But while the ship’s skeleton was simple, the people within had spent centuries fleshing it out. The metal walls were disguised with inviting paint: warm tan, soft orange, living green. On his way to the railing, he’d come upon an enormous mural that had stopped him in his tracks. He’d stood for a minute there, as other travellers split their busy stream around him. The mural was vibrant, almost gaudy, a spree of colour and curves depicting dancing Exodans with a benignly burning sun beneath their feet and a starry sky above. Myriad professions were on display – a farmer, a doctor, a tech, a musician, a pilot, a teacher leading children. It was an ordinary sort of theme, and yet there was something about it – the lack of actual ground, perhaps, or something in the sweeping style – that was undeniably foreign. You’d never see a mural like that on Mushtullo.
Sawyer let his reality sink in: he was in the Fleet. The Fleet! He was finally, actually there, not just reading reference files or pestering elderly folks for any scraps they could remember about what their parents had told them about the ships they’d left behind. He’d made it. He’d made it, and now, everything was right there for him to explore.
There were no other species in the crowd, and it left him both giddy and jarred. The only times he’d seen anything close to this many Humans in one place was on holidays or at parties, and even then, you’d be sure to see other sapients in the mix. There’d been merchants from elsewhere on the transport with him, but as soon as they reached a branching sign that read Cargo Bays on the right and Central Plaza on the left, all the scales and claws went right. Everyone around him now had two hands, two feet, soft skin, hairy heads. He’d never blended into a public group like this, and yet, he felt like he stuck out more than he ever had.
Sawyer had thought perhaps some part of him would recognise this place, that he’d feel himself reversing the steps his great-great-grandparents had taken. He’d read accounts of other grounders visiting the Fleet. They’d written about how connected they felt to their ancestors, how they felt immediate kinship with the people there. Sawyer hadn’t felt that yet, and part of him was a touch disappointed. But no matter. He’d been there for all of twenty minutes, and the only person he’d talked to was the patch scan attendant. So far, he’d dipped a toe in the water. It was time to dive in.
He took an elevator down to the market floor, an expansive grid of shop fronts and service centres. It wasn’t like other marketplaces he’d been to, where everything sprawled and piled as if it were alive. The Fleet, as he’d read and as had already proven true, was a place of orderly geometry. Every corner had been considered, measured, and considered again. Space efficiency was the top order of business, so the original architects had provided future generations of shopkeepers with defined lots that could be assigned and repurposed as needed. The end result was, on the surface, the tidiest trading hub Sawyer had ever seen. But once he got past the neat exteriors, the underlying business was bewildering. Dozens of signs, dozens of displays, hundreds of customers, and he had no idea where anything was.
He eyed the places that served food – all open-air (if that was the right term to use inside a ship), with shared eating tables corralled behind the waist-high metal walls that defined each lot’s edges. Sawyer found himself drawn toward a cheery, clean cafe called My Favourite. The menu posted outside was in both Klip and Ensk, and the fare was things he recognised – beansteak skewers, hoppers, jam cakes. It looked like a respectable spot for a non-threatening meal. Sawyer pointed his feet elsewhere. That was a place meant for merchants and visitors. Tourists. He wasn’t here to be a tourist. He was after something real.
He spied another eatery of the same size and shape. Jojo’s, the sign read. Or it would have, if the pixels on the second. hadn’t been twitching themselves nearly illegible. There was no posted menu. The only other signage displayed the hours of business, which were in Ensk numerals and Ensk numerals only. (Standard time, though. They only used Solar for age, or so he’d been told.) Behind the corral, some folks in algae-stained coveralls wolfed down whatever was for lunch. A group of five or six elderly folks were arguing over a game taking place on an old pixel board. Nobody had any luggage.
Perfect.
No one greeted Sawyer as he walked in. Few looked up. There were two people behind the counter: a wiry young man chopping something, and an imposing middle-aged woman peeling shells off steamed red coaster bugs. The woman was absorbed in a loud vid on a nearby projector – a Martian period drama, it looked like. She cracked each shell segment with speedy precision, without so much as a glance down at her work. Sawyer had no real way of knowing, but he got the unshakable sense that this was her place.
