Ibyabek Read online

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  The party was opulent. Kyeo had trouble at first taking in the details of the food and decor, as though really it were all a smear that a dreaming mind had labeled “rich, elaborate, luxurious”. But after a moment to breathe, trailing his father up the carpeted stairs, the colors on the upper floor started to resolve themselves into plates of stuffed mushrooms and deviled eggs carried by silently gliding waiters. The statuary, at intervals around the railing that prevented people from pitching off the huge balcony to the ground floor, was clarified as marble abstracts here, larger-than-life sculptures of the Glorious Leader there, wire trees with stone leaves and fruits across the room. Plaques labeled them as gifts to the Glorious Leader from celebrated offplanet artists, in some cases, or the magnum opus of one of the great creative minds on Ibyabek. Kyeo smoothed the long heavy sleeves of the outfit his father had lent him, but couldn’t keep all the wrinkles from coming back across the dark blue and burgundy whenever he bent his arm.

  The atmosphere was smoky, where it wasn’t perfumed; it was more conspicuous the deeper they waded into the party. Clusters of men stood with their feet sinking deep into the carpet, puffing cigarettes and making small talk; others sat at chairs that at least looked like blue-upholstered solid gold. Women stood out, wearing paler colors than the dark masculine ones (sky blue instead of navy, pink rather than deep red, and so on). The women were mostly around Kyeo’s age or a little older - Morale Corps girls, all in the same cut of dress though the fabrics differed. They leaned towards men they were chatting with, trailing their fingers along their arms. Kyeo didn’t have to deal with any of those, he expected - he wasn’t important enough for them to approach him. There were also a couple of older women; most people didn’t bring their wives to these parties, so Kyeo scanned for pastels, looking for a foreign face that might indicate the Ambassador’s wife and, presumably, their son nearby.

  There she was; and there he was, if Kyeo didn’t miss his guess. Umi Peng, wearing canary yellow, was darker-skinned than the Ibyabekans in the room. Not dark enough that she couldn’t simply have come straight off a farming rotation, but of course no one at the party had been on a farming rotation in years if that. Sarham (Kyeo presumed) was standing at her elbow. Just a couple inches taller than she was, Sarham wasn’t much lighter than his mother, though he looked it since he was wearing black. Kyeo didn’t see anyone who was obviously the Ambassador.

  “I think I see him,” Kyeo murmured to Suor.

  “Good. Do you need to be introduced?”

  “It would help.”

  So Suor went toward the ambassadorial wife and child with Kyeo. The two were whispering to each other and didn’t notice they were being approached until Kyeo had come to a stop within arm’s length of Sarham. “Mrs. Peng,” said Suor, “and son, I’m Suor Sebe Luk, we spoke on the phone this morning.”

  “Yes, I remember,” confirmed Umi cordially. “And this is?”

  “My son Kyeo Sebe Luk,” said Suor, patting Kyeo firmly on the shoulder. Kyeo smiled - at Umi first, since she was the person Suor was ostensibly talking to, but then at Sarham. Sarham blinked back at him, nonplussed. “He’s a student, but he’s just begun his break from school and I brought him with me to this gathering. I thought young Sarham might like to have someone his own age showing him around the beauty of Ibyabek.”

  “Hello,” said Kyeo, unsure exactly how cheerful he was meant to sound and concerned he landed somewhere north of manic. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both. Welcome to Ibyabek.”

  “It’s been lovely so far,” said Sarham. “Though we haven’t seen much yet.”

  “I’ll be happy to show you the sights!” Kyeo said. Still too chirpy by far. There was no reason to be this excited about toting a foreigner through museums and architectural projects and escorting him to concerts and theater. How could he tone it down without making it even more conspicuous by the transition? “You’ll have to tell me what interests you most, of course, and I don’t know what other schedule of appointments you might have yet.”

  “Of course,” agreed Sarham. “But I’m excited to see whatever’s locally a must-see, of course, I wouldn’t want to insist on one thing and find out later it wasn’t what was most worth my time.”

