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

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I understand from your Linking page that you carry high-skim algae fuel.’

‘We sure do,’ she said smartly. ‘You’re here for a … four-hour layover, correct? Would you like to take care of fuelling up now, or later?’

‘Later, if that’s all right. I’ve been on my ship for tendays, and could use a walk around.’

‘Oh, I understand,’ the Laru said in a knowing tone. ‘I haven’t been on a long haul in standards, but my paws twitch whenever I remember it. Where is it you’re headed?’

‘Vemereng,’ Roveg said.

Ouloo apparently knew it. ‘Oof, that’s a long way,’ she said. ‘Remind me where home is for you?’

‘Chalice.’

‘Goodness, yes. Must be an important trip to take you that far. Business or pleasure?’

‘I have an appointment there,’ he said.

Ouloo waited expectantly, but he provided nothing further. ‘Well,’ she said, the barest hint of disappointment creeping into her otherwise chipper tone. ‘If it’s a walk you want, our garden will be just the ticket. Are you hungry? We haven’t got a restaurant, I’m afraid, but we’ve got a wonderful selection of nibbles.’

Roveg wasn’t hungry, but nothing piqued his interest like regional food. ‘I never say no to nibbles,’ he said.

Ouloo laughed – which wasn’t like a laugh at all to Roveg, but he knew what the huffing sound meant – and gestured with a paw for him to follow. ‘Come on, we’ll sort you out,’ she said. ‘Do you like jenjen cake? I got some fresh from my neighbour this morning.’ She padded along, making small talk in good cheer. But as Roveg followed, he couldn’t help but notice her throwing the occasional glance toward the fuel shed across the way. Something in there was on the Laru’s mind. Whatever it was, it wasn’t his concern. He was here for fuel, a stretch, and apparently, cake. Under the circumstances, he had no appetite for anything more complicated than that.

PEI

One of the first things Aeluon children learned after they mastered the complicated matters of walking and eating and using their colours with intention was that the world around them did not use the same language people did. People, of course, communicated via the swirling chromatophore patches covering both cheeks. Their plant-and-animal neighbours, however, did not. The purplish fur of lumae did not mean they were angry. Nectarwings, with their orange spots, were not sad. Shiver fish were not friends, no matter how kind their blue scales might look. Pei had a hazy memory of struggling with this concept, of feeling like the natural world was untrustworthy, that it was lying to her in some way. Colour was colour, and colour meant things, and if it was obvious to her that laughter was green and annoyance was yellow, surely other creatures must know this, too.

From the vantage point of her middle years, she could not pinpoint the moment in which that errant conception had faded, but once she crossed that threshold, she understood that every aspect of life had layers. There was the colour on the surface, and the meaning underneath. Yellow, when not seen swimming through a person’s face, was often nothing more than yellow, full stop. You had to pause in the face of reflex, ask yourself if the narrative you attached to the knee-jerk was accurate. Once she’d grasped this, she could never again see life as a static thing, something with one immutable definition. The universe was not an object. It was a beam of light, and the colours that it split into changed depending on whose eyes were doing the looking. Nothing could be taken at face value. Everything had hidden facets, hidden depths that could be interpreted a thousand ways – or misinterpreted in the same manner. Reflexes kept a person safe, but they could also make you stupid.

Pei knew this fact in the same way that she knew how to breathe, and yet all the same, the Akarak made her wary.

She’d never seen one of their kind in a place like this – in a spaceport, sure, but always on the fringes, digging through scrap, scuttling through alleys, conversing only among themselves. Never in the thick of a marketplace. Never alone. Never walking around a fuel shed, browsing algae starters and fuel pumps, as the individual she was watching from a distance was doing now. Akaraks were not a common sight in GC space, but Pei had assuredly had dealings with them – not in words, but with weapons. She’d caught a pair of them snooping around her shuttle once, and had scared them off with nothing more than a pistol drawn. Another time, a crew of them had been in the process of stealing the cargo she and her own crew had been sent to collect. That incident hadn’t been so easily resolved. Pei had never spoken with an Akarak, but she had a pulse-rifle scar on her upper arm thanks to one, and had ended the lives of two more with her own hand.

That was the sort of fact whose layered meanings she had no desire to unfold further.

Pei turned her attention back to the spiral of blooming hedges she stood within. Their long, horn-like flowers were pretty (despite being yellow), and their scent was pleasingly sweet. A small swarm of pollinator bots moved among them in a soothing sway, meandering from blossom to blossom, rolling their soft, dusty brushes with a mechanical hum. Pei was glad to be outside, glad to have her feet on the ground. Her ship – her main ship, not the shuttle she’d travelled in – had a garden, like most did, but it just wasn’t the same as one woven into a planet. She knelt down, grabbed a pinch of the mulch blanketing the hedges’ roots, and rubbed it between her fingers with reverence. She loved her ship, loved her crew, loved a life spent above instead of below, but stars, there were times when she missed dirt.

The back of her neck prickled with the empty