Reclamation

8—Amaiar Gardens, Kethran Colony, Hour 05:12:36, City Time

Evran was beginning to get on Aria’s nerves. Most of the other students had adopted a normal speed for talking around her and had begun to assume she understood what they were saying unless she told them otherwise. Not Evran. He talked to her like he might to a three-year-old, and when she bothered to respond long enough to let him know she thought he was a fool, he’d smile indulgently and say she just didn’t understand yet.

He’d taken to following her around the lab, lecturing as he went. Right now he was leaning his buttocks against one of the unused analysis tables, delivering his unbroken stream of philosophy, or science, or whatever it was, and trying to touch her on her arm if she was stupid enough to get close to him. It was just about enough to drive her insane. Not because the tasks were particularly difficult, but because she was still learning how to read without help and she needed all her concentration to get the notes of new instructions that Zur-Iyal and the others had left for her.

She cast a longing glance out the window toward the fields and cattle pens and then a quick one at the clock. Two hours before her shift was over. Two more hours for this fool to sit there and yammer.

“…I know Allenden and the others are trying to tell you that your genetics, your body, you understand, Aria? are the final determination of your existence, I mean, that you’ve got no choice, you understand, because you were so carefully built, but in reality you’ve got more choice than we do, you understand, because…”

Aria bent more closely over her notepad display, trying to decipher the instructions Myra Lar ki Novish had left for her…check the monitors on the B series protein cross sections. If any of them read over…Her lips moved while she read on her own, a habit she was trying to break. Her free hand dropped down to her pouch of stones, as if just touching the leather could help her. She pulled her hand away.

“…You aren’t carrying the excess genetic baggage that the rest of us are, you understand? The survival instinct, the macrogenetic tribal survival instinct, I mean, it’s not natural for you to want to pass on exclusively your genes, I mean, you are not naturally inclined to warlike behavior the way we are, you understand?”

…Sixteen to the twenty-third power, is that what that says? Nameless Powers preserve me from this idiot. Yes, that’s what that says…For the HT6E enzyme concentration, call me immediately. I’ll be on line at…

“…that means, Aria, that you aren’t motivated by, I mean, you understand, you don’t cling to irrational, instinctive behavior, like we do. You make your decisions exclusively, you know that word, right? On the basis of personal experience, and that means that…”

“If you’re going to try to corrupt impressionable young minds, Evran fa Kell, you really ought to do it in a lower tone of voice.”

Aria almost cried out in relief. Zur-Allenden ki Uvarimaya-nus strolled through the doorway. As usual, mud covered his boots and breeches. A smile glowed on his pointed face, but it didn’t reach his eyes while he looked over Evran. For reasons Aria hadn’t gone out of her way to understand, the pair regarded each other as Heretics and would avoid each other whenever possible.

Evran stuck his chin out toward Zur-Allenden. “We’re not on Quapoc ground, Zur-Allenden. There’s no law against my talking to her.”

“But I’ll bet she wishes there was.” Aria turned away to hide her smile. “And face it, Sar Evran, Manager ki Maliad catches you trying to make her into a Determinist, she’ll boot you off-planet so hard you’ll reach Station Eight without a shuttle.”

Evran sniffed. “You are the ignorant child of an ignorant people.”

“And the Balancers decided there weren’t enough self-satisfied little shits in the universe so they sent us you.” Zur-Allenden stumped over to his corner table, leaving a whole trail of squashed leaves and earth behind. Aria groaned inwardly.

Why can’t he use the clearing room like everybody else? she thought as Zur-Allenden began stripping his boots off and leaning over the tabletop to check the results of whatever experiment he had brewing under the glass, showering more dirt everywhere.

Fortunately, Evran’s stock of insults was smaller than his stock of pedantic speeches. “Aria, think about what I’ve said and come find me when you’ve got any questions.” And he stalked out.

Zur-Allenden shook his head. “What amazes me is he says that like he thinks you’ll actually do it. Like he thinks you don’t have a brain in your head.”

“Used to it.” Aria ran her thumb along the bottom of the monitor display to make sure she got the numbers right. I hope I get faster at this soon. Her hand dropped to her pouch again, and she stopped it midway. She stuck the pad into the feed-out slot on the edge of Myra Lar’s table so the two machines could talk to each other.

“Wouldn’t have thought so.” Zur-Allenden planted his stocking feet on the tile floor and folded his arms across his skinny chest.

Aria bent over the table and ran her finger down the line of glowing figures, slowly reading each one. Myra Lar had been overly diligent in explaining the importance of a manual check. “Be surprised, you would.”

Zur-Allenden sat silently for a moment and Aria tried not to wonder what was going on inside his head. She’d used every trick she knew to try to get him to drop his guard around her. She’d worked diligently. She’d volunteered to run extra errands. She’d been overflustered and profusely apologetic when she’d made mistakes. She’d occasionally “let slip” remarks about her children and her sisters. The performance had gained the confidence, even the friendship, of almost everyone else in the lab, but not Allenden, and Aria was beginning to wonder why.

Blasted Skymen. You all look alike but you all act differently. There’s no way to tell who’s going to do what. Why can’t you just mark your hands so a person can tell who you are by looking? Her hand twitched like it wanted to move to her pouch. She pressed it harder against the tabletop.

She had asked Iyal if there were other places where the people were marked so they could be told apart, and had received a strangely sad smile from her. “Almost everywhere has a social hierarchy, Aria. It seems to be part of being human. Some places use tattoos, or natural appearance to enforce it. Some places use family names or histories…” Her sentence had trailed off, and her face had turned thoughtful. “I’d be willing to speculate that maybe your world’s hierarchy came from genotype…family…but if that was it, what’re you doing on the bottom?”

“Oh, I forgot.” Allenden snapped his fingers, interrupting her reverie. “Zur-Iyal wanted me to remind you to make sure you’ve got the lab cleaned and locked down by hour six. Maintenance is running the building check tonight and we all have to clear out early.”

Blast, blast, blast. I had work I wanted to do tonight. Her eyes flickered involuntarily toward Allenden’s keyboard. Aria was glad she had her back to him so he couldn’t see. “Thank you, Zur-Allenden. I’ll have it done.”

“Good enough.” Boots under one arm, computer pad under the other, he shuffled out, trying to keep himself from sliding on the tiles.

When the door swung shut, Aria let her shoulders sag. She couldn’t have said who wore her out more, Allenden or Evran.

At least Allenden tries to keep a lock on it. She sighed and started on the next set of numbers. Why do they nag at me like this ? The Nameless Powers have seen me deal with worse, most of my life, in fact. The Skymen just give me words.

Words and plenty of them. Iyal and her cohorts honked like geese sometimes about the contents of Aria’s blood and bones.

“You are saying that some person decided how I should be?” Aria had asked Iyal once.

Iyal had come into the lab just to stare at her. A recent analysis had just come out of the machines and Iyal was more confused than usual.

“Basically, yes. Not you, personally, of course, but at least one set of your ancestors. Probably more than one.”

And the Nameless Powers spoke the names of all the People that would be and in each name declared the soul and life that it would have…

“That’s not unheard of.” Iyal leaned against the wall. “I’ve met GE descendants before. What’s incredible about you is what your…engineers bred for.”

“What is that?”

“I don’t know.” She threw up her hands. “That’s the problem. Usually it’s obvious. Strength, speed, intelligence, creativity. You, though, you make no sense.”

Neither do you, but she didn’t say that.

Zur-Iyal spread her hands. “Let me try to explain this. We’ve talked about cells, right? Cells in a body communicate via a series of messengers. Chemicals emitted by one cell cause a reaction in second cell. That second cell might undergo an internal change, or it might send off its own messenger. That’s extremely simplified, of course.”

