Chapter 6

He wakes up wrung-out. There is a bruise on the day. He lightens the window and the sky is jaundiced.

He makes himself chai from a sachet and sinks into his chair at his desk. He wonders how Yachi is. He stares at his cup till it stops steaming. He starts to get up to head for maintenance, and then remembers that it is not his shift today.

Wallowing in this quagmire will not help him. He sits up straight. “Deep breaths,” he tells himself. “From the diaphragm.” He hauls himself up and goes to the mess hall. Another cup of chai and half a toast later, he begins to feel more settled.

Onkar drags up a chair and collapses next to him, putting his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. “Heard we have a guest.”

“Mm.” Ayaan swirls the remaining chai in his cup without looking up.

“You two spent a lot of time together.”

“I didn’t – they can be insistent.”

Onkar snorts. “Be careful, Ayaan – people are going to start thinking you’re one of those sorts.”

Ayaan finally meets his eyes. “Those sorts?”

“You know.” Onkar slips on a generous expression. “But we accept all sorts around here.”

“Onkar, I am not… ” He trails off. He doesn’t know what he was about to say, but he knows that by denying it, he would be denying his entire self.

“I mean, you do you, be free, just don’t bring it home to your mother. She doesn’t deserve to have her heart broken like that.”

Ayaan puts his hands in his lap so Onkar cannot see them shake. Keeps his tone level and unsentimental. “Like what? There are lots of human-alien ties. The law for marriage was passed half a century ago.”

“Where can you even begin? Aside from the fact that Farishi aren’t male or female, they’re not wired to get people. I don’t care if they say they do – if they’re asexual, in every sense of the word, they can’t.”

Ayaan stands up. The room has developed a red cast to it.

“I’m worried you’re making a mistake,” Onkar is saying. “If you think you can shack up with one of these things, you’re going to be heading for trou – where are you going?”

“I am going to check on Yachi.” He picks up his tray, and does not wait to hear Onkar’s response.

***

Yachi is reclining in a bed with their leg in a cast. Their face is still wan, but no longer ashen. The rest of the medbay lies empty. After fussing and checking whether there is enough water on the bedside table, Ayaan drags up a chair. “Our staff managed to take care of you?”

“They were able to contact a Farish doctor on a different base. Apparently, the differences between us and humans are not so great when it comes to broken bones.” They pat the side of their injured leg. “I am not sure what I expected, considering how alike we look.” They sigh and settle back into the pillows.

Ayaan squeezes the arms of his chair. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t answer your call.”

“It would not have prevented the injury.”

“You were in a lot of pain. I could have gotten there sooner.”

“And I could have been more careful.” They place a hand over Ayaan’s and look at him seriously. “Stop it.”

Ayaan reaches out without thinking, brushes a strand of hair off Yachi’s damp forehead. They do not seem surprised at the gesture, only holding their steady, easy gaze. “Do you.” Ayaan’s jaw works. He means to say, Do you want some food? “Do you want to come with me to Earth.” He sits there, stunned, as Yachi’s eyebrows climb. “I mean – I – ”

“Of course I want to come.”

Ayaan’s brain blitzes. “ What ?”

“But I will not.”

Ayaan feels as if he is about to be torn apart by all the feelings running through him at once. “I’m sorry,” he blurts. His chest is full of lead. Yachi is right before him, yet it seems there are lightyears between them. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I put you on the spot. It’s not like I offered to stay.”

“I wish you would – but I will not play a hand in you leaving your mother to sickness.”

Ayaan rubs his temples. “Even if that weren’t the case, the IPL could sue me for leaving without a three-month notice.” It is insanity, the idea of packing his suitcases, dropping them outside the base, and resigning just like that. “Aren’t you upset at all?” he bursts out, unnerved by Yachi’s placidity, and then reels back, horrified at himself. I should leave , he thinks. He wishes he had his tablet so he could look at his father’s photo.

“Do not yell at me,” Yachi says. “Of course I am. I want to know you, and now I cannot, beyond what I find out in these few days.” They sink farther into their pillows, as if they’ve a mind to make a nest out of them and stay there for the rest of the season. Ayaan takes a moment to come down from the shock of them not despising him or telling him to leave.

“Why don’t you read me a book?” Yachi says at length.

“Wh – I’ve never read anyone a book.”

Yachi laughs hoarsely before descending into a fit of coughs. “It is common enough in your movies.”

“I think you’re referring to idealistic movies from the early twenty-first century at the latest.” Ayaan rakes a hand through his hair, feeling increasingly foolish. “I have some physical books, but most of them are on my tablet, and most of them are contemporary.”

“I want to see a book. I want to touch the pages.”

Ayaan doesn’t know why his hand reaches for The Way of the Mountains when he probably should have picked something more conventional – Tagore’s poems, or the tiny Bhagavad Gita his grandmother gave him that he keeps in his drawer. And in the ship’s library there is a well-thumbed copy of Pride and Prejudice and he’s sure that there can’t be many books more fitting of being a Terran ambassador, even if the front part of the cover is missing.

He watches as Yachi flips the pages of his book as though it is a rare manuscript rescued from an archaeological dig and not some cheap mass paperback spat out within the past forty or so years. As he reads aloud he notices the door cracking open and pauses. Onkar stands at the entryway, watching Ayaan with a closed-off expression. Ayaan feels dirty; he’d come to depend on Onkar, and here he is, openly disagreeing with him. He wonders if he comes across as cunning and sly, as if he had just been waiting for someone other than Onkar to enjoy his company.

“What happened? Is someone there?” asks Yachi blearily, lifting their neck.

Ayaan meets Onkar’s eyes. “No,” he says. “No one is there.”

Onkar leaves.

Two chapters later, Yachi is nodding and clearly no longer paying attention. Ayaan gets up and asks a nurse for a pen, wishing his handwriting were elegant and beautiful instead of this loopy haphazard scrawl.

To Yachi , he writes on the first page. The pen is running out of ink, and he ruins the paper a bit while scratching at it, and the black gel is sterile beneath the purple glitter, but it puts him at ease knowing that Yachi will have something tangible of him left. Yachi looks astonished when Ayaan pushes the book into their hands.

They refuse to put it down, and when they fall asleep, they are still holding it.