Chapter 31. Your Golden Palomino Boy
Your Golden Palomino Boy
The Oreanian scout vessel rose back into the air, and just as before with the arrival of Joanni, and just as with the ravens she had released during the clesig ceremony, curved up and away from those left on the ground, soaring into the dark sky.
The Eridanus’ captain had been brought to the surface of Oreana by the same pilot who transported Joanni there, but he was escorted by a different guide, one certainly not as talkative as Xaeter had been with her passenger. In fact, although Chipman asked his guide several questions, she had barely answered him. This was partly due to the language barrier, although small translation devices were worn by both of them, but also due to a simple lack of curiosity on her part about her “cargo”—she was as interested in him as she was in the packet of foodstuffs and water Chipman had brought with him for Joanni.
Chipman was left by his guide just outside the grounds of the Oreanian Cultural Arts Hall. After a few moments, through the dusky air, he could make out a creature coming toward him, gracefully leaping over the occasional puddle, and he strode forward to meet her, walking fairly forcefully across the burgundy surface. (It served him well that he had been an avid skier in his younger years on Earth, and so, knew instinctively not to lock his knees.) His aspect seemed strange and unsettling to the Primora: strong, direct, not easily dismissed; his full masculinity striking in its intensity due in part to its appearance where it was normally absent.
Over time, Tom Chipman had developed a gnawing dislike for this planet and its inhabitants with their arrogance and ignorance, but he greeted the Primora graciously, making a small bow. Mentally, he refused to back down from his own mission objectives while at the same time recognizing his growing lack of objectivity. Both the captain and the Primora spoke into small translating devices which hung around their necks when not in use. Chipman asked several questions, some answered by the Primora, some not. At one point, as they walked toward the Hall, he asked about Oreana’s men and boys, whom he had never seen.
Men and boys lived among themselves in several widely dispersed districts, the Primora explained, mostly left alone to develop and electrify these areas; later they were relocated to other regions to do the same there. (The planet was sparsely populated, with desolate areas of vouronium outcroppings, oceanic in scope.) Boys choirs were the exception; they traveled and entertained in various troupes, the best singers eventually promoted to choir directors.
“So boys are raised by their fathers, not their mothers?” Chipman asked her. The Primora looked as though she didn’t understand. “Don’t mothers care for their sons?” he tried again.
“They do not inspire love like our girls. No.” The Primora did not like this line of interrogation and began to regret her weakness in allowing Joanni to persuade her into letting this captain come down to harass her. She took up the small bell attached to the ribbon-like material around her waist and rang it smartly. Its peal carried throughout the front grounds. “Joanni N. will be waiting for you by the third statue to your left. You’ve been granted a quartet of time intervals [roughly twenty Earth minutes], then I’ll return.”
Chipman kept his eyes focused on the increasing number of puddles as he made his way to the third structure of twisted forms. When he finally looked up, he saw a woman in Oreanian dress gazing off into the distance, one hand resting lightly on the sculpture’s glassy surface. He first pegged her as a native due to the haughty air about her—another intermediary—but realized with a spasm of emotion that it was Joanni. She turned and looked at him with her dark, expressionless contact eyes and silently held out her hand.
“Do I smell french fries?” the captain quipped softly, coming up and standing quite close to her. Joanni smiled weakly at this lame opening. He handed her the package of food packets.
“Thank you. I’m starving.” They looked into each others’ eyes, trying to give and receive any additional meaning that might exist behind Joanni’s words, but it was difficult to discern much in the semidarkness with their blank gaze. He took her hand in his, but didn’t kiss her as he didn’t know if they were being watched, and if so, how such an act would be taken. There was a vagueness about the entire encounter and Chipman liked facts.
“You look pretty in that getup,” he told her.
‘Was he being sarcastic?’ she wondered silently. She turned around so he could see her back, which miraculously (or not), had sprouted a tiny pair of wings. “It’s all gypsum and gossamer string,” she assured him.
They walked around the grounds a little and fell into awkward silences. So different than in the recent past, when they would relax together in one or the other’s quarters on the Eridanus and feel they could say anything. Tom indeed did fall back on sarcasm, and Joanni made enigmatic statements, evidently expecting him to read her mind. “I dreamt of rain again last night,” she told him suddenly, apropos of nothing.
Spying the returning Primora off in the distance, the captain took the remaining time allotted to tell Joanni she was perhaps being too deferential to the Oreanians. “This is a cultural exchange to some extent,” he told her. “You should explain the ISEA viewpoint to them as well.”
Joanni’s face hardened at this advice. “I don’t tell you how to run your ship; don’t tell me how to handle the Oreanians.”
Chipman saw his time was up. She was picking up bad Oreanian habits. “Satisfy yourself to your heart’s content; I’m out.”
The Primora came up to them to call time and escort Chipman back to a chamber where he could await the arrival of the small diplomatic contingent earlier agreed upon by the Oreanians. As the two of them were leaving, she shut off her translation device and turned to speak in her native tongue to Joanni. “He asks too many questions,” was her assessment.
As Joanni stood there watching them depart, she became overcome with emotion, possibly due to a combination of hunger, fatigue, and strong feeling. But she also became overcome with flashes of insight and intuition, able to see time forward and back, to understand possibilities of what might have been, to breach the wall and fly outside the confines of space as one used to do with those old-fashioned virtual reality devices. The Oreanians became ghosts and the captain was made flesh. He had told her what the Primora had said about their lack of feeling toward their sons, and she keenly felt the wounds this indifference inflicted on both parties. She wondered how this had struck the captain. She knew a bit about his own mother from what little he had mentioned on occasion, and instinctively perceived that she had adored him, as a mother would. How could she not—her golden son. The Primora, as one of the elders, was old enough to be Chipman’s mother. What if he were her boy? Would he not inspire love? How could she not think of him as the golden palomino boy, her adored golden son? And what of her familial sons? Did she think of them? Her daughters were known. Where were the golden sons of Oreana?
Image: Ways of knowing. Source: “Relief Fragments Depicting a Winged Woman and Two Deer.” Roman, early 1st century. The Art Institute of Chicago. Public domain