“Of course,” said Aria humbly.

Zur-Iyal’s eyebrows went up. Her puckered mouth twitched into a half smile. “Deserved that, I suppose.” Iyal was quicker than most of them to pick up on when Aria was acting. Around Iyal she had to be extremely careful how she played the Notouch.

“All right,” Iyal went on, “your people are, obviously, from the same Evolution Point as mine. That should mean you have the same messengers in your cells, plus or minus three or four to allow for your native environment.

“As far as I can tell, your cells will react to twenty separate messengers that aren’t present in any other known Human variant. Then there’s your brain.” She shook her head. “The brain, as we know it, is a complicated, disorganized organ with three or four backups for every function. It stores information, but it stores it wherever there’s room and reacts according to a branch of chaos theory. That doesn’t even begin to cover how it decides whether the information gets stored as short-term, or long-term, or muscular memory.” She scowled at Aria. Aria didn’t flinch. She had learned fairly early on that Zur-Iyal’s scowls had nothing to do with her personally. The woman was annoyed with her cells, or her brain, or whatever it was that she couldn’t understand today. “Your brain, on the other hand, is more tightly organized than a Vitae datastore. I can predict, PREDICT, where a given piece of information is going to end up, down to the cell. Your short-term memory is ridiculously huge, and your long-term memory defies description, and you’ve got no backups.” She frowned even more deeply. “You should be a flipping genius, but you’re not. You should be totally impossible, but you’re not. Although for the life of me I don’t know why.” Again she shook her head. “I find it hard to believe that someone so carefully constructed has no idea of her function.” Zur-Iyal looked at her very hard, as if trying to pull the ideas out with her eyes.

“Would help if I could, Zur-Iyal,” Aria told her honestly. “But there’s too much I don’t understand.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Iyal had sighed and stumped out again.

I could tell her the apocrypha, but, Garismit’s Eyes, how would I make her understand it? Aria stared out the laboratory window. There were fifteen separate stories about the Nameless and the Servant that the Teachers had declared to be lies. One of them told about her family and her namestones.

The gardens’ flat, cultivated land spread out in front of her. The window frame gave it just enough shape to keep her leftover fears quiet. Silver drones bobbed between the long rows of plants, checking soil quality, watching for parasites and fungi, administering fertilizer or pesticides as necessary, or harvesting the mid-season crops. Not all of what they harvested would be used as it was. Even through the window, Aria could catch the faint green scent of the processing sheds, where the raw organic materials were augmented with artificially produced animal products and turned into a variety of unpronounceable things that had mechanical or medicinal uses.

The cleanliness and precision of the place was the most completely and utterly alien sight for Aria on the entire world.

She leaned her hip against the counter and watched the drone’s movements. She remembered the smell of animal pens where she spent what felt like half her life in the Realm. She remembered the ache in her shoulders as she dug out the manure and mud. Chilblains broke through her hands from spending hours up to her knees and elbows in water harvesting grain. She lived with the rain, the stink, the ache, and the Teachers coming once a month to her village to tell them all it was what the Nameless meant for them. And she had believed. From the time she could hear and understand, she’d believed because everyone around her did.

Then came her Marking Day. At the end of that day, she lay on her mat, her hands wrapped in bandages and throbbing from the pain. The leather belt her old grandmother had fastened around her chafed her waist and legs miserably. Outside, the night’s hail clattered against the roof. The wind rocked the house on its stilts. Its fingers found their way through the cracks in the walls and drew themselves across her. She stared into the darkness, hearing the sounds of her father and little sisters breathing and snoring all around her and wishing for sleep to come.

The floor had creaked from gentle steps and she smelled her mother’s musky breath.

“Get up, Aria, I’ve something to show you.”

She’d sat up, blinking. Mother had taken her by the arm right above the ragged bandages and led her out into the other room. The fire on the central hearthstone was nothing but red coals buried in ash. Mother poked them carefully with a stick until the tiniest flames flickered up. The dim orange light showed up her wrinkled, leathery face and Aria wondered why her mother was smiling. She never had before.

“Now that you’ve lived to be marked, Aria, I can start telling you about your name. Stone in the Wall. Aria Born of the Black Wall. What I say is true, daughter of my blood, but you must never, ever tell anyone. If someone comes who has need of you, they will already know. If anyone else hears, you’ll be killed for a Heretic. What I say is from the Nameless Powers to our family, do you understand?”

Aria didn’t, but she’d nodded anyway. Mother’s anxious tones sent chills through her that were worse than the ones the wind brought.

Mother sat back and folded her hands like she was making a vow or a curse. She stared at the moss-chinked wickerwork that made up their house walls. She spoke in measured cadences like she did when she was reciting the Words. “When the Nameless Powers left the Realm for the place beyond the Black Wall, they knew that the people would have need of aid and protection. So they gave their Words to the Teachers and their authority to the Royals. They set the seasons and the days in motion so that the people would have time and life.

“But they knew the Aunorante Sangh were waiting with their tricks and their traps. They knew, for they were the Nameless Powers and nothing is hidden from them, that the Aunorante Sangh might send servants to disrupt the workings of the Realm, which would kill the People.

“To prepare against this, the Nameless Powers spoke new words and these words became jewels. They took each jewel and they spoke its name over it. As they spoke, the jewels split into four parts. Three parts remained stone, but the fourth became a person.

“The names that the Powers spoke for the jewels gave the stones the power to hear and understand the workings of the world, but only in the hands of the people who had been made from the jewel’s substance. The Nameless scattered the people across the world. One became a Royal, one a Noble, one a Bondless, one a Bonded, and one a Notouch.

“The years passed and the stones and their names were handed from parents to children. But the names became corrupted and garbled by the speaking of men and, gradually, the truth was lost by all, except the Notouch. For we who cannot touch power or coinage cannot be distracted by the ways of the world.

“The Nameless Powers, where they watched through the Black Wall, saw the Aunorante Sangh breeding their servants the way a farmer breeds pigs. They saw, too, that they were building their own Realm that their servants might have a fortress from which to launch attacks upon the People. The Nameless knew those servants would one day be sent into the Realm. So the Nameless Powers spoke new words. Metthew Garismit, they said, and they created their own servant and opened the Black Wall so he might walk down to the Realm.

“Garismit knew his name from the beginning and he knew that to save the Realm from the Aunorante Sangh, he would need to move it to where the Aunorante Sangh could not reach it.

“The Teachers say that Garismit went into the belly of the Realm and spoke to it with its own name. That is not all he did, Aria.

“To make the world hear him, and to hear it, he needed the stones and their keepers. He went first to the Royal and the Noble. But they had hidden their stones in their money houses and would not dig them out. He went to the Bondless, but they had gambled the stones away years ago and did not know where they were. He went to the Bonded, but the slave had given the stones for a master’s favor and did not know where they were.

“So Garismit went to the Notouch. He called her by her name—Clear Sight—and Clear Sight took her stones into her hands. Garismit opened the ground for Clear Sight and he led her down the paths to the center of the earth. The stones became eyes and ears and the Realm saw Garismit and heard him as he spoke its name and it moved at his command.”

Mother had rumbled with the thong of a leather pouch then. Aria could still remember the musty smell that rose from the leather.

“Hold out your hands, daughter.”

Feeling like she was dreaming, Aria had held out her bandaged hands. Her mother laid the stones in them and Aria gasped, partly from the pain of their smooth weight against her fresh hand marks, but mostly from their beauty.

