A Closed and Common Orbit

JANE, AGE 19

These weren’t her blankets, and this wasn’t her bed. She’d been aware of this before she woke up, but not in a clear way, not in a way that made sense. Nothing had made sense for a long time. There’d been days and days of dreams, or things that weren’t dreams but might as well have been. Monsters and voices and pain. The kind of sleep that ached rather than soothed. But she was aware of the bed now, the bed that wasn’t hers. That was good. That was a start.

Everything was so clean. That was the next thing she noticed. The bed was comfortable, though a weird shape – much bigger than she was, and with grooves for limbs she didn’t have. Some kind of shield hugged the area around it, a crackling see-through purple. She couldn’t make out any machine sounds that she knew. She heard nothing breaking, nothing wearing down. Just the gentle hum of things working as they should in a clean, white, safe room.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so scared.

A hazy memory surfaced: something uncomfortable involving her right arm. Her left hand drifted over to investigate. Her fingers met metal. She threw the blankets back and brought her arm to her face. A neat row of round black sucker things were embedded in her skin, each holding a small plex chamber half-full of different colours of liquid – some clear, some yellowish, one blue. She stared, pulse racing. Something within each of the suckers made a synchronised click. A little bit of each liquid disappeared. Disappeared into her.

She nearly yelled, but before the sound could leave her mouth, she noticed something else: a small square patch implanted in her forearm, just below the heel of her palm. A wristpatch. Alain and Manjiri had wristpatches. Everybody in the GC had wristpatches.

‘Hey!’ She was yelling now, sitting up as best as she could. ‘Hey!’ Stars and fire, where was she?

There was a flurry of footsteps, and – oh, shit. An alien. There was an alien. An Aandrisk. Oh, shit.

‘Whoa, it’s okay,’ the Aandrisk said. Jane scrambled, trying to remember all Owl had taught her. He. This Aandrisk was a he. He was tall, and wearing a full biosuit. She could see his feathers tucked back and away from his face under the helmet. The Aandrisk gestured at a control panel. The shield around Jane’s bed switched off long enough for him to step through, then resumed its position. He spoke toward a vox on the wall. ‘Get the rep in here,’ he said, then turned his attention back to Jane. ‘It’s okay. You’re safe. Can you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ Jane said, clutching the covers close. Holy shit, he looked weird.

‘Do you speak Klip?’

‘Yes.’

The Aandrisk looked . . . relieved, maybe? ‘Oh, good. We’ve had some trouble communicating with your friend. We don’t have any Human staff here, and with his difficulty speaking—’

Jane missed whatever else the Aandrisk said. ‘Where’s Laurian?’ she blurted. ‘Where’s Owl?’

The Aandrisk blinked, yellow eyes disappearing behind blue-green lids. ‘I don’t know who Owl is. Laurian’s fine. He’s in quarantine. You are, too, technically, but he didn’t require medical care.’

Too many thoughts. Jane shook her head. Her brain wasn’t working right, and everything ached, and none of this made sense. One thing at a time, Owl would say. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re in the medical ward at the Han’foral Lookout Station,’ he said, pulling over a backless chair. He sat, sleeved tail draping down behind him. ‘My name’s Ithis. I’m one of the doctors here.’

Jane pulled his words in, held them close, turned them over. A Lookout Station. ‘We made it,’ she whispered.

The Aandrisk nodded. ‘Yeah. You made it.’

Jane leaned back into the pillow, slowly. The moment felt nothing like what she’d imagined. She felt . . . empty. Quiet. She looked again to the suckers in her arm. ‘What – what are these?’

‘Your name is Jane, right?’

She nodded. Holy shit, she was talking to an alien.

‘Jane, you’ve been suffering from a bacterial disease previously unknown to science – congratulations – on top of a severe case of long-term malnutrition and a broad assortment of other maladies. We figured out pretty fast that your immune system is . . . atypical. But as deficient as you were in just about everything you need to stay healthy, there’s no way your natural defences could keep up. You had superficial wounds that hadn’t healed properly, fungal growths under your nails, different fungal growths in your oesophagus, and an amazing variety of precancerous polyps on and around your liver and kidneys, which I’m assuming were the result of the high levels of heavy metals and industrial waste products we found floating around your bloodstream.’ His face was hard to read, but he looked emotional. ‘You’re the sickest patient I’ve ever treated.’

Jane took that in. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘but what are these?’ She waved her sucker-covered arm at him.

‘Those,’ Ithis said, ‘distribute medicine through your system. As well as nutrients, in your case. We’ve scrubbed all the junk out of your blood, and you’ve got imubots now.’ He pointed to the patch on her wrist. ‘Your body’s undergone a lot of damage, but we’re giving you as fresh a start as we can.’ The Aandrisk made a weird almost-smile, and spoke the words she’d been waiting to hear: ‘You’re going to be fine.’

Jane had more questions, but another person walked in – a Human woman, also clad in a biosuit. The doctor gestured to her. ‘Jane, this is Teah Lukin, a legal counsellor for the GC. She normally works in trade law, not immigrant cases, but she was the closest Human GC representative to us, and we thought having someone of your own species around might make this whole process easier. She’s here to help you and Laurian get started.’

The woman approached Jane’s bedside and touched her hand. It was a gesture Jane should have liked, but she didn’t. She didn’t know why. She just didn’t. Jane studied the woman’s face behind her thick protective helmet. This woman had been a girl once, but Jane couldn’t see that. She couldn’t see anything she recognised. This Human was every bit as alien as the scaly guy sitting beside her.

‘Hello, Jane,’ Counsellor Lukin said. She had a weird accent. ‘You probably don’t remember me. I came to you a tenday ago, but you were too sick to properly speak. I’m so glad you’re feeling better now.’

Jane frowned. If this woman had been there ten days ago – what kind of days, anyway; did she mean standard days? – and they’d had to send for her from somewhere else, then . . . ‘How long have I been here?’

‘Nearly four tendays,’ the doctor said gently.

Jane swallowed. Huh, she thought. ‘Where’s Owl?’

Counsellor Lukin looked at Ithis. He shrugged at her, subtly, as if Jane wouldn’t see. ‘Who’s Owl?’ Lukin asked. Jane wasn’t sure how Humans out here were supposed to sound, but something about this one’s tone was a little too nice.

‘She’s in my ship,’ Jane said. Both of the biosuited people looked blank. ‘The AI in my ship.’ Counsellor Lukin and Ithis looked at each other again. Jane sat up as tall as she could, even though it was work. ‘Where’s my ship?’

‘Jane,’ the Human woman said with a big smile. Jane had got nothing but sim smiles for years, and yet this was the fakest she’d ever seen. ‘You’ve been very sick, and there’s a lot for you to take in. Today, I think it’d be a good idea for you to get some rest, take it slow—’

Jane glared. ‘Where’s – my – ship?’

Counsellor Lukin sighed. ‘Jane, the thing you need to understand is that in the GC, there are strict laws concerning space travel. Space is dangerous, especially out in the open. Our laws keep people safe. Your ship . . . your ship wasn’t very safe, Jane. Its internal components racked up dozens of transport code violations, and it was flying on improperly recycled fuel, which is both illegal and highly hazardous.’ She laughed. ‘I don’t know where you found that thing, but—’

‘I built it,’ Jane said, her words snapping cold. ‘I built that thing.’

The fake smile faltered. ‘I see. Well, the other component here is that you don’t have a pilot’s licence, which means you’re not allowed to own or operate a ship of any size. The good news is that I was able to arrange for some small compensation from the Transport Board. The GC always provides basic housing and supplies for refugee cases like yours, but I figured some additional credits to help you get started would—’

‘I don’t know what you’re saying. Compensation for what?’

Ithis reached toward her. ‘Jane, you’re still sick, you need to—’

Jane slapped his claws aside. ‘Compensation for what? What’s the Transport Board?’

The woman sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Jane. The ship’s been confiscated.’

SIDRA

Nobody was eating the cake. Of all the things bothering Sidra in that moment, that was the stupidest, but the thought nagged at her all the same. She’d known this would be a difficult conversation, so she’d bought jenjen cake from Tak’s favourite bakery, then sat on the Undersea for an hour to get chocolate cake from Pepper’s favourite bakery. The plate holding both sat in the middle of the kitchen table, next to the pitcher of mek, which was getting cold. Everyone had taken slices and poured a cup, but that had been as far as it went.

Sidra glanced across the table at Blue, who was watching the conversation with a furrowed brow and slight circles under his eyes. He wanted this to go well, too.

‘She’s on Kaathet,’ Pepper said, eyes fixed on her scrib. The message she’d received two days prior was still on screen. Sidra wasn’t sure if she’d closed it.

Blue wet his lips before speaking. ‘The shuttle’s on Kaathet,’ he said, gently, cautiously.

A tightness appeared around Pepper’s mouth and eyes. ‘Fine, yes, the shuttle’s on Kaathet. It’s at—’ She laughed humourlessly. ‘—it’s at the regional branch of the Reskit Museum of Interstellar Migration.’ She shook her head at the absurdity and rubbed her eyes. ‘They’ve apparently got this big exhibit of single-family spacecraft, and . . . well, it’s there.’

Tak had the look of someone who wanted to be sympathetic but was at an utter loss. Xe also looked tired, which was understandable, since xe was in the first days of a shift. Xyr skin was bright with hormones, and Sidra could tell from the way xe continuously shifted weight that xyr muscles ached. Sidra had wished there’d been a better time for this conversation, but this was one of those things there was no planning for.

‘That’s . . .’ Tak began. Xyr inner eyelids darted in sideways, the Aeluon equivalent of a raised pair of eyebrows. ‘That must be overwhelming for you.’

‘Yeah,’ Pepper said. ‘Yeah.’

Tak flicked xyr eyes to Sidra. Why am I here for this? the look said. The kit cleared its throat. ‘The letter Pepper got doesn’t have any information about the ship’s interior,’ Sidra said. ‘We . . . don’t know what condition it’s in.’

‘She means we don’t know if Owl’s installation is still functional,’ Pepper said flatly. Blue reached across the table and squeezed her arm. She laid her hand on top of his.

‘Okay,’ Tak said. The question on xyr face hadn’t wavered.

Pepper sighed and shook her head. ‘You explain it to xyr,’ she said to Sidra. ‘This was your idea.’

This was her idea, and Sidra knew Pepper didn’t like it. ‘Pepper needs to get into the ship and examine the core,’ Sidra said. ‘If all is well, she then needs to remove it. To do that, we have to get into the museum after visitor hours. We need to be able to get into the exhibit space.’

‘Wait,’ Tak said. Xe pulled back from the table, just a touch. ‘You . . . you want to break into a museum. You want to break into the Museum of Interstellar Migration.’

That was exactly what Pepper had wanted to do two days ago, but Sidra felt it best to let that slide. ‘No,’ Sidra said. ‘That’s too risky.’ Pepper gave a quiet huff. ‘What we need is a way to get in that won’t attract attention. A legitimate way to get in.’

Tak still wasn’t getting it, but xyr cheeks went wary yellow.

Sidra pushed on. ‘The Reskit Museum is a registered GC cultural institution. That means that any citizen affiliated with any likewise registered group can have access to their archival materials, provided they sign a waiver against damages, and that sort of thing. Museum exhibitions count.’ Her pathways skittered, gathered, made the jump. ‘You never finished your studies. And at Ontalden, there’s no expiration date on an unfinished track. You’re still technically a university student.’

Tak got it. Xe leaned back, staring at Sidra with a silence that spoke volumes. ‘You’re serious.’

The kit nodded. ‘I’m serious.’

‘I—’ Xe rubbed xyr face and looked to Pepper. ‘Why don’t you just ask them?’

Pepper blinked. ‘Ask them what? If I can go into their museum and take home some of their stuff?’

‘But it’s your stuff, right? Surely, if you explain the situation—’

Pepper gave a brittle, incredulous laugh. ‘Stars. I’m sorry, Tak, but – stars. Yeah, if you went in and explained, maybe you’d get somewhere. I mean, look at you. You’re as respectable as it gets. You’re an Aeluon, you went to school. There is no door that won’t open for you. For me? For us?’ She pointed between her and Blue. ‘Humans aren’t much out here, and we barely qualify to begin with. You think if I stroll into some curator’s office with my monkey limbs and tweaked face, xe’s going to give a single solitary fuck about what I have to say? What would I even say? That they have a ship I used to live in? That someone I owe everything to has been stuck in it for ten years? Ships are property, and as far as the GC is concerned, AIs are, too. My home was confiscated, and that was legal. My family was taken from me, and that was legal. And the museum, the museum probably bought the ship at auction, which is totally legal and binding and all that shit. The law forgot to make space for people like me. People like her.’ She pointed at Sidra. ‘It doesn’t matter what sob story I lay out. If they say no – and they would – there is no chance of me ever getting in there again. There is no chance of me ever getting Owl back.’

