If Rosemary had committed any transgressions in the act of dismantling the bug, none of the other crew members mentioned it. They were too busy shoveling down food, heaping praise on Dr. Chef for his cooking, and laughing at jokes that Rosemary couldn’t follow. Her embarrassment at being unfamiliar with the food disappeared the moment she placed the first bite of bug in her mouth—tender, savory, comforting. A bit like crab, only denser. The rolls were hearty and hot, the mash salty sweet, the salad (picked from the garden that day, she was told) crisp and refreshing. All her fears about spacer food were eradicated. She could get used to bugs and hydroponic vegetables. Easily.
Once her hunger had been quelled enough for her to eat at a less desperate pace, Rosemary noticed the empty chair and unused place setting that separated her from Corbin. “Who sits here?” she asked.
“Ah,” said Dr. Chef. “A tricky question. No one, technically, but it’s meant for Ohan.”
Rosemary registered the name. “Right, Sissix said xe’s nocturnal,” she said, choosing a neutral pronoun. It was the only polite thing to do when no gender signifiers had been given.
Ashby smiled and shook his head. “They. Ohan’s a Sianat Pair. Male, but we still say ‘they.’ ”
Rosemary thought back to the airlock. Lovey hadn’t been talking about a navigator, but a Navigator. Her mind raced with excitement. Sianats were the stuff of urban legends back home—a reclusive race who could conceptualize multidimensional space as easily as a Human could do algebra. Their mental aptitude was not innate, however. Sianat culture was structured around a neurovirus they called the Whisperer. The effects of the Whisperer were largely unknown to the rest of the GC (Sianats barred other species from researching it), but what was known was that it altered the brain functions of the host. As far as Rosemary knew, all Sianats were infected with the virus during childhood, at which point they ceased thinking of themselves as individuals, but rather as plural entities—a Pair. They were then encouraged to go out into the galaxy in order to share the Whisperer’s gifts with species that could never know them first hand (the virus had yet to jump to other species). Sianat Pairs’ ability to think in ways other species couldn’t made them invaluable members of research projects, science labs… and tunneling ships. In all the hullabaloo of getting herself out to the Wayfarer, the likelihood of meeting a Sianat Pair hadn’t occurred to her.
“Do they not eat dinner with us?” she asked, trying to hide just how badly she wanted to meet this—person? People? The plural thing was going to take some practice.
Ashby shook his head. “Pairs are paranoid about their health. They’re wary of anything that might inadvertently affect the Whisperer. Ohan never leaves the ship, and they don’t eat the same food that we do.”
“Though it’s perfectly sanitary, I assure you,” Dr. Chef said.
“That’s why I had to get flashed when I docked,” Rosemary said. “Lovey said I had a few contaminants one of the crew couldn’t handle.”
“Ah, yes,” Dr. Chef said. “We’ll need to update your imubots’ databases. We can take care of that tomorrow.”
“It’s not just a health thing,” Sissix said. “Pairs don’t socialize well, even with other Pairs. Ohan doesn’t leave their room much. They’re… you’ll see when you meet them. They’re on their own little plane.”
“You would be too, if you could map out tunnels in your head,” Jenks said.
“But Dr. Chef always sets a place for them anyway,” Kizzy said, tucking a bite of food into her cheek. “Because he’s a sweetie.”
“I want them to know that they’re always welcome,” Dr. Chef said. “Even if they can’t eat with us.”
“Aww,” said Kizzy and Jenks in unison.
“Technically, I don’t eat dinner either,” Sissix explained. Rosemary had already noticed that while Sissix had taken some of everything, her portions were tiny. “I just eat little bits of stuff throughout the day. One of the benefits of not being able to keep myself warm is not needing as much food.” She smiled. “But I like sitting down with everybody in the evening. It’s one of my favorite Human customs.”
“I heartily agree,” said Dr. Chef, taking another red coast bug. “Especially since I only eat once a day.” He balanced the bug atop a tall stack of empty shells. Rosemary counted six.
