The end of sensible biology began almost as soon as humanity left to see the stars. At least, that’s what Kilian’s old biologist friend said. She reflected on this as she watched two nako frolic outside. Dragon-like creatures with lizard-like limbs, snake bodies, solar sail fins, and bodies that absorbed photons almost as well as a black hole, they normally moved slowly, but loved to follow ships. She wondered what made these, like the dolphins of earth, follow people and even sometimes rescue abandoned crews.
She caught the eye of one of the nako, and it seemed to smile as well as a mouthless creature could. She wondered how they would feel about being in a 24-meter ship with a half dozen other people on the way to a ship at most half their length with over a thousand people onboard. The nako tilted its head—she’d forgotten they were mildly telepathic—and started to separate from its partner. Kilian shook her head, but it was too late—she had made her first new friend for her Minkowski mission.
“Do you like the stars?” Kilian whispered, forehead against the window. The nako didn’t respond, perhaps mourning their partner lost in the haze of a nebula. Kilian felt something twist inside of her—something lonely and afraid. If a nako didn’t like the stars and space, where would they go? Meanwhile, she wanted to escape, to see…to be someone else. The nako was next to the window now but not touching. It was large enough to move the ship parsecs off course with a small bump. Kilian wasn’t sure how she felt about the fact the nako was preventing that. She felt something calm wash over her, gentle and almost suffocating. “Please stop,” she60 whispered, eyes closed, “I know it seems painful, but the sadness is part of me.” The nako nodded and kept pace with the ship. “I always wanted to be out here, but…I didn’t want to leave everyone. I mean, I know no one really…well, I mean, people liked me. But it was all temporary. I just want…I want to be as permanent as the stars. Even though they move and die, it takes so long…”
The nako was still following, so Kilian took that as a good sign. “You don’t really understand what I say, do you? Doesn’t matter, I’m a physicist, nothing more or less. You’d get bored if I really got to explaining what I do, right?” There was a feeling of gentle enthusiasm, so Kilian went ahead and kept talking about the specifcs of white dwarf formation, of trying to fgure out how long they might last, of sampling the red dwarfs and the dust of a thousand forming bodies. The nako did a slow twist when she was done.
“Who’s this?” Kilian burst into tears.
“Why am I crying?” she said in between sobs. She leaned into the hand on her shoulder, but didn’t turn away from the window. The nako outside was twisting tightly, almost as if it too was anxious.
“Well…I probably surprised you. You’ve been in here for a few hours, and, uh…I just kinda wanted to know if you wanted to talk. Should I just go away?”
Kilian sniffed, wiping her nose, and looked over at her acquaintance. It was a female Alith, only an inch or two taller, her large brown eyes slightly folded in concern. “You can, um, sit down on the ledge if you want. I pulled this nako away from their mate on accident. Goofy things, you know?” Kilian’s laugh was a choked sob, but it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t a long mission, and then she would hardly have to leave the astrophysics department.
“Cool, does it have a name? Or you for that matter?” The Alith’s voice was soft, cheerful.
“Can they talk?” Kilian appreciated the chance to deflect.
The Alith laughed. “Nothing seems to stop them, but they prefer to converse in emotions. I’m warning you though— they’re not pets. I used to study them before I…well, I’m just gonna move on. Anyway, they, uh, have wrecked ships they didn’t like. And they have a wicked sense of humor—getting songs stuck in people’s heads, randomly rearranging asteroid felds like a game of dodgeball…well, anyway, this one likes you.” Kilian realized she was rambling—she was nervous too. “I’ll ask it—maybe it does have a name. I’ll give it a try.” She turned back to the window, but the nako was already attentive. Although Kilian had some experience with telepaths, she never could quite get the hang of “hearing” sent thoughts. It always felt a bit more like she was having an idea, with no words or sounds. “It asked where I was stationed, then called itself Felix. I think it’s a joke.”
“It called itself Lucky? Why is that a joke?”
“No, it called itself Felix, like Felix Klein, close friend of Minkowski and fellow mathematician. But how do you know Latin?”
