Conversations on the Utopian Ideal: Twenty Eight.

((co-written with Silver Night))

Captain Silver Night waited at the foot of the docking umbilical, watching the small woman - the word came to mind unbidden - waddle towards him. Ciarente should, of course, have taken a passenger transport platform rather than walk the length of the hangar, and he knew his crew would have offered her one at the security checkpoint. Knew, too, exactly what she would have said, the same response she gave when he offered to take her place in the labs at HQ or overseeing a production line. Relax, Silver. I'm pregnant, not crippled.

Reaching him, a little breathless, she smiled. "Hello, Silver. How are you?"

"I'm well, Cia. How are you?" He started towards the ship. "Shall we?"

Tired, he thought an honest answer to his question would have been, judging from the blue shadows beneath her eyes and the pinched look to her face that the warm smile couldn't quite hide. But -

"Fat," Ciarente said instead, with a laugh, and then nearly overbalanced as the umbilical sloped upwards. Silver offered his arm, and Ciarente tucked her hand through the crook of his elbow, leaning on him lightly. "Ooops. Fat and with a centre of gravity that changes daily. I find it hard to believe that there's still more pregnant for me to get, but they assure me it'll happen."

"Well, you're most of the way there, from what I understand." They crossed the airlock threshold and Silver hesitated, considering the distance to his office. " I think ... " Security station, no, medical staging, no, non-com break-room .... "I think this should be suitable.

Ciarente, of course, had an apologetic smile for the non-commissioned officers who accurately read their Captain's expression as a suggestion that elsewhere would be a better place for them to be at the moment. And if she walked the length of the ship and went into premature labour she would no doubt apologise to medical for the inconvenience.

Sinking awkwardly into a chair, Ciarente smiled and said as if she could read his mind, "I'm not going to suddenly have the babies on B deck just from walking to your office, Silver."

"Shall we not take the risk, nevertheless?" he said.

Ciarente laughed. " All right. It's your ship, after all." She folded her hands over the swell of her stomach. "And I admit, although I'll deny it in public, my ankles are starting to complain a bit at the extra weight."

"Not so very much longer," Silver said. "And there's nothing wrong with taking it easy, when you can. Tea?"

"Yes," Ciarente said. "Yes, tea, thank you. And yes, time's been passing. It's ... getting to be time for me to think about names, perhaps."

"Oh?" Silver poured for both of them.

Ciarente picked up her cup and spoke to it, rather than to him. "Verin told me it's traditional, Caldari tradition, to chose an ancestor's name. It's not so different, where I come from. A grandparent, a great-grandparent. Someone you want to remember, maybe."

"I suppose it is somewhat common in many places," Silver said.

"Camille," Ciarente said with fond exasperation, "Camille thinks I should name my daughter Camieta. But I ... I've been thinking more about boy's names."

Silver sipped his tea. "Oh? Like what?"

"People it's important to remember. Important to family." Ciarente picked up her cup again, and put it back down, tapping the rim gently with one finger. "I haven't talked to Ami about it yet, Silver. I don't want to ... blunder in, I suppose."

"Blunder in?" Silver asked. "I'm afraid you're going to have to tell me a little more than that, Cia."

Ciarente looked down at her stomach and told it in a whisper, "I thought, perhaps, well, I wouldn't, of course, I know reminders can be painful, but I got the idea, and it seemed like the right thing, and I ..."

"Cia?" Silver prompted gently when she stopped.

"I was thinking about Jan," Ciarente said quietly, and then hastened to add, "But of course, not if, I haven't even mentioned it to Ami, it's a stupid idea, isn't it, I - "

"Cia," Silver said. "I don't think it's a stupid idea at all. Yes, reminders can hurt, but it's also good to remember."

"You think?" she asked hopefully.

"I think he would have been honoured, Cia," Silver said. "It would have made him very happy, I think. Having a niece and nephew."

"All right," Ciarente said, and smiled. "I'll talk to Ami."

Silver nodded, and sipped his tea. "Speaking of Ami. She and I discussed things, yesterday."

"Oh," Ciarente said, and went quite still. "Silver, are we - how secure are we, here?"

"Secure," he assured her.

"All right," Ciarente said quietly.

"I think Amieta is right," Silver told her. "A great deal has changed."

"Yes," Ciarente said. "That's what she said to me, and I suppose she is right, it has. I ... I just need to know that you're sure, I guess. That it's the right decision, for you. Not because of me, or what Ami said, or ... but that it's what you want."

"I'm sure, Cia."

"I don't want to put you in a position where ... I don't want it to be just because I'm ... a mess, about things."

Silver realized with alarm that Ciarente's eyes were filling with tears. Hastily, he offered her a handkerchief. "That isn't it at all, Cia. I would like ... to be able to have holos on my desk and spend holidays together without worrying about being seen."

Ciarente gave him a watery smile. "Like normal people? I know. I've felt that way, too, sometimes. But ... we're not, Silver. Are we?"

"Maybe a little at a time."

"Yes." She rested her hands on her stomach again. "It would be nice. Not to have to wait until my children are old enough to be able to keep secrets, to tell them who you - oh!"

"Cia?" Silver rose to his feet, making the comm connection to Medical with a thought. "Are you all right? Cia?"

"Give me your hand," Ciarente said urgently. "Quickly!"

"Do you need medical?" Silver asked, leaning over to offer her his hand.

Ciarente shook her head, taking his hand in hers and pressing it firmly against her stomach. "No. Wait. Just wait - there!"

Silver felt a vibration against the palm of his hand, faint but unmistakable.

"Did you feel that?" Ciarente asked softly.

"Yes," Silver said as softly, and felt the movement again, as if in response to his voice.

Ciarente's fingers tightened over his. "That's my daughter, on the top there," she said. "They can hear us, you know. I guess we sound like - when you're swimming underwater and people are talking by the pool, I suppose. But they can hear us." She smiled at him, tears sparkling on her eyelashes. "Say something to her."

"What ... " Silver cleared his throat. "What should I say?"

"Tell her hello," Ciarente said gently, and when he hesitated: "It's all right. Go on. Tell your - "

He saw her lips start to shape the word and forestalled her. "Don't - " say that. An automatic, reflex response. Never say it, not aloud, no matter where, no matter when. Never say it.

"Of course," Ciarente said, the ghost of a sigh. "I'm sorry."

Her smile was apologetic, but Silver thought he could see sadness there as well. He looked at his hand, both of Ciarente's now folded over it, felt the quiver in her skin that told of a new life moving, growing, listening to his voice. All three of them, he thought. Right here beneath my hand.

He would bury who he was and who he cared about behind an alias, behind a million secrets and a thousand locked doors, if that was what was best for them.

Or shout it from the hangar gantries, if that was.

Or say -

"Hello," Silver said hesitantly. "Camieta. Jan. Or whoever you're going to be. I'm - " He paused, and Ciarente squeezed his fingers. Silver took a deep breath. "I'm your uncle. Most people call me Silver. Most people do. But my name ... my name is Val."

Entirely True

Avolier Girane paused at the gate to the DeGrace house, straightening his tie and smoothing a palm over his hair. Of course it was impossible to imagine Lorraine DeGrace, or Lorraine Roth as she is now, living anywhere other than the DeGrace's ancient house on the broad terraces above the river, but the restrictions on private vehicles in the old part of town did mean that guests were forced into a closer encounter with the public transport system than a councillor like Girane was used to.

Satisfied that he was at least presentable, Girane made his way up the path between the manicured shrubs. The door opened as he approached, and he recognised one of Lorraine's sons, the polite one, Michel or Marc I think, doing duty as a doorman, offering to take Girane's coat with a smile that made his resemblance to his father all the more marked.

And there was the father himself,  topping up another guest's glass with a wink and a laugh, Lorraine DeGrace's folly they used to say, until Jorion Roth, spacer, became Jorion Roth, capsuleer.

"Bon soir, Avol, you're well?" Jorion draped an arm around Girane's shoulders and drew him further into the room. "I'm glad you could make it tonight, I'd hate to get sent back upstairs without a chance to see you. Pesellian's well? He's not here tonight?"

Jorion's smile was, as always, infectiously warm. Pesellian always said it never reached the man's blue eyes, but Pese's always been jealous of every man better looking than he is, which is why he refused to come tonight and left me to make his excuses. Girane paused, vaguely aware that though the thought was entirely true, it didn't quite feel like the entire truth, and then realised Jorion was waiting for a reply. "I couldn't drag him away from the lab, I'm afraid."

"Ah, scientists, eh? My eldest, Cia, she's the same." Jorian gestured toward the back of the room, where a plump girl was moving among the guests with a tray of canapés. "Lorraine had to drag her down here by the ear, or close to it. She's been accepted to the Ecole de Physique, you know, we couldn't be more proud, but a girl her age needs more in her life than the books, non?"

Girane nodded agreement and took a glass from a tray offered to him by a younger girl, one with a far stronger resemblance to Lorraine. And there was Lorraine DeGrace Roth herself, her eyes and smile as bright as the gemstones around her neck, pausing to kiss her husband's cheek before extending one slender hand to Girane.

"Avol," she said fondly. "Such a pleasure.  Is that darling man of yours brewing up some sort of elixir of eternal youth in his laboratory? Because I swear you look younger every time I see you.  Therese has gotten you a drink?  And - Cia, don't stand there dreaming while Avol is hungry."

With a murmured apology, the older Roth daughter held out her tray, wearing an echo of her mother's bright smile. "M'ser Girane, how nice to see you again."

Girane contemplated the potential damage to his waistline in each pasty-wrapped parcel on her tray, but Lorraine's cook was famous in society circles, and rightly so, and he couldn't resist. The girl smiled again, and began to turn, and Girane hastily cast about for a topic of conversation that would delay her and the tray she carried.  "Jorion said you're studying to be a physicist?"

"Oui, M'ser," she said, politely but a little distantly. "Perhaps less useful than Dr Aurelim's work on tuber yields, but it interests me."

"Oh, you know Pese's latest?" Girane discreetly took another pastry.

