Symbiosis
MARI HAD SEEN the space elevator go down to the surface of Verdu too many times to count. From a holodisplay.
It was one thing watching the elevator take cargo to a planet from a flickering light on your desk. It was something else to be in the damn elevator.
It didn’t help that Mari wasn’t secured in one of the biped seats when she’d forced the elevator to drop. She’d had one strap on her shoulder and had been fumbling to put the other strap on when the pounding on the door started. Rationally, she knew that she had at least enough time to get the harness closed, and it would have taken more than five seconds to breach the door. But the box under her arm sloshed, Mari felt a flash of panic, and she hit the red emergency release button.
The elevator plummeted, and Mari slid off the seat.
She yelled, a deep-throated cry that echoed off the metallic walls. It sounded simultaneously raw and unreal. It didn’t seem right that her yell was the loudest sound in the room, not with poorly-secured cargo rattling and a metal box plummeting to Verdu on a cable. It seemed even weirder that she cared how loud she was. After all, she was hanging out of a harness and clinging to a metal box so hard that she could feel the corners bruising her skin through her shirt.
I’m going to die, Mari thought. I am absolutely going to die.
The box slid out of her arms; when it hit the floor of the elevator, the glass shattered, and the forked-head symbiote inside slid out, a trail of water in its wake.
Mari might die, but it looked she wasn’t going to be the only one.
Earlier
The space station was a lot like the other ones Mariana Soto had served on. There wasn’t much need for variation when they were boxes with just enough space for a couple people to live in.
Of course, Mari had never served in a station meant for only one bipedal resident before.
“The glowing red line takes you to your cabin.” The voice from her wristwatch wasn’t joined by a hologram. Mari wouldn’t get to see what the station’s off-site manager looked like this time. “The glowing blue line will lead you back to the common area. You may have seen the kitchen and office on your way in.”
Mari nodded before realizing there was no way for the manager to know she was acknowledging. “I did see,” she said.
“Take a closer look.” Was that a humming Mari heard under the speech? She’d heard Jovians often took these managerial roles because they couldn’t live off world. They lived on gas giants, and their speech was more music than words. “Follow the blue line.”
Mari did. It wasn’t easy; the line was on the ceiling, and she was hunched over pretty severely. Most human stations had been built for early explorers, and they’d had a height restriction of 5’7” back then.
The blue line split into green, orange, and yellow. Yellow went to the lavatory, which was appropriate if gross. The two orange forks went to what Mari assumed was the office door—it had a “staff only” sign glowing on it—and a kitchen space with no door. Green went toward the airlocks.
“Your coworker is in the office,” the manager said. “Would you like to meet them?”
Coworker? There was only space for one biped on the station. Would she have to share a bed with some stranger?
“Soto?” the manager asked.
What else would Mari say? “Yes, of course.”
“Press your thumb on the scanner. Your skin print will be recorded.”
Mari did as asked, and after some buzzing sounds, the door slid open.
The office was small and mostly empty. There were two desk spaces and a narrow gap between them. Mari would have to leave the office door open and keep her feet out to fit. The perils of being 6’3”.
“Symbiote 22302, this is your new operator, Mariana Soto.” Mari heard crackling from a speaker just above the rightmost desk, but no actual reply. “She begins her shift in four planetary standard hours.”
Symbiote? Didn’t those usually have bipedal hosts?
“Hello,” a tinny voice called out. It was high-pitched, much higher-pitched than Mari when she spoke. “Hope you like small spaces.”
Mari blinked. She couldn’t see the symbiote anywhere. “Hi.”
“Please step outside,” the manager said. “The last part of the tour involves the elevator.”
Mari shuffled out of the way as best she could. The door slid shut before she could turn away. She could feel the breeze of it on the tip of her nose.
The elevator door was in the room with the airlocks, down a level from the rest of the station. Mari had been told, when taking the job, that visitors hauling cargo would use the kitchen, but they’d keep to themselves otherwise. She should only engage in a professional capacity or if they spoke first.
“Open the elevator door,” the manager said.
Mari pushed the button, and the door opened, revealing the inside of the elevator. It looked like a smaller version of cargo freighters she’d seen. There were four seats with harnesses for bipeds, with possibly more folded into the walls, and the rest was empty space for cargo. The walls were dreary metal, and the lights were painfully blue, which was even less pleasant than the metal walls and golden lights of the station.
She took a step forward. Or she tried. She hit something she couldn’t see pretty fast, but red lights spread from her body quickly. A clear gate was blocking entrance.
“Humans are barred from entry on their own,” the manager said. “In emergencies, Symbiote 22302 will assist you.”
“How?” Mari asked.
The manager either didn’t hear, or didn’t care. “Close the elevator door.”
Mari sighed heavily, stepped back, and hit the button again.
“You are not permitted to help with loading or unloading the elevator,” the manager said. “Monitor the elevator’s status and monitor the computer sending messages to HQ to ensure repair crews can be brought in if necessary. You may do maintenance on the interior computers from time to time.”
It was a babysitting job. Mari had done some technical work in the past, and she had her spacewalk qualifications; part of the reason she’d gotten this job was because she could fix exterior parts of the elevator if it was broken. Or so she’d thought.
Computers on these kinds of stations never broke. She’d stare at the computer and do nothing for a living.
“Do you understand?” the manager asked.
“I understand,” Mari said, even though she didn’t. Why hire a human, drag them halfway across the galaxy, and pay them more than industry standard...to do nothing?