“These are Clear Sight’s stones,” Mother said. “We are her daughters, named by the Nameless and born of their substance. We serve the Nameless by keeping them safe and close. The Aunorante Sangh still seek us. The Nameless Powers may send another servant to save us from them again. The Nameless themselves may return. When they do, they will need the stones and we must be ready with them.” Mother tucked her hand under Aria’s chin and raised her daughter’s eyes away from the beautiful spheres. “This is the beginning of the truth, daughter of my blood, Aria of the Black Wall. There is more, and I will teach it to you. We can only speak of these things when the world is protected by the Black Wall. When the sun comes again, you cannot let anyone know anything has changed for you.”

Mother’d taken the stones back, then led her daughter back to her mat. Aria spent that night shivering in the dark, but now from wonder rather than cold.

Aria kept her silence as she traveled with the other women and children to the cities and she did not show anything had changed. But something had. She knew it when she listened to the Teachers. Thoughts crept unbidden into her head when she was supposed to be filling it with the words of the Nameless Powers and Metthew Garismit.

... the Notouch are the dirt and stone of the world, but I’m not Notouch. I’m born of the stones and born of the Black Wall. If the Teachers could lose the story of the stones, what else could they lose?

If names given by the Nameless can become corrupted by the speaking of men, what else can become corrupted?

And always, always, through the other thoughts, through the anger that blossomed and the rebellion that grew into willful and deliberate heresy she remembered that the Nameless Powers had condemned their best to be Notouch. The knowledge of who she was and how she had been wronged by the Nameless Powers and all their servants shaped her life from her Marking Day to the day she’d walked unafraid up to the Skymen and asked to know how she could be of use.

She caressed the pouch that held her namestones. All her life she had longed to be recognized for what she really was, and now it was happening. These Skymen with their naked hands and their ignorance of the Words of the Nameless treated her like a trophy. She should have been reveling in it, using it for all it was worth. But all she wanted to do was get home, get the stones back to her home and her daughter, where they belonged. There wasn’t a minute that went by that she didn’t wonder what would happen if she lost her life, lost the stones out here. Then she would not only have lied to Little Eye, she would have taken away her children’s only hope of getting out of the mud.

Aria realized her knees were trembling. She turned away from the window and strode across the room.

Counters. Floors. The terminal. I’m not sure how much longer I can deal with these Skymen. I don’t know how much longer I’ve got before whatever plans they have for the Realm come true. I’ve got to find out what they want and get back home. She saw all her children lined up before her mind’s eye and swallowed hard against the pang of homesickness.

She slid the door for the sanitation cupboard and dug out the sponges and canisters of solvent. Can’t go yet. Too much I don’t understand. Her own words came back to her. A wave of exhaustion washed over her. Just too much. How has Teacher…Eric Born…managed to live out here for ten years without losing his mind?

Thinking of him was a mistake. His name brought the image of him to her mind, along with an absurd longing she’d managed to avoid finding words for.

Scowling at her hands, she bent to her work.

“G’wan! Get outta here! Move it!” Iyal swatted the backsides of the sandy brown cows indiscriminately with her prod. The beasts bellowed and jostled each other but they moved steadily toward the narrow gate where Jexid, the new intern from the Nuot Division, gave any of the balky ones an extra prod to funnel them up the ramp of the transport. Old Keyenar ki Oruat tapped each of the fat, stupid, carefully engineered beasts between the ears with the signature wand and checked its number to make sure only the cattle that had already passed inspection made it into the shipment.

Loading and herding the big animals was one of the things people still did better than the automatics. Nobody’d yet been able to program a cheap automatic with enough self-preservation instinct to get out of the way if there was a stampede.

A sharp whistle jerked Iyal’s head around. One of the cows bawled and stamped its foot down. Iyal felt the shock up to her ankle, despite her steel-toed boots. She whacked the cow and cursed and at the same time she tried to see who the idiot was who didn’t know they still hadn’t managed to breed all the nerves out of the mountain-specific cattle.

Outside the fence Zur-Allenden waved at her frantically and beckoned, while pointing at her sedan chair unit with his other hand.

Ground beneath my feet, what does he want now and why can’t he call me over the crashing terminal? She gave the cows in front of her an extra shove and hit the TRANSMIT key on her torque.

“Get an appointment, Allenden,” she muttered through clenched teeth as she leaned sideways to try to keep a nervous yearling from squashing her side. It stamped edgily, missing her toes, thankfully, and moved forward.

Got to calm these critters down. Well, with the new configuration in the next batch…

“Iyal, I need to talk to you about your new…acquisition,” came Allenden’s voice through her translator disk.

“What acquisition?” Keyenar was cutting one of the cows out of the herd and prodding it toward the side holding pen. Iyal hooked her prod onto her belt and waved both fists in the inquiry sign and he held up three fingers. Wrong number. Nothing major.

Iyal brought her hands down. Understood. She snatched up the prod again to urge the cows forward. The press was easing as most of the cattle lumbered onto the truck. There was always a mild relief in being able to breathe freely again. Allenden was not allowing her to enjoy it, however.

“You know,” said Allenden. “The woman.”

“It shouldn’t be that tough for someone named Zur-Allen-den ki Uvarimayartus to pronounce Aria Stone.” The torque picked up her subvocalized words and relayed them to Allenden’s translation disk. She hoped it also managed to accurately transmit her tone.

“Zur-Iyal, I can’t talk about this over the air. Give me ten minutes. Please.”

For a moment, Iyal considered telling him to go bury himself in manure, but Allenden was capable of making himself extremely unpleasant if he felt ignored, and she didn’t feel up to being called into Director ki Sholmat’s office and read the employee relations section out of her supervisor’s contract.

She waved to Jexid to come take her place at the back. The intern, to her credit, unhooked her own prod from her belt and waded into the thick of the herd, slapping and cursing like an old pro.

Iyal squelched through mud and debris to the side gate and palmed the latch. It registered her sweaty, muck-stained hand and let the gate swing open for her. Iyal stomped up the path, showering the concrete with dirt at each step until she reached her sedan chair. She plunked herself down in the seat and immediately switched on the monitor boards to check the input from Keyenar’s wand against the manifest. This was a big order and an important one. Since the Vitae had taken over Kethran’s gene-tailoring industry, there had been far too few of those. The last thing she needed was Allenden bothering her about his pet trivialities.

But then, he probably knew that. He never picked his fights randomly.

The summer heat and pent-up annoyance broke a fresh sweat on her forehead and cheeks, despite her broad-brimmed hat and screening lotion.

“I’m serious, Iyal.” Allenden squatted down beside the front legs of the sedan. “I think we’ve got a problem.”

“You mean a new problem.” Iyal watched three new registration numbers appear on the list. “So let’s have it.”

Allenden glanced this way and that. Iyal sighed. Allenden’s penchant for dramatics never failed to get under her skin and stick. “Get it out, Allenden, I don’t have all year. We’ve got 260 head to get inspected, loaded, and delivered.” She squinted at Allenden out of the corner of her eye. The sun was behind him and it took a minute for her new lenses to adjust so she saw something other than a black blob where his face should be.

“Iyal. Your…Aria, she’s a Vitae spy.”

Iyal felt her eyes swivel all the way toward Allenden. Her gaze followed a second later. “What?” Almost no one on Kethran, from First Family members on down to Fourth Wavers, liked having the Vitae around. Most recognized them as an unpleasant necessity. Some were waiting for a chance to kick them offworld. A few, like Allenden, were actively looking for ways to force them off.

“Somebody’s been using my access codes to get into the datastores after hours.”

Iyal finally took her attention off the herd and the boards and turned all the way toward Allenden. The man was built like a sun-bleached beanpole on stilts. Even on his knees in the grass, the top of his head was level with hers.

