Captain Uisine stared at her over the crate. “I am on the very edge,” he said, finally, “of refunding your passage—both of the berths you’ve paid for—and asking you to leave this bay. I haven’t made up my mind yet. But I’ll tell you one thing, there’s no way you’re bringing that person—Pahlad Budrakim, you said?—aboard my ship still in that suspension pod. And considering you expected to meet em awake and unfrozen, you won’t have any objection to thawing em out now, I presume?”
“Will you take us aboard then?”
“I’ll consider taking you aboard then. Pahlad Budrakim can do as e likes.” A moment’s thought. “If e doesn’t want to come aboard, I’ll refund you eir fare.”
It could have been worse, Ingray supposed. It was some sort of chance, anyway. Captain Uisine put his other hand on the crate. “Step back, excellency, you don’t want your foot caught under this.” Ingray stepped back and the crate settled to the floor with a thunk. “Do you know if this person has ever been in suspension before?”
Ingray picked up her jacket and bag and sandals off the crate lid. “No, why?”
Captain Uisine touched the crate’s latches and carefully slid the lid aside. “E might panic if e doesn’t know what to expect. A little help would be nice.”
Ingray dropped her sandals and bag, pulled her jacket on, and then helped brace the lid as Captain Uisine tilted it and let it slide down to rest against the crate.
Captain Uisine looked for a moment at the smooth, black surface of the pod, then slid open the pod’s control panel. “Everything looks good,” he said, as a giant black spider scuttled out of the airlock, nearly a meter high, a rolled-up blanket clutched in one hairy appendage. Weirdly, disturbingly graceful, it skittered up to Captain Uisine and stopped, turned one of its far too many stalked eyes toward Ingray. No, it wasn’t a spider. It was … something else.
“Um,” said Ingray. “That’s … is that a spider?” She didn’t know why the back of her neck was prickling. She didn’t mind spiders. But this … thing was so unsettling. Its legs were jointed wrong, she realized, and its eyestalks sprouted right out of its blob of a body. There was no waist, no head. And something else was wrong, though she couldn’t quite say what.
“Of course it’s not a spider,” replied Captain Uisine, still frowning at the suspension pod. “You don’t get spiders with half-meter bodies, or two-meter leg spans. Or, you know, not unaugmented ones. But this isn’t a spider.” He looked up. “But it’s kind of like a spider, I’ll grant you that. Do you have a problem with spiders, excellency?” The not-spider’s body trembled gelatinously, stretched to become oblong rather than round, and four extra legs slid out to touch the bay floor. “Does that help?”
Seeing the thing change shape was somehow even more disturbing, but she refused to step back, even though she wanted to. “Not really. And I don’t mind spiders at all. It’s just, this looks so … so organic.” Except in a wrong, squishy, itchy sort of way.
“Well, yes,” said Captain Uisine, standing square and stolid by the open crate. Entirely unbothered by the spidery thing beside him. “A lot of it is. Some people find it unsettling, and apparently you’re one of them, but it’s just a bio mech. You’ll get used to it after a few days, or if you don’t I’ll keep it out of your way.” He touched the control panel and the smooth surface of the pod broke open with a click and slid aside. For just an instant Ingray saw a person lying naked and motionless, submerged in a pool of blue fluid, unevenly cut hair a tangled mass over half of eir sharp-featured face, thin—thinner than she remembered pictures of Pahlad Budrakim—the long welt of a scar along eir right flank.
Then the smooth, glassy surface of the preserving medium rippled and billowed as the person opened eir eyes and sat convulsively up, choking, one outthrust arm smacking hard into Ingray. Captain Uisine grabbed eir other arm. “It’s all right,” he said, voice still calm and serious. The person continued to choke as blue fluid poured out of eir mouth and nose, sheeted away from eir body back into the pod. “It’s all right. Everything’s fine. You’re all right.”
The last of the fluid drained away from the person’s mouth and nose, and e gave a breathy, shaking moan.
“First time?” asked Captain Uisine, reaching down for the blanket the spider mech still proffered.
The naked person in the pod closed eir eyes. Gasped a few times, and then eir breathing settled.
“Are you all right?” asked Ingray. In Bantia this time, the most commonly spoken language in Hwae System, though she was fairly sure Pahlad Budrakim would have understood Yiir, which Captain Uisine had used.
Captain Uisine shook the blanket out and laid it around the naked person’s shoulders.
“Where am I?” e asked, in Bantia, voice rough with cold or fear or something else.
“We’re on Tyr Siilas Station, in Tyr System,” said Ingray, and then, to Captain Uisine, “E asked where e is, and I told em we are on Tyr Siilas.”
“How did I get here?” asked the person sitting in the suspension pod, in Bantia. By now the blue fluid had all drained away to some reservoir in the pod itself.
“I paid someone to bring you out,” said Ingray. “I’m Ingray Aughskold.”
The person opened eir eyes then. “Who?”
