68: Kapu

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“This is Kapu,” Tikka told me in my room the next morning. “Kapu, this is Taya.”

Kapu was a bit bigger than Tikka, but seemed smaller in the way she folded in on herself and sort of tried to hide behind her friend. Was she afraid of me? No. Just very shy.

I think. I still wasn’t good with capuchin body language.

“Hello, Kapu,” I said gently. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

She gave me a little wave, which looks kind of funny with a capuchin’s long arms, and didn’t say anything.

“Kapu is really good at wiring,” Tikka said. “And she likes to wire dance, and she can weave so well.”

“What’s wire dancing?” I asked.

Tikka waited a bit for Kapu to answer, and when she didn’t, jumped in instead. “It’s so cool, it’s this type of dance where there’s a lot of wires and the dancers climb and jump between them. It’s even better in zero pull.”

“It’s clumsy in zero pull,” Kapu said, “because you have to train to jump and move all over again. We’d be able to do it really well in zero pull if we were in zero pull all the time. But I think the normal pull dancing looks better because the dancers know how to move better.”

I said, “I played a zero pull sport on Hexacorallia called markball, and it was hard to learn how to move and use the ball properly without inertial pull. It’s a whole different way of moving.”

“Yes!” Kapu said, then fell silent again.

After awhile, Kapu had to leave, and I felt kind of bad about how much more relaxed I felt when it was just Tikka and me. It wasn’t Kapu’s fault that she was shy. I was probably really weird, to a capuchin.

“She was really excited to meet you,” Tikka said, and I wondered if that was true. Did Kapu want to meet me, or did Tikka want her best friend to meet me, and Kapu had agreed? One thing that I hadn’t thought much about was that I didn’t really know any capuchins except for Tikka. Did I really know anything about capuchins at all? Deciding what they were like based on the one that had snuck through vents to track me down just because they wanted to meet a foreign kid was probably like if a capuchin watched me sneak into the Courageous treegrave and decided that all humans were like me. I should probaly learn more about the people I was trying to help before doing anything big.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t start setting things up.

“Do you think she’d want to send messages to someone on the Courageous?” I asked. “Like how we messaged each other when I was on other ships?”

“Oh, maybe!”

“When I get home, some other kids there might want to know about capuchins, and talk to them,” I said. “So there might be lots of kids who want to talk to your friends. Don’t tell Kapu about it; maybe no one will want to talk to capuchins, and if that happens then I don’t want to get her hopes up. Bu if Courageous kids do want to talk, do you think your friends would want Courageous friends?”

“Ooh, that’s a great idea! Some of them might. If your friends do want to talk, let me know and I’ll ask mine.”

Great! Maybe everything would be very easy.

Now on to my next important job – figuring out what present to give Tikka before I left. It had to be something as special as the charm she’d woven for me.

I headed to a workshop and just kind of wandered around, hoping that something would stand out. But it was just full of people repairing clothes and signs and ship stuff. There were two capuchins working on some kind of broken machine, and I thought about asking them, but just going up to a stranger and saying “hey, I see you’re a capuchin, what do capuchins like?” felt like it would probably be rude.

“Taya!” Ella called from the doorway. She was smiling widely, and looked a little out of breath. “Want to see something cool?”

I always wanted to see something cool. I headed over. “What is it?”

“It’s a secret.” She winked, and lead the way out of the workshop.

Something was wrong.

Ella was trying to look and sound relaxed, but she was tense. Her shoulders were stiff, and even when she looked at me, winked at me, she didn’t look me in the eye. She headed down the hall just a bit faster than normal, but she didn’t seem happy or excited. She was… afraid? Maybe? Maybe something else?

We reached a fork in the hallway, and watching her carefully, I slowed down and turned towards the fork she didn’t take. Just like I expected, she spun around to look, and while her face was smiling there was panic in every other part of her. Panic that I might leave.

“I’m supposed to meet up with the historians,” I lied. “I need to let them know I’m going with you instead.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Was she lying? Did she want nobody to know where I’d gone? I didn’t think so. It was hard to tell, since she was already tense and I wasn’t sure what was happening. But she seemed like she didn’t care that they knew, which was a good sign.

I’ve been watching a lot of spy stories, okay? When you’re doing something secretive and a mysterious friend shows up behaving strangely and lures you off alone somewhere, you don’t go without telling somewhere where you’ve gone! That’s how you get secretly killed in all the spy stories!