"Great potential, perhaps not here but in places with more marginal conditions," Cia said, almost the exact words from Pese's Science Merit Citation, and entirely true, although with no mention of the military applications, not the entire truth. The girl gave him another bright, Lorraine-DeGrace-smile, and said,  "You must be very proud of him, M'ser. Please, do try the ones on the left. They're cheese, quite delicious."

"Oh, well, if you insist." She was right: they were quite delicious. He said so, and Cia's smile broadened, genuine warmth in her eyes for the first time, as if she'd been somewhere else until them and briefly stepped inside herself. Fortune, she's almost pretty, Girane thought with surprise, and then, "Did you make them?"

Cia nodded, flushing a little, and lowered her voice to say confidingly, "The secret is the - "


A loud curse behind her made them both turn. Doetre Tumame, past and most say future mayor, was hopping on one foot, swearing, the crumpled child's model of a sharp-edged space ship on the floor an eloquent explanation.

"You stupid cow!" a shrill voice declared. The owner of the voice, a small girl with startlingly ginger hair, glared up at Tumame. "You ruined it! Why don't you look where you're going, you - "

"Camille," Lorraine DeGrace said, and cast a laughing glance around the room. Children, the glance said, inviting complicity from all the parents there,  what can you do?

""Well, she should!" the girl said furiously. "That took me and Cia ages and - "

"Then you should have taken better care of it, cherie," Lorraine said. "Now pick it up and take it to your room."

"Not until she says sorry!"

Lorraine lost her smile. "Camille! That is not an appropriate tone to use. If you are looking to be -"

Whatever Lorraine thought Camille was looking to be was lost as the tray Cia had been holding hit the floor with a crash. She stared down at it and then looked up with a bright smile. "Fortune," she said. "I'm so sorry, everyone, I really am a butterfingers."


"Oh, Cia," Lorraine said with a disappointed sigh.

The girl flushed a dull red and bent to gather up the spilled food, murmuring apologies.

Jorian put a hand on his wife's shoulder and said genially, "Well, I think Cia has announced it's time to move into the dining room, everyone.  Mayor Tumame, let me offer you my arm, I trust Camille's Drake hasn't caused permanent injury? They are quite a sturdy little ship, we pilots call them flying bricks for a reason."

The tension in the room lifted as the guests followed Jorian and Tumame towards the dining room.  As the staff set out a first course of delicate white fish and lemon butter, even the former mayor forgot her injury.

Girane would not even have remembered Jorion and Lorraine's youngest and least well-behaved child, except, leaving the house full of excellent food and better wine, he heard a child's voice from the shadows beneath the hedge at the front of the property.

"I don't care, Cia! I am running away and you can't stop me!"

The eldest daughter's voice sounded somehow softer and warmer in the darkness. "But I will be lonely when you've gone, cherie. And sad, without you."

"You're going away anyway, to college!" Camille said sullenly.

I am eavesdropping, Girane thought, with a faint, guilty thrill. Still, it's always useful to know what one can about a family like the DeGraces.  As a councillor, it's almost my duty to.

As  a justification, it had the benefit of being entirely true.  Girane stepped further into the shadows as Cia said gravely, "Only a little way away. And I have to, to get a good job so I can get a house of my own."

"Of your own?" Camille asked. "With just, like, you?"

"Mmm. There might be room for one more, cherie. If you wanted."

"We could be running away together!" the child said excitedly.

A faint rustle of clothing. "We could. If you weren't running away now, that is."

"Oh." A small foot scuffed gravel.  "Maybe I could wait, for you. If you didn't take very long."

There was a smile in Cia's voice as she said, "I promise I'll be as quick as I can, how about that?"

"Okay. I guess I can wait, if you're quick. Ow, don't squeeze, Cia!"


The girl laughed quietly. "I can't help it, you're too squeezable.  Hey, since you're not running away, do you want to help me fix your ship?"

"It's too smashed," Camille said sadly. "That stupid lady has big feet! She should watch where they go!"

"Yes, she should," Cia agreed. "But I bet it isn't too smashed. I bet we could fix it, with maybe some replacement bits."

Camille sighed. "Then it won't be the same, with new bits."

"No, it'll be like a real spaceship. They get fixed all the time, you know," Cia said. "And new parts get put on them when they're too broken."

"Really?" Camille asked.

"Uh-huh.  So your ship will be even more real, if it's been fixed up after a collision."

Camille said hotly, "Mama should have made the stupid lady 'pologise, not me, Cia! That wasn't fair! It was on the table and everything, she knocked it down with her big fat backside, I saw!"

Girane had to stifle a laugh, thinking Tumame is rather broad in the beam, as Cia said quietly, "Well, maybe Mama didn't see."


"She should have been on my side anyway! She's my mama!"

"Mama can't help being Mama, Cami. Don't be mean about her. And I'm on your side, hmm? How about that?"

"Okay. Cia?"

"Yes, cherie?"

"Can we go and fix my ship now?"

Girane stepped back out of sight hastily as feet scuffed and bodies moved in the shadows. "If you've finished running away."

"I have," Camille said, as the two sisters joined hands and started back to the house.

Then as they passed the shadows where Girane stood, she added thoughtfully, "Well.  For now, anyway."

Perhaps it was that carefully considered qualification that stuck like a grass seed on Dry Day to Avolier Girane's memory.  Certainly, when he heard that Jorion Roth had fallen victim to some sort of cloning accident, he wondered first, not about the man's beautiful now-widow but about the eldest and the youngest of his children.  When the Roth family left Debreth, suddenly and completely between one day and the next,  Girane found himself thinking For now without quite knowing why he did.

And when, some time after that, Ciarente Roth called upon the town council to explain that sometimes Air Traffic Control regulations were made to be broken, Mayor Avolier Girane surprised his fellow councillors almost as much as he surprised himself when he found himself agreeing with her.

She was a DeGrace, he explained to them later, even if this pilot fellow she wanted them to recognise as a hero was Caldari. There had always been DeGraces in Debreth, even back before the first of the nine bridges had been built.  Humouring her, especially now she was a capsuleer pilot and richer than Fortune's right hand, was an entirely prudent thing to do. 

Eventually he won their agreement.  Fines were cancelled, a statue commissioned, a public holiday gazetted.


After all, what he had said was entirely true.

And in the end, Girane thought to himself, standing on First Bridge on the first Debreth annual holiday to celebrate capsuleer pilots, watching Ciarente Roth watch Captain Night make a gracious speech thanking Debreth for the honour, in the end ...

No-one knows the entire truth, in the end, except perhaps Fortune.

Who keeps her own counsel. 

Even, he thought, joining in the general applause, even  from capsuleers.

Love and Crime

"Charlie, you're a fool." Capitaine Elienne Desorlay hunched her shoulders against the draft whistling out of the ventilation duct, gaze steady on the door at the end of the alley.  "This exchange program - that no-one's ever heard of before - just happened to pull your name out of the hat right when your capsuleer conceived more than a fancy to have you closer to home?"

Lieutenant Charles Etay, his thick coat more than a match for the breeze, more podder bribes, shrugged. "A job is a job all the same."

"A job that's a podder's grace and favour, for you to lose as soon as you lose her fancy?" Eli snorted, fumbling in her pocket for her cigarettes. "That's not a job, farm-boy. That's a polite way of offering to turn you into her putain.."

That got her no more reaction than a faint smile. "Such a way with words, you have," Etay said, leaning forward to cup his hands around her lighter as the draft made the flame flicker and dim.

"Oh, and how's it going to be, then, you tell me, when she tires of your pretty face?" Eli drew on the cigarette and when it lit, puffed smoke in Etay's face.  "When you tell her no when she wants to hear yes? When you think yours when she's thinking hers?"

Etay took a step back and turned to watch the door again. "There's a job there. There'll be one here, if I need it." He shrugged a little."Do you think this asshole's going to show?"

"He'll show," Eli said with flat certainty.

"He's got to know we'll be watching his girl," Etay said.  "The smart thing would be to -"

Eli flicked ash downwind. "You're forgetting something."

"I am?"

"One, he's a criminal. And crime makes you stupid," Eli said, holding up her thumb.

"Well, that explains a great deal," Etay said mildly.

"And two," Eli said, raising her forefinger to make the shape of a gun, "He's in love. And love, farmboy ..." She aimed at him. "Love makes you dumber than dumb."

Etay glanced sideways at her, long lashes half lowered over his limpid gaze, the breeze ruffling his hair into artless disarray, leaning against the wall as if he belongs on the cover of a holo, not that he knows it, which is almost more annoying, Fortune fuck him. "I recall you saying something along those lines once or twice before."

"A pretty girl crooks her finger, and a silly boy goes running. And then discovers he can't go wandering off again so easily."

Etay laughed soundlessly. "You think Cia plans to keep me chained up and captive?" he asked.  "To father the rest of her children?'

"Stranger things have fucking happened, farmboy, most of them in podder's hangars."

Etay took a step sideways as a passer-by obscured his view of the door. "She's not like that, Eli."

"Oh, not like that, not like that, says the man so head-over-heels in love with her he can't see her any more clearly than he can the shadow behind the sun." Eli burnt the cigarette down to filter on a single ferocious inhalation and dropped it.  "Fortune fuck me, and Robert just finished repainting the bathroom."

"Painting the ... " Etay stopped, eyes steady on the end of the alley. Not a stupid boy, no, Eli thought. Just a foolish one. "Eli ..."

"Someone has to keep an eye on you, farmboy. Someone with a clear head."  

The corner of Etay's mouth that Eli could see twitched upwards. "And you're volunteering?"

"Partners, remember?" She took a wide step around him as a face familiar from the squadroom holoboard showed at the end of the alley. "So you tell your pretty podder mama-to-be that this exchange program needs to have room for your senior partner. Flutter your eyelashes at her, or something."

"Eli ..."

She jerked her chin towards their target. "You going to argue with me or you going to make this arrest?"

Etay's head turned, his eyes narrowing, and he reached for the PRD on his belt. Cop trumps love-sick fool, Eli thought to herself.

For now, anyway.

For now.

Unlucky

He was hungry.

He'd been hungry for a long time. There was food, rotting, stinking food that sometimes made him vomit, but food nonetheless, in the cans scattered here and there, but he was usually chased away from it by those larger and stronger.

