Envoys - Chapter 2
"Well?"
To Grayson, it was a mark of Seul's need for control that she rarely invited him to sit during their meetings. Of course he could always seat himself, but he wasn't going to be the one to break. Let Seul have the empty satisfaction of making him stand while she reclined on a soft red divan.
However, being human, he couldn't resist a long pause before answering her. "She's in shock. I don't think we can expect her to be quick to adapt. She ate well, and seemed ready to rest, but", he shrugged. "I think she's going to need time, and a lot of it."
Seul shook her head. "That's not acceptable. I've got more important things to do than pander to some whiny envoy's sensibilities. Honestly," she rolled her eyes, "Earth is such a repressed place - it gets harder and harder to remember ever having shared those values. It's sex. It performs a necessary function. Like sanitation tubes."
Grayson inwardly winced at Seul's callous comparison of bodily functions. Trust her to come up with something that would make a potential envoy feel worse than her social inhibitions already did.
"You knew she was going to be slow to adapt. Her profile said it all. In fact, I believe that's why you selected her for this task."
Seul leaned back and closed her eyes. A small smile played across her lips. "I realize that. However, the nature of the task, as you so delicately put it, requires her full consent and participation. She must adapt. And you," she opened her emerald eyes and gave him a penetrating look, "will be the one to guide her to this understanding. I trust your newfound dedication to envoys all but demands it. Am I wrong?" Her gaze raked down his clothing, lingering on the black striping.
Grayson had known this comment, or something very like it, was coming. Seul was deeply angry about his decision, and anger made her vicious. Giving him the responsibility for the new envoy's transition was evidently meant to be punishment.
"You are quite correct, of course. I will take responsibility for the envoy. But I must have the ability to work as I see fit. Objections?"
Seul radiated satisfaction. "None at all. Just recall that we leave Dau very soon. She must be ready when the time comes, or you will be called to account for it."
He didn't bother responding. He merely nodded and made his exit as quickly as he could. Of course he would be held responsible. Even if he hadn't agreed, she'd have found a way to make it his problem. She might even be hoping to see him fail, though she was as heavily invested in the new envoy as anyone. He had more reason to be wary of Seul now than he ever had.
Still, he was pleased with the results of the meeting. Seul had not only given him the very excuse he needed to spend more time with Cass, she'd given him the freedom to access the tools he'd need for the task. He allowed himself a small grin as he walked back to his quarters. He hoped Cass was the woman she appeared to be - if she was, he had a feeling he might even enjoy introducing her to her new life.
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Cass had slept deeply and awoken early. Well, she assumed it was early. There was no view to the outside and she had no idea of how to access a clock, or what it might tell her even if she could find one. But when she'd opened the door to her rooms, the corridor was utterly silent. If anyone else was up and moving, they were too far away to be audible.
Right, she thought. Let's get this over with. Collected the trailing ends of her robe once more, she shuffled back to the remarkably comfortable bed and perched. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and tried to relax - and remember.
She could easily call up images of places - the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls. She could remember people - George Burns, Angelina Jolie and Lady Gaga. She remembered songs, television shows, ad campaigns, cell phones and 3D movies. She remembered jokes and expressions and the smell of rain on hot concrete. Her memories of Earth felt whole and strong.
With a little effort, she could remember experiences. Eating ice cream. Swimming. Reading books. Driving. Having a job.
But when she tried to recall where she might have eaten the ice cream, done the swimming or where she might have driven to, there was nothing. Not a ghost of a memory. It was like arriving at a cliff in her own memory. A cold sweat broke across her body. She couldn't remember one friend. She didn't know if she'd had any sisters or brothers. She could not, no matter how hard she tried, recollect the face of her own mother. Assuming she hadn't been an orphan.
Fighting the rising tide of panic that accompanied that chilling thought, she shook her head. Enough. Time to focus on what I do know.
She did remember meeting with the people in the hospital. She even remembered being in the hospital, though trying to push that memory outward to see precisely where that hospital gave her a whisper of that dangerous memory cliff feeling, so she shied away. She'd been in the hospital. She'd had cancer. That much she knew. However, the feeling of being sick wasn't there. She felt removed from the whole idea, like it had happened to someone else.
But why? Why would they take away my memory? What does it matter if I remember who I was?
As it had yesterday, the answer surfaced in her mind. Envoys are strongly urged to retain minimal personal memory. The retention of such memories can lead to depression and difficulty adapting to their new surroundings. However, the choice remains with the individual.
This too, was disorienting. Leaving alone for the moment the fact that this oh-so-helpful answer suggested that she'd willingly traded away her memories, the very fact that an answer emerged from her own head was lurch-worthy. How could there be information in her mind that she didn't know? Again, panic stirred.
