’s their original world, or at least a good enough approximation.”

“I see that,” Ke’ne’voor added, unconvinced. “But you wouldn’t have worked so hard on this crazy plan, so hard to eventually make it work, if this strange place didn’t mean something to you, at least on a primal level.”

Marina scoffed.

“It’s just—beautiful, don’t you think?”

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