The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

by Becky Chambers

  Dr. Chef nodded. “You love them and you understand them, but sometimes you wish they — and me and Ohan, too, I’m sure — could be more like ordinary people.”

  “Exactly.” She sighed, her frustration simmering down. “And it’s not like they’ve done anything wrong. You know how much this crew means to me. But today…I don’t know. It feels like having a mess of younger hatchmates who won’t stop playing with your toys. They’re not breaking anything and you know they’re only trying to please you, but they’re so little and annoying, and you want them all to fall down a well. Temporarily.”

  Dr. Chef gave a rumbling chuckle. “It seems your diagnosis is more complicated than just a premature molt.”

  “How so?”

  He smiled. “You’re homesick.”

  She sighed again. “Yeah.”

  “We’re stopping off at Hashkath before the end of the standard, right? That’s not so horribly far,” he said, patting her head. He stopped and rubbed one of her feathers between his fingerpads. “Have you been taking your mineral supplements?”

  She glanced away. “Sometimes.”

  “You need to take them all times. Your feathers are a little limp.”

  “I’m molting.”

  Dr. Chef frowned. “It’s not because you’re molting,” he said. “It’s because you’re deficient in the basic nutrients that every Aandrisk needs. If you don’t start taking your minerals regularly, I’m going to start feeding you moss paste.”

  She made a face. The very mention of the stuff brought back childhood memories of the taste: bitter, dusty, lingering. “Okay, hatch father, whatever you say.”

  Dr. Chef rumbled in thought.

  “What?”

  “Ah, nothing. The phrase just struck me as odd,” he said, his voice light. “I was only ever a mother.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sissix said. “I didn’t mean — ”

  “Oh, don’t. It’s only true.” He looked back to her, the twinkle returning to his eye. “Besides, if you think of me as a parent, maybe you’ll listen when I tell you to take your damn minerals.”

  She laughed. “I doubt it. There was a stretch in my childhood when my hatch family couldn’t get me to eat anything but snapfruit.” She hissed as he worked the riksith against a stubborn patch on her shoulder.

  “At least snapfruit’s good for you. And somehow it doesn’t surprise me that you were a willful child.” He thought aloud, and laughed. “I bet you were a real pain.”

  “Of course I was,” Sissix said with a grin. “I wasn’t a person yet.”

  Dr. Chef’s cheeks rippled in disagreement. “Now, see, there’s something about your species that I will never understand.”

  She let out a congenial sigh. “You and the rest of the galaxy,” she said. Honestly, what was it about that concept that was so difficult for others to grasp? She would never, ever understand the idea that a child, especially an infant, was of more value than an adult who had already gained all the skills needed to benefit the community. The death of a new hatchling was so common as to be expected. The death of a child about to feather, yes, that was sad. But a real tragedy was the loss of an adult with friends and lovers and family. The idea that a loss of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around.

  Dr. Chef glanced over his shoulder, even though no one had entered the room. “Hey, I have a confession to make.”

  “Oh?”

  “I haven’t told anybody else this. This is secret. Top, top secret.” He had lowered his voice as much as he physically could.

  Sissix nodded with exaggerated seriousness. “I will say nothing.”

  “You know how you said Humans can’t smell anything?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed that the Humans aboard this ship don’t smell nearly as bad as other Humans.”

  “Yeah. I’ve gotten used to them.”

  “Wrong.” He paused with dramatic importance. “I routinely mix a potent anti-odor powder into the soap dispensers in the showers. I rub it into Kizzy’s solid soap, too.”

  Sissix stared at him for a moment before crooning with laughter. “Oh,” she said, gasping for breath. “Oh, you don’t.”

  “I certainly do,” he said, puffing his cheeks. “I started doing it not a tenday after I took this job. And do you know what the best part is?”

  “They can’t tell the difference?”

  Dr. Chef let loose an amused harmony. “They can’t tell the difference!”

  They were both still laughing when Ashby walked through the door. His hair was wet. He had clearly just bathed. Sissix and Dr. Chef fell silent. The laughter returned, even stronger than before.

