The village was bustling today, little fury forms playing in the fresh snow around the Ariel while their parents went about chores, getting ready for the send off. It had taken weeks to move the yetis here and further weeks to get them set up in and around the derelict spaceship, but all that effort had definitely been worth it.The Ariel formed the back wall of the village and we’d repurposed the sections of the ship that Cyrus had smashed flat to serve as a perimeter wall. All of the ice huts within the perimeter wall were just work buildings. The yetis' homes were all inside the Ariel now. They were warmer and safer that way. And I didn’t have to do everything by myself.
It was a windy day and the chill was slipping in through my suit but if anything it was invigorating. With the repairs we’d been able to do to the Ariel, it wasn’t so relentlessly cold inside. We couldn’t heat it to a point where I could be comfortable outside of my survival suit, but that would have been way too hot for the yetis anyway. We got it to their preferred temperature on all but the absolute coldest nights and that was good enough for me.
I was standing on a balcony over the hanger bay looking out at everything, when Choota came up behind me. The crate he was carrying had to weigh two hundred pounds but he carried it like it was an empty cardboard box. I couldn’t call him the little yeti anymore. He’d hit a growth spurt and was rivaling his father in height now, though he was still noticeably thinner. I thought he would fill out before long and it would be difficult to tell them apart, other than Choota’s easy smile. Once Igot to know Chief Gunta he turned out to be a big softy, but he liked to put up a hard face, to look strong for his tribe. The formerly-little yeti grinned at me and let out a series of hoots and chuffs. My suit translated for me.
“Standing around letting us do all the work, huh?”
I grinned back.
“You’re that eager to get rid of me huh? Need me to hurry up and fly off?”
Choota listened to the suit interpret my words, playing them back in mechanical imitation of their hoots and chuffs. Then he snorted and shook his head.
“If only. I don’t know that we’ll ever be rid of you. You used to talk about getting off this planet and nothing else. These days it’s all, ‘There’s no rush,’ and ‘We’ll see what happens.’ I think you just like our cooking.”
I couldn’t help barking out a laugh at that. Yeti food might have had more flavor than the protein packs stored in the Ariel, but eating it was a profound experience in self-inflicted torture. I’d choked down dinners with them for two weeks before Choota told me no one would be offended if I stopped. I thought they were giving me the most flavorful portions as some sort of guest honor. Turns out they knew I hated it and wanted to see how long I’d put up with eating it. Yeti humor.
“It’s definitely not that. I think I’d fall in love with the view first,” I said, gesturing out at the endless expanse of white beyond the village border. I expected another laugh at my joke but Choota set down his burden and came to stand next to me. Instead of looking out at the horizon, he looked down at his people. At my friends.
“Maybe you would,” he said. And I couldn’t help but smile at that, even if it hurt.
“I don’t think we can stay forever. This place… You’re all great… it’s just…”
“This isn’t home.”
“Yeah.”
We stood there in silence for a while. It was comfortable, companionable, and painful. But that hurt didn’t change the truth. I couldn’t live here forever. And besides, of all the pains I’d felt in my life, this one was one of the few good ones.
We spent a few minutes there looking down at the village. And at the ugly, patchwork, mishmash of a ship in the middle of it. The ship me and Ai had built, rebuilt, and built yet again to take us away from Persephone. Someday anyway. Today, we were just going for a test flight, out past the outermost atmosphere. We’d be up there for a while, testing the ship’s functions and making sure that nothing would go wrong once we had it out in the vacuum. We weren’t leaving today but if this went well, it would be a signal to everyone that our time here was coming to a close.
“Let’s get moving,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
He and I and a few of the other yetis finished loading everything up. Even with the survival suit’s enhanced strength, I couldn’t help but marvel at how strong these people were. They could carry and lift monstrous loads all day without ever seeming to get tired. Part of that was the show they were putting on for each other and maybe for me as well. But it was mostly what life on this planet did to make creatures that could survive here.
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“Euclid?” Ai’s voice came to me from the suit. “How are things going out there?”
“We’ll be ready in just a few minutes,” I answered.
“Perfect.”
