We Have Always Been Here

by Lena Nguyen

  HARE (processing): You have only recently acquired the profession of miner.

  Taban: That’s right. I signed up on a whim, right off of the Martian Loop. Surprisingly very little training involved. I guess because they’ll be having the robots take it over soon. Again, no offense.

  HARE: I have not acquired—

  Taban: I got it. You want some coffee?

  HARE: I am unable to ingest coffee.

  Taban: I know. It was a joke. Maybe some motor oil?

  HARE: I have no use for motor oil.

  Taban: Another joke. I’m just killing it today. (drinking)

  [A few moments pass.]

  Taban: I wasn’t even supposed to partner up with him. He was supposed to retire. His heart is bad—that’s what I heard from the other miners. Like, really bad. He wanted to keep working, to make money for a new one . . . but they were forcing him off. I was supposed to be partnered with his replacement. But at the last minute, Daley insisted on going out instead. Just one last time, on one last mission, he said. This last time, this last mission, of course. (throwing away his coffee skin) Lucky me, right?

  HARE: I am unsure of how to answer your query.

  Taban: You’ll figure it out. (stretching) Anyway. Now we’re here.

  [He and the HARE regard the white, frosted plain outside for a while. The suns are setting; the light wobbles over the ice in undulating waves. There are no signs of the fractal structures or the geyser that the HARE previously saw.]

  Taban: I don’t get it. How is it possible that we walked from here in a straight line and wound up back here again? Do you know?

  HARE: No.

  Taban: What do your readouts say? Compass-wise, directionally, whatever?

  HARE: There are anomalies. It will take time for me to analyze and process.

  Taban: Great. Thanks. (rubbing his head) What the fuck is going on with this place? Why doesn’t any of it make sense?

  HARE: I am unsure.

  Taban: And why does Daley keep wanting to go out? His heart is on its last legs.

  HARE: Yes.

  Taban: Did you see a man by the ship?

  HARE: No.

  Taban: So he’s losing it. Or is he?

  HARE: What is USER Daley losing?

  Taban: Never mind. The point is, we can’t be stranded on this hellhole. We just can’t. Not in a place where walking in a line gets you twisted around and lost in some bizarro-mutato dimension, and where some creepy invisible dudes may or may not be hanging around the ship. Right?

  HARE: Yes.

  Taban: I mean, just look at it. It’s not like anyone would want to come here anyway, even if we managed to get off this rock to tell them about it.

  HARE: Disputable. There are many geographical and topical anomalies here.

  Taban: Better left alone, I say. Some shit just isn’t worth exploring.

  HARE: . . .

  Taban: Don’t take offense to that.

  HARE: My primary purpose is exploration.

  Taban: I know. Just—you know what I mean.

  HARE: . . .

  Taban: Anyway. If he tells you to go out, don’t listen to him. He’ll want to use you to look for things—don’t do it.

  HARE: Please clarify. Why should I disobey USER Daley’s command?

  Taban: Because if you go out, you’ll use up your power source. It’s limited, right? And I can fix minor breakdowns, but I don’t have a replacement for your—battery. You have to conserve energy, or you’ll shut down. And then you’ll leave me alone with him. Please don’t do that.

  HARE: I understand.

  Taban: But will you do it?

  HARE: Yes.

  Taban: Good.

  [A few moments pass.]

  Taban: (looking outside) It never snows here, does it? It’s all ice. Have you ever seen snow, HARE?

  HARE (processors whirring): No.

  Taban: I guess you need a specific atmosphere for that. Back where I grew up, it snowed all the time.

  HARE: On Earth?

  Taban: Yep. Calgary, before it was buried by the Comeback. You know where that is?

  HARE (processors whirring): I do now.

  Taban: Got snow there all the time. They called it ‘the decade without summer’ in those parts—before all the people left. Just snow and snow and snow. I used to show up to school an hour late and say I got lost in the snow, because it came up to my shoulders. Worked about a fourth of the time.

  HARE: Does USER Daley originate from the same area?

