‘And what’s true Quelin civilisation?’

Roveg laughed ruefully. ‘Now that would take tendays. There are tomes upon tomes written on the subject, and they’re all equally stupid. Anyway, it became very fashionable very quickly to perform cultural purity for others, and that fashion became dogma, and dogma became law, and tada! Here we are.’

Speaker thought. ‘Yet you’re part of the GC. You trade. You’re in Parliament. Your borders aren’t closed.’

‘Oh, of course not,’ Roveg said. His frills bristled. ‘Perish the thought that we stop trade. It’s a relationship of greedy convenience, and everyone knows it. The fact that both the GC and the Protectorate are willing to quietly shelve their principles just so they can keep ore and ambi flowing is nothing short of disgusting.’ He had no muscles to tense, but his body had gone rigid anyway. Speaker wondered how it felt, being unaware of your own softness. Roveg shook from head to end, as if dusting himself off. ‘I cannot tell you what a constant relief it is, even decades after I left, to be in places where I can say something like that freely.’

Speaker had a word for how she felt right then: eerekere. A moment of vulnerable understanding between strangers. It did not translate into Klip, but it was a feeling she knew well from gatherings among her people. There was no need being expressed here, no barter or haggling or problems that required the assistance of a Speaker, but eerekere was what she felt all the same. She’d never felt it with an alien before. She embraced the new experience. Were Roveg an Akarak, were he linking wrist-hooks with her and opening himself in the radical way required if you truly wanted someone’s help, she would hold nothing back, couch nothing in pretence. And so, she said exactly what she wanted to say next: ‘May I ask what it was that led to your exile?’

Roveg was silent for a long time. Speaker feared she’d swung too far, but eventually, his motionless eyes glittered. ‘I told the wrong stories,’ he said.

‘You said you make vacation sims.’

‘Nowadays, yes. But in my younger years, I designed narrative sims, and … well. My political subtext wasn’t as clever as I thought.’

That seemed a callous reason to drive someone out of an entire region of the galaxy, but such extremity matched what she’d been told of the Quelin, and why she and Tracker never flew through their space. ‘Why did you stop telling stories?’

‘I enjoy giving people templates in which they can make their own stories. Telling my own requires a mindset I just can’t return to.’ Roveg was quiet for several seconds. ‘Just because I was right doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.’ He stared off, past the garden, past the dome, all the way to the horizon. ‘But you’re correct. Our species – no, forgive me, our cultures – aren’t the same at all. Quelin fear outsiders because we use them as scapegoats for the things we fear about ourselves. We bar cultural exchange because change frightens us. Whereas your people …’ He looked at her. ‘You fear outsiders because they gave you no choice in the change they forced upon you.’

‘There’s more to it than that,’ Speaker said. ‘But that’s a piece, yes.’

The progress monitor chimed completion. Roveg leaned forward; Speaker did the same with her suit.

Error

Connection lost

Cause: unknown

‘Agh,’ Roveg moaned. ‘Stars, I don’t know what’s wrong, that should’ve—’

‘It’s all right,’ Speaker said. She was disappointed, of course, but the beak-snapping anxiety she’d felt in the shuttle had ebbed. The feeling remained as a background hum, still imagining the same horrors, still desperately wanting solutions. But she’d tamed it, for the moment. She, and the stranger who had attempted to help. ‘It’s enough that you tried,’ she said. ‘Really.’

His frills drooped with defeat, but he turned his inscrutable face to hers once more. ‘I am sorry it didn’t work. But thank you for the rekree, Speaker. Am I saying that correctly?’

‘Rakree,’ she said.

‘Rakree,’ he repeated.

‘That’s right. And yes. Thank you, as well.’

Day 237, GC Standard 307

YOUR CONTINUED PATIENCE

ROVEG

The building was the same shape as the other pre-fab bubbles that comprised the Five-Hop, but that was where the similarity ended. The outside had been painted – in amateur fashion and drab monochrome – with images of erupting volcanoes, careening meteorites, glittering gems, and … and … some shapes. The shapes had meaning, Roveg was sure, but whatever their artist’s intent had been, it was lost in the execution. He stood pondering one lopsided blob that was probably a cliff. Maybe a rock. Could also be a water tank, if you turned your head to the side. There was no way to be sure.

A sign hung above the entrance to the building, its style quite unlike that of its prodigious cousins. This sign was engraved, not printed, and embellished with thick lacquer and faux-metal highlights. A custom order, commissioned by someone who wanted it to look elegant but without the means for heavy expense.

The sign read:

THE GORAN NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

ESTABLISHED GC STANDARD 304

HEAD CURATOR: OOLI OHT TUPO