Or if not larger and stronger, then at least with others to help them hunt away strangers and claim the food for themselves.

He didn't have others.

He was alone.

That was worse than being hungry. Being hungry was a constant pain that gnawed at his belly and burned his throat and made him almost too weak to walk, sometimes, but being alone was Wrong.

It wasn't his fault. He'd just been unlucky, or that's what he tried to tell himself when the feeling of Wrong got so bad he couldn't uncurl himself.

He hadn't always been alone. He'd had a pack, too, once. Not a big one, but a good one. He hadn't been hungry, or cold, or chased, then. He'd had a good leader, even if it was a Big, a leader who always made sure there was food, and fresh clean water that hadn't been pissed in, and had kept strangers out of their home.  It hadn't been a big home, but it was big enough for their pack, just him and his sister and Packleader.

Packleader hadn't been able to talk properly, of course, being a Big, although it tried sometimes, making noises with its mouth.  He'd learned how to understand what it wanted when it made those noises, or some of them, anyway, and that made Packleader happy.

But then one day Packleader had started to smell wrong.  It had laid down in its sleeping place and stopped moving. He and his sister had tried to wake Packleader up, had licked all its fur the wrong way round, but Packleader didn't wake up, and after a while Packleader started to be cold and smell even more wrong, and that's when he'd known that Packleader had stopped being there and had turned into food, even though nobody had bitten it on the back of the neck the way you did to turn something into food.

That was the first time he'd known what it was to be hungry.

He'd pulled on the metal thing where Packleader kept the food, even though that was a Badboy, Wrong, thing to do and it made him want to dig a hole and hide, doing it. He and his sister had drunk water from the bowl in the waste place, beside the dirt Packleader always put there for them to use, even though drinking water from that bowl was another Badboy thing.

They'd been thirsty.  He didn't think Packleader would have wanted them to be thirsty.

They ate the food from the metal thing until it ran out. Then he'd tried to find more food for them, but their home only opened when Packleader made it and neither he nor his sister had been able to make it work.  They'd waited for another Big to come and bring food, but no Big came, and they got hungrier and hungrier. His sister's fur began to fall out, and his mouth hurt and bled all the time.  One day his sister wouldn't get up from her sleeping place.

That's when he decided they had to eat Packleader.

It was an awful, Wrong, Badboy thing, but he couldn't think of anything else.

Packleader was enough food for a while longer, but he'd started to worry about what they'd do when it was gone by the time they heard the home opening one day and some more Bigs came.

They didn't bring food, though. And they didn't want to be part of the pack. They put their paws over their noses and made loud noises with their mouths and when they found Packleader those noises got so loud they hurt his ears.

Then one of them rushed at him and his sister and even though he'd never seen a Big in fighting posture he could tell instantly that's what it was. His sister told him to run and got in between him and the Big.  The home was still open and he'd run for the outside. Before he got there he looked back to make sure his sister was following him and just as he did the Big lifted one foot and brought it down hard on her.  There was a crunching noise.

He'd learned that day you don't need teeth to bite someone on the back of the neck.

He ran, and kept running, until the Big stopped chasing him and longer, until his paws were so sore he couldn't bear to put them on the ground, and then he crawled into the smallest place he could find and curled up and cried, for his sister, who was now food, for Packleader, and for himself, who was Wrong, and Badboy, and alone.

The next morning was the first time he was hunted by another pack.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find a pack that would let him be part of them.  If he'd been younger, maybe, or older, the Packleaders wouldn't have cared. Or if he'd been stronger and large, he could have fought a Packleader and taken their pack for himself. But he wasn't strong, or large. He was the right size to sit on a Big's legs when they were resting, which had been just the right size for his old Packleader, but was just the wrong size now.  And no Bigs wanted to be his Packleader, even when he showed them how he could chase his tail as if it was a scurry-food, and pretend to be surprised when he caught it, which had always made his old Packleader happy.

It didn't make the other Bigs happy. One even kicked him, hard, but he remembered what happened to his sister and when he saw the Big's paw go up he dodged, and the kick only hit his side and leg.  It still hurt, even though it didn't turn him into food, and it never stopped hurting, so he couldn't run much anymore.

After than he stayed away from all the Bigs.

So he was hungry, all the time. And hunted. And alone, which was worst of all.

Right now, though, he could smell food.

He crept out of the hole where he'd been hiding from the other packs and tried to work out where the smell was coming from.  His nose told him it was somewhere in the Bigs that hurried by, near the big fast metal things, and he wanted to cry.  He couldn't go out there, among all of them, with their kicking paws and loud noises, especially not near the big fast metal things. He'd seen others get too close to those things and suddenly become flat and food.

He was so hungry, though.

And what if they did kick him? What if he did turn into food? He was alone, and Badboy, and Wrong.

And hungry.

He crept out, just a little way, to see and smell better, belly low to the ground. None of the Bigs paid any attention.  The food smell moved away and he followed it, carefully, as fast as he could.  He couldn't walk very fast, since the Big had kicked him, and the smell got further away, and he wanted to cry again, but then it got much closer really quickly and he realized that the Big carrying the food had stopped.

He looked at it. It wasn't a very big Big, the same size as his old Packleader, and it was with another little Big who was part of its pack.  They made noises with their mouths at each other while he watched them. The smallest Big smelled sad, but the Packleader smelled like it was in fighting posture, even though its paws were on the ground.

He couldn't see any food, but it was there all right. Sometimes Bigs carried food in the outside-fur they had to make up for not having much proper fur. He guessed this one was doing that.

He really, really, didn't want to be kicked again.

He really, really wanted something to eat.

He crept forward, watching the Big's paws, and nosed it the way he used to nose his old Packleader to tell it he wanted food.

The Big looked at him. It didn't kick him.

It didn't give him any food, either.

He nosed it again, and even though Bigs couldn't talk, he tried explaining to it that he was very hungry, and Goodboy, and could he please have some food?

Both Bigs looked at him and made more noises with their mouths, not loud noises, though, and their paws stayed on the ground. While they were looking at him he showed them how he could chase his tail and pretend to catch it, except his side and his leg hurt too much and he fell over on his rump.  It was horribly humiliating, but he got up and tried again. He even pretended he'd meant to fall over, and did it again on purpose, even though it really hurt.

The Bigs made more noises. They didn't kick him.

They didn't give him any food, either.

He started to cry. He couldn't help it. He put his nose against the Big who was the Packleader and tried not to make any noises with his crying.

The Packleader Big put its paw inside its outside-fur and then it was holding food. It gave the food to the other Big and the other Big got down close to him on the ground and held it out in a paw.

It was real food, fresh, food that tasted of food. He tried to eat it politely, but he was too hungry.  When he was finished he headbutted the Big's hand the way he'd used to with his old Packleader, to show he was grateful.  The Big smelled sad again, when he did that, but it rubbed his head with its paw and gave him more food, and made noises to the Packleader.

The Packleader made noises back.

The Packleader didn't smell sad. It didn't smell happy, either.

It didn't smell angry, though. Just ... a little bit like it was thinking about whether to dig a hole and hide, or get in fighting posture and bite someone on the back of the neck.

Not him, though, he didn't think.

He nosed it again.

This time the Packleader got down close to him and made more food appear in its paw. He took it and ate it the very politest way he knew how. This was a good pack, he could tell, even if the smaller Big was sad.  There wasn't any kicking.  The noises they made to each other weren't loud.

And they had a lot of food.

The little Big did something to its outside-fur, and took it apart. The Packleader took the piece, and tied it to his neck.  It held on to the other end.

It held on to the other end.

He stopped being alone, and Wrong. He had a pack.

He butted his Packleader's paw with his head and waited for it to tell him what to do.

Then something terrible happened.

One of the fast metal things came very very close and stopped and his pack went right up next to it.

He tried to tell them how dangerous it was, but they were Bigs, and he couldn't make them understand. The little Big climbed inside it, and then his Packleader did, and they ignored him, even when he danced the Danger Dance right there next to the metal thing.

His Packleader pulled the thing tied around his neck and made noises at him.

He wanted to run, more than anything. The metal things were dangerous and Wrong and even being this close to one made him want to dig a hole and hide.

But his pack was inside it. He couldn't run away and leave them in danger.

He had to at least try to protect them.

His Packleader pulled the thing around his neck again.

He closed his eyes and jumped.

Human

"No," Capitaine Elienne Desorlay said flatly. She opened the drawer of her desk and for an instant her hand hovered over her sidearm before she reached past it for the crumpled pack of cigarettes. "No fucking way."

"They'll dock you," Lieutenant Charles Etay reminded her mildly, "If you get another citation for smoking in the squadroom."

"My business," Elienne said, patting her pockets for a lighter. Shit. It's always in that one pocket ... She hoisted herself up to fit her fingers in the front pocket of pants that had been shrinking in the wash more and more lately. Got you, you putain de merde. "Not yours."

"Partners," Etay said. "What's yours is mine, remember? And I can't afford the fine. I'm going to be - "

"So you fucking said," Elienne snapped, flicked the lighter and saw their supervisor heading towards them. "Merde."

"Have an orange instead," Etay said, producing another of his increasingly-frequent fruit miracles from a jacket pocket.

"Gift from your fucking podder?" Elienne asked sourly.

Etay smiled at her, sunny and unperturbed. "From the podder I'm fucking, yes."

Elienne stuffed the unlit cigarette and lighter in her pocket. "And didn't anybody ever tell you not to wade without your waterproofs?"

"Mmm, well," Etay said, turning the orange slowly between his hands. "Everybody knows pod pilots can't be natural parents."

"So you just assumed..." Words failed her for a moment, and then returned in a string of obscenities that turned heads even in the squadroom.

Etay didn't try to interrupt, peeling the skin from the orange as Elienne gave him the full force of her opinion of his intelligence, parenthood, upbringing and general character. By the time she'd run down into fuming silence, he had a neat pile of peel on the edge of her desk and a heap of translucent crescents in the palm of one pale, long-fingered hand.  He offered one to her, the sweet, sharp scent stirring some dim image in Elienne's mind, a feeling like memory but one that connected to no place or time she'd ever known.  She took the fruit without conscious thought, a broken fingernail ripping the thin membrane and sending a trickle of juice running down her wrist.

