“I suppose you could do whatever you liked. You don’t have to go back to wherever you came from, or go anywhere the Budrakims are likely to see you. You could go to the public registry, and probably find pretty decent work.”
“I suppose I could,” said Garal. E didn’t sound enthusiastic about the prospect, but then, e had never sounded terribly enthusiastic about anything in the week or so that Ingray had known em. “I’d like to know all my options, though.”
Ingray stepped for a few moments in silence. She’d rarely come out and said anything about her various plans. And she had never quite gotten to the point with this plan where it seemed to make perfect, brilliant sense. “Danach,” she said finally, “is a serious collector. Or he considers himself to be one. He’s always on the lookout for exactly the sort of thing you said you did—vestiges that seem insignificant now, so they go for cheap, but they’ll turn out to be valuable later. He considers it an investment.”
“Why worry about an investment when he’s going to inherit Netano’s not inconsiderable wealth, as well as her vestiges?”
“He wants to add to that. And every time he buys some trinket for cheap that turns out to be worth a lot, he gets a thrill out of the idea that he’s cheated someone out of a treasure. He’s said as much.”
“Delightful.” E had to be speaking sarcastically, but there was no trace of it in eir voice or on eir face.
“So,” said Ingray, and then hesitated, feeling an unaccustomed sense of uncertainty. Her last big plan had failed completely, and she was entirely out of resources. “So,” she said again, “what if we turned up and you told Danach that you knew where the Budrakim Garseddai vestiges were? That you’d give him that information in exchange for a sufficiently high payment. I know he can’t sell them, or display them. He’d probably want to give them to Mama.”
“It has the virtue of being very straightforward,” Garal commented after a moment’s consideration. “There is the difficulty that I don’t know where the Garseddai vestiges are, and when your brother goes to retrieve them he will find nothing, and there we’ll be.”
“Yes. But if we ask him for enough, we can buy a new set of identities and then go back to Tyr Siilas and buy citizenship.” Silence. Unsurprisingly—it was the part of the plan that was the most impractical, the blankest in Ingray’s mind. “And if we choose the spot right, we can convince him the vestiges are somewhere really inconvenient or expensive to get to. Or, you know, somewhere he can get into a lot of trouble if he’s caught poking around for stolen goods.”
Garal Ket stood silent in the corridor, apparently thinking for a good ten seconds. Then e said, “Let’s talk some more about that.”
Ingray waited until they left the ship at Hwae Station to access the public news and data feeds. She could have looked sooner—could probably have had access while the ship was still in the Tyr/Hwae gate—but hadn’t wanted to know if any of her family had tried (or not tried) to contact her. Now as she stepped through the airlock, a flood of messages scrolled past in her vision. None of them looked urgent, or even particularly interesting, and she blinked them away.
“How do I have messages?” asked Garal, behind her.
She turned. E wore a dark blue coverall that Captain Uisine had given em, and over eir shoulder e carried a large velvety-looking black bag Ingray supposed was from the same source, though what Garal needed with a bag when e didn’t have any other possessions at all Ingray wasn’t sure. “I had it set up that way,” she said. It had cost extra, but it was too easy to spot a fake identity when they had no personal data anywhere in the system. “Your travel history says you’ve been away from Hwae for a while.” She looked around for directions and saw a path to the left marked INCOMING TRAVELERS on the dull green floor.
“Not that way,” said Garal. “We’re on the other side of the station from where the passenger ships usually dock. That exit comes out a long way from anywhere we want to be. If we go the other way we’ll be just a short distance from the System Lareum and the Assembly Chambers.”
And it was a direct tram ride from the System Lareum to the elevator shuttle, where they were headed. Ingray pulled a map into her vision. “You’re right,” she said. “We’ll spend half our time backtracking if we go that way.” She frowned. “But it looks like we’ll have to walk the whole way?”
“There should be a freight transport, it has room for passengers. Or, it did last time I was here. You send a request to …”
“Ah, thanks, I found it.” She sent the request and turned right into the scuffed gray corridor beyond the bay. After passing a few more bays she said, “So, we have enough money to take transport the rest of the way home, but then we can’t afford to eat. If we eat, we’ll have enough for probably one night’s lodging as well.” If Captain Uisine had not bought the crate and suspension pod from her, sparing her the trouble of pushing it around and trying to sell it herself, she would still be completely broke. “Well, you can probably get yourself on the public allotment list, if you like. I can’t. And if I call home and ask for a ride, someone will probably help us.”
“But you’d rather not do that,” guessed Garal. “I can’t say I blame you, and besides I think you’ll be in a better position if you arrive home without having to ask for help to get there.”
Ingray waited a moment for em to say more, but e didn’t. “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll claim us seats on the next elevator shuttle.”
A walk, a tram ride, and several minutes in a lift took them to the freight transport, which took them on a slow, rumbling ride through tunnels Ingray had never imagined existed to another stretch of dingy corridor with two doors at the end. They walked past the line at the door marked NON-HWAE CITIZENS, to where the floor changed from dull gray to brass-bordered blue tiles and a bored-looking guard sat staring. “Identity tabulas, please,” e said dully as Ingray and Garal approached. Ingray had already begun to pull hers out of her jacket. She held it up as she walked past the guard. Tried to keep her breathing even, her steps no more hurried than any other tired traveler. This was a moment when Garal’s identity would be under extra scrutiny. Just walk, she told herself.
She didn’t dare turn to look for Garal until they were well away from the door, down another corridor and through a much larger entrance into one of the station’s main thoroughfares, a broad avenue that led to a wide, open space in front of the System Lareum, where, finally, surrounded by people passing, files of crèche children streaming toward the lareum entrance, under cover of the noise and chatter, she stopped to look at em. E looked calmly back at her, eir tabula already tucked away again. “All right?” she asked.
“Just fine,” e said.
“Let’s go, then.” Though it was a nonsensical thing to say; they were already walking toward the tram that would take them to the elevator shuttle.