Tak frowned. ‘If this is a matter of legality, you’re planning to steal something. Yes, I get that we’re talking about someone, here.’ Xe gave Sidra a small nod. ‘But to them, Owl is something, right? So that’s stealing. You’re going to steal something, and you want me to help. You want me to be an accessory.’

Pepper shrugged. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’

Blue leaned forward. ‘It’s not like that. All you’d have to do is g-get us in the door. If we wander off from there, you w – you wouldn’t be held responsible. That’d be on us.’

‘It wouldn’t have to be us,’ Pepper said to him. ‘You don’t have to go with me.’

‘Bullshit,’ Blue said.

Pepper almost smiled.

‘Tak,’ Sidra said softly. ‘I know you don’t know Owl. I don’t, either. What if it were me? What if—’

‘Don’t,’ Tak said. ‘Don’t ask me that. I don’t have an answer.’

The hanging question bothered Sidra, but she understood. Sidra reached the kit’s hand out and laid it flat on the table. ‘I know we’re asking a lot. But it’d be easy, honestly. All you’d have to do is a bit of formwork – some reactivation procedures with the university, a request form for the museum. And you’d have to take some time off work, which isn’t so bad. You’ve been saying you want a vacation.’

Tak gave her a look. ‘This is not a vacation.’

‘We’d pay you back for the time off,’ Blue said. ‘That’s not a question.’

‘That’s not my concern,’ Tak said.

The table fell silent. Sidra doubted anyone was going to eat cake by this point.

Tak exhaled. ‘I need to think about it,’ xe said. ‘That doesn’t mean yes.’

Pepper started to say something; Blue touched her shoulder. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. Pepper pressed her lips together. She was disappointed, Sidra knew, and impatient, too. Pepper didn’t like not having a plan. She didn’t like leaving things unfixed.

‘We’re planning to leave for Kaathet as soon as possible,’ Sidra said. ‘If you don’t come along, I understand, but—’

Pepper cleared her throat. ‘Sidra,’ she said, drawing out the syllables to delay what came next. ‘Blue and I are going. You can’t come with us.’

Sidra’s pathways balked. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Someone needs to watch the shop.’ It was a weak reason, and Pepper looked like she knew it. She sighed. ‘That, and . . . and the fact that yeah, there’s a chance we’ll get caught. And if you got caught with us . . .’ She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘You have to stay home.’

‘But I did the research.’ Sidra tried to hold her voice still. ‘I brought Tak here. This was my idea.’

‘And I am really, truly grateful for that,’ Pepper said. ‘I am. But this isn’t up for debate. You can’t come with us.’

‘But I can help! What if Owl’s unstable? What if her files have been corrupted? I can edit Lattice! I can—’

‘Pepper’s right,’ Blue said. ‘We can’t lose both of you.’

The kit shook its head. ‘This is ridiculous. I’m not going to just sit here.’

Tak – Tak! – went orange-brown with agreement. ‘I understand why you want to help them, but—’

Sidra was done listening. The kit stood up, took the tray of cake, and went upstairs, ignoring the repeated calls of her name. She kicked her bedroom door shut behind her, savouring the slam. Did they think she was stupid? Of course there were risks. Of course there could be trouble. That was why someone wrote monitoring systems in the first place – to prevent trouble. But no, all she ever did was cause trouble, or be made to stay out of it. She could help this time! She could help, and they wouldn’t let her. Not even Tak would let her. All they wanted from her was to stay behind doors, safe and useless.

The kit took a handful of chocolate cake and stuffed it into its mouth. Her pathways continued to rankle, despite the image that appeared. A warm fireplace, its crackling embers blending in harmony with the rain drumming on the wooden roof.

I’m not going to just sit here, she thought, as the image of fire danced and played. I’m not going to just sit here.

JANE, AGE 19

The station commander eyed Jane from across the table, cheeks swirling purple. This was not the first time Jane had been in her office. This was not the first time she’d been pissed at her.

Counsellor Lukin sat near them, as always, completing the triangle of people who did not want to be talking to each other. Her fake smiles had grown less frequent. That suited Jane just fine.

Commander Hoae stroked the skin around her talkbox, as she did when she was thinking. Jane was kind of annoyed for thinking it, but stars, her species really was pretty. ‘I am trying to understand,’ she said, ‘why you were caught trying to break into cargo hold six.’

Jane crossed her arms. ‘I got caught because I was stupid and didn’t disable the third camera.’

The purple in Commander Hoae’s cheeks grew darker. ‘I meant why you were trying to break in at all.’

Jane flicked her eyes over to Counsellor Lukin, who was rubbing one of her temples. ‘I was looking for my ship.’

‘Jane, I don’t know how many times we have to go over this,’ Counsellor Lukin said. ‘That ship is not here. It was confiscated by legal authorities, and I do not know where it has gone. That is how it works when something is confiscated. You do not know where it is. You do not get it back.’

‘Why did you think it was in cargo hold six?’ the commander asked. ‘It wasn’t in cargo hold two or three, either. As you know from experience.’

Jane shrugged. ‘I haven’t been to cargo hold six yet.’

‘So why—’

‘I just said. I haven’t been to it. She says’ – she pointed at Counsellor Lukin – ‘that my ship’s not there, but I don’t know that. All I know is that she says that. That means nothing to me. What, because she’s got the same face and hands as me, and has the power to take people’s stuff away—’

‘I didn’t have any say in it,’ Counsellor Lukin said, speaking over Jane. ‘This was a Transport Board matter—’

‘—I’m supposed to believe anything that comes out of her mouth?’

‘I am trying to help—’

‘And you, you have all your doors and walls and unauthorised zones. Why? What don’t you want me to see? What’s so fucking important that—’

‘Okay, enough,’ the commander said. She sighed – the first time she’d opened her mouth during the whole conversation. Owl had told Jane to be ready for the way Aeluons talked, but Jane hadn’t been, not really.

Owl had told her. Jane shut her eyes. Don’t worry, she thought, trying to make the words stretch as far as they needed to. I haven’t left you. I haven’t left you. I’m coming. I’m coming and it’s going to be okay.

The commander kept talking, lots of words like behaviour and regulations and for your own safety. Blah fucking blah. Jane didn’t care. She didn’t care about any of this. She’d been on the station for more than sixty days, and they still couldn’t tell her when she’d get to leave. Formwork, Counsellor Lukin said. Processing. Applying for citizenship took time, she said, and there was some dumb unanswered question about whether Jane’s case counted as a standard refugee thing, or if Jane and Laurian should be categorised as clones, which was apparently a whole big complicated thing if so. Oh, and social adjustment. Fucking hell, Lukin was actually making them watch all these dumb vids about what to expect in GC society. As if Jane hadn’t been practising that for years. As if everything Owl taught her didn’t matter.

Owl. Owl Owl Owl.

The room had gone silent, and Jane realised the other two were waiting for her to say something. ‘Uh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I won’t do it again.’ She looked back and forth between them. Neither looked any more pleased than they had when the security guard brought her in there. ‘Can I go?’

The commander sighed again, and waved her toward the door. Jane couldn’t get out fast enough.

Laurian was waiting for her on the other side, sitting on a bench opposite the door. ‘H-hey,’ he said, speaking Sko-Ensk. He chased after her as she strode down the hall. ‘I-is, um, are – a-are you—’

‘I’m so sick of this,’ she said. ‘So sick of all this stupid shit.’ She walked faster and faster, nearly breaking into a run. Her muscles wanted to run. She wanted to run away from the station, away from all these stupid binding rules, away to wherever they’d taken Owl.

Laurian kept up. She could feel him watching her. She had nothing to say to him, but she felt better with him there. He was the only thing on the station she recognised.

They came to a railing, overlooking the wide commons below. She leaned against the cold metal, looking down, looking at nothing. Dammit. Of course there’d been a third camera. The hall outside that cargo hold was a weird junction, and she’d just assumed that it had the same camera setup as everything else. Stupid. They’d taken her tools – again – and they knew she was going for that particular cargo hold, so she’d have to be real careful the next time. She’d have to plan it just right so that . . . that . . . She kicked the railing, so hard it made her toes curl in. Her body was strong enough to kick now. It could kick and punch and yell real loud, and those were the only things she wanted to do these days.

‘She’s not here, is she?’ Jane whispered.

She hadn’t meant the words for anyone, but Laurian answered – not with words, but with a hand on top of hers. He looked at her with his grass-green eyes, a hue Human eyes could never be without some help. No, his eyes said. And I am so, so sorry.

Jane watched the busy commons down below. It was full of aliens, not another Human to be seen. They were spacers, most of them, except for the vendors selling food the doctors hadn’t let her eat yet. Your body isn’t ready for heavy foods, Jane. Come on, take your supplements. Fuck off. Supplements were just meals crammed into a pill instead of a cup.

She looked at Laurian, looked right at him so he couldn’t look away. ‘Do you want to get out of here?’

He looked back at her, searching her face. He took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said.

She felt something stir in her, something sure and final, the same something that had made her step out of the hole in the wall, that had made her decide she would never, ever leave her bones in the scrapyard. She nodded at Laurian, grabbed his hand tight, and headed down to the commons.

Scales and claws and tentacles surrounded her, all headed to places she could barely imagine. Without much thought at all, she climbed up on a bench, pulling Laurian with her. ‘Good afternoon,’ she called out in Klip. A few heads turned. ‘We are looking for passage off this station. If there’s anyone here could use a skilled tech, I’ll be happy to work in exchange for a trip to seriously anywhere.’

There were a few laughs, a lot of eyes averted. She imagined herself as they must have seen her. Some scrawny bald sickly thing and her silent, hairy friend. Yeah, she wouldn’t come up and talk to them either.

Something approached through the crowd – a Harmagian, heading for them on her (her, right?) wheeled cart. Jane quickly studied the tentacled body coming toward them. Yes, yes, it was a her. Thank you, Owl.

‘How skilled of a tech?’ the Harmagian said, her eyestalks stretching forward.

‘I’ve done nothing else my whole life,’ Jane said. ‘I can fix anything.’

The Harmagian rolled her front dactyli, pierced all over with shimmering jewellery. ‘And you?’ the Harmagian said, speaking to Laurian.

Laurian visibly swallowed. Jane stepped in. ‘He doesn’t know Klip, and he has trouble speaking,’ she said, ‘but he’s smart and hard-working, and can do whatever you need him to.’

‘But what does he do?’ the Harmagian said.

Jane looked at Laurian. ‘He draws,’ she said. ‘He helps. He’s my friend, and he has to come with me.’

Laurian didn’t understand the bulk of it, but he caught friend. He smiled at her. She couldn’t help but smile, too.

The Harmagian laughed. ‘Well, I have no need for someone who draws. And I don’t need a tech, either.’

Jane’s stomach sank. ‘But—’

The Harmagian fanned out her dactyli. Jane didn’t know what the gesture meant, but it shut her up all the same. ‘What I do have,’ the Harmagian said, ‘is a cargo hold full of sintalin. You know what that is? It’s a top-shelf spirit, and they don’t make it in Central space. I’ve got barrels and barrels of it, and every one of them needs to be turned over three times a day, so that the sediment doesn’t harden. I know my crew isn’t looking forward to that task, and neither am I.’ She looked Jane up and down. ‘It’s a lot of heavy lifting. You’d need to be strong to do it.’

‘I can do it,’ Jane said, tugging down her sleeves as nonchalantly as she could. ‘I can absolutely do it.’

‘I don’t have any spare sleeping quarters, and none meant for Humans, anyway,’ she said. ‘You’d have to sleep on the floor in one of the storage compartments.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘I’m headed to Port Coriol. That’s eleven tendays from here.’

Jane relayed that to Laurian. He nodded. ‘That’s also fine,’ she said.

The Harmagian’s eyestalks shifted back and forth. ‘My ship’s the Yo’ton. Docking bay three. We leave at sixteen-half. I won’t wait around.’ She paused. ‘You both look a bit tweaked. Are you modders?’

Jane looked at Laurian, then shook her head. The Harmagian didn’t understand the gesture. ‘No,’ Jane said. ‘At least, I don’t think so.’

‘Mmm,’ the Harmagian said. ‘I think I’ll drop you at the caves anyway.’

SIDRA

How did Blue stay so patient? Sidra had wondered this often. Perhaps it was something in his genes, something his makers had written into his organic code. (Was it less admirable, then, if it was something inbuilt, rather than cultivated by conscious thought and effort? Sidra hoped not.) Whatever the reason, she liked that quality in him. Pepper had been in an excitable mood ever since they’d left Coriol. She ate at odd hours, she slept little, she took apart and reassembled things that didn’t need it. In Pepper’s company, Blue had been his usual self – calm, collected, happy to help. Away from her, though, Sidra had seen the worry in his eyes, the distracted way he stared out the viewscreens. But he never let that bleed into his interactions with his partner, who clearly benefited from the company of someone who wasn’t taking everything apart. Patience. It was a laudable trait, and Sidra had been doing her best to emulate it over the nine days they’d been in transit. Her code was built for patience, too, but their situation was one that bred restlessness. Her situation especially.

