Use it or lose it. The golden rule of exercise. I’ve seen its effects myself, in the years I’ve been doing my necessary sojourns on a bike. Strength and stamina don’t just build themselves. Yet, in a sense, they truly do. So long as you put in the effort.

I believe the same is true for everything.

The line of writing I have chosen for my work is fiction. But how much of that do you see here? I write the occasional thing, of course, like Marie Chen’s account of Proteus. In fact I’ve quite surprised myself by how far that has gone; given its intention. But for the most part, my writing here reads like a journal of my own experience, rather than the draft of my creation. Instead of writing Andala, I’m writing about Andala. It’s writing about writing! It’s meta work in lieu of the work itself.

I won’t surprise you one bit with the fact that my private notes read just the same way, and did long before the public Project Andala ever started.

There’s some necessity to all that. But I could go on like this for an individual’s measure of eternity. And I’d still be just beginning! That’s no way to write. Not exclusively. I really ought to turn this tale around.

You build your habits. And your habits then build you.

The writing I haven’t done is exactly the stuff I mean the most to do. The fiction! The drafting proper. The book. Why’s it such a fight? Well, my mental muscles aren’t primed for it. I could do far worse than exercise.

And so the thought occurred to me, while riding past Hound Point, that there’s only one way to change this. I’ve got to build the habit. I’ve got to write not only the very thing you see here, but fiction proper, on a routine basis. I’ve got to earn my chops.

But how to do that without stirring up a keen resistance?

Here’s the new bit. I realised that I needed to write non-critical fiction. Little things that aren’t make or break for the entire story. The kind of writing where I don’t get tangled up in a myriad of dependencies the minute I begin. Just what kind of fiction is that, though, given the world I’m building and my evidently maniacal desire for every last piece to fit?

There is just one way I can picture: to escape the canon completely.

One way to do that would be to jump ship to another project entirely. Not something I’d like to do, or think I could for long. Besides, the problem would remain, just in different clothing. No, I’m not looking for another macrocosm; but the opposite.

How about little fictions inside the Andala “universe” that I’ve already started? How about short stories contained within themselves, which needn’t define nor undermine the rules of the game? How about the legends presumed already extant on Andala, like Ayana’s myth? Or even just the backgrounds and day to day lives of the characters I’m making, without the need for vital moments in our future history? Ah, more tales within the tale. But short and sweet.

I doubt it’ll do me any harm. Or you, as I can always put the kibosh on publishing them. We’ll see. I just know I need to shake up my practice.

What I like to think sets my work aside from other superpower fantasies is its world. Andala is, very simply, an entire civilisation where everyone has their share of these abilities. Aner is not the special gift of a chosen few. It belongs to everyone.

Think about that for a second. Everyone can do it. All of them. Not just the mighty élite, but the lowest of the humdrum everyday ornery. And then we arrive.

My peculiar interest is in just this kind of culture shock. From its destructive effect on the traditional tribal lives of the Bushmen, to its broader impact on the very foundation of our global history: this stuff is right up my alley. What little I know of super heroes tells me what I’m doing is quite distinct from the norm. Where episodic adventures require a rhythm and a routine reset to the way things were before, I can explore a whole different horizon.

There’s something that really appeals to me in the idea that aner – that unsettling, uncanny, and essentially un-human power – is so perfectly natural on Andala. Marie’s described the first time that we saw it. Aner is startling, terrifying and baffling stuff; a veritable deus ex machina of course. And my hesitance to work on it is as just much a metaphor beyond the book. But there it lies. The focus and the magic.

The world, then, is where I see my best work. It’s a playground for my own games of consequence. There is one continuity in this story. One timeline! (And a relativistic one at that; as long as I can keep the details straight.) Everything the characters do is done for good. Change is eternal, as it is in reality. Anything less doesn’t feel the least bit right. Dodgy prequels and the like have torn the patience out of me!

But what’s a culture like when everyone is Superman? I’ve spent a good while wondering about this very question. Andala is my attempt at answering it. The only way you can: one piece at a time.

From out of those a world is made. No more, no less.

Amongst the infinite dichotomies by which you can split man, lies the one about perseverance. There are those who stride ever onward, guided by goodness knows what, drawn in every step by a passion they themselves might not be able to describe, ever seeking the way of the future; and then there’s the rest of us.

I took up Jared Diamond’s epic answer to Yali’s Question as an exercise in broadening my own perspective. Oh, it worked all right. His book is rich with consequences for my own project. So much so, that I’ve found myself thrown back in introspection. I can take a while to digest what I read, but this is something else, and by no means any one else’s fault.

I’ve not given up on Andala. I’m not sure, after all the times it seems I’ve tried, that such a thing is possible as long as I am still around. But I do find myself in the midst of something of a breather. One of these things where it’s not my own initiative, but the realm of the unconscious muse.

