Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 165 by Neil Clarke

Author:Neil Clarke [Clarke, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magazine, science fiction, Science Fiction - Short Stories, Science Fiction And Fantasy, science fiction magazine
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2020-05-31T04:00:00+00:00

5. /we.ne.a.ta/

the loneliness that begets another’s loneliness in turn

Small worlds, these Partnership way stations, with their portholes overlooking miracle planets and tech-shackled stars, and all their ships and species just passing through or else lingering awhile to study this system’s ancient, vanished race. How many stories here, I wonder? How many unexpected connections between citizens, species, and whole compacts?

When Jess first told me about the lone Retet working storage here, for instance, she never mentioned that “storage” was also the part of CEB-21 with holding cells. Or maybe she had, and I’d just fallen to dreaming through that part of her chatter? I wouldn’t be surprised, if the latter: all the most important parts of those waves of tedious Partner speech always seem to pass me by.

Yet local penalties for their oversight never seem to, too.

I do remember being told, though, that the Retet is an “it”: each giant rodent in its species sharing genetic code with its birth brood, and all Retets are neuter until the time of mating, when each chooses what role to play within proceedings, before reverting to “neuter” afterward. And now I begin to see, Wene’ss, the other side of my feelings about that pitiful feline creature in Jess’ quarters—for what would this Retet think, I wonder, if our diplomatic mission had brought along a native delicacy from a species much like its own, but in mentally deficient miniature? Is there perhaps a species on CEB-21, too, that keeps primitive simians in similar captivity? For amusement? Subordinate companionship? Repast?

It begins to dawn on me that each higher-sentient species now seeking communion with the rest on this station, in this compact that extols such grand virtues, represents no less than its own world’s brutal conqueror; and that none of us comes to our present fraternity save through histories of planetary strife still visible in all the species we still keep in private service.

Of course, such musings truly belong to another timeline, don’t they, dearest? One in which our delegation is unharmed and progressing smoothly through first contact activities; where perhaps I’m striking up conversation at a formal function with someone mutely standing by while his own, dazzling version of a Wene’ss parlays with you over treaty terms and future plans for the Uma’u. Oh, I’m sure we would’ve spoken then of all the histories of injustice our two species had so valiantly surmounted, while also tacitly reminding each other that, should the need arise, our respective peoples nevertheless stand ready to war again.

That’s the sort of might we’re used to wielding, at least, isn’t it? But in this universe, for all the supposed civility of this research way station . . . I am but a single, solitary tom in high-tech captivity . . . and just thankful that the Retet seems discreet. It keeps its distance, that is, while attending to nearby maintenance tasks, which allows me to watch it without being too obvious about watching it, from within this semicircular, see-through enclosure, with its arc of a padded bench that terminates on one side in facilities for physical release.

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