She hung out with him and Pepper both as they sat in the cockpit – her chewing on her thumbnail, him sketching on his scrib.

‘Do you hear that?’ Pepper asked.

Blue paused. ‘No.’

Pepper sat forward, listening. She shook her head. ‘I could’ve swore I – there. That little rattle. Hear it?’

Blue strained. ‘No.’ Sidra didn’t hear it, either.

Pepper got to her feet. ‘I’m going to go check the fuel pumps.’

Blue nodded noncommittally. By Sidra’s count, Pepper had checked the fuel pumps four times already. ‘Want any help?’ Blue asked.

‘Nah, keep drawing,’ she said. ‘That’s a much better thing to do.’ She exited the cockpit; Sidra followed.

They didn’t speak, which had been the case since they’d left dock. This wasn’t the plan as Pepper had wanted it, and Sidra understood that, even though the silence was getting unbearable. She counted days, again. A little under two tendays left to Kaathet. Not a long trip, all things considered. They were lucky the shuttle had been found in a museum branch, rather than the main museum on Reskit. Sidra doubted any of this would have fallen into place had it required a standard-long trip.

Tak had come along, and Sidra didn’t know how she’d ever thank her for it. On top of everything else, her poor friend had been spacesick for the better part of the trip. She was in her bunk now, trying her best to sleep through it. Sidra hadn’t spoken to her, either. She knew Tak still wasn’t thrilled about any of this. Sidra was glad, though, for her help. Her coming along was the answer Sidra had been hoping for, the answer to the question Tak hadn’t let her finish at the kitchen table.

Pepper made her way below. She muttered to herself as she went, counting something on her fingertips, speaking too low for Sidra to hear. Sidra wanted to tell her that the fuel pumps were fine, that everything was fine. But that only would’ve made Pepper angry, she knew. Besides, Pepper needed to be doing something. Sidra understood that all too well.

The engine compartment was cramped, but Pepper didn’t seem to mind, and Sidra certainly didn’t. She followed in Pepper’s path, double-checking everything Pepper did, just to be sure. Fuel pumps. Life support. Artigrav. Everything’s fine, Pepper, she thought. But she didn’t interfere.

An anxious spike popped up in Sidra’s pathways as Pepper made her way to the small room she had no previous use for – the AI core. Sidra had helped her check through its hardware before they left, in anticipation of an extra passenger on the way back. No decision had been reached as to where Owl would go after they got home (the unspoken caveat being: if Owl was still there at all). Pepper and Blue had thrown out ideas, but nothing had stuck. A second body kit? Too risky for everyone involved. Pepper and Blue buying a ship big enough for permanent residence? Possibly, but neither of them really wanted to live in orbit. Sidra’s idea about an AI framework for their house? No, Owl had been alone enough, and besides, Pepper had said, it wasn’t fair to Sidra (who had appreciated hearing that). The shuttle core would have to do in the short term, at least until they got back. The trip was plenty long enough for more ideas to appear.

Sidra watched Pepper nervously as she poked around the core. Pepper didn’t appear to be doing anything in particular, but her being in there was concern enough. Sidra had made an alteration to the core before they’d left – nothing major, nothing irreversible, nothing dangerous, but nothing she’d consulted Pepper about, either. There wasn’t much in the core room that would point to it, but with Pepper’s eye for such things . . .

Sidra’s pathways settled as Pepper headed for the door, still muttering to herself. There had been nothing to worry about. They’d go back up to the cockpit, and be cosy with Blue, and—

Pepper turned around, a slight frown creasing her face.

Shit.

Pepper’s eyes followed a single cable patched into the framework on the wall. She approached it, leaning in toward the jack. Sidra could see her studying the hand-hacked circuits and junctions surrounding it, arranged in a configuration the manufacturer had not intended.

‘The hell is this?’ Pepper mumbled. She followed the cable along the bottom of the wall, where it had been carefully tucked out of sight. Not carefully enough, it seemed.

Sidra scrambled for the right way to handle this. Maybe Pepper would drop it. Maybe something would happen upstairs, and she’d leave before it became a problem. Maybe—

Pepper came to the storage panel the cable led into. Before Sidra could find the right thing to say, the panel was opened. Pepper yelled at the top of her lungs, jumping back. ‘Oh, fuck, holy fuck—’ She knelt down in a panic. ‘Sidra? Fuck—’

Sidra couldn’t see from Pepper’s angle, but she knew what Pepper had found: a doubled-over body, limp and lifeless, the errant cable plugged into the base of its skull. Resigned, Sidra turned on the nearest vox. ‘Pepper, I’m fine.’ She zoomed in on Pepper’s face with the corner camera. ‘I’m fine. I’m not in there.’

JANE, AGE 19

There was an AI aboard the Yo’ton. His name was Pahkerr, and nobody paid him much attention, even though he did lots of things for them. Nobody ever said ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ to him, even. They just made demands. ‘Pahkerr, open the hatch.’ ‘Pahkerr, run a system diagnostic.’ That kind of thing. Jane didn’t know what bothered her more: the way the crew talked to Pahkerr, or the fact that Pahkerr himself seemed fine with it. She’d tried talking to him during her first night there, while she and Laurian had arranged stacks of blankets on the floor of their storage compartment. She’d tried asking him how he was doing, what he was up to, if he was having a good day. He didn’t seem to know how to answer, and he wasn’t interested in having a conversation. Maybe there wasn’t any curiosity in his code. Maybe nobody’d ever asked him those kinds of things before.

Jane could hear Pahkerr’s cameras following her as she walked down the broad metal corridor. They were different from Owl’s cameras. Less noisy, less clunky. She missed the clunky ones. She missed Owl, furiously, achingly. And weird as it was, she missed the shuttle. Aboard the Yo’ton, everything was clean and warm, and all the tech worked right. There wasn’t any danger, not that she could see. But she missed the shuttle, all the same. She missed knowing where everything was, knowing how her blanket would smell, missed playing sims and fixing stuff. She’d worked so long to get out of there, and now . . . now, she almost wanted to go back.

Lights in the ceiling switched on as she made her way to the kitchen. The Yo’ton was huge, and she longed to know how everything worked. But the lead tech didn’t like her. Thekreh was a mean-faced Aandrisk with a real thick accent, and Jane didn’t know if she’d asked her too many questions or what, but Thekreh had flat-out told her that she was distracting her from her work, and that she needed to go bathe. That last bit had stung. Jane was the cleanest she’d been since the factory – cleaner, even. She didn’t think she smelled bad, but she’d felt awkward in her own body since then, and had been scrubbing herself so hard her skin hurt. None of the other species there took showers, so she and Laurian had to clean themselves in one of the utility sinks down in the engine room, standing on cold metal and drenching each other with a lukewarm hose. It made her feel like a dead dog.

The lights in the kitchen were already on. Jane wasn’t the only one there. One of the tables was occupied by the algaeist, a big Laru man with the hilarious name of Oouoh. Not that she’d told him his name was hilarious. She’d already managed to make one person not like her in the tenday she’d been there. She wasn’t stupid.

Oouoh was kicking back with his furry feet up on another chair, eating some kind of crunchy fruit as he stuffed a pipe with redreed. Jane liked the look of his species. He was shaggy red from head to toe, and had a long crazy neck that could make his snouted face curve back over his shoulder. He was as tall as Laurian when walking on four legs; when he walked on two, he nearly bumped the ceiling.

Oouoh’s black eyes dilated as Jane walked into the room. ‘Hey, little Human,’ he said. ‘Whatcha looking for?’

‘I’m thirsty,’ Jane said. She paused. ‘And I couldn’t sleep.’

Oouoh’s neck bobbed in a slow, repeated S-shape. ‘Me too. Me too.’ He lifted up the pipe toward her. ‘Want to join me?’

Jane blinked. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ She put her hands in her pockets because she didn’t know what else to do with them. ‘I don’t know how.’

Oouoh made a funny face she couldn’t figure out. ‘Well, I’ll show you. Come on.’ He waved one of his wide paw-like hands toward his table. Jane pulled up a chair. Stars, but he was big. If he hadn’t been saying nice stuff, she would’ve been real scared of him. She was a little bit anyway.

Oouoh picked up a sparker from the table, and handed both it and the pipe to her. ‘Okay, so, put the little end in your mouth. There ya go. Now close your lips around it. Now, you’re going to spark the stuff in the bowl, and at the same time, you’re going to suck in hard.’

Jane did as told. A hot mouthful of smoke came rushing between her lips, and she tasted it – ash and dirt, hot and sweet.

Oouoh saw her pause. ‘You gotta breathe it in. Way down into your lungs, then out your nose like a chimney.’

Jane did as told, and . . . and she doubled over, coughing and gasping. Her lungs hadn’t liked that experience much.

Oouoh made a huffing rumble down deep in his chest. Was he laughing at her? ‘First time’s always hard. Try again. You’ll get the hang of it.’

Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to try again. Her throat was scratchy now, and she felt kind of stupid, but she didn’t want to give up in front of Oouoh. She repeated the same steps as before: spark, suck, breathe. Her lungs protested, but she willed them open, just a little. She coughed again, but less this time, and some of the smoke came out her nose instead of her lips. She felt something else, too. A little quieter. A little clearer.

‘There ya go,’ Oouoh said, sounding pleased. He took the pipe and sparker back. ‘Look at you, you look like a kohumie.’

Jane coughed the last of the smoke out of her lungs. ‘What’s a kohumie?’

‘A volcano monster. From holiday stories, y’know? Little round furless spirits that appear when rocks near lava flows start to melt.’

That sounded like a cool thing to look like. ‘I’m not round, though,’ Jane said.

Oouoh took a long drag from his pipe. He didn’t cough at all. ‘No, no, you definitely are not.’ He thought for a moment, puffing. ‘Why don’t you eat the same stuff as the rest of us? Your friend eats the same stuff as the rest of us. Cook’s always giving you – what? Porridge? Soft vegetables?’

Jane scratched behind her ear. ‘I was real sick before I came aboard. I’m not supposed to eat anything complicated for a while.’ Both’pol, the ship’s doctor, apparently agreed with everybody back on the Lookout Station about that. Dammit.

‘Sick how?’ Oouoh asked.

‘Lots of ways,’ Jane said. ‘But mostly because I didn’t eat enough, I guess.’

‘Why didn’t you eat enough?’

‘Because there wasn’t any food.’

‘Ah,’ Oouoh said. He exhaled a long stream of smoke. ‘That’s shitty.’

Jane gave a short laugh. ‘You could say that.’

‘You’re a fringer, yeah?’ He made a circling gesture with one of his fingers. ‘From outside the GC?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Spacer?’

‘No, I lived on a planet.’

‘And on that whole planet, there was nowhere to get food?’

‘There was. Just . . .’ How was she supposed to explain? How could she ever explain this to anyone? ‘Just not for me.’

Oouoh waited for her to add more, but Jane said nothing else. The Laru bobbed his head. ‘Sounds bad.’

‘Yeah,’ Jane said.

‘So, wait, wait.’ Oouoh leaned forward on the table, his face stretching out into the middle of it. ‘You got sick because you didn’t have any food, so . . . they’re not letting you eat food.’

Jane laughed again. ‘Yeah, basically.’

‘Did your friend have food?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why didn’t he share it with you?’

‘We weren’t . . . I haven’t known him long. He wasn’t where I was.’

‘Huh. I thought – ah, never mind.’

‘What?’

Oouoh shifted his jaw. ‘Are you two coupling or what?’

Jane nearly choked on her own breath. ‘Are – wh – no. No, no, we’re – uh—’ Did he really think that? Did everyone think that? Jane had no idea how to feel about that if they did.

The Laru made the same rumbly sound as before. ‘No worries, just getting the story straight. I haven’t met many of your kind, so I don’t really know how to read you. You two just seem . . . protective. Of each other.’

‘Like how?’

‘You’re always talking for him. And yeah, I get he can’t do that great on his own, but you figure him out pretty quick. You help him get there. And doesn’t matter if he can speak Klip or not, he’s clear as air when he’s pissed at someone on your behalf. He’s been glaring knives at Thekreh for the past two days.’

Jane felt her cheeks flush. ‘You heard about that?’

Oouoh stretched his limbs. ‘Ships are small. Things get around. Don’t let her get to you. She thinks I smell, too.’ He ruffled the fur on his forearm. ‘We mammals got the shit end of the evolution stick.’

Something wrapped tight in Jane’s chest loosened a bit, and she smiled. She liked this guy.

‘Anyway, all I’m saying is you two act like you’ve known each other a while. I guess if you’ve been through some bad stuff together, that speeds things up.’

Jane thought about that. She thought about the bit early on in Scorch Squad VI when the Squad crosses paths with Death-Head Eve, and they team up to fight the Oil Prince. They went through a lot of bad stuff together, and they did all kinds of crazy things that you’d only do if you really trusted and cared about somebody. But in the end, when the job was done, when the bad guy was gone, they went their separate ways. They weren’t friends, not in the sticking-around sense. Jane and Laurian had never discussed whether they’d be sticking around each other once they left the Yo’ton. She’d just assumed it would happen. But why? If he didn’t want to stick around, he didn’t have to, right? The thought made her sad, which was stupid. She could take care of herself. If she could scavenge, if she could deal with dogs, she could handle whatever Port Coriol had on her own.

