The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

by Becky Chambers

  Rosemary had known Harmagians before — her Hanto professor, for one, and several of her father’s regular dinner guests — but she always had trouble reconciling their appearance with their history. The person before her was, like all his species, a mollusk-like blob who couldn’t move around quickly without the help of his cart. He didn’t have teeth or claws. He didn’t have bones. Yet somehow, there had been a time when this squishy species had controlled a significant portion of the galaxy (and they still did, if you watched where the credits flowed, but they weren’t in the habit of subjugating indigenous sapients anymore). She had once read a paper by an Aeluon historian who suggested that the Harmagians’ physical frailty was exactly what had helped them develop a technological edge over other species. “Want and intelligence,” the historian had written, “is a dangerous combination.”

  When she considered the historical context, Rosemary thought their presence in the shop made for a rather odd tableau: a Harmagian (an aging son of a former empire), an Aandrisk (whose people had moderated the talks that granted independence to Harmagian colonies and ultimately founded the GC), and two Humans (a meager species that would’ve been ripe for the picking if they had been discovered during the days of Harmagian conquest). All standing together, amicably discussing the sale of soap. Time was a curious equalizer.

  Kizzy poked around the Harmagian’s offerings. “Have you got any — Ooh! Can I ask you in Hanto? I’ve been taking a course on the Linkings and I want to practice.”

  Sissix eyed Kizzy with skepticism. “Since when?”

  “Dunno, five days ago.”

  The slits on the ends of the Harmagian’s eyestalks crinkled with amusement. “Please, let me hear.”

  Kizzy cleared her throat and coughed out a few wobbly syllables. Rosemary cringed. Not only had Kizzy spoken nonsense, but without the accompanying gestures, the attempt had come across as a bit rude.

  But the Harmagian ululated in laughter. “Oh, my dear guest,” he said, tendrils quivering. “Forgive me, but that was the worst pronunciation I have ever heard.”

  Kizzy gave a sheepish grin. “Oh, no,” she said, and laughed.

  “It is not your fault,” said the Harmagian. “Humans have much difficulty in mimicking our tonal shifts.”

  Rosemary put a hand near her collarbone and waggled her fingers, as she had done many times. It was a crude imitation of tendril gestures, but it was the best a Human could do. “Pala, ram talen, rakae’ma huk aesket’alo’n, hama t’hul basrakt’hon kib,” she said. Perhaps, dear host, but with some extended effort, we can share your fine words.

  Kizzy and Sissix turned their heads toward Rosemary in unison, as if seeing her for the first time. The Harmagian flexed his tendrils with respect. “Well and successfully done, dear guest!” he said, speaking in his own tongue. “Are you a spacer merchant?”

  Rosemary stretched her fingers. “Not a merchant, and only recently a spacer,” she said. “We three crew aboard a tunneling ship.” The words were true, but they still sounded strange, as if they belonged to someone else’s life. “My friends and I have come to the Port to acquire supplies.”

  “Ah, tunneling! A well-traveled life. You will need plenty of things to keep you clean along the way.” The Harmagian straightened his tendrils cheekily. His eyeslits dilated as he shifted his gaze to Kizzy. “Have you found something to your liking?” he asked in Klip.

  Kizzy held a brick of blood red soap. “I need this,” she said, pressing her nose against it and inhaling deeply. “Oh my stars, what is this?”

  “That’s made with boiled eevberry,” the Harmagian said. “A very popular scent on my homeworld. Though, of course, we don’t mix it into soap. What you hold there is a fine blending of our two cultures.”

  “I’ll take it.” Kizzy handed the Harmagian the soap. He took hold of it with two of his smaller tentacles, each covered in a sheath-like glove to protect his delicate skin. He zipped behind the counter and busied himself with foil and ribbon.

  “There you go, dear guest,” said the Harmagian, handing her the attractively wrapped bundle. “Just chip off a little piece of it at a time, it’ll last longer that way.”

  Kizzy stuck her nose to the wrapper again. “Mmph, that smells good. Check it out, Rosemary.”

