begin all short stories as confusingly as possible

Soliday says, as calmly as he can: “I am seriously and severely going to kill you,” and Njagi cringes while the children seated around them give a cheer.

Njagi blusters.  “I don’t see the harm –”

Oh, Jesus.  “You don’t see the harm in doing exactly the opposite of what I specifically requested?”

“It’s boring here,” Njagi says, his face flushing darker.  One of the children, Smamina, dashes off toward the compound, but the rest just watch the two of them attentively like they’re the best entertainment around.  “The elders won’t show me those cabbages with the hearts in them, or that seaweed I’m not supposed to know about.”

“Not this again –”

“And it’s been months of you asking Ayal about his dreams and shit –”

“You mean months of me doing my job.”

“Don’t even start with me. I can’t do my job because we don’t have access to botanical samples and asking leading questions is ‘telling them about Earth culture’ –”

“I told you I’d find a way to –”

“And, and!  Santos is off killing rhinos or whatever, and these kids are smart, Peter, they are so smart, and they don’t even realize what they can do.  Do you know Smamina did Calculus the other day?”

Soliday feels himself go completely still.  “You’re teaching these children Calculus?” he asks.  Njagi’s eyes go wide.  He says again, very slowly, “You’re teaching them Old Earth games.  And Calculus.”

As if on cue, their audience perks up.  “I am going on a picnic,” one of them chirps helpfully, “and I am bringing knives.”

Another says, “I am bringing groflen paste.”

A small boy to Njagi’s left says, “I am bringing guests,” and sticks his chin out when the others stare at him.

Njagi puts a hand over his face.  “They’re not even doing it right,” he says, muffled.  “Soliday — Peter, listen to them.  This isn’t contaminating their culture any more than us even being here.”

“He’s right,” one of the other children hisses.  “We’re supposed to go alphabetically.  Mr Njagi, will you tell us the alphabet again?”

Njagi gives them one horrified look and says, “I’ll just, I’m going to,” and scrambles to his feet and away before Soliday can even start to breathe again.

The first child to speak, Krinfield or something, Krinspen, comes over to Soliday and places a hand on his arm comfortingly.  “Will you two fight to the death now?” she asks.  Looking past her, Soliday can see a Smamina walking over from the compound and pulling Ayal by the hand, with other adults following after them.  Behind them comes Santos, tall and straight, with that set of her shoulders that says she’ll be very irritated if they don’t stop fucking up right now.  ”Father said you were not warriors, but I did not believe him.”

And oh Jesus, none of this is going right at all.

 

—

 

If Soliday were going to tell anyone on Sifla about Earth, he wouldn’t give them games and mathematics.  He’d give them the warm, quiet hallways of the Lieutenant Historian Archives, and the perfect precise clarity of their cataloguing system.

He’d give all the music the Lieutenant Historians have collected in the years since the Reformation: klezmer and Nony wedding chants, throat-singing and the Intergalactic Top 2500.

He’d give the memory of the first time he heard Vladimir Ashkenazy play Debussy’s Images, Book 1, back when he was a student: the way he sat in his study carrel with his eyes closed against the blue light of the Archives, hunched in on himself much as possible to keep the sound inside, and the notes swirling around like a snowstorm, with McCabe smiling into his neck and whispering, “See?  See what we get to have here?” every time he shuddered at the beauty of it, every time he nearly wept.