“Go away,” I said to her, flat and brusque.
“Of course, Fleet Captain.” She bowed low. “I’ll see you at supper, shall I?” And not waiting for any answer, she turned and strode off into the crowd.
“Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence,” said Captain Hetnys, leaning close so she didn’t have to shout aloud to the entire concourse. “Citizen Fosyf’s family’s lands produce nearly a quarter of all the tea exported from Athoek. Her apartment is very near Administration, on the upper concourse, in fact.”
More and more interesting. Earlier it had been clear that Captain Hetnys had neither expected nor wanted me to stay. Now she seemed to wish that I would stay with this tea grower. “I’m going to the Governor’s Palace,” I said. I knew the system governor wasn’t there. I would still make an issue of it. “And then while I’m settling into lodgings, you can give me your report.”
“Sir. Yes, sir.” And then, when I said nothing further, “If I may ask, sir. Where are you staying?”
“Level four of the Undergarden,” I replied, my voice bland. She tried valiantly to keep her surprise and dismay off her face, but it was obvious she hadn’t expected that answer, and didn’t like it.
6
Station AIs were built—grew—as their stations were built. Shortly after Athoek Station had been finished, when resentments from the annexation had still been fresh, there had been violence. A dozen sections on four levels had been permanently damaged.
Installing an AI into an already existing construction was a dicey business. The results were rarely optimal, but it could be done. Had been done, quite a few times. But for whatever reason—perhaps a wish to forget the event, perhaps because the casts hadn’t been auspicious, perhaps some other reason—the area had not been repaired, but blocked off instead.
Of course, people had still managed to get in. There were several hundred people living in the Undergarden, though they weren’t supposed to be there. Every citizen had a tracker implanted at birth, so Station knew where they were, knew those citizens were there. But it couldn’t hear them or see them the way it could its other residents, not unless they were wired to send data to Station, and I suspected few of them were.
The section door leading to the Undergarden was propped open with the crushed remains of a table missing one of its legs. The indicator next to the entrance said that on the other side of that (supposedly closed) door was hard vacuum. It was serious business—section doors would close automatically in the event of a sudden pressure drop, to seal off hull breaches. We were likely not even close to hard vacuum, despite the indicator on the wall by this door, but no one who spent much time on ships—or who lived on stations—took such safety measures lightly. I turned toward Captain Hetnys. “Are all the section doors leading to the Undergarden disabled and propped open like this?”
“It’s as I said, Fleet Captain, this area was sealed off, but people kept breaking in. They’d just be sealing it off over and over to no purpose.”
“Yes,” I acknowledged, gesturing the obviousness of her words. “So why not just fix the doors so they work properly?”
She blinked, clearly not quite understanding my question. “No one’s supposed to be in this area, sir.” She seemed completely serious—the train of reasoning made perfect sense to her. The ancillary behind her stared blankly ahead, apparently without any opinion on the matter. Which I knew was almost certainly not the case. I didn’t answer, just turned to climb over the broken table and into the Undergarden.
In the corridor beyond, a scatter of portable light panels propped against the walls flickered into a dim glow as we passed, then faded again. The air was oppressively still, improbably humid, and smelled stale—Station wouldn’t be regulating the air flow here, and very possibly those propped-open section doors were a matter of breathing or not breathing. After a walk of fifty meters, the corridor opened out into a tiny almost-concourse, a stretch of corridors where doors had been wrenched off and grimy once-white walls torn through to make a single-storied half-open maze, lit by more portable light panels, though these seemed to be better provided with power. A handful of citizens walking through on their way to or from someplace suddenly found that their paths took them well away from where we were standing, just by chance discovered that they had no desire to look directly at us.
