Record of a Spaceborn Few

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

Item name: The Modern Exodus – Entry #14

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 has not translated the following material directly. The content here is a modified translation, intended to be accessible to the average Kliptorigan reader.]

Before I was Ghuh’loloan, my body belonged to someone else. Something else. By definition, I cannot remember this time, but I can tell you, from having visited my own offspring while they were in development, what it would’ve been like. The Being That Was Not Ghuh’loloan had no name, no identifying distinction beyond parentage. Xe was a polyp, an unfeeling mass anchored to a rock face alongside a hundred or so siblings. That being had the beginnings of the tentacles I do now – tiny buds waving in the simulated tides, pulling in the nutrient mix the minders routinely pour into the nursery pools. All Harmagians begin this way. For the first ninety tendays before we become ourselves, the polyps do nothing but hold fast and eat while engaged in the taxing business of growing a brain.

When the brain is sufficiently formed, the polyp detaches from the rock. Xe floats freely in the water for another tenday at least, wriggling constantly and without direction. Slowly, slowly, the new brain masters locomotive control, and the swimmer becomes strong enough to navigate around the pool. It is marvellous, dear guest, to watch the near-instantaneous shift from hapless writhing to purposeful experimentation. The child – for it is a child, now – does not have fully formed eyes or dactyli yet, nor is xyr gut developed, nor will xe venture out of the water for another eight tendays. But xe has control. That is when a Harmagian begins life. That is when I became Ghuh’loloan.

Biologically, I find that other species understand this phase of transition quite readily. What they do not understand is that culturally, we consider the moment of the polyp’s detachment to be a death. To a Harmagian, this is obvious. What else could it be? The form and behaviour of a polyp are so different from that of a mature Harmagian that they can only be seen as separate entities. How could I have been Ghuh’loloan if I did not have a brain to understand what Ghuh’loloan was? How could I claim that polyp as a part of myself if I have not even the faintest recollection of that experience? (I do of swimming in the nursery pools: a hazy memory of a dash around a very tall rock, an image of an adult’s enormous tentacle reaching underwater to fix an oxygen filter). Remember, we are a species that does not sleep. Our lives are defined by the aggregate of all that happens during the waking.

I used to assume, when I first began to study the lives of my sapient neighbours, that perhaps sleep would better prepare those species for death. Sleep sounds quite like death to me, a strange temporary death, complete with an afterlife of surreal visions. I have heard both a Human and an Aandrisk, on separate occasions, posit that death must feel like nothing more than a ‘dreamless sleep’. You would think, then, that these species are less fearful of the inevitable end. If one experiences oblivion daily – and for an enormous portion of the day, at that – should it not be familiar territory?

I was wrong about this, of course. Some species have a more passive reaction to death than others – I am thinking here of the Laru, with their total lack of funerary customs – but sleep or no, all fear it. All spend lifetimes trying to outstretch its grasp.

In a highly social species such as my Human hosts, a death is keenly felt, even if it is that of a stranger. Certainly, I have been moved by the end of those I did not know – please read my fourth essay on this feed, dear guest, if you have not already – but Humans habitually react in a way that members of my own species might find extreme. A single death, regardless of relation, can dominate conversation for tendays upon tendays. It takes over news feeds, workplace chatter, decisions about the day. A death always fixates Humans in one direction or the other. They either talk about it at any given opportunity, or doggedly avoid the topic. I did not have a good hypothesis as to why this might be until I joined my dear host Isabel for dinner at her hex tonight. There has been an unusual death in the Fleet – accidental or purposeful, no one yet knows – and the families could speak of little else. All species emote around death, but there is an intensity of mood here I am unaccustomed to. I cannot stop pondering it.

As I sat witness to this behaviour tonight, two individuals caught my eye: Isabel and Tamsin’s son, Miguel, holding his young daughter Katja on his lap. His embrace was snug, and he was stroking her hair as the others spoke and argued. At first, I thought the gesture was in order to calm or reassure her. Perhaps consciously, that is why he did it. But Katja was paying no attention to the conversation. She was fully engrossed in building a fortress out of mashed vegetables on her plate. If she registered the topic at hand, I do not think she understood much of it. But still, her father held, and stroked, and the longer the conversation went on, the more affectionate he became. I thought then of the means of Human reproduction. It is an intense process, an internal process. Even though her father did not go through this process himself, he was close audience to it (as is commonly the case, he is romantically partnered with Nina, Katja’s mother). Human infants are famously frail, and the amount of time they remain dependent on adults for needs as basic as eating or locomotion makes me wonder how the species didn’t give up on the whole prospect millennia ago.

