“But, mistress, my translations must reflect the richness of the tayshil languages. Mr. Chonik’s northern origin is obvious from his speech, so the brogue I give him—”
“Just shut it down.” Times like this made Lynn glad that human voices were pitched too low for tayshil ears. “Grampa’s quite well, thank you, Mr. Chonik,” she said, coming up to the booth. “I hope you and your family are the same.” As always, she had to blink at the stereo effect: her actual words in her ears and Orel’s translation translated back through her neural shunt. Most folks had their rachnoids filter out this echo, but then most folks could trust their rachnoids not to start ranting about eggplant.
Mr. Chonik pursed his lips in a tayshil smile and leaned forward, one four-fingered hand coming up to stroke Orel; Lynn puckered in return and reached for the metin dug into the back of Mr. Chonik’s thick neck. The metin tapped her arm with one chitinous leg, and Mr. Chonik straightened up. “Well now, Miss Lynn, how’d you find those ghost stories I lent you?”
Lynn grinned. “Oh, Mr. Chonik, these are even better than the last ones. I mean, that whole scene in ‘The Rattling Wall’ where the ghost comes gibbering out of the woods, into the murderer’s house and tears his head off, it’s terrific!”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it.” His eyes widened. “It’s not proper reading for someone of my stature in the community and all, but, aye, that one’s my favorite, too. Now, what can I help you with this fine day, Miss Lynn?”
“Oh, I’m just wandering.” She pulled at her backpack. “It’s almost Grampa’s birthday, so I was going to pick up one of Ms. Bahsh’s carvings for him.”
His cheek pouches fluttered. “That’s right: you folks celebrate your actual birth rather than your joining.” He touched his metin, his lips pursing. “You might be interested in knowing that up north where I come from, potted umsu’s the traditional joining day gift.” He spread his hands. “Just for a bit of variety, if you like.”
“Really? Well, I’ll look around.” Some other tayshil were coming out of the crowd toward Mr. Chonik’s booth, and Lynn heard Orel’s raspy voice in her ears: “Mistress, note the quiver in the whiskers of these approaching tayshil. It indicates anger and leads me to believe that Mr. Chonik is needed in his capacity as judge to settle a dispute.”
Mr. Chonik had caught sight of them now, and a slight quiver passed over his own whiskers. Lynn pushed out her lips and flicked her fingers at him. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Chonik. I’ll see you later.”
His lips barely twitched. “I certainly hope so, Miss Lynn. But at any rate, a good morning to you.”
Lynn walked around the booth and into the market, tayshil voices weaving up to her from ahead. But behind, things had grown quiet, and she looked back to see the tayshil around Mr. Chonik’s booth staring after her, their whiskers visibly twitching. She blinked, cold prickling at her back, then put a few booths between them and herself. “Hey, Orel, you don’t think they’re angry at me, do you?”
“Unlikely,” the rachnoid buzzed. “Our behavior has been within the bounds of propriety, and their lack of xenophobia makes the tayshil unique among known peoples. Your grandfather attributes this to their symbiotic relationship with the metin, but the reluctance of the tayshil to discuss this and most metin-related questions, however—”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Science.” Lynn poked his carapace. “This is my day off, remember?”
“But mistress! The questions!” He began tapping her back. “All evidence indicates that metin and tayshil cannot reproduce without each other, one metin born for each tayshil child! Yet we find metin wandering wild in the woods!”
“Orel…”
“Before joining, young tayshil and young metin are no more intelligent than, say, large canids, yet these wild metin produce a warbling that seems too structured to be merely—”
“Orel!” She flicked a finger into his side.
He jumped on her shoulder, his eyestalks turning to blink at her. “Mistress, that is very painful.”
“You know the rules, Orel. On Monday, I’ll find this all fascinating. Till then, I don’t give a rip, understand?”
She felt him slump against the side of her head. “I shall so endeavor, mistress.”
“Good.” She wandered then, not sure if she wanted to find Malcolm, until the bright red of shurtri caught her eye, stacked in bunches next to some huge eggplant: boiled shurtri was Grampa’s favorite, just right for his birthday dinner. So she stopped, and when the proprietor turned, a tayshil only Lynn’s height with a farmer’s vest and a scar marring the fur along the left side of her face, Lynn pursed her lips and reached for the tayshil’s metin.
But the other drew back, her whiskers twitching. Lynn blinked: no one had ever done that before. She left her hand outstretched, thinking maybe the farmer had misunderstood, but the tayshil jerked her chin and said, “Use that hand to pick your root and pay me, invader: that’s all I need from you.”
The back of Lynn’s head suddenly felt tight: she’d never heard a tayshil use the word “invader” before. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. She moved past, but the farmer followed, her arms crossed, and Lynn found herself clearing her throat. “You, uh, you’ve got a lovely selection here. Really.” She felt like an idiot immediately and pulled her mouth shut, but she heard her voice continue along the neural link: “And your eggplant, ma’am! So robust! The finest I’ve seen in weeks!”
“Orel!” Lynn said through clenched teeth, but the rachnoid was already going on: “They seem almost hydroponic! I’ll wager you use natural deterrents against the flea beetles and that your farm is near the mountains, yes?”
Lynn pushed her lips out and clapped a hand over Orel’s face: she hated it when he did this! After all, to tayshil thinking, the rachnoids were just metin, joined with a human into one mind. With normal rachnoids, that wasn’t far wrong, but Lynn had never been able to think of a way to explain to the tayshil that Orel was not a normal rachnoid.
She was just starting to back away, determined to take Orel off somewhere and yell at him, when the farmer pursed her lips. “You know your eggplant, huh? The one good thing you humans’ve done, I’ll admit that. Helped a lotta dirt farmers ’round here, this stuff growing out on the flats the way it does.” She pointed the smallest finger of her left hand at Lynn. “So you pick your choice, and I’ll not bite your head off, deal?”
Lynn stared, Orel’s voice buzzing in her ear: “Point your left pinkie at her, mistress, and agree.”
“Uh, sure,” Lynn said, raising her hand and pointing. “Deal.” She heard Orel translate it, saw the tayshil purse her lips, turn, and greet another customer. Lynn blinked, then looked down at the shurtri. “Orel, what’s going on?”
He was quivering on her shoulder. “Unknown. Such animosity is unheard of in human-tayshil relations.”
“You seemed to know that bit with the finger.”
“In tanaksh, a local ball sport, the gesture signals a truce between two players. I felt it best to take the offer.”
Lynn blew out a breath. “Yeah.” She dug through the shurtri till she found a bunch with the veins still pink, then turned to the eggplant piled in the next bin. “Well, I guess we’d better buy one now that she thinks I’m an expert.”
Orel gave a little wiggle. “Oh, mistress, may we? That one to the left there, just beneath that one, yes, oh yes, the very one…” His voice trailed off as Lynn pulled one of the vegetables from the stack. “Oh, such tone, such clarity! Truly a virtuoso eggplant, mistress!”
She looked at it. It was an eggplant, the same as every other eggplant she’d seen since Grampa had introduced the things. She shook her head and walked around the stand to where the farmer was taking money from a customer.