The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

by Becky Chambers

  “You what?”

  Marcus cleared his throat. “One tenday, I spent all of my free time cleaning up the station. Made sure it looked presentable. Set the table with the nicer food that I’d been saving in the stasie.”

  Corbin gaped. “You did not invite her in.”

  “Oh, I did. And she accepted.”

  “But,” Corbin sputtered. “Does that station even have a decontamination flash suitable for Humans?”

  “Nope. I was sterilized before I went down to the station. The only flash installed there was meant for food and supplies. Having her walk through it wasn’t even an option.”

  “But your samples!” His mind reeled. Throughout Corbin’s entire childhood, Marcus had drilled him with the importance of preventing contamination. One time, he’d revoked dessert privileges for a month after catching Corbin eating candy in the lab. Corbin didn’t know the person that Marcus was describing. It certainly wasn’t the father he knew.

  “All ruined,” Marcus said. “She had just enough benign bacteria on her to cause a few problems. The project leader was furious when she found out. Six months of work, gone. Sita was fired, and I was given the option to either start the year over or leave the project entirely.”

  “You stayed?”

  “Oh, no, I left. I had just had one of the best days of my life, and it was all thanks to that beautiful woman. We hadn’t even done anything that interesting. We just ate all my food and talked about everything. She made me laugh. And for reasons I still don’t understand, I made her smile. There was no way I was going to be locked away from her down on Overlook. I spent the next five years trying to put my career back together, but it was worth it.”

  “So,” Corbin said, bewildered. His brain could not accept the image of his father as a lovesick young man willing to contaminate his lab. “You married her.”

  Marcus chuckled. “Not right away. I begged and scraped and pleaded until I found somebody willing to hire me at the gene library. Awful job, but I was lucky to get anything at that point. The head lab tech there had done a year down on Overlook, too. I think he sympathized. Sita got a job with a cargo company based on Titan that didn’t ask too many questions, either about who she was or what cargo they took on. Shady work, but…well, we thought it was a good thing at the time. Since I was back on the orbiter, we could see each other more often. And after a time, I married her. We had five wonderful years together.” Marcus’s face grew tight, and for a moment, Corbin thought that he could see all the years of his father’s life press down upon him. “One morning, she told me she’d have to leave her job in a few months. I asked why. She told me she was pregnant. I was ecstatic. By that time, I’d crawled my way up to a better position in the library, and we had enough credits saved up to start thinking about living elsewhere. It was the perfect time to begin a family. I’d never even thought that a family was something that I’d be able to have. I mean, who’d love me?” His pixelated eyes found Corbin’s. Corbin said nothing. Marcus continued. “Two tendays later, Sita was making a run from Titan to Earth. Ambi cells. She normally didn’t make runs that long, but they were paying her double because of the valuable cargo. It wasn’t the sort of job she could say no to. Thing was, the bastards at the shuttleyard didn’t check to make sure that the containment seals were properly installed. This is before the GC really started cracking down on unsafe ambi. Bureaucrats don’t give a damn about anything unless it starts to affect a significant number of their constituents.” Marcus took a breath. “I’m sure you can guess what happened next.”

  “The seals broke,” Corbin said. Marcus nodded. “I’m sorry.” He meant it, for Sita’s sake. At least an ambi accident was a quick way to go. The woman probably hadn’t had time to realize that anything had gone wrong. Still, unfortunate as the story was, it didn’t address the important question. “This doesn’t explain why you felt the need to clone yourself.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Marcus said. “Sita was gone, and with her went the only chance at family I thought I’d ever get. I buried all thoughts of her, and focused instead on the child I could have had.”

  “You could’ve adopted.”

  “I wanted my own flesh and blood. Proof that someone had loved me enough to create a new life with me.”

  Corbin scoffed. “You could’ve found a surrogate. You could’ve met someone else.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you’d think that clearly if you were in the midst of grieving your dead wife,” Marcus snapped. There. That was the father that Corbin knew. At least he was on familiar ground now.

  “So where did you do it?” Corbin asked. “Where was the vat that you grew me in?”

  “Stitch. I took everything Sita and I had saved, and went to Stitch.”

  “Stitch. Lovely.” Stitch was a fringe colony that served as a haven for the darker side of the modding community. Even visiting Stitch was liable to get you interrogated and slapped with jail time if someone back in the GC found out about your little trip. There weren’t many legal reasons for visiting such a place.

  “After you were…well, after you came to be, I stayed a few more months, then brought you home.”

  “How did you explain the infant?”

  “I said that I’d met a woman on Port Coriol. We shared a night together, and next thing I knew, I had a son. I said that your mother couldn’t take care of you, so I took you home instead. I chose a non-augmented gestation process, so it did actually take nine months for you to fully form, and you aged at a normal rate. There was no reason for anyone to question it. My family chalked it up to me still grieving, but you know I didn’t talk to them much anyway. As for Sita’s family…they didn’t want anything to do with me after that. They’d never liked me to start, and I suppose they didn’t like the idea of me sharing someone else’s bed so soon after their daughter’s death.”

