The Color of Distance (14 page)

The forest was a refuge now, from lovers she couldn’t touch, from the uncomfortable comfort of well-meaning friends, and from the impossible expectations of the Survey. The green shade soothed her sun-blasted eyes, and the humidity eased her dry, drawn skin. She must have a touch of sunburn. She scratched at her itching skin, wishing an unpleasant fate on Morale Officer Chang.

The branches nearby swished and rustled, sending a shower of dead leaves pattering to the forest floor. It was Anito. The alien swung down beside her, touching Juna’s shoulder to get her attention.

“People come?”

Juna nodded.

“When people come?”

Juna shook her head, then waved her arm as though gesturing at something very far away.

Anito made some response that Juna couldn’t interpret. Her computers were out at the radio beacon, one controlling the radio, the other recharging in the sun. She shook her head, indicating that she didn’t understand.

Anito touched her itching back. “Skin bad.
Something something
not do.”

Juna shook her head. She didn’t understand what Anito was trying to tell her.

Anito squirted a cool liquid on her skin and the itching eased. Juna flushed lavender with relief. Anito handed her a large, sloshing gourd of water, which she drained, wishing for more. The alien then fished in its satchel and gave her a brilliant red fruit that tasted rather like a sweet honeydew melon, and a chunk of raw meat wrapped neatly in a large leaf. Juna nodded her thanks, and the two of them ate in companionable silence.

When they were through, Juna got up to return to the beacon. Anito followed her, pausing briefly to refill her gourd from the tank of a large bromeliad, using a hollow green reed as a siphon. Just as Juna was about to push through the tangled brush at the hem of the forest, and emerge onto the rocky, sunlit cliffs, Anito stopped her.

“No. Skin bad. You make more bad.”

Juna shook her head. She didn’t understand. She needed to contact the ship before they started to worry. There was no way to explain this to Anito, though. She started out again, but the alien moved in front of her, blocking her way.

“No go,” Anito insisted. It flushed a pale white, and pointed at the sun. “Sick you get,” Anito told her in emphatic tones of dark brick red.

Juna pointed insistently out at the beacon. She had to go.

“Wait. Rain come, you go. Skin not bad then.”

Clouds foretelling the afternoon shower were already beginning to build. It wouldn’t be more than a couple of hours before it started to rain, juna needed a rest. Anito led her to a clear jungle stream and the two of :hem bathed and wallowed in it until the first fat drops of rain began to fall.

Juna returned to the beacon and began answering more questions from the Survey team. Many of them were impossible to answer. She had been too busy surviving to take notes. Still, she documented the bee-fungus-tree ecosystem* that the aliens lived in, and she described what new animals and plants she could remember. She would have to start keeping better records.

The sun was a big red ball breaking through the clouds on the horizon when she heard from the ship again. She checked the computer’s clock. The radio lag time had stretched another twenty minutes each way, and her last contact with humanity was growing more tenuous with each passing minute. It was Morale Officer Chang again. She sounded suspicious about Juna’s two-hour disappearance. Juna listened unhappily to Chang’s inquisition. She had one more day before her last contact with humanity for several years would vanish. She didn’t want to spend that time in petty wrangling with Chang. She listened politely, trying to say nothing that would trigger a tirade.

When Chang’s lecture was over, Juna repeated the reason that she had given them when she had returned, that Anito had advised her against coming back sooner, for reasons she didn’t entirely understand. No, the alien had not threatened her. Juna believed that the alien didn’t want her to get sunburned. Then Juna returned to answering the backlog of questions from the Survey crew.

It was fully dark when she finally signed off for the evening. She was exhausted, her skin felt raw, and her back hurt from sitting too long in one position. She picked up Oliver’s computer, which she was using as a spare, and headed into the forest. Anito was waiting for her with a glow basket on a stick to light their way. She followed the alien through the velvety darkness. The forest shimmered with the sounds of insects and the cries of nocturnal animals. Something close beside her let out a deep, rumbling roar. Juna started, and looked at Anito. A glowing ripple of laughter flowed silently over the alien’s body. Anito lifted a large overhanging leaf, and holding the light up, beckoned to Juna. Huddled on the underside of the leaf was a small green frog with enormous black eyes. Juna nodded, and Anito let the leaf drop. A few minutes later they heard the little frog roar again. Juna wondered whether the noise was to frighten predators or to attract potential mates.

