massive nose and tiny gray eyes which seemed to light on Skye before turning, with sad self-knowledge, to me. “You’re from the Judge Advocate.”
“Brilliant deduction,” said Lastogne, dripping more than his usual concentration of scorn. “Counselor Andrea Cort, meet Exophysiologist Third Class Nils D’Onofrio, current status inactive. De facto commander of the three height-sensitives confined to this chamber on Mr. Gibb’s orders.”
D’Onofrio offered me a hand, kept it extended, then let it drop, a grim disappointment already burning in eyes that knew the cruel emotion well. “I see you share Mr. Gibb’s attitude toward us untouchables.”
“Not at all,” said Lastogne. “She just hates everybody.”
D’Onofrio gave me an appraising look. “Really, Peyrin. You must feel like you just found your soul ma—”
I cut him off. “Mr. Lastogne doesn’t speak for me, sir. It’s true that I try to avoid physical contact whenever possible, but the number of people I go to the trouble of actually hating comprise a very small and very select group, who had to earn their places there. Deal with me properly and I promise you we’ll have a pleasant, professional relationship.”
D’Onofrio studied me for signs of mockery. “I’ll take that at face value, Counselor. How do you want to do this? You want to question us together, or one at a time?”
“Together will be fine, for now.”
D’Onofrio acknowledged that with a nod and returned to the ship, a portrait of wounded dignity.
I thought of the many years I’d needed to carry myself with quiet strength, bearing the monstrous reputation I’d earned at Bocai. D’Onofrio’s bearing testified to the same kind of wounds, the ones known only to the scapegoated. I found myself feeling significant empathy for him. Without turning to Lastogne, I murmured, “Don’t speak for me again, sir.”
“My error,” said Lastogne, who didn’t sound sorry at all.
“I mean it. I’ll cite you with interference if you try it.”
“I understand,” he said, without an iota of additional contrition.
“Especially if you implicate me in any attempt to stigmatize these people.”
Lastogne waved his hand. “We don’t stigmatize them, Counselor. Not as bad as they sometimes think we do.”
“No,” said the Porrinyards. “You do worse.” They glanced at Lastogne, as if deciding just how much contradiction he could take, and then resumed, their shared voice pitched toward Skye’s side of the vocal register. “Gibb’s people are all high-altitude specialists. They define themselves by their ability to navigate the Uppergrowth bare-handed, and they demand that level of competence from everybody they work with. They have to, when the reflexes of others are so vital to their own survival. They see anybody who freezes up, who can’t function, who allows himself to be defeated by the same challenges they face every day, as not just weak but dangerous. Cross that line and you’re on their bad side, permanently.”
The Porrinyards considered it. “I don’t think you should worry about it, Counselor. Most of Gibb’s people understand that you’re an untrained outsider, doing your best in an environment you find frightening and alien. It may lead a few to underestimate you, or show you less respect. But most won’t judge you by that criterion alone.”
I wasn’t sure I bought it, but that assurance would have to do for now. “And you?”
The Porrinyards grinned with something hard to avoid interpreting as affection. Now their voice tipped toward Oscin’s end of the register: “Here’s a shameful personal secret, Counselor: Oscin the single never quite managed the grace and confidence Skye the single demonstrated in high places. She did things that scared the hell out of him. He hid it well, and overcompensated by taking stupid risks to impress her. So I know what it’s like.”
They seemed to be going out of their way to show individuality in my presence. Why, I didn’t know, but I sure wished they’d stop turning it on and off and just decide which way they wanted to act.
A second later D’Onofrio arrived with his fellow exiles, introducing them as Exobiochemist First Class Li-Tsan Crin and Atmospheric Analyst Second Class Robin Fish.
