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The concept of a zoo is a strange one, to a Gethenian. Genly had had to take some time explaining. Of course, many things are unknown to natives of a land without large land animals; he knew he’d have similar trouble speaking of a trophy hunter’s wall, or a racing stable.
Trophy hunting was for the large part no longer practiced on Terra. But there were still zoos. Genly even knew this one. It had been very new, the last time he had visited. Now, it was a venerable old institution. Everything about it had changed, but he was still able to read the signs, and head directly for the aviary.
Estraven, in tow, did not resist, but followed, matching their footsteps to Genly’s, despite the dazed expression on their face. Genly found himself pausing at least once a minute to turn and look, letting the vision hit him again and again with the same force each time: Estraven, dressed in a light sleeveless shirt as a concession to Terran modesty, brown skin beaded with sweat, face tilted upward, glowing under the Terran sun, even in this early morning light. Dappled with the shadows of leaves. Their lips slightly parted, their black eyes wide. They would draw alongside Genly as he paused to look at them, and he’d turn and stride forward, confident that their joined hands would not allow separation.
The sounds of the aviary filtered into that contained little world as they approached, even over the other noises of the zoo, and Genly looked at Estraven again for a reaction, but of course they were lost in a sea of strange sounds; it was ridiculous to expect birdsong to generate a unique response.
Estraven had head birdsong before. Once, in their office in Ehrenrang, light snow falling outside, when Genly had played a recording, and the First Minister had listened in intense fascination; and then again this morning, in their room at the headquarters of the Ekumen on Terra. Genly had woken slowly out of a dream, to pre-dawn darkness and birdsong, and thought at first that he was back in the student dormitories on Hain-Davenant, and then, briefly, that he was back in Borland, in the little room of his childhood, the old wooden farmhouse, birds singing in the cherry trees outside and the distant murmur of the radio from the kitchen below.
This misconception lasted only a moment, and then he was awake and present, in the dark, cool, air-conditioned room, looking at the shadowy shape of Estraven, on the bed closer to the window, looking out into the lightless world. Silent and remote, Genly thought, but then Estraven had spoken: “The sound… is it birds?”
“Yes,” Genly said, voice rough and blurred still by sleep, and had padded over to sit next to his friend on the narrow bed, and put his arm, very carefully, around the bare curve of their back. Estraven had not moved away, but had continued gazing out of the closed window.
“I cannot see them.”
“We’ll see them when the sun comes up,” Genly had hastened to reassure them, and that was where the idea had been born.
The spaceport, the Ekumen compound on Terra, were not located in Borland, but in a more northern city of the Union. Genly was not surprised to find the nation-state still called the Union. Perhaps he should have been, but he was accustomed to Gethenian rates of change, now, and was utterly unsurprised to find the layout of the city much the same as in his eight-year-old memories, though one hundred and forty years had passed here.
The zoo had still been where he remembered it; he had managed to get them there. Walking and driving in darkness and then dawn and then morning, hoping to make the most of their time before the day reached its full heat.
There were crowds of Terrans all around, other visitors. Perhaps among the hundreds here there might be one or two who had come from another world. They wouldn’t be visible- Chiffewarians here often covered their hairless heads, and as far as Genly knew the stranger inhabitants of Rokanan had never come to Terra. Genly remembered, as though in a distant dream, the way he had looked at people when he came to Gethen, constantly in his mind comparing them to Terrans. It was not something he could imagine doing now. He wondered, idly, what Estraven made of these crowds of people; wondered if Estraven was feeling the same way Genly was, as though those people were insubstantial and inconsequential; as though they were only a distant noise on the edge of the small and sunlit world containing two humans, their hands joined.
The aviary had a latched door. Genly lifted it with one hand, and beckoned Estraven into the soaring glass dome. It was warmer inside, enough that Estraven, who had been struggling even in the chilly spring outside, had to stop and lean against an elegantly decorative palm, their face flushed. “Would you like water?” Genly asked, concerned, but Estraven ignored him. They were staring at a bird that had alighted on the ground in front of them; small and brilliantly red, like a drop of blood.
“Here,” Genly said, filling Estraven’s pliant hands with birdseed. The little bird- a tanager, Genly’s mind supplied, some long forgotten source of information resurfacing suddenly- hopped up into Estraven’s hands with a flutter of wings. Estraven jumped a little, startled, but then tried to remain still, eyes wide, mouth open, face suffused with the pure and perfect joy of a child.