Perhaps I am completely wrong about linking these two behaviours, dear guest, but I find it likely that there is a connection – even if only a tenuous one – between Humans’ heavy parental involvement in child-rearing and how socially unsettled they become around death. Were I among my own kind and had someone met a sad end, it would be discussed, certainly. If I knew the deceased, I would visit their family to recite my praise of their life, as is proper. But I would not think of my offspring in that time. This would not occur to me. My offspring are not the ones who have died. I would know them to be well. Depending on age, I would know them to be swimming safely in their ponds, or being mindfully reared by their tutors, or living in homes of their own. I would not imaginatively transfer the misfortune of another onto them. I would not worry about them unless given reason.

Human parents always worry. Their offspring developed while attached not to rocks, but to themselves. And unlike Harmagians, who bid farewell to polyps and welcome new children in their stead, their progeny have but once to die.

Tessa

There was never a day when Tessa’s home wasn’t a mess, but the one she walked in on now was of a different kind. Cupboards were open, drawers were empty, and things she was sure she’d tidied up had found their way elsewhere. She might’ve thought the break-ins at work had moved to her home, were it not for Pop sitting on the couch in the middle of it, smoking his pipe and observing.

‘What is going on?’ Tessa asked warily, hanging her satchel by the door. Elsewhere in the home, she could hear industrious movement.

Pop raised his chin. ‘Aya,’ he said, ‘is packing.’

Tessa had long ago stopped trying to predict anything that was likely to be waiting for her at home. She might as well write a bunch of nouns on some strips of cloth, add an equal number of verbs, shake them up in a box, pull two of each out, and pair them with her kids’ names. Ky eating paint. Aya breaking bots. That system would be closer to the mark than anything she could come up with on her own.

Still. Packing. That was new.

She made her way to Aya’s room and leaned against the open doorframe. Yes, indeed, there was her daughter, sitting by several old storage crates and everyday satchels stuffed with clothes and sundries – a pack of dentbots, Tessa could see, and a tin of tea as well. Her son was present too, kneeling on Aya’s bed and trying his darnedest to put on one of her shirts. He was attempting to stick his head through the sleeve, but hey, points for effort.

Tessa surveyed the goings-on. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘What’s all this?’

Aya looked up from her concentrated work. She took a large breath. ‘Mom,’ the nine-year-old said in a serious voice. ‘I know this might be hard for you to hear.’

Tessa kept her face as straight as possible. ‘Okay.’

‘I’m moving.’

‘Oh,’ Tessa said. She gave a thoughtful nod. ‘I see. Where are you moving to?’

‘Mars. I know you don’t like it there, but it’s better than here.’

‘Sounds like you’ve made up your mind about this.’

Aya nodded and resumed emptying her dresser into one of the crates.

Tessa watched for a moment. ‘Can I help?’

Her daughter considered, then pointed. ‘You can put my toys in this box here.’ She pointed again.

As directed, Tessa sat on the floor and began to gather figurines and model ships. ‘So, how are you getting to Mars?’

‘I wrote to Uncle Ashby,’ Aya said. ‘He’s going to pick me up and take me there.’

‘Really,’ Tessa said. ‘Did he say that to you, or is that what you asked him?’

‘That’s what I asked him. He hasn’t replied yet, but I know it’ll be fine.’

‘Hmm. You know, he’s pretty far away right now. Why not take a transport from here?’

‘I don’t have trade good enough for a ticket.’

‘Ah. Yeah, that’s a problem.’

Ky wriggled his way off the bed and marched over to the boxes. ‘I help!’ he said. He grabbed a battery pack out of one of the crates, put it on the floor, then reached for something else to remove.

‘Ky, stop it,’ Aya said, not a trace of patience in her voice.

‘No,’ Ky said. He threw a bundle of socks with a laugh. ‘No!’

‘Mom,’ Aya whined. ‘Make him quit it.’

Tessa pulled her son into her lap. ‘Ky, come on, don’t throw,’ she said. She handed him the least fragile of the toy ships in order to keep him busy. ‘Aya, be nice to your brother.’

‘He’s so annoying,’ her daughter muttered.

‘You were annoying when you were little, too.’

‘Was not.’

Tessa laughed. ‘All toddlers are annoying, baby. It’s the way of the universe.’ She kissed her son’s hair as her daughter continued packing. ‘So, once Ashby drops you off on Mars, what’s your plan?’

‘They have bunkhouses at the docks,’ Aya said. ‘I can stay there until I make enough creds for a house.’

Tessa smothered a smile. Whatever vids Aya had picked up dockside bunkhouses from hadn’t driven home the fact that nobody on Mars would give her a room without creds. She was from the Fleet, through and through. She wondered what other facts about grounder life her daughter hadn’t gleaned. ‘You know Martians don’t live under open air, right?’ She said the words strategically, trying not to scare too much.

Aya paused. ‘Yeah, they do.’

‘They don’t. Humans can’t breathe the outside air on Mars. Every Martian city is under a big shield dome.’

