Rhiva squints up at the bright sky bleeding through the slats of her fingers. An endless ocean, was how Educator-Bioecology described it. Robin’s egg blue.
They’d all laughed at that, of course. Ocean means water, infinite water, enough to fill an entire hangar bay and then some, and of course so much water in one place didn’t exist.
Robins are birds with red on their breasts, like someone rubbed them all up with anti-gamma sealant. Birds can fly anywhere they want because of their bone structure, Educator explained. Their bodies have adapted to their environment, just like Colonites. Rhiva had lowered her head at that, trying to ignore the stares burning into her back.
The terminal bustles around her, but that is not the problem. She’s used to people, brushing elbows with workers and technicians in narrow white hallways, squashed hip-to-hip in slender elevators or pill-shaped transport pods, breathing the same recycled air, drinking the same reclaimed water. She never used to see herself as different, even when the other Xers in Basic Tier pointed and giggled. Mahn said their family was special, that Granpahn was so determined for a better life he snuck onto a shuttle from Earth to find work out in the Colonies. We’ve had to overcome so much, Mahn used to say, stroking Rhiva’s hair as it floated about her head. Colonites will never understand just how much.
And of course they didn’t. Basic Tier was okay, everyone there too young to understand exactly why Rhiva was slower at grav-tag than the others, or ate twice as many calories at mid-meal. Advanced Tier was when it got bad, when Xers and even a few Yers with nothing better to do started calling her dirtworm or blocky bitch or any of the other dozens of terrible names for short legs that didn’t spring off walls in zero-grav or fat hips that wouldn’t fit through narrow hatches.
What she wouldn’t give for that now. To be back in the modules, and the other kids would still sneer and point but at least the spotless white walls would be familiar, the chute-like hallways, the round portholes showing a distant speckling of stars. The cold hiss of circulation, atmosphere so artificial you could taste it. The steady hum of a million circuits and electronics and the station’s massive engines a heartbeat in the walls, lulling her to sleep each night with its rhythmic murmur.
There’s noise in the terminal too: honking horns, shuffling footsteps, yammering conversation. But the people. Rhiva stares at the dozens of bodies going about their business and she knows, she knows she looks like them, but it catches in her synapses, a compile-time error of does not compute. Surely there cannot exist a place where so many dirtworms gather together. Surely she cannot be one of them, stumbling about with ungraceful fat limbs and too-wide torsos and too-small eyes that can’t catch starlight.
And everything is just. So. Heavy.
Next to her, Mahn shifts where she stands and groans. It’s the gravity here, this pulling, sucking thing strapping invisible cables to every part of her body, a reverse marionette where the slightest movement costs so much. Rhiva’s legs have turned into airlock doors, ponderous and dense. Mahn got them both waters at a little stand outside the terminal earlier—to celebrate our return, she’d said, with a smile like peeling anti-rad paint—and Rhiva took a sip and released the bottle without thought and it raced to the ground and spilt everything everywhere because there is just so much gravity here.
The blue sky hovers overhead, too big, too bright, too everything. Rhiva closes her eyes and tries to breathe but even that feels wrong, too many smells and dry dust that should’ve been caught by the station’s filters but haven’t, because they are not on the station. They are not wanted there, or anywhere in the Colonies anymore.
“Come on, sweet.” Mahn nods to where the other passengers on their flight are walking, toward a large sign marked ‘PROCESSING’. Rhiva follows her, every step an effort. By the time they slot into the end of the line, she’s out of breath. A rebellion pounds in her chest, and it’s funny because aren’t Earther bodies designed for this, this too-heavy atmosphere and too-strong gravity? But she does not have the heart of an Earther.
Mahn fidgets with their papers. Uncle Fihrwar was supposed to pick them up, but he wasn’t there when they got off the shuttle. Maybe he’ll be waiting for them outside. Maybe he’ll show Rhiva how to walk without feeling the drag of her own skin.
They move up, inch by inch. The woman behind the desk has wrinkles like a pane of spaceglass just punctured by a dust mote and any moment now it’ll set off the klaxons and the whole module will be sealed off—except that doesn’t happen here, Rhiva reminds herself. On Earth, things break all the time and no one dies.
The woman opens her mouth. Sound spills out, a babble of syllables nothing like the crisp, neat articulation of Educator-Earth Standard. Rhiva stares at this woman with the alien mouth. Educator gave her good marks in both reading and comprehension; shouldn’t she know what this woman is saying?
“Sor-ry,” Mahn drawls. “Slow talk?”
The woman rolls her eyes, something Earthers do to express displeasure or impatience, according to Educator-Etiquette. “I said. Do you. Have your. Deportee. Documents.”
Mahn offers their papers. The woman says something else, but she’s speaking fast again so Rhiva can’t follow it anymore. Or maybe it’s the water.
On the other side of the room, next to the bright windows, there is a structure full of water. It’s round, maybe the size of a couple’s berth, and clear liquid falls from the sculpture in the center to pool in ripples at the bottom. There is so much water, just like Educator-Bioecology promised. Her breath catches as she realizes what it must be.
She has found the ocean.
Mahn either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care when Rhiva leaves her side. The ocean murmurs with her approach, water creating this pleasant tinkle-splash, nothing like the harsh hiss of the fluid unit back home that dispensed a mouthful at a time. This ocean could fit a thousand mouthfuls, and it’s clearer than she imagined: she can see the bottom, uneven and blotchy and covered in what looks like discoloured console buttons. That’s strange, though, isn’t it? Educator said the ocean is murky and so deep you can’t see the floor except in specially-built ships. But Educator is not always right.
She does remember one thing, though.
Someone shouts. The water warms her feet, lapping playfully at bare skin, and it is a new kind of force, this pull of the ocean that doesn’t crush at all, and Rhiva lets it welcome her into its cool, deep embrace. She sinks, down down down. All sound vanishes as water closes over her head, and here, in the familiar floating silence, she closes her eyes and returns: white walls, hissing air, the soothing thrum of faraway engines, and the safety and comfort of the stars.
Gravity fades, and she is home.
[* Float is a reprint. It has first appeared in Interzone, May/June 2019]