Federations

months for the morath colony to fall into HD 76700, and the few survivors were told to leave Hex and never return.^[8]

Humans were only the latest race to stake out land on Hex. Our six habs were located about halfway up the northern hemisphere where the surface gravity was about .7-g, less than Earth’s but just a little more than Coyote’s. The Texas Rose entered spherical node between habs One and Two; a mile in diameter, it was spacious enough to hangar the entire Federation fleet, and indeed two other vessels were already docked there. Our ships had been coming to Hex for over a year now, bringing materials necessary to turn our hexagon into a little version of Coyote. Now that the Rose had completed its circuit, about half of our cargo would end up here, most of it various items we’d acquired in trade with other races.

So far, only Hab One—christened Nueva Italia by those who lived there—was settled, and even so its population was still less than a thousand. Not many people on Coyote were willing to pull up roots and relocate so far away from others of their own kind. A small town, Milan, had been built near the western end of the cylinder, not far from the tram station that connected Nueva Italia with the other habs in our hex. The dwellings were prefab faux-birch yurts shipped from 47 Uma, but it was hoped that, once sufficient forestland was cultivated, the colonists would have their own supply of lumber.

I spent the better part of my first day on Hex driving a forklift, hauling pallets, crates and barrels from the tram to an open-sided shed where the supplies were stockpiled, so I didn’t get much of a chance to look around. Indeed, I was trying hard not to; I’d seen many strange things during my tour of the galaxy, but even this minuscule corner of Hex was mesmerizing. It took an effort to not become distracted by a landscape that lacked a discernible horizon, but instead curved upward on both sides and at either end until it merged with a barrel-shaped sky where a sun perpetually stayed in the same place, never rising or setting.

Even so, the day on Nueva Italia did eventually come to an end. The danui had programmed the window panes to gradually polarize over the course of hours until a semblance of nighttime came upon Milan. A collection of yurts in the center of town served as a bed-and-breakfast for travelers, and nearby was a small tavern. After knocking off work, I joined the rest of my crew at the tavern. Hex marked the end of our long voyage, and the captain was feeling generous; he told the barkeep that he’d pay the tab for everyone at our table, and so we settled in for a night of drinking.

I was on my third or fourth pint of ale when I became aware of something tugging at my left foot. Looking down, I found a young woman kneeling beside me; the laces of my work shoes had come undone, and she was retying them for me. Her head was bowed, so the only thing I saw at first was the top of her scalp; light brown hair fell around her shoulders, hiding her face from me. I started to tell her that I could tie my own shoes, thanks anyway, but then she looked up at me.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“Yes . . . yes, I think you do.”

“You should be more careful. If you walk around with untied shoes, you might trip over them and hurt yourself.”

“Good advice. I make mistakes like that sometimes.”

“People are like that. They do things they don’t mean to do.”

“Umm . . . yeah, you’re right. Sometimes you don’t . . . ”

“Hush.” Jordan reached up to take my face in her hands. “I forgive you.”

• • •

She’d received my letters. That was my first question; any others were unnecessary, or at least just then.

In time, she would tell how she’d thought about responding, but decided instead to maintain an aloof silence while waiting to see what I’d say or do next. And when she’d heard enough to convince herself that my apologies were sincere and that I really did love her, she left her family and caught the next ship to Hex, knowing that the Rose would eventually make its way there. And then she’d waited for me to show up, to tell me . . . 

“I got your letters,” Jordan said, once she’d kissed me. “I read every one of them. And I’m sorry, too.”

“You don’t have to be.” She was sitting beside me at the table, her hands in mine. The rest of my crew, realizing that we needed to be left alone, had quietly moved to another side of the room. “Anything you said, I don’t . . . ”

“No. That’s not what I mean. Your letters . . . I’m sorry, but I don’t have them any more.”

“What did you . . . ?”

“I had to get here somehow, and my family didn’t want me to . . . well, you know how my parents feel about you. So I sold your letters to buy passage out here.”

“I don’t understand. Who would buy my letters? Who’d even want to read . . . ?”

“Who do you think?”

Who, indeed?

Of course, I forgave her for this. Love is a matter of forgiveness, if nothing else. Since then, we’ve had a very happy life together, here on Hex, where the sun never sets and we have plenty of neighbors to keep us company.

All the same, we try to avoid the hjadd. They know enough about us already. How our story ends is none of their business.

LIKE THEY ALWAYS BEEN FREE GEORGINA LI

Georgina Li is a new writer, with just one previous publication, a (non-genre) story called “Closer to the Sky” in the current issue of Chroma. She says she used to write everyday and then for a long time she didn’t and now she writes some days but not others. When she’s not writing she likes to paint, bright colors on small canvases, torn pages, cardboard squares pulled from the recycling bin.

About “Like They Always Been Free” she says, “In a larger sense it’s about the things we value and the things we don’t, about how everything changes when that one paradigm shifts. But mostly it’s a love story.”

Underground there ain’t nothin’ but dark and sweat and filth, figure that out quick or get on with dyin’, just weren’t no other way. Guard on the transpo told Kinger, “You ain’t willin’, you ain’t worth it,” and Kinger opened his mouth easy, Guard’s skinny business jammed in his throat, words sinkin’ in. Cut that Guard’s throat with his own damn knife, didn’t even bother runnin’. Figured the Hole probably weren’t much different from where he been headed, ’cept for Boy bein’ huddled in the corner there, big eyes shinin’ in the dark.

Boy said, “You kill that Guard?” and Kinger grinned bloody, spit a chunk of flesh down where Boy could reach.

Underground Kinger told himself every day, “You ain’t willin’, you ain’t worth it,” told himself over and over, every time he killed, every time he ate, sewed them bones right into his skin. There’d been light on the transpo, even down in the Hole, not much, but enough Kinger could see Boy without tryin’ too hard, blue skin so pretty it hurt to look away, so pretty Kinger knew Boy weren’t headed Underground, weren’t meant for minin’ some shit-torn planet, not lookin’ like he did.

Underground ain’t no light at all, not so it mattered. Weren’t nothin’ there to see.

This ship there’s sunlight, this ship there’s noise, this ship ain’t any place Kinger ever expected to be. Underground six years best as he could figure, no sunlight, nothin’ but what he come with and that weren’t much. Blood on his hands and an empty belly, Boy on the transpo still, slavebound somewhere else.

Underground Kinger scraped the hair from his body with that Guard’s knife most every day, blade sharpened on the rocks. Hard enough to keep himself alive, keep breathin’ even if it were only the same dank air he spit out the day before. One thing bein’ willin’, somethin’ else all together havin’ vermin burrowed in, livin’ off his meat. Underground, you ate what came your way or it ate you, and Kinger staked his claim on the food chain day one, kept on livin’.

Dreamt of Boy off and on, his voice, his skin; licked the lichen off the rock walls when it glowed pale blue, bitter