by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025
Cobalt Starstrong charged right in, grabbed a stool at the bar, and then looked back to see Delvin balking in the doorway. There was a strange look on the younger man’s face. Cobalt gestured to the empty barstool beside him; it was a plain, simple stool, suitable to all kinds of physiologies. That was important. For they were in the All Alien Cafe.
Reluctantly, Delvin darted into the bar and took the empty seat beside Cobalt. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked.
Cobalt stared blankly at Delvin for a moment in surprise. “This is the best bar on Crossroads Station,” he said.
“Best in what sense?” Delvin asked, looking skeptically at the bar’s other patrons. Many a night, The All Alien Cafe was filled with human customers. Tonight, however, Cobalt Starstrong and his ward were the only humans in the room.
Cobalt patted the younger man on his shoulder. “Spooked by the aliens, eh?” Cobalt was a cargo runner, and he’d picked up Delvin as a passenger on the way back from a delivery to Debelen III. “Look,” Cobalt said, signing to the elephantine bartender for him to pour his usual drink times two. “This bar has the best drinks…” The bartender slid two tumblers across the bar to them with his prehensile nose. “The best atmosphere…” Cobalt gestured expansively, but Delvin only grimaced at the dour lighting and garish holo-displays of colorfully dressed dancers of all species. “And, far and away, the best company.”
Cobalt pointed toward a table of fluffy furred Heffen refugees in the corner, listening raptly to a four-armed, blue android telling stories, but Delvin looked unimpressed.
“Yeah…” Delvin said, “But no girls.”
“What?” Cobalt said. He looked around, genuinely confused. There were girls everywhere. Heffen women with their lustrous, gold fur and flowing manes; a Jetheri woman with her long legs and sinuous fingers; a Lintar woman whose blue fins fluttered seductively like the fabric of an evening gown whenever she moved, gracefully obscuring her voluptuous frame; and, at the far end of the bar, there was a feathered alien who Cobalt had seen go home with at least twenty different men of a dozen different species in his time.
“No human girls,” Delvin said to Cobalt as if he was explaining that gravity makes things heavy to a consummate zero-geer who’d been dropping crates of solidium on his own feet ever since going planet side.
Cobalt shrugged. “Never really bothered me.”
“Have you… I mean…” Delvin was clearly flustered now. “…with an alien?”
Now, truth is, Cobalt thought himself a player, but he spent more time souping up his ship — she had the latest in elasti-drive engines! — than picking up women, human or otherwise. But, he knew that wasn’t the right answer here. After all, he was a worldly spacer talking to a wet behind the ears boy, fresh off his dirtball of a home planet. Delvin needed a little guidance. Someone to look up to. So, Cobalt said, “Sure. No big deal. A woman’s a woman, right?” Cobalt clinked his glass against Delvin’s.
The younger man sat there, perfectly still with his glass held in the air. His glazed over eyes suggested a brain busy playing out exotic, erotic scenarios. Then he blinked and refocused his gaze on the Jetheri woman, perhaps the most humanoid in the room with a smooth amphibious skin. Delvin gestured subtly with his glass. “Her?” he asked. Then, gesturing at another alien girl and then another, “What about them?”
Feeling challenged, Cobalt said with a shrug, “Well, no, but I could take any one of them back to my ship with me tonight if I wanted.”
Delvin snorted skeptically. “Right.”
“Don’t believe me?” Cobalt said. “Tell you what, name the girl, and I’ll have her in my bed by midnight tonight or you don’t owe me for your ride here.”
“Midnight?” Delvin said.
“Midnight, whatever, you know what I mean.”
Delvin looked like he was thinking the bet over. He took just long enough for Cobalt to begin to wonder what exactly he’d gotten himself into.
“All right,” Delvin said. “It’d be nice to start out my life on Crossroads Station with a little extra pocket change.”
Cobalt bristled. “Kid, you’re not gonna be getting extra pocket change. You’re going to be paying me to go on a date.”
Delvin wasn’t buying it. He looked the room over, and then he pointed a single finger down the length of the bar. A S’rellick woman had just taken a seat on a barstool at the end. Her green scales scintillated in the barroom’s low light. “Is that a S’rellick?” Delvin asked. “They’re cold-blooded, right?”