Iyal snorted. “Aria can barely type her name or understand…”

“She’s got a Vitae gene sequence, Iyal. For all we know they created her as a way to get in here.”

“Don’t be stupid, Allenden. Should that sequence turn out to be exclusive to the Vitae, which I doubt, even the Vitae aren’t that good at genetic engineering.”

“We don’t know exactly how good the Vitae are,” he said levelly.

Who’s paying Perivar’s bills these days? The thought slid into her mind. No. Not Perivar. Bones and breath, he works with a Shessel. He…

Who is paying his bills these days?

“You want to talk about this inside?” Allenden glanced across toward Keyenar, Jexid, and the herd.

“No, I do not want to talk about this inside.” Iyal heaved her shoulders back. “If you want to insult my judgment, Assistant Researcher, you can do it in writing to Director ki Sholmat.”

Allenden leaned close enough for her to smell his fruity breath over the scent of the cows and the summer grass. “I saw her, Iyal. Security’s got her recorded. Reading the lab notes. Senior research level lab notes.”

No. I won’t believe it.

And if security really has got her recorded?

No. Some of those rented eyes haven’t got the brains we gave the cows. There’s been a screwup. There must have been a screwup.

Allenden waved his hands toward the sky in a gesture of helplessness. “Iyal, you brought her in here just before the Vitae made their announcement about taking over MG49 sub 1. Everything’s changing with them, don’t you see? We’ve got to look at everything in a new light. Now that they’ve picked a single base, they’re going to be moving to centralize their influence. They’ll be tightening the screws and closing the locks. The only reason they haven’t done it before is that they’ve been too scattered, too busy maintaining control over themselves to spare resources for consolidating an empire out of the rest of us.”

Iyal blinked at him. She tried to take her time to formulate a decent reply. That was a mistake, because it gave Allenden’s little speech time to sink in. He’d obviously rehearsed it several times. Maybe he’d even talked to some people who had better sense than he did. If you believed in conspiracies, the formula made too much sense, and if you’d ever seen the Vitae organize a project, you believed in conspiracies.

It would still mean that Perivar had lied to her, and that Aria had lied to her, and that Zur-Iyal ki Maliad had seen the chance for profit and advancement and had lost track of the overall situation.

That was not acceptable.

“I said, if you want to question my judgment, you take it to Our Cousin Director. Until he fires me, I’m your supervisor, and I say that Aria Stone is my responsibility, not yours.” She folded her arms and directed her attention to the cattle pens. Keyenar slammed the truck’s gate shut and waved to the driver. The transport rolled across the grass. Its balloon tires molded to the damp ground so the turf would be disturbed as little as possible. The labs only had an allotment of ninety-five acres of chopped ground and they needed all of that for gardens and pens. They couldn’t afford to go hacking up the fields.

Allenden reached across the chair’s boards and with one, bone-thin finger tapped six keys, one after the other. The manifest cleared from the main screen and in its place appeared a view of Lab #20. Aria Stone hunched in front of the comm screen on Allenden’s research table. Iyal squinted over the dark woman’s shoulder and saw nothing but a blur of gold light on a black screen. Allenden keyed for the security camera to zoom in closer on the text. Aria had the screen set for the fastest scan level and the words flashed by too fast for Iyal to do more than pick out one or two at a time, but she did catch the gold logo of the First Families and the green-and-blue globe of the Kethran Diet.

Seven screens of information flashed past before Iyal realized Aria was reading transcriptions from the Diet sessions. Reading high-formal tense, legally extensive and twisted documents restricted to First Family access. Iyal touched two keys and brought up a profile from the second security camera. Aria’s black eyes flickered back and forth. She was really reading them, and reading them faster than Iyal could.

Iyal sat back in the chair, not caring what Allenden made out of the bewildered look on her face.

Impossible. Ridiculous. She had only started learning the language four weeks ago. She didn’t even have full command of one level of grammar yet. She barely knew where an ON switch on a view table was. How in all the worlds that lived had she gotten into secured files?

Allenden planted both hands on the edge of the board. “We’ve got a spy in the ranks, Cousin Manager.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no!” Allenden reared up like a startled cow. “Look at her!”

“Yes.” Iyal gestured at the screen. “Look at her. Right in front of the security camera. Clear as all outdoors and solid as dirt. You’re telling me a spy, a VITAE spy, is going to tap the secured network from the lab in front of a camera?”

Allenden’s mouth opened and closed three or four times before he finally said, “Then what else could she possibly be?”

“1 don’t have any idea.” Iyal hit the HOME key on the chair’s control board at the same time. “But I’m going to go find out.”

“You can’t just…” began Allenden as the chair’s legs telescoped up to their active length.

“I can, and you’ll wait until I have before you say another word to anybody.” The chair rocked forward, picking its quick, mincing steps over the grass. Iyal twisted around to see if Allenden understood. “We need to know what we’re dealing with before we make a fuss.”

Allenden nodded. Iyal took that as a good sign and settled back into her chair again. The sedan carried her down the paths that bisected the beds of medical plants and grains. The lab section had been laid out for efficiency, not aesthetics. Domes of white polymer skins alternated with square, white concrete buildings that sat in the middle of squared-off plots of plain grass. A quarter of an acre of grass had to be reserved for every cubic meter of building so that solar reflection and environmental absorption would balance each other out.

People and drones hustled to and fro down the prescribed paths. One or two raised their hands in greeting, but Iyal only nodded absently in return.

Aria Stone. Aria Stone. Iyal had been all but breathing Aria Stone since Perivar had brought her to the lab. For weeks now, Iyal had wished in vain that she could find whoever had designed the woman’s ancestors so she could shake their hands, and then pick their brains, even if they were the Vitae.

She’d told Perivar that Aria was a walking work of art, but now Iyal was ready to revise that interpretation. The woman was nothing short of a miracle.

Iyal was used to the idea of genetic engineering. Every piece of flora and fauna on Kethran had been built to fit into the tailored biosphere. Her own work carried on the family profession and she was proud to do it. But there wasn’t a soul alive on Kethran, or anywhere else she knew of, that could design a DNA string that contained nothing but the bare essentials organized to express themselves in a totally predictable fashion in a human being. In a strain of yeast or algae, maybe. But not a human being. She had learned more about neurochemical regulators in the three weeks she’d known Aria than she had in ten years of active study.

But not everything about Aria made sense. Who would design an organism that did not have enough room left over in its DNA to allow for adaptation or compensation for changes in environment? The rate of birth defects would be astronomical. Aria was perfect, but if one or two of her perfect traits hadn’t expressed themselves because of environment, she could have been in trouble. Iyal was surprised Aria had even managed four living kids out of a total of seven births. If you wanted to keep her branch of humanity alive, you’d have to do an incredible amount of outbreeding, which would negate all that careful engineering, or you’d have to be able to check each fetus to make sure conception had worked, and then you’d have to monitor each child to make sure they grew up all right, and tinker with them all as necessary to keep weaknesses from creeping in.

No. It made no sense. A group like that would require more maintenance than…Kethran Colony.

The comm screen still showed Aria hunched over Allenden’s table, reading the documents flowing past. Nothing in those short, perfect strings she carried around inside her explained this. Nothing at all. Not even the incredible organization inside her skull.

Iyal’s translator disk beeped and she winced.

“Cousin Manager Zur-Iyal ki Maliad,” said Director ki Sholmat’s voice, “I require your attendance at my office immediately.”

Iyal felt her forehead wrinkle. The Director hadn’t chosen to acknowledge their First Family connection since Iyal’d deigned to marry a third wave colonist.

She touched the TRANSMIT key on her torque and whispered, “With respect, Cousin Director, I have an emergency in the lab.” Aria had moved on to a new set of documents. These had the lab’s privacy logo on them.

