Zoe's Tale

by John Scalzi

  “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 to 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.

  Or so it was explained to me by Dad, who continued to be pleased with himself. “So you can see how we weave a subtle web of interpersonal connection,” he said to me, as we watched one of the dodgeball games.

  “Oh, Lord,” Savitri, who was sitting with us, said. “The self-satisfaction here is going to make me gag.”

  “You’re just jealous that you didn’t think it up,” Dad said to Savitri.

  “I did think it up,” Savitri said. “Part of it, anyway. I and Jane helped with this plan, as I’m sure you recall. You’re just taking all the credit.”

  “These are despicable lies,” Dad said.

  “Ball,” Savitri said, and we all ducked as a runaway ball ricocheted into the crowd.

  Whoever thought it up, the dodgeball scheme had side benefits. After the second day of the tournament, the teams started having their own theme songs, as team members riffled through their music collections to find tunes that would get them riled up. And this was where we discovered a real cultural gap: Music that was popular on one world was completely unheard of on another. The kids from Khartoum were listening to chango-soca, the ones from Rus were deep into groundthump and so on. Yes, they all had good beats, and you could dance to them, but if you want to get someone wild-eyed and frothy, all you have to do is suggest that your favorite music was better than theirs. People were whipping out their PDAs and queuing up their songs to make their points.

  And thus began the Great Magellan Music War: All of us networked our PDAs together and furiously started making playlists of our favorite music to show how our music was indisputably the best music ever. In a very short time I was exposed to not just chango-soca and groundthump but also kill-drill, drone, haploid, happy dance (ironically named, as it turned out), smear, nuevopop, tone, classic tone, Erie stomp, doow
a capella, shaker and some really whacked-out stuff alleged to be waltz but critically missing three-quarter time or indeed any recognizable time signature at all as far as I could tell. I listened to it all with a fair mind, then told all their proponents I pitied them because they had never been exposed to Huckleberry Sound, and sent out a playlist of my own.

  “So you make your music by strangling cats,” Magdy said, as he listened to “Delhi Morning,” one of my favorite songs, with me, Gretchen and Enzo.

  “That’s sitar, you monkey,” I said.

  “‘Sitar’ being the Huckleberry word for ‘strangled cats,’” Magdy said.

  I turned to Enzo. “Help me out here,” I said.

  “I’m going to have to go with the cat strangling theory,” Enzo said.

  I smacked him on the arm. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I was,” Enzo said. “But now I know how you treat your pets.”

  “Listen!” Magdy said. The sitar part had just risen out of the mix and was suspended, heartbreakingly, over the bridge of the song. “Annnd right there is when the cat died. Admit it, Zoë.”

  “Gretchen?” I looked over to my last, best friend, who would always defend me against Philistines.

  Gretchen looked over to me. “That poor cat,” she said, and then laughed. Then Magdy grabbed the PDA and pulled up some horrible shaker noise.

  For the record, “Delhi Morning” does not sound like strangled cats. It really doesn’t. They were all tone-deaf or something. Particularly Magdy.

  Tone-deaf or not, however, the four of us were ending up spending a lot of time together. While Enzo and I were doing our slow, amused sizing up of each other, Gretchen and Magdy alternated between being interested in each other and trying to see just how low they could cut each other down verbally. Although you know how these things go. One probably led to the other and vice-versa. And I’m guessing hormones counted for a lot; both of them were good-looking examples of blossoming adolescence, which I think is the best way to put it. They both seemed willing to put up with a lot from each other in exchange for gawking and some light groping, which to be fair to Magdy was not entirely one-sided on his part, if Gretchen’s reports were to be believed.

  As for Enzo and me, well, this is how we were getting along:

  “I made you something,” I said, handing him my PDA.

  “You made me a PDA,” he said. “I always wanted one.”

  “Goof,” I said. Of course he had a PDA; we all did. We would hardly be teens without them. “No, click on the movie file.”

  He did, and watched for a few moments. Then he cocked his head at me. “So, is the whole thing shots of me getting hit in the head with a dodgeball?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Some of them are of you getting hit in other places.” I took the PDA and ran my finger along the fast-forward strip on the video player. “See, look,” I said, showing him the groin shot he took earlier in the day.

  “Oh, great,” he said.

  “You’re cute when you collapse in aching misery,” I said.

  “I’m glad you think so,” he said, clearly not as enthused as I was.

  “Let’s watch it again,” I said. “This time in slow motion.”

  “Let’s not,” Enzo said. “It’s a painful memory. I had plans for those things one day.”

  I felt a blush coming on, and fought it back with sarcasm. “Poor Enzo,” I said. “Poor squeaky-voiced Enzo.”

  “Your sympathy is overwhelming,” he said. “I think you like watching me get abused. You could offer up some advice instead.”

  “Move faster,” I said. “Try not to get hit so much.”

  “You’re helpful,” he said.

  “There,” I said, pressing the send button on the PDA. “It’s in your queue now. So you can treasure it always.”

  “I hardly know what to say,” he said.

  “Did you get me anything?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact,” Enzo said, and then pulled out his PDA, punched up something, and handed the PDA to me. On it was another poem. I read it.

  “This is very sweet,” I said. It was actually beautiful, but I didn’t want to get mushy on him, not after just sharing video of him taking a hit to his nether regions.

