Danach certainly hadn’t been deceived. He’d known from the time they were both children, and never tired of telling her that. It was a wonder Netano hadn’t discovered Ingray’s fraud yet.
She laid her handful of green-tipped pins on the bunk beside her, and counted them. One missing, probably fallen out on the trip from Gold Orchid to the docks.
If only. If only she really was what she had been trying so hard to be all this time. If only it hadn’t been so disastrously expensive to bring Pahlad Budrakim out of Compassionate Removal. She was increasingly convinced that it wasn’t Pahlad who’d walked out of the bay. Increasingly convinced by eir bitterness, and that steady conviction as e’d said that e didn’t even know who Pahlad was.
Well. There was nothing she could do about that now. Best consider the future. She did have skills, and connections. She could support herself, she could pay her debt off, even if it took decades. She just had to get through the next few weeks—to face admitting her failure to Netano, and face Danach’s contempt. If only there was some way to avoid that. Or better yet, to strike preemptively at Danach, to humiliate him the way he constantly tried, time and again, to humiliate her.
But wait. What if she could do exactly that?
She gathered her hair and shoved a few pins in to hold it. Got out of the bunk and went down the corridor to the ship’s tiny galley. The table was folded out from the wall, and Captain Uisine sat watching the doorway, as though he had been waiting for her.
“Captain,” she said, from the corridor, “I wonder if you could delay processing the refund of … of my friend’s fare. Until I’ve had a chance to talk to em again.”
“Had an idea, have you?” Since she had first met him, not two hours ago, his dark, square face had shown nothing but calm seriousness. That didn’t change now, but something about his manner seemed edged. Tense. “I’ll delay if you like. But maybe you should eat first. Our supper should be here soon. Though I must warn you, I’m in a difficult mood just now.”
“I’m … sorry to hear that, Captain.” Ingray wasn’t certain what else there was to say. It probably wasn’t wise to ask what the problem was.
“Do you,” he asked after a long, awkward silence, “have opinions to share, regarding current events?”
“About the Geck, you mean?” From that brief glimpse of news and opinion pieces she’d seen earlier, Ingray knew that the arrival of the Geck treaty delegation had brought out into the open any number of old conspiracy theories about the Geck, and about Radchaai involvement in the treaty. Ingray remembered hearing whispers, once or twice, to the effect that the Geck didn’t actually exist. They seemed never to leave their homeworld, and as far as Ingray knew they only ever appeared in images in the person of human representatives. Maybe, these whispers suggested, the Geck were an invention devised to give the Radchaai extra influence on the treaty. And that wasn’t the most unhinged of the rumors about the Geck she’d heard—or seen hinted at during her short sampling of recent news. But she wasn’t sure why Captain Uisine would care about any of them. “No, I don’t have any opinions about the Geck.” Or about the business with the treaty—she’d been too busy with other things.
“If you discover any,” said Captain Uisine, “please don’t share them with me.”
She wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, or if she should respond at all. A movement caught her eye—a spider mech, two brown cartons of what Ingray supposed was supper held above its body, jointed legs squeezed together in the narrow space of the corridor, stepping delicately toward the galley. She suppressed a shiver. She had seen mechs before, of course; everyone had, they were all over. Quite a few of them were designed in imitation of insect models. But she had never been so close to one that was so … so buglike in such a disturbing way. It made the back of her neck itch, made her want to frantically brush herself off.
She backed down the corridor to make way for the spider mech, managed to keep absolutely still as it squeezed through the galley doorway and set the cartons on the table, and then backed into the corridor and scurried off. “They’re just mechs, excellency,” said Captain Uisine as she came back to the galley doorway.
“You’re … they’re not alive?” They seemed alive.
“That depends on what you mean by alive. There is … a larger biological component than you’re probably used to. But they’re just mechs. They can’t think for themselves. Can’t think at all, really. They can perform a number of automated functions, just like any other mech, but I promise you there’s no conscious AI here.”
