Free Listen by Karin Tidbeck Page B

this process so that they could communicate when the moons that bathed Kiruna in soundwaves drowned out the frequency of human speech. That Aino looked like she did because the incubation sometimes had terrible side effects. That she was cast out because she reminded the others of what they did to their children. That she had taken the biologist Petr Kozlov’s place on the shuttle to Amitié. When the ambassador asked Aino to demonstrate her voice, she let out a series of trills, like a little bird.
    Aino asked why Oort’s people wanted to settle on Kiruna specifically. Oort replied that the moon’s sound environment seemed to fit them.
    â€œThat sound environment doesn’t fit anyone,” Aino replied.
    Oort smiled.
    *   *   *
    Sleeping was even more difficult that night. Mika’s thoughts ran in circles, a long cavalcade of conversations and snatches of music and ideas and all of a sudden Mika was sitting up in bed composing a new piece; the foundation was a sequence that had been going through his head, adorned with a filigree of frail triplets that he gently dropped over it, an abstract choir that welled in from the sides and enveloped the little cupola he had built, and suddenly the alarm went off and it was time to get up and go to work and he wasn’t tired in the least despite sitting with the music piece for four hours but he made himself take a shower and eat something because that’s what healthy people did.
    Ã‰mile had left him because of this. Mika couldn’t blame him. It could hardly be easy to put up with someone who one month would stay up all night, talk incessantly, and always want sex, and the next month couldn’t get out of bed or even respond. Émile couldn’t.
    â€œOort is more important than I am” were his parting words.
    Maybe it was true. But Mika’s skin ached to be touched.
    *   *   *
    â€œWe would like you to come along as an informant when we reconnoiter,” Mika translated to Aino the next day. “You have knowledge of the community that we don’t.”
    â€œWhat do you need me for?” Aino said.
    â€œWe need help interpreting and negotiating on site,” Oort replied.
    â€œWhat’s in it for me?” Aino asked. “I left for a reason. I don’t want to go back there. They treated me like dirt. I was heavy and in pain. I can be light here.”
    â€œWe can cure you.”
    â€œI don’t need curing,” Aino said. “It’s just the wrong place.”
    â€œWhat do you want then?”
    Aino shook her head. “I don’t want anything. I’m content.”
    â€œPetr Kozlov,” the ambassador said, “isn’t doing very well.”
    Aino squinted at her.
    â€œHe wrote about you in one of his reports. I got the impression that the two of you were close.”
    Aino averted her eyes. “Maybe,” she said. “It’s none of your business.”
    â€œHe was badly hurt trying to incubate,” Oort said. “He wants to go back to Gliese, but no one will fund the trip. We could ship him home.”
    Aino was quiet for a long moment. Then she said: “I thought he would be all right.”
    Oort shook her head. “He wasn’t.”
    Aino’s mouth twisted. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Well,” she said, and her voice trembled slightly. “I suppose I’ll go with you.”
    *   *   *
    Mika kept stable on the trip. Maybe it was because he spent most of the trip in stasis. Maybe it was because during his waking hours he was linked up to the ship only, and not to an entire station. Maybe it was because Oort stayed in her cabin and didn’t need him. Maybe it was because staring at the projection of the approaching gas giant and its three moons gave him a kind of calm. When they eventually landed on Kiruna, he felt almost normal. The sensation evaporated in the terrain