Varr rose above the horizon as night crept over the village of G’tel. Alone in the long-abandoned signal tower, Benexx watched the small moon slowly gain altitude against the dark ocean of stars. Few came up here anymore. Not since the road network had been supplied with human-built radios. Once their proudest technological achievement, the signal tower was now little more than a tree fort for village kids.
In truth, calling G’tel a “village” was a misnomer. In the fifteen years since the humans’ appearance on the continent, the population had exploded. For the first time, houses were being built well outside of the village’s ring of protective halo trees. Where once crops had grown in the sun, rings of streets had been laid down. New three-, four-, and now even five-level buildings were being erected as fast as the mudstone could set.
As the village grew, human advisors helped plan for new issues that cropped up, such as infrastructure, aqueducts, and sanitation. All this development was necessary to keep up with the growth fueled by the twin booms in both fertility and immigration. G’tel was now the place on the road network for trade, sitting as it did next to the largest landing strip, and only sea port, on the entire continent. And with the explosive increases in crop yields owed to the humans’ desalinization plant and irrigation channels, there was finally enough food to feed all those hungry mouths. The days of culling new clutches were fading into memory.
Which was just fine with Benexx. Ze’d narrowly escaped being decapitated only moments after zer birth, along with every other member of zer clutch, save four. It was a barbaric practice, one ze’d only been spared from by the intervention of zer father, Bryan Benson. Benexx had never bothered to search out zer biological parents. Ze didn’t feel the need.
“Ah, there you are, Benexx,” a familiar voice called from below. It was Uncle Kexx, G’tel’s long-serving truth-digger. Ze was shadowed as always by zer human apprentice, Sakiko, who was in turn shadowed by Gamera, an orphaned ulik she’d adopted as a pup.
“We wondered where you’d run off to before the evening cleansing,” Kexx said.
“Just wanted to watch one more sunset over the plains,” Benexx called down.
“Well, don’t be too late. The evening cleansing is starting soon and you have an early flight tomorrow.”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Goodnight.” Kexx said something to Sakiko in Atlantian, a little too quiet and fast for Benexx to pick up, then headed back down the trail to the old village inside the ring of trees. Zer house was there, near the outskirts, as it had been since before Benexx was born. Sakiko remained behind and started up the ladder to join zer at the top, while Gamera whined softly at the base of the tower before stomping down a bed in the underbrush and lying down to wait for her return.
Sakiko sat down. “Varr’s bright tonight.”
Benexx nodded. “The Atlantis should be landing just about now.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s Jian Feng’s first mission. He’s kept me updated.”
“You mean he’s been sending you love letters,” Sakiko said, then made a kissing face. She was three years older than Benexx, but because of how long it took humans to develop she still acted less mature.
“We’re just friends!” Benexx punched Sakiko in the shoulder to emphasize the point.
“Ow!” she protested. “That hurt!”
“Whatever, wuss.” Benexx wiggled zer four tentacle-like fingers. “I don’t even have hand bones.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
They made an odd pair, Benexx and Sakiko. The Atlantian raised among humans and the human raised among Atlantians. In many ways, Sakiko was more accepted among the people of G’tel than Benexx was. She knew their language because it was hers too, while Benexx still struggled with the different dialects. She’d grown up in their clothes, (with some small additions for the sake of modesty), their food, and their rituals. She was Kexx’s chosen protégée for village truth-digger, and her mother, Mei, was the respected and beloved ambassador from the human colony.
Benexx was… none of those things. Back home in Shambhala, ze was an unwilling celebrity. The adopted Atlantian child of humankind’s greatest living hero. A symbol of the Trident between all the peoples of the planet. But here, surrounded by zer people, Benexx was a curiosity. The bearer who wouldn’t bear, talked funny, and could never get zer skinglow right. The villagers weren’t openly hostile to zer, but they could be aloof, never quite sure what to do with zer.
Benexx loved it. The Varr cycle ze spent every summer in G’tel were some of the quietest, most relaxing days ze had all year. But now, break was coming to an end.
“What is he doing?” Sakiko asked.
“Hmm? Who?”
“Jian,” she pointed at Varr. “Up there.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. They’re fixing a busted helium harvester or something.”
Sakiko nodded. “Dangerous?”
“Everything in space is dangerous. But I don’t think this is particularly so.”
“Still, it’s kinda hot, right? Commanding a shuttle mission.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Benexx said.
“Oh come on,” Sakiko prodded. “That’s sexy.”
“Now whose boyfriend is he?” Benexx teased. “I don’t have any of those parts, remember? And even if I did, they wouldn’t line up with anything your people have.”
Sakiko smirked. “That’s no obstacle to the curious.”
Benexx put zer fingers over zer earholes. “Lalalalala…”
“There are even some adaptors…”
“LALALALA!”
Sakiko laughed at her friend’s discomfort. “You look ridiculous.”
Benexx sighed. “I’m going to miss this.”
“What?”
“The peace and quiet, mostly.”
“What quiet?” Sakiko asked incredulously. “It’s a madhouse around here. G’tel has quintupled in size in the last ten years.”
“Yeah, to fifteen-thousand. Shambhala is fifty thousand and counting, with transit cars and quadcopters and drones and the spaceport. Humans and Atlantians running about at all hours. The noise never stops. At least G’tel still sleeps at night.”
“So stay here,” Sakiko said. “Mom loves you. We already keep your room open when you’re not here.”
“I can’t. My parents would never allow it.”
