Record of a Spaceborn Few

by Becky Chambers

  ‘Hey, that was Ashby, not me. I found a sink.’

  Her father gave her a look that told her how little that distinction mattered. ‘Couple of dumb teenagers who couldn’t handle themselves.’

  ‘I maintain that playing charthump all the next day was an asshole move.’ Full volume drums, for hours and hours. She felt an echo of nausea from memory alone.

  Pop laughed heartily. ‘That was your mother’s doing, and you deserved every second of it. Here.’ He handed her a glass. ‘For grown-ups.’

  They clinked glasses and sipped. The kick was rough, but once she got past the edges, it warmed her all the way through. She didn’t remember the taste – she didn’t remember much of that adolescent night, honestly – and yet, somehow, it made her feel at home.

  ‘Ahhhhh,’ Pop said. ‘Stars, that’s fun.’ He took another sip. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘I do,’ Tessa said honestly. She eyed the bottle. ‘It’s half empty,’ she said.

  ‘That it is.’

  ‘I’ve never seen you drink this.’

  ‘I’ve been saving it. Wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to have any again.’

  Tessa waited patiently. Pop didn’t always make sense on the first go.

  ‘I first opened this bottle,’ he said, ‘when your brother told me there was something he needed to talk about.’ He briefly met her eyes over the rim of his glass. ‘Would’ve been a good number of years ago now.’

  Nobody said anything for a moment. ‘You kept the other half for me,’ Tessa said quietly.

  ‘Yep,’ Pop said. He drained his glass and exhaled appreciatively. ‘Just in case. I didn’t think I’d bring it out again, but – well, kids have a way of surprising you.’

  Tessa stared into her glass, held with both hands low in her lap. She watched sediment drift and swirl in the decades-old kick. She raised the glass and tossed it back in one smooth swallow. ‘We haven’t made a decision yet.’

  He refilled both their glasses. ‘Uh huh,’ he said. He left the bottle uncorked. ‘Is George with his folks right now?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘So, you’ve decided between yourselves, then.’

  Tessa shook her head. She couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. She couldn’t believe anything about this at all. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know . . . what? Where you two left things?’

  ‘No, I – I don’t know. I don’t know how to have this conversation.’

  Pop sipped and exhaled, same as he had every sip before. ‘One word in front of the other is how I do it.’

  ‘Me and him and the kids . . . that’s not our only family.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘And we can’t do this without talking to everyone else.’

  ‘Define “this”. Tessa, if you can’t say it, you’ve got no business doing it.’

  She shoved the words out. ‘We’re thinking about going planetside.’ There. They were out now, out in the open, somewhere between treachery and relief.

  Pop did nothing but nod. ‘Colonies?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good. It’s hard work out there, and hard work keeps you honest. Keeps your head on straight.’

  She waited for him to say more than that. She waited for him to get mad, to scoff, to tell her every reason why this was stupid, to be the outward confirmation of all the guilt and fear she felt within.

  He did not.

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’ Tessa said incredulously.

  ‘What do you want me to say? That I don’t care? Of course I care. I’ll miss you and the kids like hell. Or do you want me to get pissed and tell you no way, no how are you leaving home? That kind of thing didn’t work when you were a teenager, and it sure as shit won’t fly now.’ He laughed. ‘You’re an adult. You know what you’re about. Whatever you decide, I’m not gonna tell you otherwise. I’m too old for making big decisions. Had my fill of those.’

  ‘But—’ She scrambled, trying to find the trigger for the reaction she’d expected. ‘But what about—’

  ‘You know I’m not going, girl. I’ll visit. But I’m not going anywhere.’ He reached across the table and patted her hand. ‘You don’t have to worry about me. I got a good hex and the best friends a person could ask for.’ His face scrunched into a worryingly pleased grin. ‘Y’know Lupe from neighbourhood four?’

  An image appeared in Tessa’s mind: a tiny, white-haired old woman, arguing with her son behind the seed shop counter. One of Pop’s lunchtime cronies. ‘Yeah.’

