I was fascinated. The bravery, the audacity of trying to make an ancient pagan religion fit the modern world was breathtaking. “Why you?”
“It’s my Dreaming.” She saw that I did not understand, and tried again: “Like you with dancin’. It’s what I was born for. My mob, the Yirlandji, we’re reckoned the best singers. And I’m the best o’ the lot.” There was neither boasting nor false modesty in her voice.
“Sing me something.”
“I can sing you a tabi,” she said. “A personal song. But you’ll have to back off: I gotta slap me legs.”
We let each other go, and drifted about a decimeter apart. She closed her eyes in thought for perhaps ten seconds, filling her lungs the whole time. Then she brought her thighs up and slapped them in slow rhythm as she sang:
Her voice was indeed eerily beautiful. It had the rich tone of an old acoustic saxophone, but it was not at all like a jazz singer’s voice. It had the precision and the perfect vibrato of a MIDI-controlled synthesizer, but it was natural as riversong, human as a baby’s cry, a million years older than the bone flute. It was warm, and alive, and magical.
The song she sang was made of nine tones that repeated, but with each repetition they changed so much in interval and intonation and delivery as to seem completely different phrases. Considering that I didn’t understand a word, I found it oddly, powerfully, astonishingly moving; whatever she was saying, it was coming directly from her heart to my ears. As I listened, I was radically reevaluating my new roommate. This cute little puppy I’d been mentally patronizing was someone special, deserving of respect. She was at least as good at her art as I had ever been at mine.
When her song was over I said nothing for ten seconds or more. Her eyes fluttered open and found mine, and still I was silent. There was no need to flatter her. She knew how good she was, and knew that I knew it now.
Then I was speaking quickly: “Teena! Did you hear Kirra’s song just now? I mean, do you still have it in memory?”
“Yes, Morgan.”
“Would you save it for me, please? And download it to my personal memory?”
“Name this file,” Teena requested.
“ ‘Kirra, Opus One.’ ”
“Saved.” And that’s why I can give you the words now—though I can’t vouch for the spelling.
“Do you mind, Kirra? If I keep a copy of that—just for myself?”
“Shit no, mate. I sang it to you, di’n I?” she looked thoughtful. “Hoy, Teena, would you put a copy in my spare brain as well? Label it ‘Bodalla,’ and put it in a folder named ‘Tabi.’ ”
“Done.”
She returned her attention to me. “I was singin’ about—”
I interrupted her softly. “—about saying goodbye to Earth, about coming to space, something about it being scary, but such a wonderful thing to do that you just have to do it. Yes?”
She just nodded. Maybe people always understood her when she sang. I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’ve since asked Teena for a translation of “Bodalla.” She offered three, a literal transposition and two colloquial versions. The one I like goes:
“But that’s just a tabi,” Kirra said. “Just a personal song of my own, like. That’s not why I got sent here. See, what I’m special good at is feelin’ the Songlines. Been that way since I was a little girl. Whenever my mob’d move to a new place, I always knew the Song of it before anybody taught me. Yarra, the…well, a woman that taught me, this priestess, like…she used to blindfold me and drive me to strange country, some place I’d never been. And when I’d been there a while, sometimes an hour, sometimes overnight, I could sing her the Song of that place, and I always got it right. I got famous for it. Tribes that had forgotten parts of their own Songs, or had pieces cut out of ’em by whitefella doin’s, would send for me to come help ’em. So when the Men and Women of Power figured out this job here needed doing, there never was any question whose job it was.”
“And you don’t mind?” I asked. It was sounding to me a little as though she’d been drafted, and was too patriotic to complain.
“Mind?” she said. “Morgan, most of us do pretty good if we can get through life without screwin’ anybody else up too bad. How many get even a chance to do somethin’ important, for a whole people? I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Oh Christ, I made a pun. That’s just what I’m doin’: not missin’ it for the world.”
“Where in Australia are you from?”
“Not far from Suit Camp,” she said.
“You’re saying double goodbyes today, then,” I said without thinking.
I felt like kicking myself, but I had to explain now. “A few months ago I said goodbye to Vancouver—to my home—in my heart. All of us here left home before we came to Suit Camp. Today all we’re leaving is Earth. You’re leaving home and Earth at the same time.”
Implausibly, her grin broadened. “You’re not wrong.” Somehow at this aperture, the grin made her look even younger, no more than twenty. “This’s the first time I been out of Oz in me life, and it feels dead strange. Probably be just as strange to go to Canada, but. Oz, Earth, all one to me. Hey, what do you say we get out of these suits and see if our new clothes fit?”
Each of us had been issued several sets of jumpsuits, in assorted colors. It wasn’t especially surprising that they fit perfectly: after all, they’d been cut from the same set of careful measurements used to make our formfitting p-suits. We also got gloves and booties and belts, all made of material that did not feel sticky to the touch, but was sticky when placed against wall-material. Traction providers. Teena explained that although social nudity was acceptable here, it was customary for Postulants, First-Monthers like us, to wear jumpsuits if they wore anything; second-month Novices usually lived in their p-suits, for as long as it took them to make up their minds to Symbiosis. We admired ourselves in the mirror for a while, then I slid into my sleepsack and began learning how to adjust it for comfort, while Kirra got Teena to display three-dimensional maps.
“Teena,” I said while Kirra was distracted, “where is Robert Chen billeted?” Absurdly, I tried to pitch my voice too low for Kirra to hear, without making it obvious to Teena that I was doing so. I have no idea whether Teena caught it, or if so whether it conveyed any meaning to her. How subtle was her “understanding” of humans?
All I know is that Kirra didn’t seem to hear her reply, “P7-29.”
Just down the corridor! “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Okay, it’s dopey to thank an electric-eye for opening the door for you. I wasn’t thinking clearly; I was too busy kicking myself for asking the question. And for being elated by the answer. What did I care where he slept? I was not going to get that involved.