On the fourth morning, Ivo found Nessa sitting on her kitchen pack in the hub, which was difficult because she had to keep one hand on a rail to persuade it to stay underneath her.
“That's an unnecessarily elaborate chair,” he said.
“It's mine.”
“I know.”
“No. That's the point.”
Her small private bag was on her lap. He had never seen her hold anything as still.
She looked at him, then at the Traverse hatch.
“I'm going.”
He knew what she meant. He asked anyway.
“Going aboard?”
“To Earth.”
For a moment he heard Mara's voice asking him what he meant and understood how cheaply a person could buy another second.
“Yesterday you wanted—”
“Yesterday I hadn't tried living there.”
“We were all a little awkward. It would get better.”
“Some of it.”
“We can change how things are arranged.”
Nessa tilted her head. “You don't even know which thing I want changed.”
He stopped.
The chair from the first day stood tied beside a luggage cart, gathering small objects people had tucked into its cushions. A child's mitten. A coil of cable. A soft toy with repaired ears. Alma's work had always persuaded strangers to trust it.
“I can't do another version of this,” Nessa said, “where I'm the one who knows what to do with dinner. Or laundry. Or the unhappy person. Or a pan that's stuck because somebody was improving onions.”
He tried to smile. She didn't give him the smile back.
“You're good at it.”
“I know, Ivo.”
He felt the cruelty in the compliment a moment after she did.
“I'm twenty-seven,” she said. “I want to be terrible at something while there are still people younger than me to be terrible with.”
“Like what?”
She laughed at last, but it sounded tired. “I don't know. That's a feature.”
“You could do that here.”
“Could I?”
She was asking honestly. He could imagine promising to cook, promising to remember everything, promising enough to keep her. He had promised too much already.
She slipped a finger under the cord on her private bag. “There's a class near where my cousin lives. They make things from clay. With actual gravity, so presumably mine will fall over. I'd like that.”
“Do you want it to fall over?”
“I'd like not to be responsible for whether it does.”
He nodded. Something moved in his chest that wasn't assent yet. It was the beginning of having nowhere else to put what she had said.
“Do you need me to help carry?”
“Yes.”
They fetched the rest of her things from the kitchen. She left the stock lists on the counter without giving him a lecture about them. He looked down at all the quantities, the ingredients he encouraged into food, the work that made generosity look effortless.
“Which one is tonight?” he asked.
“The upper sheet.”
“Tomorrow?”
“The sheet below it.”
He turned it over. “You can't go. The system's too complicated.”
This time she laughed properly and pushed her shoulder into his.
He put her pack and private bag into a Traverse luggage compartment, taking care that the bag was above everything else. A ship attendant showed her the accommodation she'd always had. She sat on the berth, tested the mattress, and looked as if she'd come into a room nobody expected her to improve.
Ivo stayed by the door. He had no claim on it.
“Will you teach me one more time before we go?” she asked.
He was grateful she could ask that. “Of course.”
“The turn with the ugly beginning.”
“The beginning's only ugly if you fight it.”
“You see? This is why I'm going. Clay won't say things like that.”
On his way back he met Mara coming out of her cabin with a cup in her hand. He was still warm from Nessa's laughter. He told her about the decision.
“She's excited,” he said.
Mara nodded.
“I helped move her things.”
“I thought you would.”
Something in her face changed before she turned away. He might once have pursued it, asking whether she was angry, making her explain the feeling so he could defend himself against it. This time he let the silence tell him what it could.
He could help Nessa go. He could even be pleased for her. He wondered whether Mara had wanted that kindness too. He had been busy explaining why he wanted to stay.
“I'm glad she knows what she wants,” he said.
Mara wrapped both hands around her cup. “So am I.”
At the ring transfer he stopped before descending. Beyond it the commons waited, full of students who could not stay there. He had been so concerned with keeping the room that he hadn't considered how to end a lesson.
He went down and opened the net.
Before noon he taught the ugly beginning again. The students caught one another more often than they fell. When Nessa arrived from Traverse, without her kitchen pack, he let her join late without asking where she had been.
“Ready?” he said.
“Not remotely.”
He held out his hand anyway, and she took it.