"I assumed, oui," Etay said as Elienne stuffed the piece of orange in her mouth and licked the last trace of juice from her hand before it could disappear up her shirtsleeve. "I know. When you assume you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and - "

Elienne cut him off. "You made an ass out of you, farmboy, leave me the fuck out of it.  I wouldn't fuck a podder with my worst enemy's dick, let alone get her en cloque. And you think she was assuming she wouldn't end up avec un polichinel dans le tirrior?"

That got her another sunny smile. "Do you think it's a plan to sue me for child support?"

She snorted. "Be serious." Even with the worst will in the world it was hard to see how a capsuleer could be out for Charlie's money. He makes less than I do, for Fortune's sake, and I make two fifths of one tenth of fuck-all.

Charlie ate another crescent of orange. "I am serious," he said. "I'm serious about everything. You know that."

"Yeah, everything and nothing," Elienne said. "Charlie. This has gone far enough.  She's a podder."

"She is a podder, yes," he conceded. "And she's going to be the mother of my child."

"Mother?" Elienne closed her eyes, decided The Super can go fuck himself, and fumbled the now-crumpled cigarette out of her pocket. "Look, farmboy.  Whatever the fuck a podder turns into when it reproduces, it isn't a mother. A mother is a human thing, it's ... " She lit the cigarette and burned it a quarter down with one ferocious draw. "Take it from me. I've had three. Stretch-marks and hemorrhoids and tit-rot and all the rest of it. Waking up at one in the morning, and again at two thirty, and again at four, all of you hurting like poison from how tired you are, and still loving that little, screaming, stinking creature more than you ever knew there was love in you, even while you want to put a pillow over its face so you can get some sleep. Human, all of it, hard and ugly as it is. That's not something that belongs in a podder's world."  She ashed the cigarette into Etay's pile of orange peel and drew on it again. "You've been fooling yourself that this podder feels for you like you feel for her, and now tu l'as mise en cloque and you're talking about the  mother of your child but Charlie, she's a fucking starship, not a mother, and whatever comes out of her in nine month's time - "

"Six months," Etay corrected her mildly.

"Whenever the fuck, she won't be a mother and it won't be your child. If it's even a child."

His expression was grave, and for a moment Elienne thought she'd finally got through to him.  Then he quirked one eyebrow. "You think it'll be a shuttle?"

No such fucking luck.

She shook her head, and stubbed out  her cigarette on the sole of her shoe. "Charlie.  This isn't a joke. It isn't a crush, anymore, yours or hers."

He offered her another piece of orange, and when she made no move to take it, set it carefully on the edge of her desk, ends upright like Tomas had used to make the smiles in his drawings. "I know that."

Elienne shook her head. A podder gets a pretty plaything, stops taking his calls when she gets bored, never thinks about the wreck she makes of a man's heart. That's a heartbreak.

A podder gets a pretty plaything and takes a fancy to breed another. What does she do when she gets bored with her toys and her poor pretty boy's fantasy that he's got something to do with her life and her child?

More than a heart's going to get broken, here.

She picked up the piece of orange and bit into it, sweet and tart at the same time, and sighed. "What am I going to do with you, farmboy?"

Etay studied the heap of peel and cigarette ash for a moment, apparently giving her question serious thought, and then reached out and swept it all into the trash bin by the desk and gave her his sweetest, sunniest smile. "Tell me more about your hemorrhoids?" he suggested.

Elienne tried to glare at him, but as always, she couldn't keep it up. No wonder that Fortune forsaken podder picked him for a diversion.

Sweet, pretty, silly farmboy. Thinking about a little voice calling him 'Papa', about first steps and milk teeth and all the rest of the holvertisements. 

Poor stupid fool.

This is How It Is Not

This is how it is not.

You can forget.

Whole minutes, hours, sometimes almost the whole day, you can forget.

Things are very much as they used to be, after all.  Your quarters with the gaily colored blanket knit your mother's youngest brother knit for you when you first left home spread carefully over the bed, your office with all the books you've been meaning to read for about two years now on the shelves and the familiar copy of Iuenan's famous holo of the Salaajo dancer on the wall, the hangar with the perpetual faint tang of machine oil and freeze-burned metal, the mess with bowls of apples on every table ...

Things are so very much as they used to be, you can forget that they aren't how they used to be, won't ever be how they used to be, not ever again.

You even look the same, no suddenly grey hair or new lines showing in the mirror.  No dark shadows beneath your eyes telling the world of nightmares, because you're a professional and you're not about to ignore what you know is best practice.  Exercise, healthy food, meditation, plenty of water, sometimes pills, mild ones only, when absolutely necessary, scrupulously logged with two of your colleagues from Pilot Roth's medical staff.  Your eyes are bright, your skin clear, your clothes no tighter or looser than they were a year ago.

You look perfectly healthy, in the mirror, so perfectly healthy that you can forget that you aren't perfectly healthy, won't ever be perfectly healthy, not ever again.

This is how it is not.

You do your job as well as you used to, listen and question and follow the thread of the half-hinted revelation, offer a glass of water or a box of tissues when they're needed but not when they'd break the flow words from the patient sitting across from you. You ask how they feel about what they've told you, offer patience and kindness and at just the right moment the gentle nudge that steers them towards why they're really there. Never judging, never shocked, you're the calm face that makes it possible to put words around what's unspeakable, giving them the confidence that whatever it is that gnaws away at their heart in the darkest hours of the night, it can be faced and tamed and brought to heel. They don't know that it's a lie, and so for them it isn't one.

You lie so well that for hours at a time you can forget that you know the truth now: that some beasts can never be defeated and some dark hours never end.

This is how it is not.

You can let a door close behind you without running through a calming exercise to keep your shrieking nerves from flooding your system with enough adrenaline to drop you hard into dark so black I can't tell if my eyes are open and someone screaming and they can't, they can't, they can't do this, it's a mistake, a mistake ...

You can glance casually around a room without bracing yourself in case you see a slightly-above average height man with a stocky build and light brown hair, a man just close enough to memory for your treacherous subconscious to do the rest and put you on my back and the hangar floor is cold and the weight of him is making it hard to breathe and there's nowhere that I still belong to myself now, not a single place, not even inside myself ...

You can go out without double checking the watch with the alarm that lets you know when you have to be back to take the needle from the box and stick it into the vein in your forearm, the vein pocked and pitted now with the only external marks of the constant battle between the poison and the nanites in your blood.

This is how it is not.

You can unwrap the neat package of words you've put around what happened and how you feel about it, the shiny coating that proves to the colleagues whose patient you are just how well you're dealing with what happened, how professional you've been, how much insight you have into your own case.

You don't find yourself kneeling on the shower floor with the warm water sluicing tears and snot from your face, sobbing Mumma, mumma until your throat is so sore and swollen a wave of panic breaks over you the vitoxin, the nanites have stopped working ...

You don't wake to sodden, stinking sheets, and sneak out to haul them to the 'cycler yourself so the ensign assigned to linen duty on your floor won't know that the crew's psychologist wets her bed every night.

This is how it is not.

You can see a way for you to live through this, imagine a future, not necessarily a good one but some sort of future, at least, with you in it.

This is how it is not.

You can forget.

Impossible Situations

You did your job.


Right, left, right-right, the heavy dummy jerking and rocking with each blow despite the weights at its base.

You were in an impossible situation.


Elbow, knee, fist. Left hook, right jab, right again and a kick.  Sweat burned her eyes, her breath coming short and fast as she pushed past her implants' ability to compensate, a blur of movement an untrained eye would have trouble tracking.  Hell, even a trained, unaugmented one.


Helmi is very well trained and she's packed full up to her back teeth with some of the best wiring money can buy.

All of it so there'll never be a situation that's impossible when it comes to Pilot's safety.

No matter what Pilot's sister says.


There's good enough, and not good enough, and a gap in between wide as the space between the stars, but no situation is impossible, if you're good enough, if you train hard enough, if you get it right.

Helmi got it wrong, there's no question of that.

Got herself good and dead, for one thing. Clear sign of a fuck-up.

Let Pilot get hurt. A little, Invelen had said. Before I realized.


The dummy jerks and dances, the casing beginning to split. Helmi hits it again, and again, leaving smears of blood despite the wraps over her knuckles. Her arms ache, her vision blurs, the bruises on her elbows and forearms and knees and shins are bad enough now for their dull warning ache to get past the pain suppression implant with each impact.

There's a limit, that's what Pilot's sister had said, making excuses Helmi didn't need made, offering forgiveness she hadn't asked for. There wasn't anything else you could have done.


But Helmi's not interested in forgiveness, and she's never been any better with limits than she is with excuses.  Not as a cadet, not in basic, not when Pilot's people hauled her off her crippled transport and the first face she saw as the marines snapped open their helmets was Sarge's.


You again, he'd said, even though they'd only met the once.

Me again.

Home Guard and Peace and Order, court-martial offence for either of them. Sergeant and Private on the same crew, same result. Lines that don't get crossed.

But Helmi and Sarge cross a lot of lines these days. After all, they live in a world where you come back to work two days after a bullet shatters your skull or a steel hand snaps your neck.  That's a pretty big fucking line, right there. 


Death used to be a limit.


Not any more.

Sarge forgave her for killing him. Helmi's still working on forgiving him for his forgiveness.

Not your fault, Alpassi, he'd said. Nothing you could have done.

But Helmi's not interested in excuses.

There's always something you can do.

If you try hard enough, work long enough. 


No situation is impossible.

Not even mine.

The Worst Of It: Two

You can hold onto pain, like it's a physical thing, curl yourself around it like the little sister you'd die to protect, if you want to.

Put your faith in it like the ancestors you don't have and the spirits you only pray to in foxholes.

Hold it close, so you can't feel shame or guilt past the fire of your cramping muscles, can't see the endless chain of sleepless nights ahead past the jangling colors spiraling across your field of vision, can't taste the copper coin of despair past the sour bile burning in your throat. Fill yourself with it until the hum of it in your veins drowns out everything else, until it coils through your body like smoke through a crematorium.

