The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)

by Becky Chambers

An absence of sound meant that air was no longer flowing, engines no longer running, artigrav nets no longer holding your feet to the floor. Silence belonged to the vacuum outside. Silence was death.

And when the fabric of space goes to shit, you’ve got a really big problem.”

The ban against FTL was one of the oldest laws on the books, predating the founding of the GC. While traveling faster than light was technologically possible, the logistical and social problems caused by what basically amounted to time travel far outweighed the gains. And aside from the administrative nightmare, few people were keen on a method of transportation that guaranteed everyone you knew back home would be long dead by the time you reached your destination.

In many ways, the idea of a shared stock of genes drifting through the galaxy is far easier to accept than the daunting notion that none of us may ever have the intellectual capacity to understand how life truly works.

“Besides, if you think of me as a parent, maybe you’ll listen when I tell you to take your damn minerals.”

She would never, ever understand the idea that a child, especially an infant, was of more value than an adult who had already gained all the skills needed to benefit the community. The death of a new hatchling was so common as to be expected. The death of a child about to feather, yes, that was sad. But a real tragedy was the loss of an adult with friends and lovers and family. The idea that a loss of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around.

“Ninety percent of all problems are caused by people being assholes.” “What causes the other ten percent?” asked Kizzy. “Natural disasters,” said Nib.

“Do you know why Human modders give themselves weird names?” She shook her head. “It’s a really old practice, goes back to pre-Collapse computer networks. We’re talking old tech here. People would choose names for themselves that they only used within a network. Sometimes that name became so much a part of who they were that even their friends out in the real world started using it. For some folks, those names became their whole identity. Their true identity, even. Now, modders, modders don’t care about anything as much as individual freedom. They say that nobody can define you but you. So when Bear gave himself a new arm, he didn’t do it because he didn’t like the body he was born in, but because he felt that new arm fit him better. Tweaking your body, it’s all about trying to make your physical self fit with who you are inside. Not that you have to tweak to get that feeling. Like me, I like to decorate myself, but my body already fits with who I am. But some modders, they’ll keep changing themselves their entire lives. And it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes they seriously mess themselves up. But that’s the risk you take in trying to be more than the little box you’re born into. Change is always dangerous.” He tapped her arm. “You’re Rosemary Harper. You chose that name because the old one didn’t fit anymore. So you had to break a few laws to do it. Big fucking deal. Life isn’t fair, and laws usually aren’t, either. You did what you had to do. I get that.”

“Jenks, my father sold biological weapons to both sides of a civil war outside his own species, and all for getting access to the ambi across their borders. I think calling him an asshole is being generous.”

There were few things Dr. Chef enjoyed more than a cup of tea. He made tea for the crew every day at breakfast time, of course, but that involved an impersonal heap of leaves dumped into a clunky dispenser. A solitary cup of tea required more care, a blend carefully chosen to match his day. He found the ritual of it quite calming: heating the water, measuring the crisp leaves and curls of dried fruit into the tiny basket, gently brushing the excess away with his fingerpads, watching color rise through water like smoke as it brewed. Tea was a moody drink.

He did not run from his grief, nor did he deny its existence. He could study his grief from a distance, like a scientist observing animals. He embraced it, accepted it, acknowledged that it would never go away. It was as much a part of him as any pleasant feeling. Perhaps even more so.

Such a quintessentially Human thing, to express sorrow through apology.

But if an organ cutter hit one of us, that triggered its real purpose.” “Which was?” Rosemary said, looking fearful. He looked out the window, but he did not see the stars. “To burrow. A cutter would dig through a person’s insides until it hit something vital. It wouldn’t stop until the victim was dead. So, say a soldier took a hit to a limb. With a normal bullet, that’d be a minor wound. But with a cutter, they’d be dead within . . . oh, half an hour. And half an hour may not sound like much time, but when you’ve got a little piece of metal ripping through you—” The memories reached out to Dr. Chef, trying to pull him away from his safe observation point. They tugged, begging for him to give in. But he would not. He was not a prisoner of those memories. He was their warden.

