[Issue 2026.75]

‘We Will See’, L.F. Howard

Art © 2026 L.E. Badillo

---

The bar on the ninth level had one of the best views on the station. Most of the rest of them, at least the ones I could afford, were interior-facing with a few liquid crystal displays showing island sunsets or late-night views of Old Earth. But we were a long way from those places, and most of us Humans had never seen them firsthand anyway. This bar had a portal to the outside—it allowed us to watch the blackness, sprinkled with some distant lights. Staring into space, literally and figuratively, made me feel better. I felt like a part of the actual universe. And if I didn’t sit there and look every so often, I felt trapped. Claustrophobic. Like everything became less and less real.

The crew either loved or hated that bar, with its glimpse into vastness, and it was a long walk from most of our quarters. So it tended to be less crowded, frequented by a few crew members who wanted a quiet outing with friends, a date night, or a solo evening to decompress. I worked a ten-day week, like most of the people on the station, with five days off in between. Every fifth shift, we got off early, so I was usually there at the end of work that day, sitting alone in one of the little tables for two that faced the windows. I needed the quiet and stillness after my shifts, which were often filled by blaring sirens and working side-by-side with the never-ending supply of trainees I was assigned.

Most of our crew, and the regulars of the bar, were Humans, but we had a few Apontis, the first highly intelligent species we stumbled across. They were compatible humanoids with something like hands, but their pale skin and bald, earless heads looked slightly patterned, like the vestiges of scales. Most of the other creatures we’d run across were more animal-like; friend or food was a very real, ongoing debate. One planet was supposedly full of sentient clouds. Those didn’t do Humans much good—they were neither communicative nor edible—so we ignored them.

The Apontis were good workers, less violent than Humans and slightly more technologically sophisticated. They had improved most of the systems in our power matrix, which they operated, and the Humans maintained them. My last assignment had been a Human-only crew, so I’d looked forward to learning more about them when I transferred here. But I’d been disappointed so far—we got along during our shifts, but our groups mostly ignored each other off-the-clock.

A few weeks ago, I’d noticed a solo Aponti sitting at a table on the other end of the bar. We both sat quietly, staring out the portal and nursing a cheap adult beverage. My drink of choice was usually a dark, synthetic alcohol, slightly sweet and bitter, with the one allotted ice cube that was as much of a treat as the drink itself. Their drink was something derived from algae, sort of a grey-green thick liquid, like sludge. I’ve never been able to pronounce it or been tempted to taste it. I was distracted most of that evening, watching them out of the corner of my eye, wondering what thoughts roamed through their scaly head.

They were so different from us. This was true for most of the other species we’d found, but there was a fundamental difference that made them stand out even from some very weird creatures around the charted systems—they’re a neutral sex, neither male or female, for most of their lives. At some point in adulthood, a mysterious reproductive cycle kicks in, picks a partner for them, and turns them temporarily into opposing sexes for mating. They wait for their biology to make their decisions for them and they go with it. The phrase they use for their neutral time is “ooperch sahgla,” which roughly translates into “we will see.” There was supposedly a lot of societal baggage around who cycles first, because… of course there was. And then after their reproductive cycle ends, with or without a child, they change back to neutral.

I’d been watching the Apontis since I’d started here, and their consistent focus on their tasks amazed me. They didn’t seem to have anything comparable to the constant pressure-cooker of Human’s societal expectations, with our small talk, arbitrary rules, and battles over the pecking order. They must save an incredible amount of energy by not having to go through Human-style courtship and sex rituals. Even with all of the advances we’d made over the years, the limited number of eligible bedpartners on a space station and the basic needs of Human biology led to constant competition and distraction. For years, I had watched, like a spectator at a sporting event, the scrum of young crew members waiting to pounce every time we got a transfer or a new group of trainees.

For the next few early days, the solo Aponti was at the bar when I arrived. Maybe they’d been assigned to the same shift I had. We sat at our respective tables staring at the stars, night after night, two beings alone, tired and a little buzzed from the drinks, until finally I diverted from the path to my normal seat, one hand open, palm up, in an approximation of their normal greeting. I couldn’t quite manage their normal gesture of two palms up while holding my drink.

“Che horg,” I tried. “I’m sorry, but my Apontish is terrible.”

Two rounded, black eyes looked up at me. They looked vaguely like pictures I’d seen of shark’s eyes. Much like fish, they didn’t blink, something about the pressures of the fluids.

Holding that gaze made my eyes water a little. “Che horga,” they finally said. “My English is not too good.”

“Would you mind if I join you?”