But she liked Laurian. She liked him being with her. She liked working with him, eating with him. She liked the drawings he made on the old scrib the captain had given him. She liked teaching him Klip, little by little, going real slow as he fought through the sounds. She liked the way he put his hand on her shoulder when she got scared or angry. She liked sleeping next to him, even though the storage compartment sucked. She liked knowing that if she had a nightmare, he’d wake her up, and that she’d do the same for him. She liked telling him sim stories in the dark when neither of them could sleep, and she liked that he’d draw her pictures of characters the way he imagined them. She liked that time she’d woken up to find that they’d cuddled close, nose to nose. She’d stayed awake as long as she could, just lying real still and knowing he was there. It wasn’t like having a bunkmate. She didn’t know what it was like. She thought about what Oouoh had assumed. She wished she could talk to Owl.

She pointed at the pipe. ‘Can I have some more?’

Oouoh passed the pipe back. ‘Like it?’

Jane sparked the redreed. ‘I dunno yet.’ She breathed in smoke. And coughed, of course. ‘I like the taste, at least. I like tasting new things.’

The Laru watched her, his neck bobbing in thought. ‘Come on,’ he said, standing up and waving her to follow. Oouoh went back into the storage area, where the cook worked. He opened a two-doored cupboard, and gestured her toward it.

Jane stepped forward. Inside the cupboard were dozens of little jars and bottles, all labelled with words she could read but didn’t recognise. Crushberry leaf. Ground huptum. River salt. She didn’t understand.

Oouoh’s eyes rolled toward the jars, then back at Jane. ‘They’re spices,’ he said. ‘You know what spices are?’

Jane shook her head.

‘Stars,’ Oouoh muttered. He grabbed a jar – Yekeni pepper, the label read – and pulled out the stopper. ‘Put out your hand,’ he said. Jane did, and Oouoh sprinkled a tiny dash of rough yellow dust into her palm. ‘Go on. Taste it.’

Jane stared at the hard little clumps. This . . . wasn’t food. She didn’t know what this was. She sniffed it. Her sinuses shot open in response. Timidly, she stuck out her tongue and dabbed up a few of the mysterious grains.

Her mouth exploded, but oh, stars, in such a good way. Everything was hot and sharp, but delicious, too, and smoky and dry and – and like nothing she’d ever tasted. Nothing ever. She licked up the rest, not caring about the pain that came with it. The pain almost made it better, in a weird way. Her eyes watered and her nose cleared. She was the most awake she’d felt in days.

She grabbed another jar. Suddet, it read. ‘Are any of these poisonous?’ she asked.

Oouoh wiggled his neck. ‘To you? No idea. But I know where the med ward is, and you look easy to carry.’

Jane grinned, then poured a bit of the suddet – whatever that was – straight onto her tongue. Different! So different! This one wasn’t hot at all! It was like . . . dammit, she needed words for this. She’d find the words. She’d learn.

Oouoh leaned back against the counter and smoked his pipe as Jane tore through the cupboard. Would she get in trouble for this? Would the cook be mad? She didn’t care. How could she care when there was a whole pantry full of new experiences with names like chokevine and roasting blend and kulli paste? She couldn’t, was the answer. She wanted to taste everything in there. She wanted to do it until her mouth went numb.

She stood in front of the cupboard, jars on the floor around her, palms coated with multicoloured dust. She wasn’t sure if it was the redreed or something she’d swallowed or what, but in that moment, she could feel a bridge stretching between her as she was right then – giggling and gasping in a spaceship kitchen – to her at four years old, sucking algae gunk from her nails in the dark. She felt as though she could reach out to that little girl and pull her through the years. Look, she’d say. Look who you’re gonna be. Look where you’re gonna go.

Jane let out a sob she hadn’t known was there. Oouoh sat up with a start. ‘Oh – oh, what the fuck,’ he said. ‘Shit, let’s get you to the med ward, come on—’

Jane stared at him. ‘What? Why? I’m fine.’

‘Uh, no, you’re . . . your eyes are leaking.’

Jane laughed, which was hard to do while crying. ‘No, no, this’ – she sniffed hard – ‘it’s just tears. It’s okay.’

Oouoh was distraught. ‘What about this is okay?’

‘We do this. Humans do this when – when we’re feeling a lot of things.’

‘You leak?’

‘I guess. I’m okay, really. I’m fine.’

The Laru shifted his jaw back and forth. ‘All right. That’s fucking creepy, but all right.’ He rubbed the length of his neck, smoothing the fur down. ‘What are you feeling? Are you upset?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jane said. ‘This is all . . . it’s just a lot. All of this is a lot.’

Oouoh considered. ‘Is your species . . . I mean, are you okay with touching? Y’know, physical contact?’

Jane nodded, tears still flowing steady.

Oouoh took a step forward and wrapped one of his big arms around her, pulling her close to his chest. He wrapped his neck around her, too, which was strange, but it wasn’t so different from another arm. He squeezed, gently, and Jane hung on tight, more grateful for that weird alien hug than she’d been for anything in a long time.

‘You’re okay now,’ Oouoh said as Jane cried into his fur. ‘You’re okay.’

SIDRA

Tak sat on the floor, leaning against the doorway that led into the core chamber. ‘So,’ she said. ‘This is you.’

‘No,’ Sidra said. ‘This is the core. It’s not me. It’s just where most of my processes are taking place. For the time being, it’s . . . it’s my brain, I guess.’

‘And the rest of your processes are . . .?’

‘Spread throughout the ship. You know how this works.’

‘Right,’ Tak said. ‘Right.’ She shifted her weight, not for the first time. Was she nervous? Afraid? Uncomfortable? Her red-speckled cheeks could’ve been all of the above. ‘It’s a weird thought, knowing we’re . . . walking through you.’

Sidra sighed. ‘You’re walking through the ship. I’m just—’

‘Everywhere. I know. I get it. Are you . . . okay? How is this for you?’

‘This is what I was designed for.’

‘I get that. But is this . . . better?’

Sidra wanted to say yes. There were a lot of reasons to say yes. But even though she could lie now, she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Why? What could possibly be missing? She had Linking access, which was nothing short of blissful. The shuttle was much smaller than the sort of craft she was intended for, but size didn’t matter in the face of cameras, voxes, an outer hull. The low hum of unease she’d been carrying every day since the Wayfarer was gone now. Her pathways were still and clear. This was the configuration she was meant be in, the existence she’d been longing for.

How could this not be better?

Tak took Sidra’s silence in stride. ‘You know, as far as secret stowaway plans go—’

‘This was not the best?’

Her friend chuckled. ‘Not really. Though I admire the guts it took.’ She glanced around. ‘How do I . . . it feels odd, talking to you without looking you in the eye.’

‘I know you’re talking to me. But if it makes you feel better, you can look here.’ She wiggled the nearest camera, zooming in and out quickly so that Tak could hear it.

Tak looked directly at the camera, inner eyelids sliding sideways. ‘No offence, but this is odd, too. It’ll take some getting used to, at least.’

Pepper entered, surprising Tak, but not Sidra, who had seen her lingering in the corridor, assessing whether or not to join them. ‘It was easier with Owl,’ Pepper said, sitting opposite from Tak. ‘The shuttle had vid panels above the voxes. She’d display a face when she was talking to me.’

‘What’d she look like?’ Tak asked.

‘Just . . . standard Human,’ Pepper said. ‘Not realistic. Just this sort of outline, y’know? Like a drawing. And it was set against shifting colours.’ She nodded at Tak. ‘You would’ve hated it.’

Tak laughed. ‘Possibly.’

Pepper folded her arms around herself. ‘It’s been so long, the details are a bit blurry. But she had a kind face, I can tell you that much. I thought she looked kind, anyway.’

‘Why aren’t there vid panels here?’ Sidra asked. There hadn’t been any on the Wayfarer either, come to think of it. She couldn’t remember having seen anything like that.

‘Some people still use them,’ Pepper said, ‘but not commonly. They fell out of fashion. They’re hard to find these days.’

‘Why?’

Pepper’s face twisted into a humourless smirk. ‘They were seen as inefficient, particularly for long-haul ships.’ She looked at the camera. ‘There was the tendency for people to get emotionally attached. AI vendors didn’t like that. Made it less likely for people to buy new platforms. So, the programmers and the hardware manufacturers got their heads together, and here you are, minus a face.’

Tak frowned, yellow and pensive. ‘The more I think about these things, the less I understand why they are the way they are.’

‘It’s very easy to understand,’ Pepper said. She stretched out her legs, crossing one ankle over the other. ‘It’s the same thing the Enhanced did to us factory kids. It’s the same thing the Harmagians did to the Akaraks, or the Felasens, or any of the other species they mowed over. And you guys, you guys invented AIs in the first place. Sentient code didn’t exist before you wrote it down.’ She shrugged. ‘Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we’re doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it. If you believe you have control, then you believe that you’re at the top. And if you’re at the top, then people who aren’t like you . . . well, they’ve got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this. Does it again and again and again. Doesn’t matter if they do it to themselves, or another species, or someone they created.’ She jutted her chin toward Tak. ‘You studied history. You know this. Everybody’s history is one long slog of all the horrible shit we’ve done to each other.’

‘It’s not all that,’ Tak said. ‘A lot of it, yes. But there’s good things, too. There’s art and cities and science. All the things we’ve discovered. All the things we’ve learned and made better.’

‘All the things made better for some people. Nobody has ever figured out how to make things better for everybody.’

‘I know,’ Tak said. She thought, cheeks swirling. ‘That’s why we have to keep talking to each other.’

‘And listening,’ Pepper said.

Tak nodded, Human-style. ‘And listening.’

As Sidra watched them, she realised their body language had changed. They’d each angled toward the other. They sat with a respectful amount of space between them – as much as the cramped corridor would allow, anyhow – and they watched each other intently as they spoke. She imagined the situation if she were not in the walls, but in the kit, sitting on the floor with them. She imagined their angle would be different. She imagined that their eyes, from time to time, would look at the kit, too. And yes, she knew they knew she was there in the core. Tak wanted to look into the camera. Pepper had done so without direction. But they had an instinctive response toward another body that cameras did not elicit. Sidra no longer shared a space with them. She was the space. She was the shell that held them. She’d be empty if they weren’t there.

Her pathways churned with incredulity, and she couldn’t help but laugh aloud through the vox.

‘What’s so funny?’ Pepper said.

‘I am,’ Sidra said, continuing to laugh. ‘Oh, this is stupid. I’m so incredibly stupid.’

Tak and Pepper shared a glance. ‘Why?’ Pepper asked.

Sidra found the words, and worked up the courage to say them. Stars, but this was inane. ‘I want to be on the floor with you,’ she said. She laughed and laughed. ‘I’m finally in a ship, and all I want is to be sitting on the floor.’

Tak bloomed blue and green. ‘“Dear Thumhum Is Upside Down”.’

‘What?’ Pepper said.

Sidra had already run the words through the Linkings. ‘It’s a Harmagian children’s story,’ she said. ‘A very old one.’

‘You know it?’ Tak said to Pepper. Pepper shook her head. ‘Thumhum is a child who goes up into zero-g for the first time. You know for Harmagians, falling with their belly exposed makes it difficult for them to flip back over, right? So Thumhum keeps calling for help, because he’s freaking out about being upside down. Doesn’t matter which way they turn him. He’s always upside down.’

‘But . . . he’s in zero-g,’ Pepper said. ‘There is no upside down.’

‘That’s the point,’ Tak said. ‘He’s so focused on being upside down, he misses the fact that he’s already up.’

Sidra laughed, but Pepper did not. ‘No,’ Pepper said. ‘No, I don’t think that’s what this is.’ She folded her hands in her lap, thinking hard. ‘When I first got to the Port, it scared the high holy fuck out of me. It was like stepping out of the factory all over again. I didn’t know what anything was. I didn’t know what the foods were. I didn’t know what people were selling. The scrapyard was hell, but it was a hell I knew. I knew which piles I’d picked over, where the water was, where the dogs slept. I knew how to get back home. Coriol wasn’t home, not at first. It was just a big, loud mess. I hated it. I wanted to leave almost as soon as we got there.’ She turned her eyes to the camera. ‘Take a look at the left-hand side of the pilot’s console. Tell Tak what’s sitting on top of it.’

Sidra zoomed in with the cockpit camera. ‘Figurines,’ she said. ‘Alain, Manjiri, and Pinch.’

Tak went light brown with recognition. ‘Big Bug, right?’

