The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

by Becky Chambers

  “Oh, not at all. Young Aandrisks tend to stick together at first, but once they gain a little confidence and experience, they branch out. We don’t worry about age differences as much as most other species do. If you’ve got feathers, it’s fine. And it can be a great experience for youngsters to group with an older crowd. I was the youngest by far in my second feather family, and — ” Sissix chuckled, her eyes far away. “Yeah, I learned a lot of things.”

  “Do you — ” Rosemary felt herself blush. “Does everybody in a feather family, um, y’know — ”

  “Couple? To some extent, but it’s different than what you think. At least once, almost definitely. But not everybody within a feather family has romantic feelings toward everyone else. It’s a whole web of different feelings. So, yes, there’s a lot coupling going on — especially on holidays, a holiday without a tet is unheard of.” Rosemary had learned the word. Its literal translation was “frolic,” but its colloquial use implied something far more risque. “But many members are platonic toward one another. They’ll touch each other much more than Humans do, but it’s still not coupling. Or, well, then again, sometimes it can be. We tend to think about coupling the same way that — hmm, how to put this — okay, like how you think about good food. It’s something you always look forward to, and it’s something everybody needs and enjoys. At the low end of the scale, it’s comforting. At the high end, it’s transcendent. And like eating a meal, it’s something you can do in public, with friends, or with strangers. But even so, it’s best when you share it with someone you care about romantically.”

  “I can see that,” Rosemary said. She nodded. “So, then, house family. House family raises children. But not their own children, right?”

  “Right. We can breed as soon as we’ve got a full head of feathers, but we don’t start thinking about raising children until we’ve gotten old. That’s when we make house families. It’s usually made up of elder members of a feather family, who all decide to settle down together. Sometimes they might contact favorites from previous feather families, see if they want to join. And don’t misunderstand, house families change members from time to time, too. They may be old, but they’re still Aandrisks.” She laughed.

  “So, younger Aandrisks give their eggs to a house family.”

  “Right.”

  “Do they find a house family that has someone they’re related to?”

  “It’s nice if you can, but usually you just choose whoever’s most convenient. When a woman has a fertile clutch — we call it a kaas — she goes to the local registry and finds a good house family with room for more.”

  “What if she can’t find someone to take them?”

  “Then she buries the clutch. Remember, most of the clutch will die anyway. Most won’t even make it to hatching. That’s not because they’re unhealthy. That’s just how it is. Stars, I can’t even imagine how many of us there’d be if every egg hatched. Too many.” She shuddered.

  Rosemary thought about this. “I hope this doesn’t sound ignorant, but why don’t feather families raise their own hatchlings? Aren’t there enough people there to help out?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not a matter of resources or support. It’s a matter of where you are in your life. In our early adulthood, it’s expected that we’ll want to travel or study, and it’s a given that we’ll switch families often as we age. Elders don’t shift around as much. They’re more stable. And most importantly, they’ve got life experience. They’re wise. They know things.” She smirked. “I’ll never understand how the rest of you expect brand new adults to be able to teach kids how to be people.”

  “That’s…okay, that’s a fair point.” Rosemary closed her eyes, trying to keep it all straight. “So, the house family becomes the hatch family for those eggs.”

  “Right. And a house family is usually good for two generations of hatchlings. It’s common for first-generation adults to bring their own eggs back to the family that raised them. That’s what I did.”

  Rosemary sat up. “Wait. You’ve got kids?” Sissix had never mentioned this, not once.

  The Aandrisk woman laughed. “I had a fertile clutch.”

  “When?”

  “About three standards ago. I’m told two hatchlings lived. But that doesn’t make me a mother.” She winked. “I’m not old enough for that yet.”

