“Why would I take offense to that?” I asked. “It’s factual.”
“See?” Nedd said. “I knew I liked you.”
Arturo gave Nedd a look I couldn’t quite read.
“Alanik could go get Rig,” Jorgen said. “And FM could go with her to explain the situation. Is that all right with you, Alanik?”
Was I willing to take someone with me when I walked onto a platform full of people who now probably considered me a criminal? “Yes, of course,” I said.
“I can jump straight to Rig on my own though,” FM said. “Gill is really good at finding his slug.”
“I still want you to take Alanik with you,” Jorgen said. “We think Gill will be able to get back easily, but I don’t want you stranded on Detritus, facing court-martial.”
“Wait,” Nedd said. “Why is Gill really good at finding Rig’s slug?”
“Because we’ve drilled them so many times,” FM said. She looked a little pink, and sounded defensive.
“Okay,” Nedd said. “But we’ve practiced with all the slugs. We’ve practiced so many times that I think maybe I could find these slugs in the nowhere—”
“You couldn’t,” Jorgen said.
“Leave it, Nedd,” Arturo said.
“But I’m just saying—”
“I hear what you’re saying!” FM said, too loudly.
Everyone stared at her.
She sighed. “Our slugs are really good at finding each other because Rig and I are dating, and we use the slugs to visit each other so we don’t have to deal with awkward questions, because we weren’t ready to tell everyone. There. Now you know.”
“Oh,” Nedd said. He always seemed to have something to say about everything, but now he seemed abashed. Based on the reactions of the group, I guessed that Jorgen and Kimmalyn already knew, and T-Stall and Catnip didn’t care.
“Are mate-pairs taboo in your culture?” I asked. “You all seem very embarrassed to talk about them.”
“Not taboo,” FM said. “But…personal.” She looked at me. “Do the UrDail always speak openly about these things?”
“Fairly openly,” I said. “It’s definitely nothing to be embarrassed about. It can depend on your family culture, but most families are thrilled by mate-pairings, because they welcome children.”
“None of us are thinking about children,” Jorgen said, quickly.
“Can you imagine?” FM said.
I didn’t understand. “Because you’re at war? You were all born during the war, weren’t you?” Unless I drastically misunderstood human aging patterns, they would have had to be.
“Because we’re too young,” FM said. “And we’re pilots on the front lines. Not a life conducive to raising kids. A lot of our parents were pilots, but most of us had at least one parent who wasn’t flying.”
“Wait,” I said. “You’re raised by your parents?”
The humans all looked at me like this was a very stupid question. “Yes,” Kimmalyn said. “Who were you raised by?”
“My grandparents,” I said. “We’re encouraged to find a mate-pair young, so we can have children while our parents are still young and healthy enough to raise the children. Parents have to work to support their families. They don’t have time or energy for childcare. Besides, we only have two of them, when there are at least four grandparents involved, so the odds of one of them being able to care for the children is so much higher than with parents.”
“Huh,” Sadie said. “I guess that does make sense when you put it that way.”
I was trying to picture how human parents must handle having babies while—to use FM’s example—still of age to fly in the air force. That sounded like a terrible system.
“Okay,” Jorgen said. “I think the lesson here is that none of us want to talk about relationships or plan to have children in the near future, except maybe Alanik.”
“I’m not going to have a child,” I said. “I’m not in a mate-pair. But it doesn’t bother me to say so. It’s not shameful in my culture either way.”
“Well, I feel shameful,” Nedd said. “Everyone is coupled up but me! FM has a boyfriend, and Arturo is basically engaged—”
“I am not,” Arturo said.
“And Jorgen and Spensa—”
“Shut up, Nedd—” Jorgen said.