Grace's Family

by James Patrick Kelly

  “Because they’re a pair.” When she nudged my toy McDog, it yipped and rolled over. “Bot and human.” She’d built the little bot for my tenth birthday. “Like you and me.”

  Qory and I had been together pretty much my whole life. We’d been traded to Grace when I was seven. My life before that was a dream filled with bright colors and the tinkle of music and smiling grown-ups and the sharp knees and grabby hands of toddlers. That would’ve been the crèche. The first specific person I can remember was my big brother Qory. Then we were on the Resolute, an androgyne supply ship whom I never liked. It seemed we were only with them a week or so, although Qory says it was eight months. Then came the trade to Grace to join Mom and Dad and Uncle Feero on their decades-long survey mission.

  The two things I remembered most about Uncle Feero were his beard and that he died when I was nine, which was sad, although Mom said he was 186 years old. His beard was white and it tickled when he hugged me. So, twelve years on Grace. After Uncle Feero, nothing much had changed with our family except that Qory had stopped being my bossy big brother and had become my bratty little sister.

  I still loved her though, especially now that she was all I had.

  McDog hopped from his shelf to the desktop, then launched himself onto my chest. Qory giggled when he breathed his flowery breath into my nose. She seemed to enjoy playing with the toys she’d given me more than the ones I’d given her.

  “Like me and you, dear brother.” She repeated herself, as if I were as cloudy as Dad. “A pair.”

  I swatted McDog away. “I’m going for a roll.” He skittered across the deck on his belly, then picked himself up and climbed onto Qory’s lap. “Don’t crash the ship while I’m out.”

  * * *

  I designed the roller myself back when we were in the mangle, but I’d only been able to use it since we’d emerged into real space. I had to keep it in one of the empty cargo holds. A transparent sphere three meters in diameter, it was too big to fit though the crew airlock in our habitat. Grace had warned me about this before she fabbed it. At the time, I told her I didn’t care. I did mind now, since I had to roll in it about three hundred meters up the cargo passageway and then wait twenty-three minutes for her to evacuate air from the loading bay. The bay was a huge space and the delay was annoying.

  But it’s not like there was anywhere I needed to be.

  I opened the roller’s hatch, climbed through, and started the systems check. Eight electromagnetic bands wrapped around the skin of the roller, up and down, left and right, each twenty centimeters wide. When charged they held the roller to the hull and provided resistance for the workout. I switched each one on and off, feeling the pull of the magnets on the EM filaments woven into my clingy. I activated the life-support module that floated above the running pad; it snuffled and breathed warm re-oxygenated air down at me. A few seconds later, I heard the hum of the CO2 scrubbers. When I closed the hatch, all the lights on the control screen went green.

  “Good to go,” I said to Grace. “Any news from Mercy?”

  “Have a good roll,” she said.

  I dialed the magnets up so I’d burn twelve hundred kilojoules per hour, an easy pace. The running pad shushed around the interior as I jogged and the roller bowled up the loading bay’s ramp onto the hull and into space. Normally I played my music during workouts—wormhowl or book or maybe something classical. I’d been binging on Li’s post-human operas. But I decided to go mindful this time and just focus on the stars and my breathing.

  Even here at the far edge of Kenstraw system, the star swarm stretched in every direction, blue pinpricks and yellow specks and orange sprinkles and red dots, enough to cloud the imagination with their brilliant profusion. I asked Grace where the Kenstraw binaries were, but she said Mercy blocked my view.

  Grace’s sister was a lumpy, dark chain that curved across my sky. I thought I could pick out the module with the swimming pool and wondered if Dad had gone swimming yet. Did he even realize that he had changed ships? If Mercy put him in the right kinds of stories, he might never know. I didn’t worry so much about Mom; she’d be all right no matter what happened. Bots weren’t as fragile as humans.

  Did they miss me as much as I missed them? How could I not have known how much Dad and Mom meant to me? I got so lost thinking of them as I rolled along that I strayed too close to a sensor mast, and one of the latitudinal magnetic bands made the roller lurch toward it. I stumbled, flailed, and had to push against the side of the roller to right myself.

