Reet

Rurusk Station, Sovereign Territory of Zeosen

There were any number of people on Rurusk Station whose work could be done at whatever hour seemed best to them, so long as the work was done in a reasonable time. Reet was not one of them.

The private consultant he was meeting with presumably was one of them, but e had been inflexible enough that Reet had been tempted to refuse to meet at all. There was, after all, very little a consultant of any sort could have to say to him that could not be conveyed just as well by a text or voice message. But when Reet had begun to suggest so, the consultant had insisted. The meeting must be in person, and it must occur. Intrigued despite himself, Reet had agreed to the least ridiculously impossible time.

And now he stood here, in this… this facility, which had looked like nothing remarkable at the entrance (aside from an actual human keeping the door, instead of a bot, or people just coming and going freely as they did in most other places) but had turned out to be some sort of private lounge, filled with low tables and thick padded chairs and benches. And waiters, quiet and discreet, bringing food and drinks to the people sitting there talking quietly. Human waiters, not mechs or bots. Just like the guard at the door.

“You’re late,” said the consultant, when Reet presented himself. E lounged in one of the chairs, another person—a man, round-featured, brown-skinned with light, close-clipped hair—sitting in the seat next to em. An empty bench faced them both.

“I messaged you,” replied Reet, not entirely able to keep exasperation out of his voice. “There was a pipe break. I couldn’t leave until it was repaired.” Surely they could smell the musty whiff of the pipeways on him—he had stripped off his thin coverall and shoved it in the recycler, but he hadn’t stopped to shower, because he’d known he was late already and didn’t want to be even later.

He could have showered and just gone home. He could be in his tiny room, sitting on his tiny bed, eating takeout dumplings, watching Pirate Exiles of the Death Moons.

“Come now, Mr Hluid,” the consultant replied. “These state-mandated jobs are all make-work. Engineers fix the pipes by mech, surely, or the bots can do the repairs themselves.”

Reet considered several answers, but rather than speaking he turned to leave.

“Wait!” cried the consultant.

The man sitting beside em laughed. “Perfect!” he chortled. “Absolutely perfect. You are certainly a Schan, all the way through!”

Reet stopped. Turned back. “I’m a what?”

“Three hundred years ago,” said the consultant, “in Keroxane System, Lovehate Station was destroyed in…” E glanced at eir companion. “Let’s call it a particularly violent civil dispute.”

The man beside em frowned. “A dispute? It wasn’t a dispute! The Hikipi rebelled against their Phen oppressors!” The consultant made a placatory gesture.

“I’m aware of what happened on Lovehate Station,” Reet cut in. And was suddenly struck with the disturbingly appealing vision of stepping forward, grabbing this man by the neck, and biting into his cheek, teeth sinking into flesh. Impulse followed vision, but Reet kept himself standing straight and still.

“Records were lost in the destruction,” said the man, eagerly, his agitation gone as soon as it had come. Reet imagined peeling off the man’s skin, as though it were one of the cheap coveralls he worked in. What would he see?

The man continued speaking, oblivious. “Centuries of history, of culture, of genetic data, of nearly everything—gone. All that’s left is the records of a few of us whose ancestors left Lovehate Station years before. And of course, the Schans, the ancient Hikipi rulers of Lovehate Station, were supposed to have been destroyed long before that. But there have always been rumors that some escaped that destruction. Imagine if we could find them, the descendants of the Schans. What would that do to the struggle against the Phen?”

“Please sit down,” said the consultant. Reet did not, and the consultant went on with a small shrug. “You arrived here as an infant, an orphan refugee, some three decades ago. No family, no adults claimed you.”

“I’m not related to any of the families on this station,” said Reet. “Hikipi or otherwise. They checked my genetics.”

“The Schans were always very secretive about their genetic data,” said the man. “I’m Heroth Nadkal, by the way. President of the Siblings of Hikipu here on Rurusk Station.”

“The Schans,” said the consultant, “were very much their own clan within Lovehate Station when they were in power. They’re rumored to have made alterations to all their members—by birth or otherwise.”

“You could always tell a Schan,” said Mr Nadkal. “By their manner, certainly.” He indicated Reet with one hand, smiling. “But there were other ways. What those ways were… we think we have discovered.”

“Your route to this station, what we know of it, fits with someone who might have come from Lovehate Station,” said the consultant. “And your genes are distinctly odd. I would even say those oddities are unique.”

“I’m aware,” said Reet shortly. He took a breath, willing the disturbingly attractive images of skinless Nadkal away. “If those oddities had been even remotely connected to any of the Hikipi families here, surely you would have claimed me before now.” He should have gone back to his room after work and ignored this appointment. He should never have taken it to begin with. He should leave, right now.

“But no one was looking for a Schan, were they,” replied Nadkal, as though that disposed of the matter. “This is the result of decades of research, and careful piecing together of what fragments of information and tradition we might have.” He laughed. “Just seeing you stand there—you’re a Schan. I’m convinced of it.” He nodded. Turned to the consultant. “I’ve transmitted your fee. Well deserved, I do say. And you”—he turned again to Reet—“Mr…” For some reason, Mr Nadkal hesitated.

Reet suspected he knew what that reason was, but maybe not. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it wasn’t because Reet’s family name—the parents who had adopted him—belonged to what most Zeoseni would consider the wrong ethnic group. “Mr Hluid.”