"Now stop that." As it had before, the sound steadied her. "I can't keep panicking every time I have a stray thought or something weird happens. This whole thing is weird. It's . . . science fiction. I'm living in sci-fi. Either that, or Rod Serling is about to bust out from under the bunk."
She actually entertained the possibility for an instant before she realized what she was waiting for. A bubble of laughter formed in her throat and escaped before she knew it was coming. It came out as a high, choked squeak, which struck her as even funnier. Within moments, she was laying helplessly on her side, laughing so hard her cheeks hurt.
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He was halfway down the corridor to her room when he heard the noises. His brow furrowed. She was awake, that much was obvious. But the sounds were not comforting, and did not speak well for his chances of making progress with her this day.
Slow to adapt, he reminded himself. Be patient with her, or you'll fail. He nodded to himself and prepared to be as comforting as he could.
Thusly braced, he tapped the door panel.
She was laughing. Laughing.
He shook his head, certain that he must be missing something. There she was, sprawled across the bed in complete abandon, the robe for once not clutched in her hands. In fact, her hands were tucked across her stomach. She rolled slightly back and forth as she did so, her whole body shaking with mirth. Tears were leaking out from under her shuttered eyes.
Which might have been why he hadn`t rearranged his expression into a more respectful one by the time her eyes opened. When she did open them at last, the look on his face was enough to send her into fresh gales of laughter.
Realizing that he must have looked like a spacewalker without a suit, his own expression cracked into a grin. He continued to smile as he moved a fresh tray towards her and then sat himself beside her.
When she`d eventually recovered herself, requiring many new outbursts along with mumblings about someone called Captain Kirk and beams, she looked at the tray with a cheerful, but somewhat more dubious expression.
``Grayson, are you . . . fattening me up?"
Although he'd been working with envoys for a while, all the ones before this had been through some basic training and acclimatization before he ever crossed their paths. He wasn't used to having to show someone around his own culture. So many of the things that seemed simple and self-evident to him were strange to her. He never knew if or when he was going to step into something and produce a scene.
He had to connect her expression to the food on the tray and then try and patch in some of his admittedly sparse Earth knowledge to try and come up with a reason for her upset.
Once he'd made the connection, he wanted to laugh out loud. However, he didn't trust her newfound cheer to survive past what might be seen as mockery. Instead, he contented himself with a smile.
"Ah no. Food is slightly different here than it is on your home planet. The food we eat is programmed to rank very high in nutrition and flavour experiences, but to recognize when a body has reached a sufficient level of sustenance. Once that point has been hit, the food ceases to have any caloric value."
It was her turn to look like an oxygen-deprived spacer. "I'm sorry, I need to see if I understand you correctly. Did you just tell me that food just plain stops counting?"
He nodded.
She shook her head. "No."
He nodded, and then couldn't decide if he'd accidentally agreed with her no, or if he was still saying what he meant to say. "It's quite true. It has been this way for a very long time. In fact, people sometimes cultivate the other kinds of food, as a novelty. Food that can't respond to the body's needs."
"No," she shook her head again. "You cannot tell me that this," she reached out and grasped one of the pastries, bringing it between them without even looking. "This," she took a large bite, "is not fattening."
He debated telling her that he wasn't sure what the word meant, but decided that not displaying any more ignorance would be a good thing for the moment. "It will not harm you."
She locked gazes with him. He couldn't imagine why she was having such a hard time understanding. Did it normally take this long for new envoys to understand something this simple? He reminded himself that her profile and the traces of humour he'd already seen in her indicated intelligence. He put as much sincerity as he could in his gaze.
Her eyes still flashed a challenge. "So you're telling me that I could eat this entire tray full of food, and it wouldn't do anything to me?"
"Well . . ."
"A-ha. Well what?"
"If you ate everything on the tray, you might get a bit of a sore stomach."
The answer didn't seem to satisfy her. "And that's it? A stomachache? So, in fact, what you're trying to tell me is that I could eat what I wanted, when I wanted, every single day and I'd still be fine?"
Once again, he nodded. Feeling that he needed to make some other kind of gesture, he took the pastry out of her hand and took a bite himself. He chewed and swallowed under her scrutiny. When he finished, he smiled in what he hoped was a helpful manner.
She reached onto the tray and took up another pastry. Watching his face, she took a bite. He smiled wider. She took several more bites in rapid succession. When his expression continued to remain pleasant, she turned her attention back to the food on the tray and began to sample with more abandon.
Internally, he heaved a sigh of relief. Whatever the test had been, he'd escaped it with what he hoped was at least marginal success. He watched her eat and thought about all the other tests he'd face with her.
He wasn't sure he was truly up to the challenge. Suddenly, her gaze returned sharply to him and for a panicked moment, he thought she could read minds.