  Corbin held up his hand. Old family drama was the least of his concerns. “You said non-augmented gestation process. Is there anything about me that was augmented?” Dr. Chef had told him there was nothing out-of-the-ordinary about his body, but he wanted to be damn sure.

  Marcus shook his head. “No. The tech who made…the tech I hired kept trying to convince me to add a few tweaks, but I put my foot down. You’re the same as me. Flaws and all.”

  Corbin leaned forward. “That’s why, isn’t it?”

  “That’s why, what?”

  “Mistakes were never okay by you. A broken sample dish, a dirty sock on the floor, a spilled cup of juice. It didn’t matter how well-behaved I was at school, or how good my grades were. I’d come home with a score card full of ‘excellents,’ but all you’d focus on was the one ‘average’ mark.”

  “I just wanted you to be the best that you could be.”

  “What you wanted,” Corbin said slowly, “was for me to improve upon all the mistakes that you had made yourself. You didn’t want me to be my own person. You wanted me to be a better version of you.”

  “I thought — ”

  “I was a kid! Kids make mistakes! And it didn’t stop when I grew up, either, you never once stopped to tell me that you were proud of me or that I’d done all right. I was an experiment to you. You were never satisfied with positive results, you just kept looking for the flaw causing faulty data.”

  Marcus was silent for a long time. “I am proud of you, Artis,” he said. “Though I’m sure that’s too little, too late. There’s no way for me to go back and be a better father.” He looked back to Corbin. “There’s one thing, though, that I’m very glad of.”

  “What’s that?”

  His father gave a sad smile and looked around the sterile prison room. “That it’s me in here and not you.” He sighed. “They told me that you have to reapply for citizenship.”

  “Yes. I’m leashed to one of my crewmates for the next standard.”

  “You’re lucky,” Marcus said. “Aside from Sita, I never had any friends good enough to do that for me.”

  Corbin shifted in his chair. “
She’s not a friend,” he said. “She despises me, in fact. Just not enough to let me die in a Quelin prison.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Artis. Even unpleasant bastards like us deserve company.” He smirked. “That’s a quote from my wife, by the way.”

  Corbin exhaled something like a laugh. “I’d have liked to have met her,” he said. Something occurred to him. “Though if she had lived, I wouldn’t exist.”

  “No,” said Marcus. “But I’m glad that you do.”

  Really? Would you have traded her for me, if you’d known? “How long is your sentence?”

  “Twelve standards,” Marcus said. “I’ll be an old man once I get out. But I’ll be fine. I’ve been treated well here so far. And I’ve got a cell all to myself. I can finally catch up on my reading.”

  Corbin noticed a spot of dried algae gunk on his desk. It was a good thing to focus on. “One more thing,” he said, scratching the gunk away.

  “Yes?”

  “My birthday. Is my birthday my real birthday? Or my pulled-from-vat day, I suppose?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been bothering me.” He looked around his lab. “I have to get back to work now.”

  “Yes, of course,” Marcus said. “The guards will be telling me to end the call soon anyway.” A pleading look filled his eyes. “Maybe…maybe we could…?”

  They stared at one another. There was more distance between them than just pixels and space. “I don’t know,” Corbin said. “Maybe.”

  Marcus nodded. “Take care of yourself, son.” He waved his hand. The image faded. The pixels withdrew.

  Corbin sat listening to the humming pulse of the algae vats. After a while, he picked up his scrib from the desk. He opened his log program and made a quick entry.

  October 25. Still my birthday.

  ●

  “You’re pensive tonight,” Lovey said.

  “Am I?” Jenks said.

  “Yes,” Lovey said. “You’ve got that little crease between your eyes that you get when something’s on your mind.”

  Jenks rubbed the skin between his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize I was so easy to read.”

  “Not to everyone.”

  Jenks leaned back against the wall with a sigh and pulled his redreed tin from his pocket. “It’s this whole thing with Corbin.”

  “Ah,” said Lovey. “I think everyone’s still shaken up. Corbin hasn’t been sleeping well. He stays up late accessing his personal files. Mostly pictures of himself as a child.”

  “Please don’t tell me that stuff,” Jenks said, stuffing his pipe. “You know I don’t like snooping.”

  Lovey laughed. “You’re not snooping. That’s what I’m doing. You’re just gossiping.”

  “Oh, well, if that’s all.” He lit the pipe, sucking air through the burning leaves. The smoke in his lungs made his shoulders go slack. “Poor Corbin. I can’t imagine being thrown for a loop like that.” He turned his head, pressing his ear against the wall. “Is that your tertiary synapse router making that click?”

  “Let me check. It’s functioning normally.”

  “Hmm. I don’t like that sound.” He moved to face the wall and removed the access panel. His eyes darted over the lace of blinking circuits that lay within. “Yeah, see, right here. The shunt’s worn out.”

  “Save it ‘til morning, Jenks. That’ll take hours, and you’ve been working all day.”

