I was not, in fact, in any great hurry to have that conversation with my parents. If I were honest, I wanted them to come ask me what happened, so I could have the talk in my space instead of theirs. And if it took them a few days, all the more time to catch my breath.
Time was clearly something I needed. I’d been throwing myself into the role of delegation head, getting more and more stressed, putting more energy into it than I normally would even for work I loved. It might be the most important work on the planet, but I didn’t do it any favors by burning out, or by disconnecting from the things I was working to preserve. I messaged Mendez and asked her to arrange oversight of the antenna for a couple days, convinced Dinar and Athëo to show up there with our kids on a regular basis, and put in for a neighborhood work shift with Carol.
For absolutely no reason at all beyond keeping the diplomatic task moving, I asked Rhamnetin to join us.
“Tell him it’s a traditional human social activity,” said Athëo, nearly poker-faced, as I put too much effort into the text message over pancakes. We were being careful this morning, consciously avoiding excess gentleness in a way that felt good but fragile: stoneware mended with a line of gold.
“But does he already know what kind of tradition, or do I need a detailed explanation of shared work shifts as a courtship opportunity?” I asked.
“It’s a very recent tradition,” Carol pointed out. “In most of the broadcasts he’s probably seen, people either pay to experience temporary luxuries together, or ask each other’s parents for permission to get married.”
I shook my head. “I’ll explain in person. Or better yet, you will. If worse comes to worst, at least he’ll learn more about our species.” Rhamnetin, Carol and I are going to put in a work shift around the neighborhood today, checking drainage for the spring storm season. Want to join us? It’ll be anthropologically interesting, I promise.
Fortunately, Rhamnetin was an easy recruit; we met him an hour later in the common hall. Dori had gone down for a nap, so we took Raven with us. That would give Dinar and Athëo time to rest before visiting the construction site. Raven immediately tried to climb Rhamnetin’s leg.
“You can pick them up, if you want,” I said. It would feel strange not to give him permission, having already offered it to Cytosine.
“Really?” At my nod, he scooped them carefully into a relatively stable seat atop one of his upper joints, holding them in place.
“More up!” demanded Raven.
“I’m afraid that’s all the up I have,” said Rhamnetin. “You’re a solid little creature!”
“Ringer men don’t get to hold kids?” I guessed.
“Not very often. And definitely not during tense negotiations.”
“We’d better not negotiate anything tense this morning, then,” said Carol. “Who points the flashlight and who scans for clogs is as high-stakes as this should get.”
She led us toward our first site, and Rhamnetin dedicated an extra limb to holding Raven in place while he followed. “So what exactly are we doing? I thought it was storm season in the southern hemisphere; all this preparation has Cytosine getting nervous about the site again.”
“We have storms year-round,” I said. “They’re just worse in season. Given what you told us about the antenna’s resilience, it should be fine with anything the Atlantic’s likely to throw at us in the next couple months.” I pinged records. “The earliest we’ve ever gotten a Cat 4 is late May.”
“So what we’re doing now,” Carol said, “is checking drainage features in the neighborhood—ditches, artificial wetlands, reservoirs, that sort of thing—and making sure none of them are blocked, the runoff filters are functional, and in general that nothing is going to flood or spill nasty stuff into the Anacostia next time it rains for three days straight.”
“What I like about habitats,” said Rhamnetin, “is that raining for three days straight is not a thing that happens. We don’t get winds strong enough to knock down an ansible at any time of year.”
With Cytosine, that would’ve been the start of a tense negotiation. With Rhamnetin I only said, “And what I like about planets is that when the power goes out, we don’t have to worry about life support failures outside of specific medical needs.”
Limbs that weren’t holding our kid rose and fell in a passable imitation of a shrug. “Touché.”
Normally I enjoyed this task because it involved walking around the neighborhood, looking at all the little details that marked change and stability and the health of the community. The bloom and fall of forsythia, the ever-shifting blossoms of solar panels and wind kites tugging against roofs, the seasonal games kids played in the street, the little routes worn by streams or anthills. This time, my attention was all for Rhamnetin. He moved more like a horse than a spider, if a horse had ten legs and no particular front. There was a prancing grace to him, and curiosity like the turn of a bird’s head in the way he changed direction on a moment’s whim. Raven clutched fistfuls of dense fur and rubbed it between her fingers.
The emotional connection had come first: wanting to know his opinion, liking the way he treated people and the way we saw each other. But now I found myself enjoying his scent, imagining fur against bare skin. It had been the same with Carol: first seeking out the conversations, longer and more often, and then discovering that I’d made a place in my head to model her body, imagining more and more detail until I wanted desperately to replace imagination with observation. With touch. It had made me shy and slow then, and did the same now.
My earpiece chimed. “First stop: the Hollingsworth barrier rain garden.” We were at the low end of the neighborhood, where a cluster of repair shops and a broader road increased runoff risk. The garden was a long, narrow wetland standing between the road and the farther slope to the Anacostia’s tideline. Reeds helped turn the patch of water into an effective filter; a nearby bat house along with dragonfly larvae and tadpoles kept it from becoming a haven for mosquitoes. I wanted the time with Rhamnetin, but I also wanted to show this off: the older powers had their parties and we had ours, but it was this merging, the blurred boundary between human design and natural creation, where our true power shone.
“So what we do here,” said Carol, “is get readings from the sensors already in the pond, and deploy our own bot for a clearer picture of any problems—blockages, say, or too few frogs, or the wrong mix of plants.”
I hoped no one noticed me flinch—if I felt guilty every time someone talked about bots, that was gonna be fun. To cover, I busied myself getting the stupid thing linked to my lenses and into the water. I inhaled the reassuring scent of water dripping through petals and leaves, soaking into earth. Finally I could see the bot’s growing model: pixels filled in with increasing density until they skinned over with a clear image of the garden ecology, everything tagged with goal states and sensor readings.
