Ancestral Night

CHAPTER 8

I WENT DANCING TWICE MORE—AT DIFFERENT bars, just in case my new friend Rohn showed up again, and I doused myself in antipheromone first even though it gave me the itches—and toured the botanical gardens, and went out to dinner once with Connla and Pearl. I know that depending on where you’re from, it probably seems unconcerned, possibly even irresponsible, given the threat sitting docked a third of the ring away from us. But we couldn’t go anywhere, and it was going to be decians before we were back where we could do anything about it again, and skulking about acting paranoid wouldn’t change anything.

Anyway, one of the first things you learn in space is not to thrash. If you have nothing constructive to do, the most constructive thing you can do is often nothing at all. In a mindful sense, I mean.

Thrashing is the thing that gets people killed. Not sitting still.

The botanical gardens were amazing considering the size and isolation of Downthehatch. Of course, they were useful for food, and oxygen exchange, and air filtration, but these must be a project of love for somebody. Possibly, if I wasn’t stereotyping, Habren themself, being photosynthetic and all.

There was an extensive aquaculture section too, with a dodecapod engaged as gardener—a species I’d encountered descriptions of, but never previously met. Senso with it was fascinating, as its perceptual systems were so different from mine we had to use translator meshes even to exchange basic concepts, but after pestering it with badly communicated questions for as long as I thought I could get away with, I almost conceived of a passion to take up water gardening.

Impossible on Singer, of course. And if I give you the impression I was annoying the poor thing, well, I about had to pry myself loose when its explanation of algae control protocols stretched into the second decihour.

After I made my excuses to the dodecapod, I went to wander around the nonaqueous areas of the botanical garden. And that was where I ran into the Goodlaw again.

Almost literally.

Cheeirilaq’s mottled wing coverts and carapace blended into the greenery so thoroughly that I would have trodden on one or two of the constable’s delicate feathery feet if it hadn’t whisked them away a moment before my station shoe descended. I don’t think I would have hurt it much, because the shoes are a closed-cell foam meant to protect my tender afthands when I have to walk on them like some kind of barbarian—but low-gravity life-forms are notoriously fragile. The speed of the dodge was… well, unearthly, despite the transparent tubes of an ox-supplement system winding around Cheeirilaq’s multiple breathing holes, which probably meant it was feeling a little light-headed… or light-wherever it kept its brain. Probably in the abdomen, considering the relative size of the head. Or that nice armored thorax, which would get it close to the manipulator arms, and still not too far from the sensory equipment.

Not that I was contemplating all that at the time, you understand.

What I was doing was feeling my hands and scalp go cold while some tiny shrew ancestor in my amygdala stared up at a two-meter-long praying mantis reared back over me with its barbed-wire forelimbs raised as if to stab and clutch. The rodent ancestor screamed at me in whispers to keep still, keep still, keep still and maybe it won’t be able to see you and find you and eat you. It was the most amazing sensation, entirely devoid of will: my body just… crystallized, as immovable as in those nightmares when your body becomes aware that your REM paralysis is still switched on, but you can’t make yourself wake up from whatever horror is chasing you.

We stared at one another for long seconds. Then Cheeirilaq settled its two lifted feet neatly back on the path—in my heightened state, I remember thinking very clearly how the feathery fronds were admirably adapted to grasping surfaces and moving around in low or zero g—closed those bread-knife manipulator arms, and settled itself with a shake of wings and head and torso like a roused cat attempting to shrug back into her dignity.

It looked away and quickly groomed its antennae with the smaller, feathery set of manipulators.

Counting wings and wing coverts, the Goodlaw had eighteen limbs, which was an impressive total for any sentient. And yes, part of my brain was doing the math, because brains are ridiculous. Another part was trying not to get upset about the sheer number of legs on that thing, oh my Void.