‘What? No.’

‘Yep. Here,’ Tessa said, handing Aya her scrib. ‘You can look it up on the Linkings.’

Ky dropped the toy ship and reached for the device as it was handed off. ‘Mine!’ he said.

‘That’s definitely not yours,’ Tessa said. ‘And your sister’s using it now.’ Ky started to fuss, so she grabbed the pair of socks he’d thrown earlier and put it in his stubby hands. ‘Here, show me how fast you can make this into two socks.’

Ky plucked at a random patch of fabric. He’d be at it a while.

Aya, meanwhile, was frowning in a way that said she expected parental trickery. She looked down at the scrib and made a few practised gestures. The screen responded with pictures of Florence, Spirit’s Rest, Perseverance. All glittering, all metropolitan, all . . . corralled behind barriers against the harsh red dust outside. Aya visibly wilted. Tessa felt a little sorry for her. Adventures were a hard thing to let go of.

‘Did something happen at school?’ Tessa asked. The bullying had ended – as far as she knew – but Aya had been playing solo since then.

‘No,’ Aya said, annoyed at the question.

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay.’ Tessa raised her palms. ‘Why do you want to move, then?’

Her daughter’s bravado was shrivelling before her eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled.

‘That’s not what you told me,’ Pop said. Tessa craned her head back to find him standing in the doorway. How long had he been watching? ‘Go on, bug,’ he said kindly.

Aya said nothing. She fidgeted.

Pop looked to Tessa. ‘She’s upset about that grounder they found.’

‘Oh, honey,’ Tessa said. A pang of jealousy blossomed in her, and she hated it, but she couldn’t shake it, either. Why had Aya shared that with Pop over her?

Ky fell quiet, understanding as far as his baby brain could that something was up with the grown-ups. Pop reached over and picked him up, making distracting nonsense sounds, leaving nothing to get between mother and daughter.

‘I’m upset about that, too,’ Tessa said. ‘Everybody’s upset about it.’ That was true, and how could they not be? Some grounder thief, murdered and tossed away. Murdered. In the Fleet. Was there anyone who wasn’t rattled by that news, who wasn’t still wrestling with the idea of something like that happening here? There wasn’t much to the story yet, but that didn’t stop everybody from talking endlessly about it. Tessa scolded herself for not bringing it up with Aya before now. She hadn’t thought it was anything a little kid needed to concern herself with, but clearly, it was. Sometimes, she lost sight of how easy it was for children to absorb the things adults whispered about. ‘That was an awful thing that happened,’ she said. ‘A really terrible thing. But the patrols are on it. They’re gonna find the bad guys who did it, and it won’t happen again.’

‘How do you know that?’ Aya said. It was a direct challenge, a question that demanded an answer.

‘I—’

‘She doesn’t,’ Pop said. ‘She wants you to feel better.’

Tessa glared at her father. ‘How is that helping?’

He shrugged. ‘She wants the truth, Tess. She’s old enough to understand what happened, so she’s old enough for – hey, hey, quit it, buddy.’ He turned his attention to his grandson, who was pulling hard at his remaining hair.

His refuting her in front of her daughter was irritating, but he was – all the more irritatingly – right. Tessa folded her hands together and spoke to her daughter, who was growing up too fast. ‘I don’t know that it won’t happen again. I’m bothered by it, and I’m scared, too. But I also know that . . . that kind of thing isn’t normal here. Our home is a safe place, Aya. It really is.’

‘That’s not—’ Aya struggled. She understood so much, and yet, not quite enough to pick apart her feelings. ‘I’m not scared about it happening again.’

‘Then what?’

‘I’m not scared.’ She frowned harder. ‘You said we can’t go live on a planet because bad stuff happens there. But – but bad stuff does happen here. I don’t understand why we can’t live on the ground if bad stuff happens here, too. If it happens everywhere, then . . . then it’s everywhere.’

Aya’s words were clumsy, but Tessa understood. Every lesson she’d tried to impart was based in principle, rather than practicality. No, we can’t move planetside, because it’s too dangerous. No, you can’t have creds, because you need to learn to trade. No, you can’t watch Martian vids, because they solve every problem with violence, and that’s not our way. No, you can’t keep all the cookies to yourself, they belong to the hex, and you have to share, because we share. That’s what we do. That’s who we are.

But now there was one news story, one unpleasant headline, that had thrown all that out of whack. There was danger in the Fleet, and it came from people who hadn’t cared about trade, who hadn’t minded violence – and those people were Exodan. That was the part that bothered Tessa the most. Everybody was so focused on the grounder, they sidestepped the one sentence that had shaken her: the patrols were pretty sure the dead guy’s crew was Exodan, and would anybody who knew anything please come forward?