  “Yes, well,” Enzo said, taking back the PDA. “I wrote it before I saw that video. Just remember that.” He pressed his PDA screen. “There. In your queue now. So you can treasure it always.”

  “I will,” I said, and would.

  “Good,” Enzo said. “Because I get a lot of abuse for those, you know.”

  “For the poems?” I said. Enzo nodded. “From whom?”

  “From Magdy, of course,” Enzo said. “He caught me writing that one to you and mocked the hell out of me for it.”

  “Magdy’s idea of a poem is a dirty limerick,” I said.

  “He’s not stupid,” Enzo said.

  “I didn’t say he was stupid,” I said. “Just vulgar.”

  “Well, he’s my best friend,” Enzo said. “What are you gonna do.”

  “I think it’s sweet you stick up for him,” I said. “But I have to tell you that if he mocks you out of writing poems for me, I’m going to have to kick his ass.”

  Enzo grinned. “You or your bodyguards?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’d handle this one personally,” I said. “Although I might get Gretchen to help.”

  “I think she would,” Enzo said.

  “There’s no think involved here,” I said.

  “I guess I better keep writing you poems, then,” Enzo said.

  “Good,” I said, and patted his cheek. “I’m glad we have these little conversations.”

  And Enzo was as good as his word; a couple of times a day I’d get a new poem. They were mostly sweet and funny, and only a little bit showing off, because he would send them in different poem formats: haiku and sonnets and sestinas and some forms I don’t know what they’re called but you could see that they were supposed to be something.

  And naturally I would show them all to Gretchen, who tried very hard not to be impressed. “The scan’s off on that one,” she said, after she had read one I showed to her at one of the dodgeball games. Savitri had joined the two of us to watch. She was on her break. “I’d dump him for that.”

  “It’s not off,” I said. “And anyway he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “A guy sends poems on the hour and you say he’s not your boyfriend?” Gretchen asked.

  “If he was her boyfriend, he wouldn’t be sending poems anymore,” Savitri said.

  Gretchen smacked her forehead. “Of course,” she said. “It all makes sense now.”

  “Give me that,” I said, taking back my PDA. “Such cynicism.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re getting sestinas,” Savitri said.

  “Which don’t scan,” Gretchen said.

  “Quiet, both of you,” I said, and turned the PDA around so it could record the game. Enzo’s team was playing the Dragons in the quarter-final match for the league championship. “All your bitterness is distracting me from watching Enzo get slaughtered out there.”

  “Speaking of cynicism,” Gretchen said.

  There was a loud pock as the dodgeball smooshed Enzo’s face into a not terribly appealing shape. He grabbed his face with both hands, cursed loudly, and dropped to his knees.

  “There we go,” I said.

  “That poor boy,” Savitri said.

  “He’ll live,” Gretchen said, and then turned to me. “So you got that.”

  “It’s going into the highlight reel for sure,” I said.

  “I’ve mentioned before that you don’t deserve him,” Gretchen said.

  “Hey,” I said. “He writes me poems, I document his physical ineptitude. That’s how the relationship works.”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t your boyfriend,” Savitri said.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, and saved the humiliating snippet into my “Enzo” file.
“It doesn’t mean we don’t have a relationship.” I put my PDA away and greeted Enzo as he came up, still holding his face.

  “So you got that,” he said to me. I turned and smiled at Gretchen and Savitri, as if to say, See. They both rolled their eyes.

  In all, there was about a week between when the Magellan left Phoenix Station and when the Magellan was far enough away from any major gravity well that it could skip to Roanoke. Much of that time was spent watching dodgeball, listening to music, chatting with my new friends, and recording Enzo getting hit with balls. But in between all of that, I actually did spend a little bit of time learning about the world on which we would live the rest of our lives.

  Some of it I already knew: Roanoke was a Class Six planet, which meant (and here I’m double-checking with the Colonial Union Department of Colonization Protocol Document, get it wherever PDAs have access to a network) that the planet was within fifteen percent of Earth standard gravity, atmosphere, temperature and rotation, but that the biosphere was not compatible with human biology—which is to say if you ate something there, it’d probably make you vomit your guts out if it didn’t kill you outright.

  (This made me mildly curious about how many classes of planet there were. Turns out there are eighteen, twelve of which are at least nominally humanly compatible. That said, if someone says you’re on a colony ship headed to a Class Twelve planet, the best thing to do is to find an escape pod or volunteer to join the ship’s crew, because you’re not going to want to land on that world if you can avoid it. Unless you like weighing up to two and a half times your normal weight on a planet whose ammonia-choked atmosphere will hopefully smother you before you die of exposure. In which case, you know. Welcome home.)

  What do you do on a Class Six planet, when you’re a member of a seed colony? Well, Jane had it right when she said it on Huckleberry: You work. You only have so much food supply to go through before you have to add to it from what you’ve grown—but before you grow your food, you have to make over the soil so it can grow crops that can feed humans (and other species which started on Earth, like almost all our livestock) without choking to death on the incompatible nutrients in the ground. And you have to make sure that earlier-mentioned livestock (or pets, or toddlers, or inattentive adults who didn’t pay attention during their training periods) don’t graze or eat anything from the planet until you do a toxicology scan so see if it will kill them. The colonist materials we were given suggest this is more difficult than it sounds, because it’s not like your livestock will listen to reason, and neither will a toddler or some adults.