Tikka and I kept messaging each other. I told her more about Hexacorallia, she told me more about her life on the Stalwart. Her life didn’t sound very interesting, but maybe it was just hard to say the interesting parts across languages. I don’t know.
I told her that Hexacorallia seemed like it would be great for capuchins and wondered about how there weren’t any here. She said, again, that capuchins couldn’t go to other ships because they weren’t safe, but I couldn’t understand her grammar well enough to understand why. Eventually I stopped being stubborn and messaged the Stalwart’s treegrave (which was weirdly hard to do from another ship, it was the least social treegrave I had ever met) and asked it to translate Tikka’s messages properly, which made them a lot easier to understand. And also didn’t give me any more information. She just knew that other ships were dangerous, and didn’t seem to want to talk about it. I wondered if that was her own choice, or if someone was reading our messages and telling her not to talk about it.
I didn’t think that the reason was physical. If capuchins needed special air or magnetism or something then I was sure that HEXes could be made for them. Which meant it had to be about people. I prodded a bit more and Tikka said that capuchins stayed on the Stalwart because staying on the Stalwart protected them. Outside the Stalwart, the people on other ships might hurt them.
Which made no sense, but I didn’t tell her that. I could think of two reasons that she might think this. First, maybe capuchins just felt safe in groups? Maybe it wasn’t being on another ship that was dangerous; maybe it was being without other capuchins. Maybe they only wanted to live in big groups and nobody ever left because there was never a big enough group that wanted to go to the same place.
But I thought it was probably the second reason. I thought that the humans on the Stalwart were probably lying to them. Looking at how they didn’t want to make a big deal out of the capuchins and didn’t want foreigners noticing them too much, and how Fari hadn’t really wanted me to message Tikka but hadn’t wanted me to know that either, and if Hali was right about the capuchins not talking to anyone on other ships very much… yeah, the humans were lying to them. The humans wanted all of the capuchins to stay on their ship, they wanted them all to themselves.
Why?
I went looking for Miya, and found him in the creche with Jamon, Lilin and the historians. (The kids had all gone home a couple of hours ago.) Lilin looked like ke was about to cry.
“I’m so sorry,” ke was saying to Jamon, “I didn’t think! I should have been paying attention, I – ”
“Hey, hey,” Jamon said. “It’s alright. Why don’t you go on home? I needed to get that fixed up anyway. I’ll deal with it.”
“I can do it tomorrow, I – ”
“It’s alright, Lilin. It’s really not a big deal. I’ll see you next shift, alright?”
Lilin left, looking upset.
“Nervous little thing, isn’t ke?” Hali said when Lilin was gone.
“Ke used to to be a lot worse, believe it or not,” Jamon sighed. “This is an improvement. Someday I’m going to take kes guardian’s ear off.”
“So this is why you got the creche up and running so fast,” Miya said, in the tone of someone who’d just figured something out. “You’re playing Mama-Jamon again.”
“Well somebody had to give kem somewhere to go!” Jamon said defensively. “It’s hard to convince him to let Lilin out for too long, but if it’s for a job…”
“This would never happen on the Courageous,” Tima said. “That kind of nonsense shows up, we put a stop to it right away. If it doesn’t stop, that’s what the orphanage is for. Parenthood is a privilege, not a right.”
“Yes, well, that’s your way of doing things,” Jamon said. “It’s a little more complicated here. We value our freedom very highly, and that’s usually a very good thing, but it does come with a few problems: namely, who would enforce something like that? He can do whatever he likes in his own rusting HEX. And the solution is that ke can do whatever ke likes too, including leaving, but it’s a bit hard to act in your own best interests in a situation like that, and much more importantly, Lilin has two younger siblings that ke won’t abandon. Unless ke was willing to try to hamelin them – and I don’t think I need to go into all the reasons why that would be an awful, awful idea, even if ke wanted to try, which ke doesn’t – then there’s not a whole lot to be done.”
“That’s – ” Tima started, then stopped talking before she could say something rude.
Jamon raised an eyebrow. “That is, I’m afraid, fleet standard behaviour.”
“It is not!” Tima protested. “This would never happen on the Courageous.”
“I didn’t say it was ship behaviour, I said it was fleet behaviour. For example… radioactives are dangerous to work with. Does the Courageous decontaminate its own irradiated external equipment?”
None of the historians answered. They looked like they didn’t know.
But I knew a lot about Rubbish & Recycling. I knew.
“The Courageous doesn’t have very good radioactive decontamination systems,” I said. “We work with smaller ships for that sort of thing.”