  Rosemary looked out the window. She chided herself for being so species-centric, but something about this knowledge made her view Sissix differently. She was surprised to realize the depth of her Human concept of motherhood, the idea that procreating fundamentally changed you. But then, she was of a mammalian species. If she ever chose to have children, it would mean spending the better part of a year watching her body stretch and contort, then another year, or more, of letting a fragile, helpless thing that didn’t understand its own limbs feed from her body. Aandrisk hatchlings developed within a detached object, and emerged ready to walk. But though she understood the biological distinctions, she still struggled to wrap her brain around the idea of breeding as something nonchalant, nothing more complicated than sticking eggs in a basket, handing them off, and getting on with your day. Did they use baskets? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t push away the image of a white wicker basket filled with speckled eggs, the handle tied up with pastel bows. “Do you talk to them, or…?”

  Sissix gave her a somewhat exasperated smile. “No. Remember, they’re not people yet, not by our standards. And they’re not my family. I know that sounds cold to you, but trust me, they’re loved by the elders raising them. Though, that said, elders don’t get attached to hatchlings, not until they see who they turn into. That’s where the real joy is for house families. Seeing the hatchlings they raised come back as fully-feathered adults, with stories and ideas and personality.”

  “Like you’re doing now.”

  “Right.”

  “Have you ever met your…biological parents?”

  “My egg mother, once. Her name’s Saskist. Very funny woman, and I’m glad I got her feathers. I’ve never met my egg father, but I know he lives with his feather family on Ikekt. Or he did last time I checked. That was a while ago, though, he may have moved on by now.”

  Rosemary thought of what Lovey said if you gave her one task too many: I’m sorry, but that’ll have to wait a moment. If I put anything more in my databanks, my processing streams will stall. And I hate that. “How do you keep track of all the changes to families?”

  “There’s a central database that our government maintains. All feather families are registered there, and the archivists keep track of every change. You can look up anybody’s name and see who their egg parents were, who raised them, which families they’ve been in, who they’ve had clutches with, and where the hatchlings have gone to.”

  “That’s got to be one complicated database. Why go to all that trouble?”

  “Same reason our full names include all our family details.” She gave Rosemary a pointed look. “Because inbreeding is gross.”

  ●

  The shuttle ramp unfolded, bright sun flooding in. Rosemary tugged her satchel over her shoulder as she followed Sissix and Ashby down. Her legs wobbled, protesting the switch from artigrav to the real thing. Hashkath had just a touch more bounce than she was used to. She looked up. Theth loomed overhead, its rings and swirling clouds appearing as ghostly afterimages against the hazy blue. Her view was unhindered, no shield pylons or shuttle traffic to get in her way. An open sky.

  They had landed in Sethi, a small community in the Western desert region of Hashkath. Well, Sissix had called it a desert. It wasn’t like any desert Rosemary had ever seen. Mars was desert, barren and parched. Its gardens and green plazas were constructs, enclosed beneath habitat domes, fed with recycled water. But here, the ground was alive, flocked with scruffy grass and warped trees, stretching from their flat landing site all the way to the angular mountains along the horizon. And flowers, too, flowers everywhere. Not like the lush, leafy genetweaks from the gr
eenhouses back home, or the elegant vines creeping through Dr. Chef’s garden. These were wildflowers, bursting triumphantly from the gray ground, growing tangled and low in bundles of orange, yellow, purple. The trees twisted up over them, covered in spines and clusters of berries. They grew thickest in a long strip up ahead, a ribbon of green that hinted at a hidden stream.

  Beyond the ribbon lay the community, a lazy gathering of pod-like homesteads hugging the ground. It was spread out enough to give a family space to stretch and grow things, but close enough to keep your neighbors right at hand. Sethi was a quiet place. Out of the way. Modestly prosperous. Uncomplicated. No gaming hubs or pre-fab stores. There wasn’t even a real shuttle dock, just a wide, unattended area suitable for landing small spacecraft and supply drones. Looking around, Rosemary understood why a young adult would want to leave such a place, and why an elder would want to come back.

  She touched her bare nose, basking in the novelty of being able to breathe without a mask or an artificial atmosphere. The last time she’d been without one or the other was Port Coriol, which felt like a lifetime ago. The air at the port had been thick with the smells of algae and business. The air on Hashkath was clean, dry, oxygen rich, laced with the scent of desert flowers warming in the sun. It was good air.

