Qven

None of us is wasted. They make sure to tell us that, to assure us that each Tiny, sliding slick and slimy into its warm tray, has been designed, intended for some essential role. They don’t tell you—at least when you’re a Little or a Small, and probably not even after that, not in so many words—that they make a few extras. Just in case. They don’t tell you, so of course no one ever tells you you’re an extra.

I wasn’t an extra. I toddled out of the Tiny beds and into the slightly wider world of the Littles with not a care. By the time I grew from Little to Small, I had developed a comfortable sense of my own importance to the world, to the other Smalls around me. I knew that the larger figures around us who fed us, who instructed us in various proprieties (don’t put that in your ear!; no, don’t bite off her finger!) would keep me safe and comfortable.

None of that changed when I reached the Middles. Except that the world became wider still, and those caring, comforting figures mostly disappeared.

It’s in your Middles that you begin to be more intensely fascinated by what might be inside those around you. The Middle quarters are soft, the blue-veined ground warm and yielding, tensing sometimes in response to pressure. Walls, where there might be rooms, opened when you might want a door. Or not, you could never really depend on a wall opening when you needed it. The growths in the wide places—tall, fleshy towers ragged here and there with patches of cilia; translucent blue mounds that crept slowly along the ground; a million different small, bright-colored things that came and went—none of them had anything sharp or rigid about them. There were no rocks, no glass, no sticks, nothing to make any tool to cut or stab.

We found a way. The first Middle I saw opened up was an unpopular, inoffensive creature whose only crime, I thought, was being weak. Now I suspect their real crime was being not sufficiently zealously protected by those Adults who’d cared for us when we were Tinies and Littles and Smalls. You wouldn’t think private disdain would communicate itself so clearly to us, oblivious as we were to any but our own fascinations and concerns, but I believe now that it can, and does.

It was shocking, and titillating, to see the layer of yellow fat under the skin, the liver gleaming smooth and wet beneath the ribs. One of us pushed the guts aside to reveal kidneys. But just as a few Middles began to explore ways to crack the sternum and reveal the frantically beating heart, the ground gaped and cilia pulled the screaming, sobbing Middle away.

They came back, after a while, and tried to hide from us, but we found them and removed a leg. (The muscles! The tendons! The pop of the joint when we levered it apart!) They were taken away again, and never returned. The leg was left behind, though, and that was amusing for a while.

They weren’t the only Middle that happened to. But of course it never happened to me. Not even the threat of it. I assumed—if I thought about it at all—that I was just better than those victims. That there had been something fundamentally consumable about them.

Out of the Middles, then, and into the Edges. The Edge is the boundary, the last layer of childish existence. I never thought to measure time as it flowed past, never looked ahead to any future that might have been different from the present, but in the Edges, you begin to count, to see what might be coming. In the Edges, you begin to realize that childhood is not eternal.

We’re in the Edges much longer than the Tinies or the Littles, Smalls, or Middles. So there are far more of us there at one time, and a far wider difference between those of us who’ve just arrived and those who are about to exit into the World. Those senior Edges can be remote, disdainful of the new ones just emerged, or they can be helpful. Solicitous, even.

In the Edges, we begin to learn the things we’ll need to know out in the World. I was assigned a room with objects I was meant to sit and sleep on. I ate odd-tasting mixtures out of dishes, not with my hands but with tools specially made for the purpose of lifting food into my mouth. I was introduced to clothes, which I didn’t like but eventually grew used to. I began to learn the language of humans.

“Why can’t we just eat a Teacher?” I asked one of the older Edges who had been friendly to me more or less since I’d arrived.

My companion lay on the floor of my room, legs up against the wall—minor, casual rebellion, the sort of thing you do when no Teacher is around. Now they made a shocked face. But the older Edges were used to treading the boundaries of the acceptable. “It wouldn’t work. Not the way you’d want it to. And even if it did, you’d be stuck with the miserable thing for the rest of your existence. And the other Teachers would definitely be unhappy with you.”

I frowned, pondering. The Teachers took care of us, taught us, of course. The older Edges I was acquainted with made it clear that Teachers were to be obeyed at all times, but also that Teachers were inferior beings whose particular quirks or private feelings were beneath consideration.

“You don’t want to make them too angry,” said my companion, from the floor. “They can hurt you. Or…” They swung their legs down, rolled over. “Not us, you know. They can’t do much of any consequence to us. But they can make things very unpleasant. And a replacement Teacher is an adjustment. Not always a good one.”

I sighed. “But it would be so much easier.”

“Can you imagine them letting you be a Diplomatic Operative”—they switched momentarily into human language—“a Translator, with a Teacher inside you? You know they’re bred for teaching, nothing better. Or else they’re a Failed and can’t even do the thing they were meant for.”

I knew these things. My companion was not telling me this because they thought I didn’t know it, but to be absolutely certain that I understood it. Because if I did not, I, too, might become one of the Failed.

“Really,” continued my companion, “it’s not something to even joke about.”

“I know,” I acknowledged. “It’s just so frustrating! All the stupid rules! Eat with a spoon. Put clothes on your feet. Sit on the chairs.” My companion, still lying on the floor, snickered. “Say thank you and if you please. In human language, begging your indulgence!”

“Radchaai,” corrected my companion, mocking the prissy pedanticism of a Teacher. “If you please.”

“Excrete into the special excretion receptacles!” I went on. “Sleep on the sleeping furniture! And never, ever open anyone up.”

“At least not anyone worth caring about,” said my companion.

I laughed. Because it was true, there were here, as there had been among the Middles, some of us who were weak and prone to being victimized. No matter what the rules were, some of them got opened up. But—despite there being more of us here—not as many as in the Middles. They tended to hang together here, and there was always the possibility that they might resist. Besides, if a Teacher caught you, there would almost certainly be some sort of penalty.

You’re in the Edges for decades. As you go along, as you learn the things you’ll need to know in the World, you learn what those first signs are, that you’re ready, that you’ve become an active danger to your former fellow Edges, no longer an Edge yourself.

This is what the Teachers tell you: when you exit into the World, you’ll take the place you’ve been prepared for since birth, each of us chosen for our suitability, without reference to favoritism or any sort of partiality. Each role is necessary and noble, part of our great work, and we will all be happy and fulfilled.

It’s all a lie.