The woman gave a short, mocking laugh. ‘This Solan shit,’ she said in Ensk, shaking her head at the projector. The vid music hit a melodramatic crescendo as a character in a clunky exosuit succumbed to a sandstorm. ‘Why does anybody watch this?’
‘You watch it,’ an old woman piped up from the board game table.
‘It’s like a shipwreck,’ the shell-cracker replied. ‘Once it starts, I can’t look away.’
The scene changed. A tearful group of terraformers sat huddled in their dome. ‘This damned planet,’ one actor cried. He wasn’t about to win any awards for this, but stars, he was trying. ‘This damned planet!’
‘This damned planet!’ the woman repeated, laughing again. Her eyes snapped over as she noticed Sawyer at last. ‘Hey,’ she said, glancing at his bag. ‘What can I get ya?’
Sawyer walked up to the counter. He was more or less fluent in Ensk, having crammed Linking language lessons hard over the past few years, but the only person he’d been able to practise speaking with had been the lady at the shoe shop back home, and her slang was about twenty years out of date. He screwed up his courage, and asked: ‘Do you have a menu?’
Every person in Jojo’s looked up. It took Sawyer a moment to realise – accent. His accent. He didn’t have the distinctive snap of an Exodan, the silky smoothness of a Martian, the muddle of someone who did a lot of bouncing around. His face said Human. His vowels said Harmagian.
The woman blinked. ‘No menu,’ she said. She jerked a thumb back toward the wiry man, still chopping away. ‘It’s ninth day. That means we’ve got twice-round pickle on a quickbun and red coaster stew. Only, we’re out of red coaster stew.’ Exoskeleton crunched between her hands. ‘I gotta make more, and that’s gonna be at least an hour.’
‘Okay,’ Sawyer said. ‘I’ll have the other one.’
‘The pickle?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You ever had twice-round pickle?’
Sawyer grinned. ‘Nope.’
The woman grinned back, but it wasn’t a good grin, not the kind of grin that shook hands with his own. This was a different look, a look that knew something he didn’t. Sawyer felt his mood slip a bit. He was pretty sure the board game crew was still watching him.
‘Okay,’ the woman said. ‘One pickle bun. Comes with tea.’
It took him a second to realise she was asking him a question. ‘Tea would be great.’ She searched for a mug by way of reply. Sawyer took a chance, trying to coax more conversation. ‘Are you Jojo?’
‘No,’ the woman said flatly. ‘Jojo was my mom.’
‘And she was a lot nicer than this one,’ an old man with a pipe added from the back.
‘Ch,’ the woman said, rolling her eyes. ‘You only say that ’cause she slept with you once.’
‘I would’ve thought she was nice even if we hadn’t.’
‘Yeah, well. She always was a sucker for ugly things.’
The board game crew cracked up – the old man in particular – and the woman grinned, a real grin this time. She filled a mug from a large decanter and set it on the counter as the wiry man silently assembled Sawyer’s lunch. Sawyer tried to see what was going into what he’d just ordered, but the man’s body blocked his view. Something was chopped, something was ladled, a few bottles were shaken. Twice-round pickle looked . . . involved.
>
The woman stared at Sawyer. ‘Oh,’ he said, understanding. He hadn’t paid. He pushed back his wristwrap. ‘Where should I, ah . . .’ He looked around for a scanner.
The woman pursed her lips. ‘Don’t take creds,’ she said.
Sawyer was elated. He’d heard about this – Exodan merchants who operated on barter and barter only. But there was a problem: that was as far as his knowledge of the practice went, and he didn’t know what the protocol was. He waited for her to suggest an acceptable trade. Nothing came. ‘What would be good?’ he asked.
Another short laugh, like the one the sandstorm victim received. ‘I dunno. I dunno what you’ve got.’
Sawyer thought. He’d only brought one bag of essentials and didn’t have much he was willing to part with, not for the sake of a sandwich. He scolded himself for not planning for this with a bag of circuit chips or something. ‘Do you need some help in the kitchen? I could wash dishes.’
Now everyone laughed. Sawyer had no idea what the joke was, but he was starting to wonder if the tourist cafe would’ve been the better option.
The woman leaned against the counter. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Mushtullo.’
‘What now?’
