Eventually, we did go deep into my experiences on the ship and doing so brought up such rawness. Over those months with Dr. Nwanyi, I learned why sleep was so difficult, why my heart would beat so hard for no reason, why I’d walked into the Oomza desert that day, why I had such a tough time at solar shuttle platforms, and why I couldn’t bear the thought of boarding a ship. But now, something had shifted in me. I was ready to go home. I needed to go home.
The day after the showdown between Okwu and its professor, I’d made an appointment with Haras, the University Chief. When we met, I told it how urgent my need was and Haras understood. Within a week, the university had given Okwu permission to travel and gained agreement from the Khoush city of Kokure and my hometown of Osemba to allow Okwu to visit as an ambassador. Okwu would be the first Meduse to come to Khoushland in peace.
The swiftness of these arrangements astonished me, but I moved with it all. One does not question good fortune. Home was calling, as was the Earth desert into which I would go with the other Himba girls and women on pilgrimage. Okwu and I were issued tickets to Earth not long after quarter’s end. My therapist, Dr. Nwanyi, hadn’t wanted me to go so soon, but I insisted and insisted and insisted.
“Just make sure you breathe,” she’d said as I left her office hours before the journey. “Breathe.”
Launch
I followed Okwu through the enormous entrance to the Oomza Uni West Launch Port. Immediately, my sharp eyes found the doorways to docked ships far beyond the drop-off zone, ticketing and check-in stations and terminals. I opened my mouth to take in a deep lungful of air and instead coughed hard; Okwu had just decided to let out a large cloud of its gas.
When I finally stopped coughing and my eyes focused on the docked ships, my heart began to beat like a talking drum played by the strongest drummer. I rubbed some otjize with my index finger from my cheek and brought it to my nose and inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled its sweet aroma. My heart continued its hard beat, but at least it slowed some. Okwu was already at check-in and I quickly got behind him.
The Oomza West Launch Port was nothing like the Kokure Launch Port back home. The hugeness of it was breathtaking. Since coming to Oomza Uni, I’d seen buildings of a size that I couldn’t previously have imagined. The vastness of the desert easily surpassed these structures, but where the desert was a creation of the Seven, these buildings were not.
The great size of the Oomza West Launch Port was secondary to the great diversity of its travelers. Back at Kokure, almost every traveler and employee was human and I had been the only Himba in a sea of Khoush. Here, everyone was everything… at least to my still fresh eyes. I was seventeen years old and I had been at Oomza Uni for only one of those years now, having spent the previous all on Earth among my self-isolating Himba tribe in the town of Osemba. I barely even knew the Khoush city of Kokure, though it was only thirty miles from my home.
The launch port was like a cluster of bubbles, each section its own waiting space for those in transit. There were whole terminals that I could not enter, because the gas they were filled with was not breathable to me. One terminal was encased in thick glass and the inside looked as if it were filled with a wild red hurricane, the people inside it flying about like insects.
Just from standing in line and looking around, I saw people of many shapes, sizes, organisms, wavelengths, and tribes here. I saw no humans like me, though. And if I had seen a fellow Himba, it was doubtful that I’d see any with Meduse tentacles instead of hair. Being in this place of diversity and movement was overwhelming, but I felt at home, too… as long as I didn’t look at the ships.
“Binti and Okwu?” the ticketing agent enthusiastically said in Meduse through a small box on her large dome. She was a creature somewhat like Okwu, jellyfish-like and the size of a storage shed, except her dome was a deep shade of black and she had antennae at the center with a large yellow eye. Over the last year, I’d learned (well, brashly been told) that the females of this group of people had the long antenna with the yellow eyes. The males simply had a large green eye on their dome, no antenna. This one used her eye to stare at Okwu and me with excitement.
“Yes,” I responded in the language of my people.
“Oh, how exciting,” she said, switching to Otjihimba, too. “I will tell all my male mates about today… and maybe even a few of my female ones, too!” She paused for a moment looking at her astrolabe sitting on the counter and then the screen embedded in the counter. The screen hummed softly and complex patterns of light flashed on it and moved in tiny rotating circles. As I watched, my harmonizer mind automatically assigned numbers to each shape and equations to their motions. The agent switched back to Meduse, “Today, you’ll be—” She paused, letting out a large burst of gas. I frowned. “You will both be traveling on the human-geared ship, the Third Fish. Do you…”
The talking drum in my chest began to beat its rhythm of distress, again.
“That’s the ship we came in on,” Okwu said.