"Wait a minute - caloric? Did you say 'caloric'? See," she raked her hand through her hair in a gesture of frustration. "This is what gets me. How come you're using Earth words? How the hell is a calorie still a calorie out here? Except that it's not a calorie anymore - it's some kind of weird mutable property that you can take away from food and . . . oh. Fuck it." She flopped backward and was silent.
He sat and thought for a moment. What would he be feeling if he were in her place? Confusion, frustration, fear and a general and pervasive sense of being . . . overwhelmed. In an instant, he could see it from her place, with information pouring in from him, from her own senses and even from a borrowed space within her own mind. A cascade of information and no simplicity. Nothing clear cut.
The moment the inspiration hit, he knew it was the right thing to do. "Cass, I can answer this and any other question you have. Would you like to go down-planet and visit the market? We can look around and talk at the same time.
It was like he'd sent a shockwave through her. Her eyes snapped open and she bolted forward, grabbing hold of the sides of his suit. "A market? A real live market with real people selling real - things?" When he nodded, she released his clothing as absentmindedly as she'd grabbed hold of it. The expression that came over her face was almost dreamy. He began to realize that this was a woman who many men would seek to please, in order to see such an expression.
While her expression was candidly delighted, all she said was, "I'd like that very much."
He was still contemplating her and her potential impact on the worlds of men when she shifted uncomfortably. "Grayson?"
"Yes, Cass?"
"Can we go now?"
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There was a necessary delay between her request and their actual departure. First, Grayson introduced her to some of the more cleverly hidden features of her room, including a closet secreted behind a panel, a mirror and an array of baubles and pots of what she could only conclude were cosmetics of some kind.
He also showed her more features of the “sanitation tube” - a cylindrical room that, once stepped into, performed what seemed to be near miraculous work on the resident. It gave a quick medical exam, reporting any issues it might have found. Cass was surprised to learn that she’d been running a slight temperature, which the cool mechanical voice assured her was a normal part of the adjustment period. It then administered the antibodies with a rush of air. Or so it said. Cass hadn’t felt it.
Following that, it removed any debris from within the body - evidently, inhabitants of her new life didn’t even have to trouble themselves with actually performing any bodily functions - the tube took care of everything, sweeping it out and adjusting vitamin levels and hydration levels without the individual ever feeling a thing.
It didn’t stop at the internals, either. A warm, moist breeze, scented with something that Cass couldn’t identify ,but which smelled delightfully citrusy, with a sweet, buttery undertone took care of the externals. Stand as long as you want in the breeze, but whether it was three seconds or fifteen minutes, the result was the same - your whole body was spic and span.
Cass had done her best not to think about the strangeness of such a simple thing as having bodily functions taken care of. She’d done reasonable well by pretending it wasn’t the case, and hoped that it would just become natural. Someday.
Grayson had explained the tube and then excused himself to make arrangements for their visit. After stepping in and out of the tube, she ventured toward the open panel that had hidden the clothing. It took her some time to be able to pick out individual items from the wall of colour. She pulled out a piece, the only one she could see that didn’t have any patterning. It was a simple swath of fabric in a beautiful scarlet, and it felt like heavy silk with a whispering hint of velvet on the surface. Experimentally, she draped it across her shoulders. The fabric caressed her skin as it slid across, the velvety surface providing enough friction that it raised goosebumps across her arms.
Unsure of how to actually wear the fabric, she began swathing it around herself. Not only was the velvety nap wonderful to the touch, it appeared to enable the fabric to more or less stick to itself, as the fibers caught against each other - like ultrasoft velcro.
After a lot of tugging and adjusting, she thought she’d managed to cover all the salient parts. It was only then that she looked up and realized she was no longer alone.
He looked absolutely pole axed, as though someone had come along and slapped the back of his head. She looked down, wondering if she’d missed a crucial covering somewhere. By the time she’d reassured herself that everything was covered and looked back up, Grayson seemed to have recovered himself.
“It’s ah - very lovely, but I think we might want to go with a more . . . common day dress.”
Cass felt a dull flush come up behind her ears. Clearly, whatever she’d done with the fabric was all wrong. She suddenly pictured herself, imagining the whole fabric wrapped up around her, making her look like nothing so much as a sausage in lurid red casing. Feeling stupid, she stood still while Grayson made the short trip from the door to the clothing selection.
In moments, he removed a fabric that was a riot of blues and yellows. In his other hand, he held a smaller piece of fabric in a bright, electric blue. He handed both to her. “Take these. I’ll be just outside.”
In her haste to strip herself of the offending red cloth, she didn’t really stop to look at what she was putting on. The electric blue piece seemed simple enough - it was like a unitard of some kind. She was easily able to slip the tube of cloth on. What did surprise her was the way it molded itself to her body, forming a soft but supportive bra like structure .