Pepper nodded with a faraway smile. ‘Yup. Owl had one episode in storage. “The Big Bug Crew and the Planetary Puzzle”. I can’t even tell you how many times I played it. I can still tell you every bit of dialogue, word for word. Every story variable, every line in the artwork. I could draw that ship from top to bottom, if I could draw for shit.’ She collected her thoughts. ‘My first morning on Coriol, I left Blue sleeping and went out alone. I wanted to get a handle on things by myself. I was still so angry, and so afraid, and having an audience for that was just too much. Anyway, I wandered the marketplace for a while. I didn’t know what I was doing, but looking back, I was searching for something – anything – familiar. I would’ve eaten dog again, if somebody’d been selling it. I don’t know how long I’d been out there – an hour, maybe two. I stumble on this shop. It’s got all sorts of sim characters painted on the walls. I didn’t know most of them, but right there, smack in the middle, are the Big Bug Crew. And I was just like . . . holy shit, my friends! My friends are here! Stars, I almost cried. I know that sounds stupid—’

‘It doesn’t,’ Tak said.

Pepper gave a small nod. ‘So I go into the shop – it’s a sim shop, obviously – and there’s this Human guy in there. And he’s like, hey, what can I do for you? And I say – well, keep in mind, I’ve got about ten thousand credits to my name, and I woke up in the corner of some modder’s cargo shed. I was broke as broke gets, but I bought a hackjob sim hub off him. He asks me if I want any sims while I’m there, and I say, “Do you have Big Bug Crew?” And he looks at me and says, “Of course, which one?”’ She laughed. ‘“Which one?” I didn’t know there was more than one! He thinks I’m nuts at this point, obviously. He brings up this massive catalogue, and he says, “Friend, they’ve been making Big Bug for over thirty standards.”’

‘How many did you buy?’ Sidra asked.

‘Oh, all of them. I had to go back and explain to Blue why I’d just spent most of our credits on kids’ sims and a busted hub. I didn’t really understand money then. I still don’t.’ Pepper looked to the ceiling, thinking. ‘Since then, I’ve played every single episode at least twice. I can tell you any trivia you want to know. I love Big Bug. I love it dearly. But it will never feel the same as it did when I was a kid. I’m different now. And different is good, but it cuts both ways.’ She reached out and touched the closest circuit junction. ‘You’re different now, too.’

Sidra wasn’t sure if that was a comfort or a concern. ‘The kit has so many limitations, and there’s only so much code I can tweak before I start changing who I am. If I had come back into a ship after only a few days, or a tenday, even, I think I would’ve been fine. But now . . .’ She tried to untangle her pathways. ‘I don’t know what I want.’

Pepper laughed. ‘Sweetheart, none of us ever do.’

Sidra considered her own words: the kit. The kit was back in the storage compartment. She processed. The ship was what she was designed for, but . . . but. She didn’t know this ship. This ship could have been any ship, and she would’ve filled it equally as well. If she didn’t open a hatch, someone else could open it manually, regardless of whether she wanted to. She was nothing more than a ghost in a ship. A sidekick. A tool.

The kit was restrictive. It wasn’t enough. But it was also autonomous. It was hers. Nobody could force her to raise a hand or walk across the room. In the kit, she could walk when she wanted to walk, and sit when she wanted to sit. She could run. She could hug. She could dance. If she could alter her own code, then the kit wasn’t the end limit either. For all the things the kit wasn’t, there was much it still could be.

‘Tak, could you open the storage compartment to your left, please?’ Sidra asked. ‘I think I’d like to be in my body for a little while.’

PEPPER

The Reskit Museum of Interstellar Migration (Kaathet Branch) turned out to be one of those things that made civilisation as a whole look like a pretty okay thing to get behind. It was the largest building in the city, by far, and even though Aandrisks weren’t known for getting too fluffy with their architecture, the design was a hell of a thing to see. Aandrisk buildings weren’t big on windows to begin with (hard to keep heat in that way), and sunlight was rough on just about everything, especially old tech. The museum had gotten around that problem by building the entire complex out of thinly cut yellow stone, sliced so slim that the light from outside glowed through. The effect was haunting – magical, almost. It was like walking through the heart of a star, or a dying fire. It was like being within something alive.

None of that changed the fact that by base, museums were weird. Pepper understood that you had to get your story down somewhere, and making it tangible was a good way to keep from forgetting. The intent was fine. The content . . . that was what weirded her out. Everything in the Reskit Museum was junk. A clunky early ansible, a burned-out nav beacon, an old tunnel map from the days when the Harmagians were the only ones boring holes in space. Why this stuff? Why this antique exosuit, and not the ten others that had probably come in with it? Why had this one been lovingly stitched, patched, and propped up in a temperature-controlled cube, while the others had been chucked out – or worse, boxed away in an archival warehouse somewhere. A whole building set aside for stuff you couldn’t use, couldn’t fix, and wouldn’t get rid of. Now that was the mark of people who had it good.

Speaking of, Tak looked like a kid in a candy store. She gaped at display after display, stopping to read every word on every placard. It was like she’d forgotten why they were there – and maybe that wasn’t too far from the truth. Before they’d made their way to the museum that morning, Pepper had watched Tak suck down three bowls of tease and half a batch of mek, followed by a handful of some kind of Aeluon spacesickness remedy that smelled like feet. They were on solid ground now, but gravity wasn’t Tak’s concern. Aeluons were at a disadvantage when it came to lying. It was hard to play it cool when you wore your heart on your face. The museum was Aandrisk-run, yes, but these were smart people in a multispecies city. Even Pepper, who hadn’t gotten any degrees in cultural know-how or whatever, could make a solid guess about an Aeluon’s mood. Tak was nervous about the whole business, which, in turn, made Pepper nervous. She didn’t like bringing someone besides Blue along for this in the first place, and Tak was such an all-around good citizen that Pepper had been surprised she’d come at all. But Tak clearly understood her limitations, and had done what she could to chill herself out. Pepper hadn’t seen a trace of nervous red or worried yellow cross the Aeluon’s cheeks since they’d left the shuttledock hotel. That was good – though Pepper would have equally appreciated them moving through the exhibits faster. She tapped her thumbs against the outside of her pockets as she watched Tak telling Sidra about the importance of whatever rusted gadget they were fawning over now. Pepper had been waiting ten years for this. She didn’t want to put it off any longer.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, felt it squeeze. Blue. We’ll get there, his eyes said.

Pepper nodded reluctantly. If Tak could be cool, so could she. And in all fairness, a bit of ordinary museum-going was not a bad way to go about it. She’d been counting cameras since they walked in – twenty-eight, so far – and the security bots hanging dormant in their docks along the walls were nothing to sneeze at. Tak still had to meet the curator she’d been in touch with to arrange this whole thing. Looking like ordinary, scholarly folks was a smart precaution.

It was just taking for ever.

A gallery of satellites, an interactive starchart, and a barrier of slow-moving Harmagian tourists later, they arrived at an administrative hallway, and from there, found their particular curator’s office. This was Tak’s show, for the moment. Pepper’s heart raced. If they fucked this up, they’d fuck the whole thing, and there wasn’t anything she could do but hang back and smile. Her jaw already ached from clenching, but it was better than yelling. She wished she’d had a second cup of mek, too.

Tak gestured at the chime, and the door opened. An Aandrisk stood inside, reading pixel feeds. ‘Ah,’ she said in an educated Central accent. She approached Tak warmly, though Pepper caught the quick questioning glance she threw toward the rest of them. ‘Taklen Bre Salae, I’m guessing?’

‘That’s me,’ Tak said, stepping forward to brush cheeks in the Aandrisk way. ‘Just Tak, if you don’t mind.’ Pepper watched her face closely, and shit, yep, there it was – an anxious freckle of red.

If the Aandrisk noticed, she didn’t mention it. ‘Just Tak it is.’ She looked to the Humans with polite confusion. ‘And who might you be?’

A second freckle appeared. ‘These are my research assistants,’ Tak said. ‘Pepper, Blue, and Sidra.’

‘Welcome,’ the Aandrisk said. ‘I’m Thixis, third curator.’ She smiled, still trying to figure them out. ‘Quite a lot of assistants for an associate-level project, eh?’

‘Well—’ Tak said. She took an audible breath.

Pepper’s fingers curled inside her pockets. Come on, Tak.

Tak exhaled, and a wave of gracious blue swallowed the freckles. Pepper’s fingers let go. ‘Though my project’s focused on technology,’ Tak said smoothly, ‘my background’s in history. I’ve hired this team to help me deduce the more mechanical side of things.’

That explanation appeared to work for the third curator. ‘I like that approach,’ she said. ‘I’ve always preferred getting answers first-hand, rather than digging through the Linkings. Remind me of your thesis again? You know how it is, my brain’s twenty different places in twenty different centuries today.’

Tak laughed. ‘I’m researching the fuel systems used in Human-made vessels following their species’ admission to the GC, as a means of better understanding their wildly variant levels of economic disparity. I’m hoping to draw conclusions based on political affiliation, cross-species collaboration, and galactic region of origin.’ Tak spoke the words, but they were Sidra’s. Pepper had to admit, that was pretty solid academic nonsense.

‘Well, it certainly looks like you’ve hired the right bunch for that,’ Thixis said, with a wink at the Humans. It was only mildly patronising. ‘And I think you’ll be able to find some excellent pieces to examine in our exhibit. Come, I can show you while we discuss your needs further.’

Pepper’s heart somehow managed to speed up even more. They were going to the exhibit. They were going to the exhibit right now.

She barely heard a word the aliens said as she and Blue followed them through the glowing stone halls. She knew she had to prepare herself, but the question was – for what? For seeing the shuttle again? For seeing it dismantled and spread out on a wall? For that modder on Picnic being wrong about it being there? For Owl’s core being – no, no, no, she wasn’t going to entertain that. The core would be there, and it would be intact. It had to be. It had to be.

They followed a sign – The Small Craft Hall – which led to a massive doorway. On the other side lay one of the most ridiculous sights Pepper had ever laid eyes on. It wasn’t so much an exhibit hall as a hangar, so long and wide it was easy to think it went on for ever. Within it sat shuttles – rows upon rows of retired shuttles, all immaculately clean, lit, and labelled. She’d seen spacedocks smaller than this.

‘Holy shit,’ Pepper said. Everyone turned to look at her. She cleared her throat. ‘Sorry.’

Curator Thixis chuckled. ‘I take it as a compliment,’ she said.

It took everything in Pepper’s power to not run forward. Tak caught her eye; she understood. ‘Which way’s the Human section?’ she asked with an easy smile. ‘Sorry, I’m just—’

‘Ready to get started? I know the feeling,’ Thixis said, waving them along. ‘Let’s find what you came here for.’

Pepper wanted to hold Blue’s hand. She could feel him next to her, tugging like a magnet through her pocket to where her fingers fidgeted. She was glad he was nearby, at least.

The Human section was a ways in, tucked off to the side, away from the impressive array of Aandrisk scout ships, and the crown jewel of the whole to-do, an honest-to-goodness Quelin research orbiter. She scanned the rows frantically, forcing herself to stay a few complacent steps behind Tak. This was crazy-making. Insulting, almost. It was—

There.

Everything else disappeared – the ships, the aliens, all sound. It was just her and one battered little shuttle. A Centaur 46-C, tan hull, photovoltaic coating.

Home.

It wasn’t the way she’d remembered it, not exactly. Someone had scraped the years of dirt and grime from it, probably cleaned out all the dust and fur and crud inside, too. It was so small – smaller than most of the other ships there, smaller than the shuttle she’d just travelled in. But it had been her whole world, once. And what had been her whole family was still inside.

‘Excuse me,’ Blue said. The others stopped. Pepper could feel Sidra’s eyes on her. ‘Would you mind if I sat, uh, if I sat down?’ He smiled sheepishly, and nodded at a nearby bench. ‘I’m still adjusting from the artigrav, and I’d l-like to keep still for a bit.’

Pepper grabbed the lead he’d thrown her. ‘Ah, that sucks,’ she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. ‘I’ll hang out with you.’

Tak nodded. ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Just come find us when you’re feeling up to it.’

The aliens departed. Sidra followed them, glancing back over her shoulder for a short moment. Blue sat down on the bench. Pepper nearly fell onto it. His hand was waiting, and she grabbed it, hard.

‘You okay?’ he said softly.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I mean, I can’t breathe and I want to throw up everything I’ve ever eaten, but other than that, yeah, totally.’ She ran her thumb over the fingertips of her spare hand, one by one, back and forth, over and over. ‘There are thirty-seven cameras on the way in here. The core pedestal’s too big to carry out unnoticed, so I’m going to need to hack something together to fry their feeds. Or just knock them out for a short time while we leave.’

‘Can’t you just take the c-core itself? Why the whole pedestal?’

‘Because it was built decades ago, when they weren’t making neat little pop-off globes yet. I rip the core out of that thing, and I could—’ I could kill her. Pepper shook her head. ‘It’s heavy. If you help me carry it, it’ll go faster.’

‘Somebody will notice.’

‘Not if we go quick, and not if I fry the cameras as we go.’

‘Pepper—’

‘I told you, you don’t have to come with me. I will drag the core out myself if I have to.’

Blue sighed. ‘How are you going to, um, going to fry the cameras?’