Amieta clung to the pain, clenched her fists on it until the servos whined and the joints grated in protest.

No more than I deserve.

There were voices, sometimes. Sometimes they were voices she knew. A woman's, soft and tender as the hands that smoothed her hair, that wiped her face. Ami? Can you hear me? Ami?

More often they were harsh, Amarr-accented, voices that went with blood and screaming and everyone dead, every single one of them but me.

The voice she thought she knew, her sister's voice, told her It isn't real, Ami, what you see, it isn't real. You're safe, with me, I'm here, Ami. Gentle fingers tried to prise open her fists, but flesh-and-blood was no match for Zainou's finest work. Cia gave up and wrapped her own hands around Amieta's, fingers tucked against the crook of rigid metal joints. I'm here, Ami. You're safe.

That might be true.

It might not be.

From moment to moment Amieta wasn't sure which of those was the worst of it.

The pain was true, the jagged edges of it in her gut, the burning cold that washed over her in waves, the hot ache in her bones.

The pain was real.

She wrapped herself in the pain like a blanket, drew it over her head and curled under it, fists clenched in its edges.

You can hold onto pain, like it's the most precious thing you have.

If you want to.

Drown yourself in it, let it wash away the knowledge that you've hurt the ones who love you, the fear you'll hurt them again, let the acid bath of it etch away the lies you told. You can let the pain eat away the shame.

And the reasons for it.

If you want to.

Even through the pain Amieta could feel Cia's hands curled around hers. She cracked an eyelid to see her sister's honey blonde head leaning on her arm, the edge of her face, one closed eye.

You can hold onto pain.

If you want to.

A new pain, different, signals firing from the machinery of her hands. Metal ground on metal, joints abused past tolerance.

The blonde head lifted. Cia blinked, eyes still cloudy with sleep. "Ami?"

Voice rusty with disuse, Amieta cleared her throat and then again, croaked, "I'm here."

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Amieta opened her hands.

Conversations on the Fortune's Firefly: Twenty Six

The instruments were laid out on the tray.

The needles and the knives.

Cia tried not look at them, but they were there, glinting in the corner of her eye.

"Are you ready, Captain Roth?" Dr Sanik asked.

No. No. Never, not ever.

"Yes," Cia said. She looked away from the tray and sat down on the examination table. "I'm ready. I think."

Metal clinked against metal. "This will only take a few moments."

"Thank you, doctor," Cia said politely. Something cold touched the skin behind her ear and she was -

falling away as fast as she can from

                                                               needles and

                  knives

and -

"Captain Roth."

Dr Sanik was on the other side of the room.

No, Cia realized. I'm on the other side of the room. Crouched in the corner, back pressed to the wall.

"Captain Night said you wanted this procedure," Dr Sanik said.

Want. Wrong word.

"I have to have it," Cia told her knees. "I have to."

Metal clinked on metal again. Cia stole a glance at Dr Sanik and saw her hands empty, the needles and the knives on the tray. "Did he explain to you that it is nothing like - the surgery you had before?"

"Yes. He said - " Cia closed her eyes and tried to make Silver's voice real, tried to make it sound as if he were there and not the other side of the cluster. A fairly minor operation, Cia. Very safe. "He said it was safe."

"It is safe," Dr Sanik said.

Cia nodded, and told her knees "I know."

"We can give you something to make it easier. A mild sedative, if you want."

"I want - " Not to have to do this. "To have -" Silver here, really here, not just a memory of a voice. "I could, if -" Ami were here, holding my hand.

"Captain Roth," Dr Sanik said. "I understand that you may feel some anxiety. I did, after all, perform the reconstructive surgery, after the ... incident."

"I know," Cia said. "I am sorry about that. I mean, I'm sorry about the - the fuss I made. I know, I knew, you weren't ... I did know. It was just the -"

              Needles

                                                                 and the

                           knives

                                                                                   and the dark.

"I understand from Captain Night there are some time constraints," Dr Sanik said.

"Yes." Cia took a deep breath, and forced herself to get up. The room spun, and then steadied. "Yes, there are. I can't afford to - I'll need to be sharp, later. I don't think, a sedative, I don't think it's a good idea."

"Then if you'll take a seat?" Dr Sanik indicated the examination table again. "We can begin."

It was a long way across the room to the table. Cia took a step, then another, keeping her gaze away from the tray, from what it held.

The last time Dr Sanik had held a scalpel and touched its blade to her scalp, Cia had held tight to Ami's cool metal hand, held on even in the dark, through the needles and the knives, until it was over.

Cia opened her mouth to say Wait, wait until Ami gets here, I'll be all right when Ami gets here.

Closed it again. If Ami was here, it wouldn't be necessary.

She heard metal scratch against metal, felt the cool touch of it on her skin. Someone was whimpering. Cia was too frightened to open her eyes to see who it was. Please, no, she thought, please, stop. Please.

The words stayed unspoken in her throat.

For family, you do anything.

Go anywhere.

Even into the dark.

Not Quite The End of The Universe

The station smelt.

Even in the hangar, Cia could taste the tang in the air: oil and grease, metal glowing under the heat of welding torches, something unrecognizable cooking at a food stall nearby.

Out in the corridors, the smells were stronger. A sickly blend of perfumes drifting from a gaggle of girls clattering and chattering past with their gazes sliding over the off-shift deckhands and dockhands slouching towards the bars and clubs on Recreation Row; a warm wave of fetid stench from the waste-cans as they were dragged through the access alleys; the thick simmer of spices poured over food protein to give it some illusion of flavor.

There was no reason the station cyclers should be weaker in Syndicate than in Heimatar. No reason at all, Cia told herself.

The station still smelt.

She swallowed hard and tried to ignore it. "Anything, M'ser Burke?"

Tanith Burke, dressed in a faded jacket with the shoulder patch that marked him as a Mordu's veteran, shook his head. "Couldn't find anyone who said they'd seen her."

"But that's just Mordu's Legion, isn't it?" Cia asked. "I mean, Ami was with the, the ... 'Bunnies'. Did you ask them?"

"It's not," Burke said, "Quite so simple."

"That's not a good enough answer, M'ser Burke." Cia turned on her heel so fast her head spun and she had to stop for a moment.

"Maybe we should go back to the hangar," Helmi said quietly.

"I'm not going anywhere until we find - " A gust of air carried the smell of sweat and onions and beer from a couple wandering past with their arms entwined and Cia stopped, gagging.

"They're not going to be faster with watching over you at the same time," Helmi said.

"You mean I'm in the way," Cia said. "Am I in the way, M'ser Burke?"

"I wouldn't put it precisely that way," Burke said.

"Well, how would you put it?" Cia felt her eyes sting with tears and blinked hard. "She's my sister, M'ser Burke, my sister and I can't just sit around and - " A sob escaped, despite her best efforts, and she covered her face with her hands.

"Perhaps you should get some rest," Burke suggested. "We are professionals, Captain Roth. Do you know the old saying about the man who buys a dog and barks himself?"

Wiping her eyes, Cia shook her head. "But I think I take your point. I'm sorry, Tanith. I didn't mean to shout at you."

"I'm sure it's been a very trying time for you," Burke said noncomittally.

Cia sighed. "Do you think you'll find her soon?"

"We know she's on this station," Burke said. "But things aren't quite as straightforward here as you might be used to. People are very wary of strangers, especially strangers asking questions." He offered his arm, and when Cia took it, tactfully turned her in the direction of the hangars. "It may take some time to build up the neccessary contacts and trust."

"How much time?"

"I won't mislead you, Captain. Months, rather than weeks."

"Oh."

They walked in silence a moment, and then Burke cleared his throat. "Of course, there is an alternative."

"Oh?"

"You could hire the local knowledge. In the person of a local operative, of some description. Of course, that would mean expanding the group of people aware of the situation, by one, at least."

"Oh," Cia said. "I don't want to ... but, months?"

"At least, Captain."

"Oh." She looked up at him. "Do you think that's what I should do? Hire someone?"

"I do," Burke said.

"Oh. Then, will you find someone for me to hire?"

They reached the hangar entrance and Burke stopped. "I'll look into it, Captain."

"Quickly, please," Cia said, having to blink back tears again. "I don't ... I don't like it here." She made herself smile, made her voice light. "It smells terrible. Like ..." Welded metal and cheap perfume, bulk spices and liquor and sweat. "Like the end of the universe."

One of Burke's eyebrows went up at that. "Sydnicate is not quite the end of the universe, Captain," he said. "There is still Solitude. And the Outer Ring."

"Well," Cia said. "We'd better hurry, then. I don't think - " She bit her lip. "I don't think it's a good idea."

To let her get any further away.

Conversations In Debreth: Twenty Five

Mathilde Leclerke ran the cloth over the already-spotless kitchen bench one more time and folded it into precise quarters. Easy to keep house when the house has no-one in it, she thought with a glance at the couches never-sat-on by the fireplace-never-lit. Change the flowers, dust ... open and close windows.

Not that it should be anything to complain about, not for a woman of her age. A nice quiet life with no crying babies and no toddlers smearing honey on the walls, no adolescent boys tramping mud through the house, no dinner parties for twenty at an hour's notice.

Most housekeepers would envy her, Mathilde knew. I'd have envied myself, fifteen years ago.

Never thought I'd miss cleaning M'selle Camille's handprints off every surface less than three foot off the ground.

She sighed. Can't hold on to your own forever, let alone the others.

What was it her own Maman had said? First they make your arms ache. Later they make your heart ache.

And she was old enough to know better, too.

Still, it would be nice to -

As her thought had bespoke Fortune herself, the front door banged open.

"Ami!" It was M'selle Roth's voice, Captain Roth as she was now. "Ami? I'm home." Rapid footsteps in the hall, and then the girl herself appeared at the door.

"Ami? Mathilde, where's Ami?"

"M'selle Invelen is not here," Mathilde said.

"Did she go out?" Ciarente asked. She crossed briskly to the chiller and opened it. "She'll be hungry when she gets back, Ami's always - ugh, Mathilde. Something's gone off in here."