“Delegate it,” said the Director. “I have an Ambassador from the Rhudolant Vitae sitting in front of me. The Vitae want to talk to you about some property of theirs they say the lab has wrongfully appropriated.”

Iyal’s eyes bulged in their sockets as she tried to keep from gagging audibly. Under her gaze, Aria went on reading, completely undisturbed.

“Cousin Manager?”

“I’ll be there in five minutes, Cousin Director.” Iyal shut the connection down.

Iyal ground her teeth together and, at last, touched her torque and whispered Allenden’s name.

“Zur-Allenden,” she said. “This is Zur-Iyal. There’s trouble. I need you to get Aria out of the lab. Send her to sweep the attic, anything, just keep her out of the way of the management halls for at least the next hour.”

“But…” came Allenden’s hesitant voice.

“The Vitae are sitting in the Director’s office,” she said. “Get Aria out of sight.”

“Done and done.” Her translation disk buzzed as he closed the connection.

The sedan halted in front of the double doors labeled CENTRAL RESEARCH FACILITIES BLOCKS 6-12. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and froze its legs, settling toward the ground so she could climb out. Iyal cut the comm board off and shut the chair’s power off.

She rubbed her temple as she pushed through the facility doors and walked down the bare, tiled corridors. Her gaze strayed to the portrait of Killian that she wore on her wrist. He was off-shift tonight. She could put in a real-time call. It’d be good to talk to him. It’d help sort out the jumble of problems swirling around inside her mind.

Director Zur-Kohlbyr ki Sholmat’s office was a three-room suite at the east end of the building. Kohlbyr was an entrepreneur, an aspiring politician, and the oldest child of the first of the First Families. As a result, he knew all about the importance of appearances and he used all that he knew when creating his workspace.

Iyal entered the waiting room, a comfortable lounge that had been partitioned off to accommodate both Human and Shessel visitors. It gave the impression that the Director was an open-minded man.

The door to the meeting room stood open. Iyal stepped in. It was a greenhouse-style room with transparent silicate walls that let in the view of the medical compound and the clean fields. The ceiling was also transparent, so she could see the clouds building up for the weekly heavy rain that this longitude required to keep the vegetation healthy.

At the moment, the room was furnished with clusters of small tables and padded chairs. It was a casual atmosphere where people could meet, drink, circulate, and chat. Director ki Sholmat sat at the table in the sunniest corner, sipping something gold out of a long-stemmed glass. Next to him, a Vitae Ambassador sat like a statue carved of ruby and marble.

Iyal clenched her teeth and forced her mouth to smile.

“Zur-Iyal ki Maliad.” Zur-Kohlbyr bowed his head but did not stand. “Sit and know yourself welcome, Cousin.” Iyal’s stomach turned over at the hypocrisy but she drew back a chair and sat, ankles properly crossed and hands neatly folded on the table. If she was going to be treated as a dignitary, she would put on the show, even if her coverall was dirt-spattered and she smelled strongly of cattle.

“This is Ambassador Basq from the Vitae ship Grand Errand."

“Ambassador.” Iyal briefly touched her fingertips to her forehead to salute him. At least she assumed the person under the draping of cloth was a him. The only feature he had to distinguish him from any of the other Vitae she’d seen was a blister over his right eye.

Zur-Kohlbyr took another sip out of his glass. “The Ambassador came to me asking about the location of the Subcontractor Aria Stone. I informed him we would have to consult you, since you were funding her contract out of your own accounts.”

And you didn’t bother to tell him that the lab’s refunding me for it.

“Zur-Iyal,” said Ambassador Basq in the smooth, even voice that the Vitae seemed to be born with. “If you’ll permit, I would like to clarify the origin of the individual you call Subcontractor Aria Stone.”

Iyal raised her eyebrows to indicate gentle inquiry and managed not to let her hands twitch, even though her nails were ready to dig into her own skin.

“You have heard our announcement of the Vitae claim of the world MG49 sub 1?”

Iyal inclined her head. “The city council held several public briefings on it. Being under Vitae management, we are most interested in the shifts in status of your people.” Her high-formal grammar was rusty. She didn’t go home much and she never went to First Family celebrations. She hoped the translator disks were compensating.

“Then you know that the Kethran Diet and Executors have already agreed to honor our claim to the planet.”

Iyal nodded again. She’d paid very close attention to both the video clip and the vote that had followed its screening, and had sworn profusely at the result.

The Vitae’s little blip didn’t tell us anything! How could we make that kind of decision without taking a look at the place?

Who’s we, Iyal? Killian had asked quietly. Your opinion’s not on the register.

In case you’ve forgotten, I gave up my vote when I married you. She’d said it sourly and regretted it immediately. But it was Kethran law. You couldn’t marry up, you could only marry down. She could have kept her vote only by making a partnership bond with a member of another First Family, or a selected Parent World family who wanted to emigrate. Killian’s name didn’t appear in any of the proper files.

Your vote, yes, but I hadn’t noticed you’d lost your voice. The cool exchange was the closest they’d ever come to an actual fight.

“I now make confession, Zur-Iyal,” said Basq. “And I trust to the discretion of yourself and your Cousin Director. While we were deciding whether to press our claim, MG49 sub 1 was raided by contraband runners. Aria Stone was one of the things taken from us.

“It is not an independent human being, Zur-Iyal. It is a genetically engineered artifact and the Kethran Diet has acknowledged that it is Vitae property.” He paused as if to let his statement sink in. “Of course, you could have no way of knowing this. I’m sure you picked up its contract in good faith and had no idea you were hiring contraband.”

Of course not. Iyal shook her head. That would be illegal by Kethran law. Vitae-enforced Kethran law.

Zur-Kohlbyr set his glass on the table with a click. “I informed the Ambassador that since the subcontract was legal and since no accusations of contraband running had yet been filed, you were the one who would have to release Aria Stone to Vitae custody.” He gave her a look that tried to rivet her to the back wall. “Formalities need to be observed, particularly in times of flux.”

“Particularly in times of flux.” Iyal shoved tones of agreement into her voice. Inside she wondered, what are you trying to tell me, Zur-Kohlbyr?

“A state of affairs the Vitae appreciate, I can assure you,” said Basq. “I trust, however, Zur-Iyal, that you will not be hesitant to expedite matters as much as possible.”

The image of Aria at the research table flashed in front of Iyal’s inner vision.

“Naturally,” she answered, attempting to match Basq’s fluidity of speech. “So, as soon as you, Ambassador, submit documentation supporting your claims to my office, I’ll recall Aria Stone from field assignment and nullify her contract before witnesses.” Her stomach tightened as Zur-Kohlbyr smiled.

No, I haven’t forgotten any of the legalities, Cousin Director. Now why are you so glad about that?

“I wish to be perfectly clear and candid about the Vitae position at this time, Zur-Iyal,” said Basq. He leaned forward a very little, but even that much body language surprised Iyal. The Vitae usually moved like freeze-frame videos. One sharp, separated motion at a time. “When we have the artifact in our possession, we are leaving Kethran Colony. The reclamation of MG49 sub 1 will be absorbing all our resources. We will be forgiving all debts and contracts that tie Kethran to the Vitae.”

Iyal’s breath caught in her throat. Leaving? We hand you Aria and you’re away from here?

“We will, of course, be leaving all our hardware behind in payment for unfulfilled obligations on our side. We will also provide training manuals and AI software guides for the continued health and management of your colony, which has been our good client for over a decade.”

We’ll be rid of you? For good and all?

“My failure to reclaim the artifact will delay this operation,” added Basq.