Her timing was, as usual, also perfect. Which was impressive because it still wasn’t easy for her to move. She came out of the Ariel with slow, deliberate steps, aided by the smooth, inky black material of the survival suit I’d found in the frost wolves’ lair. Once we’d realized it might be possible for that suit to keep her alive outside of her tank we’d thought the biggest challenge would be finding a new suit for me. But being able to fly hundreds of miles a day expanded the possible range of our search so much that finding a new suit only took a few weeks. No, it was getting the suit into her tank that was the real challenge. But that had all worked out in the end. Even if the suit I wore now let the chill in more than I would have liked and couldn’t fly, that was okay. It was well worth it to see Ai walking around on her own two legs.
A few of the yetis stopped what they were doing to walk and talk with her even though, between their incredibly long strides and her very deliberate ones, the pace must’ve seemed glacial to them. She kept the helmet of her suit transparent all the time so that the yetis could see her facial expressions while they talked. The dark materiel of the suit contrasted as strongly with the snow as her pace did with the bustling movement all around her. It was hard to keep my eyes off her.
Still, there was work to do and I couldn’t let the yetis do all of it. They’d never let me live it down. I got back to work checking over the last few issues that could go wrong with the ship. I checked three times to make sure the batteries wouldn't overload and explode, even though Ai and I were both pretty sure that Cyrus had actually caused that.
When Ai finally stood at the foot of the ramp up into the ship, I felt ready. I came down to meet her and found that most of the village was there. They were in a circle surrounding the ship, a sight that once would have terrified me. Now I had to use a joke to push down the emotion I felt.
“Making a wall so I can’t chicken out and run back into the Ariel, huh?”
“Choota’s let you humans stink up our ship for too long as it is,” Gunta said over the crowd’s chuckling. Choota elbowed his dad in the ribs.
“Your ship?” Ai said, mock outrage in her voice. That just made the chuckling turn to outright laughter as Gunta turned away and pretended not to have heard her.
“Alright, alright. You all know this isn’t the big goodbye. We’ll be back in a few days and we’ll keep in touch with the radio.”
I turned to march up the ramp. Choota called out and stepped out of the crowd. I stopped, and he came close and pressed something into my hand.
“For good luck,” he said. In my hand was a small polished object that looked like a badge. It was a nano-immunizer. Maybe the one he’d had with him that night in the cave, when he’d saved me from the other yetis. As it turned out they’d had about a thousand of them in their tech stash. He’d carved something on it in the yeti language, but the suit couldn’t translate it for me.
“What’s it say?” I asked.
“Good luck. Duh.”
It’s shocking how close the yeti word ‘duh’ is to the human one.
“Thanks Choota.”
“Sure thing. Bring me back something cool from space.”
“It’s space. There’s literally nothing out there.”
“It’s space. There’s almost literally everything out there,” Ai said. Choota pointed at her and gave me a, ‘She’s right, you know’ expression. I threw my hands in the air.
“Can’t believe you’re taking his side over mine,” I said in mock offense. “Fine, I’ll bring you back a shiny rock or something.”
“He does like shiny rocks,” Gunta said from back in the crowd. There was more laughing, but it was time to go. We walked up the ramp and I stayed close enough to Ai to catch her if she wobbled. She hadn’t had much time in the suit and after a lifetime or more in the tank her muscles were horribly atrophied.
We moved to the front of the ship where the cockpit was and she sank gratefully into the chair on the left. I took the one on the right and started firing up the engines. Outside all of the yetis had retreated away from the ship to avoid the miniature snow storm that was about to kick up when the ship took off.
“Everything ready?” Ai asked.
“Yeah, I think we’re good,” I said.
Together we kicked on the thrusters and, while she interfaced with the ship's computer, I took care of the actual piloting. Which was definitely the easy part. I just had to steer us in an upward direction.
“Everything holding together?” I asked as we punched into the clouds.
“Everything is stable.”
It didn’t take as long as I expected to get through the clouds and when we did the sun was there to greet us. It was still distant, not as bright as the suns of most planets I’d been to but, after so long without really seeing it, those things didn’t really matter. Beside me I heard Ai gasp. I had to turn in my seat to look at her since she was on my left. The smile on her face and the wonder in her eyes were incredible.
I couldn’t help cruising along over the endless sea of clouds for just a little while, taking in the view. But it didn’t take long for us to decide to head up and out. I pushed the little ship’s engines up to full throttle and drove it until the colors of dawn turned to night’s black and stars peeked at us through the black curtain of space.
As the universe revealed itself to us, Ai and I both reached out. Her hand found mine. Or at least the prosthetic hand the suit gave me. But that didn’t matter to me. I could still feel her there. We were together, and that’s all I needed.