And that, Ingray realized, was what had been troubling her about the spider mechs. Their fluid, graceful movement reminded her of artificially intelligent villains in a popular entertainment. “Who controls them?” Ingray hadn’t seen anyone else, or any signs of anyone else. Anything beyond the very basics of mech-piloting took a lot of attention, and some of the jobs a mech would be used for on a ship required specialized skills. Most ships Ingray had traveled on had one or more mech-pilots as part of the crew. The way these moved, so quick and unhesitating, each hairy leg placed so precisely right every time—didn’t seem very mechlike. It must be that whoever was piloting them was very, very good.
“I do.” Captain Uisine opened one carton. “Don’t worry—I’ve had a lot of practice.” Steam wafted up from the open carton, and the smell of spiced noodles. “Eat. Your friend is probably sitting in a waiting room. Will be for hours yet. The only way to avoid a long wait at the Incomers Office is to be very obviously rich, or well connected. You’ve got plenty of time to have supper.”
She didn’t go into the galley. Though the food smelled wonderful and it had been far too long since she’d eaten. “Why are you being so nice?” He hadn’t seemed to care when she’d said she was too broke to eat for two days. Had shown no sign of caring about her at all.
“I’m an owner-operator with a small cargo ship,” he said, perfectly calmly, as though the question had been an entirely ordinary one. “I’ve been doing this run for five years or so. The thing about small independently owned cargo ships is, lots of people think you’re for sale, or easily stolen from, or available for smuggling or illicit trade. I’m not any of those things, and I’ve had run-ins with bad passengers before. I don’t think you’re a bad passenger—you could have behaved very differently when I refused to open cargo for that suspension pod. Or when the person inside that pod refused to go with you.” He picked up his carton of supper. “But don’t think I make a habit of this.”
“Of course not, Captain.” He was right. There was no rush to find the person who’d come out of that suspension pod—e was probably only just now reaching the Incomers Office, and e’d have a long, long wait ahead of em. She stepped into the tiny galley and sat down. “Thank you for the supper.”
Ingray found the person who (she had decided) wasn’t Pahlad Budrakim on a bench in the lobby of the Incomers Office, right where the unpadded bench met the corner of the room. Eir head leaning against the notices actually written in stark black on the white wall—presumably so that incomers who didn’t yet have access to system communications, and thus couldn’t see any overlays, couldn’t claim ignorance of rules or regulations. Captain Uisine’s blanket—a standard extruded one, dull orange-brown without even stripes or a pattern on the edges—was wrapped around em, like a lungi or a sarong. Eir arms crossed, eir eyes closed. Eir hacked-off-looking hair half over eir face. Asleep, Ingray thought. No one else was in the room—most incomers to Tyr Siilas probably had somewhere to go, once they’d managed to get a place in the queue. This person had nothing, no money, no friends, no place to stay. From what Captain Uisine had said, a wait could take days.
Ingray hadn’t made a sound, she was sure, but e opened eir eyes. Looked unsmiling, unmoving, at Ingray. “Netano Aughskold’s daughter,” e said. “What do you want?”
“I …” She moved to sit beside em, but something about the way e was looking at her, the way eir voice sounded, stopped her. “I’
d like to talk to you. May I sit here?”
“I don’t imagine you need my permission.” Eir tone was … not casual. Not angry or resentful or sarcastic, either. But on the edge of that. Certainly it wasn’t inviting.
Ingray didn’t sit. “You look an awful lot like Pahlad Budrakim.”
“Apparently so,” e said, still unsmiling. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“You could be Pahlad Budrakim,” said Ingray. Some tiny impulse crossed eir face, some trace of a thought or a reaction, but e didn’t say anything. “You really look a lot like em.”
“And you went to quite a lot of trouble to get em out of Compassionate Removal.”
“I did,” Ingray admitted. “I wanted em to do something for me.” And there had been, really, no guarantee e would have done it. “It was something only Pahlad could have done, you can’t do it for me. But maybe you can do something else.” She took a breath. Here it was again, that feeling that she was on the edge of a cliff, that if she backed up fast, right now, this instant, she might save herself. “Pahlad stole nearly all of the most famous Budrakim family vestiges. Ethiat Budrakim must have been beside himself when he realized they were gone, and who had done it. But Pahlad never admitted the theft, and e never said what e’d done with the things e stole.”
