by John Scalzi
"So, to recap," I said. "You want me to decide in the next two hours whether or not to leave my family and friends for at least a year, maybe longer, to tour the Obin worlds by myself."
"Yes," Hickory said. "Although of course Dickory and I would accompany you."
"No other humans, though," I said.
"We could find some if you wanted," Hickory said.
"Would you?" I said. "That would be swell."
"Very well," Hickory said.
"I'm being sarcastic, Hickory," I said, irritated. "The answer is no. I mean, really, Hickory. You're asking me to make a life-changing decision on two hours' notice. That's completely ridiculous."
"We understand that the timing of this request is not optimal," Hickory said.
"I don't think you do," I said. "I think you know it's short notice, but I don't think you understand that it's offensive."
Hickory shrank back slightly. "We did not mean to offend," it said.
I was about to snap something off but I stopped and started counting in my head, because somewhere in there the rational part of my brain was letting me know I was heading into over-reaction territory. Hickory and Dickory's invitation was last-minute, but biting their heads off for it didn't make much sense. Something about the request was just rubbing me the wrong way.
It took me a minute to figure out why. Hickory and Dickory were asking me to leave behind everyone I knew, and everyone I had just met, for a year of being alone. I had already done that, long ago, when the Obin had taken me from Covell, in the time I had to wait before my father could find a way to reclaim me. It was a different time and with different circumstances, but I remember the loneliness and need for human contact. I loved Hickory and Dickory; they were family. But they couldn't offer me what I needed and could get from human contact.
And besides, I just said good-bye to a whole village of people I knew, and before that had said good-bye to family and friends, usually forever, a whole lot more than most people my age. Right now I had just found Gretchen, and Enzo was certainly looking interesting. I didn't want to say good-bye to them even before I properly got to know them.
I looked at Hickory and Dickory, who despite everything they knew about me couldn't have understood why what they were asking me would affect me like this. It's not their fault, said the rational part of my brain. And it was right. Which was why it was the rational part of my brain. I didn't always like that part, but it was usually on point for stuff like this.
"I'm sorry, Hickory," I said, finally. "I didn't mean to yell at you. Please accept my apology."
"Of course," Hickory said. It unshrunk itself.
"But even if I wanted to go, two hours is not nearly enough time to think this through," I said. "Have you spoken to John or Jane about this?"
"We felt it best to come to you," Hickory said. "Your desire to go would have influenced their decision to let you go."
I smiled. "Not as much as I think you think it would," I said. "You may think I'm old enough to spend a year off touring the Obin worlds, but I guarantee you Dad will have a different opinion about that. It took both Jane and Savitri a couple of days to convince him to let me have that good-bye party while they were away. You think he'd say 'yes' to having me go away for a year when there's a two-hour time limit attached? That's optimistic."
"It is very important to our government," Dickory said. Which was surprising. Dickory almost never spoke about anything, other than to make one of its monochromatic greetings. The fact Dickory felt compelled to pipe up spoke volumes in itself.
"I understand that," I said. "But it's still too sudden. I can't make a decision like this now. I just can't. Please tell your government I'm honored by the invitation, and that I want to make a tour of the Obin worlds one day. I really do. But I can't do it like this. And I want to go to Roanoke."
Hickory and Dickory were silent for a moment. "Perhaps if Major Perry and Lieutenant Sagan were to hear our invitation and agree, you might be persuaded," Hickory said.
Rankle, rankle. "What is that supposed to mean?" I asked. "First you say you wanted me to say yes because then they might agree, and now you want to work it the other way? You asked me, Hickory. My answer is no. If you think asking my parents is going to get me to change my mind, then you don't understand human teenagers, and you certainly don't understand me. Even if they said yes, which, believe me, they won't, since the first thing they will do is ask me what I think of the idea. And I'll tell them what I told you. And that I told you."
Another moment of silence. I watched the two of them very closely, looking for the trembles or twitches that sometimes followed when they were emotionally wrung out. The two of them were rock steady. "Very well," Hickory said. "We will inform our government of your decision."
"Tell them that I will consider it some other time. Maybe in a year," I said. Maybe by that time I could convince Gretchen to go with me. And Enzo. As long as we were daydreaming here.
"We will tell them," Hickory said, and then it and Dickory did a little head bow and departed.
I looked around. Some of the people in the common area were watching Hickory and Dickory leave; the others were looking at me with strange expressions. I guess they'd never seen a girl with her own pet aliens before.
I sighed. I pulled out my PDA to contact Gretchen but then stopped before I accessed her address. Because as much as I didn't want to be alone in the larger sense, at that moment, I needed a time out. Something was going on, and I needed to figure what it was. Because whatever it was, it was making me nervous.
I put the PDA back in my pocket, thought about what Hickory and Dickory just said to me, and worried.
TEN
There were two messages on my PDA after dinner that evening. The first was from Gretchen. "That Magdy character tracked me down and asked me out on a date," it read. "I guess he likes girls who mock the crap out of him. I told him okay. Because he is kind of cute. Don't wait up." This made me smile.