Truth be told, I suppose it is the way I’m telling Proteus that’s at the heart of my doubt. That backstory has been out of control for as long as I can remember. I meant for it to be a fragmentary report of distant discovery, but it’s already about as long as I mean Alpha itself to be, and showing no sign of a conclusion. When I’m writing it, though, I do like Marie’s story. Coupled with my apparent inability to pull the reins and steer where she’s going, you get where I’ve been headed. The choice between it and the central story that I came here to tell is one I seem unable to take. Or in the right direction, at any rate.

All of which is to say that Guns, Germs and Steel isn’t at fault for my time off the keyboard. And, in fact, that I am well pleased for the most part by how suited my little fiction of a world matches the analysis Diamond wrote there. I haven’t thought at all of ancient man’s spread around our own planet, before the rise of farming and subsequently everything else, being drawn to Sumer for my inspiration more often than not. But now that he’s explained it, I see the implications of prehistory around us everywhere. For whatever reason, they’re more or less as snug on Andala. The details of which I’ve some reading yet until I can describe.

If you’re like me: you think in writing. Seems to be the only way. Just as music is to dream, and reading is to see.

I’ve belatedly gotten around to picking up Jared Diamond’s intriguing book Guns, Germs and Steel. It’s history on quite a breathtaking scale. Take Wikipedia’s word for it. As the author says himself, in the preface:

With mildly critical tongue in cheek, the reviewer wrote that I seem to view world history as an onion, of which the modern world constitutes only the surface, and whose layers are to be peeled back in the search for historical understanding. Yes, world history is indeed such an onion! But that peeling back of the onion’s layers is fascinating, challenging and of overwhelming importance to us today, as we seek to grasp our past’s lessons for our future.

He frames his grand vision in a nutshell. It is to answer a question posed to him by an inquisitive Papua New Guinean once upon an afternoon at the beach.

“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”.

The man’s name was Yali. And I got quite diverted in my reading by following up on him. Again, the Wikipedia has an excellent article about the chap. He was no mere politician, nor even just a philosopher. He was a bit of a gangster and even a cult leader in his day. As he put it in how he posed his question: around the magic word of “cargo”.

I’ve a thing for culture shock, as worlds must one day collide. Right at the heart of my story is our centuries advanced Earth meeting its uncanny sister Andala in the unexpected depths of space. We’re rivals, whether we like it or not; or even choose to see it that way. Mina knows. I’ve set about creating some far flung reenactment of what happened when the two worlds of our own planet met in the shape of Columbus just half a millennium ago. Only, we aren’t the same kind of people as our ancestors who sailed then, conquistadors in waiting; and the people of Andala have a little something of their own beyond the reach of our technology. Yet the metaphor is, ultimately, much the same.

In other words, I’ve picked some pretty damn pertinent reading. I’m playing with the constraints, but I’m still very much working within the forces of global history. Whether it be Andala’s or ours.

Then them both.

Marie reports back to her captain, from the heart of Zuba.

“Well Kingston, I’ve got to tell you,” I grinned into my screen on Bee, “you’ve really missed out.”
“That so?” His little image asked me, alone in the dark.
“For sure. This place, goodness, we really must get you down to Zuba.”
“What they had you doing there anyways, Chen? Seeing as I can’t seem to find your report.”
“This is my report! Come on, Mina and I have been rushed right off our feet all day long.”
“And Tani?”
“She was the one doing it.”
“Makes sense.” He smiled. “Your tag says you covered, what, a dozen klicks every which direction.”
“You know how it is. But all worth it, captain. We’ve found the mother lode here in Zuba.”
“Akanai’s been telling me about that.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he’s fairly talkative without Tani around.”
“Right. About the Azu?”
“Well, really about Megan.”
“Maigan.”
“Uh, yeah.” He laughed. “I oughta know by now.”
“She’s been with us all day, in fact.”
“What do you make of her?”
“Well, everyone knows who she is. I mean she has the key to the city, it feels like. And she’s damn smart, too. So quick. She’s picking up English already, would you believe.”
“I would. Akanai’s pretty sold on her. Says she taught him everything he knows.”
“Like a mother?”
“She kinda was. He lost his the day he was born.”
“Wow.” I stopped in my tracks at the thought. “Tani never knew hers either.”
“Is Mina there?” His eyes twitched side to side, as if my screen would show him anything in the evening dim.
“Oh no, they’re still together. It’s just you and I.”
“How’s she taking it?”
“Mina’s acting a little funny, I’ve got to say.”
“Is she alright?”
“She is now. Initially, she just seemed quite overwhelmed when we arrived here. But over the hours, she’s really gotten close to Maigan. It’s like the two of them are…”
“Are?”
“Well, I don’t know what. They’re just finishing each others thoughts, almost.”
“Interesting.” Pondered Kingston, as he looked away from his screen. “You think that maybe…”
“What?”
“Like how you and Tani are pretty tight. Is it like that?”
“Sure, I guess. Yes!”
“She’s met her first Andalan friend, then. Good for her.”
“I’ll say, Kingston. Maigan’s determined to share her knowledge with us. And, well, Mina…”
“Has changed her tune at last? Let me guess.”
“Perhaps. She’s much more comfortable speaking with Maigan than she is anyone else. If anyone can handle it, I suppose it’s her.”
“Which one are you talking about?”
“Both!”

