Isabel didn’t need to ask what she meant. She remembered. She remembered being not much older than Sasha and hearing the adults in her hex talking about the growing push for GC membership. She remembered the news feeds, the public forums, the pixel posters with their catchy slogans. She remembered being a little older, when the Fleet and the Martian government were in the thick of smoothing out relations so as to join as a unified species, and everything felt like it was one spark away from a flash fire. She remembered being in her teens and watching the parliamentary hearings, listening to the galaxy’s most powerful debate whether her species had merit enough to go from tolerated refugees to equal citizens. She remembered the hopes everybody had pinned on it – Grandpa Teyo, with his medical clinic badly in need of new tech and proper vaccines, Aunt Su, with her merchant crew hungry for new trade routes. Everybody who had ever been to a spaceport and felt like they were a subcategory, a separate queue, an other. And she remembered the Harmagian delegation in those hearings, fully split on the issue of whether Humans were worth the bother, unable to vote in consensus. They hadn’t been the only species with objections, but that wasn’t the point. Every voice that got up there and spoke against Humanity stung as if the words were being said for the first time.
Isabel laid her hand on her wife’s knee. ‘That was such a long time ago,’ she said. ‘So much has changed.’
‘I know.’
‘Ghuh’loloan wasn’t around for any of that. She wasn’t even born yet.’
‘I know.’ Tamsin thought. ‘They’re born underwater, right?’
‘Yes.’ Isabel smirked. ‘I’m sure she’d be happy to answer your questions about it. Seeing as how you’re curious about her species.’
Tamsin stuck out her tongue. ‘It’s not that I don’t understand curiosity. It’s that . . . it’s like you said. She wasn’t even born yet. She missed out on all of that ugliness, and yet we’re kind of quaint to her, it feels like. Yeah, it was forever ago, but those Harmagians who said those things are still around, right? They had kids, and those kids would’ve learned—’
‘They don’t raise kids like we do.’
‘Well, somebody’s raising them, right? Somebody’s teaching them, somebody’s telling them how the galaxy works. So what was your pal Ghuh taught about us? What do they say about us when we’re not around? In some ways, they were right. We don’t have much to offer. We build off their tech, and we get the planets they’ve decided are too crummy to live on. And our kids see that. They all want to go to Central space and mod their bodies and get rich. Did you hear Terra at dinner tonight?’
‘You’ll have to be more specific.’
‘She was talking about the ferry ride she went on last tenday, and she said, “we flew past a big yelekam”. I asked her what the word was in Ensk. She didn’t know. She didn’t know the word for comet.’
Isabel blinked. The younger generation, she knew, was mixing Klip and Ensk in ways hers never had, and they tended to lean heavily on the galactic language when speaking among themselves. But Terra was five years old. She would’ve barely started being taught Klip at school. Clearly, she’d been learning elsewhere. ‘Languages adapt.’ Isabel exhaled. ‘That’s the way of it.’
‘Stars, you are the worst person to sympathise with about change being scary,’ Tamsin said with a crooked smile. She set both stitching and mug aside, and leaned in to Isabel, lacing the hand on her knee into her own. ‘I’m not saying I hated it tonight, or that I don’t want her here. I’m saying I felt like I was on display, and it was weird. I expect that if I’m elsewhere. I don’t expect that here. That’s all.’
Isabel cupped Tamsin’s face with her free hand and leaned forward to kiss her. ‘I’m sorry you felt that way,’ she said after their lips parted. ‘That isn’t fair to you.’
Tamsin rested her forehead against Isabel’s for a long moment, the kind of moment that made everything else hold still. She pulled back just a touch. ‘So since I’ve been so emotionally wounded in my own home—’
‘Oh, stars.’ Isabel sat back, letting the roll of her eyes lead the way.
‘Can you go fetch the leftover custard out of the stasie?’ She gave her lashes an out-of-character flutter.
Isabel sighed in acquiescence. ‘Did you not get any at dinner?’
Her wife looked at her seriously. ‘I am seventy-nine years old. If I want dessert twice . . . I get dessert twice.’
Tessa
This was a battle of wills, and Tessa was going to win. She was sure of that, sure in her bones, even though the scene before her was a daunting one.
‘Ky,’ she said. ‘You need to lie down now.’
Her toddling son stood atop his cot in her room, all tummy and gravity-defying curls. He was the cutest thing in the universe, and she would’ve given anything for him to be someone else’s kid right then.
‘No,’ Ky said with simple conviction. ‘Up now.’
‘It’s not time to be up,’ Tessa said. ‘It’s time for sleep.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’ His knees wobbled, but they held steady. Ky presented his argument: ‘Mama up now. Aya up now.’ He raised his voice. ‘Ky up now! All fixed!’
‘Your sister is not up, either. She’s asleep.’
‘No!’
Tessa looked over her shoulder, across the living room toward Aya’s door. It was closed, but . . . but. A new uncertainty needled at her. She wondered what little ears could hear that hers couldn’t. Tessa ran her hand through her hair and let out a terse sigh. She looked Ky in the eye as she started to exit the room. ‘When I come back, you need to be lying down.’
‘No!’
Tessa crossed the living room, trading one battle for another. She opened Aya’s door, and – well, she had to give the kid credit. She was tented under her blanket, which would have hidden the light of her scrib were it not for one traitorous hole created by an errant foot.
‘Hey,’ Tessa said sternly.
Her daughter froze, an oh shit rigor that might’ve been funny if Tessa hadn’t been so sick of this. ‘I was just—’ Aya began.
‘Bed,’ Tessa said. That would’ve been that, were it not for a creeping suspicion. She pulled the blanket up and away. Aya scrambled to shut off her scrib, but she was too slow. An image of neon weapon blasts and campy explosions lingered in the empty air.
Tessa frowned. ‘What were you watching?’
Her daughter pouted at the bed.
‘Aya.’
‘. . . Cosmic Crusade.’
‘Are you allowed to watch Cosmic Crusade?’
‘No,’ Aya said, mumbling so low her lips barely moved.
‘No,’ Tessa said. Stars, but she was over fighting to keep that Martian trash out of her kid’s head. She took the scrib.
The protest was immediate and indignant. ‘Mom! That’s not fair!’
‘It’s totally fair.’
‘When do I get it back?’