The second was from Enzo, who had somehow managed to get my PDA's address; I suspect Gretchen might have had something to do with that. It was titled "A Poem to the Girl I Just Met, Specifically a Haiku, the Title of Which Is Now Substantially Longer Than the Poem Itself, Oh, the Irony," and it read:
Her name is Zoë
Smile like a summer breeze
Please don't have me cubed.
I laughed out loud at that one. Babar looked up at me and thumped his tail hopefully; I think he was thinking all this happiness would result in more food for him. I gave him a slice of leftover bacon. So I guess he was right about that. Smart dog, Babar.
Image
* * *
After the Magellan departed from Phoenix Station, the colony leaders found out about the near-rumble in the common area, because I told them about it over dinner. John and Jane sort of looked at each other significantly and then changed the subject to something else. I guessed the problem of integrating ten completely different sets of people with ten completely different cultures had already come up in their discussions, and now they were getting the underage version of it as well.
I figured that they would find a way to deal with it, but I really wasn't prepared for their solution.
"Dodgeball," I said to Dad, over breakfast. "You're going to have all us kids play dodgeball."
"Not all of you," Dad said. "Just the ones of you who would otherwise be picking stupid and pointless fights out of boredom." He was nibbling on some coffee cake; Babar was standing by on crumb patrol. Jane and Savitri were out taking care of business; they were the brains of this particular setup. "You don't like dodgeball?" he asked.
"I like it just fine," I said. "I'm just not sure why you think it's an answer to this problem."
Dad set down his coffee cake, brushed off his hands, and started ticking off points with his fingers. "One, we have the equipment and it fits the space. We can't very well play football or cricket on the Magellan. Two, it's a team sport, so we can get big groups of kids i
nvolved. Three, it's not complicated, so we don't have to spend much time laying out the ground rules to everyone. Four, it's athletic and will give you guys a way to burn off some of your energy. Five, it's just violent enough to appeal to those idiot boys you were talking about yesterday, but not so violent that someone's actually going to get hurt."
"Any more points?" I asked.
"No," Dad said. "I've run out of fingers." He picked up his coffee cake again.
"It's just going to be that the boys are going to make teams with their friends," I said. "So you'll still have the problem of kids from one world staying with their own."
"I would agree with this, if not for the fact that I'm not a complete idiot," Dad said, "and neither is Jane. We have a plan for this."
The plan: Everyone who signed up to play was assigned to a team, rather than allowed to pick their own team. And I don't think the teams were entirely randomly assigned; when Gretchen and I looked over the team lists, Gretchen noted that almost none of the teams had more than one player from the same world; even Enzo and Magdy were put on different teams. The only kids who were on the same "team" were the Kyotoans; as Colonial Mennonites they avoided playing in competitive sports, so they asked to be the referees instead.
Gretchen and I didn't sign up for any teams; we appointed ourselves league managers and no one called us on it; apparently word of the intense mockery we laid on a wild pack of teenage boys had gotten around and we were feared and awed equally. "That makes me feel pretty," Gretchen said, once such a thing was told to her by one of her friends from Erie. We were watching the first game of the series, with the Leopards playing against the Mighty Red Balls, presumably named after the game equipment. I don't think I approved of the team name, myself.
"Speaking of which, how was your date last night?" I asked.
"It was a little grabby," Gretchen said.
"You want me to have Hickory and Dickory talk to him?" I asked.
"No, it was manageable," Gretchen said. "And besides which, your alien friends creep me out. No offense."
"None taken," I said. "They really are nice."
"They're your bodyguards," Gretchen said. "They're not supposed to be nice. They're supposed to scare the pee out of people. And they do. I'm just glad they don't follow you around all the time. No one would ever come talk to us."
In fact, I hadn't seen either Hickory or Dickory since the day before and our conversation about touring the Obin planets. I wondered if I had managed to hurt their feelings. I was going to have to check in on them to see how they were.
"Hey, your boyfriend just picked off one of the Leopards," Gretchen said. She pointed at Enzo, who was playing in the game.
"He's not my boyfriend, any more than Magdy is yours," I said.
"Is he as grabby as Magdy is?" Gretchen asked.
"What a question," I said. "How dare you ask. I'm madly offended."
"That's a yes, then," Gretchen said.
"No, it's not," I said. "He's been perfectly nice. He even sent me a poem."
"He did not," Gretchen said. I showed it to her on my PDA. She handed it back. "You get the poetry writer. I get the grabber. It's really not fair. You want to trade?"
"Not a chance," I said. "But he not's my boyfriend."
Gretchen nodded out to Enzo. "Have you asked him about that?"
I looked over to Enzo, who sure enough was sneaking looks my way while moving around the dodgeball field. He saw I was looking his way, smiled over at me and nodded, and as he was doing that he got nailed righteously hard in the ear by the dodgeball and went down with a thump.
I burst out laughing.
"Oh, nice," Gretchen said. "Laughing at your boyfriend's pain."
"I know! I'm so bad!" I said, and just about toppled over.
"You don't deserve him," Gretchen said, sourly. "You don't deserve his poem. Give them both to me."
"Not a chance," I said, and then looked up and saw Enzo there in front of me. I reflexively put my hand over my mouth.