The orange sun still shone, if only just, back up in Ayanakert. Its shadows reached ever longer across the wall behind the captain, one I recognised from the palace. We talked for quite a while about what we had seen. I told him my impressions of the great Azu city of Zuba in the detail he preferred. Lastly, twilight fell on him as well, as both Andala’s capitals joined in night.

“How long should we stay here, Kingston?”
“Till Proteus can spirit us away back home.”
“No! I mean down here with Maigan.”
“Oh, right.” He smiled. “Been a long day all round, Chen.”
“They always are on Andala.”
“Right enough, I could use a break from this place.”
“We could pick you up and bring you down to Zuba.”
“No, Marie, a break. Like, uh, I don’t know. Just thinking.”

Something about the way he said that reminded me of what had been, until only weeks ago, our mission. We came out to the Pleiades to explore. This we were surely doing, but in a very different way. Our training and our equipment was all for barren worlds, far apart, even in as busy a stellar neighbourhood as this. Proteus was to take us to dozens of stars, the seven sisters themselves included, and yet here we were all tangled up in just one Earth-sized moon. All the worse for Kingston, as he didn’t even have our shuttle nearby to leave Ayanakert. The dark little cabin I sat inside was our only vehicle in the world. Bee couldn’t reach lightspeed, but it could take us to the other planets around Andala’s star if we wanted.

“Yeah, I could see doing that.” He agreed. “Could really use the space. But you know the problem.”
“You wouldn’t need Proteus just for sublight around the system.”
“Maybe not. But think about the comm. Sublight applies there too.”
“You’d be a few lighthours away.”
“Which means real hours. Without a way to respond if and when you need me. No, I’d better stay in touch. Besides, getting Proteus back online is our real priority.”
“I suppose. How’s Robin getting along?”
“Now there’s a question. We’re still limited by secondary radiation aboard Proteus, so we can’t really get to grips with the problem; yet. Let me tell you, I for one will be glad when we can get started. Because, ah, you know how it is.”
“How he is!” I laughed. “What’s he been up to while we’ve been away?”

The captain stared into space, his mouth a little open and sliding to the side. This was not going to be good.

“It’s been a whole I-Year ain’t it?”
“Aieer.”
“A whole goddamn day! He must have given me the slip when we met up with Akanai this morning.”
“His tag says…” I pulled up a map of his whereabouts, using Mina’s medical credentials. “Well, he didn’t leave town at least.”
“Where’s he been?”
“He wandered a fair bit, but has been in the one place for a good few hours now.”
“Copy me his fix. I got a little something in mind for him.”
“Captain, you’d better hold on. The place he’s in…”
“Coordinates!”
“Is the temple.”
“Temple?”
“He’s the first of us to gain entrance. I did ask Tani about it the day we landed, but she couldn’t get permission.”
“What exactly do we know about the joint?”
“Next to nothing. I’ve never been in one anywhere on Andala.”
“Fantastic. And now Robin’s giving his thanks to…” Kingston paused. “What do they call the big man around here?”

Cosmic considerations in a room of speculation. If not a garden.

The closer I looked at Maigan’s model of Andala, the more I was intrigued. I pulled it close to me, to see just how she made it. But nothing about the little globe felt the least bit artificial. I saw no seams, no paint, no ink. In fact, as I held the orb up to the distant light, I’m sure I saw the clouds take on different shadows, until, in the tiny dusk, ruddy haze spirited them away to night. It really did look just as worlds do from out in space. Not to mention that it felt as though it hadn’t any weight, and I couldn’t see what held it up.

“This, this is quite impressive.” I stammered.
“This is Andala.” Mina said to Tani, a broad smile on her face.
“Mmm!” Grinned Tani. “But my Andala is more big.”
“Tani, your globe doesn’t begin to compare to this!”

I held on tight to Maigan’s model. I couldn’t even tear my eyes from it, indeed, it felt like the most precious thing I’d ever touched.

“We are…” Mina said, hovering a finger over the world, “move your hands…”
“Right. Sorry.”
“…here!”

She tapped the very spot where we stood. But she quivered.

“What do you think this is made of?” Mina whispered to me.
“That’s the thing. I haven’t the least idea. Not a projection, at any rate. It feels like…”
“Like air?”
“Like cold air. But then you press into it.”

By now, Tani wanted to have a go, too. I noticed her hand grasp the world away from me, and only then did I realise she’d let go of my waist.