“I don’t. They taught us a bunch of prefixes and things when I was learning English.”
“Ah…well, that’s Felix, I guess I’m Kilian, and…”
“And I’m Devin!” Devin winced at the sound of her own voice. “Sorry. Anyway, I, uh, don’t really know anyone on the Minkowski either. What department are you?”
“Astrophysics—red dwarfs and stellar formation, with a little bit about planetary formation. You know, the boring stuff.”
“Only if you consider XNA and organometallic chemistry even worse. I mean, why are we bonding beryllium to aromatic rings again?” She laughed, and the flash of teeth against her dark skin reminded Kilian of lightning. “I don’t suppose all this made you hungry?”
“Felix” was now a respectful distance from the window. Kilian felt something drain out of her, but consented to being led over to a table. It was now about 19:00 hours according to the ship’s clock, and she hadn’t eaten breakfast, let alone lunch. There had been so much life outside the windows to watch, so much isolation to feel. She ordered “pasta,” then “red pasta,” then “marinara pasta” before Devin took over and ordered “Spaghetti Bolognese with extra cheese, hot.”
“I could’ve done it!”
“Sorry. I’ve been on this ship since Aleesh, and I… thought maybe you’d like this better than whatever the kitchen defaulted to.”
“You’re right. I…I just wanted to say it.”
They ate in silence for a while, Kilian feeling progressively guiltier about yelling.
“You want to walk around with some ice cream?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry I yelled. And cried. And ate in silence.”
“Hey, we’re still hanging out right? It’s whatever. What kind of ice cream do you want?”
“…Mint chip please.”
Kilian didn’t know how late it was. She didn’t really know where she was on the ship. She wasn’t really sure why she was laughing, but this felt good. Devin felt good. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Devin winked, and tapped Kilian’s nose. She realized they were in the quarters, and waved goodbye. She stumbled back into her quarters, and went over to check the window for Felix. Their tail was a few kilometers away, and they seemed to be preoccupied with keeping pace with the ship. Kilian laid down, and begged whatever was out there for a good day. She wanted to make a good impression.
◆
“You look tired, man.”
“I, uh, may have…cried myself to sleep.”
Devin winced. “Anything you want to talk about?”
“No, I just have clinical depression. It’s fine…it’s whatever. How long until we get to the Minkowski again?”
“Just a few days. Are you anxious?”
“I mean, it’s going to be nice to have some personal space. 24 meters is barely enough for two people, let alone twelve.”
A wry smile. “There's only six people aboard. We’re mostly a resupply mission—I heard they lost a couple people in a particularly messy experiment.”
“Are you serious?” Kilian’s face was panicked. “Wait, did they slip on some unsafe ice?”
They laughed uproariously. “Oh my god, you watched that training video? What were they thinking?”
“I can’t even imagine, but when the maple syrup came to life afer being exposed to gamma radiation, I almost died. I mean, if that’s all I have to do to get a lab assistant, I am so in.”
And that’s how the days started passing. When Devin wasn’t around, Kilian could talk to “Felix”. And while Devin wasn’t exactly outgoing, she did make Kilian feel safer as she went ahead and met the rest of the Minkowski’s new crewa cephalopod biologist named Kim, a humanoid quantum physicist named Strirry, an android executive assistant and amateur chef named Sollo, and the captain, Morgan Yar’Adua. Kilian apologized for being shy, but apparently, everyone had just been assuming she wanted to watch the stars. Devin chuckled something about a wanderer watching the stars.
“I don’t suppose we could have dinner together?” Devin suggested. Everyone decided to spend their last night together aboard eating shrimp chips and playing irreverent card games. The autopilot had no problem keeping them on course, and Kilian felt bubbly and anxious when the fun finally broke up.
“You better come visit the chemistry lab once we get there.” Devin was swerving quite wildly for someone who didn’t drink. Kilian had a hand just touching her, to make sure no one face-planted.
