Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘Do you know,’ Isabel said with a grin, ‘that during late pregnancy, sometimes you can see the baby’s features pressing through the mother’s skin?’
The Harmagian’s eyestalks gave a slight pull downwards. ‘. . . not the face.’
‘Sometimes the face.’
Ghuh’loloan made a sound of good-humoured revulsion. ‘My dear Isabel, I really do recommend that your species try spawning like normal people do. It is far, far less disturbing.’
Sawyer
The vox snapped on with a loud scratch, waking Sawyer with all the courteousness of being dropped into a pond. ‘One hour to go time,’ Oates announced. ‘Up and at ’em, folks.’
Sawyer processed the message, processed his surroundings, and processed the fact that he felt wholly like shit. ‘Ugh, stars,’ he moaned, rubbing his face with his palms. He was hungover, and how. Len had presented two bottles of Whitedune after dinner the night before, and every memory Sawyer had retained after that point was hazy at best. A bellyful of corrosive kick should’ve been enough to make him sleep through the night, but it turned out that Oates, who had the room next to his, snored with a vigour and volume that could pull even the drunkest punk into a queasy, half-awake limbo for cumulative hours.
And yet, in between the heavy pulses in his temples, he remembered other things. He remembered the table cracking up at his lousy imitation of a Martian accent. He remembered Len jamming on his lap drum and cheering loudly when Sawyer proved he could sing along to ‘Go Away Away’ – the Exodan pop song of the standard – in its entirety. He remembered Dory roaring with laughter and thumping him across the back after he choked on one shot too many and felt it exit his throat by way of his nose. He remembered Muriel saluting him with a raised glass.
They like me, he thought as he threw up in the washbasin. He spat, smiled, and half-laughed at himself. What a great look for his first day. He’d laugh in full about this, at some point, that first job on the Silver Lining when Len got everybody shitfaced the night before. Yeah, that was the kind of story you’d tell fondly a few days down the road.
He washed himself up and found his last clean shirt. It had been four days since they’d left dock and headed into the open. He could make out the Fleet in the distance, just barely – a bright cluster of lights that didn’t match the stars. But he couldn’t see the Oxomoco yet. He didn’t know much about navigation, granted, but he was kind of confused by the direction they were heading. He thought he’d heard that the wreck had been put into orbit in such a way that it and the Fleet were always on opposite sides of the sun, so nobody would have to look at it. If he could still see the Fleet, then . . . then maybe he’d got that wrong. He’d misunderstood. Wouldn’t be the first time.
He headed to the kitchen. No one else was there, but some saintly person had put out a big hot pot of mashed sweet beans, a bowl of fruit, and – best of all – an open box of SoberUps. He availed himself of everything, plus a giant mug of water.
‘Hey hey, grounder,’ Nyx said, entering the room. The pilot delivered the dig with a friendly grin, then spotted the items on the counter. ‘Oh, thank fuck,’ she said, reaching into the box of SoberUps. She had a packet open and its contents crunched between her teeth in seconds flat. Nyx grimaced. ‘I hate the taste of these.’
‘Me too,’ Sawyer said.
She flipped the packet over and squinted at the label. ‘Snapfruit flavoured, my ass. More like . . . snapfruit’s ghost. Like a really sad ghost.’
Sawyer navigated a chuckle around his mouthful of mash. The magic combo of carbs and medicine was already doing its trick, and his temples throbbed less forcefully now.
Nyx helped herself to breakfast. ‘You ready for the hop?’
Sawyer wasn’t sure what she meant. A tunnel hop? That couldn’t be right. He was pretty sure they weren’t anywhere near the Risheth tunnel, and they couldn’t have got there in four days anyway. Besides, they weren’t leaving the system for this job, so – hmm. Whatever. He chose ignorance over sounding stupid, and replied: ‘Yeah, totally.’
‘Good good,’ she said, fetching herself a spoon and heading for the door. ‘You can ride it out anywhere you like. Bed’s best for it, though, if you’re not flying. Doesn’t take long, but most folks like to lie down.’