  Jenks frowned. “Okay, but you wake me up if you experience any gaps in memory.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Lovey said with fondness. “I can’t even tell that anything’s wrong.” Jenks replaced the panel. Lovey spoke again. “I don’t think Corbin is what’s bothering you.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is?”

  “I don’t know, but I wish you’d say.”

  Jenks sighed, exhaling. The tiny worklamps overhead cast beams of light down through the smoky swirls. “I’ve been thinking about your body kit.”

  Lovey paused. “There’s a catch and you didn’t tell me.”

  “No,” said Jenks, taking the pipe from his mouth. “No catch. This whole deal is as respectable as you can be in black market business. Even the price was fair, all things considered.”

  “Then what’s troubling you?”

  “Corbin’s dad. That guy must’ve spent a fortune on getting himself cloned. Somehow, he was careful enough to not only make sure that Corbin never found out about it, but that the law never found out, either. And he got away with it for decades. Corbin’s more than passable. He’s the real deal. No tweaks, no enhancements. Hell, even Dr. Chef didn’t notice until he made a point to go looking for it. And yet…”

  “And yet he still got caught.”

  “Yeah. After all that money and all that planning, that poor bastard’s locked up in prison, and Corbin’s lost his citizenship. And that’s after he got the shit kicked out of him by those fucking Quelin.” He sat up. “Look, we always knew getting a kit would be risky. But I’m not sure I really thought about what that meant. I mean, okay, I knew prison would suck, but I’d always figured that if the law was on my ass, I could just take you and go to Cricket, or maybe a fringe planet somewhere. Wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d be safe. But all this mess with Corbin got me thinking about what would actually happen if we got caught. Let’s say I got caught with the kit before I uploaded you into it. Okay, I’d go to jail, Mr. Crisp would go to jail, but you’d be fine. You’d still be here, on the Wayfarer, with all our friends. Kizzy could look after you until Ashby got a new comp tech, and you’d still be here when I got out. But what if we didn’t get caught until much later on, not until after you were in the kit? What if it was, like, ten years down the road and we’d stopped being careful? What if one of us said the wrong thing to the wrong person, or what if bio scanners got good enough to see what you really were? What if we got stopped by the Quelin again and they wanted to do a blood scan? I’d still go to jail, but they’d dismantle you, Lovey. When my sentence was up, you’d be gone. Not away, not somewhere where I knew you were safe. Gone.”

  Lovey was quiet. “The kit’s on its way, Jenks.”

  “I know.”

  “And you can’t get your money back.”

  He sighed. “I know. But it won’t break me. And besides, maybe we can still use it. Maybe the laws will change down the road. We could just wait until it’s safer. Or until I leave the ship, or something.”

  “This was my decision too, you know. You didn’t push me into it.”

  “I know. And I won’t tell you no, not if it’s what you want. But I’m scared. I’m starting to think maybe I wanted this so bad that I didn’t let myself acknowledge just how fucking dangerous it is.” He looked down at his hands. “As bad as I want to hold you, I don’t know if it’s worth the risk of losing you forever. Maybe it’s better to just go on like this and know that there’s no chance of somebody taking you away.”

  The room was silent, or as silent as it could be. The air filters hissed. The cooling system surrounding Lovey’s core hummed. “Jenks, do you remember when we first talked about this? When I told you all the reasons why I wanted to have a body?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I lied when I said it wasn’t for you. Of course it’s for you. I do think it’d present some wonderful opportunities for me, and I imagine it to be a very good life. But it was always, always for you. I wouldn’t have thought to do it otherwise, not in a serious way.”

  “But…you said. Your pros and cons — ”

  “Were things I came up with after I’d decided that this was something you deserved. I wouldn’t have ever mentioned it if I thought it would make me unhappy. I do have some self-respect, after all. But yes, it was for you. And if it scares you more than it excites you, then there’s no point to it. I’m happy here. I’m happy with you. Would I like a body? Yes. Am I willing to face the risks? Yes. But I’m content as is, and if you are too, then maybe that’s enoug
h for now. Not forever, maybe, but we don’t need to rush. I can wait for the galaxy outside to get a little kinder.”

  He swallowed. “Lovey, it’s not that I…I mean, I want this so much, I just — ”

  “Shh. Come in further,” she said. Jenks snuffed out his pipe, put it back in the tin, and moved toward the pit. He reached for the sweater lying on the floor.

  “Leave it,” she said.

  He could hear her cooling system shut down. “Not for too long,” he said.

  “Not for too long.”

  He took off his clothes and climbed into the pit, as he had done many times. He sat down and leaned back against her core, his bare skin bathed in her glow. Without the chilled air, she felt like sunlight, only softer.

  “I will always understand if you need to find someone who can give you more than this,” Lovey said. “I wouldn’t hold that against you. I sometimes worry that I am holding you back from the kind of life an organic sapient should have. But if you choose this freely, then I don’t need a body, Jenks. We’ve always been together without one. I don’t know how to love you any other way.”