“Yeah,” Cobalt said, tilting his head. He knew the S’rellick at the end of the bar. Her name was Minorai, and they’d raced daisy-chains through the local asteroid belt before. Her ship was faster than his, but, Cobalt was better at the tricky gravity play of daisy-chaining.
“Good, then I pick her. Good luck,” Delvin said, cheerfully.
“Won’t need it,” Cobalt said and smiled. His young friend had made a common rookie mistake: he thought coldblooded meant passionless. From racing against Minorai, Cobalt knew that she was anything but passionless. Now he just had to find a way to translate the furious rage she’d expressed at repeatedly losing races to him into slavish sexual desire for him.
Cobalt had no idea how to do that, but he figured it would start with buying her a drink.
After hitting the bar and ordering two Derubian fizzes — a drink he’d seen S’rellicks order before — Cobalt walked right up to Minorai’s table and sat down without any prelude. He shoved one of the bright blue foamy drinks toward her, raised his own, and said, “To an enjoyable evening ahead of us.” He’d found confidence to be an effective strategy in, well, everything in his life so far. And it only occasionally got him stuck in situations that he didn’t know how to get out of.
Minorai wrapped a scaly talon around the drink and eyed Cobalt. “A Velverran already walked by and told me about your bet. Gossip travels faster than light here.”
Velverrans had very large ears, and Cobalt swore at himself internally for not having noticed one of the fuzzy canids around while he’d been talking to Delvin. He’d probably missed it because they’re so short. But he didn’t let his discomposure show. Instead, he merely shrugged and said, “What of it? You know I like drinking with you. Who cares if some wet-behind-the-ears, new to the station kid wants to pay us to spend some time together?”
“From what I heard, your bet was a lot more crude than that,” Minorai hissed, her forked tongue flicking out and tasting the air between them as she spoke. “I’m not really sure what a soft-skinned primate like you would have to offer a scaly goddess like me, erotically speaking–” Minorai shifted in her seat in a way that made her look like a glorious, sinuous dragon. “–and I don’t really care enough to find out. I have other plans. But if you want to follow me around like a K’tallian spider-puppy all evening and then weigh how much your honor is worth, I don’t really care what lies you do or don’t tell some other human youth who’s too young to properly belong out of a hatching cave yet.”
Cobalt felt his face flush hot at Minorai’s casual dismissal of both his species and his manhood, but he covered his embarrassment with a cocky grin. “Spider-puppy it is, then. Lead the way.”
Cobalt hadn’t expected Minorai to abandon her free drink and actually head straight for the door of the All Alien Cafe, her sinuous form gliding with a grace his human legs couldn’t hope to match. Nonetheless, he hurried to keep up, only pausing to shoot what he hoped was a confident wink at Delvin before following the S’rellick woman out into the thinning, evening crowds of the Merchant’s Quarter. To his surprise, Minorai turned not toward the Residential Quarter but instead began walking even deeper into the Merchant’s Quarter where most of the shops were already closing up for the station’s imitation of night.
* * *
The door to Maradia’s Robot Emporium was still open, light and the smell of solder spilling out into the station’s corridor. Cobalt had never been to Maradia’s shop before, but he’d met the older human woman. They’d shared drinks a few times at the All Alien Cafe, and you could hardly be a regular there without knowing about her — too many of the robots around here considered her their mother or grandmother. And while robots may not eat or drink, that doesn’t stop them from enjoying a sociable environment.
Minorai charged straight through the shop’s front lobby and into a work room in the back where Maradia was hunched over a table covered in gears, wires, scraps of metal, and several disembodied robot arms. Maradia looked up from the computer board she’d been soldering and lifted the face-shield strapped around her head to see her visitors better. She was a tall, angular woman with piercing eyes, and everything about her made Cobalt feel inadequate — from her casual brilliance to the way she seemed to completely forget him immediately after every time they met.
“Minorai,” Maradia said, not even seeming to notice Cobalt behind the S’rellick woman. “…did we have an appointment?”
“Yes, I confirmed it three times,” Minorai answered, her forked tongue adding a hiss to the words. Even so, the S’rellick sounded more amused than annoyed by Maradia’s forgetfulness. She knew how lucky she was to have Maradia’s help on building her pilgrimage shell. “But I don’t care if you forgot about the appointment, as long as the schematics…” Minorai trailed off in a leading, hopeful way.
