Sarai, стр. 19

“All right,Alekyn-sar…Jamie. I will show you how to use an e-tab and then youcan look at more of the pretty starcharts.”

Score!

“I’d lovethat,” Jamie smiled at him disingenuously, hoping Bram hadn’t seenthe flash of triumph he’d immediately felt at the Naferi’s words.“Are you sure though?”

Bram sighed.“I said so, Jamie. Although,” he added a trifle testily. “It istaking me away from my studies.”

What a shame. Not.

“Well, ifyou show me how to use the e-tab, I’ll sit here nice and quietwhile you do your work. I’m sure Alekyn won’t mind — he’ll just behappy I’m happy.”

That seemedto clinch the deal. Bram immediately brightened. “Indeed. As longas you’re quiet like a good sarai, I can get on with myresearch.”

Jamie gritted his teeth. This sex-slavemalarkey was getting old fast.

“I promiseyou,” he said, radiating a sincerity he hoped wasn’t obviouslyfalse. “I’ll be as good as gold.”

Bram lookedconfused again. “Gold? It is a metal. It cannot be good. To begood, it must be sentient and that is not possible for anon-sentient thing, Jamie.”

“Huh, no,”Jamie shook his head. “It’s just a saying. It means that gold isreal, not counterfeit. It’s a simile …”

Incomprehension etched its scanty trail on Bram’s face. Ohhell. Jamie tried again. “I mean I’ll behave properly.”

Bramharrumphed. “I suppose it will be all right. As long as you sitthere quietly and behave as good as gold, that will befine.”

Sucks to be you, thought Jamie,and smiled sweetly at the Naferi, who unexpectedlyblushed.

An hourlater, Jamie was curled up on the couch, flicking the e-tab andcasually commenting on the holograms that popped up. Bramoccasionally off-handedly responded to his comments, seeminglywithout realizing he was being pumped for information — or atleast, that the information he was giving Jamie could be used foranything other than momentarily alleviating the boredom of someonehe evidently thought had the attention span of a fractioustoddler.

Starchartafter starchart appeared, floating in the space in front of him.Beautiful, but nothing of any use to him. He was just about to askBram to find him something else to look at — possibly a primer tohelp him read Naferi, he grumbled to himself — when somethingremarkable happened.

At first hedidn’t realize what it was. He just flicked his fingersautomatically across the screen, staring at the pretty patterns asthey formed in the air. Then his brain caught up with his hands,and he reversed the movement.

There itwas. He stared at it, amazed, hope rising in his heart and mind,forgetting to breathe. Then he forced himself to calm down, andsucked in a deep breath, feeling air teasing his nostrils andspuming down his trachea, filling his lungs and making his heartresume its pumping.

It wasn’tpossible, was it? He couldn’t possibly be seeing what he thought hewas seeing. He looked more closely, and then squeaked, quiteaudibly.

It was.

He tried notto shout his excitement aloud. It bloody was.

Among allthe hundreds of star systems — all the unlikely combinations ofbillions of stars — there was one he recognized.

He looked atthe e-tab screen and hissed softly, frustrated. Of course hecouldn’t read anything, no handy keyword or url — he wouldn’t evenbe able to find this screen again if he logged out.

“What is it,Alekyn-sarai?”

“Jamie,” hecorrected automatically, his eyes still locked on theconstellation. “I know this constellation.”

He tracedthe pattern in the air with a shaking finger. “It’s Cygnis — look,there’s Deneb, the tail of the Swan, and Albireo, the Swan’shead.”

Bram didn’tseem all that impressed. “I do not see this swan you speak of,Jamie, but the names are interesting.”

Jamiedropped his hand and turned around to face him. The names? Hefrowned, his excitement momentarily forgotten. “What do youmean?”

The Naferistudied the hologram, this time more interested. “The star you callDeneb is called Denet in the language of the Foretimer, while theother — Albireo — is known as Albinea — ”

“Closeenough to be the same thing,” Jamie shook his head. “This isn’t acoincidence.”

Bramshrugged. “Probably not. Again, a xenolinguist could help you withthat, but it really means very little.”

Jamie staredat him. “Why not? This constellation appears in the night sky athome, except…except it’s reversed, but it’s the same thing, withalmost the same names. It’s like a gigantic signpost.”

“For whom?”Bram snorted with amusement. “We already know where we are, andwhere your planet is.”

Jamie’sshoulders slumped. Yeah, they knew exactly where Earth was, and howto get to it.

The troublewas he didn’t, and without understanding how to read theirlanguage, he didn’t stand a chance of finding his way back home,not unless Alekyn kept his promise.

It wasdepressing. He felt tears filling his eyes and caught himself inamazement. Was he about to cry again? Jesus, what was happening tohim? Maybe Alekyn was right — maybe it was hormones. Maybe hisbody was changing …

He shookhimself mentally. Nah, he wasn’t drinking that particular Kool Aid.The Naferi might well be more scientifically advanced than humansin lots of ways, but they couldn’t change his gender like that.Biology was what biology was, and the male pregnancy trope didn’tapply to humankind, no matter what the Naferi believed.

“I stillthink it’s very interesting,” he said defensively. “The similarityof the names suggests those whatchamacallits…thoseForetimer knew Earth, or at least visited it and left some of theirlanguage behind, or maybe vice versa.”

Anothersnort. He glared at Bram. “Laugh all you want. I bet one of yourxenolinguists would find it fascinating. I know those on Earth —linguists, I mean, I don’t think we have xenolinguists.”

“Yes, youdo,” Bram supplied almost casually. “We’ve been analyzing thecontents of your species” planet-wide compnet and it has somereferences to extraterrestrial languages. Although,” he addedsmiling, “Xenolinguistics was described as a hypothetical subjectsince no-one on your planet has ever spoken with anextraterrestrial.”

“Yeah, well,I bet that’s changed in the last few days.”