On their brief travels with Satlyt strapped to their back as a tender-faced baby, NuTay had seen the perimeter of one of these excavation zones from a mile away, floodlights like a white sunrise against the night, flowing over a vast black wall lined with flashing lights. Humming in the ground, and thunder crashing over the flatlands from whatever engines were used to unearth the deep ruins and mine whatever was in them.
NuTay’s steed, a sturdy black mare the stablemaster that had bartered her had named Pacho, had been unusually restless even a mile from that zone. NuTay imagined the ghosts of a bygone world seeping from out of those black walls, and trickling into their limbs and lungs and those of their tender child gurgling content against their back.
NuTay rode away as fast as they could. Pacho died a few weeks later, perhaps older than the stablemaster had promised. But NuTay blamed the zone, and rubbed ointment on Satlyt for months after, dreading the morning they’d find their kin dead because of vengeful ghosts from the long dead world that hid beneath this planet’s time.
For Satlyt’s survival NuTay thanked the stars, especially Sol, that had no ghosts around them.
Satlyt had asked NuTay one day where they’d come from, and whose kin NuTay themself was. NuTay had waited for that day, and had answers for their child, who was ten at the time. They sat by their shack in the evening light, NuTay waving a solar lantern until it lit.
I am a nu-jen dunyashar, Satlyt, they said to their child. This means I have no maba, no parents at all.
Satlyt asked how, eyes wide with existential horror.
Listen. Many … djeens were brought here frozen many years ago. I taught you; two humans’ djeens whisper together to form a new human. Some humans share their djeens with another human in tiny eggs held in their bellies, and others share it in liquid held between their legs. Two people from some world that I don’t know gave their djeens in egg and liquid, so that peoples could bring them here frozen to make new humans to work here, and help give solace to the wayfarers travelling the stars. We are these new humans—the dunyshar. There are many old-jen dunyshar here who have parents, and grandparents, and on and on—the first of their pre-kin were born to surrogates a long time ago. Understand, nah?
Satlyt nodded, perhaps bewildered.
I was nu-jen; the first person my djeens formed here on the planet of arrivals and departures. I was born right there, NuTay stopped here to point at the distant lights of the dromes. In the nursery, where wayfarer surrogates live for nine months growing us, new-jen kin, when there aren’t enough people in the ports anymore. They get good barter value for doing this, from the off-world peoples who run these ports.
Who taught you to talk? Who taught you what all you know? asked Satlyt.
The dunyshar, chota kin! They will help their own. All the people in this shanty place, they taught me. The three sibs who raised me through the youngest years and weaned me are all, bless them, dead from time, plain simple. This planet is too light for humans to live too long as Earth and other livable worlds.
Did you sleep with the three sibs so the djeens whispered me into existence?
No, no! No, they were like my parents, I couldn’t do that. I slept with another when I grew. Their name was Farweh. Farweh, I say na, your other maba. With them I had you, chota kin.
They are dead, too?
NuTay smiled then, though barely. I don’t know, Satlyt. They left, on a starship.
How? They were a wayfarer?
No, they grew up right here, new-jen, same as me. They had long black hair like you, and the red cheeks like you also, the djeens alive and biting at the skin to announce the beauty of the body they make.
Satlyt slapped NuTay’s hand and stuck out their tongue.
Oy! Why are you hitting your maba? Fine, you are ugly, the djeens hide away and are ashamed.
Satlyt giggled.
Anyway, such a distracted child. Your other maba, we grew up here together. We had you.
They were here? When I was born?
NuTay pursed their lips. They had promised that their child would have the entire truth.
For a while, hn. But they left. Don’t be angry. Farweh wanted to take you. They made a deal with a wayfarer that sold them a spacesuit. They said they could get two more, one emergency suit for babies. Very clever, very canny, Farweh was.
Why?
NuTay took a deep breath. To hold on to a starship. To see eternity beyond the Window, and come out to another world on the other side.
Other maba went away holding on to a starship on the outside?
I see I taught you some sense, chota kin. Yes, it is as dangerous as it sounds. Some people have done it—if they catch you on the other side, they take you away to jail, like in the dromes for murderers and rapists and drunkards. But bigger jail, for other worlds. That is if you survive. Theory, na? Possible. But those who do it, ride the starships on the side, see the other side of time? They never come back. So we can’t ask if it worked or no, nah? So I said no. I said I will not take my kin like a
