That last detail wasn’t a bit true, but Isabel didn’t dare call her out. The look on the kid’s face was too hilarious. She leaned in. ‘Is it still dock thirty-seven?’
The attendant gave a smart nod. ‘Dock thirty-seven, yes, M.’ He pointed the way with a flat, business-like hand. Isabel could feel him watching them leave with the air of someone who’d had their sense of balance thrown slightly askew. She couldn’t help but smirk. Tamsin had always had a flair for ruffling strangers.
Dock thirty-seven was empty, save for the skiff waiting at the ready and a young woman leaning against the safety rail outside, playing a pixel game on her scrib. She was the pilot, as the multiple certification patches stitched onto her jacket indicated, and her uniformed appearance was every bit that of her profession, from her practical bamboo-fibre slacks to the resource-heavy boots that had probably belonged to another pair of feet first. But there were other details that would’ve been out of place on a pilot back when Isabel had been her age. The hypnotically shifting bot tattoos that danced up and down her forearms, for one. The thick Aandrisk-style swirls painted on her nails. The tiny glittering tech ports embedded near her temples, whose purpose Isabel could only guess at. She was an Exodan pilot, yes. But also . . . more.
The pilot glanced up as Isabel and Tamsin approached. ‘Hey, M Itoh and M Itoh!’ she said. ‘How’s it going?’
Isabel didn’t know the girl well, but she knew her name, that she was from neighbourhood five, and that she sometimes came into the Archives to look at records of old Earth architecture. Isabel had done the naming ceremony for her niece earlier that standard. ‘Hello, Kiku,’ she said warmly. ‘Are you our pilot this evening?’
Kiku looked delighted. ‘You two here for the Sunside?’
‘It appears that way,’ Isabel said, throwing a look in Tamsin’s direction.
Tamsin looked around the empty walkway. ‘Do we have it to ourselves?’ she asked, pleased with the possibility.
Kiku switched off her game, and the pixels scattered away. ‘Not many folks go for a night flight on a work night,’ she said, holstering her scrib and stepping toward the shuttle door. ‘Just kids on dates, mostly.’ She winked at them, and politely gestured toward the door. ‘Come on in.’
The shuttle had six pairs of passenger seats in a straight line, and a clear, domed roof that began at seat level and arched all the way around. Walking through the door, you could tell the roof was as thick and sturdy as any bulkhead, but sitting next to it, you’d never know it was there.
‘Anywhere you’d like,’ Kiku said.
‘What about that one?’ Tamsin pointed at the pilot seat, serious as could be.
Kiku played right along. ‘Can’t have that one,’ she said without cracking a smile.
‘You sure?’
‘Super sure.’
‘Tsk,’ Tamsin said, shaking her head. ‘Well, this was a bust.’ She started to head back toward the door, then chuckled, scrunched her nose at Kiku, and picked the second row behind the pilot’s seat. Far enough to not be crowding the pilot, but close enough to give her a hard time.
Kiku started her prep, and Isabel took the seat beside her wife. Tamsin leaned over, speaking in a low whisper. ‘Y’know, if she’s used to kids on dates, I bet she won’t mind if we make out.’
Isabel smothered a laugh and slapped Tamsin’s leg. ‘We’d traumatise the poor kid.’
‘What? No. We’re gorgeous.’ Her eyes narrowed in thought. ‘Didn’t we make out on the Sunside once?’
A very old memory dusted itself off: a pair of women, younger than their pilot was now, drunk on bartered kick and eyes full of nothing but the other, cosied up in the back row of a shuttle as if no one else was there. ‘That was the ferry, not the Sunside,’ Isabel said.
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Okay. You’re the archivist.’
Isabel leaned a little closer. ‘How would you make out on the Sunside anyway? You’d knock your teeth in.’
Her wife snorted. ‘But if you didn’t, you’d be a legend. I’m surprised that’s not a thing.’
‘What? Go to town as long as you can without needing medical attention?’
‘Yeah,’ Tamsin laughed heartily. ‘The Sunside challenge.’
The sounds of conspiratorial merriment made Kiku look back. ‘You two gonna be trouble?’