Its abdomen was still visibly inflating and deflating. The Goodlaw possessed something like lungs, I could see, and from the pulsing transition of each breath along its length, it seemed like it had an efficient one-way respiration system, unlike my own kludgy air bladders that had to waste capacity moving each expired breath back out the way it came. With each deep breath, slender bands of brilliant red became visible around the leaf-green bands of Cheeirilaq’s integument. From this, I deduced that Cheeirilaq’s chroma could not be too different from my own.

Friend Haimey, it said, and my senso gave the disembodied voice a tone of mild embarrassment. You… startled me.

Friend?

It had, come to think of it, used the term before. Perhaps it was a term of respect from its species.

“You also startled me, Goodlaw,” I said. “I’m very sorry for nearly stepping on your foot. Your lovely natural coloring blends in rather well in this environment.”

The foliage of my homeworld is also verdant. Its stridulation, this time, was combined with a breathy whistle from the respiration tubes along its abdomen, a sound that I could not help but hear as melancholy or homesickness.

It’s deadly to anthropomorphize, and yet who the hell can stop doing it?

I parsed that for a moment before realizing that in one of those occasional translation bugs—no pun intended—what Cheeirilaq had said was more accurately translated as “lushly shaded in [green].”

“Your species were ambush predators?”

It made a funny little bow. I was starting to get the hang of its body language.

“Mine were opportunistic omnivores,” I said. “We ran our prey down in packs and ate a lot of whatever was available.”

It stridulated. From this vantage, I could see the variety of sounds being made by the ridged edges of the wing coverts, and the rubbing of the walking legs. I wondered if its species sang for pleasure.

A very sound evolutionary strategy. I would like to visit Terra one dia, but I am afraid it would be impossible.

I imagined the effect of human-standard gravity on the slender legs and exoskeleton and winced. Apparently, I winced visibly enough that it was even obvious to an alien with no mobile facial features, because the tiny head pivoted and rocked to examine me from several angles with the mirrorlike compound eyes, and the tiny pinpricks of simple eyes. I felt like I was being examined by a curious cat.

Maybe all obligate carnivores are essentially the same. Can I eat that? Is it going to eat me? Is it a toy?

Perhaps Cheeirilaq settled on “toy.” You are offended?

“Oh no,” I said. “Just realizing that Terra would be a deadly environment for one such as yourself, due to the gravity, and feeling a pang of sympathy. Hard on the tourists, that.”

I often think that we lose many opportunities for cultural exchange because so few of the systers have homeworlds that are mutually compatible for tourism. The senso made it sound disappointed, but Cheeirilaq’s upright posture and tilted head made me think it was more wry amusement.

“Saves on a lot of colonial adventurism, though.” I took a deep breath of heavily oxygenated air. “I’ve never been to Terra myself.”

Somehow, we fell into step beside one another, proceeding in a stately way through the garden. As the Goodlaw moved, I noticed that it had been standing in a little park area, with an abstract, water-tinkling statue for contemplation, and a bench for contemplating on.

The paths were lined with specimens from many worlds, showy and colorful, arranged to show the foliage to advantage—and so that they could be lit in the most appropriate spectra. There were beds of greens and red-violets, some Terran and some not, some showing flowers or other dramatic structures. There were the black-leaved trees from Favor, with their almost shineless leaf surfaces, forming a dramatic backdrop to some intensely scarlet flowers I did not recognize.

Busy pollinators buzzed and fluttered among them, leaving me to wonder how they knew which plants were biologically compatible. Smell. Instinct. Ancestral insect knowledge.

I wondered if the methane and chlorine sections of Downthehatch had similar extravagances, or if their stationmasters had different hobbies.

We paused beside a low, puce-colored plant that had the rough architecture of a mammalian brain and seemed otherwise unprepossessing, but was nevertheless absolutely darting and swarming with bright-winged butterflies. Or butterfly analogues; I didn’t know enough to be able to tell, and couldn’t be arsed to check my senso for the data.

It was busy, anyway.

We turned again, this time back toward the aquaculture area. “And Habren? What’s their deal?”