‘Okay, cool,’ Sawyer said, having even less of an idea of what was going on now. ‘Is there . . .’ He had no idea what they were talking about, much less what to ask. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘Nah,’ Nyx said, grabbing a spoon. ‘Muriel or Oates’ll call you when it’s your time to shine. Go put your feet up.’ She winked. ‘Let the snapfruit ghosts do their job.’
Sawyer chuckled and nodded, feeling utterly lost as she left the room. Well, it was his first day. Feeling lost came with the territory, right?
He headed back to his room and lay down, as instructed. His body sank into the bed with gratitude. SoberUps were great and all, but he still felt like he was balancing his brain on stilts. A bit of rest, and he’d be good to go.
He passed the time quietly, skimming through feeds on his scrib and letting the helpful drugs smooth out his edges. He’d almost forgotten about all his questions until another one appeared: What’s that sound?
It was a sound he knew, but he couldn’t place it. A mechanical sound. An engine sound. Something that had been activated. Something . . . different. He started to sit up, but the vox stopped him. ‘Hop time, everybody,’ Oates said. ‘Sit down or lie back.’
Sawyer lowered himself back down. His heart quickened. His head puzzled. And then – oh fuck.
Space disappeared. Time disappeared. For how long or how far, nobody could say, because neither of those things meant anything anymore. Everything doubled, tripled, folded in on itself. Sawyer tried to look out the window, but his vision swam and his head begged to hold still, hold still, everything’s wrong.
Then, just as abruptly, everything was fine.
Sawyer sat bolt upright and held onto the edge of the mattress. Nausea – a whole fun new version of nausea – pushed at him in waves. He knew that feeling. Not well, but he knew it. He’d felt it once on a trip to Hagarem, when his sedatives hadn’t quite kicked in before the deepod got going. That’s what had happened. That’s what the sound had been.
They’d punched through the sublayer. The Silver Lining had a pinhole drive.
Sawyer knew, as any kid who’d taken a shuttle licence lesson did, that pinhole drives were dead-ass dangerous, that making tiny collapsing holes in the space between space was risky business, that doing so outside of designated transport lanes was illegal in the GC. He frowned. Well, it was illegal in Central space, anyway. Was it in the Fleet? He didn’t know.
There was nothing to worry about, he told himself. These folks were professionals. They had a clean ship, a registry number, kids and families back home. Besides, he didn’t know jack about scavenging. He didn’t know—
Something tugged at the edge of his vision. He looked up. He froze. Slowly, he got to his feet and approached the window. ‘Stars,’ he whispered. In the blackness hung what was left of the Oxomoco. A shell. A corpse. A ruin clasped in a sphere of flotsam. He’d seen pictures. He’d known where Muriel and her crew were taking him that day. None of that had prepared him for it. Nothing had made him ready for the tangible presence of this once-mighty homesteader, torn to shreds by something so seemingly simple as one moment of air meeting vacuum. Sawyer stood at the window, awed and shaken.
What was he doing here?
The sound of the vox switching on made him jump. ‘All right everybody,’ Oates said. ‘You know what to do. Sawyer, meet us at the airlock. Time to suit up.’
Sawyer didn’t waste a moment. He headed down the walkway, getting his head on straighter with every step. This was new, and he was just nervous. Time to shove that aside. He had a boss to impress. A crew to join, maybe. There’d be plenty of opportunity for questions later. For now, he had a job to
Kip
Kip knew, theoretically, that things weren’t always going to be like this. He knew that he wasn’t going to be sixteen forever, that exams would be a memory one day, that if other people lived away from their parents, he could, too. He would.
But right then, it sure as shit felt like life was never, ever gonna change.
Bored wasn’t even the word for it anymore. There was something biting inside him, something shouting and endless sitting right at the bottom of his rib cage, pressing heavy with every breath. He wanted . . . he didn’t know what, even, but he was always reaching, always waiting, and not knowing how to fix it was making him crazy. He thought about the vids he watched, where everyone was cool and clever and knew how to dress. He thought about the sims he played, where jumping meant flying and punches exploded. He thought about the spacers he’d see in the shuttledock sometimes, coming home with armfuls of expensive shit for friends and fam, handing their belt guns over to patrol before crossing that invisible line between out there and in here. Squish all of that together, and that’s what he wanted. He wanted aliens to nod hello to him when he walked through spaceports. He wanted to look in the mirror in the morning and think something other than well, I guess that’s as good as it gets. He wanted. He wanted.