They had only done to us what we had planned to do to them. That was the moment in which I no longer knew who the animals were. I no longer wanted to mend our soldiers so that they could go use cutters and . .

A few years later, there were too few daughters on either side for anyone to keep fighting. The germ bombs had mutated into things we couldn’t cure. Our water was poisoned. Our mines and forests had nothing left to give. The war didn’t end, exactly. It just burned itself out.”

There is peace out here in the open. I have friends and a garden in the stars and a kitchen full of tasty things. I heal people now. I cannot pretend that the war never happened, but I stopped fighting it long ago. I did not start that war. It should never have been mine to fight.” He sank down so that he could look Rosemary square in the eye. “We cannot blame ourselves for the wars our parents start. Sometimes the very best thing we can do is walk away.”

People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful. Your father had probably gotten his way for so long that he thought he was untouchable, and that is a dangerous way for a person to feel.

If you have a fractured bone, and I’ve broken every bone in my body, does that make your fracture go away? Does it hurt you any less, knowing that I am in more pain?”

Feelings are relative. And at the root, they’re all the same, even if they grow from different experiences and exist on different scales.”

You Humans really do cripple yourselves with your belief that you all think in unique ways.”

The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us.

“All you can do, Rosemary—all any of us can do—is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play.

“Or maybe because I never thought to ask anyone what you’re asking. I never thought of fear as something that can go away. It just is. It reminds me that I want to stay alive. That doesn’t strike me as a bad thing.”

our early adulthood, it’s expected that we’ll want to travel or study, and it’s a given that we’ll switch families often as we age. Elders don’t shift around as much. They’re more stable. And most important, they’ve got life experience. They’re wise. They know things.” She smirked. “I’ll never understand how the rest of you expect brand-new adults to be able to teach kids how to be people.”

She was surprised to realize the depth of her Human concept of motherhood, the idea that procreating fundamentally changed you. But then, she was of a mammalian species. If she ever chose to have children, it would mean spending the better part of a year watching her body stretch and contort, then another year, or more, of letting a fragile, helpless thing that didn’t understand its own limbs feed from her body.

Remember, they’re not people yet, not by our standards. And they’re not my family. I know that sounds cold to you, but trust me, they’re loved by the elders raising them. Though, that said, elders don’t get attached to hatchlings, not until they see who they turn into. That’s where the real joy is for house families. Seeing the hatchlings they raised come back as fully feathered adults, with stories and ideas and personality.”

Do you know how disturbing it is to see someone’s eyes start leaking? Ha! And poor man, he’s trying to explain crying to me while going through all of those emotions. I’ll never forget what he said to me. He said, ‘This means we matter. We’re worth something.’ And I said, ‘Of course you’re worth something. Everyone is worth something.’ And he said, ‘But now I know the galaxy thinks so, too.’”

and fall. The people we remember are the ones who decided how our maps should be drawn. Nobody remembers who built the roads.”

But just in case you remember this, here’s what I want you to know. I don’t understand what Jenks is feeling. I don’t understand Kizzy, I don’t understand Ashby, and I sure as hell don’t understand Sissix. But I do know that they’re all hurting. And contrary to popular belief, that is something I care about. So you’ll have to forgive me, Ohan, but this crew isn’t going to lose anyone else. Not today.”

“I don’t mean any disrespect, representatives, but your policies were supposed to protect me and my crew. I trusted in them. I trusted that we weren’t going to be sent anywhere that posed any danger outside what comes with the job.” He fought to keep his voice calm. “You sent us somewhere we shouldn’t have gone, and you’re still thinking about sending other people back. You put all of our lives at risk, without saying as much, and now you want to sit around and talk about policies.”

Every piece, down to the last atom, had been made out here, flung through the open in a moment of violence, until they had swirled around and around, churning and coalescing, becoming heavy, weighing each other down. But not anymore. The pieces were floating free now. They had returned home.

There were no seas, no forests, no great cities. This was a place to be used, not lived in.