My new friend paced alongside me on six slender legs, the two deadly looking raptorial manipulators folded against its forethorax, the more delicate ones waving gently in the air. Allow me to encrypt this conversation?

The stationmaster might, in fact, be eavesdropping on our senso. The Goodlaw, in fact, had access to law-enforcement encryption tools.

“Of course.”

It wouldn’t be suspicious at all that Goodlaw Cheeirilaq and I were talking about it over encrypted channels, of course. But the Goodlaw being the law in these parts, and the Synarche Space Guard being out of town currently, I decided to trust its judgment. There was a tickle as Cheeirilaq established a secure socket into my sphere, requesting limited permissions that I readily granted. It wouldn’t prevent a really determined eavesdropper, but it would slow them down a little.

I hoped I would meet you here, it said. I’ve been monitoring your movements, under orders from [Habren], and I noticed your pattern of visits. Since I come here fairly often myself, a chance meeting would seem unremarkable.

Speaking out loud would make the secure connection useless, so I replied silently. You don’t trust Habren.

There was the virtual equivalent of a shrug. [Habren] is no worse than many. This place is in dire need of personnel support. The Republic is involved in its management through extortion, as you have no doubt deduced, and [Habren] does not care for being beholden to pirates. However, obtaining defensive personnel is less than easy. Material resources are less of a problem, obviously, because we have excellent printing support and the local system for materials.

If [Colonel] [Habren] could manage some major coup, they might get more attention and support. That would benefit Habren and also the station, and disbenefit the pirates.

Where do all these plants come from, if resources are so scarce? I asked.

Shipped as seed, often traded with other hobbyists. The soil is manufactured. All the pollinators are local-system. The only real resource expenditure is space, and as you have noticed, the station is not crowded.

Habren’s interest is not why you sought me out, however. I felt alarm that Habren had set the Goodlaw to watch me, and confusion at the Goodlaw’s loyalties. Habren might be worse than Cheeirilaq was admitting. If there was a chance we were being monitored, it wouldn’t exactly want to call out its… well, the stationmaster wasn’t precisely its boss, but somebody in greater authority over the station than it held itself… in a recordable format. And it couldn’t entirely know my loyalties, either.

I recognize your tattoos.

Well, that shifted me from mild alarm to sirens shrieking so badly I had to tune myself down to mere alert arousal just in order to hear the rest of the conversation. I took a deep breath and held it and turned my amygdala down to about three, then let the breath out again.

You can see them? I asked, glancing down at my nanoskin-covered arm.

Ultraviolet reflectivity. A wing-settle that could be an insectoid shrug.

I was looking for information on the syster operating the factory ship, I said. Noncommittal, and something it already knew. There’s nothing in our databases, which might be nothing or might be withheld information. Habren claimed they had no information either, but they might be lying.

That’s because the species operating the factory ship is not a syster.

I actually turned to the giant bug and gaped, dumbstruck. As far as I knew, every intelligent race that the Synarche had encountered had, eventually, been induced to join it. The fact of an enormous, existing trade organization and governmental body that, in general, had overwhelmingly superior technology to any emerging race and also a complete monopoly on exploration and trade generally proved a convincing argument. Once a species developed what Terrans called the Alcubierre-White drive, or one of its variant technologies, the Synarche was waiting to greet them.

Sometimes new systers tried to start a shooting war, which generally had similar results to a kitten attacking your pants leg; when the difference in available force is so overwhelming, and you’re essentially raising a child, there’s literally no need to shoot back. Even races as belligerent as my own had come around eventually.

A few went with isolationist policies for a local generation or two, but eventually somebody started tuning into the propaganda channels and wanting all that great stuff, and within a hundred ans or so—well, the Synarche was also patient. Like a respectful suitor—unlike my friend Rohn in the bar—it had nothing to gain by hurrying things.

Earth could have learned a long time ago that securing initial and ongoing consent, rather than attempting to assert hierarchy, is key to a nonconfrontational relationship. Because we’re basically primates, we had to wait for a bunch of aliens to come teach us. We’d at least, by then, developed the tech to fix our brains so we could accept emotionally what logic should have showed us.