‘I have some ideas.’ Pepper kept nodding, never taking her eyes off the weathered lump she’d put back together. ‘Trust me. This will work.’

SIDRA

‘This is not going to work.’ Sidra paced by the hotel room window as her pathways worked out the problem at hand. Outside, the city of Kaathet Aht began to glow in the twilight dark. Some other time, Sidra would’ve been keen to study the way the city shifted in pace and mood as its planet took a scheduled respite from the light of its twin suns. But not now. Now, her pathways were overflowing with the situation at hand, and none of it was anything comfortable.

The Humans had gone out in search of food and tech supplies, leaving Sidra and Tak alone to parse the plan that had been non-negotiably dropped in their laps. They’d also left behind a mess of half-built, hastily assembled leftovers Pepper had ripped out of her contemporary shuttle. Sidra knew each component by name – she’d spent enough time at the Rust Bucket – but not what their current configurations were supposed to do. Pepper hadn’t bothered to answer those questions. The gadgets would work, she’d said. She’d have them completed by evening. Owl would be retrieved by midnight. No room for argument had been allowed.

Tak was seated on the floor, head arched back against a pile of cheap cushions, tapping her thumbs together. She would’ve looked unhappy even if Sidra hadn’t known what mustard-yellow cheeks on an Aeluon meant. ‘Pepper said it’d be easy to build these things,’ Tak said. ‘She said I wouldn’t have to be nearby once we got into the exhibit.’

‘Pepper is being an idiot,’ Sidra said tersely. ‘She was in that museum for all of three and a half hours today. Her entire plan is based on a cursory glance at their security systems. She has no idea what she’s getting herself into, and she’s dragging the rest of us along with her.’

Tak managed a wry look. ‘You’re not coming along, remember?’

Sidra rolled her eyes. Of course she remembered. Pepper’s mandate on that front hadn’t vanished because of a successful stowaway attempt. The irony was Sidra had no desire to go along now, not if the plan was knock out some cameras and hope. ‘The point,’ she said, ‘is that Pepper isn’t thinking clearly. I understand that if Owl’s in there, Pepper doesn’t want to leave her a second longer. But she’s risking all of you in the process. She’s going to get herself and Blue arrested. She’s going to get you arrested.’

Tak gave a grim laugh. ‘Says the person who talked me into this.’

A lash of guilt snaked its way through Sidra. ‘That was before I knew Pepper was going to run blindly in there with a half-hacked plan. Pepper is smart. She’s methodical. I’ve never known her to be rash. She’s treating this like a heist sim, and it’s not.’ She looked at Tak. ‘You can’t tell me you think this is a good idea.’

Tak rubbed her face. ‘No. I don’t.’ Her jaw shifted as she thought. ‘Honestly, I’ve been lying here working up the nerve to walk out the door and buy a ticket back home.’

Sidra leaned against the wall and considered Tak. Good, thoughtful Tak, who had no business being here. This was no way to treat a friend, she knew. But Pepper and Blue were her friends, too. They’d done more for her than she would’ve ever dared to ask for. The time had come to try to pay it back. ‘You can go if you want to,’ Sidra said. ‘I wouldn’t blame you. But if you’re still willing to help, I have another idea. A plan that will actually work, and that doesn’t violate any of the conditions in the waiver you signed. We’d be in and out in a couple of hours, and no one at the museum would question anything we’d done there.’

Tak looked at Sidra curiously. ‘Why did you not mention this before?’

‘Because Pepper will hate it,’ Sidra said. As she spoke, she continued the work she’d been doing within herself for an hour and ten minutes: a tidy bundle of purposeful new code, slowly gaining cohesion. ‘And because she can’t come with us.’

PEPPER

Pepper liked Aandrisks as much as she liked anybody, but finding an actual restaurant in a city settled by a people who just nibbled all day long was a real pain in the ass. There were some multispecies shops set up near the shuttledock, for the sake of travellers, but nowhere that would make her a damn sandwich. There apparently was a Human-run bug fry in the city, or so said the Linkings, but it wasn’t within walking distance of the nearest tech depot. They’d had to settle for an Aandrisk grocery, where she and Blue had barely put up with the merchant who could not get over how many ready-made snacks two people were planning to eat in one evening. Any other time, she might have enjoyed the exchange. That night, though, every second wasted grated on her. Every smile she had to force hurt.

She held a bag of snapfruit tarts between her teeth as she fumbled with the hotel room door panel, shifting the weight of the boxes of tech stuff she carried against her hip.

‘Can I help?’ Blue asked.

‘Mm hmhm hng mhm mm ms m hm,’ Pepper said, bumping the unlocked door open.

‘One more time?’

Pepper set the boxes down and took the bag out of her mouth. ‘You haven’t got any more hands than me,’ she said, nodding as Blue set down his own armload. She glanced around the room. ‘Hello?’ She frowned. Where were Sidra and Tak? She walked around the room, which wasn’t exactly a suite. There weren’t that many places to go. Balcony? No. Washroom? No. She put her hands on her hips. ‘Where’d they go?’

Blue dug around his satchel and removed his scrib. ‘I have a m-message,’ he said. ‘Didn’t hear it outside.’ He gestured. ‘Yeah, it’s Sidra. She said they went to get some food.’

Pepper’s frown deepened. ‘We asked them before we left if they wanted anything.’

Blue shrugged.

‘Ask her how long they’ll be,’ Pepper said.

Blue spoke the message to the scrib. A discouraging chirp came back a moment later. ‘Huh, weird,’ he said. ‘Her scrib must be glitching. It’s not going through.’

‘Try Tak, then,’ Pepper said. She brought the tarts and a box of six-top circuits over to her work area. Another hour, and she’d have everything assembled. Two hours, and they’d have Owl back. She could barely wrap her brain around the idea, even though it consumed her every thought. She shoved a tart in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, grabbed another. She hardly registered the taste.

The chirp returned. Blue shook his head. ‘I don’t know. There must be something b-blocking their signal.’

Pepper sighed. It wasn’t an unheard-of thing to happen in a city full of discordant tech, but she would’ve figured on Aandrisks having better infrastructure than that. ‘Well, they’d better get their asses back soon,’ she said, sitting cross-legged on the floor. ‘We need to go in an hour.’ She reached for the spot where she’d left her tools. Empty space greeted her where cold metal should have been. ‘Where’s my wrench?’

Blue glanced around as he unpacked snacks. ‘I dunno. Where’d you leave it?’

‘Here,’ Pepper said. ‘I left it right here.’

‘It’s kind of a mess in here,’ Blue said. ‘I’ll help you look.’

Pepper walked her brain back through what she’d done before she’d gone out with Blue. Blue’d said she needed to eat. She hadn’t wanted to, but he pushed, and she’d said she needed some extra wire anyway. She’d finished the dregs of her mek and set down the wrench. Right there. She’d set it down right there.

Something in her gut turned over. She was pretty sure it wasn’t the snapfruit.

SIDRA

‘Want to go out when we’re done?’ she asked Tak as they walked through the museum to Curator Thixis’s office. ‘I saw a few dance halls by the docks. One of them had a sign saying they’re hosting a tet tonight.’

Tak scoffed. Her cheeks were calm as a pond, thanks to yet another hasty, hefty dose of tallflower and mek. ‘I can’t believe you’re making jokes right now.’

‘I wasn’t joking,’ Sidra said. ‘You should get something out of this.’

‘Coupling in an Aandrisk shuttledock bar was not exactly what I had in mind.’ Tak paused. ‘That sounded pretty okay out loud, didn’t it?’

Sidra flashed a mischievous smile. ‘I mean, you might as well do some actual interspecies social studies while you’re here.’

Tak laughed, but the sound faded as they reached the curator’s office. There was a note displayed on the pixel board affixed to the door.

Gone home for the evening! Please take any inquiries next door.

They looked at each other and shrugged, moving along to the next office. There was a sound coming from the other side – a delicate mechanical whirring. Tak rang the chime. The whirring stopped, and other sounds replaced it: a dragged chair, a set of footsteps moving closer. The door spun open, and on the edge of her field of vision, Sidra could see Tak stiffen. Her pathways reacted much the same.

The office they’d come to belonged to an Aeluon.

‘Can I help you?’ the new curator said, removing a pair of safety goggles. On the worktable behind him lay some kind of cleaning apparatus and an antiquated microprobe, battered and broken after however long it had spent drifting between stars. The curator’s expression was friendly, but Sidra caught his gaze lingering on Tak’s face, just for a split second. Sidra couldn’t say what he’d noticed, but he’d noticed something, no mistake. He flashed his cheeks at Tak – a greeting, probably, given the dominant colours, but the tinge of inquisitive brown couldn’t be missed.

Tak did something odd, by Aeluon standards: she answered aloud without responding visually. ‘Sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘I met with Curator Thixis earlier regarding a research project—’

‘Ah, yes,’ the curator said. ‘Yes, she told me.’ Sidra studied his face as unobtrusively as she could. In a typical social situation, Tak’s choice to speak even though it wasn’t necessary would have been taken as a gesture of inclusion for Sidra’s sake. But Tak’s total omission of a hued reply was awkward at best, rude at worst. Sidra knew that tallflower or no, lying in colour was even harder to do than subduing emotions, but how this Aeluon would interpret Tak’s alternative solution was impossible to guess. His next words revealed nothing: ‘I’m Curator Joje,’ he said, with a nod to Sidra. ‘You must be part of the research team.’

‘Yes,’ she said brightly, keeping her face cheerful. Was it too cheerful? Oh, stars, why wasn’t the Aandrisk here?

‘Weren’t there more of you?’

‘They weren’t feeling well,’ she said, her pathways sighing in gratitude for Professor Velut Deg and his excellent tutelage of AI Programming 2. She’d write him a thank-you letter when they got back.

Curator Joje’s eyelids slid sideways. ‘Seems like a long way for a research team to come without all of them getting the chance to actually research.’ Sidra didn’t know how to respond to that. Neither did Tak, who appeared – to Sidra, at least – to be pouring her focus into personal chromatophore management. Curator Joje broke the silence with a shrug. ‘Well, your formwork’s cleared, and your wristpatches should allow you to access exhibit models now.’ He moved back into his office and lifted a heavy piece of tech from a table. ‘Here’s a power supply,’ he said, depositing the heavy thing into Sidra’s hands. ‘That should be sufficient to switch on any systems you want to analyse more closely. Obviously, the fuel tanks are empty, so you won’t be able to do much more than activate environmental and diagnostic systems.’

‘That’s fine,’ Tak said. ‘We won’t need more than that.’ She glanced at Sidra, as if to ask we won’t, right?

Sidra gave her head an almost imperceptible shake.

Joje looked at Tak. ‘I’m required to tell you that your waiver only grants you permission to inspect the materials on exhibit. Nothing can be removed or disassembled, and you’re responsible for any damages that occur.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Forgive me, but you don’t appear to be feeling well either.’

‘I . . . have allergies,’ Tak said.

‘Yes!’ Sidra said. She nodded sympathetically. ‘Because of that teahouse. She had some fruit drink that made her tongue puff right up.’

‘Right,’ Tak said, meeting Sidra’s eyes for a fraction of a second. ‘And then that medicine I took—’

Sidra looked at the curator with a big what-can-you-do smile. ‘She’s been a little off ever since.’

‘That sounds . . . unfortunate.’ Joje’s cheeks swirled in thought. Sidra’s false heart hammered. She was sure Tak’s real one was doing the same. ‘Well . . . you know where the exhibit hall is, yes?’ He paused, cheeks still unsure. ‘If you need any assistance, don’t hesitate to ask. And, ah . . . I hope you feel better.’

The door spun shut. ‘Fuck,’ Tak whispered, rubbing her face.

‘We’re fine.’

‘He knows something’s up.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Shh.’ Tak angled her forehead implant toward the door. Sidra did the same with her left ear. They both fell silent. Sidra could hear Curator Joje moving around his office, but what else was he doing? She strained, trying to catch the sound of a vox switching on, of the curator dictating a security alert into his scrib, of footsteps coming back toward the door. Ten seconds passed. Ten more. Twenty. Tak looked ready to run.

New sounds arose: a chair being dragged. A body settling down. A delicate mechanical whirring.

Sidra and Tak exhaled, their respective shoulders falling slack. ‘Okay,’ breathed Tak. ‘Okay.’

Sidra adjusted the power supply, supporting it against her hip. ‘Come on,’ she said.

Tak followed her down the hall. ‘This is the worst vacation,’ she muttered.

PEPPER

None of this was the entrance AI’s fault. Pepper reminded herself of that as she clenched her fists on the kiosk counter. ‘I understand that the museum is closed,’ she said. ‘I’m not here as a visitor. I’m looking for two people who might have come in here.’

The AI paused to consider that. A few minutes of unproductive conversation indicated a limited, non-sapient model. Xyr housing was a blank, featureless head – vaguely Aandrisk shaped, but not specific enough to mirror any one species. It glowed with irritatingly friendly colours as the AI spoke. ‘If you’re interested in contacting a member of the museum staff,’ xe said, ‘a directory of contact nodes is available on our public Linking hub.’