It was exactly the reaction Genly had hoped for, and it appeared unshadowed by any sadness. Genly didn’t try to attract the birds himself. He just stood there, watching. Wondering if what he was feeling was the happiness he had been seeking. The emotion felt too large and close to name. His throat felt closed, like he was almost choking but not quite.
For a while they didn’t speak, didn’t think. There was nothing but the sunshine hot through the glass of the aviary, and the loud cheeping of the birds as they gathered around Estraven, and the bright flashing colors of their feathers. Estraven’s eyes followed their darting movements, so fast they looked more robotic than organic. “I had no idea,” Estraven said softly after a while, breaking the long, comfortable silence. “There was no way for me to imagine this.”
“I know,” Genly said, equally soft.
The birds landed on Estraven’s sandaled feet, their hands, their hair. Finches, conures, canaries, paired lovebirds. Wiry feet sank into the padded flesh of Estraven’s palms. Small beaks tugged at their silky hair. Larger birds emerged from the foliage to peck at the spilled seed, tricolored mandarin ducks, long-beaked ibises and spoonbills, and a glorious family of peacocks that made Estraven gasp and shudder with delight.
Genly dropped down into a sitting position, on the gravel path, and looked at Estraven for a long, long, time, until Estraven’s eyes flickered up and caught his, and Genly had to look away to blink the tears out of his vision. He had been crying more and more lately, and almost never understood why.
They stayed there until the sun climbed almost to the height of the domed sky and Genly saw Estraven begin to breathe more heavily. “Let’s get you back to a controlled climate,” he said.
“I can go a little longer,” Estraven said, and of course Genly had to trust them, knowing that they were more reasonable than him when it came to such things.
“A little longer,” Genly agreed.
They wandered down the aviary paths, alongside carefully cultured streams, every rock occupied by a strange and beautiful bird, or sometimes a turtle. Genly kept an eye out for fallen feathers, eagerly collecting each one and pressing them into Estraven’s hands, a bright blue feather, a green, a striated tan, like a fisherman bringing paltry treasures to his mermaid wife, hoping they’ll be enough to keep her anchored to the shore. How had that story come into his head?
“Genry,” Estraven said.
“I’m sorry,” Genly said, wiping the tears out of his eyes again. “I don’t know what I-”
He stopped. One of Estraven’s hands carefully held the fistful of feathers, and the other was reaching up to touch Genly’s cheek. To stroke down the tear track on his face, with infinite tenderness.
Genly leaned down to press his forehead against his friend’s. He breathed in the smell of their sweat-soaked hair. “Do you like the birds?” he whispered, not moving. He felt that the press of their skulls was keeping him grounded and if he lost it he would fly off the surface of the planet.
“It’s like a dream,” Estraven murmured back. “But I am awake.”
“I know,” Genly said. His clumsy hands rested on Estraven’s shoulders, cautiously. “I remember what it was like, when I went to Hain-Davenant. An endless dream, that I couldn’t wake from. But I had my studies. I had purpose. I can’t give you that.” The tears were salty on his lips. “I can only give you love and I know that’s not any help.”
“Genry.” Estraven’s hand moved higher, to stroke along Genly’s hair line. “I had an overabundance of purpose for twenty years. It will do me no great harm to make love my purpose for a while.”
“Sometimes you feel distant,” Genly confessed, “and it terrifies me. I brought you here.”
Estraven laughed and shook their head. “You didn’t,” they said. “I came of my own accord, to see your home, and your birds.”
The day their ship had come out of lightspeed in the Sol system, Estraven had used the shipboard ansible to speak to Sorve. The ship was far too small for privacy, so Genly had remained by Estraven’s side, holding their hand, for the hour-long conversation.
Afterward Estraven had said, with a bitterness Genly had never seen before, “This is a fine cheater’s suicide, is it not?” and Genly had wrapped his arm around Estraven’s shoulder and said,
“No. You made the call. You faced the consequences. That took courage.”
When Genly, at eighteen, traveled across space for the first time, it took three months for him to contact the Terran embassy and learn that his parents were three years dead. But the knowledge that Estraven was the braver one was not new to him.
In the aviary, with his hands firmly on Estraven’s shoulders, Genly was able to raise his head, to stare up at the blue sky through the glass. Estraven’s arms wrapped around him, and pulled him to their chest. Their thin shirt crushed against his jacket.
“You often seem distant to me too,” Estraven said. “I have dreams where you are lost to me somewhere in the dark between stars. But I think it will be all right, if we keep hold.”
Genly nodded. Hand in hand, they walked down the path. The birds sang, and flashed by overhead, everyday miracles of flight.