“However, as I said, Ambassador, formalities must be observed,” cut in Zur-Kohlbyr. “Zur-Iyal will require supporting documentation before the contract is nullified.”

Basq was silent for a long moment. “She’ll have it,” he said at last. “I’ll contact your administrative assistant, Zur-Iyal, if I may, for the details regarding the extent of the documentation you will need and all the points it will have to cover.”

“Certainly,” said Iyal.

Basq rose and saluted her stiffly. “You’ll have what you require before tomorrow morning. Perhaps you should recall the artifact today?”

“When I have your documentation, Ambassador, I’ll proceed.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kohlbyr nod once. Again, he approved of her move. What was going on? His master-in-council had voted against the Vitae takeover, and here she was thwarting their removal with bureaucratic formalities and he was happy about it.

“Very well.” Basq saluted the Director. “We will continue this conversation tomorrow then.”

“My line will remain open for your message,” said Zur-Kohlbyr. The Director did not even stand. Basq’s scarlet robes fluttered as he left the room alone. Iyal wondered if the Vitae Ambassador knew he’d just been insulted.

I’ll bet he does. If he knows enough about my private politics to come across with the fact that I’m holding up their pullout, he surely knows about our manners. Killian’s calm, blue eyes gazed up from his portrait. She laid her hand across it to keep herself from seeing his face. She did not need a reminder of how alone she was right now.

Zur-Kohlbyr touched a key on the wall and the door to the waiting room slid shut. He leveled a wide grin toward Zur-Iyal. “I knew I could count on you, Cousin.”

“Forgive me, Cousin Director.” Iyal took her hands off the table and folded her arms across her chest. “But this sudden reacknowledgment of our family connection has got me a little confused.” She shifted her expression to a glower and her tenses to across-table casual, which was one step from insubordinate. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Zur-Kohlbyr’s smile was indulgent. “Iyal, these are serious events here. We have the chance to take the lead with them and shape Kethran’s future as a power in the Quarter Galaxy.”

Uh-oh. A gleam shone softly in the Director’s eye. He was smelling power and he had a keen instinct for it. It was a genetic tendency reinforced by the First Family environment. His branch had been particularly successful at applying it for a hundred years.

“The Vitae want our Aria.” He settled back and lifted his drink. “They want her more than I’ve ever seen them want anything since that business with passing the anti-contraband measures. Now, why?” He sipped his gold liquid. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you.” I don’t think my stomach could handle it right now.

He swirled the liquid in the glass meditatively. “She must be unique in some significant way.” He smiled at Iyal again. “If we knew how, we, you and I, Cousin, could give Kethran what the rest of the Quarter Galaxy would sell their lives to have, a step up on the Vitae.”

“Well, it’s not like we haven’t been trying to work on it, Zur-Kohlbyr,” Iyal reminded him.

“We’ve been trying within very strict boundaries.” He swallowed the last of his drink. “I suggest that the importance of speed in this matter removes those boundaries.”

Iyal felt the blood drain out of her cheeks. “What do you want me to do, Cousin Director? Take a sapient woman apart to see how she ticks?”

“Zur-Iyal.” Zur-Kohlbyr rested his hands flat on the table. “We need this. Things are building quickly in the Quarter Galaxy. The Unifiers are becoming a real force, and we don’t know how power will go to their collective heads. The Shessel are beginning to colonize and spread in their own right and we don’t know what they will do either. The Vitae are pulling back to this little world they’ve found, perhaps permanently, perhaps not. Without some leverage, Kethran, this world our parents built from a dead rock, is doomed to be tossed around the political storm like a feather in a stampede.”

Iyal said nothing.

“Cousin, I know you have limited your considerable talent for intrigue and manipulation to the occasional interaction with contraband runners. Since it was proper to your postmarriage status and beneficial to the labs, I’ve never said anything about it. Now I’m asking you to remember your birth family and your place in the soul-politic and do not make me force you to hand this artifact over to me after I’ve seen to your arrest.

“Where is Aria Stone now?”

Iyal gripped her wrist until the edges of the portrait bracelet dug into her palm. She saw Aria in the lab, reading. She saw her, narrow-eyed and plainly frightened, as she arrived by Perivar’s side. She heard her own voice talking to Perivar: And I’m not crazy about the idea you’d think I’d get her in here and put her in a processor…

And she heard Basq promising to leave as soon as they had Aria, and she saw Kethran forced to crawl back to the Parent World because they couldn’t manage on their own. And she heard Cousin Director’s threat again and she knew, she knew, that he meant it. And she saw Aria in the lab.

Iyal stood up. “Aria Stone is on field assignment, Cousin Director. I’ll have her recalled immediately. You’ll have to give me eleven hours, though.”

He nodded. “I think I can give you just that, Iyal. Remember, we need her alive, but I’m sure we can explain away any other…aspects…of her physical condition.” His smile grew conspiratorial. “I knew, I knew, you would hold true on this.”

“We will also have to talk further, Cousin Director,” she said with what she hoped was a knowing leer.

She let him walk her to the door and salute her as she left.

Back out in the corridor, she used her torque to call Allenden.

“Where is she?” she asked under her breath as she skirted two interns who were deep in their own discussions.

“Sweeping the attic, actually,” came Allenden’s reply, “Iyal, what…”

“I’ll tell you later. Just sit still for now, all right?”

“All right, Iyal, all right.” There was a peeved note in his voice. Iyal swallowed. She couldn’t risk getting Allenden angry right now. There was too much she might need him for later.

“Allenden,” she said. “We need to move with extreme caution on this. It could shape up into a family war if we don’t.”

She could tell by the length of the pause that she had gotten to him.

“I’m waiting on the news, Iyal,” he said, and shut the connection down.

In no mood to wait for the service lift, Iyal ran up three flights of stairs.

The attic was actually a lab that had been shut down three years ago when the Vitae had finished implementing their plans for controlling the genetic engineering industry on Kethran. The loss of business had forced Amaiar Gardens to cut its staff. The unused lab had never been officially converted into storage, but unused equipment, broken furniture, and anything else that anybody wanted to get out of the way turned up there. Every now and again some intern in trouble with his supervisor would be sent up there to clean it out and organize it.

Inside, Aria was lugging a polymer crate full of anonymous cables from its spot in the middle of the floor. Iyal stood in the threshold and watched her for a moment. Aria wore the plain moss green shirt and trousers that most of the interns favored when doing heavy jobs, but she still kept her spill of dark hair wrapped under her black turban. The thick tool belt around her waist had a cattle prod dangling next to the bumpy leather pouch she always carried, because even though they weren’t supposed to, the newer handlers had taken to quietly getting Aria out into the pens to help deal with balkier specimens. She had, as near as Iyal could understand, been some kind of animal handler back on her homeworld. She never complained about the extra work. She never even asked why she was being tapped. She just waded in and did whatever she was told to with an eagerness to please that bordered on groveling sometimes. For the past couple of weeks, Iyal had been wondering what all that ingratiation was covering up.

Now she was still wondering.

Aria stacked the crate on top of a container of silicate blocks and turned around. She saw Iyal in the doorway and flinched.

“Zur-Iyal,” she said as she recovered. “Sorry. Was…I was startled.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Iyal stepped all the way into the room and let the door slide shut behind her. “I need to talk to you, Aria.”

“All right,” said Aria, without hesitation, like she always did. Sometimes, Iyal had the feeling she could tell the woman to go jump off a cliff, and Arla’d still say “all right.”

Sometimes. Other times, out of the corner of her eye, Iyal caught Aria studying her with her innocent, brown eyes turned to black slits like she was memorizing Iyal’s motions, and calculating…calculating what?