“You were hoping this Pahlad would tell you where these vestiges were,” e guessed. “You were hoping to sell the things back to Ethiat Budrakim. Or hold them hostage; he and your mother have never been friends. But now you can’t do either one. So I imagine you’re thinking I could pretend to be Pahlad well enough for you to leverage some money out of someone.”
Ingray opened her mouth to say my brother Danach, but having had some food, and a bit of rest and time to think, she found herself in a much less confessional mood than earlier. She regretted as much as she’d told Captain Uisine, but still couldn’t see how she could have avoided it. Doubtless her mother Netano would have found a more dignified, graceful way to tell the captain what he needed to know, without revealing more than she wanted, or coming so close to bursting into tears.
She sat down on the hard bench, half a meter away from the person who wasn’t Pahlad. It was uncomfortably hard—Tyr Siilas apparently didn’t want to encourage the sort of incomer who had to wait here for very long. Ingray herself had never even visited the Incomers Office before; she had always been automatically cleared before she got off whatever ship she’d arrived on. “I have …” She stopped at the sound of voices. Turned her head to see a man come into the lobby. Omkem, to judge by his sober brown-and-beige tunic and trousers, and his height. He strode to the wall opposite the door, touched it. “This is ridiculous,” he said, before the acknowledgment tone could sound, as the image of a functionary of the Incomers Office appeared on the wall. “I have always been preadmitted before. I have done business here for years. For decades. Why has my ship been denied docking? I had to find a shuttle to bring me here, and now dock authorities won’t let me go any farther into the station. This is outrageous!”
“Your pardon, excellency,” said the functionary. Ingray could not see them clearly from where she sat, not without very obviously turning her head and staring. She didn’t know what expression they might have on their face, but their voice was calm and dispassionate. “A moment. Ah, your ship is carrying cargo, and there appear to be difficulties with the manifest as it’s been reported to us. As soon as an inspector is available to verify …”
“An inspector!” fumed the Omkem man. “My ship has never needed inspection before. Customs at Hwae passed it, you’d think that would mean something.”
“Your pardon, excellency. We are on Tyr Siilas, and your ship must meet the requirements of Tyr law, not Hwaean. I do regret any inconvenience.”
“I demand to speak to your superior!”
“Of course, excellency,” replied the functionary, voice still calm. “My superior will be available in approximately six hours. If you will be so good as to return to this office at that time, or make yourself comfortable in the lobby.”
Ingray, looking studiously away from the Omkem man, still saw the wall turn blank again out of the corner of her vision. For a moment she was afraid he would sit on a bench and wait, and make continuing her conversation with not-Pahlad impossible, but the Omkem man turned and strode out of the room.
“Hwae,” said the person who wasn’t Pahlad. “Why did he come through Hwae? It’s two gates from Omkem to Hwae, and then another to Tyr. It’s much more convenient to go through Byeit. That’s why the Omkem are holding on to Byeit so hard to begin with, isn’t it? They don’t like the extra trip, and they don’t like paying fees at Hwae, or submitting to inspections. Makes everything more expensive, and reminds them they’re not just naturally in charge of everything everywhere.”
For a moment Ingray was astonished. “The Omkem/Byeit gate’s been down for ten years.”
Not-Pahlad frowned in what Ingray was sure was real surprise. Not Pahlad for certain, then. E had only been gone a few years; e would certainly have known about this. “How did that happen?” e asked.
“Byeit rebels took it down,” Ingray told em. “They deposed the Omkem puppet government that controlled the gates and destroyed the gate to Omkem. Now if the Omkem want to come to Tyr they have to go through Hwae.” Or if they wanted to get to Byeit, for that matter. Though the Byeit weren’t allowing any Omkem through the Hwae/Byeit gate.