Maradia raised a finger into the air like she was trying to remember where something was, and a moment later, she started digging through the piles of computer pads at the end of her work table. “I forget people,” she said, still digging. “I don’t forget projects.” Finally she found the tablet she was looking for and inserted it into a holo-projector that cast a schematic display into the air above her table in a ghostly shade of blue.
The schematic seemed to be for a small shuttle pod of some kind, but it was way overloaded with thermal regulators and life-support systems for its size.
“What is that?” Cobalt asked, drawn toward the holographic blueprint like a moth toward a flame. “Some kind of racer? It won’t go very fast with that design. Do you want some tips on how to soup it up?”
When Cobalt looked back at the two women — awkward human and S’rellick goddess — they were both staring at him like he was a kid who’d somehow escaped his babysitter.
“It’s not for racing,” Minorai hissed dryly.
Maradia’s fingers danced over the computer tablet like she was a concert pianist, and the hologram shifted, the previous shuttle pod design replaced with a racing design that made Cobalt’s heart do a quick double beat. “If I was trying to design something fast, I could.” Maradia typed a few commands into the tablet again, and the hologram shifted back to the original one. “But this isn’t supposed to be fast.”
“Woah, woah,” Cobalt said automatically, like he was calling out to a loved one, trying to rescue them from falling off the edge of a cliff. Except, in reality, he was simply so entranced by Maradia’s design for a star-skipper that he desperately wanted a few more seconds of looking at it. That blueprint had been the most elegant design for a racing ship he’d ever seen in his life. Maybe the most elegant thing he’d ever seen period. “Bring it back!”
Maradia shook her head and looked over at Minorai, silently asking with a quirked eyebrow why the S’rellick had brought a human man-child with her to their consultation.
Minorai shrugged and hissed, “He’s my arm-candy tonight. Ignore him.”
Cobalt bristled at being written off as mere “arm-candy” — even if it was flattering, he was supposed to be the one doing the seducing here — and he would have protested in some kind of calculatedly cute way designed to twist Minorai’s objectifying comment into a sign of actual attraction toward him, but he was too busy trying to remember every detail of the blueprint that had just disappeared. He couldn’t take his eyes off the spot where that racing ship design had been. “You’re telling me you just… had that lying around? That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Cobalt gestured dismissively at the current hologram with its excessive life support systems. “Why waste time on this weird turtle shell thing when you could be revolutionizing racing?”
“I don’t design racing ships anymore,” Maradia said flatly. “I don’t want the blood on my hands when idiots like you misuse them. So, I don’t take that kind of commission.” Narrowing her eyes, she added, “You’re that guy I had a drink with in the All Alien Cafe one time who now goes around telling people he went to school with me.”
Cobalt shifted uncomfortably, realizing that sometimes being remembered is worse than not being remembered. Especially when you have a habit of exaggerating a lot. “Really, you should be thanking me,” he said, going for the big swing. Like always. “I’m sure you get a lot of commissions because of the stories I tell, and how I make you sound so down-to-Earth and relatable.”
“You mean the guys who come here wanting to buy sex robots?” Maradia asked snidely. “I don’t take that kind of commission either. If it’s smart enough to provide the kind of interaction they want, then it’s smart enough to require consent.”
“Hey, if you don’t want the reputation, then don’t marry one of your machines,” Cobalt snarked.
Maradia sighed deeply. Her younger self had made some deeply questionable, perhaps even ethically reprehensible choices, and if she had to live her life over again — a daunting, terrifying prospect — then she probably wouldn’t have ever designed or built either Gerangelo or Gary — the robot who had been her first serious boyfriend and the one who was now her husband, respectively.
But that path would have led to an entirely different world, because while Maradia had probably been wrong to make them, they had both become complete, fascinating people in their own right. Gerangelo was a pillar of the robotic community aboard Crossroads Station, and Gary… Maradia had trouble imagining life without Gary.
Realizing Cobalt was the kind of guy who wouldn’t stop hassling them unless he had something else to entertain him, Maradia took a moment to dig through the piles of computer tablets on her work table again. She found the one she was looking for and tossed it to Cobalt.
“There,” Maradia said. “Amuse yourself with that while the adults are talking.”
Cobalt grumbled something about how he’d prefer to look at the schematic she’d had in the hologram, but all Maradia had to do to shut down that line of complaint was hold her hand out like she was offering to take the schematic back if he didn’t appreciate it.
