Page 62 of As You Wake, Break the Shell

Cora chuckled. “I’ll do my best not to disappoint.” She stuck her empty chicory tube into a small pouch on the pole, then crossed her arms over her chest to keep them from floating every which way. “It does correlate, yes. A quick chat like that—two hours of comedown, tops. After a quarry run—”

“Which is how long?”

“Mm, depends on the moon and the orbital position, but usually, Little Quarry is a seven-or-eight-day run, and Big Quarry is somewhere around two or three weeks.”

“And you do both?”

“I do both, yes.”

“And what’s that comedown like?”

Cora paused. “There’s a wing in the station here—I can show you, if you want—where pilots recover. There’s meditation rooms, sound baths, counseling. I’ll spend like three to five days in there after a run.”

“And that’s needed, I take it.”

“That’s needed, yeah.”

Signy took another sip. She’d ordered the same as Cora’s usual, and was beginning to hit the chocolate. “You give a lot of yourself to this job.”

Cora visibly chewed on that. “I guess so, yeah. Some pilots, they block themselves off more. They like to keep more of a distance from their rorqual, because the comedown is easier that way. But that’s just a matter of . . . style, I guess. If you treat this job like you’re just there to guide an animal around, then sure, keeping a distance is fine. But I feel like me and Colibri are a team, y’know? We’re doing something together. I don’t want her to be flying out there just because I tell her to. I want her to understand why we need to. And for that, she has to understand me, because none of the stuff we need is the same as what she needs.”

Cora’s passion remained, but she’d lowered her voice. They were in a room full of her peers, after all, and if what she was saying was a matter of style, Signy could understand that she didn’t want to rub anybody the wrong way. “You mean—ice, helium, et cetera?” she said.

Cora nodded. “If you really want a rorqual to understand why getting a shipment back to the planet is important, you can’t just say, ‘Hey, we’re on deadline and this stuff has already been purchased.’ That means nothing to her. She doesn’t care. What she does care about is me, because I’ve let her into myself, and if she can feel how I feel about my home and the people around me, if she can experience a memory of being thirsty, or of a shower running out halfway through, or of how stressed you get about your water supply during a lockdown—then she’s like, ‘Oh, okay, this is why ice matters, this is why fuel made from helium matters, we do have to bring this back.’ And sure, I could push her through a run without giving her that context, but why do that, when I can get her to actually get it?”

“What does pushing involve?” Signy asked.

Cora went quiet. She glanced around the café. When she spoke again, her tone became more rote, almost like she was answering a question in class. “The saddle is equipped with various technologies that can be used for what we call ‘negative reinforcement.’ Stimuli that cause pain. It’s nothing that will physically harm a rorqual in a lasting way, it’s just a means of . . . making your point.” She pulled her lips into her mouth, her distaste for this methodology evident. “We call them prods, if that helps sum it up.”

“I see,” Signy said. “And you don’t use those with Colibri.”

Cora shook her head. “No,” she said. Her eyes gave another flick around the room. She did not elaborate.

The picture Signy was hoping to fill in by visiting this place was becoming clearer. A pilot’s attachment to these animals was typical, but Cora had taken a more devoted approach than many, and from the way her demeanor had shifted, Signy found it possible that some rules were being broken. Was that a wise move on Cora’s part? Signy wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t her life. “You said you ‘let her in’ to yourself,” she said. “Does that work both ways?”

“Yeah, absolutely. It’s an exchange.”

“And what has she showed you in turn? She understands our need for ice, and you understand . . . what, about her?”

Cora’s caution suddenly became a wall. She made a clicking noise with her tongue, then exhaled, looking away. “Maybe we could talk about this at your shop sometime,” she said neutrally. She hadn’t minded asking if Signy sold medicine, she hadn’t minded an audience while she wore the helmet. This avenue, though—this, she kept closer than the rest.

And that was very interesting, Signy thought.

Chapter 781 Cora, Cypsela (Outside)

Over a decade spent living inside a moonlet, and still, going out to the surface on foot was a little weird. The bunker’s interior was designed so its inhabitants could continue living with the framework of up and down. There were floors and ceilings, tables and chairs. Gravity mesh was laced through the whole thing, sanding the illusion smooth. In this airlock, it appeared as though there was a ladder bolted to the floor, but as soon as the air rushed out and your feet lifted free, the camera flipped. The floor became a wall, and the ladder became something you could climb.

It was a great way to get dizzy, if you weren’t ready for it.

Cora put on her suit, her boots, her gloves, her helmet. She attached her life support pack and strapped her carryall pouches to her thighs. In her younger years, there’d been a bustling team of people who’d done this part for her. Med staff, flight techs, the whole kit and caboodle. On a launch day, she couldn’t sneeze without somebody popping up to wipe her nose. She’d never been sure if being at the center of all that fuss made her feel like a very special princess or a very fragile piece of hardware. Honestly, pilots were kind of both.

But that was forever ago. It was tempting to say it was in another life, but that just wasn’t true. It was the same life, then and now. Fortune and Solace, the Quarries and Cypsela (not to mention the messy pause in between). Cora found the congruity of it—the fact that she was the common element between those disparate points—even more of a headfuck to think about. What would the pilot make of it, if she could see herself now?

Cora latched her helmet into the neck of her suit. She felt and heard the hiss of being sealed in. She pressed the appropriate controls on the wall, locking the bunker away and pumping the air that surrounded her back into the household tanks. She gripped a pair of handholds, told her stomach to hang tight, waited for the outer hatch timer to run down, and then—

Flip.

Interstitial