Away in one corner, more light spilled from a wide doorway. Beside the doorway, a person in loose shirt and trousers glanced briefly at us, seemed for a moment to consider something, and then turned back around and bent to a five-liter tub at her feet, straightened again and began dabbing carefully, purposefully around the doorframe. Where the wall was shadowed, red spirals and curlicues glowed faintly. The color of paint she was using must have been too near the shade of the wall to see well unless it was phosphorescing. Beyond the doorway, people sat at mismatched tables, drinking tea and talking. Or they’d been talking before they’d seen us.
The air really was uncomfortably close. I had a sudden flash of strong, visceral memory. Humid heat and the smell of swamp water. The sort of memory that had become less common as the years had gone by, of when I had been a ship. When I had been a unit of ancillaries under the command of Lieutenant Awn (still alive, then, every breath, every move of hers a constant part of my awareness, and myself always, always with her).
The decade room on Mercy of Kalr flashed into my awareness, Seivarden seated, drinking tea, looking at schedules for today and tomorrow, the smell of solvent stronger than usual from the corridor outside, where three Amaats scrubbed the already spotless floor. The Amaats all sang quietly in ragged, off-key unison. It all goes around, the station goes around the moon, it all goes around. Had I unthinkingly reached for it, or had Mercy of Kalr sent it unbidden in response to something it had seen in me? Or did it matter?
“Sir,” ventured Captain Hetnys, perhaps because I’d stopped, forcing her to stop, and Sword of Atagaris, and Lieutenant Tisarwat and Kalr Five. “Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence. No one’s supposed to be in the Undergarden. People don’t stay here.”
I looked pointedly toward the people sitting at tables, beyond that doorway, all of them carefully not noticing us. Looked around at the citizens passing by. Said to Tisarwat, “Lieutenant, go see how our move-in is coming along.” I could have any information I wanted from my Mercy of Kalrs with no more than a thought, but Tisarwat’s stomach had settled, now we were off the shuttle, and she was beginning to be hungry, and tired.
“Sir,” she replied, and left. I walked away from Captain Hetnys and her ancillary, through that spiral-decorated doorway. Five followed me. The painter tensed as we passed, hesitated, then continued painting.
Two of the people sitting at different scarred, mismatched tables wore the usual Radchaai jacket, trousers, and gloves—clearly the standard issue, stiff fabric, grayish-beige, the sort of clothing any citizen was entitled to but no one wore who could afford better. The rest wore loose, light shirts and trousers in deep colors, red and blue and purple, vivid against the dingy gray walls. The air was still and close enough to make those jacketless shirts look far preferable to my uniform. I saw none of the sashes I’d seen on the concourse, and hardly any jewelry at all. Most held their bowls of what I had presumed was tea in bare hands. I almost might not have been on a Radchaai station.
At my entrance, the proprietor had gone back to a bowl-stacked corner, and she watched her customers now with careful attention, very obviously could not spare any for me. I walked over to her, bowed, and said, “Excuse me, Citizen. I’m a stranger here. I wonder if you could answer a question.” The proprietor stared at me, seemingly uncomprehending, as though the kettle in her bare hand had just spoken to her, or as though I’d spoken gibberish. “I’m told today is a very important Athoeki holiday, but I see no signs of it here.” No penis garlands, no sweets, just people going about their business. Pretending not to notice soldiers standing in the middle of their neighborhood center.
The proprietor scoffed. ?
??Because all Athoeki are Xhai, right?” Kalr Five had stopped just behind me. Captain Hetnys and the Sword of Atagaris ancillary stood where I’d left them, Captain Hetnys staring after me.
“Ah,” I said, “I understand now. Thank you.”
“What are you doing here?” asked a person sitting at a table. No courtesy title, not even the minimally polite citizen. People sitting near her tensed, looked away from her. Everyone fell silent who had not already been. One person sitting alone a few meters away, one of the two dressed in properly Radchaai fashion, cheap, stiff jacket, gloves, and all, closed her eyes, took a few deliberate breaths, opened her eyes. But said nothing.
I ignored all of it. “I need somewhere to stay, Citizen.”
“There’s no fancy hotels here,” replied the person who had spoken so rudely. “Nobody comes here to stay. People come here to drink, or eat authentic Ychana food.”
