“Station, then.” Another bite of fish and fruit. “So you are watching me.” I was, genuinely, worried about Station’s surveillance. I wouldn’t be able to hide that from Station.
“I watch everyone, honored. Is your leg still troubling you?” It was, and doubtless Station could see me favor it, see the effects of it in the way I sat now. “Our medical facilities are excellent. I’m sure one of our doctors could find a solution to your problem.”
An alarming prospect. But I could make that look entirely understandable. “No, thank you. I’ve been warned about Radchaai medical facilities. I’d rather endure a little inconvenience and still be who I am.”
Silence, for a moment. Then Station asked, “Do you mean the aptitudes? Or reeducation? Neither would change who you are. And you aren’t eligible for either one, I assure you.”
“All the same.” I set my utensil down. “We have a saying, where I come from: Power requires neither permission nor forgiveness.”
“I have never met anyone from the Gerentate before,” said Station. I had, of course, been depending on that. “I suppose your misapprehension is understandable. Foreigners often don’t understand what the Radchaai are really like.”
“Do you realize what you’ve just said? Literally that the uncivilized don’t understand civilization? Do you realize that quite a lot of people outside Radch space consider themselves to be civilized?” The sentence was nearly impossible in Radchaai, a self-contradiction.
I waited for That wasn’t what I meant, but it didn’t come. Instead, Station said, “Would you have come here if not for Citizen Seivarden?”
“Possibly,” I answered, knowing I could not lie outright to Station, not with it watching me so closely. Knowing that now any anger or resentment—or any apprehension about Radchaai officials—that I felt would be attributed to my being resentful and fearful of the Radch. “Is there any music in this very civilized place?”
“Yes,” answered Station. “Though I don’t think I have any music from the Gerentate.”
“If I only ever wanted to hear music from the Gerentate,” I said, acid, “I would never have left there.”
This did not seem to faze Station. “Would you prefer to go out or stay in?”
I preferred to stay in. Station called up an entertainment for me, new this year but a comfortably familiar sort of thing—a young woman of humble family with hopes of clientage to a more prestigious house. A jealous rival who undermines her, deceiving the putative patron as to her true, noble nature. The eventual recognition of the heroine’s superior virtue, her loyalty through the most terrible trials, even uncontracted as she is, and the downfall of her rival, culminating in the long-awaited clientage contract and ten minutes of triumphant singing and dancing, the last of eleven such interludes over four separate episodes. It was a very small-scale work—some of these ran for dozens of episodes that added up to days or even weeks. It was mindless, but the songs were nice and improved my mood considerably.
I had nothing urgent to do until word came of Seivarden’s appeal, and if Seivarden’s request for an audience, and for me to accompany her, was granted, that would mean another, even longer wait. I rose, brushed my new trousers straight, put on shoes and jacket. “Station,” I said. “Do you know where I can find the citizen Seivarden Vendaai?”
“The citizen Seivarden Vendaai,” answered Station from the console, in its always even voice, “is in the Security office on sublevel nine.”
“Excuse me?”
“There was a fight,” said Station. “Normally Security would have contacted her family, but she has none here.”
I wasn’t her family, of course. And she could have called for me if she’d wanted me. Still. “Can you direct me to the Security office on sublevel nine, please?”
“Of course, honored.”
The office on sublevel nine was tiny: nothing more, really, than a console, a few chairs, a table with mismatched tea things, and some storage lockers. Seivarden sat on a bench at the back wall. She wore gray gloves and an ill-fitting jacket and trousers of some stiff, coarse fabric, the sort of thing extruded on demand, not sewn, and probably produced in a preset range of sizes. My own uniforms, when I had been a ship, had been made that way, but had looked better. Of course I’d sized each one properly, it had been a simple thing for me to do at the time.