She looked at her daughter, bags packed, brow furrowed. Her daughter, who didn’t understand that rooms cost money, who had unabashedly called on extended family for help when she lacked the ability to trade. Fear was the primary driver for Aya wanting to be elsewhere, despite how not scared she claimed to be. But maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe it wasn’t that Aya didn’t want to be Exodan. She was Exodan already.

Maybe, in her daughter’s eyes, it was the Fleet that wasn’t Exodan anymore.

‘I think,’ Tessa said, getting to her feet, ‘I think we could do with something out of the ordinary this evening. How about . . . fish fry for dinner?’

Aya looked suspicious. ‘We only do that on birthdays.’

‘Well, I want to treat my kid. Is that allowed?’

Tessa watched her daughter wrestle between a nagging existential problem and the promise of greasy, crispy, calorie-laden food. ‘Can we go to the waterball game, too?’ she said.

‘Is there a game tonight?’ Tessa asked her father.

He nodded. ‘Fast Hands versus Meteors,’ he said. ‘Just a scrimmage, not a qualifier.’

‘Still, that sounds fun,’ Tessa said. She wasn’t much for waterball, but for her kid, she’d put up with a scrimmage. She smiled. ‘Sure. We can go to the game.’

‘Looks like it’s you and me tonight, buddy,’ Pop said to Ky, who was dozing off on his shoulder.

‘No,’ Tessa said. ‘No, we should all go.’ She took in her family, the mess, the room that had been hers. ‘It’s more fun if we go together.’

Eyas

Eyas hurried into the Centre, her heart a touch lighter. Her supervisor hadn’t said anything over the vox except that patrol was there and wanted to talk to the grounder’s caretaker. That had to mean progress. The stasis chamber holding the corpse had been left undisturbed since she’d cleaned the body over a tenday ago. Finally, finally patrol had found something. They’d found someone to take him home.

She headed to one of the family waiting rooms, where she’d asked for patrol to wait for her. The door swung open at her gesture, and a woman wearing a distinctive shoulder patch sat on one of the couches inside.

The patroller stood. ‘Hello, M. I’m Patroller Ruby Boothe,’ she said. ‘I understand you’re the one looking after Sawyer Gursky.’ She was full-time, her patch indicated, but oddly, she didn’t have a volunteer second with her. Under any other circumstances, Eyas would’ve reported her, but in this case, she got the impression the absence was for discretion’s sake. Perhaps the patroller didn’t want to stoke the gossip further. If so, Eyas respected that.

The addition of a last name to Sawyer’s first should’ve kept Eyas’ mood aloft, but the grim look on the woman’s face prompted a spike of concern. ‘You found his family?’

The twitch of Patroller Boothe’s mouth said otherwise. She gestured for Eyas to sit, then pulled out her scrib. ‘Sawyer Gursky,’ she read. ‘Twenty-four Solar years of age, born on Mushtullo, no siblings. We had to do some digging, but he’s a descendant of the Arvelo family on the Al-Qaum. Housing records say they left to grab some ground right after contact.’

‘No relations here, then?’ This wasn’t a surprise, given what Sawyer had said during their brief interaction, but she’d been hoping she remembered wrong.

‘No.’ Boothe cleared her throat. ‘We don’t have much communication with anybody in Central space, so it took a while to find the proper folks to talk to. Local law enforcement helped us out in the end.’ She was dancing around something. Whatever it was, it bothered her. ‘There was an outbreak of saltlick fever that tore through the Human district on Mushtullo about thirteen standards ago.’

‘I don’t know saltlick fever.’

‘Neither did I. One of those wildfire mutations you hear about from time to time. Some minor alien thing that jumps species and fucks everyone over for a few tendays until imubots can be updated. I’ll spare you the details. It was . . . well, it was bad. He lost his whole family. Grandparents, parents, everybody. Sawyer was the only one that made it.’

Eyas converted standards to Solars. ‘He would’ve been . . . what? Six?’

‘’Round about.’

‘Stars.’ She frowned. ‘Why did he remain on Mushtullo, then? He must have had relatives elsewhere.’

The patroller shrugged. ‘I have no idea. Maybe they weren’t close. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they didn’t care. Grounders, y’know?’

Eyas didn’t care for that assumption. She gave a noncommittal ‘mmm’ and waited for Boothe to get to the point.

‘Anyway, we couldn’t find much about him, but based on his bank records and known addresses, it looks like he bounced around until adulthood – some kind of foster home setup, or friends, maybe. I don’t know. He worked a bunch of odd jobs, then he wound up here.’

Eyas sighed. Trying something new. ‘So who’d he record as his next of kin?’

‘That’s the shitty bit,’ the patroller said. She tossed her scrib onto the table between them. ‘He didn’t.’

Eyas stared. ‘His emergency contact, then.’

‘Nope.’

‘All GC records have them. It’s right there for you to fill out when you update your patch.’

