Pepper laughed. ‘Sweetheart, none of us ever do.’
Sidra considered her own words: the kit. The kit was back in the storage compartment. She processed. The ship was what she was designed for, but . . . but. She didn’t know this ship. This ship could have been any ship, and she would’ve filled it equally as well. If she didn’t open a hatch, someone else could open it manually, regardless of whether she wanted to. She was nothing more than a ghost in a ship. A sidekick. A tool.
The kit was restrictive. It wasn’t enough. But it was also autonomous. It was hers. Nobody could force her to raise a hand or walk across the room. In the kit, she could walk when she wanted to walk, and sit when she wanted to sit. She could run. She could hug. She could dance. If she could alter her own code, then the kit wasn’t the end limit either. For all the things the kit wasn’t, there was much it still could be.
‘Tak, could you open the storage compartment to your left, please?’ Sidra asked. ‘I think I’d like to be in my body for a little while.’
PEPPER
The Reskit Museum of Interstellar Migration (Kaathet Branch) turned out to be one of those things that made civilisation as a whole look like a pretty okay thing to get behind. It was the largest building in the city, by far, and even though Aandrisks weren’t known for getting too fluffy with their architecture, the design was a hell of a thing to see. Aandrisk buildings weren’t big on windows to begin with (hard to keep heat in that way), and sunlight was rough on just about everything, especially old tech. The museum had gotten around that problem by building the entire complex out of thinly cut yellow stone, sliced so slim that the light from outside glowed through. The effect was haunting – magical, almost. It was like walking through the heart of a star, or a dying fire. It was like being within something alive.
None of that changed the fact that by base, museums were weird. Pepper understood that you had to get your story down somewhere, and making it tangible was a good way to keep from forgetting. The intent was fine. The content . . . that was what weirded her out. Everything in the Reskit Museum was junk. A clunky early ansible, a burned-out nav beacon, an old tunnel map from the days when the Harmagians were the only ones boring holes in space. Why this stuff? Why this antique exosuit, and not the ten others that had probably come in with it? Why had this one been lovingly stitched, patched, and propped up in a temperature-controlled cube, while the others had been chucked out – or worse, boxed away in an archival warehouse somewhere. A whole building set aside for stuff you couldn’t use, couldn’t fix, and wouldn’t get rid of. Now that was the mark of people who had it good.
Speaking of, Tak looked like a kid in a candy store. She gaped at display after display, stopping to read every word on every placard. It was like she’d forgotten why they were there – and maybe that wasn’t too far from the truth. Before they’d made their way to the museum that morning, Pepper had watched Tak suck down three bowls of tease and half a batch of mek, followed by a handful of some kind of Aeluon spacesickness remedy that smelled like feet. They were on solid ground now, but gravity wasn’t Tak’s concern. Aeluons were at a disadvantage when it came to lying. It was hard to play it cool when you wore your heart on your face. The museum was Aandrisk-run, yes, but these were smart people in a multispecies city. Even Pepper, who hadn’t gotten any degrees in cultural know-how or whatever, could make a solid guess about an Aeluon’s mood. Tak was nervous about the whole business, which, in turn, made Pepper nervous. She didn’t like bringing someone besides Blue along for this in the first place, and Tak was such an all-around good citizen that Pepper had been surprised she’d come at all. But Tak clearly understood her limitations, and had done what she could to chill herself out. Pepper hadn’t seen a trace of nervous red or worried yellow cross the Aeluon’s cheeks since they’d left the shuttledock hotel. That was good – though Pepper would have equally appreciated them moving through the exhibits faster. She tapped her thumbs against the outside of her pockets as she watched Tak telling Sidra about the importance of whatever rusted gadget they were fawning over now. Pepper had been waiting ten years for this. She didn’t want to put it off any longer.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, felt it squeeze. Blue. We’ll get there, his eyes said.
Pepper nodded reluctantly. If Tak could be cool, so could she. And in all fairness, a bit of ordinary museum-going was not a bad way to go about it. She’d been counting cameras since they walked in – twenty-eight, so far – and the security bots hanging dormant in their docks along the walls were nothing to sneeze at. Tak still had to meet the curator she’d been in touch with to arrange this whole thing. Looking like ordinary, scholarly folks was a smart precaution.