Oates laughed. ‘You’ve filled half this cart yourself, kid.’
Sawyer’s head swam. He pulled his fingers into his gloved palms. ‘I – if I’d known—’
Oates’ expression grew serious. ‘You heard the boss. If you’re not happy, you walk away after this. After this. We are your ride home. We put food in your mouth and air in your lungs.’ He took a step forward, knife still in hand. ‘Right now, you owe us.’ He smiled as if nothing were wrong. ‘Now, we’ve eaten up a good chunk of time with this. To make up for it, I want you to take the other cart and check out the other homes while I finish up here.’ He clapped Sawyer’s shoulder. ‘Are we good?’
Sawyer would’ve given anything in that moment to be a stronger person. A smarter person. He wanted to tell Oates to fuck off, he wanted to run out of the room, he wanted to get back to the ship and into an escape pod and beat them back to the Fleet, where he could tell patrol what had happened, and they’d understand, they’d know he hadn’t known, they’d be reasonable and fair and . . . and . . . would they? Or would they scoff at him for being stupid? Would they lock him up? Would they kick him out?
The moral high ground didn’t look any safer. What would happen if Sawyer simply did nothing, if he refused to help any further with this? Would they leave him? Would they . . . He looked at Oates’ knife. Stars, they wouldn’t, would they?
Would they?
Sawyer couldn’t see any path of refusal that ended well. He didn’t have any clue what he’d do when they got back to the Fleet, but Oates was right. They were his ride home. He had four more days with these people. There wasn’t much else he could do.
He looked at the floor, and nodded.
‘Good,’ Oates said. He handed Sawyer his satchel of tools. ‘Go quick, and holler if you need a hand.’
Sawyer gestured for the cart to follow. He left the home. He walked to the next home over. There was nothing else he could do. Nowhere else he could go.
The front door was firmly sealed, and as unresponsive as the first had been. There was no big hole made by Aeluon bots. No one had opened this place up since the accident.
Sawyer stood motionless for a moment. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to be there. Sanitation, he thought. That’s where he should be. Maybe he’d tell that to patrol when he got back. Maybe if he mentioned that he was in the sanitation lottery, they’d go easy on him, they’d see that he was serious about being there, that he hadn’t come all this way to cause trouble. Or would he go to patrol? Maybe it was better to do like Muriel had said – shake hands, walk away, no problem, never speak of it again.
‘Shit,’ he said. He leaned his forehead against the inside of his helmet and shut his eyes. He had to do this. He had to get back home. Back to the Fleet, anyway. He wasn’t sure he had a home. At the moment, he wasn’t sure he deserved one.
Sawyer reached into Oates’ satchel and found another power pack. He gestured. Nothing happened. He connected his scrib, like he had before. He went through the code, like he had before. This one was the same as the other had been, and he blazed through it in a blink. It was keyed differently, that was all. Keyed for someone else. Another family. Another wall full of hands.
Focus, he thought. C’mon, don’t fuck this up even more.
He punched in the last command.
Sawyer would never be sure of what came next. The sealed door slid open, and with it came force, and fear, and pressure, and Sawyer was in the air – no, that wasn’t right, there wasn’t air in space, there was – there was air, all the air that had been behind the door, and it was carrying him, and the contents of the home, all the things Oates wanted, all the things that family had needed, rushing, rushing, flying, thudding, falling. Then there was a bulkhead, and a split second of pain, pain everywhere, an inescapable shatter. But that was all. He didn’t have time to process what dying felt like.
Part 4
But for All Our Travels
Feed source: Reskit Institute of Interstellar Migration (Public News Feed)
Item name: The Modern Exodus – Entry #11
Author: Ghuh’loloan Mok Chutp
Encryption: 0
Translation path: [Hanto:Kliptorigan]
Transcription: 0
Node identifier: 2310-483-38, Isabel Itoh
[System message: The feed you have selected has been translated from written Hanto. As you may be aware, written Hanto includes gestural notations that do not have analogous symbols in any other GC language. Therefore, your scrib’s on-board translation software has not translated the following material directly. The content here is a modified translation, intended to be accessible to the average Kliptorigan reader.]
Where would you begin, dear guest, if you wanted to venture out into the galaxy? Would you talk to a friend? A trusted person who had made the journey before? Would you reach for a Linking book, or test the waters with a travel sim? Would you study language and culture? Update your bots? Purchase new gear? Find a ship to carry you?
Every one of these options are on offer at the emigrant resource centre, a relatively new fixture you can find in most homesteader districts. Some are set up at existing schools, others fill unused merchant space. All serve the same purpose: to prepare GC-bound Exodans for life beyond the Fleet.
Scroll through a workshop listing for any centre, and you will find an exhaustive array of topics. Here is a sampling of the current menu at the resource centre my dear host Isabel took me to visit yesterday:
Conversational Klip: What You Didn’t Learn In School
Interspecies Sensitivity Training 101
Weather, Oceans, and Natural Gravity: Overcoming Common Fears
A Guide to Human-Friendly Communities
Trade Licence Advice Forum (ask us anything!)
The Legal Do’s and Dont’s of Engine Upgrades
How to Choose the Right Exosuit
Introduction to the Independent Colonies
Those Aren’t Apples: Common Alien Foods You Need To Avoid
Imubot and Vaccination Clinic (check calendar for your desired region)
Ensk Six Ways: Making Sense of Humans from Elsewhere
Ground Environment Acclimation Training (sim-based)
Ground Environment Acclimation Training (non-virtual discussion)
Tunnel Hopping for Beginners
The list goes on.
I sat in on ‘A Guide to Human-Friendly Communities.’ Neutral market worlds were prominently mentioned, as were Sohep Frie and, I was pleased to note, my own adopted home of Hashkath. Harmagian territories, depressingly but unsurprisingly, were presented as hit-ormiss. Quelin space was vehemently discouraged, to no one’s surprise.