  “Do I want to know?” Ashby said, his eyes shifting between them.

  “We’re making fun of Humans,” Sissix said.

  “Right,” said Ashby. “Then I definitely don’t want to know.” He nodded toward her. “Molt came early?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My sympathies. I’ll take over your cleaning shift.”

  “Oh, you’re the best.” That was wonderful news. Cleaning products and new skin did not mix well.

  “Remember that next time you’re laughing at us lowly primates.”

  ●

  Rosemary sat flicking through files in her office — well, what passed for an office. It had been a storage room before she arrived, and technically still was, given the modest stack of crates against the far wall. The whole setup was a far cry from the sleek desk she’d had at Red Rock Transport, even as an intern, but she liked Dr. Chef’s snack counter far more than the austere corporate cafeteria, and besides, she didn’t need anything fancy to do her job. She had a simple desk and a big interface panel, and a small pixel plant Jenks had given her to make up for the lack of window (why was it that people who worked with numbers always got tucked away in back rooms?). The plant looked nothing like the real thing, of course. The smiling face and color-changing petals resembled nothing in nature. It was programmed with some behavioral recognition software that could tell when she’d gone a while without standing or drinking or taking a break, and would chirp cheerful reminders in response. “Hey, there! You need to hydrate!” “How about a snack?” “Take a walk! Stretch it out!” The effect was cheesy, and sometimes a little jarring when she was focused on her work, but she appreciated the sentiment.

  She sipped a mug of boring tea as she puzzled over one of Kizzy’s expense sheets. The mech tech had a habit of annotating things with shorthand that she alone understood. At first, Rosemary had assumed that it was some sort of tech lingo, but no, Jenks had quietly confirmed that this was Kizzy’s own special way of staying organized. Rosemary squinted at the screen. 5500 credits (ish) - WRSS. She made a flicking motion with her left hand, pulling up a file entitled “Kizzyspeak,” her cheat sheet for acronyms that she had deciphered. ES (Engine Stuff). TB (Tools and Bits). CRCT (Circuits). But no, WRSS wasn’t there. She made a note to ask Kizzy about it.

  The door spun open, and Corbin entered the room. Before she could say hello, he set a black mechanical object on her desk.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  Her heart hammered, as it usually did whenever Corbin approached her. Speaking to him always felt like more of an ambush than a conversation. She looked at the object. “That’s the saline filter I ordered for you.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Notice anything?”

  Rosemary swallowed. She looked harder at the filter, which she only recognized as a filter because there’d been a picture of it on the merchant’s Linking page. She gave an awkward smile. “I can’t say that I know much about algae tech,” she said, trying to keep her voice easy.

  “That much is obvious,” Corbin said. He flipped the filter around and pointed to the label. “Model 4546-C44.” He stared at her, expectantly.

  Oh no. Rosemary’s mind raced, trying to remember the order form. There had been so many... “
Was that not what you wanted?”

  Corbin’s sour face answered her question. “I specifically asked for the C45. The C44 has a coupling port that is narrower than the junction in the tank. I’ll have to add a new attachment in order to make it connect properly.”

  Rosemary had been pulling up archived forms as he spoke. There it was: Triton Advanced saline filter, model 4546-C45. Shit. “I’m so sorry, Corbin. I don’t know what happened. I must’ve selected the wrong model. But at least this one will work, right?” The second the words were out of her mouth, she knew they had been a mistake.

  “That’s not the point, Rosemary,” Corbin said, as if speaking to a child. “What if I had required something more vital than a saline filter? You said it yourself, you don’t know much about algae tech. You can get away with mistakes like this in some cushy planetside office, but not on a long-haul ship. The smallest component can be the difference between getting to port safely and decompressing out in the open.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rosemary said again. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

  “See that you do.” Corbin picked up the filter and walked to the door. “It really isn’t that hard,” he said with his back to her. The door spun shut behind him.

  Rosemary sat staring at her desk. Sissix had told her not to let Corbin get under her skin, but she had screwed up this time, and it was a careless mistake, too. Decompressing didn’t sound so bad right then.