Cobalt clutched it closer and backed away, keeping his eyes on the blueprint she’d selected for him. Maradia had carefully chosen a star-skipper design that was enough more advanced than the current state-of-the-art around Crossroads Station for Cobalt to be unable to turn down the chance to pore over it… but not so advanced that the deadbeat racers weren’t going to discover those advances on their own soon enough anyway.
If Maradia could have guaranteed no one would fly her designs carelessly, she could have tripled the speed of racing model star-skippers overnight. But then, there really wasn’t a way to fly that kind of speed-optimized ship that wasn’t careless. By the time a star-skipper could move that fast, it basically couldn’t do anything else, so all it was good for was racing.
Cobalt could tell from Maradia’s demeanor that this chance to study the blueprint she’d handed him was a limited time opportunity. He wouldn’t be leaving the shop with the schematic, so he did his best to understand and memorize everything he could about it while he had it in his hands, hoping he could apply as much as possible to his own star-skipper.
Even so, bits of Maradia and Minorai’s conversation crept into his consciousness, sneaking past the roaring scream of excitement caused by the blueprints he was studying.
Apparently, Minorai was going to be leaving Crossroads Station for a while. A long while. The design she was working on with Maradia was for a mechanical pod that the S’rellick would indeed wear on her back like a turtle shell, allowing her to drift through space in a sort of pilgrimage — experiencing space almost like it was her native habitat, alternating between hibernation and deep meditation, while traveling home to the star where her species began, before they’d scattered across the galaxy like dandelion tufts on the wind. Like humans had.
The way Minorai talked about her upcoming pilgrimage, it sounded deeply peaceful. Apparently, most S’rellick who went on such a voyage built their shells themselves, and in fact, Minorai had constructed the base structure. However, since she had access to one of the most talented engineers in the galaxy, it had only made sense to consult with Maradia on whether any improvements could be made.
Cobalt Starstrong found himself falling into a trance-like reverie listening to Minorai and Maradia talk, imagining what it would be like to be a coldblooded reptile, flying through space with only a mechanical turtle shell protecting you from the harshness of vacuum and radiation. It wouldn’t matter if you were flying fast, because the distances are so great you wouldn’t be able to gauge your speed directly with your own senses anyway. You could just… be.
Minorai was planning to fly back to her species’ ancestral home, and so Cobalt found himself wondering if it would even be possible to find Ancient Earth. There were so many New Earths and Terras Nouveau scattered throughout the galaxy that the original had become something of a legend. Almost a ghost story. It’d really be something to actually find Earth — the true original — and see the soil from which the seeds for this galactic human civilization had originally grown.
Cobalt’s reverie was interrupted by a very handsome human-looking man wearing an apron and dusted in flour rushing into the workshop. Anyone who didn’t know about Gary would have assumed he really was human, but then, anyone who hung out around the Merchant Quarter of Crossroads Station was familiar with the android owner of Trattoria Silicon. Even on Crossroads Station, a baker android was a bit of an oddity. But Gary loved Maradia whole-heartedly, and the woman had a sweet tooth. So, he’d learned to bake.
Cobalt had told stories about Gary many times to visitors passing through Crossroads Station who stopped by the All Alien Cafe for a drink. Or rather, Cobalt liked to tell stories about Maradia and Gerangelo — the roboticist who fell in love with her own android who eventually spurned her — and then Gary served as a punchline. He was a good punchline, and the stories generally earned Cobalt a good laugh from his audience, so he felt quite warmly toward the flour-covered android.
“Gary, my man!” Cobalt called out. “Baked any good cakes lately?”
The android looked at Cobalt quizzically before glancing down at himself and realizing he was still wearing his apron. Gary pulled the white cloth garment off over his head, tousling his dark hair, and threw it over a cluttered pile of metal parts on another work table. Without paying any more attention to Cobalt, Gary went right up to Maradia, took her hands in his, and looked deeply into her eyes for just long enough to make her feel really seen. Then he turned to Minorai and said, “Is it really ready? Can we really bring our egg home early?”
“Wait… the egg is ready?” Maradia asked, suddenly sounding excited and flustered.
Gary got a goofy, lopsided smile on his face and said fondly, “You never check your messages, do you?”
Watching this goofy, sappy exchange, Cobalt rolled his eyes, but no one was paying attention to him. Maradia and Gary seemed to be lost in their own little world together, hands still entangled, and Minorai’s scales had spiked out in a physic display of discomfort.
