“That’s because it is a genuine replacement,” Rosemary said. She swallowed. Her tongue felt thick.
Jenks was puzzled. “How did you get—” His face lit up. “Phobos Fuel. Right. You’ve got money. Serious money.”
“I had money. Before—”
“Before you paid someone off. Paid someone to give you a new ID file. Shit, Rosemary, you must’ve paid them a fortune not to talk.”
“Everything I had,” she said. “Except for transport and hotels, that sort of thing.” She laughed without smiling. “My family may not have taught me much about the galaxy, but buying favors? We’ve got that down.”
“But you’re really a clerk, right? Like, you know your way around formwork, you obviously went to school. That’s all true, right?”
She nodded. “The official who helped me, he changed all my records, made sure my new file was linked to everywhere I’d ever been. So my diploma, my certification, my letters of recommendation, they’re all mine. The only way anybody would find out that the associated ID file had been altered was if, say, one of my crewmates went to Mars and asked one of my friends about me. I figured finding work out in the open limited the chances of running into anybody from back home. So I put my name on the queue for long-haul work, and here I am.”
Jenks rubbed his beard. “So, then, what’s wrong? If you did the course work, and you have the skills, you deserve to have this job. Why would we throw you off the ship?”
“Because I lied, Jenks. I lied to Ashby when I told him who I was. I’ve been lying to all of you every time you’ve asked me about my life back on Mars. I came into your home and told you lie after lie about who I am.”
“Rosemary.” Jenks put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not going to insult you by pretending like I get what you’re dealing with. If someone in my family did something like this… stars, I don’t know what I’d do. I can’t offer advice here, but if you ever need a shoulder to cry on, mine’s good and ready. As for who you are—and your name really is Rosemary, right?—okay.” He nodded back toward the homestead. “Do you know why Human modders give themselves weird names?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a really old practice, goes back to pre-Collapse computer networks. We’re talking old tech here. People would choose names for themselves that they only used within a network. Sometimes that name became so much a part of who they were that even their friends out in the real world started using it. For some folks, those names became their whole identity. Their true identity, even. Now, modders, modders don’t care about anything as much as individual freedom. They say that nobody can define you but you. So when Bear gave himself a new arm, he didn’t do it because he didn’t like the body he was born in, but because he felt that new arm fit him better. Tweaking your body, it’s all about trying to make your physical self fit with who you are inside. Not that you have to tweak to get that feeling. Like me, I like to decorate myself, but my body already fits with who I am. But some modders, they’ll keep changing themselves their entire lives. And it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes they seriously mess themselves up. But that’s the risk you take in trying to be more than the little box you’re born into. Change is always dangerous.” He tapped her arm. “You’re Rosemary Harper. You chose that name because the old one didn’t fit anymore. So you had to break a few laws to do it. Big fucking deal. Life isn’t fair, and laws usually aren’t, either. You did what you had to do. I get that.”
Rosemary bit her lip. “I still lied to you all.”
“Yeah, you did. And you’re going to have to fess up. Not to anybody outside the crew, if you don’t want to, but the people you live with need to hear it. That’s the only way you can make up for it and move on.”
“Ashby—”
“Ashby is the most reasonable man I’ve ever met. Sure, he’s not going to be thrilled about it.” He paused for a split second. Rosemary could see a separate thought flash past his eyes, distracting him. He cleared his throat, and came back. “But you’ve been kicking ass at your job, and you’re a good person. That’s going to matter more to him than anything else.”
Rosemary looked at her friend, and hugged him hard. “Thank you,” she said. Tears flowed down her cheeks. They felt clean.
“Hey, no worries. We’re crew. And you’ll get through this, you know. I know you will.” He paused. “I’m sorry for calling your dad an asshole.”
Rosemary looked at him with disbelief. “Jenks, my father sold biological weapons to both sides of a civil war outside his own species, and all for getting access to the ambi across their borders. I think calling him an asshole is being generous.”
“Well… okay, yeah, that’s fair.” He rubbed his beard. “Stars, I wish I knew what to say. When we get back to the ship, you need to talk to Dr. Chef. One on one.”
“About what?”
“About his species.”
Day 251, GC Standard 306
THE LAST WAR
There were few things Dr. Chef enjoyed more than a cup of tea. He made tea for the crew every day at breakfast time, of course, but that involved an impersonal heap of leaves dumped into a clunky dispenser. A solitary cup of tea required more care, a blend carefully chosen to match his day. He found the ritual of it quite calming: heating the water, measuring the crisp leaves and curls of dried fruit into the tiny basket, gently brushing the excess away with his fingerpads, watching color rise through water like smoke as it brewed. Tea was a moody drink.
There had been no tea on his home planet. Heated water was only for sleeping in, not for drinking. So many wonderful things they had missed out on, simply because they had never thought to imbibe the stuff! No tea, no soup, no mek—well, the mek was hardly a loss. He did not share his crewmates’ enthusiasm for the murky brew. Something about it reminded him of wet dirt, and not in a pleasant way.
He sat on a garden bench in the Fishbowl, his tea cooling as he worked through slow thoughts. Rosemary sat across from him, holding her own mug in her bony Human hands. She was silent as he thought out loud. He knew how strange they each were to the other—he for never thinking quietly, she for having no thinking sounds. He knew she understood his noise by now, though, and that knowledge made her silence feel companionable.
The thoughts he was drumming up were old and safely kept. Kizzy had accused him once of “bottling his feelings,” but this was a Human concept, the idea that one could hide their feelings away and pretend that they were not there. Dr. Chef knew exactly where all of his feelings were, every joy, every ache. He didn’t need to visit them all at once to know they were there. Humans’ preoccupation with “being happy” was something he had never been able to figure out. No sapient could sustain happiness all of the time, just as no one could live permanently within anger, or boredom, or grief. Grief. Yes, that was the feeling that Rosemary needed him to find today. He did not run from his grief, nor did he deny its existence. He could study his grief from a distance, like a scientist observing animals. He embraced it, accepted it, acknowledged that it would never go away. It was as much as part of him as any pleasant feeling. Perhaps even more so.
He cooed readiness, and focused on his vocal cords, forcing them to work together as one. He looked into Rosemary’s white-rimmed eyes. He began to speak.
“Our species are very different from one another. You have two hands, I have six. You sleep in a bed, I sleep in a tub. You like mek, I don’t. Many little differences. But there’s one big thing that Grum and Humans have in common, and that is our capacity for cruelty. Which is not to say we are bad at the core. I think both of our species have good intentions. But when left to our passions, we have it within ourselves to do despicable things. The only reason Humans stopped killing each other to the extent that you used to, I think, is because your planet died before you could finish the job. My species was not so lucky. The reason you haven’t seen any other Grum is because there are only some three hundred of us left.”