* * *
Mari didn’t fit in her cabin. It wasn’t a surprise. Mari hadn’t fit into any of the cabins she’d been in since she’d been fourteen.
Back then, it had been that she’d been too wide to fit in the narrower doors, but she’d hit her last major growth spurt at fifteen and leaned out just enough that she could get through them. Many of her family members weren’t so lucky.
“First station standard,” Mama had said when Mari had been seven and seen Mama struggle with the height of the door. “They’d wanted shorter colonists so they could fit more of them in.”
So Mari had to bend over if she was on her feet in her cabin, and she contorted to fit between her chair and desk, but it was actually the best room she’d had as an adult. Most spacious, for sure.
She squeezed into her chair and brought up her mother, who flickered in full color. That was another thing. Color diversity. Most of the holodisplays she’d worked with before had been black and white for contrast.
“Mari!” Mama said, beaming. She looked tired and pale, but generally okay. “You made it!”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“Of course I did.” Mama was lying. She and Papa had worked in space all of Mari’s life, and at many jobs on the level of Mari’s. That Papa was dead and Mama was on a planet as part of a work accident settlement was proof that she knew the risks. “Settling in?”
Mari nodded. There wasn’t much settling in to do. “Have you done elevator work before, Mama?”
“A very long time ago, mija. I didn’t work with lower-gravity planets much, and they’re more common on those.”
“Verdu has Earth-standard gravity.” Not that that meant much to Mari. She’d never been to Earth or on any planet surface. Mama had only been on one planet, and it was the one she was calling Mari from. She’d moved there three years ago. “Do you miss being in space?”
Mama laughed. “Absolutely not.”
* * *
Everything on the station was automated. The ships that came in at the beginning of the shift docked without any input from Mari, and she watched from a holodisplay as their crews unloaded their cargo and traveled down the elevator, which descended on their go-ahead.
A small red light flashed, issuing a warning about the elevator. Mari frowned and brought up the computer’s readout on the display.
“Gear replacement needed,” she whispered. She always spoke to herself quietly while working alone. It filled the space.
“It’s been needed for years.”
Mari jerked, and her hip connected with the desk. She hissed. That was probably going to bruise.
“You okay?” the voice said. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Mari rubbed at her hip. “What did you say? Before?”
“Don’t worry about the gear replacement.” It was a tinny voice...the tinny voice from the tour. The symbiote. “The station reports it every day, and HQ ignores it every day. Do you go by Mariana?”
“Um. Mari, usually. Sorry, what was your name again?”
“Symbiotes don’t get names. My designation’s 22302.”
Mari didn’t know what to say about that. The tinny voice sounded wry, and she didn’t want to push.
“You’re very quiet,” the symbiote said.
“I am?”
“Most of the humans who’ve worked here call someone and talk the entire shift. I’ve learned a lot of different languages that way.”
“You don’t use a translator?”
“I have a converter. Translates electric impulses into speech, and those don’t function well with translators.” The symbiote laughed. “I’m glad you speak English. I know that one.”
Mari made a wordless noise that could mean a lot of things. She was good at those.
“You can speak English with me. If you want.” When Mari didn’t say anything, the symbiote added, “To stay fresh?”
“Shouldn’t I...work?”
“Oh yes. So much work for both of us to do.”
Mari hadn’t known a symbiote using a converter could sound sarcastic. “What’s your job?”
“Emergency assistance.” There was an oddly human snort. “It means, if someone’s dying in the elevator, you can pick up my box and get inside.”
“That’s it?”
“What else can a symbiote do?” The symbiote sounded bland and innocent. Almost like they were quoting something.
Mari flinched. “That’s terrible.”
“That’s Space Station Management Corporation for you. Well, that’s SSMC when there’s no one to see them.”
What a cheering thought. “Wait,” Mari said as the conversation caught up with her. “Your box?”
“You didn’t see? Look under the desks.”
That was easier said than done. Mari had to stand up, push the chair out into the hall, and carefully ease down so she didn’t brain herself on the tables. But sure enough, in the corner under the right-most desk, she saw a box with glass walls and a metal top and bottom. It was mostly opaque, but Mari could see a shadow and hear water sloshing.
“Hi,” she whispered, grazing her fingers along the box’s edge.
“Hello,” the symbiote said back.
“Are you stuck in there? Even when I’m not working?”
“Oh yeah. System’s solar power feeds me and runs the pump that filters my water. There isn’t anywhere else for an unattached symbiote to go.”
Mari got back to her feet and went to fetch her chair. Her throat felt a little thick. At least Mari could go back to her room when her shift was over. To give herself a moment, she watched the elevator signaling its return from Verdu’s equatorial ocean.
“How often does the elevator go most days?” she asked.
“Solid dozen, at least,” the symbiote said. A pause, and then, “They’re putting in a lot of work to change the planet down there. You’ll see if you’re around long enough.”
Mari suspected she didn’t want to.
* * *
A ship docked as Mari was getting her breakfast. She was close enough to the docking ring that she could feel the rumbling under her feet. Ship rumblings were soothing, and the kitchen was the biggest one she’d had to herself. There were worse days to have.
“Biped.”
The voice was stern and loud in the cramped space. Mari whirled around and nearly dropped her tea.
A person in a gray worksuit was standing behind Mari, hands on her hips. Probably a cargo hauler. The stranger was short enough that she stood comfortably in the space station, and her skin had a subtle green tinge to it. Her forehead had ridges that weren’t human-like at all.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” the stranger asked.
