The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers #4)(84)
Orbital traffic was as crowded as expected, but the zippy TA guideships were doing a heroic job of corralling the comers and goers into transit lanes. Beyond the lanes were five clear-cut areas in which all traffic stopped: the safety corridors around the tunnel entrances, through which only one ship could travel at a time. At the end of the corridors, the wormholes awaited, each held stable by the polyhedral containment cage constructed around it, a net of metal and blinking lights encasing a blacker-than-black sphere that wasn’t so much object as absence.
Pei steered her ship into the lane for tunnel number four, and directed her ship to follow the autopilot buoys. She imagined a similar scene would await her on the other side, and that she’d travel to Ethiris’ surface in a manner every bit as controlled. She was already looking forward to the point a few tendays ahead in which she was back out in open space, able to fly in whatever direction she liked and as fast as local law allowed. But that kind of freedom was still a ways off. First, she had to get this egg fathered.
No. That wasn’t first. First, she had to write to Ashby and tell him she wasn’t coming.
She felt childish about the fact that she hadn’t written to him the moment comms had been restored. She’d told herself there hadn’t been a need to inform him that she’d been delayed. That much would have been obvious when she hadn’t sent him a travel update from Gora five days prior, and knowing Ashby, he would’ve checked the news or done some digging and ascertained what the situation was. But the longer she went without writing him, the more she knew her hesitancy had nothing to do with flight updates, and everything to do with not landing upon the right words to disappoint him with.
With no option but to wait in the queue, she decided it was well past time to suck it up and be an adult about this. She turned to her comms panel, flashed the command for a new message, switched the input format to Klip, and began to write.
I’m so sorry to do this, but I won’t be able to
She deleted that, and started over.
I’m so sorry to have to do this. There was a massive delay at Gora, and while I was there, I started shimmering. I found a creche a tenday or so from here, but that means I can’t
She deleted that as well, her cheeks spotting yellow.
You know how they say that making plans is the best way to be sure they won’t happen? Well,
Delete, delete, delete.
I don’t want to be writing this, and I’m having the worst time of knowing what to say. I don’t know why this is so hard. I started shimmering on Gora, and I found a creche, but I
Pei exhaled sharply, her cheeks frustrated yellow and wistful orange. She pressed her fingertips hard against the keymap, erasing all of the inadequate words once more.
She tried again.
I don’t want
She locked her fingers behind her neck. The shuttle crawled forward, following the autopilot buoys.
She closed the message field, and instead activated the comms camera. With no call in progress, the only thing the screen displayed was herself.
She took a breath, closed her eyes, and dug deep, letting her colours swirl however they pleased.
She thought about the Rin creche, with their cheerful info chip that said all the right things. She imagined taking part in something ancient and beautiful, something every single ancestor before her had succeeded in doing. She thought about how awe-inspiring it would feel to continue that chain and repay all the gifts they’d so selflessly given her. She replayed the conversations she’d had with friends who’d come back from their shimmer and raved about how wonderful it had been. Such a badly needed break, they said. Such a special experience. Good sex and plenty of rest and the lingering sense of a primal purpose fulfilled.
She opened her eyes, and looked at her reflection. There were many colours present in her cheeks, but overwhelmingly, the dominant hues were red, yellow, orange. Fear. Dislike. Discontent.
The sight made her shaky, but there was no surprise in it. Some part of her had known this was exactly what she’d see.
She shut her eyes hard, balled her fists in tight. With clear intention, she shifted her thinking elsewhere.
She thought about Ashby. She thought about his homely, janky ship and the good people who lived on it with him. She imagined meeting them properly this time – no pretence, no half-truths, no holding her colours rigid through every interaction so that her crew wouldn’t notice how she felt when he stood close. She thought about what his bed might be like. She’d never been in his bed, his private space. How would it feel, to exist with him for a while in a context that wasn’t secret? She thought, funnily enough, about Dr Miriyam, and how just a few syllables of Klip flavoured by Exodan Ensk had given Pei the irrational sense that this was a person she could trust. She thought about cheese and waterball and hairbrushes and grasshopper burgers and goosebumps and crying and all the other batshit Human ephemera that occupied space in her head now. Every bit was truly fucking weird, but she loved knowing it all the same.
Improbably, she thought of Speaker. She remembered what the Akarak said to her in those long hours on the shuttle, watching over Tupo.
You don’t want to, Speaker had said. That’s it. That is all it ever needs to be.
Pei opened her eyes, and she saw two things.
She saw the bluest blue, dark as the sea, shifting in currents that carried nothing but love.
She saw orange, sharp and sorrowful. This was not incongruous with the other hue. Sorrow was the right thing to feel when there were two doors in front of you and you knew that one of them was going to stay closed.