  Kyeo smiled at him and said, “That makes sense!”, but wasn’t quite sure what to make of the statement. It occurred to him that he didn’t know how Sarham was conceptualizing his role during his time on Ibyabek. He might be what amounted to a tourist - a nonessential attachment to his father’s presence - or he might be a spy, but even if he was a spy, how did Kularans handle spying? What about his plan here was generating phrases like “worth my time” and “insist on one thing”? It was a little like he was a fairytale character of some kind. Kyeo didn’t have the slightest idea in that moment what it was like to be Sarham, the way he’d always been able to figure out more or less what it was like to be Soh or his other previous pairmates.

  Someone who Kyeo assumed had to be Sarham’s father, Ambassador Peng, sidled up to Umi and put his arm around her. “Hello there,” he said to Suor. “Is this your son who you mentioned?”

  “Yes. Kyeo, this is the ambassador, Wulaar Peng.”

  “Welcome to Ibyabek!” Kyeo said again, managing a more level tone this time. “I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  “Thank you,” said Ambassador Peng. “It’s always interesting to meet more Ibyabekans. You’re about Sarham’s age?”

  “In Earth years I’m seventeen,” said Kyeo. He usually thought of his age in Ibyabekan years, which were longer and marked him as currently thirteen, but offplanet (he had learned in school) they mostly used Earth years even when their own planets differed. As a child Kyeo had always wondered why other people didn’t use Ibyabekan years, which seemed to him to divide time into the most useful units. But of course no one was willing to so overtly acknowledge Ibyabek’s centrality to human life in general, not when they had their own egos to prop up and a pathological fascination with Earth - as though civilization hadn’t progressed since the species was trapped there. Maybe he’d teach Sarham to use Ibyabekan years. His command of the language was all right, but it might or might not have covered how to use time the way Ibyabekans did.

  “So is Sarham!” said Wulaar. “I’m glad they dug up somebody his own age so he’s not stuck in the house or following around adults all day long.”

  “I would have been fine following adults around,” opined Sarham.

  “You would have had to wait outside a lot of conference rooms,” Wulaar replied. “Some things might be sensitive, and I’d have to leave you out of things that weren’t too, for cover about the exact quantity and frequency of the sensitive stuff!” He grinned and clapped Sarham on the back. “You’ll find the museums - interesting, I’m sure. And whatever else is the current tourist stuff.”

  “All right,” said Sarham. “Uh, will I see you tomorrow morning then?”

  “Yes,” said Kyeo, after a quick glance at his father, “I’ll pick you up at your house.” He was only guessing he’d be able to get a car for the purpose; if he couldn’t he might have a long walk ahead, but he was fit enough to manage if necessary. “I can figure out an itinerary for us and we can adjust it if anything special comes to your mind.”

  Wulaar apparently considered the situation well enough under control to move on to another area of the party. Umi was still nearby, but she was distracted by speaking in a low voice to one of the Morale Corps girls who was smiling fixedly at her and shifting her weight like she wanted to escape. Suor didn’t go far, but stepped into the circle of another conversation some five feet away, and was quickly absorbed in discussing what sounded like some fine point of philosophy or possibly economics with the other important men who’d been invited to the party. Kyeo and Sarham were as alone as they were going to get while they were still at the party, and Kyeo, who had never done anything this potentially high-stakes in his life, found his heartbeat agitated with the stress of it.

  “A lot of people smoke here,” Sarham remarked after a few beats of silence.

  “Most people don’t. This is just that kind of party,” Kyeo assured him. Mostly, cigarettes of any kind - local tobacco that was supposed to be diverted for use by select individuals, or smuggled offplanet herbs and alien leaves and fancier tobacco - were contraband, traded covertly between people who wanted other contraband or money or favors, sourced from an increasingly dubious chain of lawbreakers eventually terminating in a foreign drug-runner who brought intoxicants both smokeable and otherwise from decadent worlds where they were as abundant as air. Some local tobacco was allowed, and even imported cigarettes were permitted on special occasions for people presumed to be above suspicion of any worse infraction. This was a special occasion and the people at the party were presumably all of impeccable reputation, and so could waive requirements that they be quite perfectly straitlaced in terms of what they inhaled. A worrying lapse a low-merit laborer might have to hide if he could afford it at all was practically a badge of status for those who’d achieved higher levels of recognition for their rarer contribution to Ibyabek.