  Rosemary couldn’t help but inhale as Kizzy shoved the block of soap into her face. The scent was thickly sweet and sugary, like a cake. She imagined using it would be like bathing in a meringue.

  “That’s eight hundred sixty credits, if you please, thank you,” the Harmagian said.

  Kizzy stuck out her hand to Rosemary. “Can I have the chip?”

  Rosemary blinked, not sure if she had understood. “You want the company chip?”

  “Yeah, it’s soap,” Kizzy said. “Soap is cool, right?”

  Rosemary cleared her throat and looked down at her scrib. No, soap wasn’t cool, not fancy soap, but how could she tell Kizzy that? She had come onto Kizzy’s ship, been welcomed by Kizzy with open arms, let Kizzy buy her too many drinks, had vastly less experience than Kizzy in things like tunneling and shopping in neutral ports. But even so — “I’m sorry, Kizzy, but, um, we can only use the chip for common-use soap. If you want special soap, you have to get it yourself.” She felt the words come out of her mouth, and she hated them. She sounded like a killjoy.

  “But — ” Kizzy started.

  Without a word, Sissix grabbed Kizzy’s wrist and pressed it to the merchant’s scanner. There was a corresponding chirp, indicating her account had been accepted.

  “Hey!” Kizzy said.

  “You can afford it,” Sissix said.

  “A pleasure doing business with you,” said the merchant. “Do come back when you are next in port.” His voice was friendly, but Rosemary could tell by his twisting tendrils that the exchange over payment had made him awkward. She gestured a quick, silent apology. He gave her a respectful flex, and scooted off to help other customers.

  Sissix frowned at Kizzy as they exited the shop. “Kiz, if we’re flying through a rough patch, and I tell everybody to drop what they’re doing and strap down, what do you do?”

  Kizzy looked confused. “What?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “I…stop what I’m doing and strap down,” Kizzy said.

  “Even if it’s inconvenient?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And if you need everybody to not use water taps for a while because you need to fix the lines, which is hugely inconvenient, what do we do?”

  Kizzy scratched the tip of her nose. “You stop using taps,” she said.

  Sissix pointed at Rosemary. “This woman here has the worst job of all of us. She has to live on our ship, with all us gloriously stubborn dustheads, and tell us which of our well-worn habits are against the rules. That sounds scary as hell to me, but she’s done it without coming across like a hatch parent. So even though it’s not always convenient, we’re going to listen to her when she needs to do her job, because we expect her to do the same in return.” She looked to Rosemary, who was busy hoping the ground might swallow her up. “And you, Rosemary, have the right to kick our asses over stuff like this, because not passing inspections or getting grounded over unpaid invoices is every bit as much trouble for this crew as anything else.”

  “Unpaid invoices won’t suck you into space,” mumbled Kizzy.

  “You know what I mean,” said Sissix.

  Kizzy sighed. “Rosemary, I am sorry for being a jerk,” she said, looking at her toes. She lifted up her block of soap as if she were paying homage to royalty. “Please accept my soap as an apology.”

  Rosemary gave a little laugh. “It’s no problem,” she said, relieved that she hadn’t been perceived as the jerk. “Keep your soap.”

  Kizzy considered this. “Can I buy you lunch at least?”

  “Really, it’s okay.”

  “Let her buy you food,” said Sissix. “Otherwise she’s going to come up with some other ridiculous gift out of penance.”


  “Hey, you liked the Twelve Days of Jam Cakes,” Kizzy said.

  “That I did,” said Sissix. “I almost wish you’d break my scrib more often.”

  “Knocked it into a pot of soup,” Kizzy confessed to Rosemary.

  “And stuck her arm in after it,” said Sissix.

  “Out of reflex!”

  “And spent the next hour in the med bay getting her burns treated.”

  “Whatever. You got jam cakes, stop being mean.”

  Sissix pointed at Rosemary’s scrib. “We need anything else in this district before we eat?”

  Rosemary scrolled through the list. “I don’t think so. Didn’t you say you wanted some scale scrub?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t like what he had, though,” Sissix said. “Mind if we keep looking?”