What can I say? We’re slow.

Not a syster? I asked. I mean, there were the Ativahikas, which weren’t exactly a syster, not really talking to the rest of us much. And not having a white space drive so much as being a white space drive… .

Suddenly, all the glittering particles gliding gracefully and harmlessly between the cells of my epidermis seemed to ferociously itch. I’m not a praying sentient, but at that moment, I felt such a horrible black hole of implication implode in my belly that I almost doubled over in pain. Cheeirilaq put a manipulator on my shoulder to steady me.

That’s why you recognize the tattoos, I said.

The particles are derived from the sensory organs of Ativahikas. They are not widely known; in fact, their existence is kept a secret outside of law enforcement circles. They are believed to be a form of Koregoi technology that was given to or traded for or somehow imbued into the Ativahika species in a time of great antiquity. In combination with certain innate abilities of the Ativahikas, they allow the species to—

I interrupted. —to traverse space-time as if they were living starships. And somebody is stealing these particles, by murdering Ativahikas. And I have a bit of this technology embedded in me.

I’m sorry, Cheeirilaq stridulated, reminding me that the rest of the conversation had been carried out in utter silence.

We stopped before the aquaculture observation windows.

I am glad, the Goodlaw continued, that you did not acquiesce to this anathema knowing its origin.

I’m a walking war crime.

Yes.

The dodecapod was hard at work when we paused. It had a combined head and body about a meter across. It didn’t speak to us, seeming involved in its labors, but as we paused it raised six of its twelve legs in a cheery wave, flashing ripples of electric blue and silver across its normally sedate dark red surface. Maybe it recognized us; apparently we were both around enough, and we’d been waiting for clearance to leave for more than two dia. Also, dodecapods and humans have kind of a long-term friendly relationship. I don’t remember all the details, but we found them before they invented spaceflight—spaceflight is a rough invention for aquatic species, for a number of obvious reasons, though they’re great astronauts once somebody gets them up here, and the noncompressibility of water means they’re often really good at remaining functional in erratic gs—and before the Synarche brought us in as systers, but after we’d developed crude rightminding technology.

So our species are, in the parlance of the Synarche, elder systers to one another.

Cheeirilaq and I both waved back.

Does Habren know?

Cheeirilaq’s wing coverts buzzed. That seemed more like a shrug than a yes, given what I also picked up through the senso.

Who. Who did this to me?

They are Jothari. The Synarche’s greatest tragedy. But I think it was Terran pirates who murdered their crew and stole their ship and… cargo. Such a wave of distaste that I could feel it through the senso, despite our incompatible neurologies.

The name meant nothing to me.

What do you mean, the Synarche’s greatest tragedy? We don’t have tragedies anymore.

Well, Cheeirilaq said, perhaps we still did, a long time ago.

And it proceeded to tell me the history of how the Synarche learned to be a patient suitor, because it turns out that making mistakes is how we grow up, whether we’re a multispecies alien utopia, or just some dude screwing up their first romance beyond believability.

This is what I learned: early on, when the Synarche was new, it was not a Synarche yet at all, but a Galactic Parliamentary Democracy—and grandiosely so named, because in those diar it consisted of five or six of the foundation systers and perhaps a dozen systems. The short version of a very long and ugly story is that by the time the Galactic Parliamentary Democracy encountered the Jothari, the Jothari were working on establishing a smaller but still thriving interstellar community of their own. They’d come of age in one of the sparser and darker arms of the Milky Way—not unlike my own species, as it happened, so I feel a certain sympathy for this—and had never seen any evidence of sentient life until a Parliamentary ship dropped out of white space over their homeworld, ascertained that they were a spacefaring species, and opened communications in as friendly a manner as possible, considering a language gap.

