I said I supposed it was and then turned my energies to convincing Claire-Nathalie to get off at her own Metro stop and let me find my way home. They had added three lines and who knew how many stops since I’d last lived in Montreal, but it didn’t matter—any fool could listen for the stop name or poke their handheld to alert them.
Once I’d told Claire-Nathalie that, I was afraid I would be the fool who couldn’t. But I made it off the train and onto the squashy platform stairs myself. I resolved to never, ever contact her again, and possibly to ignore any attempts at contact she attempted to make. Possibly everyone on Earth would feel the same about my feet and the advisability of finding my own kind. Still, it was worth finding out.
After a few days of handheld exploration in my apartment, I ventured out in hopes of finding something, anything that looked familiar. Not far from home, I did: the Hungarian restaurant was in the same place, the striped awnings the same. Of course they had probably been replaced a dozen times since I had last seen them, and I wasn’t sure whether the name was the same or not.
I went in, and I would have sworn it was the same woman seating me, and the same cakes in the display case, although of course they had probably both been replaced with the awnings. The cucumber salad was the same, but most of the things that had had beef in them before were made with fowl or lamb. I asked the waiter.
“You are not from here, I can hear it, though your French is of course lovely,” he said in outrageously Hungarian-accented French. “Beef is almost entirely African and South Asian now. You are perhaps from Africa?”
“I have most recently come from a Brazilian island,” I said truthfully.
“Ah, Brazil!” he said. “Well, they can afford whatever they like, can’t they? And on islands one supposes it’s easier to keep the cattle isolated. But here it is all birds and sheep. They stay healthier for cheaper. It is very traditional. We have always eaten this way.”
“I see,” I said. “Thank you.”
“And would you perhaps like some cake? We have very fine cake here.”
“I see that you have,” I said, but I ordered
This began to bother me more and more.
I spoke at the garden enthusiasts’ club meeting, and I called them “modders” just as Claire-Nathalie had. They received me with mild hobbyist enthusiasm. They served me sweets that all seemed to have bits of pear in them. I was not changing their lives. It certainly did not change mine.
I looked on the net for former terraformer classmates who had gone off to the colonies. Only one of them had come back to Montreal: Stephane D’Abbadie, three years older than me to begin with. I had no idea how many years older he would be now. He had left while I was still in classes and come back while I was still in transit back from New Landing. I didn’t know much about his colony, Outpost. It was older than New Landing, but not by much. I had thought to catch up on Earth, but not on the handful of other colonies, and my news feeds were set to Earth, New Landing, and “general interest,” whatever that meant these days.
I thought briefly about reading up on Outpost before going to see Stephane, but I decided not to. I don’t know why I didn’t think of messaging him like a polite person, to let him know I was on my way or find out if he wanted to see me. We had been friends, but not good friends. And that was two decades and three planets ago.
When he answered the door, he looked just the same, but his dark skin was an ashier brown than I remembered, and he had started tinting his hair red over the black, so it looked like a mass of curled cherry wood shavings. I didn’t even remember what my own hair was like when he left for Outpost. I opened my mouth and found it dry and stuck.
“Hello,” he said. He didn’t move to invite me in, or even to indicate that he knew who I was.
“It’s me, Mireille, I’m back,” I said.
“I see that,” said Stephane.
“I can deal with them putting pears in everything now,” I said, “but I can’t get my head around the squashy floors in the Metro.”
He peered at me, and then a smile broke over his face. “All right, Mireille, come in.” As he made us tea and set out some grapes, he said, “You should feel grateful you’ve come home to a place where there’s snow. In all the cities where they don’t have to clear snow, the squashy floors are everywhere. They’ve decided they’re more natural.”
I tried to smile. “Natural. Everyone wants to call their pet theories natural but us, Stephane.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I don’t, after twenty-eight years?”
“Twenty-three for me,” I said. “No, but I know. Because terraformers don’t do that. We know how easily it could go one way or another. We know that we’re not in the business of natural.”
He said, “I haven’t been in the business of much of anything since I came home.”
“I haven’t figured out what I’d like to do, either,” I said. “I have my savings.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t fill the days.”
“No.”
I huffed a sigh of frustration. “Well, then, what are you doing?”
“Drugs and meaningless sex, mostly,” he said.
I blinked. He didn’t.
“You’re joking,” I said tentatively.
“I am, actually,” he said, and the grin returned. “No, I’ll show you what I’ve been doing, if you like. It’s not the least bit scandalous. Or at least it shouldn’t be. I’m afraid I don’t have the hang of what’s a scandal and what isn’t yet.”
“On New Landing, the amount of loafing I’ve been doing would be a scandal.”
“Outpost, too,” he said. “Come on.”
He had the keys to a shed in the back garden of his apartment building, and it was fully powered, not the tool shed I would have assumed. When he took me outside, I thought gardening, but the shed smelled of wood shavings and varnish, and sawdust scuffed under our feet.
“No squashy floors here, either,” he said, smiling. He opened a cabinet and handed me a small wooden toy, dark and light together. It had wheels and hooks.
“A train car?”
“I make wooden toys. Mostly trains. Some trucks and things. I did it on Outpost from time to time—the children loved it, but my time was mostly taken—well, you know.”
“Your children?” I asked, though I knew it was the wrong question.
“No. I never…”
“Neither did I.”
“Ah, well,” he said gravely.
I fiddled with the train car, running it back and forth along my hand. “The wheels are really lovely.”
“Thank you. Do you want to see how I made them?”
I thought about it. “Why not?”
So he showed me the lathe on which he shaped the wheels, and their evenness seemed inevitable. Before I knew it, it was late afternoon, and I had carved out the rough shape of a caboose while watching Stephane do the detailing on an engine with far more in the way of scrolls and curlicues than the plain little train car he’d handed me.
“I would say let’s get takeout,” I said, “but they put lamb on their pizzas now, I expect.”
“Mutton pepperoni is surprisingly edible once you’re used to it,” he said. “The spices cover a multitude of sins. I know a place.”
We didn’t have pepperoni at all in New Landing. I don’t know how I could have forgotten it. It was worth the mutton, every bite.
“Do you sell the trains?” I asked when we’d finished the pizza.
“I haven’t tried, not here. I don’t know where I’d start. On Outpost there was always someone who wanted
