Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Six days later, and we’re deep in the Scottish woods. Despite being on track by every indication of my study of this region, it feels like we’re lost. We’ve stayed off the highways, but I’ve still used them to gauge our progress, seeking a glimpse of upturned gray rubble every hour or two to keep our bearings, sometimes scaling a pine tree to do so, the scent of fresh sap bright under my calloused palms.

Ambrose proves more than capable of keeping up—in fact, he’s our main pacesetter, his leaner and rangier body easily vaulting obstacles I have to clamber over more carefully. For long stretches, it’s him and Sheep ahead in my view, lush greens and browns hemming those living beings in on either side as they pass through the narrow brambly canyons of these wet wilds.

Days of travel without rest have dampened Sheep’s pace from bouncy and excitable to sullen and deliberate. Her head hangs as she places hoof after hoof, only looking up at Ambrose when he addresses her directly or pats her woolen head. Sometimes when we rest, she takes a while choosing the softest bed of pine needles and then refuses to get back up. Each time we hike onward toward the Glasgow astronomical observatory, letting her pass out of view behind us, my heart quakes. But then, hours later, when we break for our next meal, there’s Sheep walking along the path toward us, glaring.

The monotony of this long trek combines strangely with the urgency of our mission. There is so much to do, and the stakes are so high, and yet hour by hour there is only the crunch of old leaves, foraging for food in abandoned homes and shops. I’m revving but not feeling like I’m getting anywhere, and it makes me even more incapable than usual of conversation. There’s nothing further to deliberate about our mission. But nothing else compares to it. So we’re quiet.

Tonight’s dinner is a years-expired kielbasa sausage, still sealed in its wrapper, the cells of lab-raised meat dry but still edible. We found some oats for Sheep, and even though they’re artificially flavored with blueberries she seems quite pleased with them, knocking the polycarb container against the rocks of the firepit as she tries to tongue out every last morsel.

For the first few days, I had to sneak my glances at Ambrose, but now that we’re in this peaceful zone, with Ambrose too exhausted to chatter at me, I find myself able to stare at him more frankly. My curiosity about him, my interest in making him an erotiyet, has risen from a flicker to a steady flame. I needed space to approach him on my own, without the constant assault of his attention. I almost wish I could stick this information into a fly and shoot it to the Coordinated Endeavor : just be quiet for a while, Ambrose—then Kodiak will come to you.

His technical gear—a shimmery charcoal fabric, run through with the glitter of temperature-regulating fibers—has accumulated layers of stains. Bright terra-cotta colors from sliding down a muddy hill outside of Inverness, and grass stains along the strong curves of his legs. His rugged clothing, the days-old scent of exerting human, is a stirring contrast with the delicate golden filigree of the body modifications adorning his neck. As he stokes the fire, I watch a metallic vine trace its way from the hollow of his throat to disappear beneath fabric that’s been stained crimson from one of his many scrapes.

He looks at me suddenly. In his squatting position, from the side, I can take in the long, beautiful outline of him. He probably knows this. “What’s on your mind?” he asks innocently.

I swallow. Decide on something to say. “Our ridiculous pet.”

Sheep looks up from where she’s knocking her empty oatmeal container against a rock, then returns to trying to lick up food that is no longer there.

“Yes, she certainly is that,” Ambrose says.

Our silence has gone from companionable to freighted. I don’t like it, but I don’t know how to fix it.

“I was thinking about Devon Mujaba as we walked this afternoon,” Ambrose says, “and what’s happened to him.”

“He is almost certainly dead,” I say. I can’t help but sound impatient. I thought this conclusion was obvious.

“Yes,” Ambrose says heavily. He looks up into the starry sky. “It makes me sad to imagine. Captured and executed. His goal unreached.”

“Changing the essential exploitative nature of human civilization would have been a lot to pull off,” I say.

Ambrose pokes a stick through a fire that doesn’t need poking.

I decide to ask him a question. “Why do you have the word Violence tattooed on your chest?”

“This?” Ambrose says, looking down at his shirt. He lowers the neckline, so the whole word is visible, riding in the valley between his pectorals.

“Yes. You don’t seem like such a fan of violence.”

He laughs, then lifts the front of his shirt over his head so it’s pinned behind his neck. I’m surprised by the unexpected delight of his torso; it takes me a moment to remember to read the words. Labels are the Root of Violence.

“Oh,” I say, disappointed. How insipid. The words are far inferior to the canvas. “What does that even mean?”

“That as soon as we classify someone, we establish the ways in which they’re separate from us. It’s the most fundamental othering that we do.”