‘Yeah, well, apparently he missed that bit. Didn’t think he’d need it, or something.’

How could you miss that bit? Eyas thought incredulously. How could you— She shook her head, ending the loop between scorn and pity. ‘There has to be someone.’

The patroller shifted in her chair. ‘I’m telling you, M, we tried. We tried to get on the local news feeds, we tried to get law enforcement to put out a notice or something. But they’re not Human, and they don’t get it. The way they see it, somebody with no family and no emergency contact is dead and has been identified, and their job is done. If he has friends, all we can do is hope they read Exodan news, because we don’t know who to—’

‘Are you saying,’ Eyas broke in, ‘that nobody’s coming for him?’

Patroller Boothe nodded. She cleared her throat again. ‘We might hear from someone. I don’t know. I can’t predict that. Could be tomorrow, could be next standard. But I also know that the, um . . . the stasies you guys use here aren’t built for long-term storage. So you might . . .’ She trailed off.

Eyas understood. ‘I might want to take care of it sooner rather than later.’

‘Yeah.’

The room fell quiet. Nobody was coming for him. Nobody was coming for him, and there was nothing more to say.

Kip

Feed source: The Thread – The Official News Source of the Exodan Fleet (Public/Klip)

Item name/date: Evening News Summary - Galactic - 130/306

Encryption: 0

Translation path: 0

Transcription: [vid:text]

Node identifier: 8846-567-11, Kristofer Madaki

Hello, and welcome to our evening update. I’m Quinn Stephens. We begin tonight’s headline summary with news from the Fleet.

The investigation into the body discovered aboard the Asteria last tenday is still unfolding. Five suspects have been apprehended and detained in connection with the untimely death of Sawyer Gursky, a Central space immigrant who recently took up residency in the Fleet. The crew of the Silver Lining, a registered Exodan cargo ship captained by Muriel Saarinen, are believed to have hired Gursky to assist with looting aboard the Oxomoco. Large stores of stolen and illegally obtained goods were found aboard the Silver Lining, in addition to drugs and small weapons. All five crew members have been charged with theft, smuggling, illegal salvage, possession of firearms, and unlicensed possession of a pinhole drive. No murder charges have been reported yet. Jannae Green, a member of the traffic control guild, has been arrested as well. Green allegedly accepted credits from the thieves in exchange for disabling the Oxomoco’s proximity alert system for several hours while salvaging took place.

The supervisory council for the Fleet Safety Patrol reminds all citizens that illegal salvage is a serious crime, and is punishable by imprisonment. Patrol also encourages any persons aware of such activity to make an anonymous report, and wants to remind the public that without such a report having been filed, today’s arrests would not have been made so quickly.

There was a buzz at the door. Kip put his scrib down and raised his head up from the pillow. ‘Yeah?’

The door spun open. His dad entered, wearing a dorky smile and carrying a shopping bag. ‘Know what time it is?’

Kip shook his head. Shit, was he supposed to be somewhere?

‘Almost three. You blazed right through lunch, buddy.’ He lifted the bag. ‘Hungry?’

A tantalising, familiar smell drifted its way to Kip’s nose. He sat up. ‘Yeah.’

The dorky smile intensified, and his dad produced the bag’s contents: a wrapped-up hopper and a frosty bottle of choko. He tossed both to Kip, one at a time.

Kip turned the warm bundle over after he caught it. The order was quick-printed on the cloth. 2x pickle. Fried onion. Extra hot sauce. No greens. Toasted bun. ‘How’d you know?’

‘M Rajan knows your order, apparently.’ His dad shook his head. ‘I weep for your stomach lining.’

Kip managed a small smile. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

The meal had been exchanged, and Kip was grateful, really, but his dad just stood there awkwardly, hands in his pockets, bag hanging around his wrist. ‘So . . . tailoring didn’t work out, huh?’

Kip rubbed his face. Stars, but he did not want to talk about job trials. ‘Please don’t lecture me.’

‘No lectures,’ Dad said, holding up his hands. ‘Just . . . curious as to what you’re up to.’ He paused. ‘Any fun plans today?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing with Ras?’

Kip looked away. ‘No.’ He didn’t want to hang out with Ras. Ras had been pissed at first that Kip talked to patrol, but once time went by and no trouble came with it, Ras started straight-up bragging. Everybody at school was talking about the body, and Ras was telling them, yeah, he’d overheard the scavengers who did it, they were a buncha mean motherfuckers, you should’ve heard the way they laughed about killing that dude. Kip hadn’t talked to Ras since he heard him doing that, and he hadn’t responded to any of his scrib messages, either. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Okay.’ Dad nodded like he understood. Kip didn’t know if he actually did or not. ‘You know that if you ever do want to talk – about Ras, or work, or . . . or . . . you know your mom and I are here, right?’