An eight-fingered hand waved towards the empty chair, their flexible joints making a rippling motion quite impossible for a human. I resisted the urge to shake hands—they didn’t engage in casual touching, so shaking hands was not acceptable as a greeting. Instead, I bowed my head slightly as I sat. “I’m Asten. Nice to meet you.”

Their head bowed in response. “Varni. I speak Ghenald, but it seems easier for Humans to refer to us as Apontis from Aponti who speak Apontish.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Yeah, sorry about that. We should really be Earthlings from Earth who speak Earthish.”

Varni patted their chest, a signal to show that they thought something was funny. “No apologies needed. We decided that arguing about the name of the language seemed like a—how do you say—like one too many fights?”

“‘Pick your battles,’ I think. Maybe also ‘we won the battle but not the war.’”

“Yes, you Humans seem to fight for very much of your Time.”

“That pretty much describes our whole history.” I wondered if I could redeem us a little in their eyes, so I added. “Not all of us are like that, you know.”

Varni nodded for a moment—a gesture that was the same in both of our cultures—and then turned towards the portal. “It is good that we will have a drink together, I think,” they said quietly.

We sat together for the rest of that evening, looking at the stars, and sipping our drinks. But somehow I felt closer to Varni than I had to anyone in a long time.

---

I tried to ignore the trainee assigned to me this ten-day. She hadn’t been very interested or trainable, and I was beginning to consider how best to sabotage any chance she had of being assigned to my section. My specialty was the air purifiers—the most important equipment on the station.

Most of the Humans tended to compete for what they viewed as the prestige assignments—the navigation or communication systems. People seemed to think that those jobs were more important than the work by the maintenance crew, so we usually got paid less and got the second choice of trainees. But they were wrong. Those systems were key to not getting lost or sucked towards an unexpected gravitational field, but none of that would make a difference if we ran out of breathable air. Hopefully, the trainee would rotate out of this section before I spent too much time fixing her work. Or she just killed us all.

As I pulled out the rat’s nest in the wiring some prior tech had left, I wondered if Varni would want me to join them at their table on our next early day. Should I just sit down? Should I offer to get them one of those green sludgy-things? We each had separate tabs at the bar when we last spoke, so I didn’t have to figure out what the rules are for buying rounds. What are acceptable bar manners for a night out with an Aponti?

“Aaagh!” I winced, as I jerked my finger back. A small, white spark and a puff of smoke came off the coil. Crap, I forgot to unplug the backup battery. I needed to focus more on what I was doing and less on Apontish etiquette.

“What’d you do?” the trainee asked, finally showing interest.

“I missed a step in my process. Can you take a look at the checklist and tell me which one?”

She looked down at the pad in her hand, moving her finger across different screens. “Are we in the breakdown phase?”

I suppressed a sigh. “No. We don’t even go through the breakdown phase on a control check.”

“Then I have no idea.”

“Should I tell you?” I enunciated each word to let her know I was not pleased.

“Um… I’m trying to get moved to Comms. Can you help me get transferred?”

Thank Time, I thought, mimicking the Aponti blessing. We’ll all live to see another few ten-days. “Yes,” I answered quickly, running back through my own mental checklist for the control check to make sure I hadn’t missed anything else. Humans, with our constant drive to be somewhere better, aren’t often satisfied with where we’re at. She and I both suffered from that a bit today.

---

I lay in my bunk for the next few nights thinking about how the Apontish culture was starting to intertwine with ours. I’d even started to buy into their religion. They revered the concept of Time, which made a lot of sense to me. It was universal and inclusive—every creature discovered so far had a life cycle of birth, efforts at reproduction, and death. It was hard to argue about the significance of Time in our lives. We all worshipped it anyway with our clocks, days off, and shifts.

When the Apontis joined the crew, the Humans in charge of the station made some compromises about the work schedule to show respect to their faith, calendar, and the length of their planet’s days. Everyone changed to ten-day work weeks, with five days off in-between. Each hour was a little longer than sixty minutes. The schedule made sense to me—there weren’t exactly “days” in space anyway, and no other inhabited planet discovered yet had a twenty-four hour schedule. It took me some Time to adjust when I transferred here, but having five days off is a game-changer. Humans needed more breaks during their shifts than the Apontis did, but they were nice about it.

I wondered if I could ask Varni about their beliefs over drinks soon. In any case, religion was a safer topic than my curiosity about the Apontish reproductive cycle. I rolled over in my bunk, trying to bring my mind back to a blank whenever an image of the bar flashed through it, like I’d tried to do in the meditation class I’d attended on my last assignment. And equally unsuccessfully. I finally drifted off to sleep.