I mean, when you show up in orbit over somebody else’s inhabited planet, not dropping a rock on it or tossing your bow wave in their direction is, in itself, a reasonable assurance of goodwill, but not everybody understands that—and there is, I suppose, the possibility that you might want a quickly habitable planet afterward.

Anyway, the Jothari had managed to reach a couple-three of their closest neighbor systems, and had pretty good shipping and space-colonization efforts going on. Then the Galactic Parliamentary Democracy ship full of weirdos like my friend the Goodlaw showed up and opened communications. The Parliamentary crew was not met in a friendly fashion, but at least no shots were fired.

They drew back, and that was when they found out that the Jothari were navigating by harvesting Ativahikas, a species generally-accepted-as-sentient, who had a migratory path running through the core of Jothari space. The Synarche’s antecedents tried to intervene, leading to the beginnings of a war.

Through absolute blind bad luck, an antibiotic-resistant pandemic broke out among the Jothari worlds around then, and somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of their population died. They declared this an act of war on the part of the proto-Synarche, and came gunning.

There was a lot more of the proto-Synarche, and despite the Jothari superior navigation, the Synarche… wiped them out.

Not to the last being. But to the last world, leaving those that remained homeless. And not welcome in proto-Synarche space—if they would have considered coming near the government that had committed semi-involuntary genocide against them. So they made their way as best they could.

Maybe they have shadow colonies, Cheeirilaq said. Maybe they’ve gone as far out as Andromeda and possibly even made allies there. Though if they had, I’m not sure we’d still find them scavenging around the edges of Synarche space.

They’re not in the databases.

No. Well, you could find them. They’re not expunged. Just deemphasized. And it’s possible the archinformists used keywords that were less than helpful to the neophyte to archive and classify the data.

Possible. Sure. And Habren doesn’t want me to know about them?

[Habren’s species] was one of the ones involved in the initial mistake. It gave me its version of Habren’s species name, which was as made-up as the human version, the original being in plant pheromones. They’re culturally very ashamed. That was about the time people started looking for a better system of government, it turns out. My people have a saying, that every civilization is founded in a terrible crime.

There didn’t seem to be much I could say to that. Even given my limited knowledge of the vast span of Terran history, terrible crimes seemed terribly commonplace, and didn’t usually lead to enlightenment.

The swirling, sinking sensation in my gut was grief, and I let myself feel it, along with the gratitude for what the Synarche was. Imperfect, surely; infested with its own brands of sophipathology and problematic social constructs. Walking a fine and wavering balance between the conformity and regulation necessary for social cohesiveness and the observance of individual freedoms within reason.

But also comprised of such a plurality of individuals and syster species spread across such vast distances that it was difficult to obtain an even vaguely accurate census, and somehow, through the tuned social consciences of all of us, managing to function.

There was pride to be taken in that.

It never could have happened without rightminding. And rightminding, taken to extremes, gave you clades. But clades also made a lot of people happy who would have been lonely and broken and without community otherwise.

Nothing is perfect. Except the Well. And what could be more perfect than the great big gravity chute of Supermassive Black Hole Saga-star, churning along in its spot at the center of the Milky Way? That’s pretty near as perfect as a thing can conceivably be: a horizon of perfect destruction.

Why do you do this? Cheeirilaq asked me, breaking a contemplative silence I hadn’t noticed until it ended. The mantid was one of those creatures you could just hang around with, not saying anything, and not notice the quiet because it felt natural. I would have liked it for a shipmate, though Singer would have been a little small. You could go sit planetside and do pretty much anything at all forever, without competition for scarce resources. So why come out here and risk your neck at all?

Huh. Apparently humans and twelve-legged, six-winged mantids have some of the same expressions of speech. Who would have guessed?

I was born out here. Why do you? I countered.

Crowded homeworld. I remembered from somewhere, possibly crèche, that Cheeirilaq’s people are solitary except for mating and child-rearing. The latter of which is carried on in nursery crèches in which all adults are expected to take a turn. Other than that, they have hobbies and entertainments and pretty much keep to themselves, being intensely territorial.

