Page 56

The question felt a little stupid to Signy, but Cora didn’t look as though she thought so. On the contrary, she looked surprised. “She can get offended, yeah. But it wouldn’t . . .” Cora scrunched up her lips and looked to the ceiling. “Okay. This one time a long while back, I had to explain bones to her. She doesn’t have bones, right? She had no concept of bones. The idea grossed her out so bad. It still does. She thinks bones are disgusting. And like, yeah, sure, anything’s disgusting if you’re not used to it and think about it too hard.”

Signy latched onto this. “Why was she grossed out by bones?”

Cora clucked her tongue against her cheek, once. “She hates the idea of an animal being internally hinged.”

“Oh.” Signy let that sit. Yes, that was a horrible way to frame it.

“The point is,” Cora continued, “she would understand if you felt weird in there, because she sometimes gets bothered by our bodies, too. I do not think she’d be offended at all if you needed to tap out. She gets it, from the flip side.”

Two individuals who didn’t ruffle, Signy thought. No wonder they were close. “All right, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Cora pulled her pilot’s license from a retractable lanyard on her belt. She stretched it toward the reader, but, once more, she paused. “Thank you,” she said, “for asking how she’d feel.” She looked meaningfully at Signy, her eyes sincere. “A lot of people wouldn’t.”

Signy shrugged. “Just seemed fair to extend her the same courtesy you’re showing me.”

“Again. A lot of people wouldn’t. So . . . thanks.” Cora nodded, to seal her point. “Okay. Here we go.”

She swiped the card.

The hatch doors opened.

Signy almost choked.

Oh god, she thought, only it wasn’t so much a thought as an instinct. Oh. God.

Time crystallized and adrenaline poured, yet even if Signy’s feet could have touched the ground, she wouldn’t have known how to run. Oh god. It was—it was—

It was huge.

The thing, the creature, the animal—it was huge. Bulbous and hulking, the size of a ferry. And oh, god, it moved. Not like potted leaves waving in the breeze of an air filter, not like robots cleaning the floor. The animal pulsed, it undulated. The animal. Flesh and muscle and fluid. Orange, purple, plasma yellow. The animal. A rotting fruit, a perfect jewel, a mushroom cap, a dissected organ, a blooming flower, an abandoned petri dish, an unbaked hunk of clay that could never be shaped to fit a human hand no matter how hard you squeezed.

She, Signy told herself. This obscenity, this epiphany—she was a she, somehow. She was Cora’s friend. She could become offended. She was eager. She would understand.

Her name was Colibri.

“You okay?” Cora asked gently.

The question brought Signy back into herself. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been staring straight ahead. She also hadn’t realized that she’d grabbed hold of Cora’s arm. “Oh, fuck—” she said as she let go. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Hey, no, it’s cool,” Cora said. “You—you can hang on, if you need to.”

Signy did not put her hand back where it had been, but she looked at Cora, taking solace in a human face, a human smile. Peppered freckles. Brown eyes with amber flecks. Eyes. Colibri didn’t have eyes. Signy had known this, from the things she’d skimmed with Otto, but knowing was never the same as experiencing. There were things in this universe that didn’t have eyes but still knew what sunlight was.

She supposed she could say the same of her plants. She found some reassurance in that, and by extension, some courage.

Signy took a shaky breath and steadied herself, attempting to parse both the rorqual and her environs. On the other side of the hatch lay a spacious control room with a large window. Monitors displayed bars and numbers scrutable only to those who worked with them daily. Tools were stuck to racks on the wall—medical devices, maybe, or perhaps handling equipment, though how you could handle a thing that big, Signy had no idea.

She returned her attention to the window, trying again to make sense of what was out there. The animal was moving more purposefully now, shifting its weightless mass and swimming through nothing.

Swallowing her pride, Signy reached out and put her hand on Cora’s forearm.

Cora glanced down. “I really don’t mean anything by this,” she said carefully, “but would you like to hold my hand?”

Signy took Cora’s hand. And yes—yes, that helped.

Cora led them both into the room, right up to the window. “She can’t hurt you,” Cora said. “And more importantly, she doesn’t want to.”

Signy nodded, trying to make her body absorb that knowledge. Her heart had yet to slow down.