Only six days and I already cared what Ricci thought. I wanted her to like me. So I set about trying to give her a reason.
A few days later, we drifted into a massive storm system. Ricci’s first big one. I didn’t want her to miss it, so I bounced aft and hallooed to her at a polite distance from her hab. She was lounging in her netting, deep in multiple streams, twisting a lock of her short brown hair around her finger.
She looked happy enough to see me. No wariness behind her gaze, no chill.
We settled in to watch the light show. It was an eye-catcher. Bolts zagged to the peaks of the ice towers below, setting the fog alight with expanding patches of emerald green and acid magenta.
Two big bolts forked overhead with a mighty whump. Ricci didn’t even jump.
“What was that?” she asked.
I was going to stay silently mysterious, but then remembered I was trying to be friendly.
“That,” I said, “was lunch.”
A dark splotch began to coalesce at the spot where the two bolts had caressed each other, a green and violet pastel haze in the thin milky fog. We banked slowly, bladders groaning, massive sinus walls clicking as we changed shape to ride the wind currents up, up, and then the massive body flexed just enough to reveal two petals reaching into the coalescing bacteria bloom.
Ricci launched herself out of the netting and clung to the side of her hab, trying to get a better view of the feeding behavior. When the bloom dissipated, she turned to me.
“That’s all it does, this whale? Just search for food?”
“Eat, drink, and see the sights,” I said. “What else does anyone need from
life?”
Good company, I thought, but I didn’t say it.
The light show went on for hours. Ricci was fascinated from start to finish. Me, I didn’t see it. I spent the whole storm watching the light illuminate her face.
What else does anyone need from life? That was me trying to be romantic. Clumsy. Also inaccurate.
When we first moved out here, my old friends and I thought our habs would eventually become self-contained. Experience killed that illusion pretty quick. We’re almost as dependent on the planetary civil apparatus as anyone.
Without feedstock, for example, we’d either starve or suffocate—not sure which would happen first. It has a lot of mass, so we can’t stockpile much.
Then there’s power. Funding it is a challenge when you’re supplying eight people as opposed to eight million. No economy of scale in a hab this size. It’s not the power feed itself that’s the problem, but the infrastructure. We’re always on the move, so the feed has to follow us around and provide multiple points of redundancy. Our ambient power supply costs base market value plus a massive buy-back on the research and development.
Data has to follow us around too, but we don’t bother with redundancy. It’s not critical. You’d think it was more important than air, though, if you saw us when the data goes down. Shrieking. Curses. Bouche just about catatonic (she’s a total media junkie). Eleanora wall-eyed with panic especially if she’s in the middle of a tournament (chess is her drug of choice). Vula, Eddy, and me in any state from suave to suicidal depending on what we’re doing when the metaphorical umbilical gets yanked out of our guts.
Treasure and Chara are the only ones who don’t freak out. Usually they’re too busy boning each other.
Without data, we couldn’t stay here, either. If we only had each other to talk to, it’d be a constant drama cycle, but we’re all plugged into the hab cultures down belowground. We’ve got hobbies to groom, projects to tend, performances to cheer, games to play, friends to visit.
Finally, as an independent political entity, we need brokers and bankers to handle our economic transactions and lawyers to vet our contracts. We all need the occasional look-in from medtechs and physical therapists. And when we need a new crew member, we contract a recruiter.
“You look tired,” Jane said the next time Ricci called. “I thought you said you were sleeping.”
Ricci hung upside down in her netting. She’d made friends with the orang. It squatted in front of her, holding the appliance while she chatted with Jane.
“I’ve been digging through some old work.” She dangled her arms, hooked her fingers in the floor grid, and stretched. “I came up with a new approach to my first dissertation.”
Jane gaped. Her mouth worked like she was blowing bubbles.
“I know,” Ricci added. “I’ll never change, right?”
“Don’t you try that with me.” Jane’s eyes narrowed. “You have a choice—”
Ricci raised her hands in mock surrender. “Okay. Take it easy.” “—you can keep working on getting better, or you can go back to your old habits.”
“It’s not your fault, Jane. You’re a great therapist.”
“This isn’t about me, you idiot,” Jane yelled. “It’s about you.”
“I tried, Jane.” Ricci’s voice was soft, ardent. “I really tried. So hard.”
“I know you did.” Jane sucked in a deep breath. “Don’t throw away all your progress.”
They went on and on like that. I didn’t listen, just checked in now and then to see if they were still at it. I knew Ricci’s story. I’d read the report from the recruiter. The privacy seal had timed out but I remembered the details.
Right out of the crèche she’d dived into an elite chemical engineering program, the kind every over-fond crèche manager wants for their favorite little geniuses. Sound good, doesn’t it? Isn’t that where you’d want to put your little Omi or Occam, little Carey or Karim? But what crèche managers don’t realize—because their world is full of guided discovery opportunities and subconscious learning stimuli—is that high-prestige programs are grinders. Go ahead, dump a crèche-full of young brilliants inside. Some of them won’t come out whole.
I know; I went through one myself.
When Ricci crashed out of the chem program within spitting distance of an advanced degree, she bounced to protein engineering. She