  Sissix obviously agreed. She threw her arms wide and her head back as soon as her clawed feet touched the ground. “Home,” she said, sounding as if she had just surfaced from a long swim.

  “Wow,” Ashby said. “I’d forgotten that it would be spring here.”

  Sissix inhaled and exhaled with vigor, as if purging the Wayfarer’s recycled air from her lungs. She looked down at her body. “Oh, hell no.” She untied the drawstring of her pants, stepped out of them, and threw them back into the shuttle. Her vest followed suit. Naked, she began walking toward her childhood home, her scales glinting in the sun.

  As they walked, Ashby reached into his own satchel and pulled out his translation hud. He fitted the thin metal band around his head. The eyescreen flickered to life.

  “I thought you speak Reskitkish,” Rosemary said.

  “I understand Reskitkish,” Ashby said. “But I’m far from fluent when I speak. And since I don’t get much practice, it helps to have a cheat sheet.”

  “Your accent is better than most Humans I know,” Sissix said. “I know it’s a pain for you to speak on an inhale.”

  “It’s not the speaking on an inhale that’s so bad. It’s alternating it with exhaling within the same sentence.” He snapped his satchel shut. “Seriously, who does that?”

  Rosemary pulled her own hud out of her bag. “It is pretty mean,” she said. Her knowledge of Reskitkish was practically nonexistent, but the few phrases she had tried made her feel lightheaded. “I don’t know how you can speak it without hyperventilating.”

  Sissix thumped her chest with a fist. “We’ve got better lungs,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, we’ve got warm blood,” Ashby said. “I think that’s the better end of the deal.”

  Sissix gave a short laugh. “You have no idea. I’d take your weak lungs and useless nose over morning torpor any day.”

  Ashby looked at Rosemary. “I can’t tell if that was a compliment or not.” He turned back to Sissix. “Hey, is Ethra still here?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Do not make any puns around him,” Ashby said to Rosemary. “He wiped the floor with me last time I was here. And he’s got an arsenal of Human jokes that will cause permanent damage.”

  Sissix chuckled. “He’s no kinder to his own species. What was the one about — oh, what was it, something horrible involving tails — ”

  Ashby laughed. “So a Human, a Quelin, and a Harmagian walk into a tet — ”

  “No, stop,” Sissix said, gesturing ahead with her chin. They had reached the scrub-filled banks of the desert stream. Two Aandrisk children were playing in the water, shouting over one another. A message appeared on Rosemary’s hud: Cannot process conversation. Please move closer to speaker(s). She had no frame of reference for how old the children were, but given their small size and playfulness, Rosemary thought of them as Human kids in their first years of primary school. Well, maybe. One of them looked younger than the other. She had a hard time pinning down anything else about them. Aandrisk sex was easy to determine in adults, mainly due to size, but at this age, they were androgynous, especially since male Aandrisks lacked external genitalia. Categorization aside, there was something fragile about these two, a paper-like quality to their scales. No wonder she hadn’t seen any Aandrisk children offworld before. She didn’t even know them, and already she felt protective. She imagined their parents must feel that way ten times over. Hatch parents, she reminded herself. Hatch parents.

  Ashby lowered his voice. “Since when do Aandrisks not mention tets around their kids?”

  “We do,” Sissix said. “But you’re probably the first Humans they’ve ever seen, and I don’t want them to grow up thinking your species is stupid.” She walked toward the children, calling out a breathy greeting.

  The kids’ featherless heads snapped up. The smaller one shouted something. The translation appeared on Rosemary’s hud. “Aliens! The aliens are here!” They scrambled up out of the stream, claws skittering in excitement.

  Sissix crouched down to nuzzle both of their faces. Rosemary had seen her do the same to Ashby, but with him, the gesture was more affectionate, more natural. There was something formal about this. Kind and genuine, yes, but definitely removed.

  The older child spoke. “You’re Sissix.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re my egg mother.”

  Sissix smiled. She did not look surprised. “You must be Teshris.” Her eyes flicked to the other. “Are you Eskat, then?”