Yet he knew, as he made his way to his usual bench after trading for his usual lunch, that he was full of it. He was still seething at his parents after the whole patch thing – which, of course, had gotten around school, too, and was doing such fucking wonders for his social life – but deep down, there was some snivelling, traitorous part of him that . . . ugh . . . that had been glad, kind of. Glad that his parents had showed up at the Nova Room. Glad that he’d been given an out. And that was his whole problem, really, more than parents or job trials or the slow crawl between birthdays. The problem was that what he wanted, more than anything, was to fuck someone or fight something, and he knew – from experience, now – that if given the opportunity, he’d be too scared to do either.
Cool. Real cool.
A group of his schoolmates walked by, on their way to Grub Grub for hoppers of their own. He didn’t look at any of them, but he could hear whispers, giggles, a pack passing him by.
Stars, he sucked. Everything sucked.
He saw Ras approach out of the corner of his eye. He had a spring in his step, a look that said I’ve got an idea. Kip took a long sip of his choko and sighed. He was still kind of pissed at Ras, but at the same time, there was nobody else coming over to sit with him.
‘Tek tem, man.’ Ras took his place on the bench and reached for Kip’s drink. ‘You look like shit.’
Kip let the bottle go without a fight. ‘Yeah, well, I spent my night boxing up all the food compost in the whole fucking hex, so . . .’ He let a shrug serve as the end of the sentence.
Ras winced. ‘They are really on your ass about this, huh?’
‘Are yours not?’
Ras shook his head as he drank. ‘They keep giving me shit, but I’m not in trouble-trouble.’ He handed the bottle back over. ‘Tika lu, man. I feel kinda responsible.’
Kip looked at his friend and felt some irritation slip away. Ras cared, and that . . . that felt pretty good. ‘Nah,’ Kip said. ‘It’s cool. Semsem.’
The smile returned to Ras’ face. ‘To make sure that it is, I wanna make it up to you. You think they’ll let you come out soon?’
Kip considered. It had been a tenday since it had all gone down, and Mom was being more reasonable. ‘Maybe. I got a job trial—’
‘Where at?’
‘Tailor shop. Y’know, stitching socks, whatever.’
Ras rocked his head, trying to look positive but undoubtedly unimpressed. ‘Cool.’
Kip gave a short laugh. ‘It’s not.’ He took another sip.
‘Well, here,’ Ras said, handing over his satchel. ‘You’ll feel even better about this, then.’
Kip looked at the bag, then looked at Ras.
‘Open it, dumbass.’ Ras turned his head toward another group from school. ‘Hey, Mago!’ he called cheerfully. ‘Porsho sem!’ Nice ink.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ came the inevitable reply. Mago had gotten a cheap bot tattoo on vacation and it looked straight up dumb. Like, the lines didn’t even move at the same time.
Kip unclasped Ras’ satchel as the sparring continued. Just school stuff, it looked like. Scrib, stylus, some pixel pens, a bag of candy, a lunch tin, an info chip, a— wait. He rifled back to the bag of candy. He wasn’t sure that it was candy.
‘Dude,’ Kip said, starting to lift the bag out of the satchel. ‘Is this—’
Ras pushed Kip’s hand down into the satchel without looking. ‘Stay stylish, man,’ he called after Mago’s back. Ras snapped to Kip. ‘What the hell,’ he whispered, more amused than mad. ‘Don’t let people see.’
That clinched it. This was not candy. Kip dropped his voice to match Ras’, his heartbeat kicking up several notches. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Toby’s sister, remember? I told you.’