“One Rashaqin, one station,” as they say. Not because they’re so tough. Because they just really don’t get along.

Strange that it seemed perfectly able to get along with unrelated sentients. Maybe that was pheromones.

It said, Had to go somewhere. I like solving crimes.

That doesn’t tell me how you wound up out here in this nest of Freeport sympathizers.

It whetted its killing manipulators one over the other, which looked like a threat but might have been a shrug. Got into some administrative trouble in the Core.

Noncommittally.

I wondered if it had eaten a suspect. If it had, I hoped the suspect deserved it. It seemed like a good cop, as such things went, and I’d hate to think less of it.

Cheeirilaq sighed. An enormous sigh, like a Terran dog. Its entire abdomen filled with air, swelling each of its breathing chambers until the brilliant red bands around its abdomen were wider than the green, and I could see that they were each edged in thin ribbons of black and a mustardy yellow. I gawped at it in surprise, though really, all sorts of creatures sigh. Oxing up is a sensible response to just about any situation or potential situation that doesn’t require immediately holding one’s breath. And if you’re going to have to hold your breath, well, you might as well be good and pink—or purple, or that nice blue color some critters use to hold oxygen, if that’s your thing—when you do so.

I might have to bring you in, it said, reluctantly admitting something we’d both known all along. It stridulated out loud again. I have sent a packet Coreward regarding our earlier conversation, but please understand that I am basically in exile here, and I find that many of my communications go missing.

I thought of my reliance on the packets for security and a chance of backup, and tuned my anxiety down a peg. It wasn’t helping.

“No hard feelings if you do,” I answered. “A bug’s gotta eat, after all.”

Also, it said, allowing me to sense reluctance, I know you have some embarrassing political secrets to keep.

That stunned me to silence for long seconds. I blinked, swallowed, tuned, nodded. I might have to run away, you understand.

That is the sensible thing to do when a larger predator is pursuing you. No hard feelings at all.

I was so deep in my head while bounding gently along the corridor back to Singer that it took most of the circumference of the station before I realized I was being followed. Followed pretty expertly, too—my shadow stayed far enough back in the curve that I never got a good look at them (bipedal and humanoid, but not much else), even when I ducked into a shop and came out reversing direction as if I’d spotted something back along the concourse that I wanted to go investigate.

That set my mind racing again, but in a different direction.

Habren wouldn’t need to shadow me, because nobody can hide on a station from the wheelmind and the stationmaster. Every centimeter of the interior is under some kind of surveillance, and while you could get lost in a crowd on one of the big ones, maybe, Downthehatch just wasn’t large enough. Habren might want to dust me, in which case an ambush was more likely than a stalker. If they wanted to send me down the well, they could just jump me when I went back to Singer.

Or a lift or airlock could be arranged to have a convenient accident. Theoretically there were safeguards against that kind of thing—above and beyond rightminding and AI oversight—but I was pretty sure by now that Habren’s rightminding was not as stable and maintained as you might like in somebody with a few tens of thousands of lives in their hands.

I got Singer on senso and filled him in, including a dump of everything Cheeirilaq and I had talked about. Some things, you want to make sure your teammates have access to if anything bad should happen to you.

My skin crawled. My palms were wet and cold. I tried to walk casually, as if I were engaged in one last idle wander through open spaces before returning to my departing ship.

Did we ever get our clearance?

I filed for it, Singer answered. And sent a reminder.

The pit of my stomach dropped, adding itself to the unsettling sensations. But there was something else, too—a prickling along my body, as if a soft wind were stirring my vellus hair. And a sense of… weight. Of gravity. Of something watching, just as I had felt out by the Jothari ship.

Oh, bloody Well, I said to Singer. I think the guy following me is one of the pirates. And I think they’re like me.

