Serial, Kherishdar's Exception, Episode 16: Emma

When I look back on my life, I return again and again to that moment. To those words. To what they implied, so innocently, so brazenly. Do you know that sentence can’t be translated into Ai-Naidari? ‘You’ is never ambiguous. We either address strangers or we address people we slot into their places in society, but the careless intimacy of your pronouns… I was an alien, and yet her first words to me were as to someone expected.

That was Emma. 

In the weeks that followed, she would become familiar to me, enough that her differences, her strangenesses, were no longer the first things I saw. Enough that I could read her tone and her face and no longer guess at her moods. But in that moment, coming on me so abruptly, and with such an enigmatic greeting, I knew only the incongruities: the body so much shorter than mine, and so much thicker. The outrageous curvature of it, that made it so obvious that she was female rather than male. The clothing for which I had no reference point: was she a farmer or a fighter or a courier with those trousers? Why no robe? Her shirt was a filmy thing with eye-mazing patterns and colors that fluttered around her like a decoration. Was she a dancer? A priestess? I was used to the uniforms Andrew and Lenore had worn—and their dishabille in Jaran’s bed—and did not yet understand the concept of clothing as an expression of individuality. As a constant and total expression of individuality. We might choose a color we like, or a pin, but it is personalization of a shared aesthetic. I don’t know, even now, if aunera have a shared aesthetic.

Her hair was a riotous profusion of black curls, worn loose to her shoulders, and she had painted her brown face—I had seen Jaran smear Lenore’s cosmetics often enough to know aunera used them—and her enthusiasm made her… not beautiful, because I confess, I find you too strange to see beauty in you often. But endearing, maybe. Like an eager child.

Because I understood that first sentence, and because she so obviously wanted to talk, I said in Ai-Naidari, “You know me?” And when the device gave me a translation, I tried speaking it out loud. Much to her… delight? She came closer, precipitously, and craned her neck to look at the sentence. And laughed.

“Of course I do. You know me, too. I’m the doctor who sewed up your man.”

Startled, I looked up at her. She grinned and pulled back her hair, flattening it as best she could against her skull, and assumed a severe expression. And I saw it, suddenly. The dark eyes that had looked back at me from between a white face mask and a shrouding hair cap. If I imagined her in a white jacket…

“I’m off-duty,” she said. “Emma Coker. Head of the medical team here. I heard someone rustling in Lenore’s office and here you are…? What are you doing here?”

The device’s translation was poor, but between it and what I’d gleaned from my covert lessons, I understood enough to know she was questioning my presence, but not why. A physician—a Public Servant for us—would have no authority to interact with aliens the way she presumably felt she could. I didn’t know whether to answer, or to defer her to Falzon… would he be offended if I spoke with her? 

To engage with aunera directly, rather than watch a lord do so, was much more fraught than I’d expected. But chaos is something you are good at. It’s exhilarating.

The device appeared to have trouble with how we caste-link our verbs, so I tried to simplify to suit it while wondering why your verbs were so uncomplicated. I spoke to it in Ai-Naidari and then repeated whatever it spelled out, grateful for the phonetic suggestions it made. “I have been sent to learn your language.” Thinking of Lenore’s letter, I amended, “Languages. But primarily the one you use to speak most often.” I made a face. “Do you have a common language?”

“Sure. Here, anyway.” She studied me. “So, you’re staying?”

“I will be visiting often,” I said. Time words made for simpler translations, at least. “For a week or two at a time.”

“And then going back home. You all go crazy without each other, I know. Not that we don’t, we just take longer to do it, and have more trouble admitting it.”

I lifted my hands. “You could talk slower?”

“Why, is it garbling the words?” She peered again at the device. “I can’t tell if it’s doing that well or not. Lenore said it was only a stopgap and that we shouldn’t rely on it, as if all of us can just drop everything and learn a new language. Especially one as baroque as yours. Of course now it’s a moot point, since we don’t have anyone to update it anymore. I don’t know what we’re going to do in the future… Lawrence handles the tech, but he’s not a linguist, and the thing’s only as good as the data.”

That translation was nearly half useless, and my own knowledge didn’t help much with the parts I didn’t understand. “If you speak more slowly,” I said, “I might have a chance of piecing it out on my own.”

“Oh!” She considered me, and her widened eyes… that was surprise. It looked dramatic on her, with the dark skin around her eyes framing the whites. “You know some English?”

“I listened to Lenore and Andrew talk.” Was it proper to use their first names? Emma’s face didn’t change, so maybe the intimacy wasn’t notable. What else could I assume given how she’d greeted me? “I don’t have a large vocabulary yet, but your grammar is easy. Unless I’m missing something.”

“Easy!” Emma laughed, a high, barking sound. “I guess it might be, to you. You speak well—confidently, I mean. And you have a pretty accent. Like you usually speak Hebrew. Or French? But I’m impressed!” She folded her arms. “So, your Emperor thinks it’s finally time to dig into our psyches, does he?”

That sentence made me stare at the device. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Right, sorry. What made your Emperor decide to send you? To do this?”