The galaxy

Tuesday. The Drawer. SOMEONE HAS STOLEN MY JACKET.

It's the only coat I can cross a cold dock in, and it was on the airlock hook, in a locked ship, in a guarded slip.

The Cat Burglar's a Fenn. All the rooftops of First Drawer are hers, a thousand lines of laundry and a thousand water tanks, and she steals things nobody noticed were missing. Well, I noticed, so I went up there. There are lines of Drum wraps on the roofs the size of mainsails, and they boom when you touch them. I've run through about a kilometer of booming washing with a tail-leaf rattling in front of me and gray four-winged birds going up on all sides, and I've never had such a good time in my life. I still want my jacket back.

Tuesday. Fourth Floor Basement. A landing.

I've come home to arrest somebody over lunch.

The basement runs on something called the Stairwell Truce. You knock twice on the rail, wait for the pipe to answer, hang up your lunch bag, and that landing's yours. Nobody on any landing may ask the person eating their name, floor or employer, and if you break it every door that reads your badge dims at you and refuses, forever. I worked in this building six years and had no idea. I ate at my desk.

· · ·

I sat down four stairs below and got out my sandwich. Kellen made it, by the manual. I've got one hour and I'm not allowed to ask his name. Ever tried to arrest somebody whose name you can't ask? Me neither, till today.

Wednesday. The Cosy. (On the back of the warrant. Taped in later.)

I said I'd stop writing in the book. This is a warrant. Don't look at me like that.

A retirement village. I've now met somebody who can make Tukkar Omdor sit up straight. She sent him a tin at the Bruise, with a note in a hand like a ruler. Tukkar Omdor. Sit up. Three o'clock.

Mr. Kreshul takes down satellites by injunction and railgun, in that order, and I've got his invoice. I have received an invoice for being aimed at.

Kreshul and No Partners. Taped in because no one will believe me

TO: A. CHASE (BRIEF)

AT 90 CREDITS THE FIRST QUARTER HOUR, DOUBLING:

RAILGUN, POINTED AT YOU .......... 90

FOLLOW UP RE: SAME ............... 180

CONSIDERING YOUR REPLY ........... 360

HEATING SURCHARGE ................ NO CHARGE

TOTAL ............................ 630

PAYABLE ON RECEIPT, OR ON IMPACT

Monday. The Tax-Haven Asteroid.

Okay. I'm going to be very calm about this.

There are Humans on the board.

Three. Out of ninety-nine of the worst beings in the Compact, we've managed three. There's a war hero with a lovely speech and a very polite arsonist with a lanyard, and those two I get. And then, on a mugshot with a bad perm:

· · ·

He's the one I take personally. So does the whole crew, turns out, since each of them's been coming up to me, one at a time, to ask if I know him. Tukkar asked. Tukkar asked me if I knew him. There are eight billion people on Earth.

He's under a very ordinary carpet, fluorescent light, clacking keys, and everybody on this rock's a registered company.

Tuesday. In the Lanes. Going somewhere, Lio says.

I've lived in nine houses, and here's what nine houses teach you. Every house has rules, nobody's ever gonna tell you what they are, and you find out when you break one. This is ten, if you're counting. I am.

What I Know So Far About the Rules of This House

• You don't open a door without asking. This one's real. It's the only one all six of us agree on. Lio breaks it. If it was Pip, you forgive it. It's usually Pip.
• Nobody knocks on the brig. The door's never been closed. It's got a latch on the outside and no knob on the inside, and he leaves it standing open and reads. I walked past it four times today on purpose, to practice.
• Nobody leaves the galley after a hunt until the board's been updated.
• Nobody talks while it's on. "It" is Two Ovens, it's on at the same time every day, Vesk shuts her door for it, and I asked what episode it was and she said, "Go away."
• Don't thank Tukkar. He looks at you as if you've handed him something wet.
• The pot's always on. Whoever walks past last tops it up with whatever's around. Today it had noodle ends, a pickle, and I believe part of a ration bar. I've had three bowls. Nobody can tell me how it got good.
• Don't sit in the chair at the far end. Nobody has said so. Everybody just doesn't.
• There's an apple tree in a pot at the end of the long table, about my height, and the soil is damp every morning. Nobody waters it. I asked around. Everyone looked at me.

I'm on a ladder.

· · ·

He sits up on the frame with every vent open to the high wind and it plays him, one long note, and the note holds the canvas flat. He can't lower his voice. It's physically not available to him. Kellen and I were at the bottom of a hundred meters of ladder when we heard from up top, at a volume I felt in my knees:

"I AM BEING QUIET."

The rims of the moon went a little blue.

Kellen's seen a sunset here he likes. They've painted it on the back of the marquee, behind the bride, and he doesn't know it's painted, and he's asked if we can keep it.