Tamsin sat up straight and folded her hands across her lap. ‘No way, M,’ she said, like a school kid caught with cheat codes. ‘No trouble here.’
‘Mmm-hmm,’ the pilot said, returning to her switches and buttons.
Isabel reached over and held Tamsin’s hand. ‘No trouble from me, anyway,’ she said.
‘Traitor,’ Tamsin said. She gave her fingers an affectionate squeeze.
Kiku slipped on a navigation hud. ‘Oh,’ Isabel said. She reached up to her face, remembering that she’d been wearing her own hud since work. She removed it, and gave Tamsin a facetious glare as she slipped the device into a pocket. ‘How long were you going to let me run around wearing this?’
Tamsin shrugged. ‘Until now, I guess.’
The engines outside whirred, their ion jets starting to glow. ‘All right,’ the pilot said. ‘Everybody ready?’ She paused. ‘I assume you two don’t need the safety lecture, yeah?’
Tamsin tugged on her fastened seat restraint in response. ‘Sit down, strap in, hang on.’
‘And let the pilot do her job,’ Isabel added.
Kiku pointed a finger back toward Isabel as she began to pull out from dock. ‘I like that bit,’ she said. ‘I’m adding that bit.’ She switched and pressed and made adjustments. ‘You two want grav or nah?’
Isabel raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re allowed to switch it off?’
Kiku gave a mischievous shrug. ‘Not officially.’
‘We’ll stick with grav,’ Tamsin said. ‘I like to feel like I’m actually upside down.’
‘You got it,’ Kiku said. She leaned into the vox. ‘Sunside One, requesting a spot in line.’
‘Granted, Sunside One,’ the traffic controller replied. ‘Have fun.’
The skiff pulled out and headed for the nearest airlock exit. A queue of private shuttles and long-haul transports each waited their turn. ‘It’ll be about half an hour until we reach the course,’ Kiku said, easing into the queue. ‘So just kick back and relax.’ She took a hand away from the controls and dug around in a storage box strapped to the side of her seat. ‘Either of you like salt toffee?’
Tamsin and Isabel spoke in tandem: ‘Yes.’ Kiku grinned, retrieved a tin, and gestured at her controls. A cleanerbot deployed itself from its dock in the corner of the craft, its tiny stabiliser jets firing friendly green. It hummed over to Kiku, who balanced the tin on its flat housing. ‘Second row,’ she commanded, and the bot complied, uncaring of the extra cargo.
‘Now that’s a creative use for a cleanerbot,’ Tamsin said, retrieving the tin from the idling machine.
‘Works, yeah?’ Kiku said.
‘Sure does.’ Tamsin looked at Isabel as she opened the tin. ‘I’m never getting up to fetch you something ever again.’
The queue moved forward without much wait, and the skiff entered the airlock. One gate slid shut behind them, another opened ahead. Metal made way for space and starlight. Tamsin held her hand a little tighter, and Isabel didn’t need to look at her to know she was smiling. She shared the feeling. The open was always beautiful.
And so they made their way to that old classic: the Sunside Joyride. A break-neck, full-throttle, sun-facing jaunt through whichever designated patch of rock the Fleet was orbiting closest to. A just-for-fun extravagance unveiled after GC citizenship expanded trade routes, and maintained by private donations after it became obvious that resources weren’t as freely flowing as hoped. The courses were safe, obviously. They were mapped out well in advance, and every rock was equipped with proximity alarms and backup proximity alarms and stabilisation thrusters that kept them from strayi
ng into the track. The pilots were exhaustively trained, and traffic control back home watched their every move on the tracking map. But none of that changed the way it felt to be strapped into a small craft, looping and leaping in three dimensions, the clear wall around you playing the convincing trick that there was nothing between you and open sky. Some people hated it. Some people tried it once and decided they preferred keeping their lunch down.
Some people were no fun.
‘What course are we hitting tonight?’ Isabel asked.
‘The Ten-Drop Twister,’ Kiku said.
Tamsin looked at Isabel. ‘I don’t remember that one.’
‘It’s new,’ Kiku said. ‘Replaced the Devil Dive.’
‘Aw, really? That one was great.’