“Yes. She may have experienced tragedy that day, but she still loves to travel.”
I nodded. The Third Fish was a living thing. Why should she die or stop flying because of what happened? Still, of all ships for us to travel on, why the same one inside which so much death had happened and we’d both nearly died?
“Is… is this alright?” the agent asked. “The university has given you two lifetime travel privileges, we can put you on any ship… but the time may…”
“I do not mind,” Okwu said.
I nodded. “Okay. Me neither. The spirits and ghosts of the dead don’t stay where they’re freed.” I felt my right eye twitch slightly.
“Great,” the ticketing agent said. “You’ve both been given premium rooms near the pilot quarters.”
I hesitated and then stepped forward. “Is there any way I can have… the room I had on the way here?”
The agent’s eye bent toward me and she released a small cloud of gas. “Why? I… I mean, are you sure?”
I nodded.
“It’s quite small and near the servant quarters,” the agent said. “And the security doors are…”
“I know,” I said. “I want that room.”
The agent nodded, looked at her astrolabe and then the screen. “I can get you the room, but I hope you are okay with it being in a slightly different place.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“The Third Fish is pregnant and will probably give birth when she arrives on Earth. The newborn will be a great asset to the Earth Miri 12 Fleet, of course. What’s good for passengers is that her pregnancy means the Third Fish will travel faster. But it also means her inner rooms and chambers shift some and will be a little more cramped.”
“Why will she travel faster?” I asked out of pure curiosity.
“The sooner she’ll get to Earth to bear her child,” the agent said with a grin. “Isn’t it fascinating?”
I nodded, also smiling. It really was.
“We’re honored to have you both aboard,” the boarding security guard said to me in Khoush a half-hour later, after our long walk to the gate. He was human and looked about the age of my father. He had a long beard and white Khoush-style robes. My fast-beating heart flipped just seeing him. Few on Oomza Uni dressed like this and, suddenly, home felt closer than ever.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, handing him my astrolabe to scan. On Oomza Uni, all humans and many nonhumans used astrolabes and they were scanned so regularly that doing so no longer bothered me as it had that very first time when I’d left home.
I glanced back at Okwu and whispered, “Say thank you or something.” But Okwu said nothing. It clearly didn’t appreciate the guard not bothering to look at or speak directly to it in its language.
“Meduse are too proud to use astrolabes, so this part of security does not apply to it,” the guard said, clearly picking up on Okwu’s irritation. He handed back my astrolabe.
As I took it, I looked past him at the entrance to the Third Fish. The hallway leading inside was the same warm blue it had been that fateful day over a year ago. “Sure,” I said, with a wave of my hand. “It’s fine.” Was it blue when I exited? I wondered, as I put my astrolabe into my pocket next to my edan. I couldn’t remember; I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d had other things to worry about, like trying to prevent a battle. Something red caught my eye on the security guard’s uniform. A breath caught in my chest as I focused on the small red beetle. It walked right over where the man’s heart would be. Red point on white. Red point. On white. I frowned, knowing what was coming, but unable to stop it. The flashback that hit me was so strong I twitched.
Heru’s narrow chest.
His kaftan was white.
A red dot appeared on it like a cursor on a blank screen.
On the left side.
Left side.
Left side. Where his heart lived.
It had been beating. Calm. Happy.
Then it was a muscle, torn through.
The Meduse stinger was white and blood stained it easily.
That red dot bloomed like a rose on the bushes that liked to grow in the desert.
Heru’s blood. Some spattered on my face. As his heart tore, as my mind broke.
Five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five.
“Binti of Namib?” the guard asked.
I’d spoken with Heru’s parents twice. The first time, his mother only gazed at me through the virtual screen and cried. Openly, unflinchingly, she’d stared at me as if she could reach out and touch her son through my eyes. The second time, Heru’s brother, only a year younger than Heru, called and demanded I recount every detail. He didn’t care that it made me weep or that it would lead to a full week of nightmare-packed nights for me. And neither did I. Heru’s brother looked so much like him, same granite black hair and bushy eyebrows. After those two calls, I heard nothing from Heru’s people.
“Binti of Namib?” the guard asked, again.
“Oh,” I said, looking up. I shook myself a bit. “Sorry.”
“You may board the ship.”
“Thank you,” I said. I turned to Okwu and I had to stare at it for several seconds, as I prevented myself from falling into another nasty flashback, this one involving Okwu and how it had initially tried to kill me. Then I said to it in Meduse, “You first, my friend.”