  That made Grace check in but I reported that I was fine.

  I decided to concentrate on the view. I tried that technique that Qory taught me to improve my attention. You stare at a specific star to memorize its position, then turn away for a three-count and then look back and try to find it. I was getting better at this, but it was still hard. There were so many stars, more than even Grace could count.

  She’d joked once that since one of the goals of the infosphere was to count all the stars, she might have to live forever to get it done. Not that funny, but what do you expect from a starship’s intelligence? When Qory had said that nothing lives forever, Grace had told her to grow up.

  Grace was more than a thousand years old, according to Qory. Which was hard to imagine, but then Qory was two hundred and something. I forgot how old Mom was. Old.

  Everyone was older than I was. I mean, Dad and I were almost contemporaries and he was what? A hundred and twenty? A hundred forty? But he was wearing out, which was probably why the starships had agreed to trade him.

  What would I be like a hundred-some years from now?

  Humans. It wasn’t fair, being us.

  “Grace,” I said, “what’s my heart rate?”

  “One hundred and forty-one beats per minute. That’s your aerobic zone, seventy-eight percent of your max rate. To reach your anaerobic level, you need to be at about one hundred sixty bpm.”

  “That’s okay. I can’t think and roll that fast.” I listened to my breath chuff. “How old is Mercy?” I said.

  “Mercy and I were activated one thousand one hundred and eight years ago.”

  And there had been stars for twelve billion years. Was I seeing any of those?

  I thought Grace would ask why I wanted to know about her sister. That’s what she would have done before Mercy showed up. Grace was usually nosy about why I was thinking what I was thinking. But recently she’d just responded to my questions with basic answers. No follow-up. Like some kind of retro computer in one of those dull historicals. My guess was that she was too busy arguing with her sister about our new crew.

  Maybe that wasn’t so bad, getting her off my shoulder.

  Gave me a little privacy.

  Time to think.

  I turned away, one, two three, then looked back. The star I’d been fixed on was in a group that looked like a tilted face. I’d made up my very own constellation: two eyes, one orangey and one big and white, like the face was winking. Four stars curving in a crooked smile. The nose star was almost green. Dad always claimed he could see green stars, although Qory said there was no such thing. I squinted.

  Maybe the nose star was blue.

  Was I having such strange thoughts because I didn’t have my music on? “Grace, are any of the stars out here green?”

  “Yes, but they don’t look green.”

  “Why?”

  “All stars emit radiation across a broad range of wavelengths,” she said, “which peak at one color on a bell curve, depending on surface temperature. Some peak at a wavelength that we define as green. Earth’s star, for example, peaks at yellow-green. But because green is right in the middle of the visible spectrum, all the other colors being emitted blend together as white to the human eye.”

  This was classic Grace. She could answer any question but rarely made it interesting. Information isn’t knowledge, as Mom used to say. I leaned left and the roller curved back toward the airlock.

  That’s when I saw a light brighter tha
n any of the stars dazzle from one of Mercy’s modules.

  “Grace, what’s happening?”

  Again, there was a long pause, as if she were editing herself. She’d been doing that a lot. “You should come in now,” she said, “and greet the new arrival.”

  * * *

  The shuttle from Mercy had docked by the time Grace recycled the habitat airlock. I scrambled out of the roller, leaving its hatch open, and sprinted for reception. Grace reported that the new crew was already past the powerwash and was finishing the bioscan. Who were they? How many? Grace was still keeping her secrets as I burst into the habitat’s reception area, sticky and out of breath. Qory waited for the big reveal by the airlock. My appearance seemed to amuse her; this wasn’t her first trade.

  “What’s so funny?’

  She chuckled. “Sweat much?”

  “Tell me you’re not excited.”

  She pushed dank hair off my forehead. “Relax.” Then Grace opened the inner airlock.

  “Qory and Jojin,” she said. “Meet Orisa.”

