SAL KONSTANZ
By the time Preston and I reached the galley, Nod was hopping from limb to limb to limb with impatience. I’d never seen it so agitated.
“What is it?”
“Important figuring-out.”
“Like what?” I squatted in front of the little engineer and put a hand on its scaly back. “Is this to do with those air filters on the cargo deck?”
“Cousins.”
“What?”
“Druff served Hearthers.”
“Yes, so?”
“Fleet must carry Druff engineers.”
I rocked back on my heels. Now he’d said it, it seemed so obvious. Every race in the Multiplicity used Druff engineers, and had done for most of recorded history. So naturally the Hearther-built ships of the Marble Armada would be carrying their own six-limbed mechanics.
“I don’t see how that helps us, though.”
“Me either. But Chet wanted us to know. Said important.”
“Chet?”
“Druff engineer on Lucy’s Ghost.”
My knees were hurting. With my hands on my thighs I pushed myself upright, and walked across the galley to the kettle, where I carefully prepared a cup of navy-strength tea: barely palatable but guaranteed to banish tiredness and keep you at your post.
“Would you like a cup?” I asked.
Nod shook one of its faces in an approximation of a human gesture. “Taste is like boiled swamp water.”
“Suit yourself.”
While I waited for my tea to brew, I watched Nod pace around. Its mouths made quiet sucking noises against the metal deck.
“Did you know it’s Christmas Eve?”
Nod stopped moving and regarded me with a quizzical twist of the head. “What is Christmas?”
I shrugged. “Something the ship dug up. I think she’s feeling sentimental.”
“An artefact?”
“A holiday.”
“What is holiday?”
“Like shore leave. A day when you don’t have to work.”
“Always work.”
“I know.”
“Work, then rest.”
I rubbed my forehead. In some ways, Nod was the wisest person I knew. In others, it was like a child.
“Back on Earth, in the early days of the Conglomeration, humans had to provide labour in order to gain the means to purchase food and accommodation.”
“Purchase from who?”
“From the corporations they worked for.”
Nod’s finger-petals rippled. “Sounds inefficient.”
“It was.”
“So, holiday?”
“Holidays were special days when they were allowed not to go to work.”
The engineer considered this. “But what happen to younglings?”
“They didn’t have to work, either.”
One of Nod’s heads shot upwards in alarm. “They die?”
“What?”
“Idle younglings wither and die. Is balance. Only enough offspring for amount of work. No surplus.”
I took a moment to process its words. “Druff children die if there isn’t enough work for them to do?”
“Yes. Keeps World Tree in balance.”
“That’s horrible.”
All six of Nod’s shoulders rippled in a creditable attempt at a human shrug. “So it goes.”
“But your children…”
“Much work. Druff have much work now, all across sky.”
This was a perspective I truly hadn’t considered before: the reason so many of Nod’s species were happy to work as starship engineers for all the other races of the Multiplicity was that otherwise, they’d literally be dead. The closed system of the World Tree would never let their population grow to a point where it might overload its ecological niche and threaten the survival of the tree itself. In their case, voluntary servitude had become a safety valve, allowing for the survival of excess individuals who would otherwise have become so much compost. From a human point of view, the morality of such an arrangement escaped me. I couldn’t help but think the races of the Multiplicity (including humanity) had done nothing but take advantage of the poor creatures, and their natural instinct to devote themselves to maintenance. But somehow, our selfishness had provided their salvation. That didn’t mean what we’d done was in any way defensible—and the fact humans had adopted the practice from older races didn’t excuse the immorality of it—but at least there were more Druff alive today than there would otherwise have been.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Nod opened and closed its finger-petals. “For what?”
I gave it a sad smile. “For everything.”
Its consternation was palpable. “I do not understand.”
“I’m feeling guilty.”
“For what?”
“The crimes of my people.”
Nod raised two scaly arm-necks and whacked them together—an action comparable to a human slapping his or her own forehead. “Humans broken.”
“What do you mean?”
It fixed me with a set of small, coal-black eyes. “Humans take guilt not theirs. Humans break selves over actions of others. Humans care too much.”
Up close, he smelled like a spice rack that had been emptied into a pond. I said, “So, we should stop caring?”
“No.” One of its heads shook. “Care, but don’t break selves caring.”
I took my tea over to a table and sat down. Nod shuffled over to sit by my feet.
“I’m not sure I know how to do that.”
“Yes. That’s why humans break. But life breaks us all.” It raised a face to the ceiling like a sunflower searching for the sun. “It’s the way we fix breaks that make us who we are.”
I contemplated the steam rising from my tea. “You know, that’s actually pretty deep.”
Nod opened and closed the petals around the edge of its nearest face. “Philosophy just engineering by another name.”
I watched it shuffle out, marvelling at how little I actually knew about one of the most important members of my crew.
Then I thought of Riley Addison. She was still grieving, and I should probably look in on her. Or maybe I would be better leaving her to her own devices, and make more profitable use of my time discussing tactics and strategy with Okonkwo?
I stood up with a curse. All I wanted was to down a couple of strong gins, crawl into the life raft in the cargo hold, and pull a blanket over my head for a few blissfully oblivious hours. Instead, I stood at the galley door, trying to decide which way to turn—left along the corridor to the bridge, or right towards Addison’s cabin.