To Be Taught, if Fortunate

by Becky Chambers

  ‘It’s so still,’ I said, peeking out the porthole. Ice stretched unendingly around us, barren and beautiful. ‘Good day for anybody who wants to find some rocks.’

  There’s nothing in existence Jack loves with more ardent passion than rocks, except for dirt, especially dirt that has become rock, and especially if that rock has fossils within. He nodded approvingly at my comment, but made no motion to end his dozing.

  There was a period in our life together when I would’ve pestered him to get up, asked him if he knew what time it was. Those days have long passed. I know how a morning goes for Jack. He’ll lie there until the last possible second, saunter into the lab with all the urgency of arriving at Sunday brunch, then do work so good that it doesn’t matter what time of day it happens in. Jack is a swagger, a wink, a final aced even though he’s never been to class, a joint smoked in bed after a day in the field, a rock climbed and an ocean swum. He knows he’s good at his job and just flat-out good-looking, and he uses both to get away with murder. The only thing more infuriating than that is how much of a sucker I am for it.

  I looked at myself in the mirror and rubbed my scalp. The shave I’d given myself wasn’t particularly even. I picked up my tablet from the cabinet nearby, and glanced over the day’s schedule. ‘You know we’ve got to file check-ups today, right?’ I asked. The torpor system keeps tabs on our health, but you can’t really tell if your internal systems are chugging along as they should be until they’re getting some normal use. After we make camp and get settled, full physicals are the next order of business.

  Jack gave me a thumbs up from where he lay. Whether this meant yes or I do now was anyone’s guess, but ultimately immaterial. Jack would remember. Patch check-ups are something even he wouldn’t mess around with.

  I left my cabin and climbed down the ladder to the deck below. I found Elena in the control room, reviewing that morning’s data on the big screen. I could tell from the flush in her cheeks that she’d already been outside that day, walking at her usual steady clip from weather station to weather station, making sure her instruments were in good order. A green light on a monitor is never enough for her. Elena likes visual checks. She likes tangibility. The wind and sky were ephemeral enough, she told me once. If she’s going to study them, she wants to feel them.

  ‘Anything good?’ I asked, my palm cupping her shoulder. I share her cabin sometimes, too. She doesn’t move her cot into mine. Elena likes her own space.

  I knew her responding expression well – that sure-footed half-smile, oozing satisfaction, a look that says she has her shit together better than anyone ever has or will. ‘Numbers are always good,’ she said. She looked at me, her gaze shifting to the sides of my head. ‘Your hair could use some help.’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah, I was hoping you could—’

  She was already out of her chair, waving me toward the bathroom. When Elena tells you to follow her somewhere, you go. Doesn’t matter if it’s down a dark cliff or into an unfamiliar alley or just across the hall. When Elena decides where she’s going, all you can do is try to keep up.

  We fell into our usual positions: me on the floor, her on a stool with clippers in hand and legs making a chair around me. She put a towel around my shoulders and guided my head downward, pushing gently against the crown of my skull with her palm. The clippers buzzed against my scalp. Little tufts of shorn hair tumbled onto our respective legs. She has strong legs, which used to run marathons and were never too proud to dance if asked. I felt safe there, as I always do, and was profoundly glad of that feeling. Thirteen conscious years of living with and working with and leaning on Elena, and to this day, she still intimidates the hell out of me. In a good way.

  ‘Do you miss coffee?’ I asked.

  Elena let out a short moan. ‘God, yes. Do you know how much more I’d get done around here if we had caffeine?’ She nudged my head to the side and worked around my ears. ‘I miss hot chocolate, too.’

  ‘Oh, man.’ I closed my eyes, remembering warm Christmases with family, cheap packet mixes in school, gratifying thermoses on camping trips. ‘With marshmallows.’

  ‘Fuck marshmallows. Cinnamon or go home.’

  I laughed, and so did she. She finished my haircut, brushing the tickling scraps off my neck, and looked at herself in the mirror. ‘I could use a touch-up too, I think,’ she said. I didn’t offer to return the favour. Elena cuts her own hair, and had already started to do so over the sink. ‘I’ll clean up,’ she said. ‘You know to file check-ups today, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I already did mine, but I don’t think Chikondi has yet.’