The pilot nodded with sympathetic agreement. ‘Yeah, but they found tungsten in that one.’
‘Hard to argue that,’ said Tamsin.
‘Don’t worry,’ Kiku said. She put on a pair of pilot’s gloves, the kind you only wore for manual control. Isabel’s heart raced with anticipation. ‘The Ten-Drop’s a real kick in the pants. You won’t be disappointed.’
The skiff pulled up to an asteroid patch, filled with tell-tale lights and markers. A big circle of light buoys wreathed the entrance point, blinking in an assortment of colours. Kiku activated her hud. The engines burned loud and hot. ‘You two strapped in?’
Isabel tugged on her restraints, and her wife did the same. This had scared Tamsin the first time, Isabel remembered. She remembered a row of painful semi-circles embedded in her palm, where Tamsin had gripped tightly in fear. She remembered rubbing her then-girlfriend’s back as she threw up on the dock the second they left the skiff. And she remembered the next day, when she awoke to find Tamsin’s open eyes looking back from the pillow beside her, a who-cares grin in her voice as she asked Isabel if she wanted to go again.
Isabel had. From then on, if Tamsin was there, she’d be right alongside.
The engines roared, and the skiff ripped forward. ‘Ohhhhhh nooooo!’ Tamsin yelled, the last vowels blooming into a cackling yelp. Isabel yelled too, a screaming, living laugh as their skiff ducked and slid and jived.
‘Faster!’ Tamsin called.
‘Faster!’ Isabel echoed.
From behind, Isabel could see Kiku’s cheeks pull into a huge smile. ‘You got it,’ she said, and they went faster, louder, upside down and circling sharp. Giant rocks floated beyond the windowed walls, looming one moment, then behind them in a blink. Stars flew by in a confettied blur. Tamsin was laughing so hard she was crying, and it was impossible not to laugh along. Isabel could feel nothing but motion, joy, heartbeat. It was as good as it’d been the first time, as good as it had always been. She shut her eyes, and she cheered.
Eyas
A canyon rose up around her, arches crumbling and rocks stained red. The sky was so far away, a swath of intangible blue beyond the grass-tufted clifftops. Below, birds nested in whatever cracks and crevices they could find. They darted around the shady space with breathtaking speed, turning to catch beakfuls of the insects that filled the hot air.
Presumably hot air, that is. The theatre did not include sensory input beyond sound and sight. This wasn’t a sim. The theatre pre-dated that technology – or, to put it more accurately, pre-dated contact with species willing to share that technology. Every Exodan district had a theatre, and they still used the same antiquated tech, patched up a thousand times over, and the same recordings, taken by Eyas’ ancestors’ ancestors when it became clear that collapse was unavoidable. It was an old tradition, viewing the last scraps of a living Earth. There had been a time when going to the theatre was something you did every tenday – every week, then – or more. Every day, for some. You and your hexmates put on comfortable clothes, you brought some floor pillows, and you sat alongside other families on the floor beneath the projector dome, surrounded by all-encompassing images of a canyon, a beach, a forest. It was time made for reflection, for reminding. People laughed, sometimes, or wept, or sang quietly, or had whispered conversations. Anything beyond that was frowned upon. The theatre was a sacred place. A quiet place, even when any given day found it packed from end to end.
Eyas had never seen a theatre that crowded. The need to acquaint oneself with what a planet looked like had faded more with each generation after the real thing had been found. She’d never seen more than ten people in a theatre at once, and not all the theatres were in use anymore. They weren’t a vital system, and they didn’t get resource priority unless the surrounding district voted otherwise. Hers always had. Eyas sympathised with people who wanted their stores to go to more practical uses, but she was glad the majority of her neighbours shared her view that practicality became dreary if you didn’t balance it out properly.
Her primary reasoning for loving the theatre was selfish, and she knew it. She could’ve cited tradition and culture – and no one would’ve questioned her, given that her work embodied said same – but no, Eyas was glad to have a functional theatre nearby because it was one of the few places she could just think. Her work might’ve seemed quiet to some, but there were always families involved, and supervisory meetings like everyone else had. And even on the days when her only company was someone dead, she was focused on the task at hand. As for home – home was a place of rest, sure, but more chiefly distraction. Chores to do, friends to chat with, conversations leaking through closed doors. There weren’t many places in the Fleet you could be alone. While she very much enjoyed being around the living, sometimes her own thoughts were noise enough. The theatre wasn’t private. It was as public as could be. But it was a different kind of public, the kind of place where you could be alone around others.