“Marie!” Mina gasped at the sight of me, free beside her in the air.
“This Andala is quite good.” Tani observed, twisting the globe around single-handed, pondering it like an apple she fancied tasting with a bite.
“Apparently this is fine.” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. Although she’d let me go, I couldn’t move any more freely than before.
“I see her mistake!” Tani shouted, startling the lot of us.
“Mistake!” Said Maigan, now right next to us. Tani shot a surprised glance at her.
“Anaya,” she said, gesturing to the thumbnail sized patch of the globe’s surface which mapped her homeland, “is more small. Too small. You Azu is playing your none sense!” Although Tani spoke in our language, Maigan could well understand her. She pinched her fingers over the surface of the globe, letting a rather nervous Mina free while doing so.

A brief exchange of angry Anatara followed while Tani and Maigan each took the model in their hands and dismissed the other’s foolish ideas. I enjoyed watching them mirror each other’s gestures and condescending looks.

“Who won then?” I asked as they finished. Tani took a moment to come up with her answer.
“We go to Bee and we will see Anaya is more big than this!”
“It looks about right to me. Goodness, you can even see the glimmer on the Aykataliya river.”
“Everything is on purpose by Azu.” Tani grumped. “She knows.”
“Marie.” Said Maigan quietly, as she tapped me on the elbow to take me away from Tani. I felt a gentle sway as she moved me up with her, little Andala in her other hand, toward Kai where it belonged.
“Kariala?” I asked, pointing to Andala’s nearest little sister moon.
Maigan nodded, careful with Andala in her fingers as she righted the world.
“And over there is “Sankarala?”
“Mmm.” She smiled, expecting we should know as much about the neighbourhood.
“But where is Jaramala?” I said, shrugging my shoulders to emphasise the question.
Without looking up, she waved off in Kai’s direction. Sure enough, just behind its rings, I saw the smallest of Kai’s four moons, and more or less as slight as it looks in Andala’s sky.
“How on Earth did you make those rings, I wonder?”

Once she put Andala back in its right place, Maigan pulled me right beside her to see what she was getting at. She traced the line between night and day on her model, the terminator, a good while from us in bright Zuba, where she pointed next. Indeed, she’d got the alignment perfect. Close to Andala’s orb, everything out in space looked quite as it did in reality. But one thing wasn’t there. She pulled us back away from Andala, and went a sixth of the way around Kai. I could tell by how the moons changed. Then, where there was nothing in the air between us whatsoever, she pointed an emphatic finger.

“Zancra.” She said, with a provocative look on her face, like I was meant to be surprised.
“What? I don’t see anything. What’s Zancra, Tani?”
“Azutara.” Shrugged our Ana assistant, a good way below. “Not any thing sense able.”
“Look where you are, Marie.” Said Mina, down there with her. “Would you say that she could be pointing to…”
“L5?”
“Proteus!”

Right enough, she was. From where I stood, Andala looked the same enticing orb as when we first arrived, desperate for a place to save ourselves. I stared at it, reliving the memory for a moment. The blue circle that got ever bigger until we touched down. Our ship, we left behind out here right where she pointed. Out where the balance between Andala’s gravity and Kai’s would keep it safe. Maigan was quite right, of course.

“Proteus.” She said.
“Yes. Proteus.” I pointed to the same invisible dot, between our heads. “Our ship. We call it Proteus.”
“But how did she see it from this distance?” Mina called from over there, where Andala itself was but a toy.
“Wouldn’t I just love to know.” I said, looking into Maigan’s glowing eyes.

Out beyond the planets and the moons of her model, painted on the walls of the circle shaped room, blue lights glistened against the orange red of Andala’s sun. Sharp blue stars so dazzling that we even have names for them on Earth, hundreds of lightyears away. Alcyone, Maia, Electra, Caleano. The one the Ana call Sahra, the one we call Merope, glowed the brightest of them all, proud and electric far behind where I’d looked before. It really was a little universe in here, a microcosm in the most literal sense I’ve encountered.

And even so, on this scale, how far would our homeworld lie away? I shuddered at the thought of explaining such a thing. But if there was anyone who could understand, it had to be our star builder. She was still watching me once I’d thought all this. Had she to know? How could we lie to her?

The trip to Zuba takes a turn inside, to outer space.

For all we had to show Maigan, she had more for us. As the leading mind in the great city of Zuba, and chief of its academy, she was guardian of untold treasures. Not the kind you’d gaze on, to appreciate their passive beauty, but the kind that held Andala’s knowledge and would speak its history. Just the kind we wanted most to see.

“Maigan says you share humani taralikera and she share Azu taralikera.” Relayed Tani for us as we traipsed across the garden, away from the tower and our ship.
“We share our writing, and she will show us yours?” I asked.
“Marie do not do this.” Tani advised me. “This things are only Azu!”
“Why? Do you have any better?”

A chill breeze blew down the axis of the garden as we went; not all of us with our feet upon the ground. Maigan kept me right by her side, with Tani close behind our shoulders. There was much to show us. Behind me, Mina tagged along surrounded by Maigan’s students. I turned back to her to see what she thought of the offer. Mina squinted in the dazzling light which filled our path. I couldn’t tell.