“Ah,” I say. “That sounds very... like you are trying to show off in a seminar.”

“It’s true,” he says hotly.

“I once grew a dahlia in the earth behind the cosmology academy. In the wintertime, I dug up the tuber to plant in the spring so it could become a flower again the next summer. That was true.”

“Both can be true,” he says.

I shrug. “Fine. But you don’t have to sound so pretentious about your true thing.”

“If you won’t let me be pretentious, you’ll find I have little left to say. Why don’t you tell me something about yourself, Kodiak, instead of just sniping at me?”

“I did say something. About the dahlia tuber. Perhaps you weren’t listening.”

“Something else.”

“Why?”

“I want to hear something about you,” he says. There are emotions I can’t identify in his voice.

I come up with nothing. “There’s nothing special about me.”

He hangs his head. Disappointed? It makes me angry, but I hide that response. I didn’t mean to make fun of his labels bullshit. I should offer something fruity about myself, maybe, to make him feel better? “I know how to knit,” I finally say. I cough.

He stares at me, suspicious. Firelight plays on the lines of his throat. “Really?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m not good. I can make a shawl or a scarf but not a shirt or a sweater.”

He laughs. It feels like a reward. “How did Kodiak Celius come to be a knitter?”

Now I have to tell him. I pretend to swallow something, even though my mouth is dry. “Most of the cadets in the cosmology academy traveled together during breaks. I didn’t join them. I stayed behind to use the training facilities on my own. I didn’t want to be cut early, so I had to make sure my fitness was as high as possible.”

I stop to make sure Ambrose is interested in this boring story. I don’t understand how it’s possible, but he is. Go on , his eyes say.

I swallow dryly again, embarrassed. “I ate dinner alone in the mess, which was... fine. But then came the long evenings. When I was older, I would do a second workout. But when I was ten or eleven, I would get sad and lonely after dark. I hid it by sitting in this—I don’t know how to describe it, but the top floor of the academy archives formed a sort of alcove, and I could sit there like a, like a gargoyle and look out and feel like I was falyut. That’s a word that doesn’t exist in Fédération. ‘Whole by being alone,’ is how you could translate it.”

“Hmm,” Ambrose says. “I had much different use for the high places in the Cusk Academy, but that’s a story for another time. But funny that I had a similar instinct as you, to climb.”

“So. One nurse, Anita, she found me on the parapets, that is the word, parapets, and she invited me down. I said no, but small child Kodiak must have looked sad up there, so she sat with me and brought her knitting. She did it in front of me for a while, and then taught me the basics and eventually gave me a set of my own needles and yarn.”

Ambrose nudges Sheep. “See, we could make a sweater out of you!” She glares back. He rambles on. “I wish I’d known; I’d have brought needles and yarn on board for that Kodiak. All I thought to bring was my violin.”

“A violin? A real wooden violin?” I sigh, despite myself. “That Kodiak will appreciate it very much.”

“Oh good,” Ambrose says. “Let’s hope clone me has been better about practicing the Prokofiev than I have. Though I suppose he’ll be just as good, won’t he?”

“Only without the calluses on the left finger pads and right thumb,” I say. If I were near enough, I might have dared to reach over and touch our fingertips.

He looks down at his own hands. “You noticed those? Good eyes.”

Yes, my eyes are good. Or maybe I simply pay close attention to Ambrose. “On the topic of Devon Mujaba...” I say. My voice trails off when Ambrose looks at me, sorrow back in his eyes. I feel contempt at his weakness. Sorrow is something to hide if it can’t be walled off entirely. But I know that is also maybe weakness on my part, to need to banish sadness instead of letting it live out its life span.

A sad smile curls onto Ambrose’s face. “Poor Devon Mujaba.” Then that smile changes. There’s something gossipy in it now.

“Did you and he...?” I prompt.

“Did we have sex?”

I nod.

“Oh lords, yes! And it was amazing. Did you?”

I blanch. There was plenty of sex between cadets at the cosmology academy, but we certainly wouldn’t talk about it proudly, if we did at all. I went through many periods of erotiyet with Li Qiang, as well as with Abdul. But we still assumed we would marry women later in our lives, or perhaps choose celibacy. The fact that it was limited to a brief window of our lives made our training sex all the more exciting.

But Devon Mujaba? No. Maybe if we had spent more time together, it would have happened. He was certainly beautiful. But during our few weeks in each other’s company I was still reeling. It was hardly a sexy mood. And he didn’t ask me to have sex with him. I guess he liked Ambrose more. “I think maybe I’m not Devon Mujaba’s type,” I finally say.