  The three crewmates drifted from stall to stall, inquiring after scale scrub. After several apologetic noes, one puzzled look, and one long-necked Laru who swore that his holistic desert salts would work just as well, Kizzy tugged on Sissix’s vest. “I bet that lady’s got some,” she said, pointing.

  “Where?” said Sissix, turning around. Her face softened when she saw the merchant, an old Aandrisk woman seated beneath a small woven canopy, surrounded on three sides by tables full of handmade goods. The woman’s feathers were faded, their frills worn and sparse. Her skin was cracking, like old leather, and though the single garment she wore — a soft pair of pants — was bright and clean, something solemn hung around her scaled shoulders.

  Sissix said something to herself in Reskitkish. The sibilant words were lost on Rosemary, but she saw Kizzy’s eyebrows knit together. Sissix pressed a palm toward her companions. “Sorry, ladies, wait here. I’ll try not to be long.” She headed for the merchant, who was too busy stirring a cup of something hot to see Sissix approach.

  Rosemary and Kizzy looked at one another. “Do you know what she said?” Rosemary asked.

  “My Reskitkish sucks,” Kizzy said. “But she sounded upset. Dunno what she’s up to.” She nodded at a nearby bench. “Guess we’ll chill for a bit.”

  They took a seat. Across from them, the merchant looked up at Sissix. The old Aandrisk smiled, but she looked hesitant, as if she were embarrassed about something. Rosemary could see Sissix’s mouth moving, but the words were lost to distance (not that Rosemary could understand the language anyway). As Sissix spoke, her hands wove in subtle patterns, shifting and darting like small flocks of birds. The old woman’s hands moved in response. At first, their respective motions were discordant, but as their conversation continued, they began to mirror one another.

  “Do you know Aandrisk hand speak?” Rosemary asked.

  Kizzy glanced up from the lock of hair she was braiding. “Not really. Sis taught me a couple of ‘em. Just basic stuff. ‘Hello.’ ‘Thanks.’ ‘I enjoy your company but I don’t want to have sex.’” She watched Sissix and the merchant for a moment. She shook her head. “I have no idea. They’re way too fast. But Sissix is speaking out loud, too, which is interesting.”

  “Why would she speak if she’s using sign language?”

  “No, no, it’s not like a sign language. Hand speak doesn’t match up with Reskitkish.”

  Rosemary was puzzled. “This is a stupid question, but then what is it? Is it like facial expressions? Or Hanto gestures?”

  “No.” Kizzy pulled a ribbon from her pocket and tied off the braid. “Hand speak expresses things that are either too basic to waste words on or too personal.”

  “Too personal?”

  “Yeah, stuff that’s really important or hard to say. Like about love or hate or stuff you’re scared about. You know how when you have something big to tell someone, you stammer through it or sit in front of your mirror practicing what to say? Aandrisks don’t bother with that. They let the gestures take care of all the awkwards. They figure that big, deep feelings are universal enough to be defined with just a flick of the hand or whatever, even though the events that cause those feelings are unique.”

  “That must save them a lot of time,” said Rosemary, wondering how much of her life had been spent trying to find the right words in difficult conversations.

  “Seriously. But back in the day, you could also use hand speak while you spoke. It was used to add emphasis to stuff you said out loud, so that folks knew you really meant it. Sissix says you can still use it like that, but it’s old-fashioned, and you only do it in special circumstances.” She nodded toward the stall, where the two Aandrisks were now moving in sync. “What we’re seeing here is Sissix being super respectful. And honest.”

  “But she doesn’t know that merchant, right?”

  “Dunno. Don’t think so. But that lady’s old, so maybe she’s just being old-fashioned for her sake.”

  Rosemary watched the Aandrisks. Their hands moved in a graceful, hurried dance. “How are they matching each other?” she asked.

  Kizzy shrugged. “I guess they agree on something.” Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh. Like that.”