"Too late," he said. Which of course made me laugh even more.
"She's mocking your pain," Gretchen said, to Enzo. "Mocking it, you hear me."
"Oh, God, I'm so sorry," I said, between laughs, and before I thought about what I was doing gave Enzo a hug.
"She's trying to distract you from her evil," Gretchen warned.
"It's working," Enzo said.
"Oh, fine," Gretchen said. "See if I warn you about her evil ways after this." She very dramatically focused back on the game, only occasionally glancing over and grinning at me.
I unhugged from Enzo. "I'm not actually evil," I said.
"No, just amused at the pain of others," Enzo said.
"You walked off the court," I said. "It can't have hurt that much."
"There's pain you can't see," Enzo said. "Existential pain."
"Oh, boy," I said. "If you're having existential pain from dodgeball, you're really just doing it wrong."
"I don't think you appreciate the philosophical subtleties of the sport," Enzo said. I started giggling again. "Stop it," Enzo said mildly. "I'm being serious here."
"I so hope you're not," I said, and giggled some more. "You want to get lunch?"
"Love to," Enzo said. "Just give me a minute to extract this dodgeball from my Eustachian tube."
It was the first time I had ever heard anyone use the phrase "Eustachian tube" in common conversation. I think I may have fallen a little bit in love with him right there.
* * *
"I haven't seen the two of you around much today," I said to Hickory and Dickory, in their quarters.
"We are aware that we make many of your fellow colonists uncomfortable," Hickory said. It and Dickory sat on stools that were designed to accommodate their body shape; otherwise their quarters were bare. The Obin may have gained consciousness and even recently tried their hand at storytelling, but the mysteries of interior decoration still clearly eluded them. "It was decided it would be best for us to stay out of the way."
"Decided by whom?" I asked.
"By Major Perry," Hickory said, and then, before I could open my mouth, "and we agree."
"You two are going to be living with us," I said. "With all of us. People need to get used to you."
"We agree, and they will have time," Hickory said. "But for now we think it's better to give your people time to get used to each other." I opened my mouth to respond, but then Hickory said, "Do you not benefit from our absence at the moment?"
I remembered Gretchen's comment earlier in the day about how the other teens would never come up to us if Hickory and Dickory were always hanging around, and felt a little bit ashamed. "I don't want you to think I don't want you around," I said.
"We do not believe that," Hickory said. "Please do not think that. When we are on Roanoke we will resume our roles. People will be more accepting of us because they will have had time to know you."
"I still don't want you to think you have to stay in here because of me," I said. "It would drive me crazy to be cooped up in here for a week."
"It is not difficult for us," Hickory said. "We disconnect our consciousnesses until we need them again. Time flies by that way."
"That was very close to a joke," I said.
"If you say so," Hickory said.
I smiled. "Still, if that's the only reason you stay in here—"
"I did not say it was the only reason," Hickory said, interrupting me, which it almost never did. "We are also spending this time preparing."
"For life on Roanoke?" I asked.
"Yes," Hickory said. "And how we will be of best service to you when we are there."
"I think by just doing what you do," I said.
"Possibly," Hickory said. "We think you might be underestimating how much different Roanoke will be from your life before, and what our responsibilities will be to you."
"I know it's going to be different," I said. "I know it's going to be harder in a lot of ways."
"We are glad t
o hear that," Hickory said. "It will be."
"Enough so that you're spending all this time planning?" I asked.
"Yes," Hickory said. I waited a second to hear if anything else was coming after that, but there wasn't.
"Is there anything you want me to do?" I asked Hickory. "To help you?"
Hickory took a second to respond. I watched it to see what I could sense from it; after this many years, I was pretty good at reading its moods. Nothing seemed unusual or out of place. It was just Hickory.
"No," Hickory said, finally. "We would have you do what you are doing. Meeting new people. Becoming friends with them. Enjoying your time now. When we arrive at Roanoke we do not expect you will have as much time for enjoyment."
"But you're missing out on all my fun," I said. "You're usually there to record it."
"This one time you can get along without us," Hickory said. Another near joke. I smiled again and gave them both a hug just as my PDA vibrated to life. It was Gretchen.
"Your boyfriend really sucks at dodgeball," she said. "He just took a hit square on his nose. He says to tell you the pain isn't nearly as enjoyable if you're not around to laugh at it. So come on down and ease the poor boy's pain. Or add to it. Either works."
ELEVEN
Things to know about the life of Zoë, on the Magellan.
First, John and Jane's master plan to keep the teenage boys from killing themselves or others worked like a charm, which meant I grudgingly had to admit to Dad he'd done something smart, which he enjoyed probably more than he should have. Each of the dodgeball teams became their own little group, counterpointing with the already-established groups of kids from former colonies. It might have been a problem if everyone just switched their tribe allegiance to their teams, because then we'd have just substituted one sort of group stupidity for another. But the kids still felt allegiance to their homeworld friends as well, at least one of whom was likely to be on an opposing dodgeball team. It kept everyone friendly, or at least kept some of the more aggressively stupid kids in check until everyone could get over the urge to pick fights.