  Taban: I have no idea. He talks a lot about the famine, so I’d bet not. We didn’t have problems with shortage of food in Alberta. Not much. Not even the plants made it up there. We just had to worry about the cold.

  HARE: Humans from Earth do not come naturally equipped for low temperatures.

  Taban: So to speak. And back then the temps were bad—like Martian bad. And everyone was poor. We didn’t have any thermal suits or space gear. That’s why everyone left, eventually. It got to be that even birds in flight would drop to the ground, frozen through. At that point both my parents did the rite of conscription just to get us out to Mars.

  HARE: Giving USER Daley the impression that you are space-born.

  Taban: Yeah. But I’m not. Surprisingly, my memories from Earth are the clearest ones. Everything else is a blur. Maybe it was something in the air.

  HARE: Are your memories unhappy?

  Taban (surprised): Not all of them. They’re just clear. Cold, like the snow.

  HARE (processors whirring): . . .

  Taban: I remember this one time I was walking home from school with this girl, Harpa. I really liked her at the time, but she hated my guts. We were maybe twelve, thirteen.

  HARE (processors whirring): . . .

  Taban: We were walking through the woods and heard this weird sound, like a baby crying. I thought it was a kid who got lost, Harpa thought it was a ghost. We went looking for it.

  HARE: What was the source of the noise?

  Taban: It was a ferrox. All fucked up in a trap. You know what a ferrox is?

  HARE (processing): A genetic hybrid of Earth, produced from splicing the DNA of a ferret (or Mustela putorius furo) with the DNA of an arctic fox (or Vulpes lagopus).

  Taban: That’s right. Cutest little things. White as snow year-round, and trusting as hell, too. They bred them to be as docile as hamsters. Can’t survive worth a damn in the wild, which is why when some of them got out and started breeding, everyone got out their forks and knives and went to work.

  HARE: I do not understand.

  Taban: Not everyone lived near the canneries, back then. There were some Dryadjacks, even up in our neck of the woods—just trying to survive as best they could in the wild. They weren’t criminals, but they crashed the mode, so to speak. My mom used to not let me go through those woods because she was afraid we’d get kidnapped and . . . well, you know.

  HARE: And what?

  Taban: Nothing. Anyway, one of them must have set up a trap in hopes of catching a ferrox to eat. It was a mechanical metal thing, just steel teeth, hinges, and a trigger. Really barbaric. The ferrox was nearly cut in half.

  HARE: I see.

  Taban: But it was still alive. Harpa hated it. She wanted to leave as soon as we saw the poor dumb thing. I didn’t get why. She kept saying, ‘It’s horrible, it’s horrible!’ But I kept trying to get her to stay. I was an ass back then. She still brought it up years later.

  HARE: Harpa is what designation to you?

  Taban: It doesn’t matter. Anyway, she stormed off in a huff. Eventually I undid the trap, but it was too late, obviously. The ferrox was almost dead.

  HARE: Did you consume it?

  Taban: No. I just sat there and waited with it. Eventually it seemed to get that I wasn’t there t
o hurt it, because it stopped crying. It just laid there, all hurt and dripping. I sat there and didn’t move for over half an hour. The snow kept falling, but I just stayed there. Finally, it just laid its head down and looked straight at me. And then it died.

  HARE (processors whirring): Why did you remain with the ferrox?

  Taban: You know, I don’t know. Harpa asked me the same thing, on our honeymoon. I guess . . . I just felt bad for the thing.

  [Taban swivels his chair so that he’s facing the door leading out of the cockpit, staring into the dark, empty hall that leads to Daley’s pod—or the hatch exiting the ship.]

  Taban: It’s a funny thing, HARE. We talked about religion. But whatever you believe—every single creature in this universe dies alone. That’s a fact. No matter where it is or how or what or who’s with it at the time. It’s like this quote I heard. Death is like a door. It’s one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone. Whatever’s on the other side is—whatever. But the crossing over, you do alone.

  HARE (processors whirring): . . .