“Uh,” Mari said. “Hello. Can I help you with something?”
The stranger rolled her eyes. “The back of your neck, biped. Show me immediately.”
Mari had no idea if the stranger had any authority. She didn’t think twice about it; getting fired on her second day wasn’t an option. She got on her knees since that was the only way to show her neck easily, and she lifted her black braid aside.
“Human,” the stranger hissed, and Mari flinched.
Mari stayed in that position for a few moments, and when she looked up, the stranger was gone. She hadn’t heard her step away.
* * *
“Treaty shit,” was the symbiote’s response.
Mari hadn’t set out to tell the symbiote what had happened, but Mari hadn’t been in a particularly talkative mood after the encounter in the kitchen, and the symbiote had asked why Mari had been silent. It would have been rude not to answer.
“Treaty...stuff?” Mari asked.
“Oh, should I not have said ‘shit’? I’m still figuring out professional language.”
“No, your language is fine. What treaty?”
“Humans are applying for symbiote candidacy. There’s a lot of Ectos and not many hosts on their home planet, and apparently the human tests look good for both symbiotes and Ectos.” The symbiote made a derisive noise. “Plus, the Ectos are offering financial incentive.”
“What does that have to do with the station?” Mari was staring at the elevator’s descent again. Hopefully, the woman she’d spoken to earlier was long gone.
“It’s one of the steps to Ectosymbiote acceptance. Humans supply bodies for jobs, and maybe they can supply bodies for Ectos. But they don’t like humans without hosts, from what I can tell.”
Mari shuddered and stroked a hand on the back of her neck. “They won’t make me be a host, will they?”
“Nah. Major interplantary violation to have non-consensual bondings.”
Mari couldn’t help her relief at that. She shifted in her chair as much as she could. “Is that why you’re here? Lack of bodies?”
A pause. A laugh.
* * *
Mari was eating lunch in the office when the alarm sirens went off. She dropped everything and ran for the airlocks as red flashed throughout the station.
The elevator door was open when she arrived. There were a half-dozen cargo haulers grouped in front of the door, but Mari’s attention was grabbed by two things: a three-eyed biped gasping and convulsing in the elevator, and an unattached Ecto on the floor just outside, flopping like the biped.
A cargo hauler scooped the Ecto and placed them in a bucket of water. Mari went for the elevator and slammed into the clear gate. It flashed red at her touch. She couldn’t get inside without a symbiote.
One of the cargo haulers yanked her back, even as the biped inside reached for Mari desperately.
“Get away!” the cargo hauler said. Mari was close enough to her eyes to see the irises turn red. “Do you want to bring the planet’s atmosphere in here? We’ll all die!”
“We have to vent the elevator,” another hauler said grimly. “Only way to clean out an atmosphere trap.”
“Go! Report this to your superiors!” the first cargo hauler told Mari.
Mari wanted to ask what “venting the elevator” meant, but she wasn’t used to speaking at work. Before she could summon up the courage to ask, the red-eyed cargo hauler was pressing buttons on the display generated by her watch, and the elevator doors slid shut.
The hiss that followed after told Mari everything she needed to know anyway.
They’d opened the elevator to push out the toxic air, and the biped inside had gone with it.
* * *
The symbiote didn’t say a word to Mari when she went into the office to file the report. The symbiote didn’t say anything when Mari dropped her head in her arms and tried to remember how to breathe.
It was probably for the best.
* * *
When Mari woke up a couple days later, there was a light flashing in her face. It was actually a word on her holodisplay, and not one she’d seen much.
“VIOLATION”, it said. There wasn’t a standard alert for “you fucked up at work” between companies, but it never took much work to figure out a new one.
Rubbing at her eyes, she pulled up the full message on the display. Apparently, she’d been reported by a cargo hauler for “inappropriate conduct”. It didn’t say when, but Mari figured it was from the elevator incident. She’d heard before that warnings were meant to be menacing and not actually helpful. Considering this one told her nothing about what she’d done, she was inclined to believe it.
Mari pinched the bridge of her nose. Two more weeks, and she would have enough money to get to her mother’s planet. Three more weeks, and she could leave. Her contract would be over.
Just three more weeks.
* * *
“You haven’t asked me about my reproductive cycle yet.”
Mari hadn’t spoken at all on the shift after her warning. She’d closed the door to the office at the beginning of the day so her legs weren’t sticking out, and she’d stared at the holodisplay so intently her eyes were dry and painful. The most noise she’d made was a quiet grunt when the symbiote had greeted her that day.
But, to the symbiote’s statement, Mari couldn’t help saying, “What?”
“Ha, knew I could get you talking again.” The symbiote sounded smug. “I bet it’s just because you’re quiet, but humans seem overly fascinated with reproduction and an individual’s role in it. One person—I’m sorry, one man—who worked here was offended I didn’t use ‘he’ to refer to him.”
Mari sighed. “Nothing about your reproductive cycle is my business.”
“You’re the only one I’ve met who’s said that. Even people who didn’t ask about it seemed nervous with a lack of pronoun.”
“There are reasons to care in a lot of human societies.”
“Well, it’s not important in my society.” The symbiote sighed wistfully, but it didn’t seem to be over lack of pronouns.
Mari bit her lip for a moment. She shouldn’t be making conversation. She should be making sure she didn’t lose her job.