  “Aw, it’s not so bad!” chirped the pixel plant. “Give yourself a hug!”

  “Oh, shut up,” Rosemary said.

  ●

  Ashby tripped over a length of tubing as he walked through the engine room. “What — ” He craned his head around the corner to find an avalanche of cables pouring out of the wall. The entire bracing panel had been removed. He tiptoed his way around the tangled mess, careful not to step on any fluid-filled tubes. As he approached the open wall, he heard someone sniff.

  “Kizzy?”

  The mech tech was sitting inside the wall, hugging her knees, tools scattered alongside. Her face was smudged with gunk and grease, as usual, but a tear or two had created clean pathways down her cheeks. She looked up at him pitifully. Even the ribbons in her hair looked limp.

  “I’m having a bad day,” she said.

  Ashby leaned inside the open panel. “What’s up?”

  She sniffed again, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. “I slept awful, I had nightmares out the ass, and by the time I got to sleep, my alarm was going off, so today was dumb from the get-go, and then I was like, hey, I’ve still got some jam cakes left, and that cheered me up, but then I got to the kitchen and somebody ate the last of ‘em last night and they didn’t ask me at all, and I still don’t know who it was, so then I went to shower, and I whacked my knee against the sink, like a genius, and it’s totally bruised, and I had a mouthful of dentbots at the time, so I kinda swallowed some, and Dr. Chef says it’s okay but I have a tummyache, which he said would happen, and then I finally got to take my stupid shower, but I noticed that the pressure was weird, so I started poking around the water reclamation systems, and I can tell there’s a whole line of cabling that’s fucked up, but I haven’t found it yet, and now there’s this big mess on the floor and I still haven’t got to any of the other stuff I needed to do today, and then I remembered that today’s my cousin Kip’s birthday, and he always has the best parties and I’m totally missing it.” She sniffled again. “And I know how stupid that all sounds, but I am just not with it today. Not at all.”

  Ashby put his hand on top of hers. “We all have days like that.”

  “I guess.”

  “But you know, it’s not even lunchtime yet. There’s time for it to get better from here.”

  She gave a glum nod. “Yeah.”

  “What was on your to-do list today?”

  “Cleaning, mostly. The air filters all need a scrub. A sunlamp down in the Fishbowl needs new wiring. And there’s a floor panel coming loose in Ohan’s room.”

  “Is any of that vital?”

  “No. But it needs to get done.”

  “Just worry about getting the water lines fixed today. The rest can wait.” He squeezed her hand. “And hey. There’s nothing I can do about your cousin’s birthday, but I know how tough that is. I’m sorry we’ve got such a long haul this time.”

  “Oh, stop,” she said. “It’s oodles of cash and I love what we do. It’s not like I’m your indentured servant or something. It was my choice to leave home.”

  “Just because you leave home doesn’t mean you stop caring about it. You wouldn’t get homesick otherwise. And your family knows you care. I keep an eye on our Linking traffic, you know. I see how many vid packs get sent to your family.”

  Kizzy gave a mighty sniff and pointed to the hallway. “You have to go now,” she said. “Because I have to work and you’re making me cry more. Not in a bad way. But you’re making me all mushy and if I hug you I’ll get gunk all over that nice shirt, which really brings out your eyes, by the way.”

  “Hey, everybody,” Lovey said through the nearest vox. “There’s a mail drone inbound. Packages on board for Ashby, Corbin, Jenks, Dr. Chef, and Kizzy. It’ll be here in about ten minutes.”

  “Eek!” cried Kizzy. “Mail! A mail drone!” She tumbled out of the wall and ran down the hallway with her arms outstretched like shuttle wings. “Interstellar goodies iiiiiiiincomiiiiiing!”

  Ashby grinned. “Told you the day would get better,” he called after her. She was too busy “whoosh”-ing to reply.

  ●

  The cargo bay hatch adjusted itself, shrinking down to fit the mail drone’s delivery port. As Ashby and the others waited, Sissix walked through the door. She’d put on a pair of pants, and it looked like Dr. Chef had taken care of the molting problem.