  ‘Is he up?’

  She mmm’d assent, running the razor over her head. I left her to it, and headed back to the ladder. I didn’t need to guess where my remaining crewmate was.

  I climbed down, past life support and on to the cargo hold. I went into Airlock A, through the metal walls of the spacecraft and into one of the inflatable modules. A wave of humid air hit me, and my eyes squinted as they adjusted to the brightness of the grow lights.

  Chikondi stood at the greenhouse’s workbench, inspecting his first cuttings under a microscope and singing quietly along with his headphones. I walked up beside him and casually watched him work, waiting for the inevitable delight of the moment when he realised I was there.

  The moment came, and it was perfect. Chikondi jumped about a foot.

  ‘Ariadne!’ He took off his headphones, pushed me in mock anger, and laughed at himself. ‘How long have you been there?’

  ‘Just a minute.’

  Chikondi shook his head. ‘That’s a terrible way to say good morning.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ I said, not sorry at all.

  He looked at me, waiting.

  ‘Good morning, Chikondi.’

  ‘Good morning,’ he returned pointedly. ‘Here, look—’ He picked up a tiny leaf of fast-growing spinach, engineered to go from seed to salad in days. ‘I saved this for you.’

  I took the offering and held it up. The stem had split itself, forming two little leaves side by side. ‘It’s twins.’

  ‘It’s a mutant!’ he said happily. No further explanation for why he had set it aside was needed. The leaf was a mutant, and mutants were cool, the end. He reached out, broke one of the leaves off, and popped it into his mouth.

  I did the same with my half. ‘That’s a tasty mutant,’ I said.

  He nodded enthusiastically. ‘I think this nutrient mix is a winner. This crop’s already coming out much more robust than our training batches. I’ll write up the changes I made in our next report. When’s it due?’

  ‘Tuesday. Hey, speaking of mutants and protocol—’

  He stared at me for a moment, searching. ‘Check-ups,’ he said. ‘Right.’ He looked a little despondent at the idea of leaving his workbench, but nodded with a responsible sigh. Chikondi, unlike Jack, would forget, especially if something as enticing as plant samples were at hand. ‘Let’s do it.’

  We went back up the ladder together, chatting about the success of his fertiliser. He’d been working on this project for weeks before launch, and I’d stayed up many a night with him in our shared campus home, letting him bounce thoughts about potassium and nitrogen off of me. Chikondi’s not interested in sex – with me or anyone else – but when he comes to my cabin to talk, we engage in another kind of sharing, one that’s every bit as good and every bit as intimate.

  ‘Me first, or you first?’ he asked as we entered the medical bay.

  I headed for the supply cabinet. ‘You first?’

  He hopped up on the exam table, and we followed protocol, step by step. I checked his weight, his vitals. I could feel him relax under my touch, as I’d done with Elena as she cut my hair. It made me feel steady, that reciprocal trust.

  ‘Do you miss coffee?’ I asked as I listened to his heartbeat. We have a pulse reader that’s more accurate than the stethoscope, but Chikondi’s the one who taught me how a heart speaks. Thanks t
o him, I can deduce each clap and echo, read meaning in muscle. Much as I love machines, this is one instance in which I prefer to listen for myself – especially if I am listening to him.

  ‘Hmm.’ He smiled distantly as he turned my question over. He opened his mouth, closed it in thought, and opened it again. ‘I never really liked coffee.’

  ‘Caffeine, or the taste?’

  ‘The taste. But – huh. I suppose I do miss it.’

  I rolled up his sleeve. ‘Why?’

  He looked toward the ceiling, losing himself in a memory as I drew his blood. ‘I miss my father making it in the mornings when I lived at home. Everybody else drank it – my mother, my brothers. I don’t miss drinking it. I miss it being around. I miss the sorts of gatherings that call for coffee.’ He was quiet for a moment, then glanced at the monitor I’d plugged his sample into. ‘All good?’