“Screw this,” I said out loud, and stopped in the middle of the corridor. It wasn’t entirely deserted—there were people here and there—and the adrenaline singing in my veins was longing for a confrontation. I could have tuned it down—probably should have—but it felt good, and I have not always had the best record when it comes to deciding to turn off harmful but thrilling emotions.

Haimey, Singer said, what are you doing?

Dealing with a problem.

Oh, for crying out loud. He didn’t think it at me, but I could feel his irritation, and also his recognition of the fact that meatforms did a lot of stupid things because of our meat, and the senseless clutter of our drunkard’s-walk evolutionary development didn’t help.

Sure, I said, responding to his emotion rather than any words, and trying to keep my tone light. There’s no pointless code clutter still floating around in you.

I do regular maintenance, he sniffed. But you wouldn’t be Haimey if you weren’t pugnacious.

I laughed out loud.

Conveniently, just as my stalker rounded the corner, and I got my first good look at them. At her.

I don’t go in for the sexy bad-girl thing anymore, but… damn. The Republican pirate was charismatic in a way that reached right past all the rightminding safeguards on my emotions and hormones and made me want to get to know her better and bond and be best friends with her forever. You can turn off sex, and you can turn off romantic love—but it’s really hard to turn off all the human emotional responses to a powerful individual without also turning off your humanity.

She looked like a planetary: not tall, but her body bulky with high-grav muscles, shoulders wide and sleeves of her coverall rolled up to show off sculptured forearms. She had a broad face with high, slanted cheekbones; coffee-dark eyes with a moderate fold; straight black hair cropped at the ear except for some longer locks, those dyed in fluttering streaks of red and gold.

Her light gold complexion was dusted in cobwebs of silver.

I gaped. She hesitated, but not as if she was surprised to see me. She glanced over her shoulder and then settled herself, arms folded, rubber-soled boots planted. Looked like she had gravity-style feet inside them, instead of afthands. I wondered if that meant she went planetside frequently.

She looked me up and down. My skin prickled with observation as she performed the same kind of assessment on me as I had on her. She cocked her head.

In a clear, light tone, she said, “I know who you are, Haimey Dz. You used to be a revolutionary.”

“Suddenly,” I said, “a lot of folks are very interested in my past misdeeds.”

“Misdeeds?” She shook her head sadly. “What happened to you?”

“Is that what they say about me where you’re from?” I asked. “The Legendary Haimey Dz?”

She laughed. “Not exactly.”

“I’m flattered to find out I’m a topic of conversation anywhere. I’m a tugboat engineer. And you have the advantage of me.”

It was a deliberate opening, to see what she would do. She surprised me.

She stroked her chin with a thumb and forefinger, making her cobwebs sparkle. No wonder people were staring; the effect was distracting. She said, “My name is Zanya Farweather, and I’m a representative of the Autonomous Collective Republic of Freeports.”

“You’re a pirate.”

“If you’re a fascist, sure.”

I am not entirely sure how I kept myself from rolling my eyes. God, she sounded like my first girlfriend. Only girlfriend, if I’m going to be honest. As if tyranny of the majority or a complete lack of social controls were somehow better than Synarchy.

But she also flaunted her galaxies openly, and I hid mine under a layer of paint. And she had to know where they came from.

This person is probably the same one who killed a whole shipful of Jothari.

“What do you want?”

“You have possession of something of ours.”

“Something you stole, you mean.” From some people who murdered to get it.

Her pretty eyes narrowed. “Pretty self-righteous, for an interstellar dumpster diver.”

“Was that supposed to be an insult of some kind? Because if you’re trying to threaten me—”

She sighed. Stepped back, and crossed her arms. The labile play of emotions across her face reminded me that I was probably dealing with somebody unrightminded, who had never had therapy or engaged in the kind of self-examination that makes you question and eventually understand yourself and your own emotions. The Freeporters were violently opposed to social controls of all sorts. Even—especially?—healthy ones.

She was a reactionary force.

I was scared of her.

Connla and Singer were in my senso, and I could feel them there. Their support was encouraging. Singer was probably tuning me, too, to keep me from freaking the hell out. This was not a time when an atavistic panic response from my endocrine system would be useful.