  Pop replied with a waggle of his eyebrows.

  The other shoe dropped, and Tessa recoiled. ‘Ugh, Pop, I don’t need to know.’

  ‘It’s nothing serious,’ he said, relishing her discomfort. ‘Just some casual fun—’

  ‘Pop. I don’t. Need. To know.’

  Her father laughed and poured them both another drink. ‘Here, I have something else to show you.’ He unholstered his scrib, gestured at the screen, and slid it across the table.

  M Santoso,

  This is a confirmation for your ocular implant installation this upcoming second day.

  Please arrive at the clinic at 10:00.

  On a personal note, I’m very happy you’ve made this decision. I think you’re going to be pleased with the results.

  Dr Koraltan

  ‘See,’ Pop said, bringing his glass to his mouth. ‘You don’t need to worry about me.’ He sipped and exhaled loudly. ‘Though you are gonna have to send me those creds.’

  Tessa truly, genuinely didn’t know what to say.

  Pop’s gaze lingered on the wall of painted hands, reaching from floor to ceiling. ‘Y’know, my great-granddad – we called him Great-pa, he thought that was funny – I didn’t know him long, but I knew him.’

  Tessa knew this much already, but she didn’t interrupt.

  ‘He remembered contact,’ Pop said. ‘He told me so often about that day when the Aeluons arrived. He was always pushing me to go. “Get out there, boy,” he’d say. “That’s what we’re meant to do.” I wondered, when I got older, why he didn’t go, if he felt that way. I thought maybe he’d been scared, or set in his ways. But now I think it’s because he knew that wasn’t for him. Some of us have to go, yes. But some of us have to stay and kick the others out. Otherwise . . .’ He scratched his chin. ‘Otherwise all we know is the same place. My great-pa, he was right. We’re meant to go. And we’re meant to stay. Stay and go, each as much as the other. It’s not all or nothing anymore. We’re all over the place. That’s better, I think. That’s smarter.’ He nodded. ‘That’s how we’ll survive, even if not all of us do.’ He looked up. ‘You’re gonna do great out there. I know you will.’

  Tessa’s first instinct was to protest. They hadn’t made a decision yet, and here he was, talking like it was a done deal. But she looked again at the bottle, kept half full for her sake, an offering for a future her father had prepared himself for decades before she’d considered said same. She closed her eyes for a moment. She got up from her chair, sat down on the floor, and rested her head against her father’s leg like she used to when she was small, like she used to when he was huge and handsome and knew everything there was to know. He pressed his palm into her curls, and she closed her eyes. ‘I love you, Pop.’

  ‘I love you, too, Tess.’

  Part 7

  And Will Undying

  Feed source: Reskit Institute of Interstellar Migration (Public News Feed)

  Item name: The Modern Exodus – Entry #20

  Author: Ghuh’loloan Mok Chutp

  Encryption: 0

  Translation path: [Hanto:Kliptorigan]

  Transcription: 0

  Node identifier: 2310-483-38, Isabel Itoh

  [System message: The feed you have selected has been translated from written Hanto. As you may be aware, written Hanto includes gestural notations that do not have analogous symbols in any other GC language. Therefore, your scrib’s on-board translation software ha
s not translated the following material directly. The content here is a modified translation, intended to be accessible to the average Kliptorigan reader.]

  * * *

  When their planet could no longer sustain them, the waning Humans dismantled their cities. Down came the shimmering towers of glass and metal, beam by beam, bolt by bolt. Some of it was repurposed, but most was melted in noxious foundries hastily constructed on barren farmland. The Humans who did this knew they would not live to see the end result. Their years were almost universally cut short by famine and disease, but even if they had been as healthy as their ancestors, the work was too great for one lifetime alone. The scavengers made way for the builders, who poured and welded for the sake of children they would likely not live to see grown. Their completed efforts were launched into low orbit, and assembled there into thirty-two ships, each a city unto itself.

  ‘A city made of cities,’ my host told me during our first day. ‘We took our ruins with us.’