  “No,” the child said, giggling.

  “No, I see now. You’re too young.” She patted his bald head. “Not that that’s a bad thing.”

  Ashby whispered in Rosemary’s ear. “Teshris is a girl,” he said. “Her buddy here’s a boy.”

  “Thanks,” Rosemary replied, wondering how he could tell the difference. “Eskat is her sibling?”

  “Egg brother, yeah. I didn’t know their names until now, though.”

  Sissix said something to Teshris in hand speak. Ashby whispered again: “That motion’s specific to egg parents. She’s saying that she’s happy that Teshris is healthy and…well, that she exists, basically.” The Aandrisk girl responded, her gestures awkward and new. “She’s thanking Sissix for giving her life.” The two Aandrisks smiled and gave each other one more nuzzle. And that was that. No hugs, no long stares, no Sissix needing some time to process the daughter she’d never spoken to. In that moment, Rosemary understood. Teshris wasn’t Sissix’s daughter, not in the Human sense. They shared genes and respect, nothing more.

  Sissix turned her head to Teshris’ companion. “What’s your name?”

  “Vush,” he said.

  “Whose eggs are you from?”

  “Teker and Hasra.”

  Sissix crowed with laughter. “I don’t know Hasra, but Teker was my hatch sister.”

  Hatch sister, not egg sister. Rosemary felt like she needed to start drawing a chart.

  Sissix grinned at the kids. “When we were growing up” — the hud added the direct translation becoming people as a parenthetical — “she always said she didn’t want to have a clutch, and that she’d be tough enough to go without coupling while she was fertile. That changed damn quick once her feathers started coming in. During her first heat, I found her rutting alone up against a rock. I thought she was going to choke, she was so — ” The hud skipped over the last word and offered an explanation instead: [no analog available; a combination of arousal, frenzy, and inexperience, generally attributed to adolescence]. Sissix laughed again, and the kids joined in. Rosemary raised her eyebrows. How old were these kids? She glanced over at Ashby. He looked a little uncomfortable, too. At least she wasn’t alone in it.
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br />   Vush spoke up after he’d stopped giggling. “I want to touch the Humans, but Ithren said they don’t like that.”

  “He’s right, not all Humans do. But I bet these two would be okay with it. You just have to ask permission first.” She pointed back toward her companions. “This is Rosemary, and this is Ashby. They are very good people.”

  The kids looked at them, motionless. Rosemary remembered being four years old, seeing a Harmagian for the first time, unable to stop staring at the tendrils where his chin should have been. It was odd to find herself on the other end of the equation.

  Ashby crouched down and smiled. The kids looked a little stiff, but they stepped closer. It took Rosemary a moment to realize their tense muscles were not a result of fear, but of suppressing the instinct to touch. Ashby began to speak in Reskitkish. His consonants were halting, and his out-breaths were far more exaggerated than Sissix’s, but it was good enough for the hud to pick up. “My name is Ashby. I am glad to meet you. You can touch me.”

  The kids ran forward. They nuzzled a quick hello, out of politeness, and got to the serious business of poking at Ashby. “It’s so soft!” Vush said, pressing his hands against Ashby’s coiled hair. “No quills!”

  “Do you molt?” Teshris asked, examining Ashby’s forearm.

  “No,” said Ashby. “But we…” He struggled, and switched over to Klip, addressing Sissix. “Can you explain dry skin?”

  “Their skin comes off in tiny, tiny pieces, not all at once,” Sissix said to the kids. “They don’t even notice it.”

  “Lucky,” Teshris said. “I hate molting.”

  Vush, a little less restrained than his hatch sister now that permission had been given, walked right up to Rosemary and gave her a nuzzle. “Can I touch you, too?”

  Rosemary smiled and nodded, before realizing the boy wouldn’t understand what a nod meant. “Tell him yes,” Rosemary said to Sissix. Sissix relayed the message.

  Vush frowned. “Why can’t she tell me herself?”

  “She doesn’t speak Reskitkish,” Sissix said. “But that hud she’s wearing lets her read every word you say.”