Kip picked at the hopper wrapper. Dad going to Grub Grub was nice and all – like, really nice – and he knew Dad wanted him to talk. But Kip wanted to be alone. Alone was easier. Alone was safe. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he was feeling. The wanting was still there, but it was different now. It wasn’t him and Ras wanting more together. It was just Kip, wanting alone. ‘Yeah. Thanks.’

His dad nodded. He seemed disappointed, but he didn’t push. ‘I’ll be in the hex if you need anything,’ he said. He started to leave, then turned back. ‘You know, might feel good to get out for a while. I can give you some extra trade. Y’know, if you want to go play a sim or pick up some vid chips or something. I heard there’s a new vid out with – oh, what’s his name, that Martian actor you like – Jacob something.’

Kip rolled his eyes. ‘Jasper Jacobs,’ he mumbled.

‘That’s right,’ Dad said. ‘He’s not my type, but I get it, I really do. He’s got those . . . those big arms, and—’

Kip’s chest began to cave in on itself. Stars, of all the things he didn’t feel like talking with his dad about, Jasper Jacobs’ arms were in the top three.

Dad cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, let me know if you want to do something fun.’

Kip squinted. ‘I spent all my tenday trade already.’

‘I know.’

His suspicion grew. ‘Mom doesn’t let me have more after that.’

Dad winked. ‘Mom doesn’t have to know.’ He gave a half-wave. ‘In the hex. Just holler.’ The door slid shut behind him.

Kip sat cross-legged on his bed, gifted lunch in his lap, guilt gnawing at his empty gut. Dad was trying to be his friend, and he knew that. He sighed, unwrapped the hopper, and tucked in. ‘Mmmmph.’ The moan was reflexive. He was hungry. He tore into the meal like somebody was going to take it away. M Rajan had made it perfect, like always. The fried grasshopper meal was satisfyingly crunchy, the twice-round pickle felt like a salty, sour hug, and the hot sauce skirted that line between ow, this hurts, please stop and I want to eat this forever. He swore she put more hot sauce on each time, like she was training him or something.

The knot in his stomach grew. He thought about M Rajan, who knew his order when he wasn’t even there, and Dad, who’d thought to go pick it up for him, and Grandma Ko, who’d been offering to take him for ‘an unofficial Sunside’ even though she one-hundred-percent did not have a shuttle licence anymore – and even Mom, who hadn’t given him any shit when he pulled out of the trial at the tailor shop.

He shoved the last of his hopper into his mouth. He kind of wanted another one, and he did kind of want to go out. Not to the sims or the vid shop or anything. He popped open the choko and washed the burn away from his mouth. He’d had a weird thought for the past tenday or so, one he couldn’t shake and couldn’t share. It wasn’t bad or anything. It was just . . . weird. A weird thing he wanted to do, one he couldn’t have explained to Dad or Ras or anybody. Definitely not to himself.

Kip folded the wrapper and picked up his scrib. He stared at it for a moment. Maybe this was stupid, but . . . nobody would know, right?

‘Public feed search,’ he said. ‘Saved parameters.’

The scrib chirped and did as told. He’d run this search probably a dozen times by now, but this time, a new result popped up. It wasn’t much – just three lines. He read them a couple times over. He took another swig of his drink, then thought for a minute, then took another. He noted the date (tomorrow) and the time (eleventh hour). He looked down at himself, wearing a holey shirt and pajama pants. He got up, opened his closet, and sighed. Most of what belonged in there was on the floor. Bit by bit, he gathered shirts and trousers and underwear, and threw them into the basket that often stood empty.

His dad – who hadn’t made it to the hex yet – looked surprised as Kip exited his room with laundry in tow.

‘Hey,’ he said, sounding confused. ‘You . . . doing laundry?’

‘Yup,’ Kip said.

‘Need any help?’

‘Nope.’ He headed to the hex’s wash machines without another word. If he was going to do this weird thing, he was gonna do it right.

Isabel

Funerals were never an easy affair, but Isabel was hard-pressed to think of one as uncomfortable as this. Not in a personal way. That distinction belonged to the funerals of her parents, her sister, Tamsin’s parents, close friends. This was a different sadness. A social sadness. It was a natural feeling to have when attending – or even hearing of – a funeral for someone you didn’t know. But this . . . this was exceptional.

In attendance were herself, of course, to make record, and Tamsin, who insisted on joining her for this one. Eyas Parata was the caretaker that day. Isabel had done ceremonies with her before, and she knew her to be the sort of compassionate guide a grieving family would benefit from. But there was no family today. There were no friends. Just three strangers, a body that had been thrown away, and a story that elicited plenty of public thrill but little sympathy. People had been horrified by the discovery of the body, and satisfied when the culprits were caught. There was a general buzz in the air that something had gone too far, something had to be done.