“Soldiers come here to beat the crap out of people minding their own business,” muttered someone behind me. I didn’t turn to look, sent a quick, silent message ordering Kalr Five not to move.
“And the governor’s always got room for important people,” continued the person who had been speaking, as though that other voice had never even existed.
“Maybe I don’t want to stay with the governor.” That seemed to be the right thing to say, for some reason. Everyone within earshot laughed. Except one, the carefully silent, Radchaai-attired person. The few pins she wore were generic and cheap—brass, colored glass. Nothing that spoke of family affiliation. Only a small enameled IssaInu at her collar suggested anything specific about her. It was the Emanation of movement and stillness, and suggested she might be an adherent of a sect that practiced a particular sort of meditation. Then again, the Emanations were popular, and given they fronted the temple of Amaat here, might be stand-ins for a set of Athoeki gods. So in the end even the IssaInu told me little. But it intrigued me.
I pulled out the chair opposite her, sat. “You,” I said to her, “are very angry.”
“That would be unreasonable,” she said after a breath.
“Feelings and thoughts are irrelevant.” I could see that I’d pushed her too far, that in a moment she would rise, urgently, and flee. “It’s only actions Security cares about.”
“So they tell me.” She shoved her bowl away from her and made as if to rise.
“Sit,” I said, sharply. Authoritative. She froze. I waved the proprietor over. “Whatever it is you’re serving, I’ll have one,” I said, and received a bowl with some sort of powder in it, which, once steaming water was poured onto it, became the thick tea everyone was drinking. I took a taste. “Tea,” I guessed, “and some sort of roasted grain?” The proprietor rolled her eyes, as though I’d said something particularly stupid, and turned and walked away without answering. I gestured unconcerned resignation and took another taste. “So,” I said to the person across from me, who had not yet relaxed back into her seat but had at least not gotten up and fled. “It will have been political.”
She widened her eyes, all innocence. “Excuse me, Citizen?” Ostensibly, technically polite, though I was sure she could read the signs of my rank and ought to have used the highest address I was entitled to, if she knew it. If she truly meant to be polite.
“No one here is looking at you or speaking to you,” I said. “And your accent isn’t the same as theirs. You’re not from here. Reeducation usually works by straightforward conditioning, by making it intensely unpleasant to do the thing that got you arrested to begin with.” Or the most basic sort did, it could and no doubt did become much more complicated. “And the thing that’s upsetting you is expressing anger. And you’re so very angry.” There was no one here familiar to me, but anger I recognized. Anger was an old companion of mine by now. “It was an injustice, start to finish, yes? You hadn’t done anything. Not anything you thought was wrong.” Likely no one here thought it was wrong, either. She hadn’t been driven from the tables here, her presence hadn’t cleared everyone else from the vicinity. The proprietor had served her. “What happened?”
She was silent a few moments. “You’re very used to saying you want something and then just getting it, aren’t you,” she said at length.
“I’ve never been to Athoek Station before today.” I took another sip of the thick tea. “I’ve only been here an hour and so far I don’t much like what I see.”
“Try somewhere else, then.” Her voice was even, very nearly without any obvious trace of irony or sarcasm. As though she meant only what the words she said meant.
“So what happened?”
“How much tea do you drink, Citizen?”
“Quite a bit,” I said. “I’m Radchaai, after all.”
“No doubt you only drink the best.” Still that apparent sincerity. She had regained most of her composure, I guessed, and this overt pleasantness with its near-inaudible undercurrent of anger was normal for her. “Handpicked, the rarest, most delicate buds.”
“I’m not so fussy,” I said, equably. Though, to be honest, I had no idea whether the tea I drank was handpicked or not, or anything about it, except its name, and that it was good. “Is tea picked by hand, then?”
“Some,” she said. “You should go downwell and see. There are some very affordable tours. Visitors love them. Lots of people only come here to see the tea. And why shouldn’t they? What are Radchaai without tea, after all? I’m sure one of the growers would be happy to show you around personally.”