Iyal shot the bolt on the manual lock. “Aria Stone, you’ve got two minutes to explain why I shouldn’t hand you over to the Vitae Ambassador who was here looking for you.”

Aria blanched until she was nearly as white as a Vitae herself, but her voice remained steady.

“Do you understand what you are saying, Iyal…”

“You’re lying.” Iyal said. “Now you’ve only got one minute.”

For a moment, Aria did nothing but rub her hands together and stare at their scarred backs. She murmured softly in her own language. Then, abruptly, she switched to Iyal’s. “I should’ve known,” she said, without a trace of accent or awkwardness. “You’re not like the Nobles in the Realm. You’ve got no expectations about what I can and can’t do. You’re not so easy to bluff.” She faced Iyal. “The Vitae. What is it they want from me? Did they say?”

“Yes. They say you’re their property. That you’re an artifact that was stolen from them and that they want you back.”

Aria sank into a rickety chair, wrinkling a short stack of polymer sheets that rested on the seat. “You do not like them.”

“No.” Iyal folded her arms. “But right now I’m trying to decide if I like you less. I’ve got security footage of you breaking into secured documents, Aria.”

Aria’s head jerked up. “You’ve got what?”

“Don’t try to go back to the country girl act, Aria Stone…”

“No! No! “Aria waved her hands violently. “I don’t understand. Security footage. What is that?”

Iyal stabbed a finger toward the boxy camera over the doorway. “Pictures from a camera like that one. Security surveillance. Yards of tape with your picture on it, pulling off ninety-nine different illegal maneuvers.”

Aria stared at the camera. Her mouth moved silently and her face went from white to green. For a moment, Iyal thought she was actually going to be sick. Then, Aria let out a cluster of syllables so bitter and explosive that Iyal couldn’t imagine them being anything but curses.

“No more time,” Iyal said. “Start talking.”

“All right.” Iyal didn’t have to strain to hear the new tone in her voice. This was not innocent trust. This was considered acceptance. “What do you want to know?”

A dozen different questions leapt to the front of Iyal’s mind: What are you? Why do the Vitae want you? How did you learn to read so fast?

At last, she said, “How did you manage to access the Diet transcripts?”

“I saw Zur-Allenden do it once.”

“Once?”

Aria nodded. “That is all I need. I was resetting one of the research tables and he was paying no attention to me.”

“So, you’ve got a photographic memory?”

Her lips moved, repeating the term, and her brow wrinkled. “Something like that, yes.”

“So you can read. The illiteracy was an act.”

“Sometimes, now. It wasn’t when I first came here.”

“Then how…”

Aria fumbled with a pocket on her tool belt and pulled out a pair of gloves; then she opened the leather pouch she carried with her and drew out an ice white sphere.

“This is one of my namestones.” She kept it cupped in her hand as Iyal leaned over it. “They give me the ability to remember everything I have ever seen, or ever heard. But they also let me have a base for those memories…” She frowned. “They correlate what is in my head so it makes sense to me. If I have a question, I hold the stones and they find the answer in my mind and give it to me. The more I have seen, the better the answers get.

“Before I came here, I was in a Vitae holding cell and a ship called the U-Kenai. I saw a great deal. I knew something about computers and I’d heard at least spatterings of your language. The stones were able to"—she frowned again—"create relationships for me so I was able to learn very fast.”

Iyal felt her mouth move as she tried to form the words “that’s impossible.” She couldn’t get the sounds out, because in the back of her mind she knew that was not a valid argument. Aria was impossible, yet there Aria sat, relatively calm and collected and holding a stone in her hand that was really…what?

Can’t be an AI, there’s no way for her to interface with it. Can’t be any kind of computer I know about. Artificial total recall? AND the ability to create contextual relationships? How? HOW?

Iyal stumped over to one of the old research tables and, with one sweep of her arm, dumped a pile of miscellaneous debris and dust onto the floor. She slammed her hand against the ON key and as soon as the screens and boards flickered to life she began activating the scanners.

“Aria, let me see that.” Iyal extended her hand and was not surprised to see it was shaking.

After a moment’s hesitation, Aria laid the stone against Iyal’s palm. It was heavy, smooth, and cool as polished crystal. She cupped her fingers carefully around it. Its surface did not warm up. It was as if it resisted her body’s heat.

Iyal set the stone gently into one of the table’s scanner pockets and closed the lid over it. Aria gripped the arms of the chair until her knuckles turned white. Iyal said nothing. Aria knew this would not hurt her precious stone, she must know that or she never would have let go of it.

The main screen lit up with the preliminary information. First there was a shell, primarily constructed of crystallized carbon, but there were several trace elements. It had a micro-level capillary construction. Capillaries? In a doped-up diamond? Inside, primarily liquid…then how had it not evaporated over time…proteins, ribonucleic acids, electrochemical traces, and a filament structure…

Iyal blinked up at Aria and down at the screen again. The stone was a hollow, porous, enriched diamond filled with a miniature nervous system and a whole stew of unidentified virus chains.

And I’d bet my marriage contract that each one of them has binders that match that host of extra receptors Aria’s carrying around inside her…but no…the scan only identifies ten variable strings and Aria has twenty-two unused receptors…

She’s not a tool then, she’s a system component. And this thing still can’t be an artificial intelligence, but it might just be a real one. Iyal wished there was a spare chair for her to collapse into.

“Where did this come from, Aria?”

Aria shrugged. “I was told that the Nameless Powers left them to my family in case they needed to send another servant to the Realm. This might be true, but I don’t know what it means.”

Iyal lifted the stone out of the scanner and turned it over in her fingers. This thing should be in the splicing room getting peeled apart a micron at a time. They should know exactly what was in there, how it was built, and what made it possible. Total, context specific, recall in a sphere the size of a small peach. Who’d need computers anymore? She could buy Kethran the leadership of the Quarter Galaxy with this thing and the woman it belonged with.

“You’ve been very calm about finding out you’re not what you thought you were.”

“I haven’t found out anything like that,” said Aria coolly. “The Teachers say I came into being when the Nameless spoke the word that is my name. My mother said I was split from the same word that made the stones. You say I came into being when somebody strung together some proteins in a laboratory. It doesn’t matter. I am still myself. My name is still mine. Only the Nameless can take that away.” She held out her hand. Iyal decided to take the hint and she handed Aria the stone.

“Are there…many people like you in the…Realm?”

“I don’t know.” Aria replaced the stone in the pouch and drew its strings tight. “I do know there aren’t many arias, stones, I mean, left.”

“How do you know that?”

Aria’s mouth quirked up into a tight smile. “About ten generations ago, the Teachers declared them sacred to the Nameless and stole them. The ones that exist are mainly in the Temple vaults. I heard one very highborn Teacher say he’d only ever seen one set. So there cannot be that many.”

Iyal’s mouth was dry. There didn’t have to be that many. The Vitae were trying to lay claim to the world where they existed. What if the Vitae got their hands on even one more person like her? Or a single stone like the one she carried in her pouch? They’d jump so far ahead of the rest of the Quarter Galaxy in technological development, the labs would look like entrail knitters by comparison. There would be no catching them. No countering them in anything. They could have whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it.

“Aria,” Iyal said. “Do you know what world it is the Vitae are laying claim to?”

“No,” Aria shook her head. “They’ve only given an astronomical notation. I haven’t got a context for it.”

“Aria, it’s the Realm. Your home.”

Slowly, Aria’s hand crept to her mouth. She pressed her palm hard against her lips, as if to stifle a scream, and her eyes squeezed shut. Iyal shifted her weight, uncertain of what to do, but in the next moment, Aria’s hand dropped back to the pouch of stones. She whispered something in her own language and swallowed hard.

