The Galaxy, and the Ground Within Becky Chambers (books to read to get smarter .txt) 📖

at the Old Marketplace, and it was a marvel, truly, but not his, not at all his. ‘You know how it feels when you hop between worlds? How you begin surrounded, in a place like this—’ he gestured at the screen with his legs ‘—and it’s everywhere, it’s everything. It appears flat and endless. But then you push away with as much engine thrust as you can muster, and it all zooms out at once, and quickly begins to curve. And once you’re above, you see it’s just a sphere like all the others, a giant ball that becomes a marble that becomes a speck. And then you approach another marble, which becomes another ball, and when you land on that, it becomes that flat endlessness once more. There’s no centre to it. There’s no up or down, there’s only close and far. You know this feeling?’

‘I do,’ Speaker said.

‘Well … to have your own planet means that despite knowing the universe is edgeless, that everything is relative to everything else, you feel there’s one place that’s the true centre of it. I don’t mean the true centre in an astronomical way, or a topographical way. I mean the true centre. It’s the anchor, the … the weight that holds the weaving together. It’s not the true centre for everyone, but it is for you. And that knowledge reframes all that zooming in and out. You’re not drifting. You’re attached, somewhere. It may be far, but you can always feel it. And it reminds you, when you go back, that it’s yours. We travellers, we move through so many artificial environments – so many combinations of air pressure, humidity, temperature, gravity – that we forget how achingly good it feels to step into the natural environment your body spent millions of years evolving for. Everything in you settles instantly, as if you are water and the world is the cup. When you look to the horizon, even though you’ve been above it, even though you know better, you can fully believe in the flatness, the endlessness. You wrap yourself in that illusion, and you will never feel safer.’

The Akarak looked him in the eye. ‘Even if you can’t go back?’

Another cut below the shell, but perversely, he welcomed it. Nothing about the question felt like a challenge, merely a desire to get to the crux of things. It made him feel quite vulnerable, but paradoxically at ease. ‘Even if you can’t go back,’ he said. He angled his body toward her. If she could be blunt, so could he. ‘Does it hurt you, not having a place to call your own?’

Speaker shifted her weight within the suit’s cockpit, breathing air she could not share with him. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘But also …’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know if I can explain this.’

‘I’d be happy to hear you try.’

She clicked her beak together three times. ‘It is difficult to feel sorrow for something I’ve never known. What you describe sounds magical. But swimming also sounds magical, and I’ve never done that, either. Or—’ She reached for something else. ‘Aandrisks can see in infrared. They can walk the world in the dark. That sounds like a magical thing, too. But it’s an experience I’ll never have. It’s impossible for me to have it. Likewise, it’s impossible for me to have a world of my own. So, I both grieve and am incapable of grieving, because I don’t know what it is that I’ve lost. And none of my kind can tell me. Nobody’s left who remembers.’

‘You are like the Humans, perhaps,’ Roveg said. ‘They likewise know only their ships.’

‘Maybe,’ Speaker said. ‘I’ve never spoken properly with one, so I don’t know. But something in me says we’re not the same. Their world isn’t dead, not completely. It’s being repaired, little by little. They can visit, if they want to. There are some who live there still. And their planet wasn’t taken from outside. They killed it from within. They chewed their own hearts out. No, I don’t think we’re the same at all.’ She moved restlessly in her chair, casting aside an unspoken rage. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Please, don’t be. You have every reason to be angry. We can talk about something else, if you—’

‘No.’ She took a steadying breath. He saw her hands unclench. ‘Tell me about your favourite place on your planet.’

Roveg did not need to think before answering. ‘Wushengat. It means Flower Lake, rather unoriginally.’

‘What’s it like?’

An ache spread through Roveg as he conjured the place in his mind. The memory was as sweet as summer syrup and twisted as an executioner’s blade. ‘It’s perfectly quiet,’ he said. ‘I never saw a time when the waters weren’t calm.’

‘What colour are they?’

‘They’re – I’m not sure you and I perceive colour in the same way.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘The gentlest, lightest purple. The sand on the shore is soft as clouds, and the trees around it explode with flowers in the springtime.’ The ache thickened and bloomed. ‘It is the sort of place where you can sit all day and be utterly sure that so long as you are there, everything will be all right.’

Speaker hung on every word. ‘I don’t think anywhere has ever made me feel that way.’

‘Well, it isn’t true, of course. But it feels that way at Wushengat.’

‘I think you should make a sim of it,’ she said. ‘You should make other people feel that, too.’

Roveg fell silent once more. ‘Tell you what,’ he said at last. He poured himself another cup of mek. ‘If I make this appointment, and if I get my permit, perhaps I will.’

PEI

Pei froze as Ouloo smiled at her. Her cheeks roiled purple at the intrusion, at being touched even in such a casual manner without being asked. But angry as she was, part of her was likewise relieved. She shut her eyes and resigned herself to the fact that covering her arm back up would not change what had been seen.