Ishtab regarded mother and child for a moment and then hailed a passing Lesser.
Pointing to the baby, she said, “Take. Follow.”
The Lesser complied without hesitation, throwing the sapped mother’s arm aside, and snatching away the baby. The mother’s prattles and howls faded as Ishtab strode across the field to the Lessers’ shades, baby and carrier behind her. Here she looked upon five times the birthers and expecting.
Ishtab addressed a conscious birther. “Greaters?”
The mother peered up at her, offered respects, and rolled her eyes down the jagged aisle.
Halfway down the row, Ishtab found what she sought. A Lesser birther, asleep, with a Greater infant.
She turned to the Lesser carrying the baby, and motioned to the dozing mother. “Give. Take.”
The babies were swapped, then the newborn Greater was carried to the Greaters’ shades, to the distraught mother outside. With a look of confusion, the mother inspected the baby from head to toes, sniffing the distinct scent of Lesser, and then proceeded to cleanse the new delivery with saliva and gray milk.
The mother eyed the observing Ishtab and said, “Good.”
Ish closed her game, flung aside the sheet and fuzzy blanket, wedged her feet into her slips, and stepped to the sink. She leaned close to the mirror. A puffy bag under one eye received a resentful poke. She stepped back, tilted her head into the refresher nook, and her foot found the peddle. Microjets sprayed hot mist on her face as warm air and renewer blasted through her hair. The facials cooled to warm and then cold, finishing with a ten-second rush of enriched air. She ran a brush through her hair, worked into a fresh tank, shorts, and top, and traded her slips for runners.
“Morning,” Angela said as they both entered the corridor. “After you.”
In the lab, Tom was sitting on Minnie’s side, gnawing on a chewstick, engrossed with whatever was displayed on one of the screens. His music ticked and thumped from the sides of his headphones.
Ish unbolted one of her own stools and slid it to the farthest screen in the opposite corner of the lab. She sat down, linked in her fone, and navigated into the supply pod tracking system. 133 hours before the next pod’s arrival. It had already decelerated to half its cruising speed.
A glance to Tom, focus unchanged.
The trajectory map expanded before her, solid red pipe leading from the pod to the target docking bay. Indicating velocity, the pipe was thickest at the incoming pod’s end, tapering to a thin dashed line for the final docking approach. She brushed her finger over a hidden icon in the middle of open space and a new blue pipe appeared, eclipsing the red on the pod side, but then arcing slightly upward, targeting the center of the Backup Habitat. Its speed tapered somewhat, but never slowed enough to prompt a dashed line. The blue trajectory would impact the Backup Habitat at precisely 135 km/h.
Ish copied the pod’s most recent position and stats into her simulation and re-hid the alternate course. She closed the app.
Accessing her surface probe catalogue, she filtered down to visuals, and bumped four units onto the large, movable screen to her right. She pinched the panel’s edge, angling the screen toward her. Her eyes locked in on the upper-right quarter where a probe lay on the ground outside a tall hut, pointed into a dark doorway. She tapped the black area inside the hut. The camera’s exposure corrected. Inside, now visible, a clan chieftain lay atop a bed of stacked Hynka skins. Ish leaned closer to the screen, bumped away the three other quarters so the doorway filled the display, and zoomed the camera until the hut’s outer walls disappeared.
She moved her face nearer still, her fone auto-compensating for focus, and watched for a while as the chieftain nibbled on a tiny bone.
John and Aether stepped out of the CO, quietly chatting. Only “Minnie” and “insisting” were audible. John noticed Ish coming up the hall and touched Aether’s elbow.
“Hi, Ish,” he said. “I just started going over your most recent report. You mind if I get back to you Wednesday? If that’s not enough time, you can absolutely add it to Thursday’s package as is. You know I trust you.”
“It’s fine,” she replied, stopping in front of them. “You caught that missing reference vid last time. I always appreciate your help.”
John returned a smile and modest shrug. He turned to Aether. “After group?”
Aether nodded and faced Ish as John slipped behind her, into the common room. She put her hands on Ish’s shoulders, lowered her chin, explored her eyes, a warm smile. “Talk to me.”
“What about? All is well.”
Aether wasn’t buying it, but she didn’t press. “You know we haven’t hung out in forever, just us? Besides one-on-ones, you know? If it’s my quarters—if it’s Minnie—you know I can come to you. Or,” she raised a conspiratorial eyebrow, “I could always kick her out of our room.”
“Sure, that sounds nice.”
Unassuaged concern weighed on Aether’s face. “You know I love you, beti.”
“You, too.”
Aether clearly wished to embrace her, but others had entered the hall from both ends. Aether waved Ish into the common room where group would soon begin.
John and Zisa sat at opposite sides of the big round table, while Minnie filled a cup of water from the dispensary. John and Zisa both had the telling, zoned-out faces of fone rapture. Ish sat down as others streamed in, talking too loud for the quiet room.
Suddenly, Zisa blurted out, “What the pip?” silencing the room.
Minnie snorted. “Pip? Is that what people are saying?” Minnie liked to mock Zisa’s obsession with Earth pop culture. “Or rather, what they were saying?” Everything they received was nearly two decades old, and likely obsolete, but Zisa loved it all and tried not to be bothered by the slights.
“Shut up,” Zisa said, her gaze still fixed on a blank wall. “The pod!”
Ish’s focus snapped from the table to Zisa.
“What about it?” Qin said as he mounted a stool.
“I’ve been going over the manifest,” Zisa replied. “There’s a song—a number-one hit—called Rape Dance.”
Gasps and laughs.
Minnie plunked down beside Zisa. “That’s amazing. Who’s the artist?”
“Um… oh, well, it matches… The Tampon Fuses.”
Everyone cackled, even John, but Zisa didn’t appear so amused. “Guys, how is this funny? Think about what this means. Think about what it says about Earth culture if the majority of people were into a song like this.”
“Come on, Zees,” Tom said. “It could be satirical. You have no idea.”
“Yeah,” Pablo said. “Plus it’s twenty years old. We’ll just have to wait for the pod to get here and all listen to it. Hey, let’s open next week’s group with it. But nobody gets to listen to it before that! It’ll be a bonding experience.”
Zisa’s gripes and the others’ chuckles slowly faded from Ish’s ears as the game loaded in her fone. She focused her eyes on the bare wall between Tom and Zisa, and enabled her avatar.
Flinging aside the weighty fur blanket, she rose from the bed.
Ish set down the helmet beside the utility belt on the supply boxes, and pulled her hair out the back of her suit. She slid off the hairband and shook her head, fluffing away the oppressively taut ponytail she’d worn for so long. Her curly locks drank in the humidity and would soon swell into a striking headdress.