To Be Taught, if Fortunate

by Becky Chambers

  I heard the comms switch back on. For a moment, all that greeted me was silence.

  ‘Ariadne,’ Chikondi said.

  I opened my eyes.

  ‘Ariadne, come back inside.’

  I turned toward the airlock door, away from the calming dark and back toward the harsh lights and oppressive walls. Only, it didn’t look as bad as before. It didn’t look as bad because Chikondi was there, floating on the other side of the window, his palm pressed toward me.

  ‘Do you want a pet,’ he asked, ‘when we go home?’

  I stared at him.

  ‘I’d like to get a dog,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had a dog before. My brothers were allergic, but I’m not.’

  I shut my eyes. I didn’t want a dog. I wanted the stars. I wanted no walls.

  ‘I think I’d like a beagle. Not too big, not too small. I like their ears. Davide in astrophysics had a beagle, do you remember him?’

  My breath caught, then quickened. I wanted him to go away, I wanted all of them to disappear. I wanted to disappear.

  ‘Come on, Ari. We need you in here.’ He pressed his hand harder against the window. ‘In here.’

  ‘I—’ I hadn’t cared what I was doing when I’d gone out there, but now the lack of that knowledge confused me. What was I doing? Who was I right then?

  ‘I know,’ he said, even though I’d said nothing else. He gave me a sad smile. ‘I know. Come on.’

  I let the door close, the pressure equalise. Jack pulled me inside. Elena removed my helmet, my gloves. Chikondi pulled me out of the cocoon of my suit. I could still hear my own breath, but it was quieter, and I could hear theirs, too, every breath and heartbeat as they held me close – as we all held each other, floating in the centre of the room, no beginning or end to us.

  Votum

  Our species evolved for a world that spins. The lengthy days and nights of our planet’s poles prove challenging for our diurnal minds, inviting summer insomnia and winter depression. Falling and staying asleep was one of the most common frustrations for early 21st-century astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, who saw the sun come up every hour and a half in their constant gravitational free-fall. But steady planetary rotation is not a given in the universe, nor even the norm. Red dwarf systems have a tendency toward tidal locking – a state in which an object’s rotational period is the same length of time as its orbital period. To illustrate this more simply: think about the way our Moon looks from Earth. When looking up at a full Moon on a clear night, you will always see the same friendly arrangement of craters shining back. Some cultures see a face in the Moon; others, a rabbit. Whatever the interpretation, the underlying truth remains the same. One side of the Moon is always facing Earth. The far side never does. This is a tidal lock.

  It is unusual that it took us until Votum to land on a world that holds still. Aecor is tidally locked with its parent planet, but not its star, so it experiences night and day in regular rhythm, just as Luna does (you’ll know the lunar day cycle as a slow exchange of shadow and light – the phases). If Mirabilis and Opera had thin atmospheres, they likely would be locked with Zhenyi, but their thick quilts of clouds have a spin of their own, pushing against the surface as they whip around. This nudging is powerful enough to make a planet turn (an effect you can see on Venus as well).

  In this regard, Votum, with its textbook tidal lock, is a more conventional planet. With an atmosphere only sixteen percent the thickness of Earth’s, there is not enough force to shove the mountains forward. One side is in permanent darkness, the other in daylight. As if this were not challenging enough, Votum’s close proximity to Zhenyi also means heavy bombardment by solar particles. The robust magnetic field that surrounds Votum helps, but there’s only so much that can be done. The combination of these factors means the surface temperatures are extreme, and protection from Zhenyi’s rays is minimal. It is not a leisurely place, this little world.

  We astronauts are already protected from dangers like these in the nakedness of deep space, but travelling to a planet such as this – one that stands forever unblinking in the face of its sun – was new territory for OCA. We had not, when I left Earth, sent any crewed missions to the hot surface of Mercury, and the other Lawki missions were still in their first legs of transit when the Merian took off. We weren’t sure what to expect, physiologically. So, to be on the safe side, my skin’s appetite for radiation was increased, providing me with an extra layer of in-built sunscreen. And while our survey schedule would take us to the planet’s frozen shadow, our first stop was the sunny side. Our antifreeze would not help us there, and we did not have a supplementation on hand for losing heat instead of retaining it. We warm-blooded mammals are a nuisance that way. This challenge is one that does require a technological solution – our TEVA suits, whose full spread of climate controls would be deployed at last.