I thought of Citizen Fosyf. “Perhaps I will.” I took another sip of the tea-gruel.
She raised her bowl, drank the last bits of her own. Rose. “Thank you, Citizen, for the entertaining conversation.”
“It was a pleasure to have met you, Citizen,” I replied. “I’m staying on level four. Stop by some time when we’re settled in.” She bowed without answering. Turned to depart, but froze at the sound of something heavy thunking hard against the wall outside.
Everyone in the tea shop looked up at that sound. The proprietor set her kettle down on a table with a smack that should have startled the people sitting there but did not, so intent were they on whatever was happening out on the shadowed small concourse. Grim, angry determination on her face, she strode out of the shop. I stood and followed, Five behind me.
Outside, the Sword of Atagaris ancillary had pinned the painter against the wall, bending her right arm back. It had kicked the tub of paint, to judge from the pinkish-brown splotches on its boots, the puddle the tub now sat in, and the tracks on the floor. Captain Hetnys stood where I had left her, observing. Saying nothing.
The tea shop proprietor strode right up to the ancillary. “What has she done?” she demanded. “She hasn’t done anything!”
Sword of Atagaris didn’t answer, only roughly twisted the painter’s arm further, forcing her to turn from the wall with a cry of pain and drop to her knees and then facedown onto the floor. Paint smeared her clothes, one side of her face. The ancillary put one knee between her shoulder blades, and she gasped and made a small sobbing whimper.
The tea shop proprietor stepped back but didn’t leave. “Let her go! I hired her to paint the door.”
Time to intervene. “Sword of Atagaris, release the citizen.” The ancillary hesitated. Possibly because it didn’t think of the painter as a citizen. Then it let go of the painter and stood. The tea shop proprietor knelt beside the painter, spoke in a language I didn’t understand, but her tone told me she was asking if the painter was all right. I knew she wasn’t—the hold Sword of Atagaris had used was meant to injure. I had used it myself for that precise purpose, many times.
I knelt beside the tea shop proprietor. “Your arm is probably broken,” I said to the painter. “Don’t move. I’ll call Medical.”
“Medical doesn’t come here,” said the proprietor, her voice bitter and contemptuous. And to the painter, “Can you get up?”
“You really shouldn’t move,” I said. But the painter ignored me. With the help of the proprie
tor and two other patrons, she managed to get to her feet.
“Fleet Captain, sir.” Captain Hetnys was clearly indignant, and clearly struggling to contain it. “This person was defacing the station, sir.”
“This person,” I replied, “was painting the doorway of a tea shop at the request of that shop’s proprietor.”
“But she won’t have had a permit, sir! And the paint will certainly have been stolen.”
“It was not stolen!” the proprietor cried as the painter walked slowly off, supported by two others, one of them the angry person in the gray gloves. “I bought it.”
“Did you ask the painter where she had gotten the paint?” I asked. Captain Hetnys looked at me with blank puzzlement, as though my question made no sense to her. “Did you ask her if she had a permit?”
“Sir, no one has permission to do anything here.” Captain Hetnys’s voice was carefully even, though I could hear frustration behind it.
That being the case, I wondered why this particular unpermitted activity warranted such a violent reaction. “Did you ask Station if the paint was stolen?” The question appeared to be meaningless to Captain Hetnys. “Was there some reason you couldn’t call Station Security?”
“Sir, we’re Security in the Undergarden just now. To help keep order while things are unsettled. Station Security doesn’t come here. No one…”
“Is supposed to be here.” I turned to Five. “Make sure the citizen arrives safely in Medical and that her injuries are treated immediately.”
“We don’t need your help,” protested the tea shop proprietor.
“All the same,” I said, and gestured at Five, who left. I turned again to Captain Hetnys. “So Sword of Atagaris is running Security in the Undergarden.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Captain Hetnys.