I knew I wasn’t in any danger, though. Either Ella was pretending that everything was fine to me because she wanted to lure me somewhere I wouldn’t want to go, or she was pretending that everything was fine to everyone else because she wanted to take me somewhere that other people on the ship didn’t want me to go, but either way it wouldn’t make sense for the Stalwart to let me get hurt. The treegrave translated Tikka’s words for me, so it knew that I planned to help other kids on the Courageous find capuchin friends, but we’d been in relaxation room when Tima had explained why I should do that, so it couldn’t know why. It probably predicted what would happen just like Tima had, and it might not want the Courageous to get interested in the capuchins, but everything it had seen me do made me seem like just a little girl happy to make friends. Luring me off to kill me would cause way, way more problems for the Stalwart than just leaving me alone. Or coming up with some reason why the capuchin kids wouldn’t message the Courageous, if they were that worried.

And if she was pretending everything was fine for everyone else, not me? If she was luring me off to show or tell me something that the ship didn’t want me to know? Well, obviously I wanted to see it. And she wouldn’t do that just to show me something that put me in danger, because what would be the point?

I was definitely safe. But that didn’t mean I should be stupid.

Plia was in her room, and seemed pretty confused that I was telling her that I was going off with Ella, because I didn’t usually track her down to tell her where I was going all the time. Ella said that we might be gone a couple of hours, and Plia nodded, and I left before she could ask why I was telling her and make it awkward. I was lucky I hadn’t found Tima; I was pretty sure that she would have noticed what was going on right away, and might have tried to stop me. The historians could be pretty overprotective sometimes.

Ella stopped acting so happy and excited as we headed off again; I figured that she knew I knew something was up since I had insisted on checking in with Plia, so why pretend it wasn’t? Which made her a lot less tense. Maybe she hadn’t felt right about trying to lie to me.

We didn’t go very far. Some more long hallways, a few turns, and Ella ushered me into a small office. There wasn’t much in the room except for a small box of refreshments (so this might take a couple of hours, like she’d said) and a rectangular white table. On the side near me, near the door,was one empty chair. On the other side were three.

Fari sat on the left, and in the middle, in a chair with a seat so high it was level with the table, sat an adult capuchin who I didn’t know. Fari had that look on his face that adults sometimes get, sort of tense and sort of smug, when they’re feeling all important and like they’ll have to baby you through something surprising. He was the one who looked surprised when I just looked at him calmly and headed for the single seat on my side without saying anything.

Ella sidled around the table to sit in the third seat on that side. I ignored her. She obviously wasn’t important here.

The capuchin was probably the most important person in the room, I figured, because he was in the middle. If the seating was random, then Fari and Ella would probably choose to sit next to each other; the capuchin was in the middle on purpose. So I sat back and looked at him.

There was a long, awkward silence while everyone waited for me to ask what was going on. I didn’t. Eventually, Fari coughed and said, “I suppose you’re wondering what’s going on.”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” I said.

“Ah. Yes. Taya, I’d like to introduce you to Captain Red. He’s very used to humans, and won’t take offence to your words.”

Which was a good thing, because the first stupid words out of my idiot mouth were, “Oh, one of your captains is a capuchin?”

I felt my face flush as soon as I said it, but luckily, Fari was right, and Captain Red just looked amused as he chittered something back. Fari translated, “Actually, all of our captains are capuchins. Most of our high level Administrators are.”

“Any human,” Ella added, “who’s looking to work in a command position needs to emigrate to another ship to do it. Humans are forbidden from command here.”

“All command?” Now I was surprised, and the people across the table relaxed; this was closer to what they’d expected from me.

“Well, we can run laboratories and head factories and soforth,” Fari said. “And naturally, intership diplomacy is a human affair. But as for internal ship command, it’s a capuchin affair. Humans physically cannot fit on the bridge, or into many of the areas where ship decisions are made.”

I stared at Fari. Then I stared at Captain Red. So, the fleet charter… the capuchins keeping to themselves; did that mean…?

Captain Red leaned forward and chittered something solemnly at me. Fari, just as solemn, translated.

“Taya, our captain would like to formally welcome you aboard the Stalwart – the universe’s first capuchin spaceship.”

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