‘Mushtullo.’ No response. ‘Central space.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Huh. You got family here?’
‘No,’ Sawyer said. ‘But my family came from here.’
‘Oh,’ the woman said, as if she understood everything now. ‘I see. Okay. You got a place to stay?’
‘I figured I’d sort that out once I got here.’
‘Oh boy,’ the woman said under her breath. The wiry man handed her a plate, which she pushed across the counter. ‘Here. On the house. The food of your ancestors.’
‘Wow, you sure?’ Sawyer said.
‘Well, now I’m not.’
‘Sorry, um . . . thank you.’ He took both plate and mug. ‘That’s really kind.’
The woman resumed her shell cracking without another word. Sawyer looked around, hoping one of the groups might wave him over. None did. The algaeists were stacking up their thoroughly cleaned dishes, and the old folks had resumed their board game. Sawyer dropped his bag in an empty chair and sat in another alongside it. He studied his food – a large mound of wet, shredded vegetables, piled on top of two halves of a nondescript bun, dressed with whatever Jojo’s daughter’s assistant had dashed on top of it. He lifted one of the halves. It leaked, sending purple liquid running down his forearm. He paused before opening his mouth. There was a smell, fetid and sharp, maybe a bit fishy. He thought of the other customers, chowing down with satisfaction. He took a bite. His throat tightened, his sinuses shot open, and his bravery died. The stuff tasted exactly as it smelled, only now it was inescapable, mingling with a bitter, tangy undercurrent he wasn’t sure he wanted to identify. He couldn’t taste the bread, but despite the sour liquid now dripping all over his hands, the texture was distractingly dry. The pickle didn’t crunch, as he’d expected. It just softly surrendered.
It was, without a doubt, the worst thing he’d ever eaten.
Okay, he thought. This is okay. It’s an adventure. Not the start he’d been hoping for, but it was a start, and that was something. He forced another bite of pickle, washing it down with a huge swig of tea (the tea, at least, was good). There was no way he wasn’t going to finish his meal. This was a test. The locals were watching, his ancestors were watching, everybody back home who thought this plan of his was bonkers was watching. He would clean his plate, and find a place to stay, and everything would be great.
Sawyer heard the woman laugh again. He thought for a moment it was directed at him, but no. Another Martian terraformer had died.
Kip
Lunch breaks were the best part of Kip’s day. No teachers, no job trials, no parents. Nothing that needed doing or that he might screw up. Kip savoured every second. This was his time, and he always did the same thing with it: get a choko and a hopper at Grub Grub, park himself on the bench facing the oxygen garden, and try to stretch out his brief bit of freedom as long as possible. Chane in biology class said Sianat Pairs could slow time with their brains, and Kip didn’t think that was true, but if it was, he’d seriously trade an arm or something if it meant he could do that. Both arms, maybe. Maybe even his eyes. Okay, not his eyes. But limbs, definitely.
Somebody jumped him from behind, pulling his shirt up over the back of his head. ‘Tek tem, fucko!’
Kip had his shirt back down and a hand swinging before he could get a look at where it would land. Not a mean fist or anything – he’d never punched anybody for reals. Just a soft slap that wouldn’t even hurt, much less bruise.
His hand landed in Ras’ ribs. Ras shoved the slap away with one hand and grabbed for Kip’s choko with the other. ‘Gimme.’
‘Dosh,’ said Kip, stretching his drink out of reach. ‘Fuck off.’ In one fast move, he reached out and mussed Ras’ hair.
Ras withdrew at that, as he always did. ‘Aw, come on,’ he said, combing away the minimal damage with his fingers. ‘Uncalled for.’
Kip chuckled into his drink, scrunching his eyes tight. He wiped his hand on his pants, trying to get rid of the hair glue remnants he’d picked up. Ras always put too much shit in his hair.
The scuffle ended as fast as it had started. He and his friend sat in an easy slump, watching the crowd for the unlikely chance of something interesting happening. Kip passed the choko bottle to Ras. Ras took a long pull of the sweet fizz and passed it back. It was a rhythm they fell into without any thought. There’d been a lot of shared snacks over the years. That was what had eventually led to them getting assigned work day and school day schedules that didn’t overlap – too many passed-between packs of cake bites in class. A persistent disruption to other students, M Rebane had called him and Ras. Whatever. At least they still had lunch at the same time.
