Jane could hear Pahkerr’s cameras following her as she walked down the broad metal corridor. They were different from Owl’s cameras. Less noisy, less clunky. She missed the clunky ones. She missed Owl, furiously, achingly. And weird as it was, she missed the shuttle. Aboard the Yo’ton, everything was clean and warm, and all the tech worked right. There wasn’t any danger, not that she could see. But she missed the shuttle, all the same. She missed knowing where everything was, knowing how her blanket would smell, missed playing sims and fixing stuff. She’d worked so long to get out of there, and now . . . now, she almost wanted to go back.
Lights in the ceiling switched on as she made her way to the kitchen. The Yo’ton was huge, and she longed to know how everything worked. But the lead tech didn’t like her. Thekreh was a mean-faced Aandrisk with a real thick accent, and Jane didn’t know if she’d asked her too many questions or what, but Thekreh had flat-out told her that she was distracting her from her work, and that she needed to go bathe. That last bit had stung. Jane was the cleanest she’d been since the factory – cleaner, even. She didn’t think she smelled bad, but she’d felt awkward in her own body since then, and had been scrubbing herself so hard her skin hurt. None of the other species there took showers, so she and Laurian had to clean themselves in one of the utility sinks down in the engine room, standing on cold metal and drenching each other with a lukewarm hose. It made her feel like a dead dog.
The lights in the kitchen were already on. Jane wasn’t the only one there. One of the tables was occupied by the algaeist, a big Laru man with the hilarious name of Oouoh. Not that she’d told him his name was hilarious. She’d already managed to make one person not like her in the tenday she’d been there. She wasn’t stupid.
Oouoh was kicking back with his furry feet up on another chair, eating some kind of crunchy fruit as he stuffed a pipe with redreed. Jane liked the look of his species. He was shaggy red from head to toe, and had a long crazy neck that could make his snouted face curve back over his shoulder. He was as tall as Laurian when walking on four legs; when he walked on two, he nearly bumped the ceiling.
Oouoh’s black eyes dilated as Jane walked into the room. ‘Hey, little Human,’ he said. ‘Whatcha looking for?’
‘I’m thirsty,’ Jane said. She paused. ‘And I couldn’t sleep.’
Oouoh’s neck bobbed in a slow, repeated S-shape. ‘Me too. Me too.’ He lifted up the pipe toward her. ‘Want to join me?’
Jane blinked. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ She put her hands in her pockets because she didn’t know what else to do with them. ‘I don’t know how.’
Oouoh made a funny face she couldn’t figure out. ‘Well, I’ll show you. Come on.’ He waved one of his wide paw-like hands toward his table. Jane pulled up a chair. Stars, but he was big. If he hadn’t been saying nice stuff, she would’ve been real scared of him. She was a little bit anyway.
Oouoh picked up a sparker from the table, and handed both it and the pipe to her. ‘Okay, so, put the little end in your mouth. There ya go. Now close your lips around it. Now, you’re going to spark the stuff in the bowl, and at the same time, you’re going to suck in hard.’
Jane did as told. A hot mouthful of smoke came rushing between her lips, and she tasted it – ash and dirt, hot and sweet.
Oouoh saw her pause. ‘You gotta breathe it in. Way down into your lungs, then out your nose like a chimney.’
Jane did as told, and . . . and she doubled over, coughing and gasping. Her lungs hadn’t liked that experience much.
Oouoh made a huffing rumble down deep in his chest. Was he laughing at her? ‘First time’s always hard. Try again. You’ll get the hang of it.’
Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to try again. Her throat was scratchy now, and she felt kind of stupid, but she didn’t want to give up in front of Oouoh. She repeated the same steps as before: spark, suck, breathe. Her lungs protested, but she willed them open, just a little. She coughed again, but less this time, and some of the smoke came out her nose instead of her lips. She felt something else, too. A little quieter. A little clearer.
‘There ya go,’ Oouoh said, sounding pleased. He took the pipe and sparker back. ‘Look at you, you look like a kohumie.’
Jane coughed the last of the smoke out of her lungs. ‘What’s a kohumie?’
‘A volcano monster. From holiday stories, y’know? Little round furless spirits that appear when rocks near lava flows start to melt.’
That sounded like a cool thing to look like. ‘I’m not round, though,’ Jane said.
Oouoh took a long drag from his pipe. He didn’t cough at all. ‘No, no, you definitely are not.’ He thought for a moment, puffing. ‘Why don’t you eat the same stuff as the rest of us? Your friend eats the same stuff as the rest of us. Cook’s always giving you – what? Porridge? Soft vegetables?’
Jane scratched behind her ear. ‘I was real sick before I came aboard. I’m not supposed to eat anything complicated for a while.’ Both’pol, the ship’s doctor, apparently agreed with everybody back on the Lookout Station about that. Dammit.
‘Sick how?’ Oouoh asked.
‘Lots of ways,’ Jane said. ‘But mostly because I didn’t eat enough, I guess.’
‘Why didn’t you eat enough?’
‘Because there wasn’t any food.’
‘Ah,’ Oouoh said. He exhaled a long stream of smoke. ‘That’s shitty.’
Jane gave a short laugh. ‘You could say that.’
‘You’re a fringer, yeah?’ He made a circling gesture with one of his fingers. ‘From outside the GC?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Spacer?’