---

A warning siren went off within moments of reporting for work, and I raced to that level. Most of my shift was spent crawling through ducts looking for the problem. After a stressful few hours, I confirmed it was a false alarm caused by a stripped wire.

By the end of my shift, I was a sweaty mess. Some hair from the top of my head got caught when I crawled through a low junction, so I might have a small bald spot for a while. There was a visible handprint on my pants where I wiped some grease on my thigh. I diverted to my cabin for a few minutes. My shower reservation wasn’t until tomorrow, but I could tidy up with some dry shampoo and a wetcloth. I didn’t want to show up to the ninth level bar looking like I’d just crawled out of a hole. Which I basically had.

I walked to the bar a little faster than usual, wondering again what I would find. I understood, at some rational level, that I’d gotten a little overly interested in someone I’d barely spoken to. A little later than usual, I reached out to the handle to pull the door open and paused. This was the moment of truth.

I stepped in, my eyes immediately moving towards Varni’s table. There they sat, two drinks in front of them. One dark beverage with a single ice cube and one greenish sludge. My heart skittered a little as I walked towards the table. I resisted the urge again to reach out in a normal Human greeting to shake hands or pat them on the shoulder.

“Che horg,” Varni said as I sat down.

“Che horga,” I returned.

Varni lifted their glass and held it up, honoring me with the Human tradition of a clinking toast.

“Atwa Khem-ed.” Hopefully, I got close to the traditional blessing to Time.

They turned their head away, shoulders moving back and forth with their gesture for laughter. I waited, my glass awkwardly hovering.

“Ootwa Khem-ed.” They enunciated the words carefully as they reached out to clink. “What you said is more ‘dirty Time.’” Varni’s shoulders still shook a little, and they tapped their chest with a hand to signal something that was funny but not offensive.

“Oh, no.” I muttered as I tapped my own chest, shaking my head. So much for showing off. We both drank.

“I’m sorry. I really did try—” I said at the same time Varni said, “You’re closer than—”

Varni’s people didn’t exactly smile—thus the chest tapping—but I could tell they were amused again. Laughing with me, not at me, I hoped.

“The old-fashioned Human toast is often just ‘cheers,’ which means something between ‘hello’ and ‘drink up,’” I finally managed.

“That is better for you. Next Time, we say ‘cheers.’”

We both sat quietly while we sipped our drinks, watching the stars, and then agreed to have drinks again during our five-day off.

---

At our next meet-up, I got there before Varni did and made my first real effort at pronouncing their drink. The Human bartender raised his eyebrows. “For my friend,” I answered, gesturing vaguely towards our usual table.

“You know Humans can’t drink that, right? It’ll make you sick to your stomach.”

“Yeah, and I’m not tempted.”

“Don’t give your friend any of yours, either.”

“Got it.” I looked down at my drink he’d placed on the bar. Two ice cubes. I wasn’t sure of the significance of that minor broken rule.

As I walked to the table, a drink in each hand, Varni stormed through the door, flinging it open. They walked up to me and reached for their sludge. They were shaking slightly, a signal for anger or irritation. “This is a bad day. What is the saying to drink to better luck?”

We sat down as I tried to think of one. “Um…I think ‘may the wind always be at your back.’”

“And that means what?”

“The wind?” I couldn’t think of the Apontish word.

“No, the wind is the air moving fast.”

“It means we’re hoping that the wind will make our trip easier by pushing us to where we want to go.”

“Good. And you will say it today?” They raised their drink.

Repeating the old toast, I clinked, drank, and set my glass down. I raised both palms in the gesture that could mean either a greeting or “I’m listening.”

“A Human and an Aponti were hurt today on engine work. The Human started a fire and both burned a little and breathed the—” They waved their hand around in front of their face.

“Smoke?”

“Yes, bad smoke. I’m assigned to the Aponti’s shift until they come back—second shift.”

“Were they hurt badly?” Selfishly, I added, “Will it be long?”

“I do not know.” I wasn’t sure if that was Varni’s answer to both questions or just the last. Maybe both.

“Well, we can meet during our next five-day.”

They nodded. “Yes. That would be good to me, but my five-day… It will be changing also. But maybe it will not stay that way for a long Time.”

Oh. Oh. “Well, I can meet you on one of my breaks on first shift. We could eat together.”

“Humans do not like to look at our food.”

“I don’t like that mud that you drink either.”

They patted their chest. “It is better than the poison you drink. Ours is healthy and makes us relaxed and happy. Yours makes you sick if you have too much.”