"No, M'selle," Mathilde said.

Ciarente began to pull things off the shelves, sniffing them cautiously. "Well, something smells terrible."

"I am quite sure I would not let anything spoil," Mathilde said. "But I meant, no, M'selle Invelen has not gone out. She has not been here."

"Oh." Ciarente paused, and then said brightly, "She's probably stopped in to see Alain on her way from the shuttle. She'll be here soon. I wonder if she'd like some - oh, this is it." She held a bowl out at arm's length, grimacing. "The vichyssoise. Ugh, it stinks."

Mathilde took the bowl. "Made fresh this morning, M'selle."

"I don't think so, Mathilde. Get rid of it, please, it's turning my stomach."

The only odors Mathilde could identify were onion and chicken, but she turned to pour the soup away. "You are expecting M'selle Invelen today? She did not call."

"I'm sure she'll be here soon," Ciarente said. "Do we have enough eggs? Ami does like Pierre's omelettes."

"More than enough, M'selle," Mathilde said. "Even for M'selle Invelen."

"Good." Ciarente took a handful of mushrooms from their storage bin and then put them back with a sigh. "Fortune, I'm tired. More jumps this week than I like to think about."

Mathilde studied Ciarente a moment. "Would you like some tea, while you wait for M'selle Invelen?"

"Coffee, I think," Ciarente said. "It's been a long few days."

"I think we may be out of coffee," Mathilde said.

"Well, tea then. Thank you." Ciarente pulled a stool over to the counter and sat down with a sigh. "It is good to be home, Mathilde. I miss this place, you know."

"We miss you also, M'selle, and M'selle Camille." Mathilde set the kettle to boil and took clump of ginger from the root cupboard.

Ciarente looked out the window at the garden. "I've all but missed summer this year. You're well? And Pierre?"

Mathilde grated the ginger and tipped it into the teapot with a handful of lemon rind. "We are both well, yes. A little creaky, these days." She poured hot water into the pot. "And M'selle Camille? And yourself?"

"Oh, Cami's Cami, as always," Ciarente said. "And I'm fine. That tea smells lovely."

"I thought you would like it," Mathilde said, pouring a mug and setting it on the counter by the pilot. "You do look a little tired."

Ciarente wrinkled her nose and sipped the tea. "Ah, worries, you know how it is? But things will be fine, now." She turned on her stool at the sound of the door opening again. "Ami?"

"No, Captain Roth." It was a man who answered, and when he came into the room Mathilde recognised M'ser Tanith Burke from the times he'd visited to check on the security arrangements. "I'm afraid not. It seems now that Commander Invelen changed shuttles on station."

"Well, of course," Ciarente said. "Interbus doesn't do planetary runs."

"No, Captain Roth," M'ser Burke said. "Changed to a different interbus line. With a ticket to Reblier."

Ciarente set her mug down with a click. "I'm afraid you're mistaken, Tanith. Amieta wouldn't buy a ticket for Reblier when she was coming down planet."

There was a little silence in the room. M'ser Burke looked at Mathilde and she made her face expressionless. She'd had decades to practice that, in this household.

"Well," Ciarente said decisively. "When she gets here, she'll be hungry." She stood up. "I think I might make a cake, Mathilde. Do we have any candied oranges? I think with a vanilla base that might be quite nice for a warm evening."

"Captain Roth," M'ser Burke said. "Commander Invelen has, we are almost certain, left the system."

Ciarente opened a cupboard energetically. "That can't be right, Tanith. It simply can't."

"If we move quickly, we may pick up her trail in Reblier," M'ser Burke said.

"She's on her way here right now." Ciarente took the flour down and set it on the counter with a thump that raised a little white cloud from the bag.

Mathilde looked at M'ser Burke, and then reached out to put her hand over Ciarente's. "I think you should listen to M'ser Burke, M'selle."

"I would like," Ciarente said a little shrilly, "to make a cake for my sister."

"I know," Mathilde said.

"So when she gets here, she'll have something to eat." Ciarente's fingers tightened on the bag until her knuckles were white.

"M'selle. If she were here, right now, what would she tell you to do?"

Ciarente stared at the flour. "She - she ... "

"M'selle."

Ciarente let go of the flour suddenly and put her hands over her face. "She said ... stop hiding, she said. Before. Stop hiding, and do something about it."

M'ser Burke cleared his throat. "The shuttle off-world ..."

"Yes." Ciarente lowered her hands, tears tracking lines through the dusting of flour on her cheeks. "The shuttle. I will tell the crew to prep the Firefly."

Mathilde picked up the cloth from the counter and began to wipe Ciarente's face, just as she had so many times before.  Baby, toddler, child ...

There had been a time when she had had a solution for any problem Ciarente could bring to her. Long past, now, that time. 


Long past.

Mathilde dusted away the last of the flour.

"Bring M'selle Invelen back to visit," she said. "Pierre will make her as many omelettes as she likes. D'accord?"

Ciarente sniffled, and nodded. "I will." She hugged Mathilde quickly, and then turned to M'ser Burke. "We should hurry, I suppose."

They went out together, Ciarente looking very small and young beside M'ser Burke.

But not so young, anymore.

Mathilde sighed, and began to clean up the flour. When they are little, they make your arms ache.

But she is not so little, anymore.

The Hope Of His Heart

It's a story told a thousand ways on a thousand worlds.

Micha Krenshaw's Folklore Compendium records seven different versions in the system of Luminaire alone, and another forty in Crux. His students, and their students, have heard it told in Domain, in Heimatar, in Solitude, in Syndicate.  Different, each time.

And the same.

A girl, or a boy, it doesn't matter which, but human, that's the point of the story. A human girl, a human boy.

A door in the hill, or a gap in the hedge, or a mirror that reflects more than the face of those who look into it, or a pool of water, or a grove of trees. Whichever it may be, or something else entirely, it's always a gate - a gate from this world to another.

From the human, to the ... not.

Sometimes the human boy or the human girl finds a way through the door or the gap or the mirror.

Sometimes something else finds its way out.


They're always beautiful. More beautiful than humanly possible.

Because they're not human, that's the point of the story.

They stay a night, or two. Perhaps they come back, if it pleases them.  Only if it pleases them, though. It's for mortals to take care of the feelings of those around them.

Those from beyond the hedge or beneath the hill or behind the mirror take their pleasure and their leave.

Sometimes there's a child. A human woman left with broken heart and swelling belly, a human man woken by a midnight knock at the door nine months later to find a squalling bundle on the doorstep.

A changeling child, a half-breed, to raise and love but not to keep.

Not that the human mother or father weeping by the cradle need any reminder. They're beautiful, the ones from beyond, more beautiful than humanly possible, and even the sight of them condemns a human man or woman to pine forever, that glamor forever between them and the deed of their hand, between them and the hope of their heart.

It is possible to make them stay. Stay for a time, at least. Find the animal skin they shucked to take a more human form and hide it, or slip a rope woven from a single hair around their neck, or mark their forehead with a holy symbol in oil, or ash, or blood.  Lay cold iron on them.

Put a gold band on their finger.

They will stay human then, live and love in human form, at least until they search out their skin or pick apart the rope with a thorn from a rosebush planted by the light of the first full moon of spring, or gather  dew on the last day of the year three years in a row to wash away the mark.  And they will, always. That is one thing the stories all agree on.

They will love you, and stay with you, if you compel them, but they will never stop trying to be free.

Charles Etay watches the girl in his kitchen as she whisks a sauce and tastes it, pulls a face and adds salt. She is playing at being normal, here in his tiny apartment.  She's good at it, too.

The neighbors have no idea she's a pod-pilot and Charlie suspects they wouldn't believe him if he tried to tell them the truth. That nice young Cia Roth? Never!


She is playing at belonging in his world, with more success than he has when he's a visitor to hers.

And tomorrow, or the next day, she will leave. Return to her home between the stars.  Come back, as and when she choses, or summon him to her side.

He will wait, for the knock at the door, for the call, for the Interbus ticket in an envelope or the sight of her at the end of the street as he turns the corner for home.  He will wait, until the time comes when she stops calling, stops coming.

And then he will still wait.

It's a story told  a thousand ways on a thousand worlds.

It always ends the same.

This Is Who She Is.

The patient was holographic and the wounds were computer generated to test her abilities, but Nerila's focus didn't waver.

This is what I do.

"How are you feeling?" Pilot asked.

Nerila blinked sweat out of her eyes, staring into the surgical field, and considered a dozen answers to that question.  Busy came to mind, as did none of your fucking business. 

She concentrated and pressed down with the holographically-generated retractor, sliding the illusory forceps past it and into the computer-generator incision and deciding on, "Fine. I'm fine."

A light flashed at the edge of her vision, the computer's warning that she's using too much pressure with her left hand.  Correcting made her fingers shake and she had to pause. 

This is what I care about.

Footsteps behind her told Nerila that Pilot had come into the room. "Maybe you should take a break."

"A real surgery would go for a lot longer than this."  The tremor in her left hand stopped and she moved the holographic liver aside and looked for the bleed beneath.

This is who I am.

"But you're still recovering."

There. Nerila clamped the leaking vein. "That's the point," she explained to Pilot. "The chip is still learning what it needs to compensate for. I have to push it to its limits."

It took her a little longer than it should have to tie off the bleeder but the scrolling counter told  her that she was still well within her margins. As Pilot pulled a stool over to the other side of the table and sat down, Nerila started to put her holographic patient back together, guts, muscles, skin.

"I need to talk to you, Nerila," Pilot said.

Nerila kept her eyes on the hologram. "So talk."

"About your son."

The light flashed, a low tone sounded. "Fortune fuck."  Her left hand shaking too badly to keep its grip, Nerila only just managed to get her right thumb on the forceps before they disappeared inside the 'patient'. Pilot reached out to help and Nerila snapped "Not sterile!" as if it mattered, as if it was real.

"Sorry," Pilot murmured.

Nerila  shook her hand out, made a fist, shook it again, and took a deep breath. "It's fine." When she took hold of the forceps again her grip was light and steady. "Go on."