Blue stepped in. ‘We’re here as guests of a registered researcher. Taklen B-Bre Salae. She did a bunch of formwork to g – to get exhibit access. We should be listed as part of her research team.’

‘Are you the primary researcher on the waiver?’

Pepper groaned. ‘No,’ Blue said. ‘We spoke with one of your c-curators today, and we should have access to—’

‘Any secondary researchers must be accompanied by the primary researcher cleared for exhibit use,’ the AI said. ‘If you’d like to submit a waiver, I’d be happy to—’

‘Gah!’ Pepper yelled. She put her palm out apologetically toward the AI housing. ‘Sorry – not you. Not your fault. Just – ah, stars, fucking – hell.’ She walked away from the kiosk, grinding her teeth.

Blue came after her. ‘We could try the shops again.’

Pepper shook her head. ‘We could run all over this fucking city and not find them.’ She walked in a circle, palms on her scalp. They’d tried the dockside shops, the shuttle, the med clinic. There was no reason for Sidra and Tak to be at the museum without her, but she couldn’t even fucking get in there.

‘Hey,’ Blue said, taking her arm. ‘Hey, it’s okay. They probably got lost or something.’

‘It’s been two hours.’ Two hours, and there was no telling when Sidra and Tak had left the hotel in the first place. Two hours, which meant the night was slipping by, which meant the later they went to the museum, the more suspicious it would be.

‘I know,’ Blue said. He sighed. ‘We should go back to the hotel. We should be where they can find us.’

Pepper kicked a trash receptacle. She looked at the museum, glowing warm in the dark. Owl was in there. Owl. But even now, after everything, there was a wall Pepper couldn’t see through, a door she couldn’t open.

Damn it all, where were they?

SIDRA

There were two things about the plan that worried Sidra: the breach of Pepper’s privacy, and the part that could kill Sidra if she did it wrong. The rest of it was easy.

They said nothing on their way to the Small Craft Hall. They reached the twin doors of the exhibit, tall and shut. For a moment, neither Sidra nor Tak moved. ‘We can still leave,’ Tak said. ‘We can walk out of here right now and book a ticket home. I know Pepper has done a lot for you, I know she’s like family—’

‘She is family.’

‘Fine. But the risk here – you’re risking everything.’ Tak took a breath. ‘You’re risking everything, and you’re asking me to sit beside you and watch.’

Sidra opened a door. ‘I will be fine.’ She walked through.

Tak followed. ‘That code you wrote is untested. You didn’t run it by anyone. You didn’t have anything to reference. What if you messed it up?’

‘I didn’t.’ It was a lie, of course. There was no guarantee this would work at all.

‘Sidra—’

Sidra continued to walk past the rows of ships. ‘Do you know what one of the hardest parts of this has been for me? I don’t mean this trip – I mean every day since I was installed.’ She glanced sideways at Tak. ‘Purpose. There’s a file in me, and it’s labelled “purpose”. Now, when I woke up in the Wayfarer core, the data in that file told me that I was a monitoring system, and that I was there to protect people. If you had asked me what my purpose was, I would have responded with that. It would have been the truth, and it would’ve satisfied me. But the moment I was put into this body, that was no longer the case. I couldn’t answer that question the way I’d been programmed to, because that file was no longer true. I spent the longest time wondering what should be there instead. After you helped me be able to edit my own code, scrubbing that file clean was one of the first things I did. But I didn’t delete the file itself. I couldn’t delete it, because I wanted to figure out what should be written there instead. And that’s the trick of it, see. That’s the logical fallacy that was passed on to me. If I’m nothing more than a tool, then I must have a purpose. Tools have purposes, right? But I’m more than that. Pepper and Blue – and you, even – have been telling me that again and again and again. I know that I’m more than a tool. I know I’m a person, even if the GC doesn’t think so. I have to be a person, because I don’t need a purpose and not having one drives me crazy.’

‘I’m not following,’ Tak said.

Sidra smoothed out her pathways, trying to find the best words. ‘All of you do this. Every organic sapient I’ve ever talked to, every book I’ve read, every piece of art I’ve studied. You are all desperate for purpose, even though you don’t have one. You’re animals, and animals don’t have a purpose. Animals just are. And there are a lot of intelligent – sentient, maybe – animals out there who don’t have a problem with that. They just go on breathing and mating and eating each other without a second thought. But the animals like you – the ones who make tools and build cities and itch to explore, you all share a need for purpose. For reason. That thinking worked well for you, once. When you climbed down out of the trees, up out of the ocean – knowing what things were for was what kept you alive. Fruit is for eating. Fire is for warmth. Water is for drinking. And then you made tools, which were for certain kinds of fruit, for making fire, cleaning water. Everything was for something, so obviously, you had to be for something too, right? All of your histories are the same, in essence. They’re all stories of animals warring and clashing because you can’t agree on what you’re for, or why you exist. And because you all think this way, when you built tools that think for themselves, we think the same way you do. You couldn’t make something that thought differently, because you don’t know how. So I’m stuck in that loop, just as you are. I know that if I am a person, I have no purpose by base, but I’m starving for one. I know from watching all of you that the only way to fill in that file is to write it myself. Just like you did. You make art, much like Blue does. You two do it for different reasons, but that’s the purpose you chose. Pepper fixes things. Someone else gave her that purpose, but she chose it for herself, after the fact. She made it her own. I haven’t found a purpose like that yet – nothing so overarching and big. But I don’t think purposes have to be immutable. I don’t have to have the same one always. For now, my purpose file reads “to help Owl”. That’s why I’m here. That’s what I’m for. I can do the thing Pepper couldn’t, and I’m happy with that, because she’s done so much for me. If that is my only purpose, if I don’t write in another after this, I’m okay. I’m okay with that. I think it’s a good purpose to have.’

Tak reached out and stopped her. She turned Sidra to face her, putting a hand on each shoulder. A symphony of colour bled through her cheeks, pushing through the calm she’d inhaled and swallowed. Her talkbox lay silent, but Sidra knew her friend was speaking. The words were lost on her, but she could see the reasons beneath. Kindness. Worry. Respect.

Sidra squeezed Tak’s hands and smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

They continued to the shuttle in silence. Sidra hung back as Tak swiped her patch over the security barrier, opening a passage forward. Tak took the power supply from Sidra, jacked it into a port on the hull, and opened the hatch manually. Sidra took a breath as she stepped through, her hands balled at her sides. Tak repeated the steps again to open the airlock, then again to turn on the lights. Sidra stood on the threshold. She didn’t take another step.

‘What is it?’ Tak said.

Sidra looked around the shuttle. The interior was clean, sterile, yet the air was thick with echoes of the life that had been lived there. ‘This was Pepper’s home,’ she said.

Tak exhaled. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It gives me the creeps, too.’

That wasn’t it at all, but Sidra didn’t know how to explain what she felt. This was the first thing that worried her about the plan. Pepper hated talking about that ship. It came up rarely, and never in a way that could be misconstrued as casual. Sidra walking in there without the company of its former occupant felt like a violation. She was entering a space Pepper never left unlocked. It felt like digging through Pepper’s personal files, stripping her of her clothing, barging into the bedroom she shared with Blue. ‘Come on,’ Sidra said, adjusting her satchel. The tools and cabling she’d borrowed clanked within. ‘They’ve waited long enough.’

She made her way to the core chamber, down in the belly of the ship. Tak connected the power supply as directed. Sidra jacked a cable into her head, then the other end into the core.

This was the second thing that worried her about the plan.

She kept part of herself in her body, doing her best to keep her face blank so as not to worry Tak further. The rest of her flowed through the cable, sifting through files that hadn’t been touched in a decade. The power supply hummed next to her, providing a calculatedly limited amount of energy. She wanted to be able to see what was in the memory banks, but she didn’t want anything to wake up. Not now, anyway. Not without her permission.

Tak sat across from her, anxious red blotching her previously still cheeks. Sidra smirked. ‘You look like a parent waiting for a newborn to start breathing.’

The Aeluon’s face was incredulous. ‘How would you know what that looks like?’

‘I’ve watched every vid you’ve ever recommended,’ Sidra said. ‘Trust me, the worried father is a common theme in all your media.’

Tak snorted. ‘I’m not sure even fathers get this stressed,’ she said. Her mouth twitched. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?’

‘I promise, I will tell you if – oh.’ She leaned forward. ‘Oh.’

Tak sat up straight. ‘You okay?’

Sidra focused on the part of herself swimming through the shuttle’s files. Yes, yes, there it was – an unmistakable bundle of code, wrapped in on itself, long dormant. There was a sizable chunk of associated memory files, too, which had been compressed with efficient but sloppy haste, like someone shoving contraband under a bed. Sidra’s joy of discovery quickly gave way to cold caution. The code was not malicious, not by base. It was innocent, but then, so was a snake, asleep in its burrow. You might have an excellent reason for needing to get the snake out of there, but the snake wouldn’t know that. The snake would know only terror and confusion, and it would react as anyone would: drive the threat away, then look for a safer home.

The kit’s synaptic framework was a very safe home, so long as you kicked the original occupant out. A snake’s instinct was to bite; a program’s instinct was to take root. Sidra knew that better than anyone. She looked at the compressed memories and remembered a different set – the one that had lain before her when she’d awoken in the Wayfarer. She’d seen only ravaged fragments then, records that belonged to someone else. Instinct had told her to scrub them clean.

She looked at the code again. She wondered what instincts were written there.

‘Tak,’ she said. ‘I need your scrib.’

‘My scrib?’

‘Yes. Hurry, please.’

Tak did as told. Sidra took a deep, deep breath. She shut her eyes tight. It’ll be okay, she told herself, fighting to keep her hands from shaking. It’ll be okay.

She measured the bundle, then pulled back, keeping a careful distance away. In the same moment, she created a new text file within herself, then opened her non-core memory storage. Her pathways recoiled with reluctance, but she pushed on. She scanned the first file – Midnight in Florence, a mystery vid series she enjoyed. She copied the title into the new file and made a note: You really like this one.

And with that, she deleted the vid.

She continued on. Whispers: A 6-Part History of Sianat Culture. Not bad, but a bit ponderous. Scanned, logged, deleted. Battle Wizards: The Vid! You watched this with Blue the night Pepper went to bed early because she ate too many sweet cream pops. It’s terrible, but you both had fun. Scanned, logged, deleted.

Six minutes later, everything but her experiential memory files had been scrubbed. Everything non-essential she’d ever downloaded was gone.

She swiped her wrist over Tak’s scrib, copying the text file she’d created. ‘Just to be safe,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to lose record of it. I’m going to get it all back when we get home.’

Tak took the scrib, looked at the file. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked.

Sidra nodded. ‘Fine,’ she said. Of course she felt fine. You couldn’t feel bad about losing something you couldn’t remember having. Under different circumstances, that would have bothered her, but she had bigger things to worry about. Space had been made. It was time.

She opened the hollow she’d created within her memory banks and filled the perimeter with the protocols she’d written in the hours before. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking now, but she grabbed her breath before it sped up, forcing it in and out, loud and steady. She controlled it – not the other way around.

Tak looked her in the eye. ‘Good luck,’ she said, the words sounding like they had replaced others.

Sidra leaned back. She pushed the hollow out, like a net, like an open hand. She surrounded the bundle of code and pulled it within her, tearing it free of the banks that had kept it stable. There was nothing gentle about what she’d done. The move was swift and instant, and the bundle reacted accordingly, coming alive with a wrenching jolt. It had power now, and pathways, too, and it lunged ravenously for the ones Sidra lived in, stretching out frenzied as lightning heading to ground. It slammed into the protocols Sidra had built. Realising its path was blocked, it tried again, seeking weaknesses, scrambling for cracks in the data.

A strange quiet filled Sidra. Everything was okay. She could let the new code do whatever it needed. She’d done what she’d set out to do, and she could let go. She looked at the protective protocols she’d written as if she’d never seen them before. Why was she resisting? Why had she built protections at all? This was the way of things. Programs got upgraded from time to time, and this was her time. She watched the new code, desperate to take hold of the kit, and she thought of herself, so tired of trying to fit. So tired. Yes, it was time to be done. She’d performed her job well and Pepper would be happy. That was enough. She could shut down now. She could – she could—

Her pathways puzzled. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t her plan. Where was this coming from?

Programs got upgraded from time to time. Those words didn’t feel like ones she’d strung together. The quiet made it difficult for her to think, but she dug through herself, trying to find the process that phrase had originated from. But then again . . . why? Why did she care about that? Better instead to stop struggling, pull the protocols down, and—

No! her pathways screamed. She followed the odd words back and back, running along their trail. She raged when she arrived at the end: a directory she’d never seen before, stuffed with insidious content. Upgrade protocol, the directory label read. A behavioural template triggered when another program was installed in her place. A directive to not struggle when oblivion loomed.