“Someone turned down this piece of prime beefcake?” Ambrose says. “I find that hard to believe. You’d be anyone’s type, at least for a go or two.”

“Stop,” I whisper, pushing a sodden branch back and forth, back and forth, with my foot. Part of me is angry at the effeminacy of what Ambrose is saying. Part of me feels it’s mean for him to compare me to a piece of meat. And part of me wants to coil around Ambrose as he says these words of desire, ask him to repeat them while I purr like a cat. And one last part of me wants to say this thing, this most important thing that binds people, isn’t only about sex, but you talk about it like it is.

“I notice you said you’re not Devon’s type, not that he’s not yours,” Ambrose says.

“Maybe it was mutual,” I say, rocking the log faster and faster.

“Maybe it was,” Ambrose says. He pauses, and I can sense him waiting for me to look at him. I refuse. He speaks again. “I do bear a passing resemblance to Devon Mujaba, you know. Beyond the general all-around handsomeness.”

I let myself look at him. I know I’m failing to keep the desire off my face. “Yes, you do. In a kind of decadent constructed way.”

Except for one arched eyebrow, his face is impassive. Not a flicker as I wound him. I realize Ambrose might be just as good at disguising when he’s hurt as I am. “Thank you,” he says gruffly. Or as close as his velvet voice can get to gruff.

I lie down on the sodden earth, ignoring how it instantly wets through the fabric covering the heaviest points of my body. I gesture vaguely to the stars. “The Coordinated Endeavor is out there, traveling dark. But in a thousand years a pair of us will wake up. They might have this very conversation.”

“Not the Devon Mujaba part. They won’t have met him.”

I turn just my head to look at Ambrose. My hand toys with my chest hair. In the hush of soft rain on pine forest, it suddenly feels as intimate as if we’re in a bed together. “No, not the Devon Mujaba part.”

“Well, Kodiak, I’d welcome you anytime. Or donate, if that’s what you prefer. It’s what I prefer, I guess. By a hair.”

I cover my eyes with my hand. “These trendy Fédération words again. How can you say them without being embarrassed?”

“No harm using the opportunity repetitive use of language provides us to build daily reminders about the damages of homophobia and misogyny, comrade ,” Ambrose says.

I snort. “‘Hut’ and ‘shihut’ are perfectly adequate sexual terms. You in Fédération could use your time much more productively if you thought a little more about where you spend your attention, that’s all. ‘Welcoming’ and ‘donating.’ Just listen to yourself. And you say it so proudly, like you’ve just saved a life, like switching the names for things does any good in the actual world.”

“You did dodge saying which you’d prefer,” Ambrose says.

“I refuse to use this ludicrous terminology in reference to my own body,” I say. Then I grin. “I will be happy to go hut any shihut who disagrees.”

Ambrose is so outraged that he squeaks. Adorably. “See! You just used ‘bottom’ as a punishment , Kodiak.”

“Yes, and look how fired up you got,” I say.

“Oh. I see. You’re teasing me.”

“I guess I am, yes.” Sheep snorts awake, rearranges herself, falls back asleep. “We appear to be keeping our traveling companion up.”

“Yes, I noticed,” Ambrose says. “She’s not exactly subtle about it.” He turns on his side, propping his head on his hand. Looking at me.

I break from his eyes, rest my palms on soft fallen pine needles, turn my gaze to the stars. The Coordinated Endeavor took off weeks ago, which means it’s out there . If it happens to be reflecting sunlight right now, it could be one of the points in this night sky. With twenty copies of us dormant on board. It’s unfathomable and yet it’s true. This person beside me. We’re up there together.

I stare into the sky, thinking of the violin, of our life on the ship, of the spacefarer career that was taken from me and yet also granted to me, twenty of me. Our life on a distant planet, perhaps trying to raise small humans from poisoned embryos. Unless Ambrose and I can get to Glasgow and launch flies across the galaxy.

For the sake of that mission, I should get a good night’s sleep. No more WakeSleep for me, just the natural kind. But tight as I close my eyes, as resolutely as I try to control my breathing, I can’t feel anything but wide awake. This arousal isn’t helping.

Maybe we could help each other with that feeling after all. I could show Ambrose just how welcome I am to his donating. I chuckle at his charming, ridiculous righteousness. Then I turn on my side, toward him.

He’s asleep.

I watch the rise and fall of his narrow chest, the ribs that encase that fragile heart. My traveling companion, the future of my other selves. I turn my attention back to the sky. Somewhere out there, maybe right now, millions of years away, in the void of space, a version of me is being woken up next to a version of him, these two beings who are intimately connected and nothing alike.