The S’rellick woman looked away, seeming embarrassed, and said, “Yes, I messaged you both earlier today. The egg… uh… came early.” Her forked tongue was darting in double time. “But — and I don’t want it to sound like I don’t trust you — but given the circles I move in, I don’t make trades until the goods are ready on both sides of the deal.”
All three of them — human, android, and reptile — looked at Cobalt. Clearly, he represented the kinds of circles Minorai moved in that caused her to have trust issues.
“What? You think I don’t have honor?” Cobalt asked, feigning offense. In reality, he didn’t care what these squares thought of him. They were living painfully boring domestic lives, and if he didn’t have money on the line, he’d have been out of there as soon as he finished memorizing what he could of the blueprints he’d been studying. By now, he’d spent more than enough time following Minorai around to tell Delvin whatever he wanted. He’d earned winning that stupid bet Delvin had suckered him into with all this nonsense. At least, that’s what Cobalt told himself.
At a deeper level — one Cobalt didn’t even know about himself — he was kind of hooked on the question of what was going on with this mysterious egg they all seemed so worked up about, and he knew that the All Alien Cafe would be down to the dregs of drunk losers by now. The kind of patrons Cobalt could wow with his lie-filled stories… and while part of him loved the attention he could get from them, another part found them dreadfully dull and their attention hollow. That part was fascinated by this secret view he was getting into the lives of people who were usually too busy with their own lives to give an aimless drifter like him the time of day.
Fortunately, the time of day doesn’t matter much in deep space. It’s always race o’clock when you have the fastest star-skipper around and a title to hold onto.
Maradia cleared her throat, drawing attention away from the man-child who had no clear reason to be in her workshop. “Actually, I know it’s, well, unorthodox to proceed with the alterations on a project before confirming them with the client… but…”
Gary laughed and shook his head, seeing what was coming.
Minorai simply flicked her forked tongue and asked, “But you’ve made the changes already?”
“I hope that’s not a problem,” Maradia said in a rush. “It looked like you were happy with them in the blueprint… and…”
“And you’re accustomed to people being happy enough with your work that you don’t have to wait for permission,” Gary supplied.
Maradia shrugged haplessly. “Look, if you’re not happy with the changes, I can change it all back–”
“No, you’re fine,” Minorai hissed. “I mean, you’re a bit of a fool, but in this case, it’s working out for you. And it’s not my job to be the morality police, going around teaching people lessons–” The S’rellick woman glanced meaningfully at Cobalt here. The human man completely missed her askance look. “–so if my pilgrimage shell is done early, and my… uh… egg is also done early, then we might as well make the swap right now.”
“Tonight?” Gary asked, his voice quivering with excitement. “We can bring the egg home tonight? Right now?”
Cobalt couldn’t believe what a milquetoast square this guy was — metal skeleton, computer brain, probably capable of all kinds of amazing feats of strength and intelligence, and here he was, what? Desperately hoping to play nursemaid to some reptile baby?
Cobalt rolled his eyes, but some part of him wanted to see how this played out, so he held his tongue which was the only reason Maradia didn’t kick him out of her shop right then and there. Instead, she put him to work. “You, Speedracer, make yourself useful and help us get Minorai’s pilgrimage shell loaded on the zero gee dolly.”
The four of them went into the back of the shop where the actual shell was laid out between work tables on the floor — a metal dome large enough to hold Minorai inside. The outer layer of the shell had been carefully decorated with swirling spiral patterns, giving it an otherworldly feel.
Maradia directed the others in helping her turn the shell over so that Minorai could inspect the underside, and then they opened it up, showing off its innards. Metal guts filled with thermal regulators, algae pack air recyclers, and everything else that Minorai would need to stay alive as she coasted through the vacuum of space. The engines, in Cobalt’s eyes anyway, were pitifully, deplorably small.
“It’s perfect,” Minorai said, her voice tinged with the kind of quiet joy that could only come from achieving a long term dream, finally seeing something that you’ve imagined for years actually realized in front of you.
“Excellent, then let’s get it on the dolly,” Maradia said.
It took all four of them to lift the pilgrimage shell, but once the dolly was secured under it and turned on, the heavy, metal object became light enough to float. The gentlest touch steered it, and so Minorai was able to proudly take possession of her personal-sized spacecraft right there.