“And the people on those ships have hard and dangerous jobs. Every ship is different, but most ships that do that sort of thing don’t give their citizens a lot of options. They tend to live harder and more miserable lives than on nicer ships. So that’s hardly fair, is it? That a ship like the Courageous can’t step in, any more than we can step in to help with Lilin’s HEX?”
“That’s entirely different!” Tima said. “Other ships aren’t the Courageous’ responsibility!”
“And other HEXes aren’t our responsibility,” Jamon shrugged.
“She’s got a point,” Plia said. “It’s awful, but it’s not a different type of awful than what’s all over the fleet. It’s just on a scale that’s harder to ignore.”
“If people are unhappy on their ships, then they can go to another one,” Tima grumbled, sort of half under her breath. “Fleet charter.”
“Go where?” Plia asked. “My grandmother hated the Ironstock, and she left. You know how? She happened to fall in love with our grandguv on kes jaunt. Ke supported her immigration bid. Sometimes I wonder how many people on the Ironstock want to leave and didn’t happen to fall in love with someone from a better ship. Besides, it sounds like Lilin’s choosing not to leave, in which case, what can you do? Force kem?”
“I’m still pushing for taking that rusting guardian’s ear off,” Jamon said. “It wouldn’t solve anything, but it’d make me feel better.”
“Depressing issues aside for a minute,” Hali said, “Taya! I need your help!”
“My help?” I asked.
“Yeah! Help us decide something.” He pulled a very small homemade deck of cards out of his wrap, gave them a shuffle, then spread them out in a fan, face down. “Pick one.”
I picked a card. It had a picture of a leaf scrawled on it.
“Leaf! Perfect!” He took the card back. “Thanks!”
“Um. Was that all you wanted?”
“Yep!”
Okay then. I turned to Miya. “Hey, Miya. You know about capuchins, right?”
He frowned. “Capuchins?”
“Yes. From the Stalwart. Very small, with tails…”
“Oh! The fuzzy guys! Yeah, I remember. What about them?”
“Well, if one of them wanted to move to Hexacorallia – and this isn’t happening, I’m just asking – how hard would that be?”
“What, to integrate into an existing HEX, or get a new one? I’d imagine that a capuchin could get a HEX pretty easily, actually. I’d help them build one. The mass requirements would be so low, and there dexterity… oh, there’d me some interesting challenges there, wouldn’t there? Why, are some looking to immigrate?” He sounded excited.
“No, no. I was just wondering. It wouldn’t be a problem for anyone?”
Kiya shrugged. “Everything’s a problem for someone, but if you don’t like something then you just keep it out of your own HEX. You don’t get to tell other people what to do unless it causes actual material problems for your HEX. The variety alone would make them a lot of friends. We like to try as many new things as we can here, because that helps find better ways to do stuff. Diversity and freedom are what we’re all about. People would love seeing hat the capuchins could bring to the ship, I think.”
“People would be okay giving someone who isn’t human a HEX?”
“Taya, if Kichi was smart enough to pilot a HEX, we’d give him one.”
I nodded. That was what I’d thought. I couldn’t think of any reason why capuchins would be in trouble moving to a ship like Hexacorallia.
They were being lied to. That had to be it.
“Taya!” called Nimi from the doorway. “We need your help!”
“What is it?”
“Parla hurt herself!”
“Is she alright?” Jamon asked.
“Yes, but now we don’t have enough people to play markball! Taya, you gotta play with us!”
“Your duties are many and important,” Hali told me solemnly as I went off to play games with my friends. “And you bear such burdens with honour.”
“You talk too much,” I replied.
We would be leaving Hexacorallia soon, and I wouldn’t get to play markball any more. I couldn’t bring it home with me, because it had to be played in zero pull. I wondered if I would miss it like I missed the Big Spiderweb back home.
Hexacorallia should have a Big Spiderweb. Maybe they did, somewhere. A Big Spiderweb in zero pull would be a whole new type of thing.
Maybe living in zero pull wasn’t too bad, in some ways. It was still pretty bad in most ways, though. I wondered how much of the fleet was standard pull ships. I wondered how many colonies lived in standard pull. A lot of the colonies were on planets, so they had no choice in the matter; they had to live under gravity, which was like inertial pull except that there was no way to turn it off.
One thing about markball is that you have to pay attention. If you get distracted thinking about colonies and inertial pull and gravity, you get hit in the head by a ball. Three times before you get the message, if you’re me. And then a fourth time, when you forget again.
Actually, you know what? Maybe I wouldn’t miss this sport.
Derin Edala 