Living on a starship forced anyone to get used to being in a confined space, but the Hurricane was too small for her.
Pirra had felt agitated for most of the trip – partly a result of instinct, and partly the result of personality. Alexander seemed concerned about her, and it only grated on her more. It wasn’t his fault, and it was quite caring, but it was still bothering her.
Trying not to show it was taxing. She forced herself to be deliberate in each action, to focus on the moment. But when there was little to do in the moment, that became difficult in its own way.
And the most annoying part was that there was something else bothering her, but she just didn’t want to talk about it.
Digging into her bag, she took out a small stone from a pouch. She didn’t want Alexander to see that she had it and folded her wing drapes around her body.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He knew when she was hiding something, but he said nothing, for which she was grateful. The hardest part of their marriage had been unlearning aspects of their own behaviour that did not mesh. Humans seemed more open in general than her kind, who had higher expectations of privacy.
Going into the central corridor, she began pacing – or the equivalent, in zero-g, simply pushing herself one way down the hall and then back the other way. They had gone through the dashgate only an hour before and it would be another seventeen before they even arrived at this third colony.
The ship was vibrating again, but at least not as much as it had been during the first dash, and even if she could only feel it when she touched a surface, the sound was alway there. The Executive Officer had taken the time before they entered to try and attune the ship better to the gate. It was newer, though already showing some signs of worse maintenance than the first.
Urle had figured that within ten years it’d be far worse than the first one, and it all just made her wonder how these colonies ever hoped to grow without caring for their own infrastructure.
Now the rattling of everything was grating on her. It reminded her of a steep cliff starting to collapse.
“Too many things compounding,” she said softly, opening her hand to look at the stone.
It was only five centimeters long, pierced with smooth holes not quite large enough for a finger to go in.
It was silent in her hand, but given a good wind it would have sung.
A heavy clunk caused her to look up. Closing her hand around the stone, she saw the Chief Science Officer as he came around the corner. She came to attention and saluted him.
The electronic face on Cenz’s suit turned to a polite smile. “At ease, Lieutenant. I see I am not the only one out for a walk,” he said cheerfully.
“It helps a bit,” she replied neutrally, letting her salute drop. It would have been overly-formal even on-duty, but she’d felt caught.
Perhaps Cenz knew that. “I can leave you to your walk if you wish,” he said.
She struggled with the desire to say yes. Cenz was possibly the nicest and most innocent being she had ever known, and adored conversation. To walk away from him now felt like being mean to a child.
“It’s fine. How are you, sir? I hope this leg of the journey is not bothering you as much as the last.”
“The last was quite unpleasant,” he admitted. “But only that – this leg is only . . . well, annoying. I cannot actually quantify this, but I think I feel the vibrations far more than the rest of you and it makes all of me want to hide in their shells.”
She knew only a little about the biology of his species; a hundred or so individual polyps that cooperated with complex neural nets they built between chunks of calcified rock that were constructed over long periods of time. Each polyp was only somewhat intelligent, but when many combined they formed an impressive intellect.
He started to move along again and she kept pace. Even here, it was incredible how easily he seemed to move; on the Hurricane they were functionally in zero-gravity. But to move that water-filled suit in the artificial gravity of a place like the Craton had to require massive strength.
“May I ask you a question, sir?” she asked.
“Of course,” he replied. “And please – you can drop any title or formality. They’re one of the few aspects of being on the Craton that I dislike. There is no hierarchy among polyps.” He chuckled, and she gave a smile.
It occurred to her that they had both become so used to being around humans that they were both faking their mannerisms to each other.
“Is it true that on your homeworld your species are not anything like a humanoid or biped?”
“Your information is accurate,” he replied. They reached the end of the corridor and turned to float back down the other way. “We are something more like crawling masses on our homeworld – it works well for moving over reefs in the shallow seas we come from. However, we may form our sections as we like, and while early contact had us being in such forms, we realized that being more humanoid would help us relate with such species better.”
“Was it hard to learn to become . . . a biped?” she asked.
He considered a moment, his screen appearing thoughtful. “In a way. It is somewhat like the strength-training a species might undergo before moving onto a higher-gravity world. We don’t usually break ourselves up, but there’s no reason we can’t, if we’re careful. So I spent a few years breaking myself into smaller pieces and then rearranging them into something like a humanoid.”
“A few years?”
“I know it sounds like a lot, but while I was doing that I was also getting an education on living among other species – so it was not as boring as it sounds.” He laughed again, and for a moment she saw specks of light in the water around his face screen. The polyps were lighting up in different colors – perhaps that was his own kind’s form of a laugh.
“Still, that sounds like a lot of effort.”
“I won’t lie – it was! But it was worth it. Because now I can walk and talk face-to-face with beings such as yourself, or the Captain.”
“Does it become awkward among your own kind?”
“Not really – we have no defined shapes. They will know from looking that I took this form, and surely figure out why. But if anything, it will only lead to some more questions!” He looked down to her hand. “May I ask you a question now, Pirra?”
“It only seems fair, sir.”
“Just Cenz, if you please. What is that you’re holding?”
She hadn’t realized he’d noticed it. With how clunky his suit looked, and how his face screen only showed forward, it was easy to imagine he didn’t see well.
“Oh, it’s . . . it’s a singing stone,” she said.
“A singing stone . . . oh, yes, from your homeworld. They have quite the significance to some groups there, from what I understand. I hope my question was not rude.”
“No, sir- Cenz. You’re fine,” she said, opening her hand to look at it. “You’re right, though. Among some groups on my homeworld, these were quite important.”
Cenz was quiet a moment. When he spoke again, her translator turned his voice a little softer. “I am not an expert on your people’s cultural history, Pirra, but I understand that there was much sectarian violence on your world until the last few centuries.”
She wasn’t sure how to reply to that.
“It’s not an issue anymore,” she finally said.
“Ah,” Cenz replied. He seemed uncertain. “That’s . . . good to hear.”
She put the stone in her pocket. “Thank you for the conversation, Cenz. I think I’m going to return to my cabin.”
Other Terrestrial 