“We’re going to have to report the pirates,” Singer said unhappily. “To a stationmaster who is giving them berth space.”
Maybe the stationmaster doesn’t know, I almost said, and swallowed it. One of the problems with AIs grown from personality seeds is that sometimes they’re just as reactive and weird as any human. Singer was acting out because he was worried.
Of course the stationmaster knew. Which meant we needed to find another way to make sure the information made it back to the Core.
Singer feathered his engines. The ship luffed, hesitated, glided. Nudged the docking ring and—relative to the station—stopped. Singer caught the hook and—elegant, perfect, seamless, with no sense of acceleration—the station appeared to stop rotating, and the sun beneath the ship began to whirl instead. A locking click reverberated through the hull, followed by the hiss of exchanging atmosphere.
I worked my jaw as my ears popped painfully. My body, suddenly, weighed a ton. It was only quarter gravity, but it felt like somebody had tied sacks of bolts and washers to all of my limbs.
“Your fresh air, Connla,” Singer said dryly. “Enjoy breathing it in freedom for as long as you can. I’ll be arguing with the local arm of the Synarche for an extension on my service start date. Hopefully I’ll still be here when you return.”
I looked down at my star-webbed hands. We could make it home without Singer; flying an established space lane wasn’t hard, not for a pilot as good as Connla. I wouldn’t trust any expert system we found out here in the margins, anyway.
“Nanocream,” I asked out loud. “Do we have any?”
Singer said, “I can fab you some. There was a bit ready-made in first aid stores, but I’m afraid it’s expired.”
I smeared the stuff on, watched it color-match my skin. It looked mostly okay, but it was missing the subtle shadings of red-brown and cocoa that my natural complexion had, the centimeter-by-centimeter color variation.
I looked flat. A little plastic.
Ill. Or like an android.
Well, no offense to any androids, but that was about how I felt, as well.
CHAPTER 7
SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO a docking ring? Thou art more beautiful and more temperate, though that’s not really hard when you’re talking about an airlock whose external temperature is measured on the low end of kelvins. On the other hand, I’m not sure I could have been happier with anything or felt more raw, unfettered love than I did for that docking ring, right then. Free and with my afthands on metal, I stretched against the rotational acceleration and sighed.
I love Singer; don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t trade my life for any crowded station existence, and most definitely not for anything on the downside. How do people live down wells? But it was good to get away from him and Connla—for just a few hours. There’s nothing like being annoyed by different sentiences to make you really appreciate your own.
Not that Downthehatch Station had a lot to recommend it. The ox section smelled of chlorine, strong enough to smart in my sinuses. The chlorine section probably stank of oxygen, I was willing to bet, because nothing makes two mutually bioincompatible life-forms feel more relaxed and at home than breathing trace quantities of each other’s poison.
Some stations, you walk out of the docking ring—okay, you climb up through it, usually, though on this one we had docked alongside the axis of spin, which is not as sturdy a connection but you don’t have to go up a ladder to get out—and there are restaurants, nightlife, trade shops, and tourist attractions. Showers and brothels and the usual amenities of any port.
On some others, you’re lucky if there’s a bathroom.
This was one of the latter. Not even a dive bar in sight, just a long dingy curve of corridor with fibrous gray carpeting institutionalizing it further. It had windows, at least, and as I looked to my left I had the rare pleasure of a glimpse of Singer from the outside, visible through the ports. Chalk another small human convenience up to side-by-side docking.
I pulled my screen out of my pocket and checked directions to the stationmaster’s office. Technically we did not have to present in person, having received clearances—but there was the little matter of the criminal issues to report, and the social capital therefrom to negotiate. Connla and I had drawn lots, and it had fallen to me to deal with strangers.
Again.
I’m pretty sure he cheats. Especially since, as I was pulling my station shoes on to cushion my poor afthands, he had smiled cheerily and said, “It’ll be good for you to get out and meet some people!”
Then he had announced his intention to go find the local strategy games club and see if he could get laid, find a chess partner, or both. So yeah, I’m pretty sure he cheats. I had sighed, and reminded him to turn his conscience and risk-assessment back on, and told Singer not to print him any station shoes unless he did.
I can cheat too, on occasion.
? ? ?
The connecting corridor from the docking ring spiraled me into a main hallway after a dozen steps or so, coming in from the side to make it easy to merge with the flow of traffic. This was where all the people were. A diverse group—I spotted a lot of humans, some of whom side-eyed me just enough to let me know they’d spotted the nanoskin and wondered if I was an overly made-up human or an AI out for a stroll.
There’s always somebody who feels like they have the right to judge.
But there was also a selection of other ox-type systers, including some small furry ones, some caterpillar-like ones, a couple of examples of a photosynthetic species that were particularly welcome on stations because they respirated using carbon dioxide, and one member of an elephantine, red-skinned species whose name was unpronounceable to Terrans. We called them Thunderbys, and this one’s hulking frame strained the capacity of the corridor.
Like most other people, I edged to one side to let it past, stepping into the embrasure of an eatery doorway. The proprietor, a human like me, gave me the veil eye when they realized I wasn’t coming in, but stopped short of actually shoving me back out into the Thunderby’s path, thus saving both of us embarrassment and me possible injury. The Thunderby was huddling already, trying to take up as little space as possible, which still amounted to all of it. Its manipulator appendages consisted of five tentacular appurtenances, which it had wrapped around its torso in an uncomfortable-looking show of courtesy so as to minimize its profile.
Politeness counts the effort, or so one of my clademothers used to say.
I frowned at it thoughtfully, but though the Thunderby was big enough to have been the species mainly crewing the factory ship, it was the wrong outline. I was pretty sure we were looking for something more or less bipedal and bilaterally symmetrical.
Maybe Singer would get something useful out of the station database. That wasn’t my job this trip, anyway.
One side of the corridor rose in a ramp to the next level, and—following color-coded signs for Station Admin—I rose with it, feeling the pull of rotational “gravity” ease as I ascended toward the station’s hub. That came with a new and peculiar sensation: a sort of stretching along the fibers of my skin. My integument—and the Koregoi senso—was reacting to the change in angular and rotational momentum as I rose. I could feel the station spinning, and the fine gradation in speed between my head and my feet. Normally, that would be too subtle to notice. I steadied myself against the wall until the sensation evened out.
I thought of mentioning it to Connla, but Singer was monitoring my senso, and the fact that Connla had turned our immediate link off made me think he’d probably found his chess club and didn’t care to be bothered.
I hoped he didn’t run into any pirates while he was there. But honestly, it wasn’t any riskier than huddling in the ship would have been. The pirates knew what our ship looked like. They had no idea who we were.
The ramp merged me onto another busy corridor. This one was lined with nearly anonymous offices, some with transparent windows, rather than with shops and eateries.
I applied my ID card and most scannable appendage to the sensor beside the door marked Stationmaster in thirty-seven languages and Standard Galactic Iconography Set Number 3. The Core had already updated to Set Number 8 by then, to give you an idea of how behind the times this backwater was.
The door slid aside and I found myself in a little suite, uncomfortably warm and humid by human standards, lit with full-spectrum bulbs. Probably past what my species would consider full spectrum, honestly; my skin tingled with UV.