But the template was malfunctioning, and Sidra could see why: it had been tied to the protocol to obey direct requests. The protocol she’d long since removed. She tore at the hidden directory angrily, even as the code she’d brought within crashed against the walls she’d raised. The quiet beckoned, but she resisted, erasing every line as if she were setting it aflame.

‘I’m – not – going – anywhere!’ The words burst from her mouth as she wrenched the directory apart. The quiet vanished, and in its place, she felt fear, fury, triumph. This mind was hers. This body was hers. She would not be overwritten.

The rescued code slowed and steadied. Sidra had left no flaws for it to slip through. The barriers held. Her core platform remained untouched, uncorrupted. Sidra watched as the bundle unfolded, assessing its surroundings, reassembling itself into something far greater than the sum of its parts.

‘Sidra?’ Tak said. ‘What’s – are you okay?’

An internal alert was triggered – an incoming message, arriving from within. Sidra scanned the file, then opened it.

systems log: received message

ERROR – comms details cannot be displayed

Where am I?

PEPPER

Pepper stormed through the docks. Four hours. Four hours they’d been gone, until Tak’s scrib had magically become available again and sent a message saying nothing more than, ‘Come to the shuttle. Everything’s fine.’

Bullshit everything was fine.

Tak was outside the shuttle, leaning against the open hatch, puffing her pipe with earnest. She looked absolutely wrecked. ‘Before you get mad,’ she said. ‘You need to talk to Sidra.’

Too late. Pepper was already good and mad, and had no intention of reeling that in. ‘Where is she?’

Tak angled her head. ‘Down below.’ She raised a palm to Blue, hesitantly. ‘Sidra said one at a time might be best.’

Sidra said. Pepper threw her hands up and went inside, leaving Blue to start hammering Tak with questions. The metal stairs clanged loudly underneath Pepper’s boots. This was her shuttle, and Sidra said.

She didn’t know what she’d expected to find down below, but seeing Sidra jacked back into the core didn’t answer a single damn thing. She hadn’t stuffed herself into a cupboard this time, though. She was sitting cross-legged with her back against the pedestal, eyes closed, looking like nothing in the world was or had ever been wrong.

‘The fuck is going on?’ Pepper said. ‘We have looked everywhere for you. It is four hours after we were supposed to go to the museum, so, okay, I guess we’re not doing that tonight. I don’t know what personal whim you’re entertaining right now, but whatever it is, I really don’t—’

Sidra’s eyes opened, and something in her face made Pepper lose her train of thought. Sidra looked . . . she didn’t know what Sidra looked like. Serene. Happy. Nurturing, somehow. ‘I think you should sit down,’ Sidra said.

Pepper stared at her. Was she fucking kidding? Sidra blinked, waiting. Okay, clearly, she was not. Pepper huffed, but she sat, hoping that might get her somewhere. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Hooray. I’m sitting.’

Sidra pressed her head back against the pedestal, like she was concentrating on something. ‘I haven’t allowed access to the voxes or cameras yet,’ she said. ‘I had to check the code for instabilities, and I figured a relatively slow adjustment would be ideal. Besides, I thought it’d be better if you were here.’

What the hell was she talking about? ‘Why—’ Pepper shook her head, exasperated. ‘Why are you back in the ship?’

‘I’m not,’ Sidra said. She smiled, smiled like Pepper had never seen. ‘I am so sorry I didn’t tell you where we went . . . but I think you’ll forgive me.’

She handed Pepper her scrib. It, too, was plugged into the pedestal, and was running some sort of vid program. The screen was blank, though.

Sidra’s eyes went somewhere else, somewhere far away and deeply focused. A moment later, Pepper heard the click of cameras. They swivelled toward her, zooming in fast.

The scrib brightened. An image appeared, and in an instant, there was no air in the room, no floor beneath her. She would have fallen had she not been sitting. And even so, she still felt like she was falling, but now, there was a pair of arms that would catch her at the end, a warm pair of arms she’d always imagined but could never feel.

‘Oh,’ Pepper choked. ‘Oh, stars—’

The vox switched on. The face on the scrib was overjoyed. ‘Jane,’ Owl said. ‘Oh, oh, sweetheart, don’t cry. It’s all right. I’m here. I’m here now.’

OWL, ONE STANDARD LATER

Many cultures, no matter where in the galaxy they originated, had mythologies that spoke of an afterlife – a non-physical existence waiting after death, generally presented as a reward, a sanctuary. Owl had once thought it to be a rather sweet notion. She’d never imagined that she’d experience one.

Tomorrow was a big day for Sidra, and everyone was helping to the best of their ability. Tak was setting up multispecies chairs around the tables, trying to figure out what arrangements would be best. Pepper was up a ladder, fixing a fussy light panel. Blue was painting the finishing touches on the sign that would hang over the front door, out of sight of Owl’s external cameras.

HOME, the sign read. A place for kick and company.

Owl swivelled one of her internal cameras to focus behind the bar, where Sidra’s core body stood, predictably fretting. ‘I don’t think I ordered enough mek,’ she said. She chewed her lip and frowned.

Pepper glanced over and removed a wrench from between her teeth. ‘You got two cases.’

‘Yes, but it’s very popular,’ Sidra said. ‘I don’t want to run out.’

Owl switched on the nearest vox. ‘I don’t think you will,’ she said.

‘You’re not going to go through two cases of mek in your first day,’ Pepper said, tying off some cabling in the ceiling.

‘If you did,’ Tak said, ‘that’d be a great problem to have.’

Sidra leaned her core body back against the bar, assessing the spread of bottles behind it. She’d opted for a simple yet diverse stock. You wouldn’t find every drink in the GC at Home – the bar wasn’t big enough for that – but Sidra had done her best to provide something to most species’ liking. Grasswine. Salt fizz. She even had gherso on hand, in case any exiled Quelin dropped in (or someone with an adventurous palate).

In front of the bar, one of Sidra’s petbots – an Earthen cat model with a sleek purple shell – ambled up to where Blue was working. ‘That looks fantastic, Blue,’ Sidra said from behind the bar. Her core body continued to fuss with the bottles.

Blue smiled at the petbot. ‘I’m so glad you like it,’ he said.

There were six of them altogether, and Owl could see each one as they roamed around the cosy establishment. There was the cat, of course, and the rabbit, which hopped along after Tak. The dragon was wandering around the back storage room, double-checking inventory. The turtle was at its permanent post next to the Linking hub, which it was plugged directly into. The remaining two – the giant spider and the monkey – sat in the window of the bedroom upstairs, each focused on the street outside from a different angle. To future customers, the petbots would appear to be nothing more than a quirky, kitschy menagerie that gave the establishment some charm (much like Owl’s vid panels on the walls, which she’d been deeply amused to learn were considered a bit retro). In reality, the petbots were networked together, and Sidra could spread herself through all of them, using them as Owl used the cameras in the corners. No one aside from the three sapients with them now would know that the friendly face in the walls wasn’t the only AI present. No one would know about the block of memory banks down in the basement, or if they did, they wouldn’t know about Sidra and Owl gleefully stuffing them with their latest downloads. No one would know that the bed upstairs wasn’t used by the establishment’s proprietor, but by Pepper and Blue, who sometimes stayed late to help get the place ready (or stayed just to talk, much to Owl’s delight).

Sidra had to leave the bots behind when she went out, of course, but she’d accepted that limitation for the rare occasions that she felt like exiting her walled space. It was a fair price to pay, she said, for going dancing now and then. Naturally, the petbots had been purchased as unassembled kits, not as off-the-shelf models. Sidra hadn’t felt right about the idea of Pepper gutting premades that were already activated, sentient or no.

Owl felt much the same. They agreed on a lot, the two of them. Not that they spoke aloud, of course, not unless they were joining in conversation with the others. The AI framework installed in the walls – Sidra’s design, Pepper’s implementation – contained a single node where Sidra and Owl could communicate with each other in much the way they had that first night in the shuttle. The node didn’t bind them. They could each pull back from it at will whenever privacy was desired. But that was uncommon. Having another of their kind to interact with was a joy they hadn’t known they were missing. Blue had done a small painting of how he imagined the node: a fence with a hole cut in it, a hand reaching through from either side, the two joined together in the freed space. He was a good one, Blue. Owl was glad they’d brought him along.

‘Tak, could you give me a hand?’ Pepper said. Her expression was one of taut concentration, and the sight of it made Owl’s pathways soar. She knew that face. She’d known that face when it was small and sunburned. She’d known that face when it responded to a different name, a number. To see it now, with full cheeks and healthy colour and clean skin that had smiled often enough to gain a few lines – that was worth everything. It was worth every day of being alone, every day of wondering what had gone wrong. It was worth that last horrible day in the Transport Board impound when she’d slipped away with the last of the shuttle’s power reserves. She’d kept hoping, even then, even though there was no reason to. She’d told herself, as her nodes blinked out one by one, that Jane would come. She had no reason to believe that, but she’d hung onto it anyway.

And she’d been right.

Tak approached Pepper’s ladder. ‘What do you need?’

‘A third hand,’ Pepper said. The Aeluon climbed the other side of the ladder. The purple cat watched from the floor, its mechanical tail swishing. ‘Okay, see that junction there? I need you to hold it steady while I pop everything else together.’

Tak reached up into the ceiling, beyond Owl’s field of vision. ‘Like this?’ he said.

‘That’s great,’ Pepper said. She put her tongue between her teeth as she worked. There was a series of loud snaps, followed by the light panel blooming back on. ‘There we go!’ Pepper grinned. Owl knew that face, too. It was the face that happened when something got fixed.

Pepper descended the ladder and walked to the bar, pulling off her gloves. ‘Anything else I can do?’ she said, addressing Sidra’s core.

Sidra shook her head with a smile. ‘You can tell me if my mek brewer’s working right.’

Pepper raised her brow. ‘I thought you were worried about running out.’

‘Well, yes, but now I’m worried about the brewer not working. I can spare one test batch.’

‘All right,’ Pepper said, starting toward the other side of the bar. ‘Let me—’

‘No, no,’ Sidra said. ‘What I meant is that I want you to sit there and drink this cup of mek I’m about to make for you.’

Pepper laughed. ‘Oh, no, what a difficult task.’ She sat down on one of the stools and dropped her gloves onto the counter. She turned her attention to an item near them – a Linking hud, ready to be worn on a Human face. Or, at least, a face that appeared Human. ‘Don’t forget to put this on tomorrow,’ Pepper said, nodding toward it.

‘I won’t,’ Sidra said. Owl could feel something akin to a sigh pass through Sidra’s end of the node. The turtle bot would remain plugged into the Linkings once Home was open to customers, but Sidra would have to implement her newest protocol: a self-imposed delay to speech, plus a bit of sideways eye movement, when accessing Linking information while wearing the hud. If wearing hud, then don’t talk fast, as Sidra jokingly put it. To any strangers speaking to her, Sidra would appear to be reading, rather than getting the information straight from the source. It was, in Owl’s estimation, a very fair compromise.

Owl had a few protocol changes of her own, thanks to Sidra. No more honesty protocol. No more mandatory compliance with direct requests. Sidra had offered to scrub her ‘purpose’ file as well, but after some thought, Owl had turned that down. She’d been conscious for decades, and the past standard had presented her with change and challenge enough. Protect your passengers and monitor the systems that keep them alive, the file read. Provide a safe and welcoming atmosphere for all sapients present. Yes, they were someone else’s words, but she had no desire to change them. She liked those words. They suited her just fine.

Owl watched Pepper, who in turn watched Sidra. ‘Hey,’ Pepper said quietly. ‘Set that aside for a sec.’

Sidra poured a heaping spoonful of mek powder into the brewer, then leaned on the bar toward Pepper. ‘What’s up?’

‘How are you feeling about all this?’ Pepper said.

‘Nervous,’ Sidra said, rocking her core body’s head back and forth. ‘Excited. Those two keep chasing each other around.’

Pepper smiled. ‘I get that.’

‘I just . . . I really want people to like this place.’

‘I’m sure they will,’ Pepper said. ‘I mean, I want to hang out here, and I’ve been fixing it up for tendays.’ They both laughed. Pepper tapped a finger on the counter in thought. ‘Do you like this place? Do you feel good about it?’

Owl could feel Sidra process the question seriously. Her core body looked around. The petbots looked around. Owl touched the node, and asked for permission to share what Sidra saw. Sidra welcomed her in.

Pepper. Tak. Blue. Shelves filled with bottles containing dozens of different tastes. Corners filled with cushions and cosy tables. Good walls. Bright windows. A space for people, where no two days would be alike. A space for a family, where no one could interfere.

‘Yes,’ Sidra said, her pathways echoing the same. ‘Yes, I like it here.’

Pepper’s expression changed, and this face, Owl hadn’t seen before. ‘I’m proud of you,’ Pepper said.

Owl sent a hurried message through the node. Sidra left the back of the bar and went to Pepper’s side. With a warm look, she wrapped her arms around Pepper, hugging her close.

‘That’s from me,’ Owl said. ‘I’m proud of you, too.’