Fool Me Once...
Datak
Every day after work at the diner, Christie McCawley Tarr sat at the desk in her room to study Castithan.
Today, things weren't going well with that.
It wasn't that Castithan had too many words or that it had too many complicated rules of grammar. In fact, there were only four rules of grammar in Castithan. And that was actually the problem.
How could four rules explain the structure of an entire language?
Christie had taken two whole weeks to master the first rule. And that had been a fairly intuitive one about subjects and verbs and everything poetically agreeing. But the second…and the other two of them...
2-Never Place something immediately Before something that obviously isn't meant to come After.
How could Christie begin to interpret that? That was a useless rule. Knowing it wouldn't help her learn to talk. It puzzled her to no end. The vague examples in her primer weren't helping either.
She closed her eyes for a moment, dropping the stylus in her hand to momentarily place her head in her hands. Her mind was swimming with Castithan words and phrases she had been memorizing from this week's vocabulary set.
The second rule of Castithan grammar was making that worse, she thought. It was so vague and self-evident, it basically meant nothing. It wasn't a rule of grammar…Christie couldn't see that.
She wished Alak came home soon, so he could explain it to her. Not that his explanations would make better sense than the few examples she already had. She also wished he would come home because he wouldn't want her to study...because after leaning over her at the desk and explaining the rule as best he could, he would tell her to forget it, since…well, he was home and he'd want her to do something else then.
And she wished he would come home because she felt awkward being in the house without him.
That was true even though she had lived with the Tarrs since before the wedding. And she thought, before deciding to skip rule 2 and move on to rule 3, about asking Alak when it would be appropriate – considering both Castithan AND Old Earth culture as he had promised her they would – for them to get their own place in Defiance.
It was a twenty-minute walk from either of their parents if they got something near the Arch, and that seemed like more than Christie could have expected in any situation.
Christie heard the bell outside her door. It was probably one of the lower-caste servants, perhaps bringing her a afternoon snack. Stahma sometimes sent the servants, but Stahma herself would never have rung.
"Come in…" Christie called, turning to see Datak enter and stand just inside the door looking rather awkward himself.
He had one hand in his pocket, and was holding something like a small pouch in the other one.
"I trust I'm not disturbing you," he said.
"Oh…um…it's okay," Christie said from her chair.
"You're in the middle of your studies…" he said.
"Just some grammar." Christie braced herself mentally and glanced at the primer once more before sliding it across the desk and getting up to face him.
3- It is Grace that makes the grammar Master.
(Another non-grammar rule, she noticed. That wasn't so much a rule of language as a question of behavior…wasn't it?)
Christie approached Datak just slightly. She waited for him to continue rather than speaking. She wasn't sure what to expect, but had become surprisingly well accustomed to lots of speeches from Datak.
In fact, Christie was sure just then, she had become really very good at letting his complaints about her not behaving like a "proper Castithan wife" roll off her back.
Christie was proud that she was so good at handling his constant insults, but it was partly Alak that helped her do that. When he seriously talked about them building a new world together and when his lips were on her skin and when his constant obsession over Old Earth rockabilly records made her laugh, he augmented the strength of Christie's New Earth upbringing so that she could keep from breaking under this constant weight of pressure.
Pressure to speak Castithan well. Pressure to be a Castithan wife. Pressure to conform to every single ridiculous, absurd bit of Casti's otherwise dead cultural practice.
"You had something to say?" Christie finally came back to Datak, and she realized he hadn't spoken yet.
"Actually, I brought you something. He held the pouch up to her without moving her direction, so Christie approached slowly and took it from his hand.
"You see," Datak told her before she knew what was inside. "Castithan patriarchs often give their daughters gifts for pleasing his son. Alak is happy. So it's only proper that I recognize that you've done well fulfilling your duties to him."
Christie's face flushed but she didn't say anything, responding only by pouring the pouch's contents out into her hand.
It was an oval lockheart. It was tarnished…
And it hung on nothing other than a wrist-length rope of market-common woven threads.
"It's…It's really beautiful," she managed to sputter out in shock. "But where did it come from?"
"It's an antique, of course." Datak said. "A miner appears to have sold it to an Irathient peddler. Which turned out to be rather fortunate since he owed me something…Thought I suppose one might consider that unfortunate, too…depending on which side of the transaction one was on when it happened."
Datak thought she seemed genuinely pleased, determined from the way she held the lockheart in palm as though it were a baby bird or egg. A clear indication of success…Not that birds still existed anymore, that he was aware. Not in Defiance and not in the badlands.
Old Earth items like that weren't so often found for sale. Like the St. Finnegan charm Kenya always wore around her neck. They were held onto closely, or used by Irathients and others to secretly hold large values or to pay off debts.
"Stahma selected the cord for me," Datak matched Christie's step towards him, indicating the piece of rope snaking through the loockheart's link with his hand. "As a woman, she has better eyes for spotting a truly Castithan-quality weave. Of course, it was gray at first, but I knew that wouldn't do."
"It wouldn't?" Christie asked.
Datak's face was full of self-pleasure.
"I painted it black. I know how you don't like normal things."
He didn't mean painted. He meant dyed, but if grace was a principle of speech now probably wasn't the time to say that.
"Thank you," was all Christie said.
