Serial, Kherishdar's Exception, Episode 23: A Gradient of Confusion

“Oh, now I’ve stepped into it.”

I grinned at her.

Drawing in a breath seemed to settle Emma. “Look, this is… this conversation might become… personal.”

“I feel as if it already is?” I said.

“Ruben’s gonna kill me,” Emma muttered.

“There is a great deal of metaphorical killing in this settlement,” I said. “Is Correction always so extreme that you compare it to death?”

“And now I sound hyperbolic—”

“Actually,” I said, “It is one of your most reasonable statements. I think. It means you perceive social punishment as physically painful. Is that right?”

“Yes, but… it’s not.”

“No,” I agreed. “It is a…” I checked the device and asked it for gradient, received the word and tried it in my mouth. We say tavan. ‘Gradient’ sounded higher and sweeter and fussier somehow. “A gradient. From social punishments of the mildest kind, to the worst of physical answers.” I wondered if I was characterizing this with the nuance Shame would have. I would have to ask him. “So why will Ruben kill you—metaphorically speaking?”

“Because I am offending you.” Emma paused. “Am I offending you?”

“Maybe a little,” I said. “But it’s probably good for me. Explain this prostitution to me, then.”

Again, the aunerai sucked in a deep breath, and began, and a long and rambling disquisition it was, punctuated as it was with my occasional incredulous comments or requests for clarification. It was a topic on which Emma felt strongly, that was clear. Nakedness was, apparently, a taboo for the aunera in a way it wasn’t for us. We go clad because it is practical, and because we use clothing for social cues, but no shame attaches to nudity, nor do we feel the sexual avarice Emma described to me—confusingly, because she admitted that in some human cultures, there being multiples, nudity does not inspire that avarice, and I was left in the end less enlightened than I’d hoped. If it had been a matter like animals going into heat? But it was not, apparently, biological. Cultural, but variable, because too many cultures. And yet she’d been offended on my behalf, despite knowing us a completely different, alien culture, and even less likely to share her values?

“Did that help any?” Emma asked when we’d wound to a close.

“Do you feel better?” I wondered.

“Only if you do!”

That, at least, was a sentiment I understood. “I’m no longer offended,” I said. “But I’m afraid I’m not less confused.”

“That’s fair,” Emma said, slumping in her chair. “God, but I’m exhausted. I feel like I’ve run a marathon!”

“Surely it wasn’t that much of an effort?” I asked, bemused.

“If I had walked out that door leaving you thinking I thought your lord was pimping you out to Andrew and Lenore without your consent, when you didn’t believe it, then Ruben really would have killed me.” She pressed her hand to her eyes. “I should stop talking out loud, shouldn’t I.”

“You are helping immensely with my command of conversational aunerai?” I offered.

Emma blurted a laugh. “I think I’m going back to my clinic, where I’m not likely to hurt anyone by accident.”

“Come back tomorrow,” I said. “And explain more of these things to me.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise…”

“Then explain adjectives to me,” I said. “Or your job. Or your food.”

The woman brightened. “You’re sure?”

“Very.”

“All right.” Emma rose and paused at the door. “If Laurence bothers you…”

So much concern over Laurence! That she could still be worried about it after trying to explain that Kherishdar had been victimizing me…

You could not hate these aunera for their constant solecisms. They really didn’t understand how they sounded to us, any more than we understood them… and really, how could we possibly? They confess not to understand one another, with their innumerable cultures. That Jaran had fallen in love with two of them, and had that love reciprocated, was incomprehensible. How had they made that work?

“Laurence doesn’t bother me,” I said. “But if he does in the future, I will say so.” To Laurence, I thought, first. But we would see. Perhaps aunera did not recognize a gradient of responses, and physical retort came faster, or out of order. That, I thought, would be important to know, and hopefully I would survive learning. I wasn’t afraid of Laurence. I congratulated myself on not fearing anything anymore, having survived loving and losing a lord I should have held myself apart from. Catastrophe had befallen me already, and been surmounted. What more did I have to prove? I could handle anything.

Such a fool, I.

“All right. Good afternoon, Haraa. Tomorrow we’ll talk about something less dangerous.”

“I am eager to discover what topic that might be,” I said, and made her laugh. So easy to laugh, these aunera. I thought it charming, and baffling.