Starfish

Twenty-Six

Nina sat in the hydrofoil cabin wondering what she'd done wrong. All morning Ardus had been distant, distracted and silent even as the little skiff pulled up to the beach and the pilot jumped over the side into six feet of water and towed it to shore. Nina had stood waving on the beach while the big dark Dreen huddled silently on a driftwood log, his hands curled protectively around a cup of black kelp and his face turned stubbornly down at his feet buried in the sand. He was back in one of his long-sleeved dark tunics again, and something about that seemed wrong. She'd offered to make breakfast and he'd turned her down. She'd suggested they take a walk up the beach to pass the time, and he'd ignored her. It was like her first week on Dreenai all over again. He was so sweet last night, what happened?

Nina turned and looked out the back of the cabin, towards the empty passenger bench and equally barren deck. With the food and water cases empty, they had packed their smaller equipment and samples inside and saved space in the cargo hull, which is where Ardus now sat on the trip back. He looked strange with his head and shoulders just above the deck level, and he stared towards the back of the hydrofoil skiff watching the foils churn up the sea at fifty or sixty knots. He'd barely made eye contact with her all morning, the few times he did being brief, stiff and uncomfortable. He'd refused to touch her as well, avoiding her request to be picked up and leaving her to climb into the skiff on her own. I thought we were getting somewhere. Was it something I said...or something I didn't?

At the university loading docks, Ardus picked up a few things and abruptly left, leaving Nina and the pilot to unload the skiff onto a cart. Without so much food or water, Nina could just push the heavy cart back to the office she shared with Ardus. When she got there, however, he was nowhere to be seen. Athe was, though, and he mentioned the biologist's sudden departure. "Did he tell you where he was going?" Nina asked.

"No," Athe shook his head, his pores faintly yellow, "he just came in, told me to put things away and left. Is everything all right?"

"I don't know, he's been weird all morning." Nina started to unpack a box of small tools, brushing black sand off into a dustbin. "Last night we were having a good time, laughing and talking, everything was fine. Then this morning he wouldn't say a word to me."

"He's not much of a morning person," Athe wiped down the coral sample drill case, popping the latches and inspecting it for damage and water.

"I saw that, but usually after he got some tea in him he was better. He even made jokes about it while he was still half-asleep... I don't know. This was weird even for him."

"Hmm." Athe pulled apart the drill's battery pack. "If I may make, er, an observational comment, you two were getting rather chummy before you left. It's been a long time since I saw Ardus warm up to someone like that. What did you two talk about?"

"Oh, nothing much. He showed me the beach site, I got to try lurefruit, we saw some striders and lots of reptiles and birds. He showed me the forest and the coral reefs, he caught redfins and cooked them for us. And...he told me about your mother."

"He did?" Athe looked up, surprised. "What did he tell you?"

Dropping to the floor and crossing her legs, Nina pulled out and checked the labels on the coral samples. "That he was with her for almost forty years, that he helped raise you, and that you pretty much kept him going after she, um, passed on."

"He told you all this? On his own?"

"He said he wanted me to know."

Athe stared at her, eyes wide. "Ardus hasn't voluntarily spoken of my mother in years." The drill components sat forgotten in his hands, his big yellow eyes full of emotion. "When my mother died it almost destroyed him. He spent weeks locked in their apartment, refusing to come out or speak to anyone. When she passed on... Well, something like that would cause someone a lot of pain."