As it happened, Ingray severely underestimated the interest the Geck ambassador took in Captain Uisine’s ship. Ingray, Garal, and Captain Uisine were eating supper that evening in the tiny galley—the captain had shared out meals from the ship’s store without any comment. Garal had, once again, seemingly swallowed eir rehydrated stew in a few quick gulps. Captain Uisine said, calmly, “Would you like more, excellency?”
“Thank you, Captain, no,” Garal replied, just as evenly.
Halfway through the sentence Captain Uisine sat straighter and stared ahead. Set his bowl on the table. A swishing and clicking came from the corridor, and four spider mechs rushed skittering by.
“Excuse me, excellencies,” said Captain Uisine, still staring ahead. “It seems the Geck ambassador has just come into the bay. And it certainly wouldn’t do to keep her waiting.”
“It wouldn’t,” agreed Ingray, hastily pulling up the fare agreement in her vision and rising so that Captain Uisine could get past her.
“They can’t have been docked for long,” observed Garal.
“I don’t imagine so,” agreed Captain Uisine, as he brushed past.
Ingray looked at the captain’s retreating back, and then at Garal. “Have you ever seen a Geck? Even pictures?”
“No.”
Captain Uisine’s voice came from down the corridor. “Come if you’re curious, but there’s nothing much to see.”
For a moment, Ingray wondered how he could know that. Then she remembered the spider mechs scurrying past. Of course, he’d seen through one or more of their stalked eyes. Had probably set one at the airlock to watch the bay. And once she and Garal came through the open airlock, she understood better why he’d said what he’d said. And also realized, quite clearly, that she was fortunate that the fare agreement did seem to indicate that she would be due a refund if the Geck confiscated this ship, because no matter how genuine Captain Uisine’s title to it looked, he had almost certainly stolen it.
The Enforcement official from earlier stood in the bay, and beside em a woman in a silver-and-green sarong and jacket that managed to look both subdued and luxurious, every fold and tuck, every drape of fabric, in perfect place. Her face was teasingly familiar, until Ingray realized she’d seen that face on a public newscast two days ago. This was the Chief Executive of Tyr Siilas. And beside her squatted a disturbingly gelatinous-bodied, hairy-appendaged, many-legged, and many-eyed bio mech, very nearly identical to the ones Ingray had just seen scuttling to the back of the ship. A little larger, maybe, and as Ingray and Garal came up behind Captain Uisine, it took a step forward, heavy and deliberate where the ship’s mechs were unsettlingly delicate and graceful. There was no one else in the bay, and the captain had said the Geck ambassador was here, so this had to be her. Or, this had to be her mech she was piloting at any rate.
“I’ve presented my documents, excellencies,” Captain Uisine was saying. The Enforcement official once again held the captain’s tabula in eir hand. “I bought this ship five years ago, and I own it free of any lien or hold.”
The Chief Executive gave Captain Uisine a sharp look. “Ownership was transferred here at Tyr Siilas, it says.”
“Yes, Executive. In a witnessed contract, in the station registry office. Where there should be a recording of the transaction.”
“It is fortunate,” said the Chief Executive, “that you went to such pains to ensure the sale was verifiably legal and valid.”
“It is my invariable habit, Executive. A moment of trouble saves a month of tears.”
“Indeed.” The Chief Executive turned, looked down at the spider mech, which had turned all its eyes toward Captain Uisine. “Ambassador, I’m afraid Excellency Tic Uisine’s title to this ship is quite clear. The transfer was entirely legal, and the ship has a clear chain of ownership back to the shipyard. And Excellency Uisine himself is a citizen of Tyr Siilas. I examined all the records myself, this afternoon. We cannot hold him without cause, and we certainly cannot impound his possessions without good legal reason.”
“Not citizen,” asserted the spider mech in a whispery, whistling voice. “Not possible.”
“He paid the fee,” said the Chief Executive. “He has met all his obligations as a citizen since then, and he has broken no laws. He has not been served with even the smallest fine since that day.”
