Isabel

Aliens did not make Isabel uncomfortable. In her youth – a period of her life she was sure her grandkids didn’t truly believe had taken place – she’d spent three standards hopping tunnels, crashing in spaceport hostels, gobbling up every strange sky and unknown city until homesickness finally won the day. She’d bunked with a Laru for one leg of a trip, become the drinking buddy of a quartet of Aandrisks on another. That was a long time ago, to be sure, but she’d had contact with aliens since – merchants, mostly, when she ordered something special for import. But in recent years, she’d found herself in the odd, delightful position of being a person of interest to certain individuals from the Reskit Institute of Interstellar Migration. The Exodus Fleet had drifted back into academic fashion, and, as the head archivist of the Asteria, Isabel did not have to ask why they’d sought her out. Every homesteader had its Archives and archivists, but Isabel was the current oldest of her profession, and even among aliens, that counted for something.

She was biased, of course, having worked in the Archives for most of her adult life, but the files she kept watch over were nothing short of magic. The first Exodans had crammed old-timey server racks full to bursting with records of Earth and personal stories, and every generation since had added to their work. What is it you’re looking for? she asked anyone who made the trip to the spiralling chamber of data nodes (the server racks had been retired well before her time). Art? Literature? Family history? Earthen history? Earthen life? Whatever topic you needed, if Humans deemed it worth remembering, the Archives kept it safe.

Her life spent in service to the past was why she now found herself doing a rather-out-of-the-ordinary task, something other than helping students or doing node maintenance or conducting record ceremonies. Today, she was meeting with an alien, and as transgalactic as her correspondence was, it had been a long time since she’d shared a room with one.

Ghuh’loloan had come straight from the shuttledocks to the Archives, and given what Isabel knew of her, she doubted she’d checked into her guest quarters yet. The Harmagian was the most enthusiastic of Isabel’s Reskit Institute pen pals, and they’d been friendly colleagues for years. But this was their first time meeting in person, and, as was to be expected, Isabel found herself reconciling the person she knew from letters with the person now sitting before her. The dog-sized, speckled-yellow, wet-skinned person, lying legless on a motorised cart, with no feet and no bones and no real shape at all until you got to the wreath of grasping tentacles and smaller tendrils centred around a toothless maw, crowned with a pair of retracting eyestalks that made Isabel stare despite her best efforts.

Stars, it really had been a long time.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you at the dock,’ Isabel said. ‘Today’s ceremony took a long time to clear out.’ They were in her office now, at her meeting table, away from the towering technology and busy staff. Well, ostensibly busy. Isabel had seen more than a few of her peers undertaking tasks of dubious value that steered them conveniently past her office windows. Everyone wanted a glimpse of the visitor.

Ghuh’loloan flexed her facial dactyli. Isabel knew Harmagian facial gestures were important communicative cues, but they were lost on her. She could follow only her colleague’s words, which dripped with a deliciously-burred accent. ‘Nonsense,’ Ghuh’loloan said. ‘You have work, and I am the one disrupting it! I feel nothing but joy in sharing your company, for however much time you can spare.’

Harmagians, Isabel knew, had a tendency to lay it on thick. ‘I’m looking forward to working together as well. Was your journey all right?’

‘Yes, yes, entirely adequate. I’ve had better, but then, I’ve had plenty worse.’ Ghuh’loloan laughed with a wavering coo. Her eyestalks studied something. ‘Do you have trouble understanding me?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘But then—’ Ghuh’loloan pointed a tentacle toward Isabel’s face.

It took Isabel a moment to understand. ‘Oh,’ she chuckled, removing her hud. A faint border disappeared from her field of vision, an edge she barely noticed until it was gone. ‘Sorry, I’m so used to having it on I often forget to take it off. I’ve even worn it to sleep, once or twice.’

‘Ah,’ Ghuh’loloan said. ‘For filing, then, not translating?’

‘For everything, really,’ Isabel said, looking at the clear lens set in a well-worn frame. ‘It’s much faster than my scrib, and it keeps my hands free.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Ghuh’loloan said in a good-humoured tone. She pointed at her delicate, swaying eyes, incapable of wearing Isabel’s favoured gadget. ‘But it sounds very useful.’

Isabel smiled. ‘Well, I envy that a bit,’ she said, nodding at Ghuh’loloan’s cart. ‘My knees aren’t what they used to be.’

‘I wouldn’t know about knees, either.’

They both laughed. ‘Would you like something to drink?’ Isabel asked.

‘Mek, if you have it.’

Isabel knew that she did, as the other archivists hadn’t rioted. ‘You take it cold, I assume?’ She’d learned to do a Harmagian-style flash cold brew in the tenday before her colleague arrived.

But Isabel’s new skill was to be untested. ‘I do,’ Ghuh’loloan said, ‘but if I wanted cold mek, I would’ve stayed home. Please, make it for me as you’d make it for yourself.’ She paused. ‘Although, perhaps not too hot.’