Chapter 43
“I couldn’t—” I started to say and she leaned into the car to silence me with a quick kiss.
“Yes, you can. And you will. My name’s Meghan,” she said, tapping the tag over her breast pointedly. “Ask for me, next time.”
“All right.”Sowing Unity by Lynn Townsend
Shipdown in the field. The space-born were unloaded first, time for adjustment to atmo and gravity. Moments to observe the wooded island landscape, the grass underfoot. Birds and stones and dirt and bugs. Things that were mostly non-existent for spacers. Some couldn’t handle it. Incidents of gaiaphobia were as high as fifty percent to those born in space.
Unity Jaem waited by his port-hole, a tiny sliver of blast-glass, admiring the deep purple sky, already darkening. Stars speckled the canopy of night. Reflections of the ringed gas-giant, their planet, spun into darkness. The shipborn adjusted better at night.
Unity had been born on Europa; planetfall was nothing. Unity could wait.
He relinquished his spot at the port for a family, the littlies exclaiming over the sights as their parentals held them up.
Full dark was up when Unity finally took a few breaths of planet air, flavored by fuel fumes, but still better than ship’s air, the tang of recycled oxy, the persistent odor of parfum, oranges, and vanilin. His nose never quite adjusted, had never not noticed. The dock-beauties and sweetboys were lingering around the plat.
“Keep movin’,” one of them said to Unity. “Look at them features! Wouldn’t want anyone t’ think he was one of my custom.” She laughed, cruel as the snap of winter. Unity didn’t mind. He stopped before her anyway, pressed a single yaun coin into her hand. It was more than she could claim for her favor; her eyes grew round with both appreciation and dread.
“Be a candle against the darkness, sister,” Unity said. She stared after him, her mouth curling in a sneer. For him, for his money, for his lack of interest in her wares, he could not tell.
He moved on. He was not here for careless love, given resentfully for coins, nor for passion as a plaything. He had all the treasure he needed under his arm. The money was only mundane.
He left the plat and the spaceport behind, the busy lines with its tides of sapients, all seeking their better futures elsewhere. Earth, Europa, the Green Islands, Mars, Ceres. Destinations and wonder, cities that floated in space, the tzigane fleets that traveled from world to world.
Scaup, homeworld of the platypus-like cresth, near as populated with humans and phinnems. Human descendants of refugees from the destruction of the Ganymede colonies had come here, and the population exploded. Phinnem seeking a better home than the polluted seas of Tocetti had come to Scaup as well, wet and fertile.
Away from the ships, Unity fell to his knees to wash his hands in the canal waters of his home. Transient, implant that he was, Scaup was home. Would always be home, now and forevermore.
Unity continued down the road. The cresth were coming out of their underground burrows, swimming in the channels that passed between the roads and islands. Their native language was musical, lyric, high and soft in the air. A pod of phinnem swam by; as much with the cresth, this near-water world appealed.
A complicated web of islands and bridges, two cities in one. Humans and the few ydne—a long-lived photosynethine species—that had made the long trip from their homeworld were in need of the land. Other sapients shared the seas and rivers. An equitable arrangement.
Much like his own.
He knew he’d reached his destination by the complicated origami in the window display. Clever and dextrous, his mate sold the folded paper as uniquities. A souvenir for travelers. A reminder of Earth, for those who settled here. Gifts of joy and craft, treasured by those who knew to treasure, and each imbued with the anima of the living papers.
His mate.
Bowen Jaem came to the window. Felt his anima, the vibration of life on the wind. Her seed was rising. He hadn’t missed it, thanks to the winds. He folded her in his arms, his flower-bride, his beloved. She turned petals to him, enclosing him with her many blooms.
Welcome home.Her voice, not the crude workings of human throat and air, but the pure gift of her thoughts, echoed in his mind. He tasted her words on his tongue, felt them against his skin, saw them painted in all the colors of the sun.
“I have brought it.” It almost pained him to speak to her, to give voice to things that were so mundane. He wished only to absorb and be one with her, to touch and take, to give and grant pleasure. And yet her seed was rising. If they missed the cycle, there would be no sproutlings. He removed the single shaft from its case, treasure. Pollen, from her homeworld. He could not bless the seed himself, but each child born of this mating would be honored and loved.