Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

Kit sighed. “Neither do I.”

They walked on into the growing twilight. Inside the stone circle ahead of them, a light came on, spilling shadows out across the grassland from the stones: Cheleb had brought out one of the electric campfires. “I guess they have to do what they think is right for them,” Ronan said. “But it doesn’t make it suck any less, from where I’m standing.”

Kit shook his head. “Nope.”

They reached the circle of stones, and for a moment Kit just put a hand out and leaned on the nearest one, breathing out. He suddenly felt very tired in a way that didn’t have anything to do with a full day of gate monitoring.

“You sure you’re all right now?” Ronan said. “You really took a hit of some kind back there.”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “But I’m okay. I think I was just picking up something from the sibik because I was holding it. It was really glad to be back…”

“I got that feeling,” Ronan said, grabbing Kit by the shoulder and shaking him. “You make sure you’re all right now, yeah? Get some food in you tonight instead of feeding it to every bloody octopus that comes along.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Kit said. “Gonna stay for the video portion of the evening?”

“No, gotta go,” Ronan said, “I’m taking an extra shift this evening: my daytime shiftmate gave me some extra time to come over here and I’ve got to get back there now. He has to take some time off.” Ronan looked over his shoulder. “All this has been getting to him. I can see why.”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “Okay. Look, text me later if you feel— You know.”

“Like kicking somebody?” Ronan said, amused.

“Like dumping,” Kit said.

Ronan took a big breath, sighed it out. “Yeah,” he said. “Same from your end.”

Kit nodded. “Let’s see how it goes.”

Ronan lifted a hand, a slightly weary wave, and headed back for the short-transit pad. Kit watched him go, then turned inward to go sit on the Stone Throne with Cheleb and give him a more complete shift debriefing before finding some food that no tentacles would now be grabbing for.

***

A cheerful enough evening ensued, though under the circumstances it took a good while for Kit’s mind and mood to settle. At least part of this is blood sugar, he thought. After all, he hadn’t really had all that much of anything today but coffee and crackers and a croissant, and bearing in mind everything he’d been up to, that wasn’t much.

Kit ducked into his puptent and pulled together a selection of snacks, avoiding the saltines, which really were seriously diminished; he was going to have to take inventory to see what he had left and start rationing them. Instead he fished out the box of Ritz crackers, along with some more of the spray-can cheese and a can of deviled ham and one of deviled chicken (so that he wouldn’t keep hearing his Mama yelling at him in his head, “Man is not meant to live on carbs alone, eat some protein!”). There was also some of the regular, plastic-wrapped sliced yellow cheese that his Mama sniffed at and pronounced “barely worthy of the name”. But Kit liked it, and it was protein, so for the time being he pulled out some slices of that too and decided to see what Cheleb and Djam made of it.

When he got out again, Djam already had his floating holographic screen display up and running, and had laid out some of his own homeworld’s food and drink. His people were essentially vegetarian as far as Kit could tell, and what he set out on a few hovering trays was a batch of strange-shaped fruits and giant berries and drupes patterned in a rainbow of colors, and slabs of processed fruit and vegetable snacks. There was also a large product-labeled jug of something that looked so much like Star Wars “blue milk” that Kit burst out laughing when he saw it. “Did you bring this out on purpose after yesterday? What is it?”

“Sekoldra juice,” Djam said. “Extremely healthy, or so my parents insist.”

“Any truth to rumor?” Cheleb said.

Djam shrugged. “Could be,” he said, “but I’d be slow to admit it. They run too much of my life as it is. No point in letting them think I agree with their food choices.”

The three of them laughed together, each after his or haes own fashion, and shared some of the blue milk, which Kit took to immediately. It tasted a lot like a Creamsicle might have if you melted it down, and had a slight fizz. “So, ready for more entertainment now?” Cheleb said as they pooled the rest of their various foods and started divvying them up.

“Absolutely. At the very least we can finish up the first trilogy,” Kit said. “…Though as I said, actually it’s the second. But it came out first.”

Cheleb threw haes arms up in a shrug-like gesture. “Temporal discontinuities,” hae said, “story of our lives for wizards. Got some questions before we start, though.”

“Sure, shoot,” Kit said, getting himself comfortable on the cushion he’d brought out to the Stone Throne and reaching for his manual to bring the streaming-video linkage up.

Cheleb gave him a bemused look. “With what? Not armed.”

“Sorry,” Kit said. He’d dropped into English for the moment. “It’s an idiom. Ask away.” He started pulling up the streaming-video settings on his manual so that Djam could screen the content from them as they had yesterday.

“Humanoid people we saw in first two entertainments yesterday,” Cheleb said, “main characters; some localized hominomorphism there perhaps? Guessing they’re based on some of your species’ major physical/gender arrangements.”

“Safe guess,” Kit said. He guessed that this was more of Cheleb’s ongoing inquiry into the biology of every species hae ran into. It had something to do with haes specialty, which was life-science based, Kit knew; but the small amount of research he’d done on it so far had just confused him.

“So,” Cheleb said. “Those were all ‘he’?”

“Well, not all. A lot of them.”

“But the Wookiee was one?” Djam said. He had taken an interest in the character and had started casually referring to him as his “counterpart.”

“Uh, he’s a male, yeah. Everybody calls him ‘he’, anyway.”

“And person we saw in white clothes all the time,” Cheleb said, “small one with hair like wheels in the first entertainment, arguing with vested fellow all the time—that was a ‘she’?”

“That’s right,” Kit said, wondering where this was going.

“Your errantry-partner also,” Cheleb said, “similarly a ‘she’?”

“Uh, yeah,” Kit said.

“Aha!” Cheleb said. “Thought so. Reminds me; meant to ask you. Conducted traditional fertility-confirmation ritual as yet?”

Kit stared at him, taken aback. “Sorry?”

“Impregnation,” Cheleb said. “You’re ‘he’, that one’s ‘she’, both well past latency now according to Knowledgebase, both of you entering prime fertility period, when does impregnation ritual happen?”

“Uh,” Kit said, as his brain more or less whited out. Immediately after that came the thought, I have got to keep Neets away from here somehow till I get this guy settled or we are going to have such a demonstration of Callahan’s Unfavorable Instigation…!

“Researched your species/culture in Knowledge last night,” said Cheleb with considerable relish, and exuding that particular kind of satisfaction that comes of having done your homework and of being absolutely ready to give a report on it. “Many highly nuanced traditions and rituals for such a simple sex/gender setup, most creative from culture to culture, all delightfully inventive.”

“What?”

“And all interleaving to greater or lesser extent with Earth-human fertilization procedure,” Cheleb said. “Some ambiguities in Knowledge material. Perhaps explain how works? Just highlights of course.”