  That is all I awoke with on Votum: a thicker skin and the tools I already carried. I floated in front of the mirror, studying my unclothed form. There was nothing about me that appeared different than it had on Opera, not in a visual, touchable way. But I was different, as different as a stranger. My mind felt quiet, at last, but the feeling was so precious that I was reluctant to accept it. I had become so accustomed to the cacophony that part of me perversely wished for it, more trusting of unending discord than peace that could be snatched away. I would never again be the Ariadne who had not been to Opera, just as I would never again be the Ariadne who had never left Earth, just as I would never again be the Ariadne who had never left her parents’ home, who had never bled, who had yet to learn to walk. A moth was a caterpillar, once, but it no longer is a caterpillar. It cannot break itself back down, cannot metamorphose in reverse. To try to eat leaves again would mean starvation. Crawling back into the husk would provide no shelter. It is a paradox – the impossibility of reclaiming that which lies behind, housed within a form comprised entirely of the repurposed pieces of that same past. We exist where we begin, yet to remain there is death.

  But I’m not a moth. I’m human. And in humans, there are far more stages than just two. I could not have predicted each version of me that I shifted into, but through my history, one constant has always remained true: change itself. I might not be able to return to the other Ariadnes, but I would not always be the Ariadne floating in front of the mirror, either. I did not know who she was, the one waiting for me to start moving toward her. I was curious about her, all the same. I was eager to meet her.

  I cut my nails. I put on my clothes. I left my cabin to find my crew.

  Elena refused the dice roll on Votum. She said she’d already been the first somewhere, and that the honour should be Chikondi’s. He protested; she won in the end.

  He stood for a long time at the bottom of the ramp as he took the world in. Nobody teased him, as they had when I stepped onto Aecor. We did not rush him. We would rush nothing here.

  I nearly collapsed at feeling dirt beneath my feet once more. I wanted to roll in it, burrow in it, rub it onto my cheeks. There was nothing but dirt before us – a bouldered plain, devoid of any sign of life. Mountains marked the horizon, ambling up toward the orange sky. Zhenyi hung large but dim as ever, and the thin atmosphere allowed a modest flocking of the brightest stars through, despite the unending day.

  Jack sat down and dragged his fingers through the dirt. He picked some up and examined it in his palm, brushing the grains this way and that. I don’t know what he was doing, or looking for. I think he was just a man playing with dirt. I had no interest in interrupting that.

  Some may have looked at Votum and seen a wasteland. This was the polar opposite of Mirabilis, the empty balance to its bounty. Aecor had been a quiet world, too, but even before we’d seen the shimmering swimmers, the waters beneath the ice held promise, and the cyclical respiration of the geysers told us the planet had a pulse. But Votum … nothing moved on Votum, nothing but pebbles small enough to be caught by wind.

  I knew OCA had debated sendi
ng us here, but there is much to be learned from a habitable-zone planet that has either died out or on which life never got started. Knowledge from the former can be used as a cautionary tale; knowledge from the latter gets us closer to understanding why life begins in the first place. Either way, we get a few more clues toward the biggest Why of all.

  I didn’t care about any of the whys or hows, in that moment. I didn’t see a waste, either. When I looked out at Votum, at that vast, echoing flatland, I saw exactly what my soul had longed for. A quiet place. A blank slate. A reality in which everything held still for however long I needed it to. If things moved, it would be because I moved, because I chose to move. It was not exciting, but neither was it frightening. It was not compelling, but neither was it overwhelming. It was, pure and simple. Neutrality incarnate.

  I lay down. I pressed my palms against the ground. I affixed myself to Votum’s outer curve, traversing the galaxy along with it. I had my back in the dirt, but I felt as though I were floating in saltwater. The sky saturated my eyes. Time dissolved. I continued to breathe deep. In and out. In and out. Votum did not need me, but I needed it. I had needed it desperately.

  ‘Should we make camp?’ Chikondi asked at last.