“Money does not make a citizen,” whispered the spider mech, its forest of stalked eyes still fixed on Captain Uisine.
“It does here, Ambassador,” replied the Chief Executive. “Or it can. In this case it does.”
Captain Uisine spoke then, his voice unbelievably calm and smooth. “What makes a citizen of the Geck, Ambassador?”
The spider mech’s body trembled, and it lifted one of its claws and set it back down again with a thunk. It did not otherwise reply.
“I’m sure you’ll understand, Ambassador,” said the Chief Executive, “why Tyr cannot just hand one of its citizens over to you. I am quite sure that if we demanded the arrest of one of your own citizens, you would not wish to hand them over without sufficient evidence of wrongdoing.”
“Not your citizen,” whispered the spider mech.
“Are you,” asked Captain Uisine, voice still silky, “claiming I’m one of yours?”
The trembling of the spider mech’s body increased. It struck the floor twice more. “This is why,” it whispered. “You did not understand why. You asked and asked. This is why.”
Captain Uisine said, in reply, “I can only apologize to the ambassador for whatever misunderstanding has brought her here. I am of course pleased to be of service to the Geck ambassador to the Presger, insofar as I am able. But I am a citizen of Tyr, and the most excellent ambassador does not have the right to interfere in my affairs. I have no doubt that if she examines the treaty, she will discover this is true.”
“Impudent child,” whispered the spider mech. “I know the terms of the treaty better than you know yourself. You are no citizen of Tyr. And that ship, you stole. Where are the others?”
“I am a citizen of Tyr,” repeated Captain Uisine. “And my title to my ship is clear.”
The spider mech turned, laboriously, one leg at a time, as though it was thinking carefully about where to put each claw, and then stepped away, toward the hallway beyond the bay entrance. “Ambassador!” cried the Enforcement official, and followed.
The Chief Executive said to Captain Uisine, “A moment’s trouble, as you say, excellency, prevents a month of tears. It’s a very good thing you have been so conscientious about your document registration, or you might have had quite a lot of difficulty today.”
“As you say, Executive,” replied Captain Uisine.
“Although I rarely deal with such matters directly,” the Chief Executive continued, “it is one of the duties of my office to guard the legal and contracted rights of our citizens. Conscientiousness like yours makes my job easier, so I thank you for it. But I strongly advise you not to come to my attention again anytime soon.”
“I won’t if I can help it, Executive,” replied Captain Uisine.
“Good,” said the Chief Executive, and turned and left the bay, the two patrollers turning to follow her. A quiet whisper in Ingray’s ear told her that the noodle shop she liked was open. Her access to the station’s information feeds had been restored.
Captain Uisine turned around. “What are you two staring at?” he asked.
“You said we could come see,” said Garal.
“I did, didn’t I.” Silence. And then, “I’ve got a bottle of very good arrack on board, and I intend to open it tonight. Feel like a drink? Because I definitely do.” And without waiting for an answer, he walked around them and into the airlock.
In the tiny galley, Captain Uisine set out three large, white, handled serbat cups and poured a slosh of arrack into each. Drank his own at a single gulp and poured himself another.
“So,” said Garal, not touching eir cup or even looking at it, “you did steal the ship. Yo
u stole it and used it to flee the Geck home system, apparently.”
“I suppose there’s no point denying it now, considering,” said Captain Uisine. “I stole three ships. Once I sold the other two I had enough for citizenship here and a very good set of documents legitimizing my ownership of this one.” He drank off his second cup of arrack. “And a refit.”
Ingray sipped her own. It was very strong and, as the captain had promised, very good, sweet and stinging. “How do you steal three ships?”
A spider mech scuttled into the galley doorway from the corridor. As Ingray leaned aside, suppressing a startled cry, it grabbed the edge of the table, levered itself up with two of its legs, and waved another one. Then it picked up the bottle and poured a fresh slug of arrack into Captain Uisine’s cup, set the bottle down, and scurried away again.