  Sissix had sat down with her back against one of the tables, spreading her legs to either side. The older woman joined her, leaning her back against Sissix’s front. They adjusted their tails accordingly. The old woman leaned her head into Sissix’s chest, her eyes falling shut. Sissix pressed one palm against the old woman’s stomach, holding her close. With her other hand, she spread her fingers wide and ran them up from the old woman’s scalp to the tips of her feathers, tugging the shafts gently as she went. To Human eyes, they looked like reunited lovers behind a bedroom door, not at all like two strangers in a open-air market. Even across the street, the old woman’s face was easy to read. She was in bliss.

  Rosemary was bewildered. She knew Aandrisks were uninhibited (by Human standards, she reminded herself), but this went beyond what she was expecting. “Um,” she said. “So…”

  “I have no idea,” said Kizzy. “Aandrisks. I don’t even fucking know.” She was silent for a few seconds. “Do you think they’re gonna go for it?” she whispered, leaning forward with childlike curiosity. “I bet they are. Holy shit, is that even legal here? Oh, I hope they don’t.”

  But the Aandrisks did not couple, though they continued their spontaneous intimacy for a good half an hour, stroking feathers and nuzzling cheeks, oblivious to the stares of passersby. At one point, two other Aandrisks strolled past without more than a casual glance, as if nothing was going on. Rosemary wasn’t sure if she should avert her eyes or not. Sissix clearly didn’t care who was looking. As Rosemary watched, the peculiarity of the act began to melt away. It was alien, yes, and sudden, but not uncomfortable. There was a weird sort of beauty to it, something about the way their hands moved, the ease with which they touched each other. Baffling as the thought was, Rosemary found herself a little envious — of the old woman or of Sissix, she wasn’t sure. She wished someone would give her that sort of attention on a whim. She wished she were confident enough to give it back.

  Finally, there was a flutter from the old woman’s hands. Sissix let go and helped the old woman to her feet. They began looking through the old woman’s wares. A jar of scale scrub was selected. Sissix’s wrist was scanned. A few more words were exchanged, but without hand speak. A normal discussion between customer and merchant, made all the more surreal by what had come before.

  The old woman reached up and plucked a feather from her head, wincing as she did so. She held the feather — a faded blue — out to Sissix. Sissix took it, bowing her head low. Her expression was one of gratitude.

  “Oh, wow,” said Kizzy, putting her hands over her heart. “I still don’t know what’s going on, but that just made me go all mushy.”

  “What?” Rosemary kept her eye on the Aandrisks, as if staring long enough might provide an explanation. “What’s that mean?”

  “Have you been in Sissix’s room yet?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, well, on her wall, there’s this big fancy frame with a mess of Aandrisk feathers hanging from it. Every Aandri
sk’s got one, as far as I know. See, if you’re an Aandrisk and somebody really touches your life in some way, you give that person one of your feathers. And then you keep the feathers you get from others as a symbol of how many paths you’ve crossed. Having a lot of feathers on your wall shows that you’ve had an impact on a lot of people. That’s a pretty big life priority for most Aandrisks. But they don’t give feathers out casually, not, like, for helping you carry something or giving you a free drink or whatever. It’s got to be an experience that sticks with you, but it can totally be between strangers. Oh, hey, check it.” Kizzy gestured with her chin toward Sissix, who was giving the old woman one of her own feathers.

  “Has Sissix ever given you a feather?” Rosemary asked.

  “Yeah, she gave me one a while back, after she got news that one of her hatch fathers died. He was old, but she was really broken up over it. I put her in the shuttle, flew her out to the middle of this nebula, and just let her yell for a few hours. I got a feather the next morning. I think the whole crew’s got a Sissix feather by now. Well, not Corbin. Probably not Corbin.”

  Sissix walked back over to the bench, carrying the jar of scale scrub. She looked between Kizzy and Rosemary. “I…apparently have some explaining to do.”

  “Uh, yes,” Kizzy said. “Explaining would be great.”

  Sissix nodded toward the road, indicating for them to follow. “A person her age should be settled down with a house family, raising hatchlings.”

  Rosemary tried to remember everything she’d been told about Aandrisk family structure. Young Aandrisks were cared for by community elders, not their biological parents. That much she knew. And there were several familial stages Aandrisks went through as they aged. But beyond that, Rosemary was fuzzy on the details.