  It was the obvious thing to do, the next step in protocol. Elena looked out at the horizon with a dogged gaze. ‘Later,’ she said. She took a step forward, testing the light gravity. She took another step, then another, and another. I propped myself up just in time to see her break into a run. Her body wasn’t accustomed to Votum’s pull yet, but you could see a well-honed stride beneath her stumbling, the legs that remembered how to run marathons and dance all night. Jack watched her for a moment, then took off after. The strength in each step was visible, palpable. It was like watching someone release a coiled spring.

  Chikondi reached out to me. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  I let him pull me up, and we took off together, barrelling after the other two. Elena knew where she was headed. I did not, but I trusted her. Jack had full confidence in his ability to keep up. I did not, but if he could, I could. And Chikondi – Chikondi wasn’t much of an athlete, but I could see him savour the way he hung in the air for a fraction of a second after every wobbly step. He didn’t care where the destination was or whether he looked good getting there. If he found joy in awkwardness, then I would, too.

  We ran to the top of a small hill, panting hard as we reached the crest. The desert stretched out below us – angular, crumbling, warm red, like the place that exists below a campfire.

  Elena surveyed. She put her hand on Jack’s shoulder congenially; he put his hand over hers. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

  Chikondi and I walked panting up beside them. I leaned my helmet against his arm. He offered his hand to Elena. She took it gladly. We became a molecule, distinct components attached by natural bonds.

  ‘It is beautiful,’ I replied, looking out at the nothing. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

  The airlock hissed open and we poured ourselves inside, humming with chatter as we disrobed.

  ‘The canyons we saw from orbit mean water,’ Jack said. ‘There was water here, at some point.’

  ‘I’m not disagreeing with the geology,’ Elena said, ‘and the tidal lock is consistent with the absence of said water now.’ The temperature, she meant; any liquid water in Votum’s unfailing daylight would’ve been all too happy to evaporate. ‘What I’m wondering is how that much water lasted long enough on the surface to create canyons at all.’

  Jack hrm’d as he hung his helmet. ‘Well, what if Votum didn’t start out here? What if it orbited further out, had an atmosphere, had a spin, all that good stuff, and something whacked it to where it is now?’

  Elena pulled off her socks and nodded. ‘A comet, you mean.’

  ‘Sure, or a planet that destroyed itself in the process.’

  ‘That could work.’

  Chikondi chimed in. ‘But is there any water left?’ he asked. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  Elena looked sceptical. ‘Not at the surface. It’s too hot. And we didn’t see any ice caps on the far side.’

  Jack scratched his stubble. ‘The canyons, though,’ he mused. ‘They’re awfully deep. Could be shady enough for some little puddle to stick around. Or caves, there could be caves. I’m going to put money on caves.’

  ‘You don’t have any money,’ Elena said.

  ‘Well, if I did, I would. Calling it now: caves.’

  Suits vacated, we headed for the ladder. ‘If there are caves, I’m not going into one with Ariadne again,’ Chikondi said as we climbed.

  ‘What?’ I laughed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? On Mirabilis?’

  I racked my brain, and laughed all the harder at the connection made. There’d been a side pocket in an old lava tube we’d explored that was just about my size, and thus, an impossible-to-resist opportunity to tuck myself inside and wait for Chikondi to walk past. ‘Oh, it was funny,’ I said. ‘You thought it was funny.’

  He gave me a facetiously scolding look as we stepped off in the control room. ‘It was definitely, definitely not—’

  Something in Elena’s body language made us shut right up. I followed her gaze to the comms monitor.

  The download folder had a number hanging over it.

  1, it read.

  We circled around.

  She pressed play.

  The message was not from Earth itself, but the atmospheric border above. I could see my home planet beckoning in the window behind the man on camera, who floated in a room just like the one I stood in. I hadn’t realised how deeply I missed the colour green.

  ‘Hey, Lawki 6,’ the astronaut said. ‘This is Lawki 5.’

  ‘Holy shit, it’s Lei,’ Jack said. Lei Jian, he meant, one of our colleagues. We knew him – we’d studied together, been to launch parties together. He’d travelled in torpor just as we had, and like us, the years had left their mark on him. I wondered if I’d ever stop feeling shock at a face older than I remembered it.