  Kyeo’d never personally had a cigarette, though he knew some students in his year who smelled of it now and then, having traded this and that for their forbidden luxuries with other students, the staff at the school, or even the teachers.

  “What kind of party?” asked Sarham.

  “The kind where people smoke.”

  “Do you go to a lot of parties?”

  “Not usually ones like this with my father,” said Kyeo. “But student parties, sure, all the time.” Were any of the times Kyeo and his classmates hung out really parties? No, probably not, on reflection, it was just meals in the cafeteria, classes, work assignments. Sometimes
they amused themselves by planning things like that - “next week we can go to the restaurant on First Street, and order snails and grapefruit ices and whatever else they have, and sing along to whatever’s on the radio” - but then the next week would come and of course they’d all be on campus as they always were, with no idea whether the restaurant even allowed students or had a radio. They’d never been inside restaurants except for a couple who’d gone with their especially important fathers; Kyeo’s father was important but this had never happened to lead him to bring his family out to eat.

  “Student parties, right. Any of those going on any time soon?”

  “Well, school is on a break now, so we’re not convenient to our classmates,” Kyeo explained. “I don’t know if you will be here that long, and I will stay with you if you are, anyway.”

  “Won’t you fall behind?” Sarham asked.

  “I can catch up,” said Kyeo. “Don’t worry about it.” Kyeo was not exactly unconcerned about that, but his father and the school would work something out, even if it wasn’t maximally convenient, and it would be embarrassingly immature to complain about having to do extra studying or falling back half a year.

  “If you say so,” said Sarham. “What are you studying in school?”

  “The same things as everyone else,” said Kyeo. “I’m going to go into the military.”

  Sarham seemed to repress a wince. He said nothing for a long, uncomfortable moment, and then Kyeo said, “I suppose you go to school too.”

  “Yes,” Sarham said, “sometimes. Other times I have tutors, if we’re moving too much or if I’m trying to learn something very fast.”

  “Something like what?”

  “I had to learn So- I had to learn Ibyabekan to come here,” said Sarham. Kyeo knew he’d been about to say “Sohaibekan”, since they still spoke the same language on Outer Sohaibek, with which Ibyabek had once been unified until they’d rebelled against the modern order. Reportedly, lots of people called Ibyabek “Inner Sohaibek”, even though it was disrespectful to call their planet anything other than what their first Glorious Leader had named it.

  Kyeo shrugged it off; Sarham had caught himself before fully delivering the insult. “Your accent is pretty good.”

  “Thanks. My tutor -” Sarham stopped, mouth partly open, then gracelessly didn’t finish whatever he’d been going to say about his tutor. Even if it were sensitive information somehow, couldn’t he have made something up? This left an odd hole in the conversation.

  Attempting to fill the hole, Kyeo said, “Do you want to go sit down?”

  “Can we sit on the floor? I think it might be less smoky.”

  Kyeo… wasn’t sure if they could sit on the floor. No one else was doing it, but allowances were made for young people, sometimes. Was this one of those times? He had no idea, and he would look ridiculous asking his father, and worse if he said it was fine and it wasn’t after all. “No,” he said confidently, “but we can go downstairs and find some benches there to sit on instead, that will be even better.” He took the end of Sarham’s sleeve in his hand, noted Sarham’s noise of unprotesting surprise, and wove between Morale Corps girls and ranking political movers and shakers to the staircase.

  There were benches down there; Kyeo picked one and released Sarham’s sleeve to sit down on it. “Better?”

  “Lots. People don’t smoke on United Kular planets, or hardly at all.”

  “Do you go to parties like this there?” wondered Kyeo, because people hardly smoked at all on Ibyabek either, and you’d miss most of it if you lived on a farm or something.

  “Once or twice. Not often. I wasn’t old enough for Dad to start taking me along to functions till recently.”