‘You know Amira, at the tech shop?’ Ras said.
‘Yeah.’
‘I think she likes me.’
Kip almost got choko up his nose. ‘Okay.’
‘Seriously,’ Ras said. ‘I saw her looking at me.’
Kip kept laughing. ‘Okay.’
‘What? I did!’
‘Amira. From the tech shop.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘She’s, like, twenty-five or something.’
‘So?’
‘So she probably just thought your hair looks stupid and couldn’t stop staring.’
‘Remmet telli toh.’ Ras cuffed him, but grinned. ‘Your hair looks stupid.’
‘Yeah,’ Kip agreed. No argument there. Had he combed it this morning? He couldn’t remember.
The crowd went back and forth, back and forth. Same faces, same patterns as every other day. ‘What do you wanna do after work?’ Ras asked.
‘Don’t you have history this afternoon?’
Ras shook his head with an expression that said he did have that class lined up, but there was no chance of him being there for it. ‘Wanna go to the hub?’
‘Nah,’ Kip said. There weren’t any new sims out, and they’d played all the ones worth playing. Ras was always down for Battle Wizards, but Kip was kind of sick of it.
‘Wanna go look at the new transport pods?’
‘We did that yesterday.’
‘So? They’re cool.’
Kip shrugged. New pods were the kind of thing that were cool only when you’d never seen them before.
‘Okay,’ Ras said. ‘What do you want to do?’
Kip shrugged again. ‘I dunno.’
Ras took ownership of the choko. ‘You have a bad day or something?’
‘It was fine. M Santoso kind of just let me hang out. Let me have mek during my shift.’
‘That’s cool.’
‘Yeah,’ Kip said, taking the choko back. ‘She’s all right.’
‘I dunno why you’re doing job trials anyway. Exams are coming up.’
This was Ras’ grand pla
n, unchanged since they were twelve: take the qualification exams and get into university (the fastest ticket out of the Fleet – all there was at home were trade classes and apprenticeships). After that, get a cool job, get on a big ship, and make lots of creds. That was as good of a plan as any for Kip – and more than he’d ever been able to come up with on his own – but he wasn’t as sure as Ras that he’d be able to come along.
‘When I don’t pass, I’m gonna need a job,’ Kip said.
‘You’ll pass,’ Ras said.
‘I suck at tests.’
‘Everyone sucks at tests.’
‘You don’t suck at tests.’
Ras didn’t say anything, because he didn’t suck at tests, just like he wasn’t doing job trials because he knew he wouldn’t need them. When Ras said he was gonna do a thing, the thing happened. Sometimes Kip was jealous of that. He wished he could be more like Ras. Ras always knew what to say, what to do, what was happening. Kip was real glad they were friends, but sometimes he didn’t know what Ras got out of the arrangement.
‘Hey, M Aksoy,’ Ras called out. The grocery seller was walking past them, followed by an autocart carrying . . . ? ‘What is that?’
M Aksoy turned his head, gestured at the cart to stop, and waved them toward him. ‘Come on and see.’
Kip and Ras ambled over. Among the recognisable boxes – mek powder, root sugar, bottles of kick – there were three plex tanks full of water, like jellyfish tanks. But whatever was inside wasn’t jellyfish, no way. They were long and wispy, covered in soft spines. They shivered their way through the water.
‘Special order from the Archives,’ M Aksoy said.
‘Are they pets or something?’ Ras asked. ‘Some kind of science thing?’
‘Nope,’ M Aksoy said. ‘They’re called—’
‘Pokpok,’ Kip said, saying the word before he realised he knew it.
Ras turned his head. ‘The hell’d you know that?’
Kip had no idea. Something from when he was little? Like something in a learning sim, or a Linking book, or . . . he couldn’t say. He’d been a dork about that kind of stuff as a kid, and it had been a long time since that was his thing. But wherever pokpok had come from, the dusty old memory remained active. He could feel Ras looking at him, though, so he just shrugged and didn’t say anything about the bit where he was pretty sure the swimming things were Harmagian food. Ras was real smart, and Kip didn’t want to look stupid by saying something wrong.