The Muses of Shuyedan-18

The Muses of Shuyedan-18

By Indrapramit Das (excerpt)

Teysanzi means new life, or beyond-life. Not quite afterlife, because of the connotations with death. I was thirty when I arrived at the Protectorate, and forty-two when I met Mi, new like I was but younger and still nan tizan, “blue-eyed” with memories of Earth. But she was quicker than me to adjust, more confident.

Nothing would get her down. Not even the sunless tiles skies and tunnels of Teysanzi, sub-city, metrocolony, Earth-Protectorate. I took her to the food court district, with its cheap neon and sunlaps battered with imported moths, its greenhouse stalls warm and rich with the smell of plants and vegetables and flowers snarling their way along the tables. She had taken it all in with a smile. The hot lights reflecting on her nose, which looked so lie a button mushroom (I would tell her so weeks later, much to her false chagrin.) I helped her with the chopsticks, her muscles still loose and hands shaking from jumping through spacetime while waking in and out of cryo-phase. From that moment watching her suck noodles into her mouth I knew I couldn’t resist the inexorable tug of affection I had avoided so long. I knew from the way she stared at me, blissful in trust, that she saw me, strong and grown into the scrubbed air and strange gravity of a new world, as somehow powerful. I fed on her awe in vampiric resignation. Quietly let her recite what she’d learned of this world back on Earth, as if to imprint her new reality with those predefined definitions, watched her explain to herself how Teysanzi cuisine was so spicy because the sub-city’s processed atmosphere and low-g made for chronic swollen sinuses and dulled taste. She licked tha same spice off her lips and left it on scrunched napkins by her tray. Mi talked in Colbyat often, to practice, though I think she was actually better at the formal language than I was. Still, I taught her Colbyat slang and swear words she didn’t know, as one will do, told her how it and other star-tongues gestated in the confined cultures of starships, q-tunneling waystations, eventually exports.

A week after her arrival, we took the buggy out to the hinterlands to start her apprenticeship. Starlight in the puddled loam sinking under our boots, she asked me, “Do you agree with the sanctions against non-het couples here?” The formality of her constant questions, as if she were continually interviewing me, still delighted me at the time.

The Muses of Shuyedan-18. Photo by Elena

“No,” I’d said. “Why?”

“Well. What if our Krasnikov collapses and we’re cut off from the rest of the protectorate net, from Earth. That’s what the Teysanzi’s afraid of, right?”

I laughed. “Teysanzi’s population isn’t even three thousand. I think if the Krasnikov collapses and we’re stuck out here a hundred light years from the nearest tunnel gate or settled planet, being het and having babies isn’t going to save our asses. Being resourceful will. Or more realistically, nothing will.”

“Yeah?” her voice loud against her helmet mic. A smile behind glass, and butterflies in my stomach. “And how’re we going to be resourceful? Build a megageneration ship to haul our descendants to the next gas station? Or should I say gas giant,” Mi asked, touching my arm lightly with her gloved hand. Her giddy infection made me light-headed. There was a tremendous energy to her out here, much more than in the sub-city. So confident, for someone on their first trip out to the hinterlands, suited up. Maybe it was adrenalin.