  I waited as the computer brought up his baseline profile for comparison. Every body is different, and can only be measured against itself. All of our patches and nutrient drips are tailor-made for our individual needs. I, for example, was born red-green colour-blind, and had gene therapy when I was four to give me full trichromatic sight. Elena has an inherited predisposition toward breast cancer, which her patches suppress. Jack’s patches perform double-duty as well, providing him with the testosterone he’s received since his – as he calls it – second puberty. Chikondi’s the only one of us whose medical needs can be described as utterly typical.

  ‘Your exams are so boring,’ I said. ‘I wish you’d get a vitamin deficiency or something, so I’d have something to write up.’

  ‘I could break my ankle again,’ he said, ‘if you’re that bored.’

  I laughed, remembering the enormous pain in the ass that had been Chikondi’s fractured malleolus during a two-week-long desert survival training in the Badain Jaran. ‘Let’s not,’ I said. I rolled his sleeve back down, taking care as the fabric passed over his patch. They can fix a lot of things, those synthetic skins, but bone injuries aren’t one of them. I’m not a fan of maladies over which we have no control.

  ‘And you?’ he said. ‘Coffee?’

  I thought for a moment about the question I’d thought to ask but not answer. ‘I’m fine without,’ I said. ‘But I already miss the smell.’

  The hour was late as we finished our prep work inside, and despite having recently been unconscious for nearly three decades, we were tired. Our side of Aecor had turned away from the sun, and despite our distance, the absence of that one faint light made a difference. It was time to call it a day.

  We gathered in the rec room to watch the news bundle OCA had sent us. We sat around the monitor with water and sprouts in lieu of popcorn and beer. The video file was queued. The speakers hummed softly as they waited for input. They waited. And waited. And waited.

  Nobody made any motion to play the file. The screen stayed dark.

  Jack cleared his throat after a moment. ‘It’s gonna be weird as shit,’ he said loudly.

  Chikondi chuckled. I exhaled, glad somebody had said what we were all feeling. Elena smiled her funny smile, reached for the control panel, and pressed play.

  I had tried, in advance, to anticipate all the paradigms that could’ve changed in twenty-eight years. I’d played horrors in my head over and over, knowing that progress is somewhat circular, and the news is rarely a good time.

  What I hadn’t anticipated was a weird haircut. The young man on screen smiled at the camera, and I’m sure in his mind and in the minds of everyone else who had put the video together, he looked presentable, professional. But I didn’t know his haircut, and the shape of his shirt was strikingly odd, and the small bubbled jewellery he wore around his wrists was a look I’d never seen before. I had thought to steel myself for the march of history. I’d neglected to factor in fashion.

  It hit me, in that moment, just how far we were from the Earth we’d left.

  ‘Hello, Lawki 6,’ he said brightly. I squinted. He sounded North American, but I couldn’t quite place him. A desert kid, maybe, from down near the Cascadia-Pacific Republic border. ‘My name’s Amado Guinto, and I’m a communications specialist here at my hometown campus of OCA PNW.’

  My jaw dropped. He was from my neck of the woods. Two hours from where I’d grown up, and he sounded like someone from way down south. I was keen to know where the change had come from – migration? Pop culture? – but no one had thought to answer that, or the question of the cut of his shirt. Our new friend Amado wasn’t here to talk about linguistic drift or the influences in aesthetics. He was here to deliver The News: politics, headlines, big names. You know. The important stuff.

  The thing about the important stuff is, it’s never uplifting. That much, at least, hadn’t changed at all. We watched in silence, like students in a depressing lecture, as Amado marched us efficiently through the decades. There were good things in there, wonderful things. We’d eradicated malaria, finally. We’d successfully reintroduced tigers into the wild. We’d made a bus-sized battery that could power a city block for ten years. But the rest of it was an odd mix of unpredictable changes that followed tragically predictable patterns. Wars, elections, lines drawn in the sand. The perpetual ebb and flow of some countries reaching out while others walled themselves in. A constant parade of societal drama, powerful within its own sphere, yet impotent when pitted against the colossal rhythms of the planet itself.