“If for no other reason than that I need to know what those stars are made of.” Kilian laughed at her own non-joke. “Here’s my number if you need something before then.”
“What if I just need to see a…friend?” Devin had paused outside her room, and Kilian struggled to breathe for a second.
“Then…I guess you should just…make some more… or call me, I guess.” Kilian squeezed Devin’s hand, and walked very calmly away. She felt the call of “Felix” in the back of her mind, but tried to ignore it. Sleep—sleep fixed everything. It was fine.
◆
Veronica wanted Kilian to look over her predecessor’s data. “It’s fine if you don’t understand all of it right now. As your boss, it’s my job to help you get the resources you need. Feel free to ask your colleagues if it’s just a minor thing toothey don’t bite!” Kilian’s lab mates waved at this remark before going back to, variously, drinking coffee, reading the news, and playing handheld games. “And don’t worry, Tim’s not dead— he just decided he wanted to transfer to a ground-based study for the next few years.” Veronica beamed; Kilian smiled weakly in return.
She sat down at her lab table with the seeming books of data. It was almost too loud to read in here, and she started to shake a little with effort. One of the other physicists pulled up a chair.
“Hey, you know, if you need somewhere quieter, no one will care if you go to the arboretum. It’s usually abandoned at this time of day. Or, if you wait until about 11, we’ll all be getting back to work. Mondays, you know?”
“I, um…where can I get some hot chocolate or tea?”
“They’re next to the coffee. You seem confused.”
“I’m…uh, very used to working alone. Or at least, we’re all so busy switching our programs on the telescopes that no one really talks to each other. Plus, I’m shy…or more accurately, I have ‘clinical social anxiety’.” Tis last statement came with her classic satirical, sardonic voice.
“Well, you’re doing a good job,” came the completely serious reply.
“Thanks.” Kilian knew she was a little terse. “Anyway, there’s a couple places where Tim uses equipment that doesn’t make sense, but from a quick skim, everything seems to be in order. Did you say we’d probably get to work around 11?”
“I mean, if you want to get to work a bit earlier, I’m sure you could tell everyone else…”
“Nah, I had a late night. I’m gonna get a cup of warm tea and take a nap under the lab table.”
The other physicist laughed. “Well, I’m Nychi, and I primarily study nebular formation and composition. I might go ask your nako friend a bit. Do they talk much?”
“Ummm…not really yet. I’m Kilian in case you didn’t catch it. And I’m going to sleep!” Nychi beamed in reply and went back to the coffee pot.
◆
When Kilian stepped out into the longue, “Felix”’s head was next to one of the windows. She sat down, leaned against the clear aluminum. “I don’t suppose anything too exciting is happening out there, huh?” A feeling like stretching afer a long day in front of a screen. “I supposed not. I took a nap, and got to reading Tim’s report. It’s, uh…well, I can see why he wanted a break. And why they hired someone with a strong background in tensor and quaternion mathematics. Anyway…I wonder how the food is.” She got a feeling of questioning. “I don’t know how I fit in yet. I just kind of want to get to work.”
She ate lunch quickly, especially considering she had a full hour, regardless, and found herself in the prairie section of the arboretum. As artifcial sunlight filtered in, dappled by the simulated clouds, she wondered what her parents would have been doing. Their farm was long sold, but she sometimes tried to remember…even so many years in the Academy, in graduate school, and studying in faraway places had not wiped away the smell of cows, the gentle touch of a horse’s nose, or the sound of shifing stems. Alas, the arboretum was not as warm as she’d hoped, considering it was only April on Earth, and she left with a vague feeling of disappointment.
“You know,” Nychi quipped when Kilian found herself back in the lab, “Tim never really bothered to run any sort of diffraction experiments on his samples. I know you still have some reading to do, but maybe you could consider trying that.” “Thanks. I don’t know, it seems like he realized he wanted to be on the ground again very soon afer starting all of this.”
