The Long List Anthology Volume 7, page 7
On the radio it was not like this at all. Nobody cried, hearing the music on the radio –and there was not a time that they'd heard the anthem in the past three years that somebody in the intrasolar hadn't cried.
Once, the best musicians in New Gehesran had all recorded versions of the partisan anthem. The players in this particular quartet had gotten no better since the beginning of the song, but their enthusiasm couldn't be denied. Listening to the hurdy-gurdy bounce its way energetically up and down the octave, Tir now found himself fighting the urge to laugh.
While the quartet played –played like they were enjoying themselves, like they knew they were ridiculous, like they fully expected their older listeners to get annoyed with the frivolity of the musical arrangement and turn the radio to another channel where they could hear classical Gehesrana harmonies –for those three and a half minutes, it was impossible to believe that New Gehesran was dead.
After that first hour, Tir and his family scoured the regularly transmitted schedules, but they couldn't find any sign of a listing for the program that they'd heard. When they tried the same channel the next day, there was nothing on but static. Tir's mother said it was a blessing to have had it only once, and Tir’s aunt was convinced it was some kind of collective hallucination, but Tir persevered, cycling repeatedly through back-channels of obscure vanity programming and long-wave spacer traffic updates until everyone else in the doublewide was sick to death of it. Over the next few weeks, his determination was rewarded with twenty minutes of G-pop, two fragments of religious debate in distinctive Gehesrani accents, and one full, glorious program, announced by the same rich voice: “This is New Gehesran calling!”
With this new information in hand, Tir sat down with his cousin Suki, who was good with numbers and puzzles. The program, they decided, was probably aired on a 37-hour Petivian orbit cycle, and rotated through three little-used channels on the high end of the radio spectrum. Maybe. If they'd guessed right.
Fifteen hours and twenty-three minutes later, Tir and Suki carefully tuned the transmitter, and waited with bated breath.
“Don't forget to tune in next time,” said the jazzy voice of the broadcaster –Tir had only heard it three times now, but felt at this point that he would recognize it in his bones –“and thanks for listening! This is New Gehesran, signing off.”
There was an audible click, followed by several minutes of static. Eventually, a teenaged voice came on and howled, “This is the music that your uncles don't want you to hear!”
Tir clicked off the transmitter, cutting off the scratchy wails of censored Zesaran ska before his parents or Aunt Ruti could notice any obscenities. He looked at Suki, and Suki looked at her calculations. “We were only off by an hour,” she said. “It'll be around again soon.”
And it was.
After that, they didn't miss a broadcast.
• • • •
“I can’t believe he’s not here yet! I cannot believe –”
“Good,” said Ereni, without looking up from her soldering. “I told you we shouldn't have programmed him. Not only is the man an unrepentant militarist, he’s got the worst voice that I've ever heard. If he doesn’t make it, you should count yourself lucky and take the day off.”
Viana balled up her call-slip and threw it. It bounced off Ereni’s shoulder and landed in the middle of the nest of switches and wires that served them as a soundboard, and Ereni let out a shout and spun around. “Vi! The amplifier has been hanging by a thread —”
“What does that matter if there’s nothing to amplify?”
“There’s four other segments to the show today besides your precious interview, Viana, so in fact it does actually very much matter!”
Geti's voice crackled over the overhead. “We're live in five, people. Live in five. Has everyone's mic been tested?”
“We're talking about the last surviving major ranking member of the Gehesran military here,” hissed Viana. “You know how difficult it is for him to travel interstellar! I can't believe you're not taking this seriously –”
“Yes, well, I’m a little more worried about the fact that we’re live in five—four-and-a-half—and we still don't know if Brun's mic is going to decide to work today –”
“What if his ship was boarded, or he was captured by the Luxians –that’s ten minutes of dead air! What are we going to do!”
“Vi!” Lor came pounding down the corridor and slammed through the room. “The General's just landed –sounds like they had some trouble but were able to slip away. Suti's just getting him set up with his mic now –”
“Well, thank every god!” said Viana, and dove back down the corridor after Lor.
“Live in three,” announced Geti's voice, wildly distorted by the overhead, and Ereni spat out a curse and bent back over the soundboard. She pressed another button and called, “Brun —”
Brun's voice came through the speaker. “The mic’s working fine. Just make sure to get Viana and the General ready.”
“I would, if —”
“Two minutes!” said Geti.
Viana came gliding back into the room, all composure. “Sir, if you'll please follow me through here so Ereni can test your mic —”
“Where'd you get all this tech?” demanded the General, looking around the control room greedily. “I thought you were an underground operation? What I couldn't have done with three of these speakers —”
“General, please, time is very short, and —”
“One minute!” shouted Geti. “Everyone ready!” Viana and Ereni exchanged anguished looks, for once in perfect accord. There was no way now to try to balance the sound to flatter the General's reedy, aging voice.
Viana took a deep breath, and turned to the General. “Please, sir,” she said, “people are waiting to hear from you.”
Her voice throbbed with emotion. Ereni waited to roll her eyes until the General had gone into the recording studio, and flipped the switch for Brun’s mic.