See above; sometimes the best thing you can do is just not thrash.

“I’m trying to offer you a place,” she said, the muscles in her upper arms rippling as she tightened her grip on her own crossed arms. She was, I realized, struggling to control her temper. “Look, Haimey. You were very resourceful out there. We can use people like you. And like your shipmind, who we know has been requisitioned back to the Core and isn’t too keen on going. You’re in obligation trouble. Financial trouble,” she reinforced, stressing the archaic word. “We can give you freedom and keep you together.”

“How do you know all that?”

“Your shipmind filed for a service extension. And it’s not like you and your shipmates brought back a lot of salvage to justify the outlay on this salvage mission. So”—she smiled and unfolded her arms to wave one hand airily—“come with us. Be free of the Synarche. Find out what it’s like to truly be yourself, without a bunch of hive-types telling you what to think and feel. You already threw off the clade mind control. Why not dispense with the rest of it for a while and experience an honest emotion or two? You never know…”

The smile broadened, and even with my limbic system tuned way down I felt the shiver of her charisma in the pit of my stomach. “I heard a rumor you like bad girls.”

It was all I could manage to keep from rolling my eyes. Maybe they hadn’t researched me that thoroughly, then. Or maybe their barbarian emotional logic actually led them to believe that such an appeal could trump my better judgment. And my rightminding.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d sooner kiss Rohn.”

I saw her attempt to parse what I was saying, the look of puzzlement creasing her flawless brow when the words didn’t impart meaning no matter what directions she turned them about in.

I took a step back toward Singer’s airlock, feeling fiercely glad that I could just step sideways into it rather than having to drop or climb down a shaft. Giving Sexy Pirate Farweather the advantage of elevation was a risk I didn’t want to take. The second step, though, I felt—well, I felt heavy. Profoundly heavy, as if I were under a big change in v, or very tired, or both.

“Sorry, kid,” Farweather said. “Can’t let you do that—”

Oh dear, said a series of chirp and sawing noises. Is there a problem here, Synizens?

A large green serrated limb poked out between us, barring the width of the corridor. Gravity returned to normal, and I shot Cheeirilaq a quick senso warning that things might get dangerously heavy for its physiognomy.

Not that I was sure what either of us could do about it if she decided to squash the Goodlaw like a… well, like a bug.

She’s not a Synizen, I sensoed.

Cheeirilaq didn’t respond. It flexed its saw-toothed forelimbs as if stretching out a kink and pivoted its head so the light flashed off its faceted eyes.

“Just asking directions,” Farweather said. She was already fading back down the corridor, and as she vanished around the corner I felt a moment of profound relief—and then an instant later I realized that my palms were clammy with sweat and my heart was pounding so hard my vision wasn’t stable.

I thought you tuned me down, I accused Singer.

I did, he answered. It seemed possible you might need all the adrenaline you could get, however.

That was fair. I couldn’t get too mad at him for fiddling that, even without permission. Even with all the juice making me unstable.

And as the immediate threat passed, I stopped trembling and managed to focus myself on Cheeirilaq. “Thank you for preventing my kidnapping, anyway. Is this going to put you in a bad position?”

Its antennae did something that was probably a shrug, and it stridulated, No worse than I already am. This is still a Synarche station. Whatever [Habren] gets up to on the side. If anything happened to me, the constabulary would show up in force, expense of shipping resources to the end of nowhere aside, and they don’t want to risk that. What was that being insinuating about you, Haimey? I only caught part of the conversation.

“I thought you knew my political secrets.”

I know they exist. Your record is sealed.

Which raised the interesting question of how Sexy Pirate knew about it.

I thought you might be a Core agent, Cheeirilaq admitted. I take it I was mistaken.

“It’s a long story,” I said.

Why is it sealed?

“I was underage,” I answered, turning to go. “And the courts decided that it wasn’t my fault.”