There wasn’t an encompassing word for what Eyas felt then. Tightness. Warmth. Pain. Clarity. She thought of the top of the cylinder, of one particular sunken crater she’d refilled with bamboo chips some tendays before now. She thought of the canisters that had rattled in her cart some tendays after then. She thought of dirt, dark and shapeless, and of sprouts, tender and new.
Why now? Sunny had asked of her profession, right before giving her the answer she’d always had: Because you love it, and because it’s our way, and that’s reason enough. There wasn’t maths or logic or any ironclad measure of efficiency to back it up. There didn’t need to be. If trying something new was valid, then keeping something old was, too. No, this wasn’t the same Fleet as that of their ancestors. Yes, things had changed, and would keep changing. Life meant death, always. But by the same token, death meant life. So long as people kept choosing this life, Eyas planned to be there – for as long as she could – guiding them through both sides of the equation.
Eyas looked Anna in the eye. She smiled, and said what she should’ve said the first time she’d heard a grounder speak those words. ‘Welcome. Whatever questions you have, we’re happy to help.’
Kip, One Standard Later
Ever since he’d arrived on Kaathet, Kip had encountered so many things he’d never seen before that the phrase ‘I’ve never seen anything like this’ had almost stopped feeling like something worth pointing out. Nothing was like what he knew, not the food, not the crowds, and definitely not the school, which was the complete opposite of school back home in that everything was fun and interesting (and that was a whole new problem, because it was all so good, he didn’t know what concentration to pick). To say ‘I’ve never seen anything like this’ was the same as saying ‘I got up today’.
That said: he’d never seen anything like the Osskerit Museum, one of the biggest repositories of Arkanic artefacts in the GC. The inside of the building was decorated to look like one of their long-gone grand temples – or, at least, somebody’s best guess as to how they looked. It was hard to say anything hard and fast about a sapient species that had gone extinct long before any of the ones around today had woken up. Still, if their buildings looked anything like the Osskerit, the Arkani had been damn impressive. Everything inside and out was harsh angles and reflective surfaces, a sharp, stabbing fractal of shimmering light. The visual effect felt violent, almost, and was nowhere Kip would want to live. He was wowed all the same.
‘Hey, come look at this!’ Tuumuu said. The Laru’s body was facing a display, but her limb-like neck was stretched back around her foreleg so she could face the others. Kip was still getting used to that. He was also still getting used to having whole conversations in Klip all day every day, which he was getting better at. He wore a translation hud to fill in the gaps.
The rest of the group came over to Tuumuu’s side, and Kip left the fossils he’d been looking at to drift their way. They were inseparable, the five of them, all first-year students, all interstellar transfers, all taking Introduction to Historical Galactic Civilisations. They were each from somewhere else, and even though the homegrown students at the Kaathet Rakas school were friendly (mostly), somehow it felt natural for the outsiders to stick together. Even if they were total weirdos.
Dron leaned toward the display, his cheeks swirling speckled blue. ‘Huh,’ he said.
Viola pointed at Dron’s face. ‘What’s that one mean?’
The Aeluon gave Viola a tired look. ‘Stars, you are not going to let this go, are you?’
‘How else am I supposed to know what’s up with you if you don’t explain your colours? See, now there’s some yellow in there. What’s yellow mean?’
‘Yellow means lots of things.’
‘What’s this yellow mean?’
‘Annoyed. It means I’m annoyed.’
Viola cuffed the innocent Laru. ‘Jeez, Tuumuu, stop bugging Dron. Can’t you see he’s yellow?’
‘Kip,’ Dron called. ‘Will you please get over here and make your cousin behave?’
‘And will you all please shut up?’ Kreshkeris said from a bench nearby. She was taking furious notes on her scrib, like always. ‘Some of us would like to actually do well on this assignment.’ She was a lifelong spacer, too, and always acted like she had to prove herself to the grounder Aandrisks they went to school with. Some things weren’t that different.
Kip walked up to Viola with his hands in his pockets. ‘Hey, cousin,’ he said. ‘Behave.’ He could hear his accent, his imprecise words. But it was cool. With this group, he knew it was cool.
Viola smirked at the joke. Their first day at school, Dron had asked if she and Kip were related, which was hilarious, because Viola came from Titan, and they looked nothing alike. At least, they didn’t think so. Everybody else did. ‘Bug-fucking spacer,’ Viola said in her weird, flowy Ensk.
‘Cow-licking Solan,’ Kip shot back.
‘That’s for Martians, you idiot. There aren’t any cows in the Outers.’
‘I dunno, I’m looking at one right now.’
They both grinned.
‘They’re talking shit about us again,’ Dron said in the others’ general direction.
‘You have no idea what we’re saying,’ Kip said.
An elaborate explosion of colour danced across the Aeluon’s face. ‘And neither do you.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Viola said.
‘You guys,’ Tuumuu said, the fur on her neck waving in the air as her big funny feet danced impatiently. ‘Look at this.’
They leaned in to see what had gotten their fuzzy history nerd so excited. On the pedestal before them rested an ancient lump of metal, smashed in on itself, worn down by time.
‘It’s a star-tracker,’ Tuumuu gushed. ‘It’s what they used to study the sky. Think about it! They were trying to find people out there, too. Only . . . only we showed up too late.’ Her head sagged. ‘Stars, that’s sad.’
They leaned in closer. ‘Doesn’t look like much,’ Dron said.
‘That’s ’cause it’s old, dummy.’
‘How’d it work?’ Viola asked.
Kip cocked his head. ‘Looks like there was a switch here.’ He reached out and picked up the star-tracker.
Everything went batshit at once. An alarm went off. Previously unseen lights started flashing. His friends yelled in unison.
‘Kip, what the fuck?!’
‘Dude, what are you—’
‘Put it back!’
A shout in Reskitkish came from behind. A line of translation shot across Kip’s hud: Put the object down.
He turned to see an Aandrisk security guard standing behind him. She was about two heads taller than he was, and had a stun gun at the ready.
Kip stammered. ‘I – what—’
The Aandrisk repeated herself in hissing Klip: ‘Set the item down.’
Kip looked down at the lump of metal he was still holding stupidly. He had no idea what he’d done wrong, but he did as told. ‘I – I wasn’t stealing—’
The guard glared at him, and everyone else. She looked straight at Kreshkeris as she walked away. ‘Mind your foreign friends,’ she said.