However, she was utterly stymied by the other item. She thought she’d found a head hole, but when she tried it, the arms drooped well past her fingertips and the rest of it hung like a potato sack around her. While the fabric was beautiful, feeling again of that heavy silk and velvet substance, every time it stuck to itself, it refused to get unstuck. She was beginning to feel a bit trapped by the ever-more constrictive fabric when Grayson opened the door again.
With just a few tucks and tugs, he was magically able to restructure the fabric into an obedient form. Suddenly, the arms fit properly, having been turned out several times, revealing the brilliant blue underside of the fabric. The waist fabric seemed to willingly pleat itself around her waist, bringing the length up to a more comfortable level. The resulting cinch around her waist was firm, but not uncomfortable.
Looking down, she could now appreciate the deep V formed by the front of the overdress, revealing the inner supporting dress. By the cool breeze against her spine, she imagined the back had the same V. She gave an experimental swish, and was relieved to discover that the fabric was holding firm in its new shape.
Grayson gave her no more time than that to assess the new clothing, instead taking her elbow and leading her toward the alcove that held all the mysterious potted items. He reached over to the first crystalline pot and removed the lid without looking. Dabbing some of the contents onto his fingers, he reached toward her face. His hand stopped a mere whisper from her face, where it paused. “If I may?” he asked politely.
Feeling a little silly, she nodded. Wasting no more time, he attacked her face in a flurry of dabs and clinks of pot lids, all gently, but with a will. Before she could fully process the sheer amount of unguents and solutions he’d applied to her skin, he’d moved to her hair, a recognizable brush held firmly in one hand.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she was perfectly capable of brushing her own hair, but she lost the urge the moment he began brushing it. Steady, slow strokes, gently untangling any rough spots, soft fingers running through, gathering up strands to brush - it was so comforting, it brought a small lump of emotion to her throat. For a moment, she forgot where she was, forgot who was brushing her hair, forgot everything and simply enjoyed.
In what could’ve been moments or hours, she felt a slightly more insistent tugging as he collected her hair and attached a selection of baubles, some pretty and bright, others clearly meant to disappear when in use.
At length, he stepped back and surveyed his work. “Well? What do you think?” He gently grasped her shoulders and turned her toward the mirror.
She spared a moment to worry about what he’d done to her face with all those cosmetics before she looked in the mirror. The thought was blown away in the shock.
Her face. It was the first time she’d really looked in the mirror. In the moment, she realized she’d been avoiding it on some deeper level. Looking at herself in the mirror, she was torn between a sense of relieved recognition and a dissonance that reverberated through her mind. Her hand moved up to her face of its own volition, reaching to feel the contours of her face.
Her hair was a tumble of inky curls, pinned up in what could’ve been a haphazard style, but somehow managed to look elegant. Wide eyes looked back at her from beneath arched brows the colour of charcoal. The eyes themselves, a colour that seemed to hover between brown and green, looked warily back at her. Her cheekbones had been touched with a light peach, emphasizing her facial structure without overwhelming it. Her lips had been similarly accented, and they looked full and lush.
All of it was familiar, but somehow new at the same time. It was like seeing a long-lost friend.
She leaned forward, inspecting her eyes. Smooth and utterly wrinkle free. “Young”, she whispered, almost to herself, “I’m so young.” Seeing Grayson over her shoulder in the mirror’s reflection, she said “I don’t feel this young. I - wasn’t this young , was I?”
He smiled. “No, you were not this young. That is the gift of the reset process. Your body is approximately the same as it was when you were in your late teens.”
She was momentarily embarrassed by the fact that she hadn’t really looked at her own body when she’d been alone. However, now in the mirror, she ran her hands down along her sides, finally realizing how supple and vital her body felt.
The overall picture was one of health and vibrance. However many cosmetics the man had used, Grayson appeared to have only enhanced what was there. The clothing, the hair and the make-up made her look dazzling - and for the first time since she’d awoken, she felt a surge of confidence and strength.
She took a deep breath and stood straighter, looking at the face in the mirror. Alright, kid. It’s just me and you against the world. Worlds. Whatever. We’ll figure this out.
She raised her chin and smiled, and saw the smile answered twice in the mirror. Grayson seemed to realize the impact of his work.
Impulsively, she reached back toward his hand and squeezed it. “Thank you, Grayson.” She tried to put all the gratitude she felt into the words, knowing it wasn’t enough.
He squeezed back. “It was really nothing - just to help mask some of the paleness that comes from prolonged space travel. I’m always at your disposal in these matters. Now,” he said, before she could reply, “shall we go to market?” He offered her his arm in a gesture that seemed universal, and they walked out arm in arm.