“She wants this very much.” Tani concluded, instead of translating Maigan’s many words. “To see humani taralikera. To see…”
“To trade our knowledge?”
“Noll-hedge.” Tani nodded, and repeated the strange new word quietly again to herself.
“Knowledge.” Maigan chimed, better on her first try.
“Right. Akanai says you keep the biggest library, the biggest collection of writing on Andala.” I said. “Tani?”

But instead of helping, Tani squabbled with Maigan in rapid Anatara quite beyond my comprehension. I caught the occasional new word, though. Not profanities, which she had already well explored back home, but, I reckoned, proper nouns. Tani knew more about this place than she was letting on to me.

“And?”
“She says she has some.” Tani shrugged.
“Well, thanks.”

Once we reached the garden’s tree lined edge, I saw what an artifice it was: a plateau above a slope which led down to the river, and many other sights nearby. Beneath the level we were, sneaked a building like a bunker. We landed on its roof! The monumental stones of the garden melded into this other form, only visible from the side. Maigan led us along its edge, a great expanse of open space just one misstep away. Mina looked a touch nervous. Understandable, as there was quite a drop below, and, as ever on Andala, no handrail anywhere in sight. We turned an exposed corner, where everything changed again. Pointed arches opened up in an ever changing row, first open to the sky, then joining, piece by piece, until they formed and held a roof. Gradually, in another minute’s walk, we had gone from outdoors to inside, without a clear beginning or an end.

“What do you make of it?” I asked Mina, who seemed more nervous now than ever.
“Do not misinterpret this.” She said, with a funny look about her. “But something feels so familiar.”
“You never told me you’d been to Andala before.” I smiled, but she barely feigned a response.

Most the while we walked, Maigan kept talking. Too fast for me, and clearly not for my ears, but Tani’s. Her breathy voice became quite endearing, as what I could make out was the difference in her accent. She spoke much more like a native Ana than any Azu I had heard. You really couldn’t easily tell this was for her, as well as me, a second language. Some things she said surprised Tani, who preferred not to ask about them but tried to wing it. By now, I could read her reactions better than her words.

“She ask why you choose to stay feet on the ground.”
“Uh oh.” Mina groaned.
“Choice?” I laughed. “Did you tell her?”
“Tell?” Tani paused, but Maigan nudged her. “She says big space is near.”
“Big space?”
“Big!” Tani exclaimed, raising up her hands. “Space to eat Aira and Kai.”
“To eat?” Mina wondered.
“Sounds impressive!”

We reached a double doorway, quite like the ones in Akanai’s palace. The surface itself was covered top to bottom and right across the middle with Andala’s distinctive cursive script. The same writing Tani taught her sisters, all the way back in Kentaken. Unlike her palm sized tablets, though, these doors were big enough you could transcribe the Rosetta Stone across them several times over. And by all impressions it seemed they had. Pity I couldn’t read a word as yet. Whatever was carved there, exactly, it was not short.

“Knowledge.” Maigan declared with a proud old smile on her face, and clapped her hands before the doors, which slid open; impressive in their silence.

Behind them shone a light. A small circle, like a lamp in a theatre, the same colour as the day. It really was quite like entering a stage, as besides the spotlight there was nothing but darkness to make out. We walked a few steps before Tani grabbed us.

“No ground here!”
“What do you mean?” I held my hand up to shelter from the light, and saw the dim edge of the floor before me, ending like a clifftop.
“Oh. Yikes!”
“Why make an empty space like this?” Mina muttered, shadowing her own eyes to take a look around.
“It’s pretty big, isn’t it.”
“For what purpose?”

Once my eyes adjusted, I began to see more in the darkness. There were walls, a great circle which we entered from the side, but they were blacked out besides a spackling of marks. Passing either side of us went Maigan’s students, heading out into the chasm where she led. They looked eerily small so very fast. But only then did I begin to see what this place really was.

“Is that what it looks like?”
“A crescent!” Mina gasped. “Several. There, look around it.”
“Oh! They look just like moons in orbit around…”
“A planet. They are! It is, Marie! A model of the universe.”

Maigan drifted towards the light in the middle of the monumental room. And as she did, she rivalled it in size until her shadow was vast against the outer walls. She was lit quite like a crescent in her own right, until she held out her hand and touched the solar sphere. It quivered.

“Marie come to see Andala?” Tani wondered.
“Mina first!” I grinned. “Unless you can take us both.”
“Hey! I did not ask for this.” Mina worried aloud, but was powerless to resist Tani’s lift.

I must say it is strange to explore a star system without a ship. And all the more compelling to be within the model, without a screen. Tani held us midway between floor and ceiling, which looked like several storeys apart. She carried us in toward the shining miniature of Aira until its disc looked as large as the Sun. Kai and its rings came clearly into sight. An orb with bands of storms around its belt, and translucent rings which kept their place by themselves, like a halo. We stopped there, where Tani raised me to a model the size of an egg, inscribed with the brightly coloured globe of her homeworld.

