The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Author:Becky Chambers [Chambers, Becky]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2014-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Day 251, GC Standard 306

THE LAST WAR

There were few things Dr. Chef enjoyed more than a cup of tea. He made tea for the crew every day at breakfast time, of course, but that involved an impersonal heap of leaves dumped into a clunky dispenser. A solitary cup of tea required more care, a blend carefully chosen to match his day. He found the ritual of it quite calming: heating the water, measuring the crisp leaves and curls of dried fruit into the tiny basket, gently brushing the excess away with his fingerpads, watching color rise through water like smoke as it brewed. Tea was a moody drink.

There had been no tea on his home planet. Heated water was only for sleeping in, not for drinking. So many wonderful things they had missed out on, simply because they had never thought to imbibe the stuff! No tea, no soup, no mek — well, the mek was hardly a loss. He did not share his crewmates’ enthusiasm for the murky brew. Something about it reminded him of wet dirt, and not in a pleasant way.

He sat on a garden bench in the Fishbowl, his tea cooling as he worked through slow thoughts. Rosemary sat across from him, holding her own mug in her bony Human hands. She was silent as he thought out loud. He knew how strange they each were to the other — he for never thinking quietly, she for having no thinking sounds. He knew she understood his noise by now, though, and that knowledge made her silence feel companionable.

The thoughts he was drumming up were old and safely kept. Kizzy had accused him once of “bottling his feelings,” but this was a Human concept, the idea that one could hide their feelings away and pretend that they were not there. Dr. Chef knew exactly where all of his feelings were, every joy, every ache. He didn’t need to visit them all at once to know they were there. Humans’ preoccupation with “being happy” was something he had never been able to figure out. No sapient could sustain happiness all of the time, just as no one could live permanently within anger, or boredom, or grief. Grief. Yes, that was the feeling that Rosemary needed him to find today. He did not run from his grief, nor did he deny its existence. He could study his grief from a distance, like a scientist observing animals. He embraced it, accepted it, acknowledged that it would never go away. It was as much as part of him as any pleasant feeling. Perhaps even more so.

He cooed readiness, and focused on his vocal cords, forcing them to work together as one. He looked into Rosemary’s white-rimmed eyes. He began to speak.

“Our species are very different from one another. You have two hands, I have six. You sleep in a bed, I sleep in a tub. You like mek, I don’t. Many little differences. But there’s one big thing that Grum and Humans have in common, and that is our capacity for cruelty.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.