  The word “Dad” must have been something they said on Outer Sohaibek; Kyeo could figure out what it meant from context and its relation to the word babies called their fathers, but was otherwise unfamiliar with it. Kyeo had called his father “pada” until he’d been old enough to pronounce the fully formalized version. “Me either,” said Kyeo.

  “What does your dad do exactly?”

  Kyeo was on a need to know basis about that, and didn’t need to know, so he invented. “He’s Glorious Leader’s subordinate - a couple levels down, you understand, not direct, but I haven’t met his immediate boss - in the department of foreign relations and trade.”

  “Wow,” said Sarham. “My father didn’t use to be an ambassador. I can remember when he was an interpreter in somebody else’s office handling visa stuff and -” Sarham hesitated. “- and passport stuff,” he concluded, which seemed lame enough to not have likely been what he’d tripped over. “Just as much travel and we didn’t stay in nearly as nice hotels.”

  Kyeo almost asked if the Ibyabekan house Sarham was staying in was as nice as foreign hotels. But framing it that way made it sound like he expected it to be worse, when of course Ibyabek could pamper an ambassador better than anybody except insofar as Ibyabek wasn’t going to let people starve or die of untreated injuries or anything to spare extra cash for pointless luxuries, and maybe Sarham would have preferred the pointless luxuries version of the house even if a peasant somewhere missed out on government services they needed as a result of the misappropriation of funds.

  Kyeo followed this train of thought long enough to pause noticeably and Sarham said of his own accord, “The house we have here is nice. It’s roomy.”

  “Roomy?”

  “I’m used to cities.”

  “This is a city.”

  “I mean I’m used to apartments,” said Sarham. He said it a bit haltingly, like he’d suddenly lost some of his fluency in Ibyabekan. Or maybe, somehow, there was some sort of secret related to Sarham’s history of living in apartments that he was supposed to keep a secret for some reason, but Kyeo couldn’t imagine what it might be. Kyeo let it go. He wasn’t supposed to be a particularly aggressive spy, was his understanding, just an opportunistic one if he happened to have an opportunity to get Sarham drunk or piece together non-drunk careless remarks.

  “Most everyone in Ibyabek lives in a house,” Kyeo said, “because we’re a rich planet -”

  Sarham made a cough-like noise.

  “Are you okay?” Kyeo asked.

  “I’m fine. Go on.”

  “- but some people have apartments too if they need an extra residence because they travel a lot for work,” Kyeo finished, knitting his brow. Were all his conversations with Sarham going to be like this? “A pairmate I had in school sometimes lived in one, in Peninsula City, when his father brought his family along for longer business trips there. I went once,” he added, so it wouldn’t seem like hearsay; he was quite confident the apartment existed, but it didn’t sound very convincing if he were just repeating a classmate’s assertion.

  “Oh, what was it like?” asked Sarham.

  This seemed pretty rude to Kyeo, like Sarham was trying to make it really obvious that Kyeo hadn’t been there at all, but maybe people were rude as a matter of habit on United Kular planets. Kyeo took a breath and replied, “Oh, it was lovely, but you probably got a look at it yourself on your shuttle flight down.”

  “We flew by the peninsula, yeah.” There was a pause. “I bet the view of the night sky is incredible on Ibyabek.”

  “It is!” said Kyeo. “If we let my father know we can probably go out and have a look, it should be dark now.”

  “Sure,” said Sarham, grinning broadly, and Kyeo was relieved that he’d found a conversation topic that got a smile instead of odd pauses.

  Kyeo jogged up the stairs, glancing down every few steps to see if Sarham was trying to wander off unsupervised but finding him every time sitting patiently on the bench, and found Suor in the social tangle talking to a film director and a general. Kyeo had to wait, trying not to rock back and forth between his heels and his toes, for a few minutes before there was enough of a break in the discussion of an incipient hurricane for his father to acknowledge him.

  “What is it?” Suor asked. “Where’s the ambassador’s boy?”

  “Downstairs.” Kyeo didn’t elaborate that he hadn’t cared for the smoke; all three men had cigarettes lit at the moment. “He’s not going anywhere. Can we go outside to look at the stars? They don’t have a good view on his planet.”