74: Gifts

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I gave my present to Tikka the next day. It seemed like a stupid idea now, just giving her a much worse version of what she’d given me, but we were off to the Ironstock in a few days and it was way too late to come up with something else.

“I made you something,” I told her while we were sitting on my bed.

“Oh?”

I fished out the haircharm I’d woven. “It’s not as good as yours,” I said quickly. “I don’t really know how to make them, or, or if – ” I had to stop talking then, because a pair of hairy arms were choking me in a tight hug around my neck. (Capuchins are very strong for their size.) I pried myself free, coughing, and she dropped back down to the bed, inspecting the charm with fascination. “You made this? With your hair?”

“Yeah.”

She chittered in delight, turning it over and over. “Human hair is so strange! I bet I’m the only person on the ship with a human haircharm. Everyone else is going to be so jealous!”

I doubted that, remembering how unimpressed Kapu had been with me. I was pretty sure that Tikka was the weird one there.

“What’s this pattern?” Tikka asked, and I felt my cheeks flush. Tikka had given me a beautiful silky charm of deep black and vivid red woven triangles, and mine looked stupid and clumsy by comparison. I’d used the same colours (dying my black hair such a bright red had been a whole chore in itself; I’d had to use special bleaches first and I hadn’t been sure that I’d be able to get it light enough, but mine was just a simple black background with a red heart embroidered on it.

“On my ship,” I said, “kids get a silver charm on their birthday, and it tells them what kind of year they’re going to have. So if it’s a star it’ll be a lucky year, or a hand for an industrious year, or whatever. A heart shape like that means that they’re going to have a very happy year, so I thought…” I shrugged.

“A charm for happiness!” She did her delightful chitter again. “Thank you! I love it! I’m going to hang it in my room all year.” She stashed it in the vent for the moment, then came back out.

“You’re leaving soon, right?”

“Yeah. A few days.”

“Will you ever come back?”

“Probably not.”

“Then you have to message me lots.”

“Of course! You have to message me lots!”

“Of course!”

I’m not sure if Tikka skipped a lot of work over the next few days or if whoever was in charge of her schedule gave her time off, but we hung out a lot more than she’d normally be able to until it was time to leave. I packed up my possessions, tucked the haircharm she’d made me in with my other souvenirs, and got ready to board the Ironstock.

I didn’t actually have many souvenirs, not for myself. Mostly I just had trinkets that I’d gotten for other people – a tiny replica of the big metal map in the Dish for Arai, a little model of a HEX for Hitan, things like that. The biggest thing I had for myself was the sash that the historians had gotten me for my birthday. And that was from people who were coming home with me, even if the cloth itself had presumably been made on the Stalwart.

The inside of the Ironstock was like being in the Vanguard if it was three times the size and full of factory equipment instead of storage space. We headed over in a transport peripheral (the Ironstock had several; they did a lot of manufacturing and couldn’t afford to go into zero pull to dock directly with larger ships all the time) were met at the Ironstock airlock by a man (no, not a man, a, uh… some person) with cold eyes and shaky hands who didn’t give us their name, but directed us to a room of twenty four bunks and told us to pick an unoccupied one. The beds were narrow, with thin mattresses and a small storage container at the head of each, and stacked on top of each other in threes with just barely enough space for an adult to sit up.

Nobody else was in the room, but it was obvious which beds were free, because they didn’t have blankets on them yet. The five free beds were all on the top level, so the three of us picked a ladder at random and hauled our bags up. This wasn’t difficult, since the Ironstock is about half of standard pull.

Our guide had a conversation with Tima in the doorway while I finished putting away my stuff, which I ignored until their voices started to raise. An argument, right when we arrived. That couldn’t be good.

“What do you mean, all three of us?” Tima was asking. “The agreement was Plia and me.”

“The agreement involved ferrying two adults and one young child,” the guide said. “That one is clearly not young.”

“She’s nine!”

“Nine is plenty old enough to work.”

Tima crossed her arms. “Nine is a young child in our culture, and I don’t appreciate people trying to change the conditions of a negotiation after the fact. You agreed to make the journey in exchange for a set amount of labour from my and my associate, so I don’t see what Taya’s age – ”

Our guide narrowed their eyes. “And I don’t appreciate being mislead in a negotiation! We are not in your culture, and unless you want to go right back onto the Stalwart – ”

“If you had any problems with the payment, you shouldn’t have made the agreement! This is extortion, and when I call – ”

“I can work!” I cut in, causing both of them to look up at me in surprise. I jumped down off the bed and landed on the floor three bunks below, which wasn’t hard under half pull, but did hurt more than I thought it would. I didn’t let myself stumble, though, as I glared at both of them. “I’m not a baby. I can work.”

A flash of annoyance in Tima’s eyes. A flash of approval in the guide’s. I remembered, so many months ago, a boy tricking me into getting trapped in zero pull and later sulkily complaining to his mother about that ‘stupid Jessie’ when she reprimanded him for upsetting people from such an important ship. People privileged enough not to need to work hard, like his people did.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“What are you good at?”

Good question. Everything, I used to think. Nothing, I’d been thinking lately. What did I want to do?

“Sorting things,” I said. “Breaking things down for recycling, collecting and reusing stuff.”

“She can’t work with radioactives,” Tima cut in hurriedly. “Or common poisons. Her geneset isn’t – ”

“I wouldn’t ask a fellow lenti to handle radioactives,” the guide said disdainfully, and turned back to me. “Can you strip down class two computer chips into their material components?”

I didn’t know what that was. I shrugged. “I live with someone who repairs computer chips, so I can probably learn pretty fast.”

They nodded sharply. “I’ll have you on assignment on white shift. I’ll send somebody to collect you half an hour before shift start. Do not be late.” To Tima and Plia, they added, “You two already have your assignments,” and left.

Tima sighed. “You didn’t have to do that. I could’ve gotten you out of it.”

“You’re the one who said that we’re their guests and should play by their rules,” I shrugged. “Besides, they didn’t care about the work, they cared about their pride and proving we aren’t better than them and shouldn’t get special treatment. If you had’ve gotten me out of work, then they would’ve made things way worse for you and Plia to make up for it, and everyone would find us annoying and spoiled. I’d rather make friends and work than sit around doing nothing and be hated.”

“It’ll be hard work,” Plia warned me from up on her bunk.

I shrugged again. “Then I’ll do my best, and if I’m slow at it, they can feel smug about being better than the dumb foreigners from the nice ship. If they’re anything like the Vanguard, they probably resent our political power. They’re not obsessed with gaining our favour like the Vanguard, though. I wonder why.”

“Because the Vanguard is a transport ship, and imminently replaceable,” Tima said. “The Courageous could replace its relationship with the Vanguard with many other ships. The Ironstock deals in purifying hazardous materials – materials that you are not to get anywhere near, by which I mean not in the same area as; there should be an airlock between you and them at all times – and there aren’t nearly so many ships that can take that over, at least not on short notice. The Ironstock aren’t powerful but they are secure in their position, which is its own kind of power.”

“That’s most of our power too, isn’t it?” I asked. “Like, nobody wants to do anything to hurt the Courageous because we’re completely irreplaceable, because of our history.”

“Exactly.”

I couldn’t wait to be back on the Courageous, back where I knew where everything was and how everything worked. Back where my friends and family were. Back learning about all the different jobs I had to choose from. Back to getting on with my life.

Surely, it’d be just like I never left.

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