The Bruise is a battlefield of pale unspent war-frames in purple grit, as far as you can see, and anything louder than a murmur sets the hulls ringing. General Brisk thinks every war that ends early was a waste of good armor. Tukkar served with his family. He got out, and he left the Ironclad kneeling at the edge and walked out to that bruise-colored thing in felt boots, and he tried to talk.

Monday. Totaled.

This one's Tukkar's. I'm only here to read the man.

The Burning City's been on fire for years, on purpose, and it's quite orderly. Glass towers alight at every height, cool dry streets, a chalk line reading CLAIMANTS ONLY. No fire can be put out till its policy's verified, and no policy's verified till the claim's stamped. Ash comes down on your shoulders and people brush it off without looking. They queue. There's a Mr. Vodven who's queued for a friend for eleven years, and he saved my place while I went to look at something, and he told me about his friend's feet.

The Cockpit Twins have never eaten a meal apart, and the two halves of a sandwich were on the console when we got in.

Thursday. Thren. Writing in the pits.

Hunt two. The Champion. Not counting the Abyss, which I don't, I'd never left Pheli before this. So, some things about Thren.

It's a racetrack through a ring of moons, named after the part that failed the first time they ran it, and there are crowds on every rock. Everybody's Hexil here, six-armed and squat and cream-colored like an old tooth, with a spray of copper wire for hair and two eyes that go in different directions, and the wire stands straight up whenever the floor hums, so you can look across a pit and see the whole crew's heads rise together a second before you feel the engine. They eat pickled sump root on a heel of bread. I had some. I regret the some.

And the rule that bites here, the one they'll disqualify you for: every racer's got to name their machine after an ex. In public, up on the Ex Board, before the start. Got one? You'd need one.

The Dun Crossing. Written after, on the free side.

The Gray Line's a band of flat paint, ten lanes wide, you've got to walk across without changing color, with guards all down it looking at you, and a flushed cheek is a confession. Ossari hold it from childhood. They've barbered the crown tips down short on all the guards, and it's so quiet you can hear people's sleeves. Every price in the market's done with the hands.

So I blushed. Of course I did. I'm a Human, it's what we do. I blushed at the Line, and then I noticed I had, and then it got worse. Three guards turned and looked, and then the whole line of them, the color of a wet sidewalk, watching a small person in a mustard jacket go red from the neck up for no reason. I was held for questions for two hours. They'd never seen one go that color and they wanted to know what I was confessing to.

Everything, I said. It's very hard to tell.

Rolling Day. Some town on a giant, the Oon. It's in the insurance.

The town's called Lower Second Shoulder. Every town out here has a sign in the square saying which way the local giant rolls and when it last did, and when the date gets painted in fresh it's a holiday. We're only here to ask a Drum sheriff about a truck, and wouldn't you know it, we've shown up on the day. The larks went up, all of them, and the whole sky went speckled for four breaths, and everybody in the street calmly stopped what they were doing and held on to something.

Then down became sideways.

Was it fast? Nope, it took most of an hour. The main street leaned over like a page being turned, a bench slid by, and kids were cheering. An old Drum across from me, enormous and ribbed and the color of a flowerpot, with the blue skin on his chest going in and out as he breathed, was holding on to a lamp post with one hand and eating a sandwich with the other. There were things living in his ribs, and one of them looked at me.

Ume. Day one of nine.

The landlord would like a word.

Everything's underwater here except what the Reef's built. The Reef's the planet's owner, thousands and thousands of small bodies with one will, coral towers lit up blue-green. When it's thinking the light goes around the bay in a slow wave and all the little lamp fish turn at the same moment. Fish rent the holes, and the crabs collect the rent, in gossip. I've looked at a crab's rent book. I've looked at a crab's rent book.

Monday. A canyon. At a walk.

The bridge is a person.

It's a long walk across, ninety meters down, and everything on it has to go at a walk, 'cause anything faster and the road walks with you. Kellen ran four steps to see what would happen and the road went four meters with him. "It's alive," said Kellen. "Obviously," said Vesk.

· · ·

Nobody looks up from their thermos. Pitta the parcel Fenn says, "Morning," at the Blink. That's all anybody says.

Tuesday. The Farming World.

Beans!!

A whole world of them. Rows going off in every direction till the land stops, and the wind going through it, and the air smells like the inside of a good pot. I'm not going to be normal about this, and I've asked if we can stay.

Not writing about the Mercy.

Friday. Main Street.

I got Kellen back today.

· · ·

I've got the index card, and I brought my reading glasses.

Town of Main. Charge, read before stew

NAME: Kellen

CHARGE: Standing Like You Mean It

ALSO: Walking In From The East Without Having Eaten

ALSO: Thank You, Excessive

FINE: One dish washed

SENTENCE: Until supper

Nine to One. Durbo's Back. Tuesday local, Friday House.