But she said, “I think more about your lack of name. I’ve been calling you ‘the symbiote’ in my head. I’d probably call you your species name if humans could say it out loud.”
“I kind of like that. I’m the symbiote.” Mari pictured a person with their chest puffed out. How would a proud symbiote look?
“There isn’t something else you’d like to be called?”
“I don’t get a name.” A pause, and then, “We have different means of identification in my society. When we got to place where a name would have been helpful...the designation number works, I guess.”
Something simmered in Mari. She wasn’t sure what it was. It felt...big.
“You get a name if you want a name,” she said, the edge of what she was feeling giving weight to her voice. “You can choose your name, and I’ll use it.”
For the first time since Mari had met the symbiote, the voice in the speaker was hesitant. “If it gets out...”
The “VIOLATION” light flashed through Mari’s mind. It was in her contract that she would get taken to a transport hub and given her last paycheck if she was fired. What happened to a symbiote that was kept in a tiny box and not given a name?
Her first instinct was to apologize and drop the whole thing. Her mouth formed the beginning of the word “sorry”, even. But there was something else there. Something that knew the symbiote deserved a damn name.
“Just us,” Mari said. “I won’t use it outside this room, if you want.”
Silence. Mari held her breath and curled in as much as she could. If she’d had a little more room, she would have pulled her legs in front of her on her chair and hugged them. She liked hugging herself. It felt safe.
“Sym,” the symbiote said, finally. “Short for ‘the symbiote’, but that’s like a human name, isn’t it?”
Mari couldn’t quite manage a smile, considering everything. It didn’t matter. Sym could probably hear the pleasure in Mari’s voice.
“There’s lots of ways for humans to have a name,” Mari said. “But ‘Sym’ sounds like one I might hear.”
* * *
The only alert that woke Mari up the next day was her standard alarm.
Usually, Mari started her day by getting breakfast, showering, and catching up on intersystem news in her room. She never fully woke up until she was at work. That was why, when the door didn’t open from her cabin to the hallway, she spent several long seconds frowning at the door instead of doing something about it.
When she finally woke up a little, she tried again. The door was stuck.
She tried a third time, pushing the button with one hand and scrabbling with her fingers to find a gap in the door with her other hand. Nothing.
It was second nature for Mari to take the button’s plate off the wall and play with the wires. She’d worked at enough stations where it had been necessary to open any door that way; doors tended to be low priority. She pushed the emergency release, leaving the button’s plate hanging from the wall.
The door slid open like nothing was wrong. Mari froze at what she saw.
“GO HOME HUMAN” painted in ugly block letters on the ground in red.
She covered her mouth to suppress the yell that wanted to come out.
* * *
According to the station info, she was the only biped currently onboard. One of the cargo ships had to have waited until after Mari had left work to leave—it happened all the time—and someone onboard had taken the time to leave her a message. That would have been enough to give her a bad day.
But when she tried to check travel information on her cabin’s holodisplay, she got an error message.
She went to the office a full hour before her shift started, ignoring breakfast and a shower to get to the holodisplay there. The lights weren’t on in the room and probably wouldn’t be until her shift, so she didn’t say anything in case Sym was asleep. Or in a rest cycle? Mari didn’t know much about Sym’s biology.
As she turned on the display, she realized she hadn’t learned about symbiotes’ rest cycle. All she’d learned was the difference between symbiotes and Ectos in school. Ectos rested on the back of the neck, but symbiotes...her teacher had kept it clinical. The other kids chiming in on their displays had giggled about how gross “swallowing the slug” would be. Mari had turned off her display after the lesson, went into the bathroom she and Mama shared with three other crew members at the time, and puked.
It had nothing to do with symbiotes and Ectos, but Mama had been turning off her display a lot during her talks with Mari lately. Sometimes, Mama managed to apologize before cutting the transmission short. One time, she hadn’t managed before she’d started vomiting.
The glowing display brought Mari out of her head. She looked up passenger transports.
Transports didn’t make it to that particular solar system more than once a week or so; Verdu, the only habitable planet, was still being settled, and the system was just a stop for most. Mari would have to summon a ship deliberately or book passage on one of the cargo ships that came to the station. That last one would be best for speed, but considering the paint outside Mari’s cabin, it wasn’t her favorite option.
She sat back in her chair as far as it would go, tapping her fingers on the edge of the desk. It was a terrible idea, but…
Pulling up information on Verdu confirmed what the elevator incident had suggested: no humans could go down and survive without gear. Mari hadn’t been told about survival gear on the tour—or any evacuation procedures at all—which told her everything she’d needed to know about the possibility of bailing out in an emergency.
The interesting part was that only bipeds with Ectos or symbiotes were granted access by treaty. That seemed an odd distinction to make when buildings adaptable to different kinds of life were so common. Mama had told Mari about all the places on her planet with different levels of gravity and different median temperatures and different levels of humidity. There were undergrounds and bridges for the more common life populations that didn’t fit surface standard. Her planet wasn’t friendly to humans but was primarily settled by them, so the biggest tunnels were Earth standard.
“Took you long enough.”
Mari squeaked before she could cover her mouth. She put a hand to her chest until her breathing settled. “Sym, you scared me.”
“And you didn’t scare me? I didn’t expect you in here so early.”
“Then why did you say ‘took you long enough’?”
For the first time, Mari heard water sloshing. When all the computers were on, it was too loud to hear Sym inside their box.
“Because,” Sym said, “you humans are always so curious about Verdu. Why is that?”
