Starsight

“What about people who complain or don’t fit with your society?” I asked. “What happens to them? That person who was protesting out in front of the docks? Where are they now?”

“Exile is the fate of many who make trouble,” Morriumur said. “But again, do we owe species the right to live on our stations? Can’t you focus on all the individuals we’re helping, instead of the few that we can’t figure out how to fit?”

It seemed to me that the ones who didn’t fit were the most significant—the real measure of what it was like to live in the Superiority. Besides, I kept repeating to myself the most important fact: that these people had suppressed and tried to exterminate mine. I didn’t know the whole story, but from what Gran-Gran had said, my direct ancestors on the Defiant hadn’t taken part in the main war. They’d been condemned simply for being humans, and had been chased until they’d crashed on Detritus.

Brade hadn’t caused a war, but the Superiority treated her like cavern slime. It made it hard to think about the “good” the government did when I found the exceptions so very blatant.

We walked farther, and I kept my arms pulled tight at my sides, because if I bumped someone, they apologized to me. All this false kindness, hiding their destructive ways. All this strangeness. Even Morriumur themself was an example of it. They were two people who had . . . grown together by pupating, like a caterpillar. Two people, imitating a third person.

How could I hope to understand such a people as this? I was supposed to act like this was normal? We walked around a corner, passing two Krell. Even still, whenever I saw one of them the hair stood up on the back of my neck and a chill passed through me. The images of their armor had been used in Defiant iconography since before I’d been born.

“Can you feel them?” I found myself asking Morriumur as we passed the Krell. “Your parents?”

“Kind of,” Morriumur said. “It is difficult to describe. I’m made up of them. In the end, they will decide whether to give birth, or whether to pupate and try again. So they’re watching, and they’re conscious—but at the same time they are not. Because I am using their brains to think, as I am using their melded bodies to move.”

Scud. It was just so . . . well, alien.

We turned around a wall, stepping through an archway into the garden that Morriumur had been leading me to.

I froze in place and gaped. I’d been imagining some streams and maybe a waterfall, but the “water garden” was something far more grand. Enormous shimmering globs of water—easily a meter across—floated above the ground. They undulated and reflected light, hanging some two meters or more in the air.

Below, smaller globs emerged from spigots in the ground and floated upward as well, merging or splitting apart. Children of a hundred different species ran through the park, chasing the bubblelike chunks of water. It was like zero G, but only for the water. Indeed, when children would catch a glob of water and slap it, it would splash into a thousand smaller globs that rippled, catching light.

I ate lunch in the cockpit each day during training, and was quite familiar with how odd it could be to drink in zero G. I’d sometimes squeeze a glob of water out to hover in front of me, then stick my lips into it and suck it down. This was the same thing, only on an enormous scale.

It was gorgeous.

“Come!” Morriumur said. “It’s my favorite place in the city. Just be careful! The water might splash on you.”

We stepped into the park and followed a path between spigots. The children didn’t all smile and laugh—diones had their characteristic lax, nonthreatening expressions, while other species would howl. One very pink child I passed was making a hiccupping sound.

Yet, seeing them together, their joy was palpable. Varied though they were, they were all having fun.

“How do they do this?” I asked, reaching out and tapping a bubble of water as it passed. It shook in the air, vibrating, looking

a little like the way the sound of a deep drum felt.

“I’m not sure, entirely,” Morriumur said. “It has something to do with specific uses of artificial gravity and certain ionizations.” Morriumur bowed their head. I was pretty sure that was a dione method of shrugging. “My parents came here often. I inherited a love of the place from both. Here! Come sit. See that timer over there? This is the best part!”

We settled onto a bench, Morriumur leaning forward, watching a timer on the far side of the park. Most of this ground was a stone patio, without much ornamentation other than pathways of a light blue rock, lined with benches. When the timer on the far wall hit zero, all of the water bubbles in the air burst and came crashing down in a sudden rain, which made the playing children squeal and laugh, and excitedly call out to each other and their parents.

I found the sounds transfixing.