“Tim was a strange one,” Veronica interjected, apparently returned from her administrative business. “I suspect he realized that he didn’t take well to artificial sunlight, tight quarters, or deciding that he really wasn’t smart enough to be here.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No, he was,” Nychi insisted, “But after a while, you realize you can’t really convince someone that they, and their work, are worthwhile. You’ve got other stuff to do. But don’t worry, we think you’re qualified, and you’ve never had too much of a problem yet.”
“You came with stunning recommendations from your other bosses,” Veronica cut in. “Just a bit quiet. We figured there’s nothing quite like a starship to study stars, so we stole you away.” She giggled. “But that’s a bit neither here nor there. How’s the reading going?”
“Like I said, I think I’m going to have to re-run some of his experiments, because they’re not well documented. And then I’d like to—”
“Look, as your boss, I just want you to write down everything. I don’t care what you do; you’re a professional with good judgement. I want you to run what tests you want to run, and if that means checking all of Tim’s work step-by-step, I’d just better see better notes than you claim he left. Capisce?” Veronica turned her back, and Kilian was stunned for a second.
Complete academic freedom. She had license to study whatever she wanted in this data; these samples were hers now. She spent the rest of the day poring over Tim’s notes, finding holes in his methods, questionable data points, and generally starting a hierarchy of what experiments she was going to run over the next one to six months. Starships sometimes ran smoothly, but emergencies were legendarily random, capricious, and oddly frequent for this class. When she asked her fellows what sort of equipment the Minkowski had, they were happy to tour her around to the cyclotron, the chemical storeroom, and the plasma generator. Kilian even saw Devin working around the x-ray diffraction machine, but had too many questions about its operation and terms of usage to remember to talk to her.
It turned out not to matter—soon after they were dismissed for the day, Devin found Kilian and introduced her to the chemists. Kilian told her about Veronica—who turned out to command both their labs—and Nychi. She even mentioned what they had told her about Tim.
“That’s sad, isn’t it? Not to believe you can do something you’ve trained in your whole life?”
“Well…there is something to be said about the pressure of working on a starship. Completely responsible for your work, with all the best equipment around you. It could cause a little bit of…impostor syndrome.”
“I know, I just…I guess never fitting in has that advantage. I just always figured I was doing it wrong, but as long as it kept working and I kept getting recommended to better and better experiments, I was doing it right enough.” Kilian paused to look at Devin’s eyes, squarely on her face. “Sorry if I’m a bit weird…”
“Hey, everyone here’s a bit weird. I hardly have room to talk.” Devin giggled. “But seriously, you’re just you.”
“You know, your name reminds me of David Hilbert, Minkowski’s bestest, truest bro.”
“No homo though, right?”
“No historically based comment.”
“NO.”
“No historically based comment.” But Kilian did start laughing in a completely incriminating way. “Look, there’s literally no way of knowing. But Hilbert did say ‘Minkowski was my best, most dependable friend who supported me with all depth and loyalty...together our joy was complete. He was for me a rare gift from heaven and I must be grateful to have possessed that gift for so long.’” At this, they both started crying with laughter.
“Oh my god, that’s the sort of quote that inspires rewritten histories and all sorts of anachronisms—”
“I hardly think the lives of dozens of famous earth mathematicians—”
“You’re right. But there’s not proof.” Devin wiped her eyes, still giggling uncontrollably. “Yet.”
They proceeded to input a story into the ship’s fiction database detailing Minkowski and Hibert’s relationship, ranging from the beginning of their undergraduate years all the way to their final afternoon walk through the campus with Minkowski’s coffin. It was nice to have something to do after work, and Kilian cherished the time. But after a week or two, the story was definitely done, and there was no given excuse to talk to Devin. But then they found a bunch of others playing virtual games in the lounge after Friday’s duty. And the flowers started to bloom in the arboretum. And there was just no reason to be apart if Kilian didn’t feel like it.