“They’ve probably never been on a planet before.”
Sym didn’t answer right away. Mari didn’t realize how long it took Sym to reply at first because she was busy scrolling back through the travel feeds in case a ship’s manifest had changed on the hour. That happened sometimes.
“Never been on a planet,” Sym said slowly.
“Yeah.”
“Ever?”
“There are a lot of humans, and only a few planets with places where humans can live.”
“But there are so many planets. And there’re ways to adapt buildings.”
Sym was echoing Mari’s earlier thought. For some reason, it made Mari clench her jaw. “People like me don’t deserve to live on those planets.” She made herself relax her mouth. Sym probably didn’t know. “Why do you think I work a job like this? For fun? My mom worked for forty-two years before she made it to a planet surface, and it’s because she’s...she’s not well.”
“What about your home planet?”
“Earth?” Mari shook her head even though Sym couldn’t see it. “My dad passed by it on a freighter once.”
“So you’ve never been.”
“My family hasn’t set foot on Earth in...five generations? Six?” Mari had known the answer once. She rubbed her hands over her face. “Planets don’t matter as much as the people on them, anyway.”
“You said it.” There was a pause. “Have you eaten yet?”
“What does it matter?”
“Maybe you should eat and call your mom.”
“How do you...” Mari frowned. “Do you listen in on my calls?”
“I can’t in your cabin. You should go there.”
Something wasn’t right. Mari felt weird about listening to Sym without asking what was going on, but she had her own problems. And maybe Mama would have some ideas.
“Okay,” Mari said reluctantly. “I’ll be back for my shift.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
* * *
“Did I wake you?”
Mama looked like she was struggling to keep her eyes open. She was definitely lying down. “No, mija. I’m glad you called. What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Did Mari look like she was upset?
“You never call me around this time.”
“Oh. It’s right before work, and I...”
Mari squinted at the display. Had Mama lost weight since Mari had last called? It was hard to tell on a holodisplay, but her face looked thinner. Mari had just called her three days ago.
“I missed you,” Mari said. “How are you feeling?”
Mama sighed. “I need to talk to you about something. Can you—”
There was a thump. Mari didn’t think it was particularly loud, but Mama stopped talking, and her eyes grew sharper.
“What was that?” Mama asked.
Another thump, and the room shook. Mari grabbed her desk to keep from tipping over.
“I don’t know,” Mari said, just as the alarms started going off overhead. She started to stand. “I need to find out, but...”
“Go. I love you.”
Mari’s hand hovered on the off button. Her mom had said it with an intensity that she couldn’t ignore.
“I love you, too,” Mari said. “More than anything.”
She turned off the display.
* * *
The alarms silenced before Mari made it to the office, but Sym was already talking when Mari came in.
“It’s fine,” Sym said quickly. “It’s okay.”
“What’s okay? The whole damn station shook!”
“We were hit by debris. The elevator was doing its daily test run, and the gear that was broken came off and broke a couple things. Whole elevator’s down for the moment, but the station’s integrity is good.”
Mari sat in her chair as hard as the lack of space would allow. The feeling that something wasn’t right still hung in the air. “I didn’t know you could access the computer from in there.”
“I can’t. Your display announces emergency updates, and I can hear them.”
Speaking of Mari’s display, it lit up with an update that directed to her watch. Probably the station manager. She turned her watch on.
“A repair crew is en route,” the manager’s voice said. “Repairs are estimated to take two days. Cargo distribution has been suspended until repairs are complete.”
“Wait,” Mari said. “If a gear needs replacing, I’m qualified—”
“No. A repair crew is en route. Stay out of their way.”
The transmission cut off. Mari kicked the office door, and thanks to her work boots, it thudded in a satisfying way.
“Feel better?” Sym asked.
Mari looked in Sym’s direction. “The gear just broke off by itself. Magically.”
“How else would it break? If HQ had listened to the warning—”
“Who got onto the station last night?”
Sym fell silent. Mari hated that she couldn’t read the symbiote.
“What do you mean?” Sym said, finally.
“I got a reprimand, someone painted outside my damn cabin last night, and the gear that’s been broken but doesn’t mean anything shut the whole station down. What do you know?”
“I...” There were some sounds that weren’t human speech of any kind, much less English. “The gear wasn’t directed at you. I didn’t know anyone was on the station last night, and not only would I not report you to HQ—”
“You have high turnaround, don’t you? Where does that come from?”
“This is a shit job! I have nothing to do with it. HQ would never listen to a symbiote, anyway. They don’t want me here.”
Mari’s shoulders dropped. She hadn’t realized how mad and scared she’d felt until she’d heard it echoed in Sym’s digital voice. Mari put a hand to her forehead.
“I’m thinking they don’t want me here, either,” she said.
Sym laughed. They didn’t sound particularly amused. “Yeah. I’m beginning to get that.”
* * *
It turned out doing a shift without an elevator to watch was even more boring than a usual shift.
Or it could have been. Mari, knowing that she and Sym were trapped together, asked Sym questions.
The first was answered simply.
“How many people have you worked with? Humans?”
“Month-long contracts are standard, so it’s around twelve people a year,” Sym said. “It’s rarely fewer, and it’s often more. I’ve been here three Earth-standard years, so you do the math.”
The second answer was a bit more complicated.
“What’s swimming like?” Mari asked. She had figured out that lying diagonally on her desks gave her more room in the office than sitting at the chair, so she was on her back, staring at the ceiling and listening to the occasional thump of the repair crew.