This casino is on an animal.

I'm trying to think how to tell you. You come in along a ramp, up something that looks like a long hill with lanterns on it, and the hill's breathing about once every eleven seconds. It's a Drum beast the size of a town, with a promenade along the spine and a vault in a cool spot under the ribs. And these gray domed things as big as a city bus sit around on the shoulders, drinking. What are they? Ticks. Livestock, actually. A Drum family owns them, and they brand them and go have breakfast. I'm told lamp oil on this side of the galaxy is mostly them.

Rules: the beast sleeps as long as nobody wins too big. Nine thousand chips and he rolls over, so everything in the building's arranged around not waking it. The Marl pit bosses keep a kid on the roof with a whistle, watching the sky, because when a giant's about to roll over, every scale lark for a mile goes up at once, four breaths before.

A heart the size of a tram goes under your feet, so slow you forget it. Then it goes again.

Thursday. Hullow. Dock and Home, both.

Ten thousand ships in a slow river around a dead gray moon. It takes days for one to pass, and they're all old and all dark and covered in ice, with coat after coat of paint in patches, every coat from a different owner, and you can read the whole life of a hull if you know how. It looks like a graveyard, and everybody calls it that. Then you notice there's a little window lit, way up on the side of one, and then another one, way off.

"Still here," said our comm, in a small, rusty voice. It wasn't anybody on board, it was the ship going by.

Kellen leaned over the comm. "Still here. What are you made of?"

It took a day and a half to answer. Paint, it said.

Friday, or possibly Monday. The Abyss. And on the way back from it.

I'm gonna go slow so I get this right. What does the Goom look like? Nothing. That's the honest answer. You'd think it'd look like something, after the training films. It's a spot in the window where the stars get pulled out long and thin and then just stop, and when the ship got close I felt something way down in my back teeth that I never actually heard.

The prison hangs off the edge of all that on a platform, and every door was open. Yeah, I know, that's in all the reports, and I've read the reports, but it's different when they're open at you. Wheels of cells, turning, nobody in them, every guard already bagged and gone, something dripping, and then from a long way down, this little tune. A pipe. Somebody was playing it nicely.

The world's called Mora-Ruu, and it's a field, one hundred nine clusters of stones and every stone blank, and the Sorrel grandmothers plant it and tend it. I've had the rules read to me twice. No light in the Long Hour. No cameras. And no names written down. Not by anybody, not on anything, ever. You can be given one, by mouth, and then you carry it.

Quen. No date. It doesn't feel like it would be polite.

Hunt five, the moon of living libraries. The Tomen stand in rows, you see, plum bark and hanging pages and scroll pods dangling off these antlers, and they are the shelves, and when they walk the pods click together. It's dark and there isn't any echo, and it smells like old sap. And there's a rule. Want to ask a question here? You give up a memory of your own, and the Tomen keep it. They put it on a shelf.

I asked one. I needed to know something and there wasn't any other way, and I'd rather not write down what I asked.

The Ring Station's got a rule, and the people who still live here will tell you it at the airlock. You say sorry before you touch a console. It started when he came home. So everybody goes around saying it, "Sorry, sorry," patting at the machinery. I watched a Marl technician apologize to a light switch. It's very funny. I wrote this down in the airlock because it's very funny.

Wednesday. The Case.

I was told not to tap.

THE LAST OF THE DRAY. Species Museum. There's a whole hall of dioramas under glass, velvet ropes at every turn, and at the end of it one person in a case in a hard white cone of light. He's bones, an open lattice of bones, like carved driftwood, and you can see right through his ribs to the back wall. Little pale moths go in and out of him. They had a whole people to live in once, and now there's the one. He hasn't asked anybody to do anything about it. Every bone holds a memory and rings at its own pitch if a draft goes through.

He's written better placards than the Museum's, because he's corrected them. He wants a formal apology from the Compact and improved lighting, and I couldn't swear to which order.

· · ·

The gift shop sells bottled water called Last Of, with bones on the label, forty credits. I've got the receipt. Obviously.

Tuesday. The Brunch.

I've got a lanyard.

"The vacation your problems can't survive." A resort in low orbit over the Goom, with a lobby fountain of something pink and carpet patterned like a spreadsheet, and a week in here's ten years for everybody outside. It's a real bargain if there's something you need to outlast. So an hour in there's about three weeks out here. I was in for fifty minutes by my watch, and I checked it a whole lot. Nobody checks out till they've sat through the full presentation, and the presentation starts the moment you try to leave and ends when you sign. You can decline, sure, but every time you decline they give you a free upgrade, and every upgrade adds a week. See the problem?

Lio came in for the free brunch. He came in for the free brunch!

· · ·

I've asked to leave. I've been upgraded.