Brun’s voice rolled out, smooth and clear: “This is New Gehesran calling. This is New Gehesran calling, and today, have we got an exclusive! Stay tuned –”
“Listen –” Viana’s voice hissed over the mic into Ereni’s other ear. “Just make me sound as good as you can, and I’ll do the rest, all right?”
“Teach your grandmother,” muttered Ereni. She could make Viana sound good in her sleep.
• • • •
Andia had been cleaning dishes, only half-listening to the broadcast over the noise of the air-jet, when she heard Viana saBrihesi’s voice and dove back to turn the sound up high.
“–so appreciative that you braved the risk to be here with us today,” said Viana, warmly. “What a narrow escape! Listen, I’m breathless just from hearing about it.” She didn’t sound breathless. She sounded golden, as she always did, the purring rhotics and liquid laterals of her North Gessie accent pouring into Andia’s ears like a lullaby. “We don’t have much time left,” she went on, “so is there anything else you’d like to say to our listeners?”
The answering voice began to spout some of the usual clichés about strength, pride and suffering; whoever it was sounded a little wheezy, but Andia supposed that whatever near escape they’d been discussing would take the wind out of you. She wished she’d caught the speaker’s name. Many of the Gehesrani officials who turned up on Viana saBrihesi’s interview segment sounded more or less the same to Andia, but her grandmother would want to know.
Andia’s grandmother lived in a Savatican retirement community and didn’t know how to jailbreak her radio to get anything besides the ten locally approved channels. It was Andia’s sister who had heard about the show from a friend of hers and had suggested to Andia that they take turns listening and writing their grandmother about whatever news they heard. It would be a nice thing to do, a way to have something to talk about with her and assure her that they hadn’t completely forgotten their Gehesrani roots.
Andia hadn’t wanted to do it. A 37-hour Petivian orbit cycle was a wildly inconvenient thing to schedule around, and jailbreaking her radio voided the warranty. It was with more resentment than anything else that she’d tuned in for the first broadcast, at four in the morning local time, after her sister had helpfully come over the night before to set the radio and also Andia’s alarm.
Perhaps the early hour was to blame for the fact that she’d heard Viana saBrihesi interviewing some Gehesrani dancer and fallen instantly in love.
When Andia was thirteen, just before they emigrated, a North Gessie girl had switched into their school. She’d had long dark hair and bright-colored eyebrow rings, and her voice had made Andia’s heart start thundering whenever she heard it. The week before Andia and her family left for Savatica, riding ahead of the first rumblings of disaster, Andia had mustered up all her courage and asked if she could show her around town.
The girl –who’d been quick to make friends, and must have already seen most of the places that Andia wanted to take her –had laughed her beautiful laugh, and said that Andia could. All through the evening, she’d said charming things to Andia in her warm, liquid voice, and asked her questions about her favorite places, while Andia flipped violently between feeling desperately interesting and desperately stupid. When they stood in the park to admire the jesa-birds, Andia had wanted to kiss her, but even absolutely all her courage hadn’t quite been enough for that.
Andia had forgotten the girl’s name, in the decade and a half since. She’d almost forgotten the sound of a North Gessie accent, too. Savatica had been quick to limit immigration from New Gehesran once it became clear the crisis was serious, and North Gehesran had been a particularly partisan district, among the last to empty out.
If the girl whose name Andia had forgotten had survived the fall of New Gehesran, she was most likely in a Petivan refugee settlement right now, or orbiting Zesar in an intrasolar doublewide. She was almost certainly not conducting interviews with famous Gehesrani refugees on a pirate radio station somewhere out in contested space. Still, when Andia heard Viana saBrihesi speak, it pulled back the taste of the mint tea in her favorite West Gehesran cafe; the smell of greenery and asphalt in the park under the highway; the sound of the jesa-birds singing, and her heart flip-flopping wildly as she felt, almost, brave enough.
She wrote to her grandmother every week about the show now. She listened to all of it when she could, even the comedy segment; she often didn’t understand the jokes, but her grandmother could sometimes explain them to her, and liked to be asked.
But she didn’t tell either her grandmother or her sister about Viana’s voice. That was just for her, her own little piece of New Gehesran.
• • • •
“And then I always finish it off with a little grated astaron cheese,” said the first panelist, “for flavor and crunch.”
“Astaron cheese?” The second panelist scoffed. “There’s only four ingredients that belong in a poracake: flour, egg, dort-extract, and pora. Can’t skip any, can’t add any, or it’s not a real poracake.”
“Oh?” said the third panelist, frostily. “So my grandfather’s recipe, with honey instead of dort-extract –our own honey, made from our own bees –isn’t real poracake?”
“Nope,” said the second panelist.
The fourth panelist, at this point, decided to weigh in. “Honey is one thing, of course. Plenty of people keep bees, it’s a classic Gehesrani ingredient. But astaron cheese, oh dear, do you really think our ancestors could have gotten their hands on that?”
“All I know is I’ve always made it with astaron cheese,” said the first panelist, her voice rising, “and I always will make it with astaron cheese –”
“I’ve been substituting banana,” volunteered the fifth panelist, and all the others immediately turned on the new target with the air of carnivores scenting fresh meat.