“You’re Geck,” guessed Ingray, willing her heart to settle, just managing not to stand and brush herself off. “I mean, you’re one of the humans who live with the Geck. So how can you be a citizen of Tyr?”
“I’m not Geck,” said Captain Uisine. “The Geck were accepted into the existing treaty largely because of their close association with humans.” He gave a small breathy laugh. “But that presents a problem. Do those closely associated humans count as humans or as Geck, under the treaty? And the Geck aren’t the only ones to have that problem. The way the treaty deals with it is incredibly weird and complicated—it was drafted by the Presger translators, after all—but in my particular case the upshot is, if I voluntarily take citizenship with a human polity, then I am human for the purposes of the treaty.”
“Which means the Geck have no right to interfere with you at all, unless it somehow touches on the treaty,” Garal said. Captain Uisine made a small, still-seated bow in eir direction.
“Wait.” Ingray was more bewildered by the answer, not less. “So anyone can just declare that they’re human or Geck or Rrrrrr or whatever?”
“Not just anyone,” said Captain Uisine. “I told you it was complicated.” He turned to Garal. “You should let me cut your hair. It looks like you hacked it off yourself with a dull knife.”
“I thought even the humans who lived with the Geck didn’t like leaving their homeworld,” observed Garal, as though the captain had said nothing at all about eir hair.
“They don’t,” agreed Captain Uisine. “It’s very stressful for them.”
“That was a mech, right?” asked Ingray. “Not the ambassador herself?”
“That was a mech,” Captain Uisine agreed. “The ambassador herself is … very different.”
“So what happened?” asked Ingray, after a short silence and another sip of her arrack.
The captain picked up his cup. Took only a sip this time, and set it back down. “My gills never developed. Don’t look at me like that, it’s a very big deal there. Without gills you can’t swim down. And if you can’t swim down by a certain age, you can’t stay on the planet.” Ingray considered asking what he meant by swim down but decided any answer would probably just puzzle her more.
“You could walk into a mod shop and lay down your money today and walk out with perfectly good gills,” Garal said.
“Too right,” Captain Uisine agreed. “Although it’s not actually as simple as buying gills. You’d need a few other changes to accommodate them. Still, you’re right, I could do that. But where I come from, if they don’t come in on their own, that’s a sign you never belonged in the first place, so there’s no point. Or so we’re always told. Once I got to orbit I learned that actually, there’s some room to maneuver. Some people who need a little helping along will get it. Not me, though.”
“Why not?” asked Ingray, and then remembered the ambassador’s whispered You did not understand why. You asked and asked.
“It was suggested to me in orbit that I was too good a mech-pilot to keep onworld. Pretty much every intrasystem ship there is remotely piloted, and while they do like to have access to trade and to system resources, even looking through a bio mech is upsetting, when it’s offworld. They’ll do it if they have to, but otherwise they leave it to the exiles in orbit.”
“So why steal a ship?” asked Ingray. “You could have just left. A good mech-pilot can always get a job.”
“Partly because it’s not actually that easy to get passage out of that system, if you’re from there,” said Captain Uisine. “But mostly because fuck them, that’s why.”
“So, is …” Ingray hesitated, not sure asking questions was a terribly good idea. But the captain seemed so much more talkative than he had been so far, and the whole situation was so bizarre. He and the ambassador so obviously knew each other. Impudent child, the ambassador had said. Ingray wanted to ask, So is the ambassador your mother? But they had only seen a mech—maybe the ambassador herself wasn’t human. “The ambassador has gills? Is she in a tank of water? Is that why she used the mech just now?”
“She might be in a tank. Probably is. But she can breathe air, too, if she needs to. She’ll have used the mech because she couldn’t bear to get off her ship. Oh, shit.”
“What?” asked Ingray.
“We’ve got a departure time, and it’s just a few hours from now. I’d better get ready. And I’d better stop drinking. Excellency”—this directed toward Garal—“I’ll be closing the airlock in a few minutes. Are you coming with Excellency Aughskold, or are you going to sleep on a bench at the Indenture Office for the next three weeks and then end up in some horrible situation that’s probably as bad as what you just got out of?”