"It's time for him to leave medical."

"Okay."

"He needs ... " Pilot hesitated. "He needs to be with someone. I mean, he needs ... care. Maybe if you ... well.  There's a family, I found. The mother is crew, here. They're both Gallente, like you, like Mitch.  They have two little girls already and they'd love to take care of ... your son."

Nerila closed the last of the incision. "Okay."

"But not just temporarily," Pilot said. "Manina - that's her name - she said it would be too hard. To love him and know she might have to give him back to you." She pauses again. "Nerila. They want to adopt him."

"Okay," Nerila said. The holographic patient shimmered and faded and she looked at the readout. Still a little slow there, but not so bad, all things considered.


"There's papers to sign."

"Got them there?"

Pilot blinked, looking taken aback. "Um. Yes."

Nerila held out her steady right hand, and after a moment's hesitation Pilot took out her datapad, tapped on it for a moment and handed it over.

"If you want to take some time to think - "

Nerila pressed her thumb to the screen and then signed her name. The datapad registered her thumbprint and recorded her signature, beeped once. She handed it back to Pilot. "There. Anything else?"

Pilot shook her head, eyes sad. "No. That's all."

"Then I need to get back to work."

Pilot took it as the dismissal it was meant to be. Her footsteps were still fading down the corridor when Nerila called up the next program on her list. Twenty-two year old made with penetrating wound upper thoracic ...


Cut. Clean. Mend.


This is what I do. This is what I care about.


This is who I am. 


Without thinking about it she got up from her stool and turned away from the patient bleeding out his computer-generated blood on her table.  Her feet carried Nerila down the hall and to the left, third door, through the decontamination lock.

This is not what I want to do.

Her legs moved without any instruction from her, under someone else's control, someone who could imagine there being anything more important than a bleeding patient on the table.


That someone could not possibly be her. It's the chip, Nerila thought, as the blast of antiseptic air died down and the doors to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit opened for her. Dr Sanik and Captain Night lied. It is a mind-control chip.


The chip walked her across the room to the incubator, lifted her hands to open the plexiglass lid, reached in to the baby inside.  So much bigger already than the one other time she'd seen him, most of the tubes gone, only a few wires left connecting him to the monitors by the incubator, and his eyes following her movements now, no longer blank and blind.

This is not what I care about.

He fussed as the chip used her hands to pick him up, and Nerila heard her voice crooning soft soothing nonsense as her good right hand held him securely against her shoulder, her less-reliable left detaching the wires that led to the monitors.

Not only should she not be doing this, not when there's a patient, even an illusory one, open on her table, she doesn't have the right to. She signed the papers. He's somebody else's son.

Someone else is his mother.

Not Nerila.

This is not who I want to be.


The baby's head was soft and downy against Nerila's neck as the chip made her pick up a blanket from the chair by the incubator and tuck it around him, then turn to the door.  Her feet carried her across the room, through the door, down the hall.  Someone called out to her but the chip wouldn't let her stop, kept her moving out past the entrance to medical and into the main hangar.

She turned towards the exit and saw security heading her way, turned the other way and saw three medtechs hurrying after her. The chip sent her forward, diagonally across the hangar, to the huge secure container that housed Pilot's hab unit.

Nerila reached it seconds before security and the medtechs reached her. They were talking to her but the chip wouldn't let her hear, wouldn't let her hear anything but the pounding of her own heart and the little grumbling sounds of the baby breathing.

"Pilot," she said to the marine on duty at the door. "Pilot."

That was all the chip would let her say.

One of the medtechs reached out for the baby and the baby started squalling.  Nerila's arms tightened around him, her body curled forward to shelter him, her head bowed over his.  Her voice whispered "Don't cry, sweetling, don't cry, don't cry."  Hands touched her and she crouched away. "Don't cry. Hush, don't cry." They were all around her now and the chip had no more instructions except Hold on and keep safe and don't let go.


Then space around her and another voice. "Nerila."

"Don't cry," she whispered to the baby, who was grumpy now with bemusement at the hot salty rain falling on his face. "Don't cry, please don't cry, don't cry."

"Nerila," Pilot said again, her hand gentle on Nerila's arm.  Nerila raised her head to see Pilot swimming in a blurry haze, crouching beside her on the deck.

"Something's gone wrong," she told Pilot.

"I know," Pilot said quietly.

"This isn't me," Nerila explained. "It's the chip. It isn't me!"

"It's okay, Nerila," Pilot said. "It's okay."

Nerila shook her head. "No. It's not okay. It's not okay! I - "

This is not who I want to be.


This is not what I want to do.


This is not what I want to care about.


"Nerila?" Pilot prompted softly.

"I can't - " she blurted. "I can't - " I can't let go. "This isn't who I am!"

Pilot's arms were around her and her son, holding them both, holding them together, and her voice was very gentle. "Yes it is, Nerila. This is who you are."

Nerila looked down at the baby in her arms and he looked back at her with his father's brown eyes.

She took a deep breath and held it until her lungs burned for air.

Exhaled.

Numb

It's an arm.

It's her arm, in fact.

It doesn't feel like it, lying on the covers of the bed, numb and immobile. Nerila reaches over with her right hand and takes hold of it, the lump of insensate flesh that she knows, intellectually, belongs to her.

She lifts it up and lets it drop.

Nothing.

Not that she expects anything.  Just about everybody on the medical staff remembers when she was CMO Janianial and it didn't take too many orders in her new, slurring, voice before someone put her patient records in her hands.

Hand.

In the hand that works, still.

Her mind works. That's in the file, but Nerila doesn't need the file to tell her that. She was running through cognitive tests before they took her off the ventilator, checking the areas she came up short again and again as the fog of post-anesthesia diminished until she could say to herself Okay, honey, you're all still here.

Her mind works.

Her brain, not so much. That's in the file, but it's something else she doesn't need to read to know. Her left hand, her left leg, useless; the right side of her face numb and slack.  You don't need to be a doctor to know what that means, and Nerila's a doctor.

The file has all the details. How long she was technically, clinically, dead for and just what parts of her brain are actually dead, now.

She knows what that means, even as her former staff are talking about therapy and rehabilitation.

Nerila's a doctor and she knows there's only so much functionality you can get back.

I was a doctor.  She makes herself say it, silently, over and over. It'll sink in, soon. It won't hurt so much. Or maybe she'll just go numb the way her left hand is numb, and she won't feel the bruising impact of those words. I was a doctor.

Nerila's looking at the ceiling saying those words to herself when they come in, the three of them. Not medical staff, she can tell from the way they stop just inside the door. Not family, because hers is disowned or dead. Not friends, because she's a  fucking junkie and junkies don't have friends. 

She wants to tell them to Fuck off, whoever they are, but pushing words out of her slackly lopsided mouth takes more effort than it's usually worth, these days.

"Nerila?" It's Pilot's voice, the soft Gallente slur of it and the hesitancy equally familiar.  Footsteps come to the left side of the bed, and Nerila turns her head in time to see Pilot gently take her left hand. Saying Don't bother, I can't feel it would take about five minutes, so Nerila lifts her right hand instead, waggles the fingers at Pilot in a silent It's this one that works gesture.

Pilot takes that hand as well. "Nerila, Dr Sanik is here to talk to you."

Sanik. Nerila knows Sanik, not in a have a drink together way but in the way that really matters, as far as the doctor Sanik is and Nerila used to be is concerned: she's read  Sanik's meticulous case notes and she's seen the tiny, immaculate incisions left on Pilot's scalp by Sanik's surgery.

Nerila has always believed that you can tell a lot about someone by the way they cut.

Sanik comes to the bed, the other side to Pilot. The third visitor joins Pilot and Nerila recognizes him as well, Invelen's boss, former Sansha or current Sansha depending on who you listened to, Mr Happy Chip himself, Captain Silver Night.

Naqam Heavy BioIndustries.

It's not numb, the place she's been battering with I used to be a doctor.  There's a flicker of hope there as  Captain Night comes to stand behind Pilot and Dr Sanik starts to talk.  Nerila can't crush that hope, although she tries, as Dr Sanik uses words like neural bridging and repair and functionality, as Pilot's face goes pale and paler. Trans-Cranial Micro-Controller, Dr Sanik says finally, the word that's been in the air since she started talking.

Pilot's Sansha friends want to put chips in my head.

The thought holds not even a tinge of apprehension when it's set beside And I could be able to use both my hands again.

"Do you understand, Nerila?" Pilot asks quietly. "It's not, it isn't, what, not like, it ..."

The hands holding hers are cold and sweaty and shaking. Captain Night says something Nerila can't hear, not more than a word, maybe two, and Pilot nods and swallows and falls silent.

"Dr Janianial," Captain Night says, "As Ms Roth was saying, there will be no behavioral control component to this T.C.M.C. No perceptual distortion, or personality modification. It will be purely a therapeutic device designed to replicate neurological functions that are currently impaired, and it will be locked against any tampering. You have my word on that."

There's something Nerila needs to ask, not about Captain Night's promises because right at that moment being a True Slave would be a fair trade for being able to get up off this bed and pick up a scalpel and do the one thing, the only single thing ever, that she's always been absolutely, unquestionably good at.  The question she needs to ask is a different one, but heaving it up off her tongue is heavy lifting, the words sliding around her mouth.

Pilot tries to help, Fortune fuck her, she always tries to help. "Your son, Nerila, Dr Sanik can help him too. It's more complicated, but he could - "

Nerila shakes her head. I don't care about the brat.  Do what you want to it. 

"It's your choice, of course, Nerila, as his mother. If you don't want, well. But Dr Sanik says - "

"Shut. Up." The words are slurred but clear enough to make Pilot blink, her wide blue eyes showing hurt, and Nerila knows she's being unfair.

Fuck fair. Fair isn't that bastard Mitch sweet-talking me into bed and knocking me up, fair isn't Pilot's bitch friend deciding she knows what's best for me, fair isn't seven months of vomiting and backaches that ends with the brat trying to kill me.  


Fair can go fuck itself.


The words come out eventually. "How much. Fuction?"

"With therapy and rehabilitation, you could be looking at close to one hundred percent," Dr Sanik says.