“You’ve never been swimming?”
“Water on ships and stations is for drinking,” Mari said dutifully, in the same voice her mother had used when Mari was a child. “That’s a nice way of saying ‘rich people learn how to swim, and you’ll drown and get me fired if you sneak in their pools’.”
“How much water have you ever been in?”
Mari shook her head. “Shower’s worth, I guess.”
“I don’t...” Sym made a frustrated noise. “What is it like to walk around in the air all the time without being inside another being?”
“Uh.” It was what Mari had always done. She didn’t know any different. “I get your point. What if I asked how swimming made you feel?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“The size of the water.”
Mari rolled onto her side so she could see under the desk. Sym’s box was barely visible, and it looked small from her corner.
“Yeah,” Mari said. “I can see that.”
* * *
The monitors powering down for the day roused Mari from a nap. She still wasn’t sure what Sym’s rest cycle was, so she slid off the desk as best she could and opened the door.
“There’s a red button on the front of my box. Push it for three seconds, and my box will slide out. You can take it wherever.”
Mari, halfway out the door, jumped. “Sorry?”
“The size of the pool, Mari.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I haven’t been on my planet for three years.” Sym sounded matter-of-fact. “I lived in the oceans. Ectos came in and forced us out three years ago. They needed another planet to mine for resources, and when our planet denied their petition for immigration, they forced their way in and killed millions of us. Hosts, symbiotes.”
Mari put a hand over her mouth.
“I was one of the lucky ones.” A moment of silence, and then, “Do you remember what I said? If you need to get my box out...”
It took Mari a few moments before the words came out. “Red button,” she finally managed. “Push and hold for three seconds, and slide.”
“Sleep well, Mari.”
Mari turned, wanting to say...something. What could she say?
“Good night, Sym,” she finally managed, wiping a tear away.
She left the office, and the door closed behind her.
Once Mari blinked the tears out of her eyes, she could see that the repair crews were gone. Probably back on their ship for the night. Their tools were still scattered around, and that included a laser cutter in the middle of the damn floor. It was turned off, but if she needed a reminder that safety didn’t matter at all on the station, there it was.
She picked the cutter up, intending to put it in the toolbox, but she hovered before she put it down. A laser cutter could be helpful if she was trapped in her room again.
Mari shook her head at herself, but she took the laser cutter with her to her cabin anyway.
* * *
When Mama had told Mari that she was dying, she’d said, “I’ll send you a vid of my own when I pass. None of those official ones. You’ll hear it from me.” Mari had replied that she would do her best to be there to say goodbye face-to-face, and Mama had said, “I know how hard it is.”
Mari wasn’t surprised to be awakened two hours after she’d gone to bed with Mama’s message.
It was short. “Mija, if you’re getting this, I’ve died. I’m so proud of you. Remember how worthy you are of everything you have and everything you don’t. I love you.”
Mari downloaded it to her watch and sent Sym a message on the station display saying that she wouldn’t be going to work that shift. She didn’t bother informing the station manager.
She stared out her small window at the green-red planet below until she was ready to sleep again.
* * *
“Mari. Mari. Do you hear me?”
“Mama?” Mari asked, rubbing at her face. She didn’t open her eyes. Mama would shake her awake if it was really important.
“Mariana, wake up.”
She groaned, but Mari opened her eyes, and…
No, this wasn’t one of the old cabins she’d shared with her mom. It was the one on the space station, and her mother’s face wasn’t on the display. Unless Mari played Mama’s goodbye message, her mother’s face wouldn’t be on a display again.
“Mari.”
She finally recognized the voice. “Sym?”
“You need to get to the office. There isn’t much time.”
Mari’s mouth went dry, but her head was still thick with sleep. “Time? For what?”
“You have ten minutes. Maybe. Grab your things and come get me.”
The transmission cut off, and Mari’s heart started pounding.
* * *
Mari traveled light. An old superstition. When she was a child, she was convinced that, if she didn’t have much and kept her things in her bag except for when she needed them, she’d get planetside one day. She’d be worthy of it. Mama had figured it was better to make the best of what you had and brought crates with her everywhere so she could decorate the cabins she and Mari shared. Mari had loved it, but she hadn’t taken anything of her mom’s when she’d started working on her own.
It meant that, after Sym’s wake-up call, Mari was out of her cabin and on the way to the office in less than three minutes.
All the overhead lights in the station were off. The only light was coming from Verdu outside the station. There weren’t many portholes, but there were enough that Mari made her way to the office in the greenish-red light.
She paused at the office door. There was a pounding noise coming from the direction of the airlocks.
“Sym,” Mari said, cramming herself inside the office so the door would close. “What the hell is going on?”
“Planetary coup.” Sym sounded cheerful. “I need your help.”
The words “planetary coup” rang in Mari’s ears. “Help?”
“Yeah. Can’t get to the elevator by myself.”
“Wait, you’re leaving?”
Sym spoke like she was reading off a recipe. “The Ectos will kill me if I stay. You might have a chance if you lock yourself in here and call one of your ambassadors. Oh, and if you grab some food from the kitchen. This door’s reinforced, I think, but that won’t do much good if you starve.”
“Who is ‘they’?” Mari’s head spun. “Won’t ‘they’ kill me for helping you?”