“So what do Sianat Pairs eat?” Rosemary asked.
A violent ripple passed through Dr. Chef’s cheeks. Even with his unfamiliar anatomy, Rosemary got the feeling that it was an expression of disgust. “This horrible nutrient paste. That’s all, just tubes and tubes of it, shipped from the Sianat homeworld.”
“Hey, you never know,” Jenks said. “It could be pretty good.”
“Nope,” Kizzy said. “Definitely not. I snuck a tube of it once, for research.”
“Kizzy,” Ashby said.
Kizzy ignored him. “Imagine something with the consistency of dry, cold nut butter, but with no flavor at all. No salt or anything. I tried putting it on toast, but it was just a waste of good toast.”
Ashby sighed. “And this from the woman who throws a fit if anybody even so much as glances at a bag of her fire shrimp.”
“Hey,” Kizzy said, pointing her fork at him. “Fire shrimp are a rare delicacy, okay.”
“They’re a cheap snack,” Sissix said.
“A cheap snack you can only get from my colony, which makes them a rare delicacy. There are crates of Ohan’s paste tubes in the cargo bay. I knew they wouldn’t even notice if I sampled one. Supply and demand.”
“That’s not what supply and demand means,” Jenks said.
“Sure it does.”
“‘Supply and demand’ does not mean ‘please wantonly steal shit because there’s more than enough to go around.’ ”
“You mean like this?” She darted a hand forward and stole a bun off his plate. She crammed the whole thing in her mouth, forcing it in with her fingers, and began grabbing more from the bread basket.
Ashby turned toward Rosemary, ignoring the war of the baked goods. “So. Rosemary. Let’s hear about you. Any family back on Mars?”
Rosemary took a calm sip of water. The question made her heart hammer a bit, but it would all be okay. She’d practiced this. “Yeah. My dad works in off-world imports, my mom owns an art gallery.” It was a true statement, just missing a few key details. “I have an older sister, too, but she lives on Hagarem.” True. “She works for the GC. Resource allocation bureau. Nothing fancy, just pushing formwork.” True. “We’re not very close, though.” Definitely true.
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Florence.” True.
Jenks pulled his attention away from wrestling with Kizzy over buns. He whistled. “That’s some prime real estate,” he said. “You must come from money.”
“Not really.” Lie. “It’s just close to my dad’s business.” True. Sort of.
“I was in Florence once,” Kizzy said. “When I was twelve. My dads saved and saved and saved so we could go there for the Remembrance Day thing. Stars, I’ll never forget when everybody let those floating lanterns go out in that big open place.” Rosemary knew where she meant. New World Square, the capital’s central gathering space. A wide stone plaza watched over by a statue of the city’s eponym, Marcella Florence, the first Human to set foot on Mars. “All those little lights, going up and up like tiny ships. I thought it was the prettiest thing I’d ever saw.”
“I was there for that,” Rosemary said.
“No way!”
She laughed. “I don’t think anybody missed the All Stories Festival.” In fact, her father had been a major sponsor of the event, but she felt it best to leave that out. Remembrance Day was a Human holiday commemorating the day that the last homesteader set off from Earth—the day the last Humans left their inhospitable homeworld. The holiday had originated as an Exodan custom, but Remembrance Day had quickly gained popularity in both the Solar Republic and the extrasolar colonies. The All Stories Festival had marked the bicentennial Remembrance Day, and the surrounding event had been organized as a joint effort between Solan and Exodan officials. Practically the entire Diaspora had turned up, down to every last handler and bureaucrat. The Festival was meant as a gesture of friendship and unity among a fractured species, an acknowledgment that despite their difficult pasts, they could work together toward a bright galactic future. Not that anything had really come of it. The Diaspora was still ineffectual in the GC Parliament. Harmagians had money. Aeluons had firepower. Aandrisks had diplomacy. Humans had arguments. No festival, no matter how lavish, was going to change that. But it had been a fine party, at least.