“No,” I said.
“Well,” she said. “I want to keep you.”
That left me feeling a warm glow that was something of an antidote to all my recent frustrations.
The next logical step for me was to check on Afar and his crew, who—being in the methane section—were much less physically accessible to Cheeirilaq, Rilriltok, Helen, and I. Well, honestly—I didn’t know about Helen. Possibly she could walk into a methane section like it wasn’t anything. Possibly it would speed up her processing to be superchilled.
Or maybe she’d freeze solid.
I should ask, once she was feeling well enough for visitors again.
Rather than suiting up and tromping through the methane section, with all the attendant risks and nuisances, I met up with Rilriltok and we removed ourselves to a remote observation lounge. The lounges were usually used by residents and doctors on a training rotation to watch treatment in sections they were not biologically suited to—but they were open to anybody with an interest. Teaching hospitals are great.
Monitors and holopresence units along two walls gave us a mediated view of the ward where the Darboof crew members were resting. It was, by human standards, pitch-black in the actual ward, but the lounge translated the Darboof’s homey, comfortable IR into wavelengths my visual receptors could process.
A patient care specialist of some description moved around the beds. Having given up the Darboof ayatanas, I did not know if the person manipulating their crystalline limbs and administering medication or nutrition was the equivalent of a nurse or filled some other function. They were, however, remarkably efficient, and I left myself a note in senso to find out who they were, so I could request them for my own patients in future, if needed.
We were barely getting settled when Tsosie walked in, followed by Cheeirilaq. Tsosie seemed as surprised to see us as I was to see him in the company of the Goodlaw. Or maybe he only noticed me. Rilriltok was suddenly blending into the upholstery again. I hoped it didn’t get sat on. That would be an embarrassing incident report to have to fill out.
Greetings, Dr. Jens, Cheeirilaq stridulated. I was certain it noticed Rilriltok, by how politely it kept its triangular face pointed toward the observation windows.
“Oh,” Tsosie said. “Are you checking on our patients?”
“Not ours anymore,” I said. “Technically.”
“I’m not busy while we’re grounded.” He walked to the monitors on the side of the room at right angles to the ones I had been observing. The new bank lit up in its turn with a different angle on the enhanced images of Afar’s crew. “Loese is volunteering in the nursery, she’s so bored. I’ve gotten involved with retrofitting the gravity generators into key areas. It’s grunt work—”
He sighed.
Of all the people I thought would enjoy spending time around children… well, Loese wasn’t one of them. It goes to show how stereotypes can mislead.
“I didn’t know you knew anything about gravity generators.”
“I played around with them a little in my downtime. I like techy stuff.” He grinned.
From here, we could have accessed senso from the care team—filtered, so we didn’t wind up with their love lives.… Did Darboof or any of the methane breathers even have love lives? Hastily, I canceled the request for info that my wondering had automatically generated, before the answer chipped away any more of my battered innocence.
Accessing the senso would have come with partial immersion in their alien sensorium, however. Having worn Darboof ayatanas, I wasn’t in any hurry to experience that again so soon. They were too different to fit comfortably over my skin. For one thing, their nervous systems depended on supercooled superconductors to move electricity around. They thought with electrons—same as Sally, same as me, same as Rilriltok—but they thought awfully fast. And moved awfully slow.
Their experience was a particularly ill-fitting suit, for a human.
They probably would have felt the same way about me and my weird, hot, bright life. Although there were hobbyists who liked to try on other species recreationally. The more exotic and extremophile, the better. Not that I judge, but some subcultures are odd.
“I’m bored, too.” I had plenty to do, but none of it was what I loved doing. I contemplated my thumbnails, and the moonstone gleam of my exo against the skin of my hands. I was tempted to tell him about my conversations with O’Mara and Starlight. Did he know about the extent of the sabotage on Core General? Rilriltok had been cagey but informed. But from O’Mara I’d gotten a sense that they were keeping it quiet, and all I’d heard through the grapevine since I got back was a bit of muttering about unlucky happenings—or, depending on the personality of the mutterer, poor maintenance.
Cheeirilaq must know, being a Goodlaw. And Rilriltok had suggested I speak with it, though I hadn’t nerved myself up yet. I wasn’t sure it would want assistance from outside of its chain of command, especially assistance foisted on it by a former Judiciary noncom who now worked for an entirely different organization.
Its role was not quite judge, jury, and executioner, but beings that achieved the status of Goodlaw in the Judiciary were trusted by the Synarche to exercise reliable judgment in ethically complex frontier situations, when they could not rely on communication to higher authorities. That was a level of responsibility that went beyond solid rightminding and into strong personal moral development—not to mention an encyclopedic knowledge of legal precedents.
I trusted Sally and her crew with my life. But somebody had sabotaged Sally. And although it didn’t seem likely, I found myself circling back to consider the possibility that it had happened after we left Core General. So where did that leave me? Wondering if I could trust Tsosie. Wondering if I could trust Cheeirilaq enough to confide in it.
I refused to wonder about Rilriltok.
But as implications I had been sort of glossing over in a haze of busyness unpacked themselves, my heartbeat seemed to pulse in my belly rather than my
