There was a lot more of the proto-Synarche, and despite the Jothari superior navigation, the Synarche . . . wiped them out.
Not to the last being. But to the last world, leaving those that remained homeless. And not welcome in proto-Synarche space—if they would have considered coming near the government that had committed semi-involuntary genocide against them. So they made their way as best they could.
Maybe they have shadow colonies, Cheeirilaq said. Maybe they’ve gone as far out as Andromeda and possibly even made allies there. Though if they had, I’m not sure we’d still find them scavenging around the edges of Synarche space.
They’re not in the databases.
No. Well, you could find them. They’re not expunged. Just deemphasized. And it’s possible the archinformists used keywords that were less than helpful to the neophyte to archive and classify the data.
Possible. Sure. And Habren doesn’t want me to know about them?
[Habren’s species] was one of the ones involved in the initial mistake. It gave me its version of Habren’s species name, which was as made-up as the human version, the original being in plant pheromones. They’re culturally very ashamed. That was about the time people started looking for a better system of government, it turns out. My people have a saying, that every civilization is founded in a terrible crime.
There didn’t seem to be much I could say to that. Even given my limited knowledge of the vast span of Terran history, terrible crimes seemed terribly commonplace, and didn’t usually lead to enlightenment.
The swirling, sinking sensation in my gut was grief, and I let myself feel it, along with the gratitude for what the Synarche was. Imperfect, surely; infested with its own brands of sophipathology and problematic social constructs. Walking a fine and wavering balance between the conformity and regulation necessary for social cohesiveness and the observance of individual freedoms within reason.
But also comprised of such a plurality of individuals and syster species spread across such vast distances that it was difficult to obtain an even vaguely accurate census, and somehow, through the tuned social consciences of all of us, managing to function.
There was pride to be taken in that.
It never could have happened without rightminding. And rightminding, taken to extremes, gave you clades. But clades also made a lot of people happy who would have been lonely and broken and without community otherwise.
Nothing is perfect. Except the Well. And what could be more perfect than the great big gravity chute of Supermassive Black Hole Saga-star, churning along in its spot at the center of the Milky Way? That’s pretty near as perfect as a thing can conceivably be: a horizon of perfect destruction.
Why do you do this? Cheeirilaq asked me, breaking a contemplative silence I hadn’t noticed until it ended. The mantid was one of those creatures you could just hang around with, not saying anything, and not notice the quiet because it felt natural. I would have liked it for a shipmate, though Singer would have been a little small. You could go sit planetside and do pretty much anything at all forever, without competition for scarce resources. So why come out here and risk your neck at all?
Huh. Apparently humans and twelve-legged, six-winged mantids have some of the same expressions of speech. Who would have guessed?
I was born out here. Why do you? I countered.
Crowded homeworld. I remembered from somewhere, possibly crèche, that Cheeirilaq’s people are solitary except for mating and child-rearing. The latter of which is carried on in nursery crèches in which all adults are expected to take a turn. Other than that, they have hobbies and entertainments and pretty much keep to themselves, being intensely territorial.
“One Rashaqin, one station,” as they say. Not because they’re so tough. Because they just really don’t get along.
Strange that it seemed perfectly able to get along with unrelated sentients. Maybe that was pheromones.
It said, Had to go somewhere. I like solving crimes.
That doesn’t tell me how you wound up out here in this nest of Freeport sympathizers.
It whetted its killing manipulators one over the other, which looked like a threat but might have been a shrug. Got into some administrative trouble in the Core.
Noncommittally.
I wondered if it had eaten a suspect. If it had, I hoped the suspect deserved it. It seemed like a good cop, as such things went, and I’d hate to think less of it.
Cheeirilaq sighed. An enormous sigh, like a Terran dog. Its entire abdomen filled with air, swelling each of its breathing chambers until the brilliant red bands around its abdomen were wider than the green, and I could see that they were each edged in thin ribbons of black and a mustardy yellow. I gawped at it in surprise, though really, all sorts of creatures sigh. Oxing up is a sensible response to just about any situation or potential situation that doesn’t require immediately holding one’s breath. And if you’re going to have to hold your breath, well, you might as well be good and pink—or purple, or that nice blue color some critters use to hold oxygen, if that’s your thing—when you do so.
I might have to bring you in, it said, reluctantly admitting something we’d both known all along. It stridulated out loud again. I have sent a packet Coreward regarding our earlier conversation, but please understand that I am basically in exile here, and I find that many of my communications go missing.
I thought of my reliance on the packets for security and a chance of backup, and tuned my anxiety down a peg. It wasn’t helping.
“No hard feelings if you do,” I answered. “A bug’s gotta eat, after all.”
Also, it said, allowing me to sense reluctance, I know you have some embarrassing political secrets to keep.
That stunned me to silence for long seconds. I blinked, swallowed, tuned, nodded. I might have to run away, you understand.
That is the sensible thing to do when a larger predator is pursuing you. No hard feelings at all.
? ? ?
I was so deep in my head while bounding gently along the corridor back to Singer that it took most of the circumference of the station before I realized I was being followed. Followed pretty expertly, too—my shadow stayed far enough back in the curve that I never got a good look at them (bipedal and humanoid, but not much else), even when I ducked into a shop and came out reversing direction as if I’d spotted something back along the concourse that I wanted to go investigate.
That set my mind racing again, but in a different direction.
Habren wouldn’t need to shadow me, because nobody can hide on a station from the wheelmind and the stationmaster. Every centimeter of the interior is under some kind of surveillance, and while you could get lost in a crowd on one of the big ones, maybe, Downthehatch just wasn’t large enough. Habren might want to dust me, in which case an ambush was more likely than a stalker. If they wanted to send me down the well, they could just jump me when I went back to Singer.
Or a lift or airlock could be arranged to have a convenient accident. Theoretically there were safeguards against that kind of thing—above and beyond rightminding and AI oversight—but I was pretty sure by now that Habren’s rightminding was not as stable and maintained as you might like in somebody with a few tens of thousands of lives in their hands.
I got Singer on senso and filled him in, including a dump of everything Cheeirilaq and I had talked about. Some things, you want to make sure your teammates have access to if anything bad should happen to you.
My skin crawled. My palms were wet and cold. I tried to walk casually, as if I were engaged in one last idle wander through open spaces before returning to my departing ship.
Did we ever get our clearance?
I filed for it, Singer answered. And sent a reminder.
The pit of my stomach dropped, adding itself to the unsettling sensations. But there was something else, too—a prickling along my body, as if a soft wind were stirring my vellus hair. And a sense of . . . weight. Of gravity. Of something watching, just as I had felt out by the Jothari ship.
Oh, bloody Well, I said to Singer. I think the guy following me is one of the pirates. And I think they’re like me.
? ? ?
“Screw this,” I said out loud, and stopped in the middle of the corridor. It wasn’t entirely deserted—there were people here and there—and the adrenaline singing in my veins was longing for a confrontation. I could have tuned it down—probably should have—but it felt good, and I have not always had the best record when it comes to deciding to turn off harmful but thrilling emotions.
Haimey, Singer said, what are you doing?
Dealing with a problem.