“They took down the gate?” Still surprised. “That’s drastic.”
“Yes,” agreed Ingray. And then remembered what she had come here for. Looked around to be sure no one else would be coming into the room. “Look, I have a false identity already made up that was meant for Pahlad. You could use that, and we could go back to Hwae. You’re legally dead, whoever you are, so your records aren’t active and your return shouldn’t set off any alarms. I’ll give you half of whatever I get from this plan”—though at the moment there was barely anything like a plan—“and you can take that and do anything you want, go wherever you’d like.”
“And then what will happen to me? Pahlad was a Budrakim, yes? And e ended up sent to Compassionate Removal. For what, for theft? You don’t get sent to Compassionate Removal for a single theft, certainly not if you’re rich and well connected. But if e had done much more than that, you wouldn’t have ever done this. So it seems to me that Prolocutor Budrakim—one of the most powerful people in Hwae—really hates this Pahlad, or at the very least doesn’t care if e lives or dies. What happens when he thinks Pahlad is back? Or is that who you plan to leverage money out of?”
“He’s not, but I bet we could, if that happened.” E didn’t reply. “If we play the game right. But we don’t have to do that. The ship I bought passage on isn’t that fast; we’d have weeks to go over the details.”
“Weeks alone with an escaped, legally dead convict. You don’t even know what I did.”
Ingray had already thought about that. Couldn’t have avoided thinking about it. “If you did anything to Captain Uisine while we were in the gate, I don’t think you could pilot the ship.” E probably wouldn’t have to do any piloting at all while the ship was still in the gate, of course, but e would definitely have to know what e was doing once e came out into Hwae System and had to slow down, and deal with traffic, and dock. “And your identity won’t match the ship’s ownership documents, and while you just peacefully arriving and going about your business won’t raise any suspicions, well, turning up in a ship you don’t own and can’t pilot, with the captain and the other declared passenger dead or missing, that will set off quite a few alarms. I imagine you’d end up back in Compassionate Removal.” Nothing, not even the flick of an eyelid. Just a long silence. “Indenture contracts here are terrible.”
“They’re better than Compassionate Removal.”
“The ship leaves in a day and a half. Almost two days, really.”
“I have a better idea: you give me that identity that isn’t doing you any good, but will be
very helpful to me, and then you walk away from here and leave me alone.”
“How is that better?” E didn’t bother to answer that. Obviously it would be better for em, and not good at all for Ingray. That identity had cost her money. And it was the only potential inducement she had that might convince em to do what she was asking em to do. She couldn’t just hand it over.
But what was she going to do with it, then? What possible good would it do her to hold on to it? True, the vesicle was empty, because as she’d told Captain Uisine, she hadn’t been able to get hold of Pahlad’s DNA. Instead she’d gotten a kit that would, she’d been promised, take a sample from whoever she wished and insert it into the documents. She’d already considered using it for herself, but the description was Pahlad’s, and Ingray didn’t think she could pass as a neman. Not for long, anyway. She sighed. “You’re right, the identity is no use to me now. You might as well have it. Come with me to the ship, and I’ll hand it over.” Silence. “You don’t need to worry that I’ll force you to come along with me. Captain Uisine refuses to take any passengers against their will. It’s the whole reason we thawed you out in the bay like that; he wouldn’t let me bring you aboard unless you were awake to say you wanted to go. So you’ll be able to leave again.” E did not answer. The silence stretched out. “Suit yourself,” she said finally, as calmly as she could, and rose and left.
Early the next morning a spider mech tapped its unsettling claw quietly on the doorframe of Ingray’s tiny cabin. “Excellency,” it said in its thready voice. “You have a visitor.”
There was, she was quite sure, only one person likely to visit her here, and now. “Thank you,” she said, and got out of bed, quickly pulled on her skirts and shirt, and twisted her hair up and stuck a few pins in—that would have to hold for the moment. She pulled her bag out from under the bunk, fished out the nondescript brown box that held the tabula and the vesicle kit, and headed down the narrow corridor.