49: Impossible

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I laid in bed until it was almost a normal time to get up, double checked that the treegrave could find me in case the historians of Jamon wanted to know where I was (it should be obvious that a ship’s treegrave could find you anywhere on the ship, I thought, but after how weirdly quiet the Stalwart’s treegrave was and how Hexacorallia was all made of bits and pieces, I decided it was best to make sure), and went for a walk.

I knew where the nearest view port was. We’d seen it yesterday. It was a HEX that was a lot like Miya’s, except the living area had some relaxing art instead, and the pilot setup was missing from the front. I thought that Miya had probably altered a viewport to make his HEX; the huge window definitely made more sense for a view port.

The angle was strange, and I could see stars that I didn’t normally see. The centre of the galaxy saw sort of above me at the angle I was floating; Earth was off somewhere in that direction, I supposed. I stared into it. Was anything following us from over there?

I was close to solving the problem. So close. But none of the dangers I could think of quite made sense. There couldn’t be anything out there coming for us, because the fleet didn’t travel in a straight line; we’d be impossible to follow for anything more than a couple of colonies behind us unless they hopped colony to colony, and if the colonies behind us were being destroyed by some mysterious space monster then the Dish would definitely know about it and warn everyone. I’d worried about some kind of space immune system or something, back on the Arborea, but that didn’t make any sense either. I didn’t know much physics, but the physicists would absolutely know if that was a thing. Something about the capuchins was still bothering me; I’d have to remember to message Tikka in a week or so, best not to be too pushy. But I didn’t know if that was even related. And now this dream about the Dragonseye colony, a future that was too stupid for anyone to actually let happen (and even if they did, wouldn’t they just move to the planets?). I had no idea what that was about.

I squinted at the galaxy for a bit (seeing nothing, of course), then turned to look towards the Dragonseye, which I couldn’t see right now because part of Hexacorallia was in the way. I turned to look ‘behind’ us, the direction I’d stared a hundred times before, the opposite direction from the Dragonseye, though I supposed that long term, ‘behind’ us was actually the centre of the galaxy. Then I turned to look ahead. Not at the Dragonseye. But towards the edge of the galaxy.

And I felt fear. What if something dangerous wasn’t chasing us?

What if we were headed right into something dangerous?

My intuition screamed at me that that was right, but it wasn’t the whole story. But I wasn’t sure that I could listen to it any more. Because that’s what it had said about everything – every time I came up with a theory that didn’t make sense, my intuition told me that yes,I was right, that was part of it, but not the whole story. I felt like I was piloting a blind HEX, with no windows of external sensors, crawling over Hexacorallia and trying to figure out its shape.

But not everything could be part of it. Had the dreamspeaker on the Arborea been right? Was I just… anxious? Was I just making it up?

No. I couldn’t think like that. If it was nothing, then by looking for answers I was still learning a lot. But if it was something and I gave up… if the whole fleet and every colony behind it was doomed because of a problem I could have solved, and I just decided not to bother…

I had to keep looking. I had to figure out how it all fit together. I had to find out what the problem was.

“You won’t be able to see the Courageous from here,” said Plia from behind me. “The ship’s in the way.”

“I wasn’t looking for the Courageous,” I said, without turning around.

She floated up next to me. “You look out of viewports a lot. Or at the stars in the Stalwart’s relaxation rooms. Do you just like stars?”

“Not really.”

“Well, what are you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it.”

I sighed. “Nothing that can be seen.” But Plia was a historian. She knew lots of stuff that I didn’t. “Have we had wars?”

“Huh?”

“Wars. Have we had them.”

“I mean. I guess it depends what you mean by ‘we’ and by ‘wars’. Like, the Courageous? There’s records of occasional regime changes, and a few of them have been violent, which is often hell for the records, especially in the early days when there weren’t other ships to hold duplicate records.”

“No, I mean like, the fleet. It’s usually not more than a few ships getting violent, right?”

“Usually not even that. Wars are expensive. It’s not something the fleet can afford between stars, it’s just too much of a waste of resources. If a ship might die to a revolution then other ships might step in to help, but if you mean the kinds of wars in stories, then no.”

“But colonies have them?”

“Uh, I think so. I mean, according to the Dish. Usually not until the fleet is long gone, because the colonies are pretty small and still setting up at that point, and we wouldn’t get very much information on those. But I’m sure some of them have dangerous conflicts as soon as we’re gone and still close enough to observe. It’s not really my area of expertise, but the Dish probably has a list. What’s this about?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I have no idea. I really wish I did.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Plia asked. “Are you homesick?”