She lay down on the floor, resting her head against the cushion she’d brought from home. The ghost of a wind rustled the scrappy canyon plantlife, and she imagined she could feel it coasting over her skin. She had no strong yearnings for wind and sky, but they were fun to think of anyway. Imagine: the intense vulnerability of an unshielded space. The wild chaos of atmosphere. Such thoughts were soothing and thrilling in equal measure.
Eyas folded her hands over her stomach, letting them rise and fall with each breath. She let her mind drift. She thought about the laundry she needed to do at home. She thought about her mother, and knew she should summon the fortitude to visit her one day soon. She thought about Sunny, and a hidden place inside her kicked with remembrance. She thought about dinner, and her empty stomach growled. She thought about work the next day, and she felt . . . she felt . . . she wasn’t sure.
She shifted her weight, the floor now less comfortable than it had been a few breaths before. There it was again – that tiredness, that nameless tiredness. It wasn’t lack of sleep, or overwork, or because anything was wrong. Nothing was wrong. She was healthy. She had a good home with good friends, and a full belly when she remembered to feed it. She had the profession she’d wanted since she was a little girl, and it was a valuable thing, a meaningful thing, a thing she believed in with all her heart. She’d worked hard for that. She had the life she’d always wanted, the life she’d set out to build.
Maybe . . . maybe that was the problem. So many years of training and study, always striving, always chasing the ideal at the end of the road. She’d reached that end by now. She had everything she’d set out to do. So now . . . what? What came next? Maintaining things as-is? Do well, be consistent, keep things up for however long she had?
She pressed her back into the metal floor, and felt the faint, faint purr of mechanical systems working below. She thought of the Asteria, orbiting endlessly with its siblings around an alien sun, around and around and around. Holding steady. Searching no more. How long would it stay like that? Until the last ship finally failed? Until the last Exodan left for rocky ground? Until the sun went nova? Was there any future for the Fleet that did not involve keeping to the same pattern, the same track, day after day after day until something went wrong? Was there any day for her that would no
t involve the same schedule, the same faces, the same tasks? What was better – a constant safeness that never grew and never changed, or a life of reaching, building, striving, even though you knew you’d never be completely satisfied?
A bang broke the stillness, startling everyone present. The canyon gave a seizing shake, froze, and went dark. The audience collectively held their breath. Someone turned on a handlight and ran around the theatre’s edge.
‘Sorry, folks,’ the theatre attendant called out, to a chorus of disappointment (but also, relief). ‘Looks like we’ve bust a projector. I’ll get the techs up here right now.’
Eyas got to her feet and picked up her pillow, knowing maintenance had a thousand more important things to fix right now. Besides, her stomach was growling louder. She’d never solve anything hungry.
Kip
This was, hands down, the worst night of Kip’s life.
He sat in the living room, opposite his parents at the low table. Grandma Ko was doing whatever in the background. Messing with plants. He didn’t care.
‘We’re not mad, Kip,’ Dad said.
‘I’m mad,’ Mom said. She stirred a steaming mug of tea.
‘Okay, your mom’s mad. I think it’d be a good idea—’
‘No, wait, he needs to understand why he’s in trouble.’ She set down her spoon. ‘It’s not because you went to a club. It’s really important that you understand that.’
‘That’s right.’ Dad did that dorky pointing thing with his index finger that he always did when he thought he was saying something smart. ‘We’re not mad because you wanted to have sex.’
Kip would’ve given anything in that moment – anything – for an oxygen leak, a stray satellite, a wormhole punched in the wrong place. Anything that would swallow him up and bring a merciful end to this conversation.
But instead, Mom kept talking. ‘That part’s okay. That’s normal.’
‘Absolutely,’ Dad said. ‘I remember what it was like to have all those hormones going around, all those urges – I couldn’t stay out of the clubs when I turned twenty.’