“He tried to kill you,” insisted the spider mech, but it loosened its hold on him.
“It was an accident!” Danach protested. He sat up, rubbing his throat. “I was only trying to scare you so you wouldn’t call Planetary Safety. I wouldn’t kill you!”
“You wouldn’t be sorry if I was gone, though,” suggested Ingray.
A pause. “Infernal powers, Ingray! I’m not a murderer.”
“Ingray Human has been very generous to you,” repeated the spider mech.
“Here’s what we need to do,” said Ingray. “We get in the car. We go home. If anyone asks, yes, you rented this excavation mech. You were drunk, you were thinking about the murder, you got upset. You’d gotten to know Excellency Zat and liked her; she was a gentle soul who only cared about knowledge. You were angry and sad that she’d been murdered. You’re not really sure what you were going to do with the construction mech but whatever it was, it made sense on a bottle of arrack. It probably had something to do with Dapi the Dirt Mover.” That was the central character of a children’s entertainment that had run for decades. There weren’t many Hwaeans who hadn’t at some point in their childhoods harbored an ambition to be a heroic construction mech-pilot on account of it. “You couldn’t control it, it crashed …”
“I couldn’t,” Danach put in. “I’ve hardly drunk anything at all and this thing is a huge pain to drive. I didn’t think it would be that difficult, I’ve piloted mechs before.”
“Is not easy,” whispered the spider mech. “Important to practice.”
“It crashed,” said Ingray again. “You’re very sorry. You’re going to pay for the damage to the excavation mech. Out of your allowance. Without being asked. You’re going to think hard about whether you’re going to be doing any more drinking in the future. Pahlad being Pahlad, and the business with the vestiges, all of that will take you completely by surprise.”
“I can’t get down if you don’t move,” said Danach. And then, when Ingray didn’t move, and didn’t say anything, “All right. All right, thank you.” Graceless and resentful. “I would have been completely fucked if you hadn’t turned up. Even if I’d managed to get into the parkland with this heap of junk. Is that what you wanted?”
Ingray took a breath. Considered answering, but instead she climbed back down to the ground and walked carefully back to the road, and the groundcar. Behind her there was a plop, and a scrambling sound, and the spider mech came alongside her. “You’ll probably have to be a bag again,” said Ingray. “It won’t help if the news services get the idea the Geck were involved in this.”
“A bag, a bag,” whispered the spider mech. “Hah! The bag. I see now. But no, I will make my own way.” It trudged onto the road and shoved itself underneath the groundcar.
“Whatever you like,” said Ingray. Suddenly she shivered. She hadn’t been paying close attention, had been thinking two and three steps ahead. What had the spider mech just said? Hah! The bag. I see now. A nauseatingly horrible thought occurred to her. “Tic?” she called. “Tic, that is you, isn’t it?” But it had to be. Why would the Geck ambassador threaten to kill Danach like that? That was certainly an unambiguous violation of the treaty.
“Let it alone,” said Danach, coming up behind her. “You might have made friends with it, but I don’t want to ride with that thing anywhere near me. It’s so … so squishy.” He shuddered. “And it almost strangled me.”
Ingray opened the groundcar door. “Right, let’s go.”
12
By the time the groundcar pulled up to Netano’s house, it was well after midnight. The house was dark, except for a faint glow of light through the blue and red glass around the doorway. And bright against it, casting a yellow glow on the pavement at an exactly legally allowed distance from the house, the tall, four-legged bright orange column of a news service mech.
Danach swore. “District Voice?”
“District Voice,” Ingray confirmed, peering out the window at the black lettering across the mech’s front panel. “But it’s the only one. The news about Pahlad must have gotten out, but only District Voice is doing anything about it.”
Danach gave a short, tired laugh. “The prolocutor must be leaning on the big services. If it is about Pahlad, then I imagine they’re here for you, sis.” That last a trifle smugly.
“What a time for you to be so very drunk,” said Ingray. “I’m going to have to call a servant to help me get you into the house.”
“I think I’d have sobered up some by now,” Danach pointed out.
“You drank an awful lot, and you’ve had an exhausting night. You’ve passed out and I don’t want to try to wake you up, or risk you saying something awkward to the District Voice. Besides, I’ve already called for help.”
“Ingray,” said Danach, sounding suddenly, unaccountably pleading. “I really wasn’t trying to hurt you. I just … I thought you were there to get me in trouble, or take credit for finding the vestiges, or …” He trailed off.
“Why do you do any of it, Danach?” asked Ingray. Her anger and frustration had receded during the ride, as they always seemed to, but at Danach’s halting attempt at an apparent apology it broke out afresh. “You know Mama’s going to choose you. You know I’m no danger to your future prospects, I never was.”
“I don’t know that. I never did, not either one. Mama doesn’t always do what anyone expects her to. And Nuncle Lak likes you better than me. You know e does. And Mama listens to Nuncle Lak.” Danach sighed. “Look, I didn’t mean to start another fight. I’ve been sitting here thinking what would have happened if you’d been hurt or even killed back there. And I just … I don’t want that, Ingray. I never wanted that. I just, it seemed like I had this thing, that I was going to have a chance of coming home and laying the Budrakim vestiges in front of Mama, right before elections, and Mama probably won’t wait much longer to name her heir, and you turn up to take that away.”
“That’s not why I was there.” She wanted to say more, but he sounded actually sincere. And she knew what that felt like, that anxiety to please Netano, the feeling that her life, her future, depended on it.
Then the front door of the house opened, and the news service mech spun to see who it was but lost interest when two servants came out. “That was quick,” observed Ingray, and opened the groundcar door. “I’m so sorry to trouble you at this hour,” she called as the servants came to the car. “It’s just Danach. He’s”—she lowered her voice, though not enough to conceal her words from the news mech—“drunk rather a lot. He’s either asleep or passed out, but I don’t think the street is the best place to find out which one.”