I shook my head. I was, obviously; I kept waking up in strange places with strange foods and strange rules. But I didn’t want to say anything that might make Plia want to send me home. I probably wouldn’t get another chance to come out here, and I’d rather keep waking up in zero pull rooms and eating weird plants in a forest and doing whatever horrible things Starlight and the Dish were going to expect than miss out on seeing them. Not if they might still have answers.

The historians went to a committee meeting that day, and I didn’t go because it sounded like the most boring thing ever to happen. I hung out with kids from the orphanage and the creche, and we played with Kichi the snake, and he was really, really weird, but still fun when I got used to him. He wasn’t a bug and he wasn’t a mammal, like me or the sheep – he was something called a reptile, with weird skin and no legs. (Jamon said that many reptiles did have legs, but Kichi didn’t.) He was really good at moving around in zero pull, throwing himself from whatever he was holding onto towards whatever he wanted to hold onto. I was not very good at moving around in zero pull, and the other kids made fun of me for it, but not in a mean way.

I worked really, really hard to get better at it. I didn’t like being in zero pull, but I liked being bad at moving around even less. Tana and Nimi took me to a big HEX that was a sports field for Markball, a ball game that could only be played in zero pull, and playing with them taught me a lot about moving around. It had a lot of very confusing rules, but after a few days I was okay at it.

Which was good, because after a week on Hexacorallia, I had a good reason to be very, very good at moving in zero pull.

“Hey, Taya!” Hali greeted me one morning. “Do you want to go outside the ship with us?”

I stare at him with wide eyes. “You mean in a HEX?”

“Nope! In a space suit.”

“Absolutely not,” Plia snapped. “Hali, she’s eight. My parents would kill me.”

“I’m very nearly nine,” I say, through I’m not sure why I say it because I definitely do not want to go outside the ship.

“Hear that? She’s very nearly nine!”

“What is wrong with you? Is the lack of inertial pull doing something to keep the blood out of your brain? We are NOT taking my kid sister on an external! I didn’t even want to go on this external! Shiproute and stars, Hali, how could you possibly even consider inviting – ”

“Because she’s going to go on one eventually,” Hali said, suddenly all serious. “She’s a good kid, and a smart kid, and she’s doing her jaunt way earlier and way more thoroughly than most kids do. Everyone does external work eventually. Would you rather she do it for the first time here, or on the Courageous?”

Plia glared at him. “You know what happened to my mum and dad. Mum’s still deaf, the never… what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“That’s my entire point. Your mum and dad were teenagers, and that fuckup would’ve got them whether they were Taya’s age or ours. Because the Courageous doesn’t have much call for external work, except for external equipment and hull maintenance. It has almost no peripherals for rescue and the external jaunt is done mostly as a matter of obligation. But this ship? They’ve got space suits in Taya’s size here, Plia. Because these people live in space. You’ve seen Miya; half of these people treat their HEXes as a really big space suit. If anything goes wrong, rescue is immediate, because absolutely any part of the ship can just pull away and come get us. And they’ll take much better care of us here, because this is a novel sort of trip. Your parents were in that accident because routine breeds neglect; push dozens of kids through an external jaunt every day and you stop doing the safety checks quite so well. But a handful of inexperienced visitors from far away? This’ll be the safest external of all time, and we can report it back to the Courageous. Taya can go outside again back home if she wants to, but if she doesn’t, this should work as an external jaunt so long as we record and cover all the basics, and Hexacorallia will, because they’re experienced at teaching this to little kids. Where do you think she’s safer, going outside here at age eight, or on the Courageous at age fourteen?”

As terrifying as external work was, that was a really good point. Almost nobody wanted to do their external jaunt. (Some people, like Hitan, were weirdos who looked forward to it.) If I could get it out of the way forever now…

“I want to go,” I said.

“This is a terrible idea,” Plia told me.

“Is it?”

She hesitated, lips pressed together. “Our parents and aunts will kill the both of us.”

“We’ve still got two ships to visit after this one,” I shrugged. “They have ages to calm down.”

Plia glared at Hali. “If a single thing happens to her, I’ll be killing you myself.”

“It’ll be fine,” Hali said. “What could go wrong?”

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