  I keep thinking of this now that I have returned to my own adoptive city of Reskit. I look out at this sprawling architectural triumph, and I cannot imagine a Hashkath where this does not exist. I cannot imagine how this land looked when Aandrisks first arrived. I cannot imagine how it will look after they – and I – are gone.

  Strange as it is to be back, I have slid effortlessly back into my usual patterns. I missed the length of a Hashkath day, the warmth of a brighter sun. I appreciate the open sky as I never have before, and will never again complain of days that are too windy. I spent an entire afternoon swimming at the Ram Tumma’ton Aquatic Park, and at one point, I could not help but sing for joy.

  And yet, though I have travelled far from Risheth, I have brought the Fleet with me. There is no place I can go, no activity I can engage in without thinking of them. I can’t see a garden without thinking of how theirs differ, nor can I watch a sunset without thinking of the mimicked rhythms of their abandoned sun.

  ‘Night-time’ in the Fleet is a curious thing. This is a people who have never lived on a planet – for some, never even visited a planet – yet they still follow an artificial semblance of a rotational day. I have experienced this environmental arrangement within long-haul ships built by a variety of species, but these have all been among crews with at least passing familiarity with life on the ground. Consider that the only generation of Exodans that would have truly needed an Earth-like environment would have been the first. It was they who needed night-time, who needed gravity, whose moods would’ve benefited from being surrounded by plant life rather than cold metal alone. And yes, the original intent of the Fleet was to seek out a terrestrial home, and they believed their progeny would adapt to that better if they were already accustomed to planetary norms. In that context, Exodan adherence to Earthen patterns is quite logical.

  But imagine the alternative. Imagine if the Earthen builders had known their descendants would choose to remain in space, that this transitory life satisfied them even when empty ground lay within reach. What would the Human species look like today were that the case? Evolution is often thought of as a glacial process, but we know from countless examples that this is not always true. Rapid environmental change can prompt rapid physical change. What if the first Exodans had left their ornamental gardens behind? What if their lights did not dim? What if they had built homes designed for zero-g instead of gargantuan centrifuges filled with unsecured objects?

  The first generation would have been miserable, no doubt. Health problems, both mental and physical, would have been rampant, especially when coupled with the unfathomable stress of leaving their planet for the unknown. But what of the second generation? What of the third, the fourth, the tenth? It is possible – likely, even – that my Exodan friends would look quite different today. Currently, there are small physical differences in modern Humans based on region. Centuries-old Solan populations based around the sun-starved Outer Planets are distinctively pale. Exodans, Martians, and independent colonists can sometimes tell each other apart (I have yet to grasp that nuance). So, imagine an Exodan people who had gone without gravity, without scheduled darkness. I find it likely that we would already see hereditary changes in bone mass, digestive process, eye structure. We would be present for the first days of a new species. Instead, we have space-dwelling Humans who get irritable if malfunctioning environmental lights prolong day or night beyond its time. They love their gardens, even if they have not seen wild plants. Chaos breaks out if local grav systems fail.

  I must stress, dear guest, that I do not view the idea of a separate Exodan species as a missed opportunity – merely an intriguing road untravelled. I myself am bound by the pulse of bygone generations. I mist myself constantly, because my skin still requires an approximation of the steady sea breeze my people have not lived in since primitive times. I cannot digest the absurdly broad variety of foodstuffs that my sapient counterparts can, even though Harmagians have lived alongside such delicacies for centuries. For all my species’ vast travels, our skin has not hardened, and our guts have not diversified. We, too, took the ways of our planet with us. And so, too, go the Exodans, a spaceborn people who balk at abandoning an environment inspired by a planet that, to most, may as well be myth.

  Humans will never leave the forest, just as Harmagians will never leave the shore.

  * * *

  Eyas, Half a Standard Later

  Every fourth day, she reviewed her lesson plans and practised her explanations, and every fifth day, she went to the spare classroom she’d reserved at the technical school, where no one but the other instructors – the other people she’d asked to do this – were waiting. Fifth day had become the most depressing day out of ten. Her usual work included.