* * *
The S’rellick led the two humans and the humanoid android out of Maradia’s shop and into the nearly empty Merchant’s Quarter, heading toward the docking section. Cobalt had seen Minorai’s spaceship before, but only from the outside. You know, while racing it. So, he knew how her ship could handle cornering and drifting while daisy-chaining through an asteroid belt, but when they arrived and went inside, he found himself surprised by comfortable and homey she’d made it.
Cobalt knew that Minorai could be passionate, because she’d packed enough righteous anger to set off a supernova into her tirades against him when she’d caught him cheating at a race. Well, not cheating. Cutting corners in a way that wasn’t technically covered by the rules they’d agreed to. But anger was just about the only emotion Cobalt had seen the reptile woman express — which probably should have caused him to reflect on his own part in that, but it wouldn’t — and so he’d never pictured her filling out her spaceship’s living space with what seemed to be hand-woven tapestries covering the walls and plush cushions arranged on the floor with spaces separated by hanging curtains of wooden beads, creating a Bohemian atmosphere completely at odds with the sleek metal hull he’d seen from the outside.
Minorai even had potted plants everywhere, the kind of succulents that must have taken years to grow and required careful tending to keep them alive in an artificial environment.
These details would be super helpful to Cobalt when he collected on winning his bet with Delvin. In fact, he wouldn’t even feel guilty about lying, because, really, Delvin would be learning so much just by listening to him describe the interior of Minorai’s ship that the kid probably ought to pay for the privilege anyway.
While Cobalt was enjoying the ambience and spinning his own dingy gray morality tales where he was always the hero, Maradia and Gary helped Minorai load the pilgrimage shell into her ship’s cargo hold. Once the shell was safely stowed away, Gary took possession of the zero-gee dolly, and Minorai led them to her sleeping quarters — where she’d laid and kept the egg they wanted to adopt.
Cobalt tagged along, less because he was genuinely interested in the egg, and more for the lascivious details of where Minorai slept. At least, that’s what he told himself. Realistically, sleeping quarters are sleeping quarters, and the only really interesting thing happening right now was Maradia and Gary meeting the egg they were planning to brood, hatch, and raise.
The egg had a leathery quality when Gary laid his hand gently against its curved surface. It was a pale pinkish, purplish color, surprisingly warm, and dimpled. Instead of a nest or bed, the melon-sized object rested inside a low, wide crate of silvery sand, kept warm by heat lamps. Cobalt couldn’t help thinking that a sandbox seemed like a terrible place for the kinds of activities he planned to tell Delvin had happened here. He’d have to claim they’d laid some sort of blanket over the silver sand, converting it into a more normal bed.
“The shell was softer a few hours ago,” Minorai said quietly. Her hiss a mere whisper in the air, almost as if she were afraid to wake the infant S’rellick inside the shell. Maybe she was.
Maradia’s first thought upon hearing the egg’s shell was already hardening was to be glad the infant inside would be better protected; Gary wished he’d been able to touch the shell when it was even softer and might have let him feel as if he were connecting with the child inside more directly. We won’t get into Cobalt’s thoughts, because they simply aren’t worth repeating.
It’s men like Cobalt Starstrong who make even a glorious, cold-blooded reptile of a woman like Minorai feel unnecessarily self-conscious, and everyone else in the room was right to be ignoring him. Even though he’s our central character, we will ignore him here too. Hopefully, you will do the same when you encounter such a figure in real life. His colorfulness is shallow — suitable for a point-of-view character to add voice and fun to a story, but not living a life interesting enough to be worthy of truly following him, unless he’s lucky enough to happen upon (quite accidentally!) a meaningful moment in someone else’s life like this one now.
“I know you weren’t expecting the egg this early,” Minorai said, her voice still a whispery susurration. “Do you have a space ready for it? You need to keep it warm enough.”
“We’ve set up a sandbox, much like your bed here,” Maradia said, “but smaller.” She still hadn’t touched the egg, merely watched Gary lay his hands gently against it. She didn’t plan on being the warm, nurturing parent. That would be Gary’s role. She would be there for it. She would do her best. But she wouldn’t risk doing something like this alone.