When it came to the victim himself, however, feelings changed. Isabel had heard everything from apathy to blame to indignation. The victim was an outsider. A leech. He’d come into their home, the party line went. He’d eaten their food. He repaid their welcome by attempting to steal. There was more to it than that, Isabel knew, but that was the story being told over tables. Sawyer Gursky had become an abstraction, an evidence file for whatever societal shift you hoped for. You want to encourage your kids to lock down a profession instead of heading elsewhere? Look at that poor dead boy, born of people who’d left Exodan values behind. He hadn’t had the sense to find honest work. You want resource management reform? Look at that guy who died on the Oxomoco. He wouldn’t have been there at all if there wasn’t demand on the black market. You want to tighten up entry requirements for non-citizens? Look at that thieving bastard who got himself killed. Why should we let people like that into our homes?

’Round and ’round the chatter went, at hundreds of tables with hundreds of families. Yet none of them seemed to care about the indisputable truth: a Human being was dead, and no one had come to mourn him.

Isabel and Eyas stood together in the privacy of the shrouding room, side by side next to the body. Neither said a word. Tamsin had pulled up a chair. Her legs were giving her extra trouble that day, so she was saving herself – ‘preserving her batteries,’ as she put it – for the walk up the ramp.

‘This is so . . .’ Eyas began. She shook her head. ‘I know how to do this with families. I’ve done this a thousand times.’

‘I know,’ Isabel said. ‘I’m feeling lost, too.’

They were quiet again, and still.

‘Can I see him?’ Tamsin asked, nodding toward the body.

‘Are you sure?’ Eyas said. In preparation, she’d made an understandable break with tradition: the body was already shrouded. Usually, that was part of the ceremony – the family lovingly wrapping the cloth together. In this case, though . . . ‘He’s not in the best of shape.’

Tamsin pursed her lips. ‘Is it bad?’

‘Not—’ Eyas’ face twisted as she thought, perhaps weighing the difference between what was ‘bad’ to her and what it was to people who didn’t do this every day. ‘Not gruesome. There’s no blood or disfigurement. But we didn’t receive him right away. He’d started to decay before I got him into stasis. I did my best with him, but he . . . doesn’t look like they usually look.’

Tamsin took in that information. ‘I’d like to see him.’

Eyas stepped forward and pulled the shroud from his face. She’d done her best with him, that much was clear. He was clean. He was peaceful. But yes, he was different, different enough to give Isabel a stab of adrenaline, a shiver of disgust. This wasn’t right.

‘Oh, stars,’ Tamsin said. ‘He’s just a kid.’ Isabel laid her hand on Tamsin’s shoulder. Her wife grabbed it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, brushing at her cheeks.

‘Don’t be,’ Eyas said. ‘I’m glad someone’s crying for him.’ She paused. ‘I did, too.’

Tamsin nodded. Her tears continued to flow. She stopped wiping them away.

‘Do you want to read the Litany?’ Eyas said. ‘I wasn’t sure which of us should do it, so if—’

The door to the shrouding room opened, and they all turned to look. A boy stood there, a teenage boy in fresh-pressed clothes that didn’t fit quite right. Isabel didn’t know him. It didn’t appear that Eyas did, either.

‘Are you lost?’ Eyas said.

The boy’s eyes fell to the body, and he stared. ‘I, um—’ He cleared his throat. ‘I asked outside where to go, and uh, they said I should go here, and— I didn’t know you’d already started—’

‘Are you a friend of his?’ Eyas said, her words rising with a sliver of hope. ‘Did you know him?’

The boy continued to stare. ‘No. I just, um, y’know, I heard about it, and I—’ He tugged at the edge of his shirt. ‘Tika lu— I mean, I’m sorry, this is stupid, I—’

Eyas gave a puzzled frown. ‘You’re welcome to join, if you want, but—’

Two pieces clicked together in Isabel’s mind – a sliver of gossip and an inexplicable hunch. ‘Are you the one who told patrol?’

The boy swallowed, and nodded. Isabel watched him with interest. His eyes had yet to leave the table. Had he been to a funeral before? Had he seen a body? To him, the face on the table would not be young, but older and respectable, an ideal he could grow into, a stage he aspired to, a promise cut short.

‘What’s your name?’ Isabel asked.

The boy finally made eye contact with someone other than the corpse. ‘Kip,’ he said. ‘Uh, Kip Madaki.’

Madaki, Madaki. Her brain tossed the name around, seeking connection. ‘Does someone in your family work in water?’

‘My Grandpa Griff did.’

Another piece clicked. ‘Yes, I remember him. Not well, but I remember.’ Old memories surfaced. She remembered being an assistant, an extra pair of hands at a naming. ‘He had twin girls?’

‘Yeah. My mom and aunt.’