  ‘Storm seasons in all corners of the globe have continued to worsen,’ Amado said neutrally, ‘with more and more coastal cities pulling back or speeding up development of technological solutions.’ His neutrality shifted into polite sympathy. ‘Mission specialist Quesada-Cruz, this next portion of the compendium may be difficult for you. I want to say personally that I am sorry to deliver this news.’

  We all turned to look at Elena. She’d begun the viewing relaxed in her chair, an arm draped unconcerned over the side. Now she was leaning forward, her face calm while her body braced hard. My eyes flicked from her to the screen, back and forth, back and forth, trying to follow both the facts and her reaction. Images of ruined coastlines and broken levies gave way to an animated map, which, as Amado helpfully explained, showed the spread of catastrophic damage. I pulled my lips inward and pressed them painfully together as the red zone filled the entirety of the land bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of cities had been abandoned or flooded beyond repair. To us, one little dot stood out among the rest: Tampico. Elena’s hometown.

  She got up and left the room.

  ‘Elena,’ Jack said.

  We heard nothing in reply but the sound of a ladder being climbed, downward.

  Chikondi reached for the monitor controls. ‘We should—’

  Jack halted him. ‘Let her be,’ he said. ‘We’re here when she needs us.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘We’re all going to have moments like that, I’m sure.’

  The OCA reporter, as if he’d known we’d need it, abruptly shifted tack. ‘You should know that everybody here at OCA and across Planet Earth are cheering for you, every step of the way. We’re ending this transmission with a present of sorts, sent in by your supporters all over the world. Best of luck, Lawki 6. We can’t wait to hear from you.’

  The broadcast ended with a montage of homemade messages recorded by OCA supporters, greeting and cheering us on from their living rooms. There were kids, dogs, hand-painted signs, languages and global flavour galore. It was lovely, and hugely appreciated, but the person who’d needed to see it most hadn’t.

  ‘I’ll play it for her later,’ Chikondi said, bookmarking the timestamp where the segment had begun.

  I got up and headed for the ladder. Yes, Elena knew we were there for her. In those kinds of situations, though, sometimes it’s good to provide a reminder.

  Her TEVA suit was missing in the cargo hold; she’d gone outside. I suited up and followed.

  Elena wasn’t far from the Merian – just a short walk away. The ice below her was smooth and flat as the surface of a fro
zen lake. Around us, though, at a short distance, a wall of jagged pillars spiked upward.

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  Elena didn’t reply. The lamps on her helmet illuminated her glittering face in the dark, like the icon of a saint. Her expression was impossible to read. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t angry. She was just … looking.

  ‘That’s what’s different,’ she said at last. There was relief behind her words, the satisfaction of an itching problem solved.

  ‘What is?’ I asked.

  She nodded at the daggers of ice, her headlamps changing their smooth surface from black to white. ‘It’s so clean.’ I didn’t understand, and my face must have said so, because she added: ‘Ever seen an iceberg flip?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘How about a glacier?’

  ‘A glacier … flip?’

  Her eyes gave me one brief, chiding flick. ‘No, just a glacier, in general.’

  The image was conjured, and her point was made. I pictured those oh-so-rare mountains of ice back home, with their dramatic streaks of grey and black that sometimes crowded out the whiteness entirely. The sort of large-scale ice humans are most likely to see on Earth is the ice that forms on land, and by nature, that ice is grubby. Even icebergs, which you might think are washed clean by the waves that cradle them, are marred with the remnants of rocky beaches, sandy canyons, dusty winds that have been etching away mountains for centuries. But there was no sand, nor rock, nor dust on the surface of Aecor. The frosty spires around us weren’t ice-covered peaks, but simply ice – the purest sea ice, the kind of thing you’d only find in the heart of polar seas back home, far from the grime of shore. Aecor had no shores, no foundation except for that of the ocean floor. We stood upon water, and nothing but.

  ‘Poor Jack,’ she said.

  I laughed. ‘Poor Jack.’ I looked at her. ‘Elena, I’m so—’

  She grabbed my arm. ‘Oh, my God.’

  Adrenaline shot through me. ‘What?’