“Aren’t you Pahlad Budrakim?” asked Ingray, feeling strangely numb, except maybe for an unpleasant sensation in her gut, as though she was not capable of feeling any more despair or fear than she already had today. The Facilitator had said this was Pahlad. No, e’d said e’d examined the payment and the merchandise and both were what they should have been. But surely that was the same thing.
“No,” said the person sitting in the suspension pod. “I don’t even know who that is.” E noticed the cup Captain Uisine was proffering. “Thank you,” e said, and took it, cupped it in eir hands as Captain Uisine stopped the blanket from sliding off eir shoulders.
“Drink some,” said Captain Uisine, still in Yiir. “It’s serbat—it’ll do you good.”
“Drink it,” said the spider mech, in Bantia. “It’s serbat—it’s good and nutritious.”
What if there had been a mistake? This person looked like Pahlad Budrakim. But also, in a way, e didn’t. E was thinner, certainly, and Ingray had only seen em in person once or twice, and that was years ago. “You’re not Pahlad Budrakim?”
“No,” said the person who was not Pahlad Budrakim. “I already said that.” E took a drink of the serbat. “Oh, that’s good.”
Really, it didn’t matter. Even if this person was Pahlad, if e was lying to her, it made no difference. She couldn’t compel em to go with her back to Hwae, and not just because Captain Uisine would refuse to take em unless e wanted to go. Her plan had always depended on Pahlad being willing to go along. “You look a lot like Pahlad Budrakim,” Ingray said. Still hoping.
“Do I?” e asked, and took another drink of serbat. “I guess someone made a mistake.” E looked straight at Ingray then, and said, “So, when a Budrakim goes to Compassionate Removal it’s only for show, is it? They send someone to fish them out, behind the scenes?” Eir expression didn’t change, but eir voice was bitter.
Ingray drew breath to say, indignantly, No of course not, but found herself struck speechless by the fact that she had herself gotten a Budrakim out of Compassionate Removal. “No,” she managed, finally. “No, I … you’re really not Pahlad Budrakim?”
“I’m really not,” e said.
“Then who are you?” asked the spider mech, though Captain Uisine hadn’t said anything aloud.
The person sitting in the suspension pod took another drink of serbat, then said, “You said we’re on Tyr Siilas?”
“Yes,” said the spider mech. Ingray found she couldn’t speak at all.
“I think I’d rather not tell you who I am.” E looked around, at the suspension pod e sat in, the crate still surrounding it, at Captain Uisine, at the spider mech beside the captain, around at the bay. “I think I’d like to visit the Incomers Office.”
“Why?” asked Ingray, almost a cry, unable to keep her confusion and her despair out of her voice.
“Unless you have financial resources we’re unaware of,” said the spider mech, “you won’t be able to do more than apply for an indenture. You may or may not get one, and unless you have contacts here you very probably won’t like what you get if you do.”
“I’ll like it better than Compassionate Removal.” E drained the last of eir beverage.
“Look on the bright side,” Captain Uisine said himself, to Ingray, in Yiir, as he took the cup from not-Pahlad. “I’ll refund you eir passage, and you’ll be able to eat actual food for the next couple of days.”
2
Ingray leaned against the once-again closed crate, crying. Once not-Pahlad had walked out of the bay, barefoot, Captain Uisine’s blanket wrapped around em, not even looking at Ingray, she had been unable to keep the tears back.
“Did you go through a reputable broker?” asked Captain Uisine.
“Yes.” She sniffed, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “If they couldn’t verify eir identity, the deal wasn’t supposed to go through. It was part of the contract.” And e might really have been Pahlad, but the more she thought about it the less sure she was that the broker had brought her the right person. So, when a Budrakim goes to Compassionate Removal it’s only for show, is it? e’d asked, with real bitterness. That hadn’t been an act.
“Did they have a good DNA sample to work with? If that was from the wrong person, or contaminated in a way they couldn’t compensate for … but they’d have told you, surely, if the sample wasn’t suitable.”
“I couldn’t get one.”
“Ah. That’ll have been the problem, then. And even through a good broker, deals are always to the best of our ability,” said Captain Uisine. “They’d have had to go by how e looked or depended on someone else to say that yes, this was really Pahlad Budrakim. You said yourself e looked like em.”
“Yes.” She wiped her eyes again. Did not look at Captain Uisine. Obviously she couldn’t hide the fact that she was crying, but still. “Yes, e did look like em.” E might well actually be Pahlad, but there was nothing Ingray could do about that. A green glass-tipped hairpin dropped onto her shoulder and then the floor. Damn. She had never been good at putting up her own hair.
And even if the person who’d just left the bay really wasn’t Pahlad, even if she could prove somehow that anyone along the way had known that, she couldn’t make the accusation. She couldn’t afford to stay here and press charges through the Infringement Bureau, and she certainly couldn’t afford to hire an advocate to do it for her. Never mind the fact that the deal had been illegal in quite a few different ways to begin with. And it wouldn’t make any difference in the end—she was still left with nothing.
“Who did you deal with?” asked the captain. “Gold Orchid?” Ingray gestured affirmative. “They’re a dependable firm. They won’t have cheated you. Not on purpose, anyway. For whatever reason, they’ll have been convinced they were delivering Pahlad Budrakim to you.” A moment of silence. Then, “Or, now I think of it. Maybe they’re protecting someone else’s deal. Maybe the real Pahlad Budrakim isn’t in prison anymore, but if they told you they couldn’t produce em, you might wonder why that was, and they don’t want that.”
Ingray turned her head, saw Captain Uisine standing short and stolid at the end of the crate, a huge black spider mech still beside him. “What? You mean, like Pah …” No. Better to assume it wasn’t really Pahlad. “Like that person said, Pahlad never went to Compassionate Removal to begin with? Or was fetched out right away? Because e’s a Budrakim? Do you think so?”
“Not really,” said Captain Uisine. Quietly, calmly serious. “It strikes me as needlessly complicated—brokers like Gold Orchid refuse commissions all the time, for all sorts of reasons. They might have just told you they don’t buy or sell people and that would have been the end of it, I imagine. And after all, once you opened the pod and discovered it wasn’t really Pahlad Budrakim, you’d be asking all of those same questions.”
Ingray didn’t reply, looked down at her feet again. Thought about bending over to pick up the hairpin on the floor, but given her luck right now, if she leaned forward to pick this one up three more would fall out.