The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers (read along books txt) 📗

Roveg an Akarak, were he linking wrist-hooks with her and opening himself in the radical way required if you truly wanted someone’s help, she would hold nothing back, couch nothing in pretence. And so, she said exactly what she wanted to say next: ‘May I ask what it was that led to your exile?’

Roveg was silent for a long time. Speaker feared she’d swung too far, but eventually, his motionless eyes glittered. ‘I told the wrong stories,’ he said.

‘You said you make vacation sims.’

‘Nowadays, yes. But in my younger years, I designed narrative sims, and … well. My political subtext wasn’t as clever as I thought.’

That seemed a callous reason to drive someone out of an entire region of the galaxy, but such extremity matched what she’d been told of the Quelin, and why she and Tracker never flew through their space. ‘Why did you stop telling stories?’

‘I enjoy giving people templates in which they can make their own stories. Telling my own requires a mindset I just can’t return to.’ Roveg was quiet for several seconds. ‘Just because I was right doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.’ He stared off, past the garden, past the dome, all the way to the horizon. ‘But you’re correct. Our species – no, forgive me, our cultures – aren’t the same at all. Quelin fear outsiders because we use them as scapegoats for the things we fear about ourselves. We bar cultural exchange because change frightens us. Whereas your people …’ He looked at her. ‘You fear outsiders because they gave you no choice in the change they forced upon you.’

‘There’s more to it than that,’ Speaker said. ‘But that’s a piece, yes.’

The progress monitor chimed completion. Roveg leaned forward; Speaker did the same with her suit.

Error

Connection lost

Cause: unknown

‘Agh,’ Roveg moaned. ‘Stars, I don’t know what’s wrong, that should’ve—’

‘It’s all right,’ Speaker said. She was disappointed, of course, but the beak-snapping anxiety she’d felt in the shuttle had ebbed. The feeling remained as a background hum, still imagining the same horrors, still desperately wanting solutions. But she’d tamed it, for the moment. She, and the stranger who had attempted to help. ‘It’s enough that you tried,’ she said. ‘Really.’

His frills drooped with defeat, but he turned his inscrutable face to hers once more. ‘I am sorry it didn’t work. But thank you for the rekree, Speaker. Am I saying that correctly?’

‘Rakree,’ she said.

‘Rakree,’ he repeated.

‘That’s right. And yes. Thank you, as well.’

Day 237, GC Standard 307

YOUR CONTINUED PATIENCE

ROVEG

The building was the same shape as the other pre-fab bubbles that comprised the Five-Hop, but that was where the similarity ended. The outside had been painted – in amateur fashion and drab monochrome – with images of erupting volcanoes, careening meteorites, glittering gems, and … and … some shapes. The shapes had meaning, Roveg was sure, but whatever their artist’s intent had been, it was lost in the execution. He stood pondering one lopsided blob that was probably a cliff. Maybe a rock. Could also be a water tank, if you turned your head to the side. There was no way to be sure.

A sign hung above the entrance to the building, its style quite unlike that of its prodigious cousins. This sign was engraved, not printed, and embellished with thick lacquer and faux-metal highlights. A custom order, commissioned by someone who wanted it to look elegant but without the means for heavy expense.

The sign read:

THE GORAN NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

ESTABLISHED GC STANDARD 304

HEAD CURATOR: OOLI OHT TUPO

A beaded curtain hung beneath the sign. Roveg passed through it, taking a moment to disentangle a few of the strings from where they’d caught in the ridges of his shell. He took in his surroundings, and his heart melted. ‘Oh, stars,’ he chuckled to himself.

The Goran Natural History Museum consisted of a single room crammed with tables, and atop the tables lay … well, rocks, mostly. There were big rocks and small rocks, rocks in boxes, rocks in stacks, rocks atop sagging pedestals, shards and pebbles and vials of dirt. The ostensible exhibits were marked with placards made from the same printer as the rest of the Five-Hop’s signage, and proclaimed titles like ‘Planetary Formation’, ‘Early Eras’, and ‘Anthropological Relics’. This last sign was posted above the only table in the Goran Natural History Museum which did not contain rocks, but rather, everyday bits and bobs that appeared to have fallen out of the pockets of dozens of travellers. Every cheap gadget and forgotten trinket was displayed and labelled as though it were precious treasure. Roveg thought that perhaps, to the curator, that’s exactly what they were.

Outside, someone came running – four paws, hitting the path hard. The sound grew closer and closer until at last Tupo burst through the curtain with a loud clatter, nearly getting xyr feet tangled in the beaded strings as xe skidded to a halt.

‘Welcome to my museum,’ Tupo gasped. There was glee in xyr voice, a sound that had been completely absent when Tupo had greeted Roveg at the airlock, or offered him cakes in the garden, or recited anything that had been xyr mother’s idea. But said glee was somewhat smothered, as the child was out of breath. (Lungs were limited in that respect, Roveg had learned; he was grateful for the much more sensible layout of his multiple abdominal airways.) ‘If you have – if you have any quest— whew, hang on.’ Tupo rested xyr head against the back of xyr lower neck and tried to catch xyr breath. ‘I was in the kitchen when I saw you come in.’

‘Sorry, should I have found you before entering?’ Roveg asked. He hadn’t seen any signage out front about checking in or buying a ticket or anything like that. If there was one thing he was sure of about the Five-Hop, it was that there was a sign for everything.

‘Yeah, no, it’s always – it’s always open.’ Tupo’s breaths