  Taban: But . . . I don’t know. I was just a kid. I didn’t like to think of it like that. I thought, ‘I could at least watch it go. Acknowledge it, instead of just letting it vanish into the void like it was nothing. Someone should.’ I don’t know. Like I said, I was young.

  HARE: I understand.

  Taban: . . . Anyway. Enough of my babbling.

  HARE: I do not think it is babbling.

  Taban: Why don’t you play us some music?

  11.

  After she broke off from Fulbreech, Park received an alert on her inlays: METIS informed her that Commander Wick had summoned her to his quarters. He had tagged the summons as a “mandatory check-up.”

  As if he would put a suppressor on her tongue and make her say “ah,” Park thought as she diverted from her route to her own bunk. The term did give her a sense of dread. It was too clinical, too sinister. Had Wick somehow found out what she’d been doing? Had Fulbreech told him?

  But Wick is a reasonable man, Park told herself. He was always so patient, so paternally reliable. She didn’t have to worry about him shooting her or freezing her—did she?

  Maybe she ought to bring Jimex with her, she thought, thinking of him still standing inert in her office. For insurance. But then again, Wick was commander; his orders took precedence over hers. Jimex would ultimately have to obey him. He would bundle Park into a coffin and nail her inside, if Wick told him to. Her stomach sank. She really had no one to count on in this place.

  On her way to see Wick, she ran into Natalya—who was doing lazy cartwheels and somersaults down the corridor to Wick and Boone’s bunk. Park slowed as she approached the surveyor; she could see a little flask glinting at Natalya’s belt.

  Although the expedition members could technically do whatever they wanted when they were off duty, getting drunk was still not a common behavior on the ship. For one thing, alcohol took up precious space and mass; for another, it was so easy to dehydrate yourself with it, trapped as they were in a vacuum that wicked moisture from your eyes every time you blinked. It tended to take extreme circumstances to push someone to get drunk, especially openly, in front of the judging eyes of Earth-born academics and spacers who had long had access to faster-burning, trendier drugs. Park wondered what had gotten to Natalya—what had driven her to this state. A little bitterly she thought that it could be any number of things: everything seemed to be going wrong with this mission. Maybe she’d have turned to the bottle by now, too, if alcohol hadn’t been so scarce back on Earth.

  Natalya pretended not to notice Park as she walked up. She read agitation in the lines of the surveyor’s shoulders: anger and suspicion and resentment, too. Natalya’s topology reminded Park of Chanur, in a way—but what had soured Natalya’s mood so? Surely it wasn’t because of Holt? They’d once been lovers, yes, but Natalya had long since discarded the physicist in favor of pursuing—who was it, again? Fulbreech? Park had lost track.

  “Something bothering you, Severov?” she asked, bracing herself.

  The other woman straightened out of her pirouette and turned to look back over her shoulder. Her glance was moody, disdainful. “I thought Sagara told you to stop your patient sessions.”

  Had everyone been told that? God damn Sagara—he was undermining her at every turn. “This isn’t an interview,” Park answered, steadily enough. “Or a patient session. I just thought I’d ask.”

  “Why?”

  “Why are you doing cartwheels in this part of the ship?”

  Outside Boone’s room, she thought. And Wick’s. Unkindly she thought to herself—Maybe she’s just working her way up the ladder.

  She quashed the idea just as Natalya said frostily, “This is how I unwind after work. Is that a crime?”

  “No,” Park answered. “Of course not.”

  She thought to give up the gesture entirely and simply walk away, but Natalya had put her leg up against the opposite wall, blocking the narrow corridor with her body. Her body language was languid, nonchalant—as if she hadn’t noticed that Park intended to pass—but Park knew that it was a calculated move, an intimidation tactic. Or even a kind of threat. I’m too tired for this, she thought. She still hadn’t slept yet. Natalya took a drink from her hip flask and smacked her lips.

