Federations

“Good advice. I make mistakes like that sometimes.”

“People are like that. They do things they don’t mean to do.”

“Umm . . . yeah, you’re right. Sometimes you don’t . . . ”

“Hush.” Jordan reached up to take my face in her hands. “I forgive you.”

• • •

She’d received my letters. That was my first question; any others were unnecessary, or at least just then.

In time, she would tell how she’d thought about responding, but decided instead to maintain an aloof silence while waiting to see what I’d say or do next. And when she’d heard enough to convince herself that my apologies were sincere and that I really did love her, she left her family and caught the next ship to Hex, knowing that the Rose would eventually make its way there. And then she’d waited for me to show up, to tell me . . . 

“I got your letters,” Jordan said, once she’d kissed me. “I read every one of them. And I’m sorry, too.”

“You don’t have to be.” She was sitting beside me at the table, her hands in mine. The rest of my crew, realizing that we needed to be left alone, had quietly moved to another side of the room. “Anything you said, I don’t . . . ”

“No. That’s not what I mean. Your letters . . . I’m sorry, but I don’t have them any more.”

“What did you . . . ?”

“I had to get here somehow, and my family didn’t want me to . . . well, you know how my parents feel about you. So I sold your letters to buy passage out here.”

“I don’t understand. Who would buy my letters? Who’d even want to read . . . ?”

“Who do you think?”

Who, indeed?

Of course, I forgave her for this. Love is a matter of forgiveness, if nothing else. Since then, we’ve had a very happy life together, here on Hex, where the sun never sets and we have plenty of neighbors to keep us company.

All the same, we try to avoid the hjadd. They know enough about us already. How our story ends is none of their business.

LIKE THEY ALWAYS BEEN FREE GEORGINA LI

Georgina Li is a new writer, with just one previous publication, a (non-genre) story called “Closer to the Sky” in the current issue of Chroma. She says she used to write everyday and then for a long time she didn’t and now she writes some days but not others. When she’s not writing she likes to paint, bright colors on small canvases, torn pages, cardboard squares pulled from the recycling bin.

About “Like They Always Been Free” she says, “In a larger sense it’s about the things we value and the things we don’t, about how everything changes when that one paradigm shifts. But mostly it’s a love story.”

Underground there ain’t nothin’ but dark and sweat and filth, figure that out quick or get on with dyin’, just weren’t no other way. Guard on the transpo told Kinger, “You ain’t willin’, you ain’t worth it,” and Kinger opened his mouth easy, Guard’s skinny business jammed in his throat, words sinkin’ in. Cut that Guard’s throat with his own damn knife, didn’t even bother runnin’. Figured the Hole probably weren’t much different from where he been headed, ’cept for Boy bein’ huddled in the corner there, big eyes shinin’ in the dark.

Boy said, “You kill that Guard?” and Kinger grinned bloody, spit a chunk of flesh down where Boy could reach.

Underground Kinger told himself every day, “You ain’t willin’, you ain’t worth it,” told himself over and over, every time he killed, every time he ate, sewed them bones right into his skin. There’d been light on the transpo, even down in the Hole, not much, but enough Kinger could see Boy without tryin’ too hard, blue skin so pretty it hurt to look away, so pretty Kinger knew Boy weren’t headed Underground, weren’t meant for minin’ some shit-torn planet, not lookin’ like he did.

Underground ain’t no light at all, not so it mattered. Weren’t nothin’ there to see.

This ship there’s sunlight, this ship there’s noise, this ship ain’t any place Kinger ever expected to be. Underground six years best as he could figure, no sunlight, nothin’ but what he come with and that weren’t much. Blood on his hands and an empty belly, Boy on the transpo still, slavebound somewhere else.