"And your son, too," Pilot said.

Close to one hundred percent. 

There's a lot that can fall into that gap that close describes.  The fine motor control that can slip an ace out of a deck of cards, for one thing. Or keep a scalpel steady.

But close is better than this. Close is a chance.  

"Yes," Nerila says. It sounds more like esh, even to her, but Dr Sanik nods.

"There is a team on standby," Sanik says. "We can start as soon as you're prepped for the surgery."

"And your son, Nerila?" Pilot asks.

"Don't care," Nerila says.

"You don't mean that. He's - "

"I. Don't. Care." Her right hand answers her will, pulls free of Pilot's grip. Her left lies limp, and Nerila closes her eyes against the sight.

Pilot, though, Pilot doesn't quit things when she thinks she's right.  "Well, medically, though, Nerila. What would you say, as a doctor? Do you want to see his ... chart, is that what it's called?"

"No." She's seen the brat's chart. Seen the brat, too, wheeled down the hall to the N.I.C.U. they have set up for it, by med-techs who couldn't imagine she wouldn't want to and who couldn't understand her attempts to protest.  Hooked up to wires and monitors and feeding tubes and oxy-mix.

No, Nerila doesn't want to see the chart. No, she doesn't want to hold the baby. No, she doesn't want to make the decision.

"Nerila?"


Pilot's not going to leave this alone, Nerila can tell.  She's going to sit there holding the hand that doesn't feel like mine asking me to make a choice about the baby that doesn't either until she hears what she needs to.


Fine.

"Yes," Nerila says. Esh.

The answer makes Pilot smile, happy, and let go of Nerila's hand so the techs can start prepping her for surgery.

That makes it the right answer, as far as Nerila's concerned.

As far as the brat's concerned ... ?

She can't find it in her to care.

Conversations on the Utopian Ideal: Twenty Three

People say starship pilots become their ships, when they're plugged in to the pod.

It's as true as any simple explanation of a vastly complex process affected by a thousand thousand variables can be, which is to say, not very.

Apart, the ship and the pilot exist, separate entities. When the intricacies of Jovian technology join them in a union more intimate than any imagined in the world of the flesh, one does not become the other.

The pilot is not the ship any more than the ship is the pilot.

But it is true enough that when the neural links slide home into the pod-jacks and the connection goes live a pilot is no longer themselves entirely, either, not the same self that walks on two feet through the corridors of the station, that sees only what can be revealed by limited human eyesight, the self contained entirely by a frame of flesh and bone.

A pilot in pod gains and loses with each transit of the barrier between metal and mind. Loses and gains with each journey back.

Capsuleers differ in the way they negotiate the constant demand of their profession to cross again and again from the self of the flesh to the self of the stars. Some reject the idea of unity between themselves and their ship as much as they can, and talk instead of controlling their ship as if pod technology is only a more efficient version of the Captain's bridge chair. Some regard their ships as if they were bodies to be put on and taken off, as casually as anyone with access to cloning technology puts on and takes off the body of their birth, declaring that their self is contained entirely in their intellect, whatever physical architecture it may be hooked up to at any given moment.

Both may be right. Or neither.

Cloning teaches us that the mind must be separate from the brain, that the self must be separate from the body it inhabits. If that is true, then the capsuleer makes the ship they wear themselves as thoroughly as anyone wearing a vat-grown body has made that biomass lattice their own even before the slow colonisation of their DNA.

But not everyone believes it is true. Some hold that something essential is lost with that first transliteration of memory and personality from flesh to flesh. Other say they believe no such thing, but hoard and protect their first body behind steel walls and security screens sufficient to keep even CONCORD out. The mind is the self, true, but the mind is the product of the brain, with all its intertwined and ceaselessly firing neurons responding to every twitch and tingle of the body that houses and shapes and changes it daily.

Except for capsuleers, who regularly, even eagerly, switch off the sensations of their flesh and switch on the carefully calibrated information flow from the thousand systems of their ship.

A pilot in pod does not become their ship, but perhaps in the intangible alchemy that technology provides, pilot and ship together become, temporarily, a single self, a mind created by the biological reactions of a human brain to mechanical stimuli fed directly into the cortex.

As complex as the technology of the pod is, the human mind is more complex still. For many pilots, their sense of control or habitation, of ownership or union, varies widely between one ship and the next. Different makes and models, different specifications and capabilities, all affect the comfort - or lack of it - of the pilot in the pod. And other intangible considerations, too: more than one pilot has been known to complain that this Vagabond, this Falcon, this Megathron, is just not as comfortable as the last.

Many a Chief Engineer has spent hours hunting for undetectable flaws and cursing their employer's eccentricities.

This pilot, though, had no such sense of nagging incongruity as he stretched his consciousness out through the kilometers of corridors and ducts of his Chimera-class carrier. This ship was not new, not unfamiliar. It was, in fact, home, in the pod or out of it, and the flood of information that poured through the pod implants was a background hum as reassuring and unnoticed as the beat of his own heart.

The ship had a heart, too, although the core life-support processors didn't beat, but hummed a steady whirr. Air hissed through vents and was drawn back again, washed through the scrubbers, pumped past the green leaves of the plants in the hydrobays and sent on its way again. Across the ship, machinery kept up its pace while redundant systems were in various stages of power-down or maintenance cycles.

The bipedal carbon-based components of the ship performed their tasks with the same reliable consistency, or moved through the rest and recreation stages necessary to peak efficiency. In one compartment, staff from engineering discussed improvements to the capacitor output mix over a game of cards; in another professions of undying love were offered and received; the muffled Rat-tat-tat. Rat. Tat of marines at pistol practice came from the range. A woman was singing as she switched out relay circuits in the cargo hold, a child was crying quietly in compartment 1583C, a med-tech sighing with relief as he looked at a test result ...

For the ship, all these sounds were of equal importance, or lack of it: non-operational background noise, of far less relevance than the hum of the capacitor or the whine of the shield buffer.

But the ship was not just a ship, when the human pilot was in pod, just as the human pilot was not only human when he was encased in the ship's embrace.

A child crying.

Responding to the pilot's interest the ship's systems sorted and ordered the flood of information with a new set of priorities. The sound was separated out from the quiet babble picked up by sensors all around the ship, identified, pin-pointed.

The neural links withdrew and the pod seal opened. The pilot slid through the decanting chamber and to the floor below, enduring the indignities of the process stoically. Jets of warm water sluiced away the pod-fluid before a blast of hot air dried the moisture from his skin. A uniform, immaculately pressed, was laid ready. Mere moments after that single anomalous sound had caught his attention, the captain stood before the door of compartment 1583C.

He pressed the call button by the door frame. "Camille? It's Silver. May I come in?"

At Camille's assent, muffled but intelligible, he keyed the door open.

The room, with its profusion of vegetative artwork, was of course familiar. The small red-headed girl sitting in the far left corner, hugging her knees to her chest, was less so.

"Camille, it's past twenty-three hundred. Shouldn't you be asleep?"

Camille sniffled without looking up. "Couldn't sleep," she said.

"I see." Silver paused. "Do you think you might be better able to sleep if you went to bed?"

The girl shook her head. "I feel better here," she said.

"I see," Silver said again, although in fact he did not, in more than the strictly literal sense, see. "Do you mind if I join you?"

"Yes," Camille said. "I mean, no. I don't mind." She shuffled herself sideways a bit, making room for him in the narrow wedge of space between Commander Invelen's desk and the wall.

Silver lowered himself down to sit beside her, his back to the ventilation duct, the faint hum of the life-support processors distantly audible under the gentle hiss of air, the constant whirr of the Utopian Ideal's heart, not, of course, a human heart that beat a steady rhythm but an artificial heart that hummed steadily without pause, much as -

I see.

He hesitated, and cleared his throat slightly. "I imagine you miss your sisters quite a bit. Cia. And Ami."

"I'm not crying," Camille said.

"I can see that," Silver assured her.

"And even if I was, sometime even marines cry." Camille sniffled again and wiped at one eye with her sleeve. "But I'm not."

Silver offered her his handkerchief. "Certainly not."

"Thanks." Camille took the handkerchief and blew her nose.

"You're welcome."

Camille blew her nose again. "I'm a bit worried about Ami," she admitted softly.

"Cia will take good care of her."

"I know," Camille said with a sigh. "Cia's good when you're sad. It's nice she's good for something." She held out the handkerchief to him. "Thanks."

"Ah, you should keep that. In case you need it again," Silver said quickly.

"Okay." Camille tucked the handkerchief into her sleeve.

"When you can't sleep, at home, what do you do?" Silver asked.

"Cia usually makes me hot chocolate," Camille said.

"And that helps?"

Camille nodded. "Yeah."

"I'm sure the officers' mess could send up some hot chocolate, if you wanted," Silver said.

"It's okay," Camille said sadly. "It wouldn't be the same. I think I'm just going to sit here for a bit."

Silver nodded. "Do you mind if I sit with you?"

"No," Camille said. "That'd be okay."

"Good."

Camille sighed again, and shuffled herself a little closer to Silver. "Silver?"

"Yes, Camille?"

"Cia said you're not very used to little kids."

"I suppose that's true," Silver said.

Camille leaned her head against his shoulder. "It's okay, though. You don't need to worry about it. I'm nearly nearly-ten, and when I'm ten I'll be nearly big enough to start training to be a marine, and that's practically almost grown up. So don't worry. I won't be a kid much longer."

"I will," Silver reassured her, "do my best not to worry about it."

"Good," Camille said, and fell silent again.

A thought brought up the interface for Silver's internal neocom, another created a memo for the Facilities and Maintenance division. Work order: Commander Invelen's quarters, compartment 1583C. Temporary relocation of bed to far left corner of compartment, adjacent to ventilation duct. Work to be completed next main-day shift.

He let the interface fade from his vision and glanced down at the top of Camille's head, her ginger hair a vivid contrast to the dark blue of his uniform. The slow regularity of her breathing and her limp weight indicated that she had fallen asleep.

Given the lateness of the hour, that was not unexpected.

What Silver had not expected was his own discovery that he did not, altogether, mind.