  ‘I’m going to assume you haven’t heard from home either,’ Lei said. ‘We’re pretty sure we know why. We arrived day before yesterday, but there’s no signal from the ground. There’s no anything from the ground. We tried calling the lunar base, and that pinged back, but it’s an automated signal. Their equipment works, but nobody’s home. So we roped in the nearest satellite, and … well, it’s fried. They all are – nothing’s responding to us. We’re still gathering info, but everything points toward a massive geomagnetic storm.’

  Oh, was my first thought. Of course. And then: Oh. Oh, no. No.

  I don’t know how to describe what I felt as the magnitude of what happened dawned on me, without insulting what you on the ground have gone through in the wake of the sun’s betrayal. What is my upset, compared with yours? I cannot imagine what you have endured. The technology I live in – the technology Earth built for us – did not fail, has never failed. We have not starved, or frozen. We have not sat shivering in the dark while our food spoiled and our vehicles lay paralysed. And worst of all, we knew this could happen. We’ve been impotently worrying about what a solar flare could do to electronic infrastructure since the 1900s. But my generation was so preoccupied with fixing the mess left by the unaddressed-and-fully-known-about environmental disaster of the previous generation that we committed the same sin of criminal procrastination against yours. I ask no forgiveness for this, because we deserve none. I do not know what conditions were like for you and yours; I can only guess that it has been devastating, given your silence lasting years and not months. How much have you rebuilt? How much could be salvaged?

  How many of us are left?

  ‘We’re going to land this evening,’ Lei said. ‘We don’t know who’ll be down there or if anyone’s waiting for us, but the good news is, since our comms are working, we’ll be able to contact you again once we get the shape of things. Tomorrow, hopefully. Uh, the one thing, though’ – h
is face went wooden as he tried to keep his tone neutral – ‘we suffered some damage to our hull somewhere along the way here. Not sure how yet, but we’ve got a bunch of yellow lights.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I whispered. A damaged hull can mean a lot of things. Some are innocuous. Many are not. One is the possibility of burning up in re-entry. And with no way to call ground crew for support, and no one waiting to pick Lawki 5 up if they needed to eject … The astronaut in me had been trained for the risk every one of us faced, had no illusions about our mortality. The human in me couldn’t help but feel sick.

  Lei’s face suggested he mirrored my feelings on both fronts. ‘We’re sending you all our mission reports, just in case, uh – but really, don’t worry. Plan on having drinks with us when you’re home, yeah? Be safe out there. We’ll call you tomorrow.’

  The video ended. I’d never felt the air in that room sit so heavy.

  ‘They could go to the Moon,’ Chikondi said. ‘They could wait it out there.’

  ‘Wait it out for how long?’ Jack said, not unkindly. ‘We know how waiting it out goes.’

  ‘I’d want to go home, too,’ Elena said. ‘I’d want to know. I’d want to help.’

  ‘Besides, there’s no telling when the base was abandoned,’ I said. ‘Functional comms doesn’t mean life support is working.’ I shook my head, my stomach refusing to settle.

  Elena squeezed my shoulder. ‘We’ll wait for tomorrow,’ she said. ‘That’s all we can do.’

  Tomorrow arrived, followed by another, and another, and another.

  Lawki 5 did not contact us again.

  When the day never ends and the world has no rhythm, it becomes vital for you to make one of your own. I slept like a teenager my first weeks on Votum, letting my body determine its ebb and flow. I did not pay attention to the time on the clock. I drank when thirsty, worked until I needed rest, rested until bored. I never abandoned protocol, but I did not need rigid checklists to follow it. I knew the rules. I knew what needed doing. I wrote myself reminders, not marching orders. I did not chide myself for days in which I did nothing but nap and make a salad, because they were paired with days where I fixed, dug, sampled, studied. Sometimes I went for walks outside – not fieldwork, not exploratory hikes. Just walks. There was a destination I came to enjoy quite by accident – a crumbling ridge overlooking a hypnotisingly flat plain – and no matter where else I wandered to, I often ended up right back there, following the foot-wide trail worn by my steps alone.