“Got to find Eric Born,” she said, at last. “Got to warn him. Got to get back. Warn my family. Warn…warn everybody.” The fear that widened her eyes could not have been faked. “The Teachers and the Nobles are bad enough, but those Skymen? We’d never get away. How can the Nameless permit this?” She spit the question.

How can you still believe in the Nameless Powers, whatever they are? Iyal wondered. Then she thought about the stones. Then again, maybe I should start believing in them.

“We need to get you off the planet, fast. We’ve got eleven hours before the Director comes looking for you. Maybe the Unifiers…”

“No,” said Aria flatly. “They started the war in the Realm. They’re too much like the Vitae. I’ve been listening to their blather. They talk about conquest in terms of contracts and agreements. I must leave Kethran, yes, but I must do it free and clear. I must get back to the Realm, with Eric Born. Then, then I will figure out what to do next.” She smiled. “I have plenty to work with.” She laid her hand over her pouch.

“What you’ll need is credit.” Iyal forced her mind back to the practical. “Don’t want to risk a transfer to you. The Vitae have got to be watching me.” She glanced reflexively toward the door. “Eleven hours…I can get the Diet hopping, create a distraction while you get out of here…I might get arrested, too, and they’ll freeze my account…do you think you can get back to Perivar’s on your own?”

Aria nodded. “I know I can, but he told me not to return…”

Iyal waved her words away impatiently. “When you get there, tell him I said he’d better help you out or he’ll be answering to me. Tell him to give you a loan. Whatever you need. I’ll pay it back. Or Killian will.”

“I’ll tell him.” Aria got to her feet. “Thank you, Iyal. I’ll remember your name.” She spoke so seriously that Iyal could only assume it was a blessing or a compliment.

“I’ll get you back to your room so you can pack…”

“Pack what?” Aria spread her hands. “I’ve got clothes and shoes and my stones, and I need to hurry. The public transport runs all night, doesn’t it? Is there anyone to prevent me from walking out of the door?”

“No one. Zur-Kohlbyr will be holed up in his office for at least another hour, plotting.” Iyal undid the door’s lock.

Aria marched out without looking back. Iyal just watched her. When the door closed again, Iyal turned up the power on the old table’s comm board and sent a call out toward Killian’s ship on the Lous Division Lake, on the other side of the world.

He was sleep-tousled and bleary-eyed when he appeared on the screen, but he woke up fast as he saw it was her. His eyes went round as he read the grim expression on her face.

“Iyal, love, what’s happened?”

“Killian…I…I’m about to find where I left my voice.”

“Oh-ho?” he breathed.

“How do you feel about emigrating again?”

He paused for a bare second. “I hear the northern continent of Fresh Dawn has a very unfussy border policy. They need hands and heads.”

Iyal’s heart swelled. “Love you.”

“Love you.” His smile was warm as sunshine and almost succeeded in banishing the chill in her soul. “I’ll go hand in my leave request now. If there’s a shuttle in port, I can be back by ten in the morning and we’ll pack, all right?”

“All right.”

They said good-bye and cut the signal and Iyal was alone again with her four walls and the silence of an empty room.

“Enjoy it while you can, Zur-Iyal,” she muttered as she placed a request for a line to the Diet. “Enjoy it while you can.”

Paral wished the Witness would stop looking at him. Even though his gaze was fastened on the monitors and comm boards in front of him, he knew she had her attention fastened on him. He could feel it like a cobweb that had laid itself over his entire body.

Lines 89A and B checked and open for another six hours. Should send the update request for another four…He forced himself to think about his job. He had to have the current resources inventoried and updated. He couldn’t think about the Witness at his back, watching every movement of his hands, every twitch in his shoulder blades. He didn’t have the energy to spare to think about that. He had to get the inventory done and try to find some way to get out to meet Ordeth without looking suspicious, without the Witness seeing an anomaly that could be traced to the Imperialists. It was vital that the Witness be seen to be the only anomaly on Kethran.

Even though the workspace was thoroughly secured and monitored, it held none of the private technologies. It was full of the same kind of consoles and transmission centers that could be seen in any busy clerical office on Kethran. Its security was so it could also hold a Vitae who was not an Ambassador.

It was necessary. Paral knew his lessons like he knew the subtleties of his Master-Ambassador’s movements. The Aunorante Sangh had been able to drive off the Ancestors because they knew too much about them. Such power could not be given away again.

That the Vitae had to hide themselves, even from the monstrous Shessel, struck Paral to the core and made it possible for him to plot under the gaze of his master.

If only the Witness would stop looking at him.

The monitor that watched the station’s plain, white antechamber beeped, and Paral nearly jumped out of his skin. His eyes flickered toward the Witness before they found the monitor. The door to the outside had opened and Basq crossed the smooth floor to tap the reader for the inner door.

Paral stood and folded his hands, ready for his Master-Ambassador’s entrance.

The inner door opened, making the Witness’s jade green robe flutter with its breeze. Paral made his obeisance and caught a good look at Basq on the way down.

Basq was not happy; Paral could sense it in the air around him, as palpable as the scent of vegetation and damp concrete that came in with him. Basq moved with the approved amount of decorum, but there was a quality to his movement that Caril had helped Paral learn to read when he first became Beholden to Basq.

“The Manager ki Maliad claims that the artifact is on field assignment and will not be recalled until she receives the supporting documentation of our claim.” Basq removed the camera patch from over his eye. The Witness moved forward, holding out her hand so Basq could drop the patch into it without doing more than glance at her.

Paral felt a brief flash of envy at the Ambassador’s control.

“This is most likely a delaying tactic. We cannot permit the artifact to remain in the hands of outsiders.”

Hope and worry both tugged at Paral. If Basq was so far wrapped up in the failure of his excursion to make such a remark in front of the Witness, he was not thinking clearly right now. But it also meant things had gone very badly. Paral suddenly felt how alone he was even more intensely than he felt the Witness’s regard.

“We need to contract satellite observation time to locate her whereabouts.” Basq sat in the chair in front of the trio of comm boards, but didn’t raise his hands to the keys. “Find out if the Gardens can be held accountable to the Diet for misrepresentation, possibly theft.”

Inspiration shot through Paral and, just for a moment, the cobweb sensation fell away from him. “A suggestion, Ambassador.”

“Yes?” Basq turned toward him so that Paral had to look his master full in the face.

Look humble, Paral instructed himself, and a little embarrassed. “It’s not entirely proper. I have… friends stationed at one of the observation posts. If I relayed the request to them, they might be willing to start the search before the allotment request comes in… I could post myself at the station and relay any information to you immediately…”

Basq didn’t say anything. He was ever mindful of the Witness, even more than Paral was. The camera set over her right eye gleamed even blacker than her skin. Paral’s palms began to sweat, but there was nothing to do but wait while Basq weighed propriety against emergency.

Just a little nudge, thought Paral, drawing justification from Caril’s comments about how susceptible Basq was to prodding.

“I recognize this is irregular, however, Amaiar Gardens may attempt to transfer her, or she may desert the premises…” He let the sentence trail off.

It had been enough. “Proceed, Beholden.”

Paral made obeisance, partially so he did not have to look at the Witness. “Yes, Ambassador.”

Paral made his escape as coolly as he could manage. One of the station’s enclosed private cars waited out on the street. He had an hour to spare, maybe two before Basq wondered what had happened to him. It would take that long for Basq to put together the documentation for Zur-Iyal ki Maliad, in case he could find no legal discrepancies in her conduct and was forced to proceed on her terms. Paral could relay his improper request to the station en route to the Shessel Embassy. The plan was in motion. All was working smoothly.

He just wished he could shake the feeling of the Witness’s eyes from off his skin for one moment more.