“You can. You’ll be fifteen in a few days and can make your own choices.”
“It’s not that simple, Kiko. I’m… important there.”
“Yeah, as a symbol of yadda, yadda, yadda. You hate that shit.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not important. Besides, I’ve started teaching the immigrants in the native quarter. Who else can do that as well as I can?”
“And you enjoy it?”
Benexx shrugged. “I’m starting to, yeah.”
They sat in amicable silence for a long moment. “So, your great bird leaves in the morning?” Sakiko asked, using the Atlantian phrase for “airplane”.
“Yes.”
“Last night in G’tel until next summer?”
“Yeess?”
“Want to go prank Chief Kuul’s house?”
Benexx smiled broadly. “Absolutely.”
Benexx was already on the plane ride home by the time Chief Kuul saw what they’d done to the statue commemorating the Battle of the Black Bridge in zer courtyard. Ze’d had it commissioned not long after ascending to Chief after Tuko died… er, returned. At six meters tall, it depicted the famous moment when Kuul, run through the hip by a Dweller spear, fired a borrowed rifle back into the encroaching horde while Bryan Benson carried zer across his shoulders to safety.
The sculptors had, out of deference to their new Chief, taken some generous liberties with the proportions of the statue’s figures, especially where Kuul’s muscle definition was concerned. Benexx and Sakiko had added their own artistic flourishes in the form of garishly colored flowers and ink paste strategically placed to be as unflattering to Kuul’s Chiefly sensibilities as possible. Benexx didn’t really understand the Atlantian social taboos their display was crossing, but Sakiko assured zer they were not only dead on the mark, but would be quite a chore to clean up once the ink paste set.
Benexx didn’t mind. In a few weeks, it would be Sakiko’s turn to travel to Shambhala and stay with zer family, where she would be just as awkward and out-of-place as Benexx felt in G’tel. It was why they’d become such fast friends years ago, each foreigners to their own people, each helping the other fill in the cultural blanks.
It was a uniquely codependent relationship.
Ze leaned back in zer chair and settled in for the long flight home. Longer now than it had been the first few summers ze’d spent abroad. In the early days, shuttles were still being used for the transoceanic voyage. But their enormously thirsty hypersonic engines, and the increasingly demanding schedule doing the work of building the space-based infrastructure the development plan demanded, meant they were pulled from airliner service as soon as alternatives became available.
The airplane Benexx sat in now was one of six that had been manufactured in the Ark’s factories, then shipped piece by piece down the beanstalk for final assembly on the surface. It was a high, swept-wing design with high-bypass turbofan engines mounted on top of the wings. It sat just over a hundred people, making it much smaller than the shuttles it replaced, but also drastically more fuel efficient.
But it was also subsonic, which meant a trip that used to take three hours now took closer to nine. Benexx shut off the artificial window display and its endless blue ocean. Ze reached into zer bag to retrieve zer specially grown headset, scrolled through zer music files, selected a soothing synth-jazz playlist from the turn of twenty-second century old Earth, and let the kilometers slip by at almost eight hundred an hour.
Ze loved flying. The acceleration at takeoff, the fleeting sensations of weightlessness. It reminded Benexx of swimming, only so much faster. Ze envied Jian Feng, floating thousands of kilometers above the planet in zero gee. Commanding his own shuttle with its immense power. Ze’d skipped a summer in G’tel two years ago and spent the time aboard the Ark with both Jian and Sakiko. It was part of their “enrichment,” and everyone’s parents had insisted on it.
Sakiko had been miserable in null gee, utterly useless. She flapped around like a wounded bird until she gave up and spent the rest of the trip either clinging to handrails or hiding in the centripetal gravity at the bottom of the habitats. Benexx, by contrast, was a natural. Ze’d picked up on how to fly through null gee like a fish took to a pond, which considering ze race’s relatively recent aquatic lineage, was probably as accurate a metaphor as any.
The Ark’s longtime captain, Chao Feng, even remarked that Benexx, “Must have gotten zer flying genes from zer father.” Which kind of ignored the fact ze was not only adopted, not only a separate species, but indeed traced zer origins to an entirely separate genesis of life from Bryan. Still, considering his hallowed career as a Zero player, it was a flattering thing to say.
For a moment, Benexx felt a pang of guilt over defacing zer father’s image, but the feeling quickly passed. They’d been increasingly butting heads lately, and even if they hadn’t been, Benexx knew he hated the “Bronze monstrosity” that had been erected in Mahama Park not three years before. For a former sports star, zer father was strangely averse to hero worship, or at least of being the target of it.
The airliner’s descent announcement interrupted zer music, letting the passengers know they’d be landing in a half hour. Benexx shifted uncomfortably in zer chair. The designers had gone to great lengths to make them ergonomically compatible with either human or Atlantian physiques, but instead simply ensured they were equally inappropriate for both.
The seat wasn’t zer only source of discomfort, however. The fifteenth anniversary of the Trident approached in only two days. There would be a parade. Zer parents expected zer to participate, solidly against zer expressed wishes. Benexx hated zer role as icon, and with zer critical fifteenth birthday fast approaching, ze felt like it was time ze should be able to make these sorts of calls for zerself.
Ze was leaving vacation and flying straight into a confrontation ze didn’t want to have but wasn’t willing to back down from just for the sake of expediency. Benexx put away zer headset, buckled zer lap belt, and steeled zerself for a fight ze knew ze was probably going to lose.