They walked for a couple of hours until they came to an enormous tree. They climbed it and were greeted by a group of aliens as they reached the multibranched crotch. It was another alien village. Juna’s shoulders slumped. She was too tired to cope with more alien diplomacy tonight.

Anito led her to a large room near the base of the giant tree, where Ukatonen and a group of nearly twenty aliens were waiting. Juna sat between Ukatonen and Anito. Ukatonen began to speak. It was a very formal speech. Ukatonen’s skin-speech patterns were very complex, and its gestures were stiff and stylized. Juna concentrated on staying awake, but even so, she was dozing off by the time the food was served. There were several different kinds of seaweed, fish, honey, and a number of new kinds of fruit. One fruit, which looked like a large purple peach, was horribly sour. She set it aside after one bite, to the amusement of the local aliens, who ate the sour fruit with obvious relish.

After the meal, curious aliens clustered around Juna. They poked and prodded her, examining her hands and ears, their own ears wide and their skins deep purple with curiosity. These aliens handled her much more roughly than the people of Anito’s village. Juna bore it stoically, flinching away only when something threatened real harm. Finally she gave Anito and Ukatonen a pleading look. Anito noticed it and said something to Ukatonen, who addressed the rest of the aliens. Then Anito led her up the tree to their room. Three fresh leaf beds were laid out for the travelers. Juna crawled into the moist warmth of the nearest one and fell asleep.

Juna’s skin was tender and sore when she awoke the next morning. It was vaguely reassuring to know that not all of Anito’s magic potions worked perfectly. She would have been more reassured if her skin didn’t feel two sizes too small. She got up and washed herself off, then sat back to think over her situation. She was going to be stuck here for a very long time. After three weeks of trying, she still couldn’t control her skin coloring well enough to “speak” skin speech. It was proving to be a serious handicap. Now that she was stuck here, she needed to speak the aliens’ language. That meant linking with Ukatonen.

Juna swallowed, her throat dry with fear as she remembered the violation of that first link. If only there were some other way; but the problem was physical, and only a link would fix it.

Ukatonen came in bearing breakfast. Fighting back the orange glow of her fear, Juna touched Ukatonen on the shoulder to get its attention, and extended her arms, spurs uppermost. Their eyes met. Ukatonen flushed a dusky purple, like shadows on a ripe plum, its ears spread wide. “Talk want you?” it asked her. “You want allu-a?”

Juna nodded. Part of her wanted to run screaming, but she fought down her fear. She needed to be able to speak with the aliens. Her life would depend on it.

“You trust me?”

Juna nodded again. She had to trust the alien, and endure the violation of linking.

“Good,” the alien said, turning a dark, reassuring blue. “You no fear me. I not hurt you.”

It was all she could do to keep from pulling away as Ukatonen reached out and laid its arms over hers. Her fingers shook as she grasped the alien’s forearms. She closed her eyes, afraid to watch as its slender four-fingered hands grasped her wrists. Then their spurs touched, connecting with a slight prick.

Entering the link felt like diving beneath the surface of a warm pool. There was a faint sensation like surface tension breaking, and then Juna was inside herself. It was a blind world, full of sound—the rush of blood through her veins, the swish-beat of her heart, quickened by her fear, the gurgle of her stomach. She could taste it as well, the rough, dark tang of her blood, the soft furry-peach feel of her skin, and the coppery tang of the alien skin that protected her. Juna could feel/taste it extending down through her gut, and into her lungs, filtering out the deadly alien poisons. She could sense her fear, bright, and sharp, flavoring the link.

Then she became aware of Ukatonen’s presence. It felt like the current of a mighty river. Terrified, she struggled, but the alien’s presence swept her up and carried her along, helpless as a leaf caught in the current. She watched as Ukatonen’s presence pooled up at the barrier between her human and alien skin. He was male, she realized, without really knowing how she knew. Her skin tingled and stung. It was like taking a bath in champagne, only on the inside of her skin. She felt the alien presence move through her, pooling briefly in her aching muscles and stiff tendons, leaving them loose and relaxed. It cleared away the bitter traces of stress and fatigue that clung to her even after sleep. Then Ukatonen’s presence receded from her body like a wave from a beach. A cool ghost of the alien lingered for a moment. Juna opened her eyes and the ghost disappeared like the sheen of water on the sand after a wave recedes.