“Goodness. Just look at the detail.”
“Those tiny clouds!”

I reached out and held Andala in my hands.

What’s the deal with Mina?

Once upon a time, a good while back in Marie’s yarn, Mina seemed infallible. More or less. I suppose the stereotype rings true: that every ship needs its Spock. Objective, cerebral, pragmatic Logos. Cast for a change in female form, if not exactly the first time. (Am I ever?) Mina is science personified on Proteus. Prickly, overconfident, and a touch too satisfied at times, maybe; but aren’t we all? Besides, she was of course the one to discover Andala, and when she did, conservation kicked in. She feels the greatest responsibility of them all for what will happen to our worlds. The weight of this is stifling her.

So she begins to crack.

If there was anyone you could truly count on, it was Mina. She was terrific at staying focused and keeping cool, even out here in a strange old world we never thought we’d find. But something unnerved her this time.

Something, someone.

Deep inside Bee’s cabin, a cave of shadows against the sunlight outside, I saw Maigan’s outline at last. She stood between the chairs up front. Caught in the dancing glow of our computer screens.

“There you are!” I puffed.

Her eyes turned to me, a great and knowing smile upon her face. She had before her in here everything that she wanted. We each paused a moment, unclear what to say or do next.
“I am sorry, Marie.” Came Mina’s voice as she approached outside. “I was not thinking.”
“That’s unlike you!” I shouted out to her, keeping my eyes on Maigan. “What’s the matter?”
“All of this.” She said, as she walked through the open airlock. “I do not know if I can handle it for much lon…” She saw Maigan’s almighty smile in the electric dark behind me. I heard the sudden end of her breath.
“It’s all right, Mina.” I said to her.
“No! It is really not!” She shouted, shaking. And then she left. She stormed right back outside again.

Mina’s opposite number is none other than Maigan, of course. Our scientist and Andala’s magus, what a pair. Mina shares a good deal with Maigan in steely intellect and cocky precociousness. Neither of them fits our own imaginary model of a woman; for whatever that’s worth where they are, and when. But their differences from one and another are the most telling thing of all. Oh, I’ve not as much as worked them out as yet, I just know that’s the way I’ll go.

Every one of the four crew who landed on Andala gets my sympathy. As in a way I’m all of them. Marie speaks in much my voice, and thinks the best of those around her, trying to coax them on in a protective act of naïveté. Kingston is a rock, doing his best to hide his fear and guilt at where he’s stuck his stricken crew. And Robin, well, old Robin’s soon to get his fun all right. They aren’t the most inventive quartet ever assembled, nor need they be. They balance, as their story does for mine, still not as yet begun.

So what then really is going on between Mina and Maigan? As always, I’ll excuse my own uncertainty with Marie’s. Our narrator has her own agenda, and may very well enjoy a touch of foreshadowing for dramatic purposes besides. Quite whether Maigan’s very appearance outside their ship was the cue for Mina to catch a sharp case of the nerves, or if this is just Marie’s liberty, is a question for a later day and draft. For now, it’s how she’s done it. And that is that.

Aside from exact timing, the truth is there. Mina sees something very sharply in Maigan that she has not in anyone else. Here or on her home world. Something captivating, commanding, and more compelling than she had yet imagined. But how she sees this is not with her rational mind, it’s from another place entire. The realm from which this whole story came as well.

I hope to capture a semblance of this. As that, I suspect, is as much as any of us can do. I’m talking about the unconscious foundation of our minds, scientific or otherwise, and the very seat of our power. Not to mention theirs.

A little optics in the garden.

Go straight for the top, and the little things sort themselves. Now that I was a friend of Maigan, I was a friend of everyone. Her underlings welcomed the three of us with measured enthusiasm, constantly talking between themselves about things we weren’t quite yet to know. Of particular interest were Mina’s glasses.

“Do be careful with those, please.” She muttered plaintively, as Maigan slid them from her nose.

Zuba’s greatest mind pored over the perplexing object, clearly intrigued. While staring through the lenses, she waved her fingers behind them, then told her pupils about her findings.

“Those are lenses.” Said Mina, with a bleary eyed grin. “They bend light, and the geometry that you see.”

Mina’s glasses were too small for Maigan to wear. So she held them out in front of her eyes, and looked to Mina.

“Everything seems smaller than it should be.” Said Mina, making the corners of a square with her hands, then sliding them close together.

Maigan wiggled the glasses back and forth, then traced a line behind them with her finger. A line that soon shot off to the side. Mina smiled from ear to ear.

“Yes! Rays diverge depending on the angle of incidence.”
“They have glass though, Mina.” I opined. “Don’t they already know some optics?”
“Perhaps not. Have you seen any of them wearing glasses?”
“Not till now.”

We knew they couldn’t speak our language, just as we were still to learn theirs. But our Azu hosts seemed to think along our own lines, or we did theirs, either way.