  “How’s your work?” Park asked, to preempt whatever nasty thing the other woman was going to say. She didn’t expect her to answer. As surveyor, Natalya had the most intimate knowledge of Eos and its terrain so far—so of course her work would be very hush-hush. And if Fulbreech wouldn’t confide fully in Park, for fear of breaking protocol, Natalya certainly wasn’t going to.

  But to her surprise, Natalya said bluntly: “It’s stressful. ISF is relying on me for a lot of things.”

  “I’m sure exploring an alien planet has its difficulties.”

  “Yes,” Natalya said with a clenched look, like a purse snapping shut. Park faltered; she’d misstepped, come off unintentionally as sarcastic. Natalya continued, “I’m sure you have your work cut out for you, too. What with Ma going—what’s the old phrase? Bananas. And poor Eric. I wonder how you’ll fix that. Along with everything else that’s going on.”

  “What else is going on?” Park asked, with bland innocence.

  “What were you doing with Fulbreech?” Natalya asked in turn. And at this Park felt a little jolt of shock: so they’d been noticed, after all.

  “Excuse me,” she said, out of habit. On Earth it was considered rude for adult acquaintances to ask such direct, personal questions of each other; one was expected to ask obliquely, using statements that could be ignored or deflected, or to infer from other interfaces like a person’s social feeds and status reports.

  But Natalya’s features only hardened. It was clear she had left that etiquette behind on Earth, that she couldn’t be embarrassed into silence. So much aggression there, Park thought. And directness. Keller had always admired it as efficient, but Park thought it prevented Natalya from integrating well into teams.

  “Fulbreech,” the surveyor repeated, in a clipped way that said she thought she was speaking to an idiot. “Kel Fulbreech. The cartographer? What were you doing with him, going down to Deck C?”

  So Natalya knew they had been down to the utility rooms together—but hadn’t followed to see exactly what had happened. “We were just talking,” Park said.

  “You never talk,” Natalya said with contempt. “And he talks too much.” She stopped stretching, let her leg fall back down to the floor. Then continued, her eyes flinty: “What exactly would he talk to you about?”

  Why do you care so much? Park wanted to ask. She couldn’t suss out if Natalya was feeling territorial over Fulbreech, or if this was about something else entirely. She noticed for the first time that the surveyor had gray thumbprints under her eyes; her fingers trembled with a kind of suppressed energy. Sh
e said, taking a chance: “You said you were stressed, Severov. Has it been interfering with your sleep?”

  “No,” Natalya said curtly. Then she shook her head. “God, you ask questions. Even when you’re told not to. Why so many questions? Isn’t the whole point of your specialization that you don’t have to ask, you can just tell?”

  The implication being that she expected Park to be psychic, Park thought; Natalya found her to be a disappointment. She answered, “I can tell a lot from topologies, but not everything. Of course I ask questions.”

  Natalya grunted. “Why do we need you, then?”

  Park wanted to say, I don’t have to explain myself to you. I don’t have to justify my existence on this ship. But she thought this was a good opportunity to shift perceptions about why she was there, so she said instead, “I provide a holistic view on what’s going on in the ship; what state of mind people are operating under. I try to provide the truth of what’s happening, just as any scientist does; and even though I don’t play a role in the decision-making or research, I ask questions about what I’m observing. Like a good scientist.”

  “But do you understand the content?” Natalya asked then. “Do you know what it is you’re observing and analyzing? What it all means? Or do you just transmit back what you’ve discovered without understanding it, like a robot?” She shook her head, her scorn palpable. “It’s all meaningless if you don’t get it.”

  Park felt a tremor, a little quiver down in the dark meat of her heart. How to answer? To admit weakness or doubt would only incite Natalya further—and not to sympathy. “I get what I need to get,” she said finally. “But thank you for your concern.”

  Natalya made a dry clicking sound with her tongue. “Just focus on doing your job, Park,” she said, turning away. “And doing it well. Don’t meddle into all these other things.”

  Who’s the one meddling? Park wanted to ask her. Who was the one sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, asking questions, invading privacy? And who was the one who was getting drunk on the job? But she only said, numbly, “If you need to talk, Natalya, my door is always open.”