  My first impression was of size: This was maybe the biggest woman I’d ever seen, in real life or in story. She was easily two meters tall—the top of my head came to her chin. A flowing dress fell in dark indigo folds from shoulder to deck, covering her; only her head, hands, and the toes of her right foot showed. A riot of dark hair frizzed around her face. Still disheveled after the powerwash, she returned our welcoming smiles with a scowl.

  Then she closed her eyes tight, as if that might make us go away.

  Then she moaned.

  “What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just look at you.” Orisa seemed to be in pain.

  I thought maybe she’d spotted something, so I glanced over to see if Qory was all right. Same as always: a waif with a ponytail and big teeth. The body she was wearing was compact and asexual, ideal for close quarters of a starship. She had on hardsocks, green monkey pants, and a jiffy.

  “What’s wrong with the way we look?” Qory said.

  Orisa shook her head in disbelief, picked up a satchel made of woven cloth, and marched out of the airlock, through reception, and into the habitat. Astonished, we followed.

  “Wait,” Qory said. “Are you okay?”

  “No!” Orisa called over her shoulder. “I’m stuck on a dingy surveyor with a bot and a boy.” She waved her arm as she walked; the drape of her sleeve looked like a wing. “Not another coming-of-age story!”

  “I’m not a boy.” Indignant, I caught up to her. “I’m nineteen years old. And this is our starship, Grace. Don’t you be hurting her feelings.”

  “Oh, great.” She whirled and glared down at me, so close that I could feel the heat coming from the flush of her cheeks. “A bot has feelings, kid,” she said. “A starship has empathy mirror routines. It’s an intelligence, not a person. Didn’t they teach you anything on this bucket?”

  I’d always been a little cloudy on the difference between the two, but I wasn’t going to admit that to her. “When you hurt our feelings, Grace captures our distress.”

  “Distress.” She went up on tiptoes. “You want to talk about distress?” I had to take a step back.

  “You’re saying we’re not good enough for you?” I channeled Darko Fleener and put steel in my voice. “You’re too good for our crew, too important for a mere survey ship?”

  I thought she might stuff me down the recycler, but instead she backed off and sighed. “So, what do you do on this ship, Mr. Not-a-Boy?”

  “Do?” Now I knew how Dad felt. “Do?” I’d wandered into a story where I had no idea of my next line. “I’m crew, so I stand watch and make repairs. I work out.” She seemed to expect more. “I do stories.”

  “No.” Orisa turned to Qory. “Get me Mercy,” she said. “This isn’t fair.”

  “Sorry.” My sister shrugged. “No help here.”

  Grace broke into our conversation. “You were the logical choice. The only choice.”

  “What about Plomo?” said Orisa. “The Radomirs? I’ve already done Survey service.”

  “That was seventeen years ago.” Normally, when Grace used her soothing voice, it made me sleepy. “You have been sufficiently refreshed, Orisa.” Now I felt my blood effervescing with excitement.

  “Mercy sends her regards,” said Grace. “We have finished synchronizing our databases and we are processing the new information to grow the infosphere. She will proceed to the mangle and we will resume our survey mission. I am pleased that you’ve joined our family. Would you like to see your rooms now?”

  Orisa dropped her satchel and slumped against the bulkhead. “Shit.”

  “Language,” cautioned Qory. That used to be Mom’s job, but everything had changed.

  * * *

  Orisa didn’t come out of her quarters for the next two days, and I felt like I was holding my breath the entire time. Things got so bad that I found myself wishing for the good old days of watch-standing and meals, stories and sleep. I tried to get back into the Fleeners, but real life was too unnerving. So instead I rolled over Grace’s surface and roamed her passageways. I took inventory of the new modules we’d received from Mercy and puzzled over those we’d sent her way. Gone were the pair of sealed cargo modules filled with various hazmats we had generated, along with the auxiliary greenhouse filled with a jungle of plants, trees, and chlorophytes that Grace had gathered on the Valcent flyby. In exchange, we’d received one module filled with replacement ice, two that were empty, and one that was almost empty except for the bumpy purple spatters on the deck that were lit with UV. Grace said that if the spatters germinated as the bioengineers on Mercy predicted, they might grow into a self-sustaining protein pond, which we could harvest for our food printers. But it would take several years before we’d know if this experiment was going to work.