Kip looked at the clear pack, full of non-threatening bundles, each wrapped in a colourful bit of throw-cloth. He’d never smoked smash before, but he knew what it looked like. He’d played sims. Smash wasn’t illegal or anything – not in the Fleet, anyway – but you could only get it and use it in special cafes with bouncers at the door and patrol always hanging around outside. It was also yet another one of those things locked away behind the When You Turn Twenty seal, and he didn’t know any adults who were into it. His mom definitely wasn’t. She said it was ‘a waste of time, trade, and self-respect.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Ras gave him a reassuring look. ‘It only lasts a few hours, and it’s not like we’ll be sitting around your kitchen. We’ll go park ourselves in a garden somewhere after lights out, and it’ll be a real good time. And besides, Una makes solid stuff.’
‘Have you tried it?’
‘Well . . . no, but everybody says. You should’ve heard her explaining it to me as she packed it up. It’s some serious science. Look, if you don’t want to, it’s cool—’
‘Nah,’ Kip said. He closed the satchel definitively. ‘Let’s do it.’
Ras blinked, then laughed. ‘All right, man!’ He clapped Kip on the shoulder. ‘I thought you were gonna take more convincing than that.’
Kip swallowed the last of his choko, heart still quick but head as steady as could be. He shrugged again, as if he did this every day. ‘Something to do, right?’
Tessa
Somewhere in her head, she knew that she’d left the cargo bay, that she’d found someone to cover for her, that she’d taken a transport pod, that she’d walked (and run, in spurts) through the crowded plaza and into the entry doors of the primary school. She’d felt nearly none of it. Nothing but a furious blur existed between getting a vox call at work and her bursting into the admin office, where Aya sat sobbing on the couch, untouched tea and cookies on the table in front of her, a pair of concerned adults on either side.
‘Tessa, I am so sorry,’ one of them said, standing to make way for her. M Ulven, Aya’s teacher. ‘I don’t know how they got away from the group, it happened so fast—’
In the same distant part of her head that held the memory of getting from there to here, Tessa knew that the teacher wasn’t to blame, that field trips were frantic and kids were unpredictable, that her daughter would be okay. But all of that was shadowed behind a raw animal fury, something that wanted to roar at everyone who’d let this happen.
She took her place beside Aya and pulled her close. Aya trembled, her face burning red and her nose pouring down her lip. There was a throw-cloth clutched in her hand, unused. Some part of her head was distant, too.
Tessa glared at the people who were supposed to keep her kid safe. ‘Give us a moment,’ she said from behind her teeth.
M Ulven started to say something, but the head teacher laid her hand on his arm. He nodded guiltily ??
‘It’s all right, honey,’ Tessa said, hugging, rocking. The girl in her arms was so big, and yet still so small. ‘Here, blow your nose.’ A sizable portion of Tessa’s shirt was already soaked with snot. No matter. Ky had done the same to another corner that morning. Her definition of clean hadn’t been the same since the moment a night-shift doctor had placed a blood-smeared newborn in her arms.
Tessa took the throw-cloth from Aya’s hand and pressed it to the kid’s face. ‘Blow.’
Aya did as told, and continued to sob. ‘I was so scared.’
‘I would’ve been, too.’ Tessa rubbed her daughter’s back with the palm of her hand for a few minutes, waiting for Aya to quiet a bit. The sobs slowed, hiccuping out weakly every few seconds. ‘M Ulven told me what happened, but I want to hear it from you. Tell me how it went.’
Aya sniffed. ‘Am I in trouble?’
‘No.’ Under different circumstances, she would have been, but that was a bridge too far right then.
Aya swallowed hard and began to speak. ‘Everybody age nine went on a field trip to water reclamation today.’
‘Mmm-hmm,’ Tessa said, handing her the wet cloth. That part she hadn’t needed a recap of, but okay.
‘And Jaime, he – he said – it wasn’t my idea, Mom—’
‘You guys snuck off on your own,’ Tessa said. A pack of four or five of them, was what she’d gotten over the vox.
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah,’ Tessa echoed. She was sure that her daughter had leapt at the chance to abandon a dull field trip for a de facto obstacle course. That was a talk for another day. ‘And then what?’
Aya’s lower lip quivered. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
‘Use the cloth, please.’
Aya gave her nose a perfunctory rub. ‘I don’t know why they – why they – I hate Opal. I hate her!’ Her words were ragged now. Angry.