Juna stood up and stretched. She felt fresh and pure, like one of her mother’s starched linen festival shirts fresh from the clothes presser. Her skin no longer felt as if it had been sandpapered. Taking a deep breath, she stretched again for the pleasure of feeling the ease in her muscles.

Holding out her right arm, she spelled out her name in turquoise letters edged in black, then made her name creep up her arm, across her chest, and down her left side, vanishing as it reached her left knee. She pictured a flower, and a flat, crude flower appeared on her skin. She concentrated, trying to make the flower look more realistic, and the image improved. It was strange, watching pictures appear and disappear on her skin. She couldn’t feel the images, but she knew exactly where they were on her body without looking. She visualized an image and it appeared. It was as easy as lifting her arm.

She looked up at Ukatonen, who rippled approval. “Hungry?” he asked her.

She was ravenous. “Yes,” she thought, and horizontal black bars of agreement appeared on her chest. “Food,” she thought, visualizing the green oval symbol for food, and the sign for food appeared on her chest. Ukatonen handed her a basket of fruit, and some chunks of honeycomb.

“I go bring more food. Come back soon,” the alien told her, and left.

Juna played with making skin speech while she ate, practicing big and little signs. The versatility and responsiveness of her new ability was amazing. Anything she could visualize would appear on her skin. Even though she could make her skin “speak,” Ukatonen had not given her instant knowledge of the aliens’ language. She could skin-speak only those symbols that she knew well enough to visualize. Juna sighed, thinking of all of the memorization that she had to do in order to become fluent in the aliens’ language. Still, she felt relieved that Ukatonen hadn’t violated her trust by tinkering with her mind. She wondered what limits the aliens had when they linked. Clearly it took energy. She was extremely hungry after linking, and she noticed that the others always ate big meals before and after allu-a.

Juna finished her breakfast and was wishing for more when Anito came in carrying a leaf cone full of freshly filleted fish. The alien handed some to Juna.

“Thank you, Anito,” Juna said in skin speech.

Anito’s ears lifted and it flared a surprised pink, fading to a questioning purple.

“Ukatonen,” Juna said, and held her arms out, spurs upward. It was a trifle crude, but Anito understood what had happened.

The alien flushed a deep, concerned ochre. “Not good,” Anito said. “Ukatonen get sick from allu-a with you. I fix.”

Ukatonen returned a few minutes later, carrying more food. Anito grabbed his arm and began flickering away at him, too fast for Juna to follow. Ukatonen looked at Juna, ochre concern tingeing his skin. He handed her a leaf-wrapped package of meat and seaweed, and told her to eat. The two aliens settled themselves in a corner, and linked spurs. Juna ate a third of the meat and seaweed, wrapping the rest up and setting it beside the water gourds. Anito and Ukatonen would be hungry when they unlinked.

She needed to get back to the radio beacon. There was so little time before the ship went through transition! Her need to be at the beacon was a hot ache. She wanted to spend every minute she could there. It was her only link to humanity, and it would soon be broken.

Could she find her way back to the beacon alone? She looked at the two aliens, locked into their strange communion. There was no way to tell how long they would stay like that. It could be ten minutes, it could be all day.

Juna went out and tried to talk with the other aliens, but she didn’t know enough skin speech to get very far. The aliens of this village weren’t interested in trying to talk with her. They brushed past her impatiently, ignoring her questions. A few seemed outright angry, flattening their ears against their heads and hissing at her like cold water on red-hot metal. Not since the funeral had an alien treated her with such hostility.

Juna wondered what she had done to deserve their anger. Had she committed some alien faux pas? She couldn’t think of anything she had done to offend them. Perhaps they were afraid of her because she was an alien to them. Or maybe they were angry at her because of something the Survey did. There were just too many possibilities. She would ask Anito or Ukatonen about it later.