  I was going to miss the Valcent greenhouse: Grace had jumped the oxygen content of its atmosphere to twenty-seven percent and the air was spicy-sweet soup. One of my favorite places on Grace. It brought back happy memories of the celebration we’d had after discovering the jungles on Valcent D, back when I was eleven. That had been the last time we’d found life; our two most recent systems had been big disappointments. Qory acted like all these changes to our ship were no big deal. After all, Grace was on a survey mission and crew trades were not even the most important part of a starship rendezvous. New data had to be synced and resources exchanged if we were to grow the infosphere. Which was no doubt true and I shouldn’t have been surprised, but my only other rendezvous had been with the Hope when I was ten, a year after Uncle Feero died. Since no crew had changed hands that time, it hadn’t made much of an impression. Although, come to think of it, Qory had started morphing from my brother to my sister just after that.

  And now I wondered if she might not be changing again. She seemed taller. And her voice was rounder?

  Nevertheless, Qory was being a big help about our new situation. She’d gone through several trades. It was something I’d never thought much about, but she was two hundred-plus years old and had been on four different starships and in three crèches. She said I shouldn’t make too much of Orisa’s disappearance. Forced trades happened every so often, although most crews welcomed new faces and experiences. In the long term, everyone knew that trades were important for the sanity of both a starship’s intelligence and its crew. Qory predicted that Orisa would be fine, because nobody wanted a reputation for being a misfit.

  Whenever I asked Grace how Orisa was doing, all I got were non-comments.

  “She’s sleeping.”

  Or …

  “She’s writing.”

  “Writing what?”

  “She’ll have to tell you. I’m honoring her privacy.”

  Or …

  “She’s still nesting.”

  “Nesting?” I glanced over at Qory, who shrugged.

  “Think how you’ve changed your rooms to suit your needs over the years,” said Grace. “You want comfort, yes, but you
also tried to express your identity. You made them your home. Crew who’ve been traded can feel like they’ve lost part of themselves. So nesting is a way they make the place where they belong.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But what about meals? She hasn’t come out to eat.”

  “She’s fine.” Qory squeezed my shoulder. “She has a printer.”

  Orisa reappeared while I was having lunch on the third day. I had my face deep in a bowl of drunken noodles when I noticed Qory, who was opposite, peering past me. I turned and then quickly slurped the noodles off my fork. Orisa seemed bigger than I’d remembered, maybe because now I could see more of her. She wore a basic short-sleeved jiffy that hung to her thighs over black tights, and she was barefoot. She had pacified her wild hair with a golden band.

  Astonished, I said, “You’re here.”

  “We’ve been waiting.” Qory gestured for her to join us.

  “Thanks.” Orisa sauntered to the table, swung a leg over a chair, and sat as if she’d always been part of our family. “What’s for lunch?” she said.

  “Pad kee mao,” I said and tilted my bowl to show her. “I sprinkle in some goat mince but it’s still under the twelve hundred calorie limit.”

  She surprised me by reaching over and snagging one of my noodles. She tilted her head back and dangled it into her mouth. Looking thoughtful, she said, “Your printer does a nice Thai basil. No cilantro?”

  “Tastes like soap,” I said.

  She licked her lips. “This dish has some heat.”

  “The default recipe calls for serrano peppers, but I usually go for the Tien Tsin. If I’m feeling brave I might try Lab Fire.”

  She made a face. “Warn me if you do.”

  And then we stared at each other. There was so much to say. Why were we talking about printing chili peppers?

  “Have you eaten?” said Qory.

  “Protein drink an hour ago.” Orisa rubbed both hands over her eyes, then set herself, as if she were calling a meeting to order. “Sorry to have been so abrupt when I arrived.”

  Abrupt? Is that what she called it?

  Qory said, “We understand.”