“‘They’ are Ectos.” There was a this is so obvious tone to Sym’s voice. “And yes, if they get their hands on you. A lot of Ectos would love to have a rebellious human to wave around, but they’ll probably kill us both if you don’t help me.”
Put it that way. “So you want me to take you to the elevator? And then I come back?”
“Well, unless...” Sym fell silent for a moment. “Do you want to come?”
“To your planet?” The dying biped came to mind, choking on the trapped atmosphere in the elevator. “Won’t the air kill me?”
“There’s a group waiting for me at the bottom. Some of them have bipedal hosts, and their hosts have breathing gear in case they dislodge their symbiotes. You won’t die.”
Probable death on the station versus less likely death on the surface. That much looked straightforward. There was more Mari knew she should ask: would she be able to get off the planet later? Would the Ectos come after them on the planet? Would humans come after them, since they had the treaty with the Ectos?
What she did ask was, “Was the broken gear fixed?”
“What?”
“Will the elevator even work?” Mari hadn’t been at work yesterday, so she didn’t know if the crews finished.
Judging by the inhuman, wordless noise Sym made as the holodisplay turned on and showed the elevator, they didn’t know either. “The gear’s in place, but the controls weren’t all turned back on. I think we can get it going from inside the elevator, but...”
“You don’t know.”
“No.”
So probable death in the elevator versus probable death on the station. Neither sounded pleasant. There had to be a way to settle it.
“Do...” Mari pulled at her ponytail. There hadn’t been time to braid her hair. “Do you want me to come?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to come if I didn’t.”
That decided her. She had no family left who would care if she was seen as a traitor and went to an alien planet. She had to take a minute to let her throat tighten and her chin wobble. Her mom was dead. She didn’t get to say a real goodbye.
But Mari had a friend, and she didn’t want Sym to die.
“Okay,” she said, pushing the chair out of the office and crouching. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”
“Fuck yes.” Sym sounded relieved. “You won’t regret this. I’ll make sure of that.”
Mari didn’t entirely believe Sym, but she admired Sym’s confidence. She paused with her finger over the button to Sym’s box. “You won’t be able to talk to me after this, will you?”
“Not until we make it to the planet.”
Mari laughed. It was a slightly terrified sound. “Any last words?”
“Just push the fucking button.”
“Good luck to you, too.” Mari pushed the button and held it.
* * *
Mari’s run to the elevator wasn’t the most elegant set of movements she’d ever done. With her things on her back and Sym sloshing in the box under her arm, she was off-balance and hitting the sides of all the doors. Her eyes watered from the jolts of pain as she stumbled down to the airlocks.
Unauthorized station entries weren’t common, so Mari hadn’t seen what reinforced airlocks looked like before. Metallic doors had sealed the openings, and they looked thick and heavy. Someone was cutting into one. It was molten and melting.
“Elevator,” Mari muttered. “Go inside.”
She pressed the button to open the elevator door, and the blue lights inside flickered to life. Empty, of course. The shift that would have opened access to the elevator was still hours away.
“It won’t kill me,” she said to herself. “It won’t kill me, it won’t kill me...”
Holding Sym’s box just in front of her, Mari stepped up to the clear gate. It glowed blue and let them enter.
She didn’t have time to be relieved. A loud clattering sounded behind her, and Mari hit the button to close the elevator so fast she nearly fell over.
If she had been thinking rationally, she might have figured out that it would be better to secure Sym’s box—and herself, for that matter—before anything else. She did put her bag down and sit in one of the biped seats, but the tapping she’d heard in the airlocks started on the elevator door, and...well, the only thoughts she had after that were “we’ll get vented into space” and “I’m going to die”, so she hit the red button for emergency descent before any securing was done.
The damn elevator had looked so sedate on the holodisplay. Speedy, but there was no reason to think it would be rocky. The display had read normal, minus the controls.
Which meant the speed it dropped, and the amount Mari felt it, had to be normal.
Whether it was or not, Mari was only partially in her harness. The elevator was built to maintain consistent gravity to protect the cargo, but the rocking of the elevator combined with Mari’s precarious spot meant she slid...and Sym’s box slid out from under Mari’s arm, too.
The moment before it broke lasted for what felt like years. Mari’s fingertips grazed the edge, and she had just enough time to remember the Ecto being dropped in a bucket of water before the box shattered and a two-headed symbiote went sliding across the floor, a trail of water left in their wake.
It was the first time Mari had seen Sym. Sym looked so small.
The decision to get Sym was instantaneous. It was the easiest part. Look at the box? Check. Was it intact enough to hold Sym for the descent? Maybe. Did it have any water left? No, that had all tipped on the floor.
The elevator took ten minutes to get to the surface. Symbiotes died of exposure in four.
Mari could hardly breathe between the fear squeezing her chest and the artificial gravity, but moving her entire body was harder than breathing. A crawl was too ambitious. She tried anyway because she wasn’t going to leave Sym to die. She pulled herself along by her fingertips and reached… reached…
Her height worked in her favor for once. She grabbed hold of Sym, and Sym flailed around in Mari’s grasp. There was no way for a symbiote to sense anything in air as dry as the elevator’s, and Sym was probably thinking “I’m going to die” as much as Mari. Did symbiotes panic the same way humans did? Mari had no idea.
“It’s...okay,” she said to Sym, even though Sym couldn’t hear her, and she put Sym in her mouth.
* * *
The next few moments could be best described as “choking to death”.
