“What is…”
I heard a horrible noise, a low rumble that boiled to an angry-sounding growl. I looked around, sure there was a monster about to enter my room. But then I realized two things. Okwu was standing in my doorway and I understood what it was saying.
I did as it said and pushed myself into a sitting position, bringing my legs to my chest. I grasped the side of my bed and dragged myself up to sit on it.
“Take your time,” Okwu said. “Your kind do not adjust quickly to jadevia.”
“You mean gravity?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I slowly stood up. I took a step and looked at Okwu, then past it at the empty doorway. “Where are the others?”
“Waiting in the dining room.”
“The pilot?” I asked
“In the dining room as well.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
I sighed, relieved, and then paused. The sound of its speech vibrating against my skin. This was its true voice. I could not only hear at its frequency, but I saw its tentacles quiver as it spoke. And I could understand it. Before, it had just looked like their tentacles were quivering for no reason.
“Was it the sting?” I asked.
“No,” it said. “That is something else. You understand, because you truly are what you say you are—a harmonizer.”
I didn’t care to understand. Not at the moment.
“Your tentacle,” I said. “Your okuoko.” It hung straight, still pink but now translucent like the others.
“The rest was used to help several of our sick,” it said. “Your people will be remembered by my people.”
The more it spoke, the less monstrous its voice sounded. I took another step.
“Are you ready?” Okwu asked.
I was. I left the edan behind with my other things.
I was still weak from the landing, but this had to happen fast. I don’t know how they broke the news of their presence to Oomza Uni authorities, but they must have. Otherwise, how would we be able to leave the ship during the brightest part of the day?
I understood the plan as soon as Okwu and the chief came to my room. I followed them down the hallway. We did not pass through the dining room where so many had been brutally killed, and I was glad. But as we passed the entrance, I saw all the Meduse in there. The bodies were all gone. The chairs and tables were all stacked on one side of the large room as if a windstorm had swept through it. Between the transparent folds and tentacles, I thought I glimpsed someone in the red flowing uniform of the pilot, but I wasn’t sure.
“You know what you will say,” the chief said. Not a question, but a statement. And within the statement, a threat.
I wore my best red shirt and wrapper, made from the threads of well-fed silkworms. I’d bought it for my first day of class at Oomza Uni, but this was a more important occasion. And I’d used fresh otjize on my skin and to thicken my plaited hair even more. As I’d palm rolled my plaits smooth like the bodies of snakes, I noticed that my hair had grown about an inch since I’d left home. This was odd. I looked at the thick wiry new growth, admiring its dark brown color before pressing the otjize onto it, making it red. There was a tingling sensation on my scalp as I worked the otjize in and my head ached. I was exhausted. I held my otjize-covered hands to my nose and inhaled the scent of home.
Years ago, I had snuck out to the lake one night with some other girls and we’d all washed and scrubbed off all our otjize using the lake’s salty water. It took us half the night. Then we’d stared at each other horrified by what we’d done. If any man saw us, we’d be ruined for life. If our parents saw us, we’d all be beaten and that would only be a fraction of the punishment. Our families and people we knew would think us mentally unstable when they heard, and that too would ruin our chances of marriage.
But above all this, outside of the horror of what we’d done, we all felt an awesome glorious… shock. Our hair hung in thick clumps, black in the moonlight. Our skin glistened, dark brown. Glistened. And there had been a breeze that night and it felt amazing on our exposed skin. I thought of this as I applied the otjize to my new growth, covering up the dark brown color of my hair. What if I washed it all off now? I was the first of my people to come to Oomza Uni, would the people here even know the difference? But Okwu and the chief came minutes later and there was no time. Plus, really, this was Oomza Uni, someone would have researched and known of my people. And that person would know I was naked if I washed all my otjize off… and crazy.
I didn’t want to do it anyway, I thought as I walked behind Okwu and the chief. There were soldiers waiting at the doorway; both were human and I wondered what point they were trying to make by doing that. Just like the photos in the books I read, they wore all-blue kaftans and no shoes.
“You first,” the chief growled, moving behind me. I felt one of its tentacles, heavy and smooth, shove me softly in the back right where I’d been stung. The soreness there caused me to stand up taller. And then more softly in a voice that only tickled my ear with its strange vibration. “Look strong, girl.”
Following the soldiers and followed by two Meduse, I stepped onto the surface of another planet for the first time in my life. My scalp was still tingling, and this added to the magical sensation of being so far from home. The first thing I noticed was the smell and weight of the air when I walked off the ship. It smelled jungly, green, heavy with leaves. The air was full of water. It was just like the air in the ship’s plant-filled breathing chambers!
I parted my lips and inhaled it as I followed the soldiers down the open black walkway. Behind me, I heard the Meduse, pluming out and sucking in gas. Softly, though, unlike on the ship. We were walking toward a great building, the ship port.
“We will take you to the Oomza Uni Presidential Building,” one of the soldiers said in to me in perfect Khoush. He looked up at the Meduse and I saw a crease of worry wrinkle his brow. “I don’t know… their language. Can you…”
I nodded.
He looked about twenty-five and was dark brown skinned like me, but unlike the men of my people, his skin was naked, his hair shaven low, and he was quite short, standing a head shorter than me. “Do you mind swift transport?”
I turned and translated for Okwu and the chief.
“These people are primitive,” the chief responded. But it and Okwu agreed to board the shuttle.
The room’s wall and floor were a light blue, the large open windows letting in sunshine and a warm breeze. There were ten professors, one from each of the ten university departments. They sat, stood, hovered, and crouched behind a long table of glass. Against every wall were soldiers wearing blue uniforms of cloth, color, and light. There were so many different types of people in the room that I found it hard to concentrate. But I had to or there would be more death.
The one who spoke for all the professors looked like one of the sand people’s gods and I almost laughed. It was like a spider made of wind, gray and undulating, here and not quite there. When it spoke, it was in a whisper that I could clearly hear despite the fact that I was several feet away. And it spoke in the language of the Meduse.