said it was some kind of Russian Sleep gadget. “Some monster, boss,” he said. “I’m disappointed.”
“We could throw her back,” Maris said, “and try for something better.”
Ty laughed, showing for a moment the wad of green gum that lay on his tongue. He was fascinated by the little girl; his fear had transformed directly to excitement and a kind of proprietorial pride. “She’s amazing,” he said. “Could you have done what she did? I couldn’t.”
“None of us could,” Somerset said. “That’s why she can’t be a normal little girl. That’s why we have taken a very grave risk in bringing her aboard.”
“Aw, come on,” Ty said. “Look at her. She’s a kid. She’s half-starved to death. She couldn’t harm a blade of grass.”
“Appearances can be deceptive,” Somerset said.
Alice Eighteen Singh Rai watched them carefully as they spoke about her, but showed no sign that she understood what they were saying.
“She would have died if we had not found her,” Bruno said. “Whatever she is, she needs our help.”
“Of course,” Somerset said. “But we know nothing about her.”
Ty snorted air through his nose. “What are you saying, we should tie her up?”
“We should certainly take precautions,” Somerset said, ignoring Ty’s sarcasm.
Maris decided that Somerset needed something to do, and told him, “Before we can decide anything, I need you to find out everything you can about where Alice came from.”
“Somewhere on Iapetus, I should think,” Somerset said. “That was the shuttle’s point of departure, according to its manifest. It was on a straight run to Mimas when the emp mine intercepted it.”
“I’m sure you can find out exactly where on Iapetus.”
“I will try my best,” Somerset said, and swam off to its cubicle.
“And take the rod out of your ass while you’re about it,” Ty murmured.
“Somerset does have a point,” Bruno said. “We have to think very carefully about what we’re going to do.”
“I’m going to have to come up with some excuse for Barrett,” Maris said. “But first, I’m going to give this little girl her first shower in three hundred days.”
Alice Eighteen Singh Rai scrubbed up well, submitting docilely to the air-mask necessary in the freefall shower. Enveloped in one of Maris’s jumpers, she refused the bags of chow Ty patiently offered one by one, then suddenly kicked off toward the kitchen nook, quick and agile as an eel. She had ripped open a tube and was cramming black olive paste into her mouth before Ty could pull her away by an ankle.
“Let her eat,” Maris said. “I think she knows what her body needs.”
“Man,” Ty said, wonderingly, “she sure is hungry.”
Bruno said, “I have only a minimum of medical training, boss. I don’t know anything about mental illness or brain damage. The autodoc can work up her blood and urine chemistry for chemical signs of psychosis, but that’s about all. I hate to say it, but the Symbiosis ship has better facilities.”
“I don’t want to turn her over to Barrett.”
Bruno nodded. His eyes were dark and solemn under the brim of his knitted cap. “She’s one of us, isn’t she?”
“She’s no ordinary little girl. Somerset is right about that. But she’s no monster, either.”
“She sure is hungry,” Ty said again, watching with tender pride as Alice unseamed her third tube of olive paste.
Maris left her with Ty and Bruno, and, with heavy foreboding, wrote up a false report for the day log and sent it off. Barrett called back almost at once. He said, “I want to believe you, but somehow I’m having a hard time.”
Maris’s first thought was that one of Barrett’s drones had spotted them working around Alice’s nest. She hunched over the com, sweat popping over her body. Her pulse beat heavily in her temples. She said, “If this is about why we’re still behind-”
“Of course it is. And I’m very disappointed.”
“The vacuum organism caused a bigger problem than we anticipated.”
“All you have to do is cut through it,” Barrett said scornfully. “Cut through it, scorch it off, deal with it.”
“Can you tell me about the shuttle’s cargo, Barrett? What was it carrying?”
Barrett gave her a sharp, bright look. “Why do you want to know?”
“Perhaps the vacuum organism was part of the cargo. If we know what it is, we can deal with it more easily.”
“The V.O. was checked out when the cargo pods were detached. It’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Don’t you have more specific information? The ship was recovered five months ago. Symbiosis must know what was in the cargo pods by now.”
“That’s none of your business, Delgado. Your business is to render down that shuttle, and your gang is a whole ten hours behind. You have to understand that Symbiosis wrote up these work schedules with generous margins-”
Relief that Barrett didn’t seem to know about Alice made Maris bold. She said, “The schedules weren’t drawn up with vacuum organism contamination in mind.”
“Please don’t interrupt me again,” Barrett said, all frosty rectitude. “The margins are there, and you’ve overrun them. You know the contract regs as well as I, Delgado. What else can I do?”
“Okay, fine, take off ten hours pay.”
“A day’s pay plus penalties. The contract is quite specific.”
“Okay.”
“What’s wrong, Delgado? Talk to me. Are you having trouble maintaining discipline?” Barrett suddenly mock- solicitous, leaning so close to the camera that his face looked like a pockmarked moon, his silly little braid wagging on his chin.
“T here’s no problem,” Maris said, snapping off the com and instantly regretting it. It was a sign of weakness, and the one skill that Barrett had honed to perfection was sniffing out weaknesses in others.
She waited five minutes in case he called back, then sculled back to the living quarters. Ty and Alice were watching a TV sheet floating in the air. Both were chewing gum. Bruno and Somerset broke off a whispered conversation, and Somerset told Maris, “I have found out where she came from.”
The Saturn infonet had been badly damaged during the Quiet War, but after running Alice’s name through half a dozen clandestine search engines, Somerset had discovered that the shuttle’s cargo and passenger had both originated in Hawaiki, an agricultural settlement on the great dark plains of Iapetus’s Cassini Regio.
“I discovered something else, too,” Somerset said. “The settlement was designed by Avernus.”
The name of the woman who had been the Outer System’s most famous gene wizard, and was now its most wanted so-called war criminal, hung in the air for a moment.
“Man,” Ty said, “I knew our Alice was something special. Didn’t I say she was special?”
“Avernus was famous for the totality of her designs,” Somerset said. “She tailored both ecospheres and their inhabitants. Given her appearance and what she did to survive, it seems quite likely that our guest benefited from Avernus’s art.”
Alice smiled at them all, seemingly quite happy to be the center of their attention.
“It doesn’t mean that she’s a monster,” Maris said forthrightly, although she had to admit that Somerset’s discovery was disquieting. Avernus had dedicated her considerable skills to pushing the envelope of humanity’s range. Some of her commissions-a sect in which adults lost the use of their limbs and eyes and grew leathery, involuted integuments stained purple with photosynthetic pigment, becoming sessile eremites devoted to praising God; a community with a completely closed ecosystem, the bellies of its citizens swollen with sacs of symbiotic bacteria-had tested even the generously inclusive tolerance of the outers.
“Aw, hell,” Ty said, “according to the flatlanders, we’re all monsters. And you know what? It’s true. We’re all tweaks, and we’re all proud to be tweaks! Flatlanders need drugs and nanotech to live here, but we’re gengineered for low-gravity. Maybe Avernus gave Alice a few extra special abilities, but so what?”
Maris asked Somerset, “Can we get in touch with Alice’s home?”
“Hawaiki no longer exists,” Somerset said. “It was captured and destroyed during the war.”