Well, Ingray had never really met Pahlad Budrakim in person. And e was ten or more years older than she was, and not likely to have noticed a very young Aughskold foster-daughter, not likely to have known her name when she had still been a child, let alone her adult name, which she’d taken only months before e’d gone into Compassionate Removal. “I’m one of Netano Aughskold’s children,” said Ingray.
“Why,” e asked, eir voice gaining strength, “would one of Representative Aughskold’s children bring me anywhere?”
Ingray tried to think of a simple way to explain, and settled, finally, for, “You’re Pahlad Budrakim.”
E gave a little shake of eir head, a frown. “Who?”
Ingray suppressed a start as another spider mech came skittering out of the airlock. This one held a large cup of steaming liquid, which it passed to Captain Uisine before it spun and returned to the ship. “Here, excellency,” he said, in Yiir, offering it to the person still sitting in the pod. “Can you hold this?”
“Here,” said the first spider mech, in a thin, thready voice, in Bantia. “Can you hold this?”
“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 ser
bat. “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.
Captain Uisine continued. “If you lose your job, can’t you just go to the public registry in Hwae System and put your name in for employment? How bad could that be? You
probably had an excellent education, you’ll have met people. You probably have the sort of skills that get someone a nice office job, at the very least. I bet if you sent a few messages, you’d have something lined up pretty quickly.”
“Maybe.” Without a family to help her, without contacts to speak up for her, her prospects would be limited. And it was entirely possible that if Ingray disappointed Netano sufficiently and was sent away, any office might refuse to hire her just to avoid offending Netano Aughskold.
Captain Uisine continued. “And, excellency, I know this is a delicate subject for quite a lot of people, but it seems to me that if your mother is going to turn you out of the house for not impressing her sufficiently, well, maybe you’re better off on your own.”
“You don’t understand,” said Ingray.
“Doubtless I don’t,” replied Captain Uisine, evenly. “In the meantime, I’ll send out for some supper. My treat this once, you’ve had a difficult day. You can sleep aboard if you like. Why don’t you stow your things, and I’ll send the crate to the cargo entrance.”
“I don’t care about the crate,” said Ingray, leaning over to pick up her sandals and her bag, and the errant hairpin. Another one dropped to the floor beside her foot.
“It’s a perfectly good crate,” said Captain Uisine. “And the suspension pod looks new. You can sell them when you get home. Every little bit helps.”
Ingray straightened, and hurried into the airlock without answering, hoping he wouldn’t see her fresh spate of tears.
There were two passenger cabins, each with two shelflike bunks, one on top of the other. And actually “cabin” was being generous—they were little more than niches in the wall of the ship’s narrow main corridor. Dismayingly cramped, and the single narrow corridor was a scuffed and dingy gray. On the other hand, the air didn’t seem to have that half-stale, recycled smell that sometimes even the big passenger liners could have. Captain Uisine must have invested in a very good air recirculation system, and not cared much about the way the ship looked inside. And at least the bunk seemed clean and comfortable, and the one above was high enough that she could sit up straight. She stowed her bag under a lower bunk, ungirded her skirts, and sat down. Considered putting her sandals on, but found she didn’t want to. She stowed her sandals and began to pull the remaining pins from her hair.
She’d done her best. It wasn’t her fault—or, appar
ently, anyone else’s—that she’d failed. And maybe Captain Uisine was right, and she’d be better off without Netano, without any of the Aughskolds. Netano had always been outwardly kind and generous to all her children—all of them adopted. But Ingray had known from the day she’d joined the household that her future well-being depended on not disappointing her foster-mother. All of them, including Danach, who everyone knew was Netano’s favorite, were there to support Netano’s political ambitions. At the very least, to be a happy, well-behaved, and well-dressed family for the news services, and ultimately for the voters. But that was the very least. Netano wanted all of her children to be extraordinary. They had, after all, been specially chosen to join her family. Fail Netano’s expectations, and you were out. It had never been said aloud, not by Netano, not by anyone in the household, but even Danach knew it, and maybe that was part of why Danach was Danach.
Ingray had always felt like she didn’t belong, as though at any moment her foster-mother would discover this fact, that Ingray never would have the kind of daring brilliance Netano Aughskold prized. Oh, sure, she was competent. She could remember who was who in the districts of the Third Assembly, who held what influence, who was likely to donate to a reelection fund and why, knew the pet concerns of various influential supporters, knew what to say and what not to say depending on who was listening. Ingray was one of several people in Netano’s Arsamol District office who spoke directly to district residents who had complaints or concerns or requests, and these days Nuncle Lak, Netano’s chief of staff, trusted her to help organize events and meetings with district residents, and she hadn’t made any disastrous mistakes, not even during her first terrifying inexperienced year at the job. But competent was not brilliant. Brilliant was taking all that knowledge and those contacts and finding a way to use it to advantage. To come up with a plan, a scheme, to bring Netano more influence, more support, or really any sort of political advantage. Ingray would never be able to do that, no matter how hard she tried.