“Nothing is as bad as what I just got out of,” said Garal. And then, “The fare’s paid? And it includes food and a place to sleep?”
“It is and it does,” Captain Uisine confirmed. “And a haircut. Tomorrow. When I’m sober.”
“Can I think about the haircut?” asked Garal.
Captain Uisine grinned, startling when he’d been so serious all the short time Ingray had known him. “I like you, Garal Ket. I don’t know why, and I probably shouldn’t, but I do. And you, Ingray Aughskold, once you get home you should steal whatever you can from your mother and get the hell away from her for good. You’ll never make a politician.”
Before Ingray could muster up any sort of reply to that, indignant or not, Garal asked, “Do you drink very often, Captain?”
“Almost never,” confessed Captain Uisine. “But don’t worry. We’ll get into the gate just fine.” He rose and squeezed past Ingray into the corridor, followed closely by another spider mech that had apparently been lurking just outside the door. And which didn’t seem the slightest bit unsteady or awkward.
“It’s not getting into the gate that worries me,” said Ingray, once the captain and his mech had moved out of earshot.
“No,” agreed Garal, “we’ve got bigger problems. Or we will, once we get to Hwae. In the meantime, I think the captain actually gave you some good advice. You said you had some sort of plan?”
“I hadn’t worked out the details yet, because I didn’t know if you would agree to come with me.”
“Well,” said Garal, as the floor and table shivered with the thunk of the airlock closing, “I’d say it’s time to start working them out.”
4
A week into the trip to Hwae, Ingray found Garal sitting at the table in the ship’s tiny galley, a spider mech behind em cutting eir hair. No tools, just snipping Garal’s hair with one of its claws. “Almost done,” it whispered in its thin voice as Ingray stopped in the doorway. “Sorry for the delay, excellency.”
“It’s all right.” The galley doubled as the ship’s very limited gym—a necessity on a ship so small, on a long trip—so exercise times were more or less tightly scheduled. But a few minutes now wouldn’t cause any serious problems, with only two passengers aboard.
“There,” said the spider mech, and ran four of its claws through Garal’s now quite short hair, leaving it neatly brushed. “Much better. If you’ll step out into the corridor, excellency, while I clean up.”
/>
Ingray backed up so that Garal could come out of the galley. “It actually looks nice,” she said. Sincerely, although the short hair was also oddly incongruous—on Hwae, it was mostly children who kept their hair short, but Garal did not otherwise look the least bit childlike. “I’m not sure I’d let one of those spiders touch me.”
“They are disquieting, aren’t they.”
She found she couldn’t quite bring herself to say they looked like they might be alive and thinking. She thought of the news from Radch space, the whole reason the Geck ambassador had left her homeworld to begin with—Radchaai artificial intelligences declaring themselves independent, and potential signatories of the treaty with the Presger. But, she reminded herself, that was very far away.
“All yours, excellency!” said the spider mech, and scuttled away down the corridor.
Ingray looked into the galley. The table and chairs had been folded back, and the little bit of exercise equipment pulled out, the floor over the treadmill pulled up. “I wish there were more room to really walk,” she sighed. And then hoped the spider mech hadn’t heard her. She had, after all, bought passage on this ship quite voluntarily, and so far everything had been calm, clean (if cramped and dingy), and just generally well run, and Captain Uisine had been unfailingly pleasant and courteous. And while she didn’t think he spoke Bantia, she knew the spider mechs could translate it. But then, he was probably used to passengers’ irritation at some point in a trip.
“I like it,” said Garal. “It’s safe.”
“Safe?”
“It’s small enough that I know exactly who’s here and where we all are. There’s food. Outside there’s just kilometers of empty space.” E closed eir mouth on that, abruptly, as though e had been about to say more but suddenly changed eir mind. “So, this brother of yours, who you sold your vestige of Pahlad Budrakim to. Would that be Danach Aughskold?”