“Yours makes us sick if we drink even a little.”

They moved a few times from side to side. “You are a funny Human, and I wish to meet you here for drinks again soon instead of changing shifts.”

“We should stay for another drink and toast again to exactly that.”

“Eebena.” It meant something like ‘very much yes.’

---

We managed to take a lot of meal breaks together for the next few ten-days as the injured crew members healed. The electrical smoke seemed equally bad for Human and Apontish respiratory systems.

During that time, we drew a lot of curious glances. Varni was absolutely right—Humans did not want to look at their food. Like their drinks, it was mostly greyish ooze, with the addition of some slime and chunks. The stuff of Human nightmares or very bad prison food. As curious as I had been about Apontish customs, even I had never been able to bring myself to study their food too closely. A further complicating factor during mealtimes was that they tended to react poorly to our meat substitute. Even though animal products were almost never served on the station, they hadn’t evolved to eat meat. The very concept of meat or a meat substitute was disturbing, much like cannibalism would be to us.

And that is one reason why, although there wasn’t anything prohibiting us from intermixing, almost all of us stayed with our own species on separate sides of the cafeteria. Any exceptions were usually the result of an ongoing emergency that required a working meal break to discuss a fix. An Aponti and Human tolerating watching the other eat voluntarily was an oddity, which, of course, led to some gossip.

“Your people look at us a lot,” Varni commented during a meal together.

“Your people want to, but they’re too polite.”

“They are looking. Remember that we have a bigger field of vision than Humans. You have to swing your eyes and head around like a menchegto.” Varni wiggled their head from side to side.

I smiled as I recognized their movements as a non-verbal signal for humor. “That’s like our mouse, isn’t it? A little prey animal?”

“Yes, the bottom of the food chain, as you say, for the predators of our world. It is always in danger.”

“What’s the phrase you told me about? To make a joke that a friend is being a jerk when they think they’re being funny?”

“Tranonti bar.”

“Tranonti bar, eebena.” I patted my chest. That was becoming enough of a habit I had to remember not to do it around my section workers.

---

Varni messaged me through the private Comms before the next meal we’d planned together to say they couldn’t meet, but they would see me at the bar after my next early shift. The Apontis didn’t casually message each other, preferring to have conversations in person. Theirs was a culture and language more dependent on body language, almost like a Human sign language, so their tradition was that the written language should only convey reports and facts. I had to resist the urge to send messages to Varni with stray thoughts or questions, but I managed to save them up for our next talk. Maybe Varni was going to return to their first shift assignment.

When I got to the bar, Varni was waiting for me at our table without drinks. They rocked a little in their chair, something I’d learned was a display of anxiety, but I’d never seen that in Varni.

I pulled out the closest chair and sat down. “What’s wrong?” I asked quietly.

“I reserved a view room. Will you come with me?”

I’d gotten used to the eye-watering feel of looking into their expressionless eyes, so we stared at each other for a few moments. “Yeah,” I nodded uncertainly. “Of course I will.” I shivered a little. This wasn’t about a change in their shift.

We walked without speaking through the maze of corridors to the next set of portals, and I tried not to worry. A few portals had been enclosed as meeting rooms or for private use. Varni pulled two of the chairs out from the table and turned them to face the portal but angled them a little towards each other. Alright, I thought. Now I worry.

Varni sat and resumed rocking, watching the stars, which looked the same here as from the bar. I waited, glancing between Varni and the view.

“Something has happened,” Varni finally said, not looking away from the portal. I raised my hands, palms up, to tell them I was listening. I knew they could see me without turning from the view.

“I could not join you for the meal a few days ago because I was sick,” they continued.

That was… concerning. “Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say. “Are you… better now?”

“I went to our healer yesterday. They believe my Dah Khem-ed has started.”

The New Time—Varni’s change into a reproductive state had begun. I stared, my mind filling with so many questions I couldn’t decide on one. This was unheard of away from their planet.

Varni shifted in their chair to face me directly, still rocking slightly. “There must be someone around us, someone to bond to, when the Dah Khem-ed starts. The healer thinks…”

I waited for them to finish that sentence for what seemed like an unreasonably long time, as my breath shuddered. “What?” I finally prompted.

“They think it might be you.”

All I could hear for a moment was the blood pounding in my ears. There was no hint in anything I’d ever read that this was remotely possible, even on Aponti. It had never happened. It couldn’t happen with our biology, with our… I stood up and walked to the portal, resting my forehead on it, and focusing on slowing my breathing and heart rate. Shut up, I thought. Get yourself under control. It happened.

