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“You have solid-state books,” Dr. Gurathin breathed in wonder, staring at the two small shelves hosting thirty or so volumes. “Are they…common here?”
“No, they’re a bit of a niche product,” she replied, smiling. “The university library has a nice collection, but those are only available on site. There are a few makers on the planet who will create a hard edition of any book no longer under copyright, or with the author’s permission.”
“That’s how you got these?” His hand kept coming up as though he was going to touch them, and then dropping back to his side.
“Some of them. Particular favorites. About half I inherited from my great-uncle, who taught me the joy of reading a hard copy when I was a child. A few have been passed down in my family since before they settled the colony that preceded Preservation, and a few were gifts. Feel free to look through them, just be careful turning the pages of the older ones, they’re a bit brittle.”
He swallowed nervously. “How do I tell?”
“If the pages have turned yellow, it’s old. Paper used to be made with macerated plant fibers, that’s why it happens. The newer cellulose compounds don’t seem to be subject to the same process, but they’ve been around for less than a hundred years, so perhaps it’s just slower.”
“Interesting,” he replied distractedly, his attention now focused on the titles, one hand poised before them, fingers twitching slightly as if over-eager to select one. She watched silently, curious which volume would draw his interest.
“Ah. Galaxy’s Edge,” he murmured reverently, trailing a finger down the dark blue fabric spine with its silver letters. “I read it when I was young. More than once. I had to delete my copy before I entered my contract, though. It’s considered seditious on the Rim. If it had been found in my augments or my external storage…” He shrugged slightly, mouth twisting with a mixture of regret and remembered pleasure. “Maybe I should read it again. I expect it’s available in the library feed here.”
“It certainly is. It’s taught in our schools.” Her smile widened as his head jerked toward her, his expression shocked. “Classic literature from mid-Expansion. And the story has certain parallels to our own history, of course, though it was written before our ancestors’ colony was founded. There are dramatizations of it, too, but the limited series from ‘85 is dreadful, don’t waste your time.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up. She thought it was probably the first time she’d ever seen him smile. Not that they’d known each other for long—he’d been in the system for half a year or so, and had only joined the survey project last month, immediately assigned to their team to fill the gap left by Dr Otumbe’s well-deserved retirement. All she really knew about him was that he had a master’s degree in systems technology and a doctorate in geology, that he had escaped one of those inhumane life contracts to a company that did something involving extracting natural resources from planets, and that he would begin teaching through FirstLanding University in the next term, just after their upcoming survey trip to check the progress of terraforming on the planet’s other large continent.
He was why they were meeting at her residence today, and why they’d met at Ratthi’s last time. Dr. Mensah felt that a casual atmosphere and the opportunity to socialize would help them integrate as a team, and also help him adjust to the culture here. She was glad he’d shown up a few minutes before the others, because now she knew he also liked reading. They were sure to be friends, that being the case.
Instead of pulling Galaxy’s Edge from the shelf, he selected Space for Sale: the Formation and Consolidation of the Corporation Rim, a well-told and meticulously researched account of the history of corporate expansion and power, written by a professor of economics at the university and released only the previous year.
The doorbell chimed just then, but she paused long enough to say, “You might like that one, it’s very good. And since it's from FirstLanding Press, you'll have access to it through the university feed as well as the public library,” before she moved away to admit their colleagues.
***
Two weeks later, in the social time after their next survey group meeting, he approached her and said, “Dr. Bharadwaj, I’ve recently finished re-reading Galaxy’s Edge.”
She smiled and replied, “And how did it hold up?”
He smiled, too. Really smiled. “Wonderfully. I think I was too young to really appreciate it when I first read it. I just thought it was a cracking good story, but there’s a great deal of substance there, too. It was amazingly prescient, wasn’t it?”
“It was. Or perhaps…” She shrugged. “There’s some speculation that the author, whoever they were, worked for one of the companies involved in colony-building. Perhaps they had access to information about colonies being abandoned, even then. Or about plans to do so, in certain circumstances.”
He frowned slightly, considering that, then nodded slowly. “That could be. Everyone knows about abandoned colonies now, because there were so many in the late-Expansion colonization boom. Early on, though, companies would have kept it quiet if they’d cut off an asset, or lost it to a faulty wormhole. It would affect their share value and ability to recruit future colonists.”