Her brain was satisfied. ‘Well, then. Kip Madaki.’ She nodded with confirmation. ‘I’m Isabel, and this is Eyas and Tamsin. We’re glad you’re here.’

‘Would you like a seat?’ Tamsin asked, pointing toward the other chairs.

‘I’m good,’ Kip said, shuffling closer to the table. ‘Thank you.’

Isabel continued to study him. ‘How did you know this was happening today?’

The boy moved as if he didn’t know where to put his limbs. Stars, Isabel didn’t miss that age. ‘I’ve, um, been checking,’ he said.

‘Ceremony schedules? The public feed?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You mean, since they found him?’

The boy shrugged.

Isabel felt her spirits rise. ‘Kip, before you came in, we were discussing who should read the Litany for the Dead. Would you like to?’

Kip was taken aback. ‘Me? Um . . . I dunno, I’ve never—’

‘Is this your first laying-in?’ Eyas asked gently.

‘No,’ Kip said, ‘but – I’ve never read the . . . that.’

‘It’s up to you,’ Isabel said. ‘But you helped this man. You helped the right people find him. You’re the closest thing he has to a friend.’

Eyas extended her scrib. Kip took it. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You can do it,’ Eyas said with the sympathetic smile that went hand-in-hand with her profession.

He cleared his throat, then licked his lips, then cleared his throat again. He began to read. ‘From the stars, came the ground. From the ground, we stood. To the ground, we return.’

Isabel bowed her head as he spoke, one hand on his shoulder, the other holding Tamsin’s. This still wasn’t right. But it was better. It was a little better.

‘Here, at the Centre of our lives, we carry our beloved dead. We honour their breath, which fills our lungs. We honour their blood, which fills our hearts. We honour their bodies, which fuel our own. We honour you, son of, um . . .’ Kip stopped. ‘What’s his homeworld?’

Isabel turned the question over a few times. She’d never heard this portion of the Litany for the Dead said with anything other than a homesteader name. She wasn’t so rigid in her traditions that the idea of inserting the name of an alien planet bothered her, and yet . . . and yet. ‘He’s still Exodan,’ she said. ‘Just more distantly.’

The boy looked unsure. ‘So . . . should I say the Asteria, or . . .’

‘The Al-Qaum,’ Eyas said. She looked at Isabel and nodded. ‘Patrol said that’s where he was descended from.’

Kip started again. ‘We honour you, son of the Al-Qaum. From death, you took life, and from your death, we now live. Here you will stay, until we rejoin the stars once more.’

Isabel took her cue and gestured at her scrib. ‘We record the laying-in of Sawyer Gursky, age twenty-three. His name will be remembered. For so long as the Archives remain, so shall he.’

Eyas turned to Kip. ‘Will you help me with him?’

Kip nodded, his face unreadable, his heart unknowable. But he took his place at the head of the stretcher. He shared the caretaker’s weight. He accompanied the stranger on the long walk up the ramp. He did these things, and it said all that needed to be said about him.

Isabel followed, Tamsin leaning on her arm. All unoccupied caretakers had gathered, as they always did, standing vigil along the pathway, each holding an item of their choosing – a globulb, a flower, a dancing ribbon, a gnarled root, a bowl of water.

‘Thank you,’ they murmured to the body as it passed by. ‘Thank you.’ Thank you for what you will become, they meant. Thank you for what you will give us.

They came at last to the top of the ramp, and reached the covering bed. To the untrained eye, it was nothing more than a flat layer of bamboo mulch, but Exodans knew better. There were walking paths raked by the caretakers around the unmistakable mounds. There were painted flags stuck in patches recently filled. There were shallow craters over patches ready to be filled again. And there was the warmth – a thick, earthy heat rising from the ground, almost too hot. A suggestion not of death, but of life, of energy, of birth.

Eyas led the way to an unmarked patch, then set down her end of the stretcher. Kip set down his as well. A set of shovels lay waiting. They both took one, and Isabel did as well, though she knew she wouldn’t get as far as the other two. That wasn’t the point. Everyone who was able had to turn the soil. Tamsin stood by the body, resting her weight on her cane, eyes closed as she whispered the Litany from memory, for no one’s comfort but her own.

Isabel dug as best she could, and as she did so, her heart filled with a complicated tangle. Sorrow for Sawyer, whose time had been stolen. Anger for Sawyer, who’d been led astray. Respect for Eyas, and all of her profession. Respect for Kip, too, who dug vigorously, even as his face became covered in silent tears. Love for Tamsin. Love for her living family. Love for her dead family. Fear of death. Joy for life.

It was, in the end, a proper funeral.

They set aside their shovels and lifted Sawyer’s body. Slowly, carefully, they laid him in. He was cold now, and heavy, but those things would soon change. He’d followed his ancestors. He’d rejoined their ancient cycle. They would keep him warm.