She ran the nail of her thumb along the etched-in markings on its top. Was it in her head that they looked like a curly P and a half-erased M?
And she still wondered slightly about the lockheart's origin. If it came from the mine...her father's rules should have prevented it being sold like that. Technically, mining artifacts belonged to Rafe, who determined on a case-by-case basis what happened to them.
But it probably wasn't odd to think the poorer miners pocketed things. Whether Datak's story was meant as an implication…that was more difficult to judge. Christie's eyes narrowed slightly, but she found it worthless to be rude by assuming Datak knew that or continuing to ask questions.
"I learned from the Irathient," Datak continued as though Christie might not know, and pulling her back to the immediate conversation, "that it was the custom for lovers to put pictures in the compartment of a lockheart.
Christie nodded. Of course Datak didn't know what a lockheart was. But it also wasn't the time to say that either. She opened the lockheart to see what was inside, trying not to make the moment more awkward than it was. There was nothing in the lockheart but a smidgeon of leftover sticking tack.
It was Datak who made both of them uncomfortable, by putting his arm around her side and pulling her in to hug him.
"I thought you could put a picture of Alak in it, so I told him to get one today as part of my gift to you, since they are so expensive to print."
Christie's body unstiffened just slightly when he said that.
But Datak could only stand to be that close to her for seconds before he removed his hand and stepped just far enough back.
That kind of touching, Datak had noticed, was frequent between Christie and her father Rafe. And he was quite certain he had correctly assumed it an appropriate gesture.
Christie certainly hadn't recoiled. An indication of success in his assumption. Or fear on her part…which really, he smiled inside, also meant success.
But it was a strangely repulsive way for a Tarr to treat his son's wife. It was too…comfortable. How did humans live with such chaotic signals about familial duty and standing? Women of the house were only meant to be seen…not subjected to confusion over their primary loyalties with overly open and affectionate touching. It wasn't honorable, strictly speaking.
Alak wouldn't think anything of it, of course, but he would have objected strongly if he were anything close to a true Tarr or a strong Castithan husband.
Christie should complain to Alak, Datak thought as he watched her finger the lockheart and worked to hold back something like a cringe over the thoughts in his head…
Christie's coloring was common for humans even in Defiance but Datak still found it close to Kenya's at the Need-Want in a way that more than unnerved him.
If Christie knew what was best, she should demand that Alak defend her dignity from these kind of behind-his-back shows of physical affection. And for Christie to encourage Alak's manhood…now that would have been much more than Datak or Stahma could hope to get from this gift.
"I can also get one of Stahma and myself, if you want one for the other side," Datak added.
"No! That's okay…I mean, I'll put something else in it that reminds me of Alak."
Christie's response surprised her, first of all because she tried to avoid as many problems as she could with her new family. But she was also surprised at her sudden outburst because she felt…well, it seemed odd, the way Christie was beginning to process the event.
She smiled before closing the lockheart tight and placing it in its pouch again.
This was a new kind of exchange between her and Datak. Christie was sure they had never had a conversation before where he had recognized her efforts to learn about the history of Casti or Castithan ways of being and behaving. Let alone recognizing her partial success.
"Of course," Datak said. "You're right. That would be best. I'll leave you then. I trust Castithan grammar isn't giving you grief. It's really quite simple, if one has the intelligence and breeding that make one capable of understanding it."
It was odd that he had given her the gift. It was odd that he had come in at all. And it was also odd, that for once in his own proud way, Datak had managed to make Christie feel not so bad.
He made her feel…almost as though she could someday be wanted. Not just by Alak, but by the whole Defiance-bound Casti clan. He made her think that one day, she might actually be more than just a glorified guest in his home.
That day probably wouldn't be soon. It probably wouldn't be the day, Christie thought – since she wished it could come tomorrow – when she and Alak got a place of their own.
But it could be the day she bore Datak's first grandchild. Or maybe even further in the future, when their children married other half-human half-Castithans or maybe even the half-bloods of settled Irathients.
Christie wasn't really practically envisioning it. But with the lockheart in her hand she might vaguely be able to imagine…and if Rafe's tiny collection of Tor classics was worth anything on New Earth, it was in proving that one never knew when something otherwise imagined might actually happen.
Datak turned to go, and Christie moved back to her desk and pulling the primer before her again.
4- If necessary for 2 and 3, Circumlocution is grammatically correct but it also always Eloquent.
"Datak," Christie called sharply before he walked out her door. "What would be a good Castithan way for a daughter-in-law to thank her husband's father for a present?"
Datak's lips were curled when he looked back.
"Why, Christie," he said. "I will hear your thanks every time I am awoken by my son screaming in delight.
Christie blushed crimson but kept herself from getting light-headed. Just this once.
"But as the head of the Tarr household," Datak turned to really leave. At last. "I will ask one other thing. Only a small token, and only because you asked what a Castithan daughter would have done. So for my sake, and my wife's, and as a show of affection for your husband…for Alak…"
Christie maintained composure but breathed in barely a very shallow breath. Datak wasn't paying her a compliment, she knew then. He didn't think she was good for Alak.
It suffocated her after everything – suddenly seeing why the lockheart was in her hand and the irrefutable insistence she already heard in the words that had to be coming next.
"I expect that you WILL join us tonight. Finally…for our usual bath."