“This is all going through the neighborhood network,” I told Rhamnetin. “We’ll share the aggregate data uphill to the Chesapeake later, but for now I’ll project on my palette so you can see.” Plenty of people stuck with palette readouts anyway; if you weren’t used to lenses (or as into sensory enhancement as I was), it could be disconcerting to have that detailed an overlay atop your own vision.
“How are the frogs?” asked Carol anxiously.
I filtered out the other readings. “Within target numbers, but on the low side. We might want to get a closer look.”
“What are they really like?” asked Rhamnetin.
I squinted at him through the haze of readings. “What, frogs?”
“They look so many different ways in your broadcasts, it’s hard to tell what’s original biology and what’s fiction. Xenon thought they were mythical, like dragons but smaller.”
I laughed, imagining the Solar Flare’s crew watching kids’ shows mixed with nature documentaries and old ads with animated batrachian mascots. “Frogs are real. But several species went extinct earlier in the century, and we’re still struggling to protect them against fungal epidemics. This lot are inoculated and gene-modded against the known strains, but there are always mutations—this stuff just won’t die.”
“Do they talk?” Rhamnetin asked.
“Huh? No, frogs don’t talk. I mean, they make noises at each other? But they don’t have language.”
“I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe they were like parrots, or dogs.” Rhamnetin paused here. “Your dog just squeaks and barks. Dogs don’t talk either, do they?”
“It’s a wonder you understand us at all,” said Carol, “given how weird some of our shows are.”
“Our stories can be bad ways to learn about reality too,” said Rhamnetin, ostentatiously sullen. “I just guessed wrong about which of your symbiote species actually have language.”
“I think we always wanted someone to talk with,” I admitted. “Hold on.” I handed him the palette so he could keep examining the model and knelt, muddying the knees of my jeans. It was early in the season for leopard frogs, but a few adults already crouched on rocks. I moved slowly, and on my second try scooped one up before it could leap away. It was green and brown and spotted like its namesake, about as long as my palm was wide. I held it gently, trying not to abrade its satiny skin. Carol got a sample swab from the same kit that had produced the bot and checked for fungus, while Rhamnetin peered at the creature from two sides at once and Raven stretched over the hump of one of his knees to try and grab it. He pulled her back, deftly as if he’d been wrangling kids for years.
“It’s very cute, even if it doesn’t have enough limbs. What does it do in your ecology?”
I tried not to feel self-conscious about my limited number of legs. “A lot of things. The adults eat mosquitoes, and the tadpoles keep algae in check. They’re also very sensitive, so when you have an area that isn’t as thick with sensors as this one, dips in the frog population can flag toxins. Wait, do the plains-folk get on your case about not having enough legs? I can’t even tell if they all have the same number.”
Rhamnetin dipped in a full-body shrug. “They do, and we get on theirs for how short their limbs are. Adults usually have thirty-two; babies start out with twelve.”
“Oh my god,” said Carol. She rubbed her arms. “Adolescence is bad enough without budding extra hands all over. I’m itchy just thinking about it.”
We returned the frog to its ordinary life and went on through the low-lying edges of the neighborhood. Raven squealed at gusts of wind and Rhamnetin squealed back. We nibbled on early dandelions and said hello to dogs (that did not say hello back) and checked drains and trenches and rain gardens. Everything smelled wet and ready to bloom, and talking with Rhamnetin felt easy and hard all at once. I put an arm around Carol’s waist. That touch, something I could take for granted and still be grateful for, was a slim but much-needed anchor.
Say something, Carol texted.
You say something, I suggested.
No, you. All I can think of is, I’d like to put this whole political mess on hold while we learn about each others’ sensory capabilities. That is the stupidest flirt.
I couldn’t think of anything better. Subtle flirtation was probably useless under the circumstances. On the train together, minds glazed with sleep deprivation and the sort of intense discussions of identity that are only easy when you’re nineteen, I’d rolled over onto Carol’s seat, straddling the warm bulge of her lap, and kissed her. It was a strategy that worked best when you were too tired to think twice about it, and when you and your potential partner shared a body plan.
“I’m going to say something stupid,” I finally told him.
“That’s my calling,” he said. “I approve of your efforts in the field.”
“Right. Um.” I tried to frame the stupidity. “I like the way you ask questions, and the way you think about our answers when they’re different from Ringer answers. We both do. We like the way you perceive things that other people don’t, things that might not be what you expected to find, and the way you try new things, and the risks you take to connect. And we like how many limbs you have. When I was in Zealand, I missed having you there in person to help figure things out. And, um. I don’t know how your people do these things, but around here sometimes you get yourself on a work crew with someone to find out if they’d like to. Um.” I felt hot and embarrassed and I hoped he noticed this time. “If they’d like to be lovers,” I finished in a rush. “Later. After the crew work is done. Obviously. Not that anything about this should be obvious.”
Finally I managed to shut up, and waited anxiously for him to respond. Maybe I should have texted him, from a safe distance, so I could hide in the crook of Carol’s arm while I waited. As it was, all my ability to read his body language seemed to fly out the window; I could tell that he still had Raven firmly balanced and that was about it.
“I like you, too,” said Rhamnetin, squatting a little. “How patient you are with us while we learn, and how impatient you get when we don’t, and how you hold your kids, and how you let me hold them. I like how you invite people to define themselves, and never assume those definitions are obvious. And I’d like to be lovers—or try it, anyway. Something adapted and made new, like the morning ritual. But you can do this one?”
“I can do this one.” I felt giddy, a little dizzy. Freed of political negotiation, for a few whirling minutes, and ready to be anxious about something more promising.