18. Kumar

Only one tragedy had darkened Kumar Leonidas’s eighteen years of life; he would always be ten centimetres shorter than his heart’s desire. It was not surprising that his nickname was ‘The Little Lion’ — though very few dared use it to his face.

To compensate for his lack of height, he had worked assiduously on width and depth. Many times Mirissa had told him, in amused exasperation, “Kumar — if you spent as much time building your brain as your body, you’d be the greatest genius on Thalassa.’ What she had never told him — and scarcely admitted even to herself — was that the spectacle of his regular morning exercises often aroused most unsisterly feelings in her breast as well as a certain jealousy of all the other admirers who had gathered to watch. At one time or other this had included most of Kumar’s age group. Although the envious rumour that he had made love to all the girls and half the boys in Tarna was wild hyperbole, it did contain a considerable element of truth.

But Kumar, despite the intellectual gulf between him and his sister, was no muscle-bound moron. If anything really interested him, he would not be satisfied until he had mastered it, no matter how long that took. He was a superb seaman and for over two years, with occasional help from Brant, had been building an exquisite four-metre kayak. The hull was complete, but he had not yet started on the deck.

One day, he swore, he was going to launch it and everyone would stop laughing. Meanwhile, the phrase ‘Kumar’s kayak’ had come to mean any unfinished job around Tarna — of which, indeed, there were a great many.

Apart from this common Lassan tendency to procrastinate, Kumar’s chief defects were an adventurous nature and a fondness for sometimes risky practical jokes. This, it was widely believed, would someday get him into serious trouble.

But it was impossible to be angry with even his most outrageous pranks, for they lacked all malice. He was completely open, even transparent; no one could ever imagine him telling a lie. For this, he could be forgiven much, and frequently was.

The arrival of the visitors had, of course, been the most exciting event in his life. He was fascinated by their equipment, the sound, video, and sensory recordings they had brought, the stories they told — everything about them. And because he saw more of Loren than any of the others, it was not surprising that Kumar attached himself to him.

This was not a development that Loren altogether appreciated. If there was one thing even more unwelcome than an inconvenient mate, it was that traditional spoilsport, an adhesive kid brother.