  She stepped off the transport pod, and, as she walked through the plaza, she did the necessary preparation of keeping her expectations low. Nobody will be there, she told herself. Maybe nobody ever would. Ten tendays, she’d told her assorted volunteers. If they tried this for ten tendays and nobody showed up, they’d call it quits. Well, this was the ninth tenday, and that meant she only had to sit around an empty classroom two more gruelling times before she could go back to her life and forget this whole idea. Just forget this whole thing ever—

  Her interest piqued as she saw Sunny running out of the school and across the plaza toward her. He stopped a few feet in front of her, eager as a kid who’d flown his first shuttle. ‘There’s people,’ he said.

  Eyas’ jaw dropped. ‘What? No. Really?’ She hurried along the way he’d come. ‘How many?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Dead serious. I guess those pixel posters Amad keeps putting up at the docks worked.’

  Eyas tried to get her wits about her as they entered the school and walked down the corridor. Three people! It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Finally, at last: a start.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said. She came to a halt before they entered the classroom door.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Eyas paused. ‘We’ve never had people before.’

  Sunny laughed. ‘Are you scared?’

  She cuffed him. ‘Of course not. I’m just . . .’ She took a breath. He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Okay. People.’

  The door spun open, and sure enough, there they were: a young woman, a middle-aged man, and . . . She turned and gave Sunny a secret, surprised look. An Aeluon.

  Sunny raised his eyebrows and gave a nod of yeah, I know.

  The other instructors turned to look at her, each as excited as she was. Eyas took a breath, and walked up to the teacher’s station at the front of the room. The others sat in the chairs lined up alongside her, like they’d practised. ‘Hello, everybody,’ Eyas said to the attendees. ‘Thank you so much for coming to our workshop.’ She gestured at the assembled volunteers. ‘We’re the Exodan Cultural Education Collective.’ She gave a slight pause, half expecting at least one of the attendees to realise they were in the wrong place and leave. None did. She smiled.
‘Right. So.’ This was harder than she’d anticipated. At the Centre, there were Litanies and traditions, set ceremonies to follow. She’d planned this class out, sure, but that didn’t change the fact that she had made this whole thing up, and was making it up still.

  She glanced over at Sunny. He winked. She steadied. ‘This is a whole-day workshop, but if you need to leave at any time, feel free. We’re hoping, at some point, to split this into individual classes – and more advanced classes as well – but we’re new, and we’re learning, too, so for now, you get all of us at once.’ She paused, the presence of an alien prompting the realisation of something she should’ve thought of ahead of time. ‘Does everyone here speak Ensk?’

  The middle-aged man nodded. The Aeluon wiggled her hand. ‘Yes,’ the young woman said in some staggeringly thick fringer accent. ‘But not much well.’

  Eyas shifted linguistic gears. ‘Klip remmet goigagan?’

  Everyone nodded, including the Aeluon. She’d clearly spent time around Humans. Eyas turned to the row of instructors. ‘That okay with you guys?’ she asked in Ensk.

  ‘Mine’s not great,’ Jacira said. She was older, maybe fifty or so.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Eyas said. ‘Just do it in Ensk, and one of us will translate.’ She switched back to Klip. ‘This better? Okay, good. Our goal here today is to give you a good starting point for finding the resources and assistance you need to begin a life in the Fleet. We’re going to cover a huge range of topics and services, and there will be plenty that we won’t have time for. We’re not here to teach you everything, but our hope is that you’ll leave here knowing where to find the right answers. Let me introduce you to your instructors. Some of these professions won’t be things you’re familiar with. Others will be, and they’re here to highlight some of the differences between our way of doing things and the ways you might be more used to. I’ll start with myself, and we’ll go down the line. My name’s Eyas. I’m a caretaker for the dead. I conduct funeral rites and . . . well, I’ll explain the specifics of it later.’ She turned to the other volunteers. ‘Let’s focus on the living for now, yeah?’