“Exactly.” She sighed, her frustration simmering down. “And it’s not like they’ve done anything wrong. You know how much this crew means to me. But today… I don’t know. It feels like having a mess of younger hatchmates who won’t stop playing with your toys. They’re not breaking anything and you know they’re only trying to please you, but they’re so little and annoying, and you want them all to fall down a well. Temporarily.”
Dr. Chef gave a rumbling chuckle. “It seems your diagnosis is more complicated than just a premature molt.”
“How so?”
He smiled. “You’re homesick.”
She sighed again. “Yeah.”
“We’re stopping off at Hashkath before the end of the standard, right? That’s not so horribly far,” he said, patting her head. He stopped and rubbed one of her feathers between his fingerpads. “Have you been taking your mineral supplements?”
She glanced away. “Sometimes.”
“You need to take them all times. Your feathers are a little limp.”
“I’m molting.”
Dr. Chef frowned. “It’s not because you’re molting,” he said. “It’s because you’re deficient in the basic nutrients that every Aandrisk needs. If you don’t start taking your minerals regularly, I’m going to start feeding you moss paste.”
She made a face. The very mention of the stuff brought back childhood memories of the taste: bitter, dusty, lingering. “Okay, hatch father, whatever you say.”
Dr. Chef rumbled in thought.
“What?”
“Ah, nothing. The phrase just struck me as odd,” he said, his voice light. “I was only ever a mother.”
“I’m sorry,” Sissix said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, don’t. It’s only true.” He looked back to her, the twinkle returning to his eye. “Besides, if you think of me as a parent, maybe you’ll listen when I tell you to take your damn minerals.”
She laughed. “I doubt it. There was a stretch in my childhood when my hatch family couldn’t get me to eat anything but snapfruit.” She hissed as he worked the riksith against a stubborn patch on her shoulder.
“At least snapfruit’s good for you. And somehow it doesn’t surprise me that you were a willful child.” He thought aloud, and laughed. “I bet you were a real pain.”
“Of course I was,” Sissix said with a grin. “I wasn’t a person yet.”
Dr. Chef’s cheeks rippled in disagreement. “Now, see, there’s something about your species that I will never understand.”
She let out a congenial sigh. “You and the rest of the galaxy,” she said. Honestly, what was it about that concept that was so difficult for others to grasp? She would never, ever understand the idea that a child, especially an infant, was of more value than an adult who had already gained all the skills needed to benefit the community. The death of a new hatchling was so common as to be expected. The death of a child about to feather, yes, that was sad. But a real tragedy was the loss of an adult with friends and lovers and family. The idea that a loss of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around.
Dr. Chef glanced over his shoulder, even though no one had entered the room. “Hey, I have a confession to make.”
“Oh?”
“I haven’t told anybody else this. This is secret. Top, top secret.” He had lowered his voice as much as he physically could.
Sissix nodded with exaggerated seriousness. “I will say nothing.”
“You know how you said Humans can’t smell anything?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that the Humans aboard this ship don’t smell nearly as bad as other Humans.”
“Yeah. I’ve gotten used to them.”
“Wrong.” He paused with dramatic importance. “I routinely mix a potent anti-odor powder into the soap dispensers in the showers. I rub it into Kizzy’s solid soap, too.”
Sissix stared at him for a moment before crooning with laughter. “Oh,” she said, gasping for breath. “Oh, you don’t.”
“I certainly do,” he said, puffing his cheeks. “I started doing it not a tenday after I took this job. And do you know what the best part is?”
“They can’t tell the difference?”
Dr. Chef let loose an amused harmony. “They can’t tell the difference!”
They were both still laughing when Ashby walked through the door. His hair was wet. He had clearly just bathed. Sissix and Dr. Chef fell silent. The laughter returned, even stronger than before.
“Do I want to know?” Ashby said, his eyes shifting between them.
“We’re making fun of Humans,” Sissix said.
“Right,” said Ashby. “Then I definitely don’t want to know.” He nodded toward her. “Molt came early?”
“Yeah.”
“My sympathies. I’ll take over your cleaning shift.”
“Oh, you’re the best.” That was wonderful news. Cleaning products and new skin did not mix well.
“Remember that next time you’re laughing at us lowly primates.”
Rosemary sat flicking through files in her office—well, what passed for an office. It had been a storage room before she arrived, and technically still was, given the modest stack of crates against the far wall. The whole setup was a far cry from the sleek desk she’d had at Red Rock Transport, even as an intern, but she liked Dr. Chef’s snack counter far more than the austere corporate cafeteria, and besides, she didn’t need anything fancy to do her job. She had a simple desk and a big interface panel, and a small pixel plant Jenks had given her to make up for the lack of window (why was it that people who worked with numbers always got tucked away in back rooms?). The plant looked nothing like the real thing, of course. The smiling face and color-changing petals resembled nothing in nature. It was programmed with some behavioral recognition software that could tell when she’d gone a while without standing or drinking or taking a break, and would chirp cheerful reminders in response. “Hey, there! You need to hydrate!” “How about a snack?” “Take a walk! Stretch it out!” The effect was cheesy, and sometimes a little jarring when she was focused on her work, but she appreciated the sentiment.
She sipped a mug of boring tea as she puzzled over one of Kizzy’s expense sheets. The mech tech had a habit of annotating things with shorthand that she alone understood. At first, Rosemary had assumed that it was some sort of tech lingo, but no, Jenks had quietly confirmed that this was Kizzy’s own special way of staying organized. Rosemary squinted at the screen. 5500 credits (ish)—WRSS. She made a flicking motion with her left hand, pulling up a file entitled “Kizzyspeak,” her cheat sheet for acronyms that she had deciphered. ES (Engine Stuff). TB (Tools and Bits). CRCT (Circuits). But no, WRSS wasn’t there. She made a note to ask Kizzy about it.
The door spun open, and Corbin entered the room. Before she could say hello, he set a black mechanical object on her desk.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Her heart hammered, as it usually did whenever Corbin approached her. Speaking to him always felt like more of an ambush than a conversation. She looked at the object. “That’s the saline filter I ordered for you.”
“Yes,” he said. “Notice anything?”
Rosemary swallowed. She looked harder at the filter, which she only recognized as a filter because there’d been a picture of it on the merchant’s Linking page. She gave an awkward smile. “I can’t say that I know much about algae tech,” she said, trying to keep her voice easy.