“Substituting banana –”
“Taro is the closest if you’re going to substitute anything –”
“Four ingredients! Just the four! Anything else isn’t –”
Ereni, splayed across the soundboard and frantically riding the panelist’s mic controls to ensure the entire broadcast didn’t dissolve into a mess of hissing and static, wailed, “Lor, why did you think this was a good idea?”
“It was supposed to be a nice broadcast for the holiday,” said Lor, stunned. “Just some grandfolk trading traditional recipes…”
“Haven’t you got any grandfolk?” hissed Ereni, straining to reach the switch for the sixth panelist’s mic. “How could you not see this coming?”
“It was never like this when I worked with professionals!” Lor put his head in his hands. “We’ve got to get them out of there, they’re going to run right through the next segment –”
“Not to mention miss the safe-passage window to get out of the system,” said Geti, striding in briskly with Viana at their heels, “which means we’ll be stuck with them for another thirty-seven Petivan hours, no thank you.”
“You’ll be stuck with them,” said Ereni, and kicked the amplifier with her heel. “Anything that happens after the broadcast ends is officially not my problem.”
Viana shot Ereni a withering look. “Never mind,” she said, loftily, “I’ll deal with this.” Back straight, fearless, she strode towards the recording booth –
“WAIT!” screamed Ereni, and hastily adjusted the sound controls to compensate for the opening of the semi-soundproofed door –
–opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it calmly behind her.
Lor, Ereni, and Geti all stared after her.
“They look … like they’re getting calmer?” said Geti, tentatively.
“I knew it would be all right,” said Lor, with absolutely unjustified confidence. “Ereni, what are they saying?”
Ereni, listening on the earpiece, shook her head. “She’s got them eating out of the palm of her hand,” she said, half-admiring, half-disgusted, “as usual. Now they’re all agreeing on pora’s unique flavor qualities and its importance as a Gehesrani staple. Gods, that woman’s a menace!”
Through the makeshift plastic of the semi-soundproofed door, Viana turned, smiled, and flashed them an OK-hand.
• • • •
Diani was reading in the bedroom, trying to ignore the noise of Teren fixing the ventilation in the engine room, when something wafted past her from the kitchen. Her nose twitched, then twitched again, as she tried to isolate whatever it was from the smells of engine fuel and heated metal and too-small living quarters –and then she jumped up from her seat, letting the pad she’d been reading drop behind her, and ran the few steps to the kitchen.
“Poracake!” she announced, triumphantly, and swung herself up to sit on the tiny countertop.
Nir glanced over their shoulder. There was green batter spattered on their cheekbone and over their eyebrow. “You’re cutting significantly into my prep space here.”
“Live with it,” said Diani.
“Don’t get too excited. It won’t be ready for hours. The batter’s got to go through its first rise –”
“Sure, I remember. It’s only been a few years.” Diani reached out with one finger and swiped some of the batter off of Nir’s cheek; Nir snorted and batted her hand away. Undaunted, Diani stuck her finger in her mouth to lick the batter off. “Mm. So what’s the special occasion?”
“No occasion,” said Nir, and flushed “I just thought it would be nice.”
Diani squinted suspiciously at them, and then began to tick things off. “It’s not a holiday –not our anniversary –not your anniversary with Teren, not my anniversary with Teren –”
“It’s really not!” said Nir, thoroughly red now. “It’s not anything, honestly. It’s just –you know, we haven’t been able to get dort-root since we left, and how can you make poracake without dort-root?”
Diani nodded sagely, and swiped another finger’s worth of batter.
“Only, on the show just now, someone was saying they used honey and I thought … well, we might not have dort-root, but we’ve got honey, and –it felt like, if that old gran said it was all right, then it felt a little like getting permission? Like not having the dort-root didn’t matter as much. You know.”
Diani looked at them. “Nir –”
“My gramps always said dort-root makes it too sweet anyway,” called a voice from the engine room.
“Teren!” said Diani. “Excuse you! We were having a moment!”
Undaunted, Teren continued, “My gramps always used condensed galactose.”
“I’m making a really incredible face at learning this information,” Diani shouted back, “and it’s very frustrating to me that you can’t see it right now. Condensed galactose! Trust a northerner!”
“So go show Teren your face then,” said Nir, “and give me back my counter. I’m going to need it.” They pitched their own voice to carry. “And Teren, I’m going to make honey poracake like that nice gran said, and you’re going to eat it! And you’re going to like it!”
The booming sound of Teren’s laugh bounced through all the pipes and vents in the intrasolar doublewide. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
• • • •
“Ereni,” said Viana, sticking her head into the recording studio. When this got no response, she pushed the plastic door open and came in. “You didn’t fall asleep in here, did you?”
Ereni didn’t look up from the cables she was twisting together. “What do you want?”
Viana came further into the room. “How long have you been trying to fix that mic?”
“More importantly,” said Ereni, “how long do I have until the mic has to be fixed? Since you ask: eleven Petivan hours and twenty-three minutes exactly, and if doesn’t work by then you and Brun will have to share for the next show, which might perhaps suggest to you that it isn’t a good time -”