  “Hey,” Ashby said. “Feeling better?”

  “Much,” she said. Her skin was oddly bright, and a few dry ridges still lingered, but at least she didn’t look like a peeling onion anymore.

  “I don’t think there’s anything for you.”

  “So?” She shrugged and smiled. “I’m nosy.”

  “Just a moment,” Lovey said. “I’m scanning the contents for contaminants.”

  “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,” said Kizzy. “It’s my birthday!”

  “Your birthday’s not until middle year,” said Jenks.

  “But it feels like my birthday. I love getting mail.”

  “It’s probably just those lockjaw clips you ordered.”

  “Jenks. Do you know how great lockjaw clips are? There is nothing they can’t hold down. Even my hair can’t work its way out of them, and that’s saying a lot.”

  Ashby glanced over his shoulder at her. “I’m going to pretend like you weren’t talking about using the tech supplies I buy as hair accessories.”

  Kizzy pressed her lips together. “Only in emergencies.”

  “All clear,” Lovey said. The hatch hissed open. A tray slid forward, holding a large, sealed container. Ashby took the container and swiped his wristwrap over the scan-seal. The container gave an affirmative beep. A corresponding beep echoed from the mail drone on the other side of the hull. The tray retracted and the hatch closed. There was a muffled clank as the mail drone detached, off to find its next recipient.

  Ashby unsealed the lid and sorted through the parcels within. They were all plainly packaged, but even so, there was something charming about a bunch of boxes and tubes marked with his crew members’ names. It did feel a little like a holiday.

  “Here, Kizzy,” he said, handing her a large package. “Before you explode.”

  Kizzy’s eyes grew wide. “It’s not lockjaw clips! It’s not lockjaw clips! I know who makes labels like this!” She slid back the lid and cheered. “It’s from my dads!” She dropped cross-legged onto the floor and pulled the lid open. Atop the package’s contents — snacks and sundries, it looked like — was an info chip. Kizzy pulled her scrib from her belt, plugged in the chip, a
nd began reading the text that appeared on the screen. Her face melted with sentiment. “It’s a just ‘cause box,” she said. “They are the best. The best.” She tore into a fresh pack of fire shrimp as she continued reading.

  Ashby pulled out a small domed container blinking with biohazard warnings. “Do I even want to know what this is?”

  Dr. Chef puffed his cheeks. “Those will be my new seedlings. Completely harmless, I assure you. They have to put those warnings on any live cargo.”

  “I know. It’s just…unnerving.”

  Dr. Chef leaned close to Ashby, his eyes twinkling. “Don’t tell, but if this is the order I think it is, I’ve now got a few starters of rosemary plants.”

  Ashby flipped over a box with a familiar brand logo, the same one he’d seen on a lot of algae tech. “Corbin,” he said, handing over the box. “This looks like it’s for you.”

  Corbin opened the box and took out a circulation pump. He peered at the label and gave a short nod. “Seems our clerk can read order forms after all.” He headed for the exit.

  “Well…good,” said Ashby noncommittally. He pulled a tiny box from the mail crate. “Jenks.”

  Jenks opened the box and removed an info chip.

  “What’s that?” Sissix asked.

  “It’s from Pepper,” Jenks said. He stared at the chip for a moment. “Oh, I bet it’s those lateral circuit specs she mentioned last time I saw her.”

  “Those sounded sweet,” Kizzy said. She frowned. “Why not just send them to your scrib?”

  Jenks shrugged and put the chip in his pocket. “You know Pepper. She does things in her own special way.”

  Ashby leaned over the mail crate. There was one small, flat package remaining, addressed to himself. The label had no indication of who had sent it, but it required a wristwrap scan. A flap snapped open as his wrist passed over it, and a frail rectangular object fell into Ashby’s waiting palm.

  “What is that?” Sissix asked.

  Jenks let out a low whistle and stepped closer. “That’s paper.”

  Kizzy’s head snapped up. “Whoa,” she said, goggling at the object. “Is that a letter? Like a physical one?” She jumped to her feet. “Can I touch it?”