Maitel tried on Mina’s glasses, at her superior’s behest. What was too narrow to fit Maigan was easily too big for Maitel, who held the glasses by the ends of their fiddly legs. She got them in front of her eyes, squirmed around a bit, and looked back at Maigan. The moment she laid her glassy eyes on her, Maitel had to fight a laugh.

“Chunky frames look good on you!” I said as, in fact, they did.

Yet the women weren’t interested in what they looked like in the glasses, but rather through them instead. Maitel helped another hold them over her eyes, and on peering back at Maigan, they giggled. The master raised her brow, and demanded a go.

“Pity. I bet Kingston’s would’ve fit her.”
“Here. Try wearing them backwards.” Suggested Mina, who set her glasses, legs forward, onto Maigan’s nose.
“Sang ah!” She exclaimed in Anatara, so we could understand her.
“See? The whole world looks smaller.” Said Mina.
“Why?” Asked Tani, who hadn’t thought to look. “Is it too large?”

Maigan pointed at no one in particular, and called Tani to her side.

“She asks why you want to see like this? All wrong like this?” Tani told us, arms crossed and looking well puzzled by Maigan’s rapid Anatara.
“My eyes are imperfect.” Said Mina. “I am shortsighted.”
“You can not see all the world at once?” Relayed Tani, shrugging in confusion as she did. “You… make it small to fit your eyes?”
“No. I see close objects quite clearly.” Mina said, holding up her pad. “But distant objects, like your tower, are a blur for me.”
“Uh, Mina, the pad?” She told the rest of us to hide them at all costs, and now she waved hers around in plain sight!
“How am I to say this!?” Exclaimed Tani quite above me. “What is burr? Who is towah?”

Mina realised her mistake and slid her pad back in her pocket. But even in all of Tani’s noise, and through her borrowed glasses, Maigan noticed it. I saw her gesture, once again, to someone who wasn’t quite where she thought.

“May I have my glasses back now?” Asked Mina.
“Mm.” Concurred Maigan, who turned them over to their rightful owner.
“The lenses are concave.” Mina said, running a finger along the surface. Maigan followed suit. “They bend light outward. The opposite of my eyes.” Maigan nodded, and traced a line again, without the need to look. “Correct.” Said Mina, pleased to see her catching on.
“So, we’re good to share our science now?” I grinned. “So long as it’s with her?” Mina turned a purposefully muted look at me as she rubbed her lenses clean again.

Our tablets were nothing, though, compared to our ship, which stood a little way across the garden behind us. Maigan took the opportunity of our arguing to pop on over for a look. I only realised when I spotted her heading in the door.

“Mina! You didn’t close up?” I scolded her, and charged off to catch Maigan. Not that I had a chance contending with her speed.

Deep inside Bee’s cabin, a cave of shadows against the sunlight outside, I saw Maigan’s outline at last. She stood between the chairs up front. Caught in the dancing glow of our computer screens.

“There you are!” I puffed.

Her eyes turned to me, a great and knowing smile upon her face. She had before her in here everything that she wanted. We each paused a moment, unclear what to say or do next.

“I am sorry, Marie.” Came Mina’s voice as she approached outside. “I was not thinking.”
“That’s unlike you!” I shouted out to her, keeping my eyes on Maigan. “What’s the matter?”
“All of this.” She said, as she walked through the open airlock. “I do not know if I can handle it for much lon…” She saw Maigan’s almighty smile in the electric dark behind me. I heard the sudden end of her breath.
“It’s all right, Mina.” I said to her.
“No! It is really not!” She shouted, shaking. And then she left. She stormed right back outside again.

I wanted to chase after her, and maybe grab her in a hug. Mina was her own harshest critic. Sometimes she’d forget how to forgive herself. But here I was, eye to eye with our unexpected guest.

“Well, Maigan.” I knocked on our ship’s reverberating hull. “Deski Bee.” Bee is its name.
“Bee?” She said. And turned right around on the spot to take in the cramped cockpit panorama of all our computers.
“I’ve a feeling you’re going to get along well.”

Touching down, Marie meets Maigan face to face.

“We should touch down now.” Said Mina, leaning over the back of my chair. “Before our visitors try to find their way inside.”
“Good idea.” I concurred. “Do you want to do it or should I?”

If there was anyone you could truly count on, it was Mina. She was terrific at staying focused and keeping cool, even out here in a strange old world we never thought we’d find. But something unnerved her this time.

“Oh, yes. Right.” She laughed, and returned to the empty pilot’s seat. Tani joined her up front, where Maitel had been, tiny in her chair. She watched every action of Mina’s at the flight controls, up on the window, until something made her sit bolt upright.
“That’s the ground below.” I explained as Mina pulled up a visual on our nadir.
“Then why is it out there?” Tani demanded, waving her hand at the projection.
“It’s just an image. We can move it wherever we want.” I said as Mina indulged her and pushed it to her side.
“You make down go up. You move chairs above the sky. But still you can’t even fly?” She declared. “Humani!”
“You must teach me how someday.”

