I hugged Bushyasta. She purred and snuggled into me, but didn’t open her eyes.
Tears behave strangely under gravity, and on the Koregoi ship I’d done enough deregulated crying about everything that I’d gotten used to the way they broke their surface tension and streaked down my cheeks, requiring no further maintenance. Now they swelled from the surface of my eye, blindingly obvious and blurring my vision completely.
I turned away so Connla wouldn’t see. Tears made him uncomfortable, and him being uncomfortable made me shy.
I gulped and said, “I swear there’s something wrong with this cat. Low blood sugar. Narcolepsy.”
“That cat just has a clear conscience,” he said. “Singer mentioned that you had a stowaway?”
“Yes,” I said. “Two of the constables who came over stayed on the ship to keep an eye out for her. And to make sure she didn’t take off with it while I was over here.” Not that she stood much chance of hotwiring it with Singer inhabiting its brain.
That was when Mephistopheles zoomed out from behind the control console, ricocheted off my legs hard enough to start me spinning, then snagged her nails in the carpet and settled into position with her ears flat and her back firmly pointed in my direction.
“You would not believe how they scratched me up,” Connla said. “I stuffed them inside my suit after the hull integrity blew out. We were all just lucky we were aft, and they were already in their skins and webbed in.”
I had been weeping more or less genteelly. At that, I lost control completely. I clutched the damn narcoleptic cat and sobbed and couldn’t stop myself spinning even when my afthands bounced off a bulkhead or two. I’d probably have drifted helplessly around the Interlocutor’s bridge if Connla hadn’t snagged my elbow and steered me to rest.
Connla isn’t big on touching people.
He hooked his lower extremity on a support rail, wrapped both arms around me, and pulled me against his broad, well-muscled (they’re gengineered for it, on Spartacus) chest. He embraced me with one hand while he stroked my hair with the other, squeezing me tighter until the cat trapped between us made a protesting noise.
“You have hair,” he said, when I’d slowed down a little.
“Couldn’t read enough alien to figure out which bottle in the bathroom was the depilatory,” I joked. I wiped tears and snot on his shoulder.
He didn’t complain.
? ? ?
“I have a surprise for you,” Connla said, and the tone in his voice indicated that he thought it would be a pleasant one.
“You are a surprise for me,” I retorted, my hands full of ecstatic cats. Any moment now they were likely to decide that the greeting had gone on long enough and commence Reunion Stage Two: The Spurning of Haimey for Her Absence, Again. But for now I was going to bask in the affection as long as it was still coming down.
“I honestly was afraid we’d never catch you,” Connla said. Not easily, the way most people would, but with a little edge of self-conscious nervousness over the vulnerability. But that didn’t matter, because—wonder of wonders—here was Connla, and he was talking about his feelings of his own accord, without any chasing, prying, or prompting.
Who says progress is measured over generations?
“I missed you too,” I said, drifting along behind him. He seemed to be leading me back toward the crew quarters. This vessel was significantly bigger than the tug had been, but in addition to its twinned white bands it had massive engines and a respectable range of weaponry. It also boasted a crew complement sizable enough to field squads of constables capable of dealing with those occasional violent impolitenesses to which even a rightminded society can be prone.
The combination of those things made it one of the most cramped and claustrophobic space ships I personally have ever been on.
The tug had been small. And yet, by comparison, its tiny crew and plan of two mostly open cabins had given it a sense of airiness. This ship, by contrast, had no gangways, no open-plan cabins. Each tiny space opened directly onto one to three others, and in many of those cabins were people—eating, sleeping, playing games.
So many people. So many of them—going about their paramilitary routines with no reason to pause or to acknowledge me at all. A few, polite or lonely, took a moment to raise a hand or nod a chin or wave a tendril or flick an ear as we went by. The vast majority, though, were either sleeping or bent to their tasks without allowing themselves distraction.
So many people. So incredibly many. I literally had no idea what to do. I felt surrounded. Oppressed. Even stalked.
I had obviously been spending way too much time alone.
I knew it was foolish. It was just that I had been away from people other than Farweather for a very long time. I had been deregulated a long time, and only reregulated for a matter of minutes. And the result was a learned anxiety response that was not helpful to me or to anyone right now—that was, in fact, maladaptive in the extreme.
It made me angry to be so reactive. Which of course was just the same damned reactivity again. Connla’s promise of a “good” surprise had been good strategy on his part, an indication that he knew me. I hated surprises. But he also knew that my curiosity was bottomless.
We swam into the final hatchway. Connla, ahead of me, cleared it. And I found myself confronted with a small cabin that from this vantage point looked to be networked with a forest of what appeared to be bamboo, except it was all growing at random angles. I stopped in the hatchway, which was a stupid thing to do, and after a moment’s more inspection I realized that the bamboo was, in fact, giant exoskeletal legs, and a lot of them.
Being paused in the hatchway was even less safe on a ship than on a station. As I hung there, braced on the lip with both forehands, a small head jeweled with vast, faceted eyes turned to regard me.
“Cheeirilaq?”
Friend Haimey, it answered. Please do move into the cabin. I should despair if anything untoward befell you.
Cats and all, I drifted into the cabin. The cats seemed undisturbed by the presence of a massive, predatory alien. I assumed that a sentient insect could be counted on not to eat pets, so I turned them loose to wander around. Or, in Bushyasta’s case, to drift, leaving a trail of tiny kitty snores.
As for me? I put a hand out and steadied myself against one of Cheeirilaq’s scaffolding of legs. It didn’t seem to mind. And in so doing, I realized why the cabin seemed so very full of not-bamboo. Cheeirilaq had braced itself into position in the center of the small chamber with its limbs wedging it against each available plane. It looked like a secure position. I hoped it was comfortable.
“Well,” I said. “I was not prepared to meet you all the way out here, Goodlaw.”
It lifted one foot daintily and gently tried to dislodge Mephistopheles, who had tackled one of its enormous legs with both front paws and was bunny-kicking its exoskeleton. At least, fairly gently. I didn’t think the claws would get through.
The pleased surprise is mutual, it said.
It was so nice to have a working fox again.
“Do you require assistance?”
Cheeirilaq put its frondlike foot down again. The cat was still wrestling with its ankle. Your small friend seems unlikely to harm me. Is it an infant?
“No, it just acts like one. It is a pet. So, what does bring you out here to the nether reaches, then?”
I expected it to say something about having been sent to retrieve the Koregoi ship. I was not prepared for what actually came out of my translator.
I was following you. Or rather, I was following your pirate captain, because of her links to Habren. If we can get them both into custody, it increases the likelihood that one of them can be induced to provide evidence.
“She’s not mine!” I protested.
It made the laughter sound. We were very much afraid that when—if—we reclaimed the Koregoi ship, you and Singer would be found to have perished. All aboard are relieved at your safety and well-being. Do you have Captain Farweather in custody?
“Ah,” I said. “So there’s a funny story about that.”
I proceeded to tell it, in three-part harmony. Connla was hanging silently beside the porthole and watching, half melted into the background, so it would save me having to tell it twice, anyway. Halfway through it Cheeirilaq noticed me yawning and sent out for stimulants, which I drank gratefully before finishing my story off and adding, “So if you’re chasing Habren, how come you’re out here after Farweather instead of back on Downthehatch?”
I spent enough time there. And I know that the pirate has a link to Habren. I need to know whether they’re partners, or whether Habren is a victim of extortion before we proceed.
“And Habren is your special project.”
“Dirty as hell,” Connla said. “And just a little too smart to get snagged on it.”