Li-Tsan, lowering her head to get through the hatchway, was one of the tallest unenhanced human beings I’d ever seen; her hypertrophic arms and legs, left exposed by the minimalist white worksuit that covered her from breasts to hips, were so knotted by muscle that they looked too tight to move. She had light brown skin, emerald eyes, and a chin that came to a point. Her hair was a wispy halo of white so thin it seemed like cirrus clouds orbiting the darker skin of her face. She was beautiful, in a dangerous way, with all the coiled menace of a predator seeking a way out of its cage.
Fish, who barely came up to Li-Tsan’s collarbone, was milky-white, to the point of translucence, her finest feature lush red hair she wore in a quartet of tight shoulder-length braids. She wore a loose open vest that accentuated the curve of her breasts and the bottom half of a stained shipboard worksuit that looked baggy and shapeless on her, even though the name stitched into the chest pocket was her own. Nothing about her physique, from the slight bulge of her exposed belly to the soft freckled skin of her limbs, testified to the kind of hyperathleticism that characterized so many of Gibb’s people. Her puffy, bloodshot eyes seemed the footprints of many sleepless nights.
Even before the women spoke a word, they both radiated wariness. They’d both been hurt badly, and at length: the kind of hurt that still bled. Was it just the professional upset of failing in One One One’s upside-down environment? Or something more?
Li-Tsan, looking me up and down, said, “So you’re the grand inquisitor.”
“No inquisition,” I said. “Just a few questions.”
“Oh, certainly,” Li-Tsan said. She had the clipped accent of a woman whose Mercantile was a second tongue learned late in life: all exaggerated vowels and stressed consonants. “And when you’ve asked all your questions, just who will you choose for scapegoat? Not one of Gibb’s infallible supermen, dangling from the Uppergrowth like monkeys. Not somebody Gibb wants to use. Just one of the expendables, fit to be taken out like a spare part the first time his creature Lastogne needs someone to condemn to the Corps—”
Fish barely raised her eyes. “That’s not fair, Li—”
“Nothing’s fair, sweetmeat. Not in the Corps, not on this world, and certainly not in front of this piece of Tchi shit.”
Anger not just between these three and the rest of this station’s human contingent—anger between those two. Their life as internal exiles must have been as interesting as the booming local industry in comparing things to Tchi shit. I asked Li-Tsan, “Would you be more comfortable answering questions without Mr. Lastogne present?”
Li-Tsan snorted. “I’d be happier still with him pushed out an airlock, but yeah, why not, as long as you’re giving me a choice. While you’re at it I’d prefer the unison twins gone too. I don’t trust anybody who works for the lord of that upside-down madhouse.”
“No offense taken,” said the Porrinyards.
“Go fuck yourself
Lastogne’s smile didn’t falter, less the amiability of a man refusing to take offense than the arrogance of one who considered these enemies beneath his contempt. “You first, bondsman.”
The Porrinyards gave me a look which they must have considered eloquent but which I found totally opaque. There was a shared-joke element to it, which seemed more or less inevitable with these two, except that I was somehow supposed to be included in it. Again, I didn’t have the slightest idea what they were getting at, and again my denseness didn’t seem to bother them all that much.
Only after all three of my guides exited the hatch at the far end of the hangar did I address the height- sensitives again. “I don’t know if it means anything to any of you, but I don’t believe it’s accurate to call Lastogne Gibb’s ‘creature.’ It seemed the other way around, to me. Lastogne’s even accused Gibb of incompetence.”
Li-Tsan rolled her eyes. “And you’ve been here how long, all of a cycle or two? Wow, Counselor, I’m impressed how completely you’ve managed to analyze the true nature of their relationship.”
“If I’m being hasty, I’m more than willing to stand corrected.”
She adopted the tone of a frustrated teacher repeating basic lessons for an idiot. “He doesn’t consider Gibb incompetent. He considers Gibb a mediocrity. He thinks Gibb is a nothing, a void, a space-holder. And that’s exactly what he wants Gibb to be. He wants it so much that he’s willing to support all of Gibb’s sordid little corruptions, in