“Good,” Minorai said, her voice laden with thoughts, like she was trying to remember everything she might ever need to tell these new parents about raising a S’rellick child. Except Minorai had never raised one herself. And never planned to. So, finally, all she said was, “And you know, if you have any trouble, any trouble at all, you can drop her off at any hatching cave on any S’rellick world. It doesn’t even matter which one. They’ll take her in.”
“Her?” Gary asked.
“I can tell from the shell,” Minorai said. “So, yes, unless the child changes sex at adolescence, she’ll be a girl. And really, we don’t expect parents or nuclear families — any of that wishy-washy, lovey-dovey, warm and fuzzy mammal nonsense. So, truly, if you can’t handle her, the hatching caves will know how.”
Minorai wondered if she was being a terrible parent, trading her egg to this human and android couple who wanted to raise the child all alone. She had one job as the child’s biological parent — take it to a hatching cave — and instead, she was making this bizarre, unorthodox choice. What if it scarred her child forever? Depriving it of the proper competition?
And worse, what if when she came back to Crossroads Station, Minorai was forced to see and reckon with that scarring? If she left the egg at a hatching cave like she was supposed to, then she’d never know if her offspring was one of the ones who proved too weak to survive to adulthood. This way, she’d be forced to know.
“Wait,” Cobalt said, breaking his way back into this private moment that he’d weirdly joined in on. “So, you’re trading an egg you just laid for upgrades to a wearable spaceship? That’s what’s going on here?”
Minorai, Maradia, and Gary stared at the braggart of a human blankly. All three of them had been so caught up in their own concerns that they hadn’t stopped to think about what sort of tales a morally dubious individual like Cobalt Starstrong might spin about what he’d been seeing here. Finally Maradia broke the silence with her painfully honest straightforwardness: “I don’t care what tales you tell about our trade. No one but a fool would believe half the stories you tell anyway.”
Cobalt shrugged. He wasn’t bothered by the truth. He just also didn’t care a lot about it. “Why would I tell anyone about this trade? No one would care.”
Maradia frowned, and Minorai’s scales smoothed down, amused by the situation. Something had just come into focus for her; though she would never have expected this foolish human’s words to function as a catalyst in her mind.
Gary looked a little uncomfortable, and after a moment, the android asked, “Why are we worried about him telling tales? Is this wrong somehow? Should we not be doing this?”
Maradia brushed Gary’s concerns aside with a wave of her hand. “We tried adopting through normal channels, and all we got was dead ends and prejudice against you for being a robot. This may be unorthodox–”
“Or just plain boring,” Cobalt interjected, cementing Minorai’s newly discovered belief further. “I mean you could revolutionizing racing! And you’re all tied up about raising some egg and, even more boring, worrying about the ethics surrounding it? Geez!”
“–but there’s nothing illegal or immoral about it,” Maradia continued, ignoring Cobalt’s tirade. “We’re fine, and this kid is going to have an awesome life and an amazing family. Half the robots on this station already consider me their mother or grandmother, so she’ll be surrounded by synthetic siblings. I may have made ethically questionable choices in the past, but I have no doubts about this choice.”
Gary smiled tentatively, his hands still resting on the dimply surface of the eggshell. He was already in love, and he hadn’t even met his organic, coldblooded, reptilian daughter yet. He hadn’t taken his hands off her shell since arriving, too afraid of losing the connection that had bound him to her before he’d even seen the egg in person, while she was still only an idea. Gary had been designed to be a good, attentive, loving partner, but he’d also been designed to learn and grow. He was going to be such a good, attentive, loving father — the exact opposite of standard S’rellick parenting, and that would lead to such fascinating results.
With a savage grin, Minorai said, “You know, this is exactly what I want for my life — to be the kind of story too boring for Cobalt Starstrong to care about telling. Now, all three of you need to get off my ship, because I have a long, very boring pilgrimage to prepare for, one that I’ve heard can change how you think about everything.”
“I’ve heard raising a child can do that too,” Gary said, helping Maradia load their infinitely precious, unhatched egg onto the zero-gee dolly.
* * *
Cobalt Starstrong met Delvin back at the All Alien Cafe in the early morning hours and collected his pay for a story that had very little to do with reality, and the two men drank themselves silly. Cobalt didn’t even try to tell the actual story — the one you’ve read here — and over time, it even blurred from his mind until he halfway believed the made-up version that involved a completely imaginary romantic tryst. He learned nothing and didn’t improve or grow. Men like that generally don’t.