And the more they were together, the easier Kilian found her own project. She programmed quietly at her desk most days, trying to finalize the best way to simulate the interior of a red dwarf. She wanted to compare her simulation to some of the cyclotron data and earlier direct samples. Nychi and Veronica had no problem helping her find any additional equipment (except, apparently, a huge store of C-4 just for the hell of the thing). And when she needed a break, it was easy to goad Strirry into giving her some of his dathe, a fruity alcoholic drink that his species apparently transported in copious amounts. It might not have been particularly good for her liver, but Kilian subscribed to the hypothesis that relaxation was good for stimulating thought.
It was not, perhaps, as lonely a life as the Australian desert, where Kilian may have been speaking a sentence a week. But it wasn’t exactly required of her to interact with anyone more than a few times a day, so life seemed tolerable. She was chewing a sunflower butter and jelly sandwich on the swing of an elm when Devin approached her.
“I don’t suppose you want a push?”
“Not until I fnish my sandwi—” Devin shoved Kilian with all her might, and the sandwich flew and hit the wall of the greenhouse.
“Cool, it’s stuck!”
“Thanks for ridding me of my lunch, Devin.” Kilian tried to sound irritated, but the kitchen was kind of slacking in quality that day. “What do you want?”
“Well, I was thinking. You’ve been visiting me a lot.”
“So? I’ve also been visiting Nychi and ‘Felix’ and Strirry and lots of people.”
“But you’ve been taking me with you when you visit them. You and I watch movies together and you’ve been learning Alit so we can converse and you eat dinner with me a lot and…well, you know, people have been asking me about you. Isn’t it funny, we’ve been friends for so long and…”
“And?”
“And even though I know most humans mate for life… and my species does too…I don’t even know if you have a lifemate. I mean, I don’t. I always thought there’d be time later, and, I, uh…”
“Devin, Devin. Don’t worry about it. I don’t have a… ‘life-mate’ as you’re calling it. I tried a few times…wait, are you flirting with me?”
“Well, I know a couple of the other…”
Kilian was shaking. “Devin, are you asking me out?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s fine. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay? I’m kind of tired. Tell all those other people I’m not really interested right now.” And Kilian hurried back into her lab, stomach churning, almost half an hour early. Everyone seemed to ignore her being upset, so she just sat at her bench, shaking slightly and preparing another hundred samples for testing. She wanted to feel sorry for herself, but could only manage to feel sad for Devin. Imagine picking to date Kilian. Someone who just wasn’t…
Kilian felt the internal slap. It was time to give this a chance. She hadn’t dated since post-graduate, and maybe things were different on Aleesh. She’d see Devin tomorrow—twice actually, because she had to run some of these samples through the x-ray diffraction machine. She shifted uncomfortably on the high wooden stool and focused as best she could on the task at hand.
The next day, Devin looked tired and only gave a weak smile when Kilian waved through the leaded glass between them. She wondered if Devin had gotten any sleep, but decided instead to focus on not giving herself cancer in a misoperation. Kilian wrote down her steps in excruciating detail, from which plug the diffractor was in to the cooler settings to how quickly it moved between angles. She only paused for her lunch of pepperoni focaccia (nothing compared to that in Bari, but her tablemates were kinder). But before long, Killian was taking the spent samples back to her lab table and asking her bench-mate to pass her a gaussometer. The diffraction data was going to be complex, and she didn’t really want to run the mathematics on a Friday afternoon after a poor night’s sleep.
She’d been practicing what she was going to say most of the night, so when she was dismissed for the weekend, Kilian started down the hall to the chemistry labs. But Devin seemed to have had the inverse idea, so they found themselves meeting in a crowded hallway with very little chance to converse. Kilian indicated in Alit that they had about an hour before they usually met everyone else, but Devin countered that she’d rather just talk to Kilian if it was okay. They could always be late after all.
“So what’s up?” Kilian sighed after they found an empty spot in the library. People usually rushed out of the reference section on Friday afternoons, so there was only a slim chance of them being interrupted.
“I…uh, want to apologize for yesterday. I obviously made you uncomfortable.” Devin’s skin could hardly have been darker, and it reminded Kilian of pictures of intergalactic space—such a vast emptiness, lonely as one could ever conceivably be.
