Noumenon. Marina Lostetter J.

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СКАЧАТЬ trying to focus on my posture. I wanted to make a clean, professional impression when he was shown in. With one look at me I wanted him to think I was the right person for the job, that I could handle the responsibility.

      It wasn’t just paranoia or an eagerness to please—Nika’s mentor had gone to Mother to ask if she had the right student. If that had happened to me I would have been mortified.

      Father came in first and held the door open for Mr. Biterman. I leapt to my feet—before he even had time to glimpse my well-planned pose—and my hand shot forward of its own accord.

      It wasn’t until we’d finished our initial shake that my mind registered anything about him. The first thing I noticed was his sticky palm, and my first impression swiftly snowballed from there.

      His dress shirt was stained at the bottom—as though he’d dropped food in his lap at some point—and wasn’t tucked in. Despite the smile, his face held a sour expression, one I feared permanent. And his eyes didn’t meet mine. Saul was only ten years older than me, but he’d gone prematurely bald, and to make up for it he’d grown a thick, unkempt beard.

      I resisted the urge to ask Father who this man was. I knew he was my tutor, despite my desire to believe otherwise.

      We were formally introduced, then Father indicated for us both to sit before he left. I’d hoped he’d stay and help break the ice, but he rushed out of the room muttering that he was late for another appointment. I wondered if that was really the reason, or if Mr. Biterman’s company was as off-putting as his appearance.

      I smiled, crossed and uncrossed my legs, and literally twiddled my thumbs waiting for my specialist to outline a plan, or start a lecture, or whip out some comm equipment.

      Saul might have been alone in the room for all he acknowledged me.

      “So …” I began. Slowly. I’d hoped he’d interrupt me. When he didn’t, I pressed on. “Do I get a syllabus, or a prospectus, or … Do I need to ask Fath— Dr. Matheson for certain books?”

      He reached into his trouser pocket and dug around for a moment. His mining produced a crumpled scrap of yellow paper. Without a word he handed it to me by means of an unenthusiastic flip of his wrist.

      Hesitant, I leaned over and took it. The scrap was clean, at least—no food stains. Glancing sidelong at this strange man I’d been saddled with, I smoothed it out in my lap.

      It was a scribbled schedule for the next week, with dates, times, and places, but no indication of what was supposed to happen during the appointments.

      Once I’d read it over, I looked up to ask him a question, and was startled by the silly smile that had replaced his indifference. “Well, see you tomorrow, Ms. Pavon,” he said, as though we’d just finished with a delightful visit.

      That was the first of many awkward times with him. It took me months to get used to his strange mannerisms, sudden disconnects with now, long silences, and a plethora of other quirks.

      I was baffled, at first. And also a little insulted. Here was a man whose expertise in communications had landed him one of the most important tutoring positions in the world—he was training ambassadors to space (myself along with seven others—three on different convoys), and would be his students’ main connection to Earth once they left the ground—yet he couldn’t hold a normal conversation.

      If anyone other than Mother or Father had brought Saul into my life I would have thought it a colossal joke.

      But, like a good little soldier, I held in my doubts and accepted the training. As it turned out, Saul was a capable teacher. He taught mostly through illustration and hyperbole rather than pontification, which I appreciated. And when it came to his work he was quick and accurate, but it wasn’t until I advanced to decoding on my own that I realized why he had the job.

      While the man couldn’t smoothly string five words together in person, he was a whiz when it came to communicating long-distance. Without all of the physical cues to get in the way, with the words stripped bare, he was the most articulate man I’d ever met.

      The difference was so apparent that when he came to grade my first solo decoding work, I asked him who had written the message.

      “Me,” he said, looking up from the many red marks he’d already placed on my paper. His brows didn’t knit together, he didn’t frown or squint sideways at me like a normal person would when trying to decipher the implications of what had been said. But by that time I could recognize his special brand of confusion.

      “I know you coded it.” I walked around the large warehouse space with my hands in my coat pockets. We’d been allotted one corner for training, and for housing the server and other equipment. Other machines I had no name for—utilized by other convoy departments—took up the three remaining corners. “But who composed it?”

      “Me. I did it all.” He went back to marking the page, each stroke of the pen more vehement than before.

      I’d insulted him, and I tried to make up for it by inviting him to drinks with my friends and me after our session, but I should have known better. He declined with a lame excuse, but I’m sure his reasons for turning me down were twofold. His anger was a part of it, but how exactly was a man who couldn’t relax and behave naturally one-on-one going to get by in a group? If I made him nervous, what would a whole gaggle of girls in a crowded bar do to him?

      But I kept trying. From there on out, every time I had a group activity planned after our lessons, I invited him. I hoped at some point he’d say yes. I thought maybe if he spent time with more people he would get better at communicating in person, but it wasn’t to be. Saul was who he was, and I couldn’t change that.

      So, perhaps his first message to me on Mira shouldn’t have surprised me so much. The man I worked with closely on Earth, but never really knew, waited to reach out to me until I was stretching the distance between us to never-before-achieved proportions.

      His reply to my first set of data packages was mostly what I expected: acknowledgment of the incidents I’d recorded, other Earth specialists’ professional advice related to my report, and questions about the crew’s health and productivity. But tacked on at the end was a full letter, clearly meant for me personally.

      A portion was general-interest based. Saul thought we might want to know what Earth was up to. We’d been gone two weeks travel time, around four months their time, so not much had happened. Not enough to take note of, anyway, but I transferred the information to a file and sent it to Nika’s implants. She’d know what to do with it.

      Throughout the second half of the letter, though, Saul told me about his work week, how he was feeling, and so on. Things friends talk about. Close friends.

      I wasn’t sure what to think, let alone how to respond.

      In all that time I’d been trying to get Saul to open up I’d thought him disinterested. I thought perhaps he didn’t want to come with me after lessons because he just didn’t care to get to know me. That maybe he didn’t like people, just words.

      Could he have been holding out for this? For when he’d be most comfortable?

      It seemed ridiculous, but as acquainted with his awkwardness as I was …

      Before he’d signed off, he asked me the same СКАЧАТЬ