“Well,” Connla said. “I’m going to sleep on it. Let’s stay here a few more shifts. We can cut loose to save on docking obligations if you like, though honestly…”
“You’d like the run of the station for a little while longer,” I said.
“Pearl is pretty great,” he said in return, with a sly little smile. “And the odds of us ever making it back out here—”
“Well,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s talk about it again in a couple of shifts, then. Can we afford the berth that long, Singer?”
“As long as there’s no competition for it,” he said. “I’ll talk to wheelmind and make sure we have a suspended embarkation permission, so we can bounce out at once when we decide we’re going, as soon as the station can give us a window. And I’ll see about getting your space suits upgraded too.”
“Just in case.”
“Safety first,” he said, and Connla laughed.
CHAPTER 8
I WENT DANCING TWICE MORE—AT DIFFERENT bars, just in case my new friend Rohn showed up again, and I doused myself in antipheromone first even though it gave me the itches—and toured the botanical gardens, and went out to dinner once with Connla and Pearl. I know that depending on where you’re from, it probably seems unconcerned, possibly even irresponsible, given the threat sitting docked a third of the ring away from us. But we couldn’t go anywhere, and it was going to be decians before we were back where we could do anything about it again, and skulking about acting paranoid wouldn’t change anything.
Anyway, one of the first things you learn in space is not to thrash. If you have nothing constructive to do, the most constructive thing you can do is often nothing at all. In a mindful sense, I mean.
Thrashing is the thing that gets people killed. Not sitting still.
The botanical gardens were amazing considering the size and isolation of Downthehatch. Of course, they were useful for food, and oxygen exchange, and air filtration, but these must be a project of love for somebody. Possibly, if I wasn’t stereotyping, Habren themself, being photosynthetic and all.
There was an extensive aquaculture section too, with a dodecapod engaged as gardener—a species I’d encountered descriptions of, but never previously met. Senso with it was fascinating, as its perceptual systems were so different from mine we had to use translator meshes even to exchange basic concepts, but after pestering it with badly communicated questions for as long as I thought I could get away with, I almost conceived of a passion to take up water gardening.
Impossible on Singer, of course. And if I give you the impression I was annoying the poor thing, well, I about had to pry myself loose when its explanation of algae control protocols stretched into the second decihour.
After I made my excuses to the dodecapod, I went to wander around the nonaqueous areas of the botanical garden. And that was where I ran into the Goodlaw again.
Almost literally.
Cheeirilaq’s mottled wing coverts and carapace blended into the greenery so thoroughly that I would have trodden on one or two of the constable’s delicate feathery feet if it hadn’t whisked them away a moment before my station shoe descended. I don’t think I would have hurt it much, because the shoes are a closed-cell foam meant to protect my tender afthands when I have to walk on them like some kind of barbarian—but low-gravity life-forms are notoriously fragile. The speed of the dodge was… well, unearthly, despite the transparent tubes of an ox-supplement system winding around Cheeirilaq’s multiple breathing holes, which probably meant it was feeling a little light-headed… or light-wherever it kept its brain. Probably in the abdomen, considering the relative size of the head. Or that nice armored thorax, which would get it close to the manipulator arms, and still not too far from the sensory equipment.
Not that I was contemplating all that at the time, you understand.
What I was doing was feeling my hands and scalp go cold while some tiny shrew ancestor in my amygdala stared up at a two-meter-long praying mantis reared back over me with its barbed-wire forelimbs raised as if to stab and clutch. The rodent ancestor screamed at me in whispers to keep still, keep still, keep still and maybe it won’t be able to see you and find you and eat you. It was the most amazing sensation, entirely devoid of wilclass="underline" my body just… crystallized, as immovable as in those nightmares when your body becomes aware that your REM paralysis is still switched on, but you can’t make yourself wake up from whatever horror is chasing you.
We stared at one another for long seconds. Then Cheeirilaq settled its two lifted feet neatly back on the path—in my heightened state, I remember thinking very clearly how the feathery fronds were admirably adapted to grasping surfaces and moving around in low or zero g—closed those bread-knife manipulator arms, and settled itself with a shake of wings and head and torso like a roused cat attempting to shrug back into her dignity.
It looked away and quickly groomed its antennae with the smaller, feathery set of manipulators.
Counting wings and wing coverts, the Goodlaw had eighteen limbs, which was an impressive total for any sentient. And yes, part of my brain was doing the math, because brains are ridiculous. Another part was trying not to get upset about the sheer number of legs on that thing, oh my Void.
Its abdomen was still visibly inflating and deflating. The Goodlaw possessed something like lungs, I could see, and from the pulsing transition of each breath along its length, it seemed like it had an efficient one-way respiration system, unlike my own kludgy air bladders that had to waste capacity moving each expired breath back out the way it came. With each deep breath, slender bands of brilliant red became visible around the leaf-green bands of Cheeirilaq’s integument. From this, I deduced that Cheeirilaq’s chroma could not be too different from my own.
Friend Haimey, it said, and my senso gave the disembodied voice a tone of mild embarrassment. You… startled me.
Friend?
It had, come to think of it, used the term before. Perhaps it was a term of respect from its species.
“You also startled me, Goodlaw,” I said. “I’m very sorry for nearly stepping on your foot. Your lovely natural coloring blends in rather well in this environment.”
The foliage of my homeworld is also verdant. Its stridulation, this time, was combined with a breathy whistle from the respiration tubes along its abdomen, a sound that I could not help but hear as melancholy or homesickness.
It’s deadly to anthropomorphize, and yet who the hell can stop doing it?
I parsed that for a moment before realizing that in one of those occasional translation bugs—no pun intended—what Cheeirilaq had said was more accurately translated as “lushly shaded in [green].”
“Your species were ambush predators?”
It made a funny little bow. I was starting to get the hang of its body language.
“Mine were opportunistic omnivores,” I said. “We ran our prey down in packs and ate a lot of whatever was available.”
It stridulated. From this vantage, I could see the variety of sounds being made by the ridged edges of the wing coverts, and the rubbing of the walking legs. I wondered if its species sang for pleasure.
A very sound evolutionary strategy. I would like to visit Terra one dia, but I am afraid it would be impossible.
I imagined the effect of human-standard gravity on the slender legs and exoskeleton and winced. Apparently, I winced visibly enough that it was even obvious to an alien with no mobile facial features, because the tiny head pivoted and rocked to examine me from several angles with the mirrorlike compound eyes, and the tiny pinpricks of simple eyes. I felt like I was being examined by a curious cat.