“No,” said Nadkal. “Mr Schan. Depend on it. Heir to a long and glorious history. And there may not be any other Schans, here or anywhere else, but you have, I assure you, the friendship and support—and family!—of the Siblings of Hikipu. Come to our next meeting, Mr Schan.” Mr Nadkal chuckled, and rubbed his hands together. “Mr Schan. At long last, at long last. Come to our next meeting, Mr Schan, and discover what it is to be part of a community. You aren’t on your own anymore. You know who you are now.”

It was too much to handle all at once. Reet stared at Mr Nadkal, his gut gone sickeningly tense, as though Mr Nadkal had threatened him. When it was Reet who had been imagining taking him apart. When Mr Nadkal had, in fact, just offered Reet the thing he had always wished for and always known he could never have: a history. An identity that was part of something else, not just Reet, solitary. Alone. It was too much.

There would be blood under the skin, and muscles. And if those were stripped away…

“Fuck this,” said Reet. “I’m going home and having supper.”

Nadkal laughed again. “Schan!” he cried. “You’re a Schan to the core!”

Reet bought dumplings and then splurged on a tiny milk jelly, and took it all back to his room. He had friends, or at least friendly acquaintances. Some of them (most of the people he’d known as a child) had fallen away somehow over the years. Others—well, Reet found he was in no mood to share anyone’s company, let alone try to explain what had just happened. He sat on his bed, back against the wall that a former occupant had painted with a scrawled stick figure of the goddex of good fortune, one schematic hand raised in blessing.

 

The dumplings were filled with some indefinite mixture of protein and plant material, strongly spiced. The familiarity of the flavor was usually soothing, but today he was too tense, and the food nauseated him. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t just Mr Nadkal and the fucking Siblings of Hikipu. It wasn’t just the sudden vision of stripping another human being down to component parts—that was something that had followed Reet, on and off, since he’d been a child. What excites you? a counselor had asked him when he’d been much younger. What do you dream of doing? That’s where to look for your place, the thing you’ll prepare for.

With trepidation Reet had confessed his desire to dissect the people around him. She’d gone straight to his foster parents, who had insisted he hadn’t meant it, it was a joke, Reet was certainly a very odd child but he wasn’t violent, not counting that time when he’d been little and had that problem with biting.

The counselor had accepted Reet’s apology, and he had never told anyone about his desires after that. He’d reached adulthood, not found qualifying work, and so he’d had to take a state job or pay the sloth tax, which of course he couldn’t afford since he had no one willing or able to pay it for him, and no paying job. For the past fifteen years he’d worked in the station’s pipeways, following the bots, repairing them or bringing them back to Central if they were beyond Reet’s ability to fix. Looking for faults or breaks that hadn’t registered on the system. It was dull. It was isolated. It was, in the absence of any other opportunity, perfectly fine.

Odd. He was more than odd. There was something wrong with him.

He’d meant to watch Pirate Exiles. Instead he closed his eyes and requested information on Hikipi history. He could guess, of course, who and what the Siblings of Hikipu were. Plenty of the people on Rurusk Station and in Zeosen generally considered themselves to be ethnically Hikipi, and so he knew a few basic bits of information: most Hikipi practiced Madeb Chenala rather than Del-tai Chenala, which was the majority Chenala sect on Rurusk; most Hikipi had come here to escape persecution by the Phen; the Hikipi had an ancient and proud history, of which Reet only knew names and some bare facts, including Lovehate Station and its destruction.

But what about the Schans?

Ah, the Schans. Before the Phen had come, the Schans had ruled all of Hikipi space, though their activities had been centered on Lovehate Station. There were seven Zones, each with its Autarch, all of whom answered to the Sovereign Autarch, who was, for six hundred years, a Schan.

The first Schan had arrived on Lovehate Station mysteriously, an infant alone in an unmarked shuttle, just as the inhabitants of Lovehate Station were debating the question of who should rule them. (That small, surely legendary bit of information made Reet shiver with recognition.) The shuttle might have come from anywhere, or nowhere, or never existed at all, but that child’s descendants ruled Lovehate Station for six centuries after. They had been deposed, finally, by a conspiracy of Zone Autarchs, who had banded together and killed every Schan they could find, and then proceeded to fight among themselves for the Sovereign Autarchy. For the next several centuries Hikipi space had been at war with itself until the Phen invaded, uniting the fractious Zones against a common enemy. Mostly. Sort of.

The Schans had been benevolent rulers whose end meant the loss of the glory days of the Hikipi. Or they had been brutal dictators. It was hard to know for certain. Records were continually lost in the wars between the stations and the struggles against the Phen, and of course when Lovehate Station had been destroyed, all its records had gone with it. There was certainly no way to know if all the Schans were really dead.

You’re a Schan to the core, Mr Nadkal had said. It was the first time anyone had reacted to Reet with recognition instead of doubt or puzzlement. Or contempt.

Could it be true? Reet didn’t think it was likely. Lovehate had been dust for centuries, Mr Nadkal had almost certainly been born right here on Rurusk Station and so had the rest of the Siblings of Hikipu. The Schans had been driven out of Lovehate a thousand years ago, none of the Siblings of Hikipu could know one when they saw one.

Or could they?

If the Schans had changed themselves, genetically marked themselves somehow as different from everyone else on Lovehate Station, might their descendants seem… strange to the people around them? Might their makeup seem distinctly odd, especially far from their place of origin, with no other Schans around to compare them to?

It didn’t seem likely. It didn’t seem likely that they’d marked their members with the persistent urge to vivisect other people. But if they had… Reet should at least look into it.

He opened his eyes. Set aside the carton of dumplings, ate the milk jelly, and lay down on the bed and started up an episode of Pirate Exiles of the Death Moons.