“No, I actually want to thank you. Sometimes it’s important for me to be uncomfortable—it means I’m caught off guard, even when I shouldn’t be. Are we still friends?”
“Yes! I mean, if you still want to be.” Kilian tried not to laugh at her earnestness, but it was weirdly endearing for someone to want to be around her.
“Look, I want to stay friends no matter what, but you’ll notice yesterday that I told you to tell everyone else I wasn’t interested. I’m interested, as long as you understand there’s some things that might not be on the table.” Kilian glanced over, and saw that their conversation had attracted “Felix”’s attention.
“I’ve never had a problem staying friends with lifemate mismatches. And you jump whenever anyone touches you anywhere. I can be patient.”
“Some things will never be on the table. I’m—”
“Then I’ll figure it out—I just wanted to try it with you. Is that okay?”
“It’s okay as long as it’s okay if I kiss you.” And so Kilian leaned into Devin meeting her in the middle. It was messy, and they were just a bit misaligned. Kilian, I love you, please don’t throw this away. It’s the right decision and you know it.
◆
And for a few weeks, it worked out. They met after work, on weekends, and rarely during lunch. They still conversed with their friends, they still watched movies, but sometimes something took Kilian over and she tried to kiss Devin senseless.
Devin didn’t seem to mind. In fact, there were times Kilian swore she was trying to do the same, but it took so little—one brush on her arm, one press of a thumb over her ear—to fry Kilian’s brain that the effect wasn’t the same. But Devin kept going, and something in Kilian appreciated it. Having someone to wake when the nightmares became too much, having a friend to vent to, having a partner to exchange scientific ideas with…it seemed like a dream. And with a job where she was challenged, colleagues who cared, and other friends who spent time with her, Kilian was starting to think this might be everything she’d ever wanted.
But she was seeing less and less of “Felix”. She inquired about it with Kim and the rest of the biology department, but they smiled quietly and promised it wasn’t a bad sign. She finally did find “Felix”’s head one day near the lounge, and inquired where they’d been. There was just a feeling of longing, of wanting to stay but knowing that the world is so much bigger than this place. It was a feeling of an inevitable, delayed departure.
“You have to go? But why?” There was a less distinct feeling, almost as though Kilian was feeling nothing at all. But then she realized—she wasn’t feeling empty and sad. “You’re still here because I was afraid, aren’t you?” No answer would come, so she pressed on, “You’re leaving because I’ve transitioned successfully, aren’t you?”
Devin walked in, and put her hand on Kilian’s shoulder. “What’s up?”
Kilian felt like crying. “‘Felix’ says they’re going to leave soon. I’m going to miss them.”
Devin had the decency to tear up a little. “You know, I think I’m going to miss them too. But you know what else I just realized?”
Kilian realized Devin had her by both shoulders—a sign to look up into her eyes. “No, what have you realized?” she asked in a small voice.
“That I love you. I love you like the waves on the sea, like the flowers in the fields, like the stars in the skies. And I know you might not be ready—”
“I love you too,” Kilian said in a small voice, “I just wanted to know if this was what it felt like.”
And suddenly, she could hear the nako “speaking” in her mind. “If you ever see me again, my name is Shikoba, and I’m perfectly happy to help. Be safe, I love you, and I’ll see you later.”
Kilian cried on Devin’s shoulder, but the sadness wasn’t trapped inside, so it almost felt...good. “They told me their name, Devin.”
Devin looked seriously into Kilian’s eyes. “It’s hard to gain a nako’s trust, or even too much of their attention. You’re extraordinary, and I love you.”
They kissed gently before Kilian whispered, “So are you, I love you too,” and kissed Devin again.
And while things were never quite perfect—they had to learn to share equipment, free time, and eventually a room— Kilian and Devin always tried to talk it out. And when that didn’t work, there was very little a soft kiss and good night’s sleep couldn’t fix.
And that’s the story of how a giant space sea serpent got two young women to fall in love, once upon a time.