Mari had known before that Ectos took hosts by making connections through a biped’s skin. She also had known that symbiotes made connections by going inside the body. “Swallowing the slug” was what she’d heard most often outside of the classroom. What she hadn’t known was that symbiotes sat in a human’s throat, making connections to a human’s major systems through there and filtering air once they were settled.
Before then, the symbiote blocked all air to a human’s lungs.
Sym settling in probably took only seconds. It felt like an eternity to Mari, one where she grabbed at her throat and choked and heaved.
Mari passed out before it was all done. The last thing she remembered before everything went dark was the shaking of the elevator and how lightheaded she felt from lack of air.
* * *
Water.
Mari was floating in... in some place where her skin felt kind of heavy and wet, but it wasn’t until an echoing thought told her water that she understood what the sensations meant. She was submerged, a human floating, even though a flurry around her suggested the water was mostly filled with symbiotes.
The water wasn’t anything like she’d ever seen before. It was green, for one thing. And there was so much.
She tried moving her hands. She flailed at first, but after a few twirls in the water, she managed to travel a bit. The awkward gliding was still freer than anything Mari had ever done in gravity. Water had a bit more resistance than zero gravity, and that was comforting. A nice balance.
Mari blinked.
The water was gone.
Grass.
Mari had seen grass on ships before. The grass she was sitting on was nothing like the green grass that she’d known; it was redder and somehow softer to the touch. There were symbiotes in the grass as well, sliding through wet pockets on their way to other things. The air felt barely less heavy than the water had, and there were water droplets on Mari’s brown skin. She looked down on them in wonder, and—
“Are you finished?”
Mari looked around. She couldn’t see any bipeds. “Who said that?”
“We did.” It was in Mari’s own voice. It took her a minute to understand.
“Sym?” she gasped.
“There you go.” Sym laughed using Mari’s voice. “Interesting mind you have. But it’s time to wake up.”
Mari opened her eyes.
The elevator door was open, and the green sky beyond was like the green sky she’d seen in her dream. Or memory?
“Memory,” her brain agreed. It was louder and more defined than Mari usually thought. “Of course it’s loud. You’re not thinking this. It’s Sym talking to you.”
“Oh,” Mari said aloud. Her throat was hoarse, and she gagged a little. Sym wasn’t as thick in her throat as they’d been before, but Mari could still feel Sym there.
“Yeah, that’ll take some getting used to. Whatever. I need to get to work. Do you mind?”
Mari’s hand lifted slowly. Mari wasn’t the one lifting it. Sym was asking for permission to do more.
“Oh,” Mari said. “Sure.”
Sym moving Mari’s body was kind of funny. Mari was lurching, stumbling for her bag like she was drunk. But Mari could feel Sym’s intense focus, and it only took a few moments of fumbling before Mari’s hand held the laser cutter again.
“I can do that, you know,” Mari said aloud.
“You can think at me,” Sym thought. “No talking required.”
“Fine,” Mari thought. “Let me use the cutter?”
“Go ahead.”
Mari moved out of the elevator. There were other bipedal hosts on the platform, their skin tinged with red. The water around was green, and Mari spotted movement that suggested other symbiotes in the ocean.
A host spoke in a high-pitched language Mari hadn’t heard before. Sym used Mari’s mouth to reply. It was odd, but exhilarating.
The other hosts helped Mari climb on top of the elevator. Mari turned on the laser cutter. It would take a while to cut the cable that connected the elevator to the space station, probably hours, but she was willing to take the time to do it.
Judging by the fierce determination that flooded through Mari, it seemed Sym felt the same way.
* * *
The hosts moved the platform through the ocean after the cable was cut. Mari still didn’t understand their language, but Sym translated roughly. They were moving the platform to a place far away from any of the underwater settlements, and they would swim to find where they were going again. Sym added that, thanks to the symbiote in Mari’s throat, Mari wouldn’t need to surface for air.
Mari tried to care, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She was sad, still, so sad that it weighed her down, and the movement of the platform on the water was also vaguely terrifying. It felt so unstable.
“How permanent is this host thing?” she asked Sym aloud.
“As permanent as you want it to be,” Sym thought back. “But it’s better than breathing gear down here, and...”
Sym didn’t need to finish the next thought. The symbiotes had probably just declared war on the Ectos and humanity and a bunch of other aliens beside. Apparently, the symbiotes had allies as well, but Mari would likely be considered a traitor by Earth, if Sym’s thoughts were any way to tell.
“So I can stay with you?” Mari thought at Sym.
Mari felt Sym’s happiness that she would ask. “I’d like it if you did.”
An image of an amphibious biped appeared in Mari’s mind. She had learned about them in school when she’d learned about the symbiotes; her classmates had called them the “frog people”. Their skin was red, their cheeks expanded, and their hands were webbed for swimming purposes, but they also had faces like humans. This particular face was an attractive one. Friendly, Mari might have said.
Grief flooded Mari, and it took her a minute to realize it wasn’t hers.
“I’m sorry,” Mari thought.
“And I’m sorry about your mom.”
Mari looked down at the water. Sym was all she had. Sym, and a planet. After everything, Mari had made it to a planet.
The other hosts were jumping, barely splashing as they hit the surface. It was getting dark, so Mari couldn’t see them well at first, but they turned on lights as soon as they made it underwater, and every host had a green halo around them. Mari looked up at the sky and saw the beginnings of stars. She’d never been able to see stars from space.
“Ready?” Sym thought.
“Yeah,” Mari whispered aloud.
She jumped into the water.