“Gheela,” Varni whispered from behind me. I’m sorry.

I couldn’t look at them yet, but I shook my head. “Don’t apologize. You have nothing to apologize for. How…” I trailed off, searching for the right phrase.

“The healer has no idea how it started. I’ve never had a cycle before. I left Aponti almost before I could have one. And the start of it—we don’t even know exactly why it happens during normal times. Probably some combination of Time and being near to someone who has the right biological… what is the word?”

“Need?”

“No, like you fit together.”

“Compatibility.”

I turned around and sat down next to them. “Are we… biologically compatible?”

“Not in any way the healer knows.”

I looked down at the eight-fingered hand closest to me, the non-Human hand that could bend backwards, like it was double-jointed, pale and rough. I realized I had never touched it. “If you were a Human, I’d reach over to hold your hand.” I rubbed my sweating palm on my work pants. “Maybe I need that… a little.”

Varni reached over and wrapped their hand around the back of mine, their long fingers completely encircling my hand. It felt cooler than a Human’s, their skin textured and a little firmer. We both turned towards the portal for a few minutes, sending gentle squeezes back and forth through our hands.

What do we do? I turned my head slightly to glance at Varni. I knew they could see me watching. We sat, the only sounds in the room our own breathing and the distant hum of the air system. I was terrified but… of what? We were in unchartered territory medically and socially. I had no real idea of what would happen during Varni’s change. Neither of us knew what exactly would—or could—happen between us.

“You are not angry with me?” they asked, finally pulling me out of my whirling thoughts.

I shook my head and held tight to their fingers. “No,” I whispered. My mind replayed images of the last few ten-days—Varni learning old Human toasts, me learning to tolerate watching Varni eat slime, Varni storming in the bar in a panic when their shift changed. We had gotten so close so quickly, and one overriding question surfaced. “Do you know when this started?” I asked.

“That’s another thing we don’t understand. My cycle probably started at least four ten-days ago. About the first time we ever spoke. Maybe even a little earlier.”

‘We will see’—ooperch sahgla—was their phrase for the non-gendered portions of their lives. I remembered my curiosity about Varni across the bar and my feeling of connection when we sat together the first night. Now I understood that expression of patiently waiting and… hope.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it did.”

---

The doctors and healers on board did a good job of respecting our privacy. They quietly arranged for a period of leave from our sections and for larger quarters in an underused area. There was no way to stop the gossip, but we’d gotten used to that. We didn’t turn too many heads when we ate together. A little blood work and some medical testing once in a while was a small price to pay.

Varni shifted somewhat more slowly than the healer said was usual. We knew there were even odds about what gender their body would settle on, but, of course, I wasn’t going to change. The Apontis who realized what was happening seemed to accept it because their whole culture was based around accepting that their change is driven by their nature and biology. Even more importantly for us, they believed that anything could happen over the course of Time, so the direction of Varni’s change with their Human mate didn’t matter much to them. And none of the Humans other than medical staff seemed to have caught on.

Certain of Varni’s parts gradually changed, externally and internally. Even though their culture didn’t allow them to touch much casually, that wasn’t the case now that their cycle was further along.

An Aponti’s skin carried ancient memories of scales that flexed in arousal. Partners essentially attached to each other during mating. With a Human involved, pointy bits posed a problem. We had to get creative, but we managed.

We lay in bed one evening after a visit to our bar and to the view room, Varni’s earhole pressed against my chest, listening to my heart—they didn’t have an organ that was quite that loud. It was exactly eight ten-weeks from the first night we had spoken. Apontis had a slightly different concept of an “anniversary” than we did. Humans were more fixated on the first time something happened; Apontis revered the passage of Time itself. Regardless, we both enjoyed the excuse for a special evening together.

I finally worked up the courage to ask something that had been on my mind. “What happens to us after your cycle ends?”

Varni sat up a little, leaning over me, dark eyes inspecting my expression. “Do you mean will we still be together like this?”

I nodded, too worried about the answer to speak.

“Time changes everything. I will not be the same, and you are changing too in a Human way.”

Varni hadn’t quite managed to adapt to my way of kissing, so just nuzzled into my neck, inhaling my scent.

“And?” I prompted.

“And we change together. As long as Time allows us.”

I reached out with my hand, caressing the most beautiful, bald, scaley head.

“Eebena,” I agreed, smiling. Very much yes.

Wiggling a little from side to side, Varni answered, “Eebena,” and then laid back down on my chest to listen some more.

© 2026 L.F. Howard

[Issue 2026.75]

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