Mina slowly took us down, while Maigan and her coterie watched from right outside. Bee’s gentle sway seemed to both surprise amuse them, as Mina picked our spot. I worried a little, remembering what Ganaks could do to our little lander without the least ado.

“Say, where is he anyway?”
“Quiet, Marie, please. I am trying to set down precisely between the trees.”

Right enough, around the tower lay a rather picturesque garden of trees and stones and flowers. The one thing it didn’t have was a lawn.

“Let’s hope it’s not some sort of Zen thing they have going on here!” I joked, not exactly to her amusement.
“Zen?!” Shrieked Tani. “Out here?”
“Probably not the same word you’re thinking.” I shrugged. “Whatever that is.”
“Less philosophy. More shutting up!” Mina commanded.

Bee did fit. Just about. Little stones scattered as Mina squeezed us in between the leafy swirls. We touched down ever so gently, but with quite a crunch nonetheless. Bee’s feet were meant for hugging barren desert terrain, not being delicate with colour coded gravel.

“Shutting down.” Mina declared while going through procedure.
“Nicely done.” I thanked her.

The last time we stepped out of Bee, right into the heart of Ayanakert, the summer heat surprised me. Kentaken, Tani’s home and our original landing site on Andala, was so much cooler. Zuba was a lot closer to the equator than anywhere we’d been before. I quite expected a blast of tropical haze when I stepped through the door.

“What temperature is it out there?”
“Good question.” She pulled up a panel of statistics on our new location. “303 Kelvin.”
“That’s, remind me?”
“Would you like it in Celsius, Fahrenheit or Electron Volts?” She grinned as I cribbed my answer from the display myself.
“Oh, summery!” I smiled. “That’s a relief.”

The women who had watched us now settled around our ship on the ground. With the engines off, I could hear them talking. That whole other language of theirs that none of us knew.

“Tani. I want you right with me. Okay?”
“Mmm.” She nodded earnestly, with bitten lip. “Azu is all around us.”
“Yes. And you don’t upset them. Right?” I bent down to whisper. “I need your protection.”
“Yes Tani.” Added Mina. “We all do.”

How our young Ana smiled.

“So, who wants to go first?” I asked, the door already unlocked in my hands.
“You are getting the knack for it.” Said Mina. “Now is Tani’s turn.”

And so out strode Tani from our ship, head held high. The light out there was fantastic. Golden, so rich, and bronze too. Her jet black hair looked almost chestnut in the glow. I watched her from the door as she marched between what looked like olive trees. She swivelled on her heels and looked back at me, aghast. Then I heard the laughter. The august college of the Azu thought her perfectly hilarious.

“So much for that idea.” Sighed Mina. “Hold the fort.” I told her and ventured out myself.

Tani bit her tongue, I’ll give her credit, as the Azu ladies laughed around her. Even Maitel grinned, but didn’t say a word. They were all Tani’s senior, most much so, and I suppose the last being they expected to come out of so alien a vessel was an uppity Ana girl. Their cries, which neither of us could understand, masked my approach. Only when I was out in the open, did Tani point them to me.

That shut them up all right.

We stood in stunned silence for a moment. Tani gleaming, and Maitel the only one watching anybody else’s eyes. I looked at them all in turn. Boy, were they taken aback. Then I came to the lady in white. She didn’t have shock in her stare, but some other piercing thing.

“Tani. Stay still now.” I told her as the woman rushed to me, without once setting foot upon stone.
“Marie?” She welped, but did as I said.

The lady stopped right before my face, uncomfortably close. In one motion, she wrapped her left arm around behind me and put her right hand over my nose. She nudged me side to side, staring deep into my eyes.

“You must be Maigan.”
“Maigan?” She muttered in a gravelly, distracted voice. What she was really thinking about was the skin around my eyes. Our difference in appearance absolutely consumed her.
“I am Marie. Ma-Ree.” I said, while she continued pushing me around. She wasn’t rough, really, but less delicate than any other Andalan who’d grabbed my face. Of which there had been a few.
“Marie.” She mumbled, dreamily. Then, interest served, she pulled her head back to look at my whole face. “Marie?”
“Yes!” I nodded, and forced a cosy smile. She did still have a grip behind my ears.

Maitel was right by me, too. Really close, in fact. Something like a dentist’s assistant, you could say. Maigan had been so intensely in my face I didn’t even notice. They exchanged a few words, and without breaking eye contact, Maigan called to Tani.

“Tani hata stera takaytara?” Tani knows their alien language?
“Maigan hata stera Anatara?” I interrupted. Maigan knows Anatara?

Maigan curled her great eyebrows in inquisitive wonder. And tilted her own head to the other side, as she had done to mine.

“Marie stera Anatara. Maigan stera Anatara. Marie stera Maigan!” She smiled, and I knew there and then that we would get along just fine.