“Ah, yes, back when they relied on volunteers rather than conscripts,” she said wryly.
“I’ve heard the boom was largely propelled by the repeal of laws against life indenture,” he agreed. “I haven’t gotten that far in Space for Sale yet.”
“I’ll be very interested to hear your impressions of that one,” she said warmly. “I’ve never even visited the Rim, so I can’t say how accurate Dr. Wellington’s conclusions about the current direction of the larger corporate economy are, though they seemed reasonable from my layperson’s perspective.”
“Well, I’m no economist myself, but I’ve lived inside that system. I’ll make sure to finish it before we leave on the survey—we’ll have plenty of time to talk about it out in the wilderness, I’m sure.”
She chuckled. “We’ll have a lot to do in the daylight, but the evenings are quiet unless Ratthi, Arada, and Overse decide to break out the board games. Then it gets a bit raucous.”
He smiled again. “I can only imagine.”
***
“If anything, I think he might have been overly generous when attributing motives other than profit to—” He jumped, turning in his seat as a whoop and a thump resounded from the other end of the habitat lounge. Arada was standing in front of her toppled chair, pumping a fist and doing a little dance as Overse and Ratthi disgruntledly tossed their cards to the tabletop and Volescu laid his down with serene amusement. Pin-Lee started gathering them up for another round, and Mensah looked at them over the top of her interface with an expression that was half-laughing, half-quelling.
Gurathin shook his head slightly and turned back to her with a faint, wry smile. “Anyway. I think corporations in the early- and mid-Expansion eras were probably just as greedy and profit-motivated as those in the late period and today. It’s just that there was still an assumption that a human life held intrinsic value, and there were laws and regulations to protect that. Laws and regulations, I might add, that corporations spent hundreds if not thousands of years slowly chipping away at until they were able to eliminate them entirely, and turn people into just another resource, and one less valuable than many.
“The fact that conditions for the average person were generally better before the late-Expansion period doesn’t, to me, indicate any virtue on the part of the earlier Rim and proto-Rim corporations. It just shows that they hadn’t completely overwhelmed society with their own values yet.”
She exhaled audibly, shaking her head. “What a bleak view. And yet, I can’t argue against it. It’s apparent that money is worth more than people to those running the corporations, and if that hadn’t been the case back then, why would they have worked to repeal those laws? I wonder when it all started.”
“Probably back when humankind first conceived the idea of wealth and associated it with power.”
She shuddered. “Well, I’d like to think there have always been people who rejected that paradigm, too.”
“I’m sure there have. Otherwise the Corporation Rim would control all of settled space, instead of just most of it.” He smirked. “The benefit to us of their competitive system is that, despite having more than enough resources and power to take over every scrap of non-corporate space, they’ll never be able to work together long enough to actually make the attempt.”
She considered that for a long moment and then said, “I don’t think that was as reassuring as you intended it to be.”
He laughed, and didn’t notice everyone else turning at the unfamiliar sound. “Perhaps you don’t find it so, but I do.”
“Tell me,” she said, leaning forward, “do you like Bellincote?”
His brow furrowed. “I’m not familiar with their work.”
She positively beamed. “Oh, they’re an Alliance author. I have a copy of Sector Gamma Blues on my interface because I’ve been meaning to re-read it; I’ll send it to you. Their stories are a bit like Galaxy’s Edge—very much in the peril-in-space adventure genre—but so, so funny. They have a dozen or so out now and are still publishing.”
“Something humorous would be a nice palate-cleanser after Space for Sale, thank you,” he agreed.
She sent him the file when she returned to the room she shared with Pin-Lee, and later that evening, through the thin walls of the habitat, she heard him chuckling.
***
“Dr. Gurathin!”
He stopped on the sunny path outside the sciences complex and turned with a smile, even though his stomach was rumbling almost painfully, as his lunch break had been delayed for almost two hours by a panicked grad student whose thesis was falling apart at the seams. Perhaps if she wasn’t expected somewhere she might sit with him for a while. They’d only seen each other a couple of times since returning from the survey five weeks earlier, and he’d missed their chats. “Dr. Bharadwaj,” he said. “I was just going to sit down for a late lunch, would you join me?”
“I’d love to,” she replied, closing the remaining distance between them. “I was just coming out in search of a table where I could enjoy some fresh air while I mark some first-year essays.” Her mouth twisted wryly, and he chuckled. He’d take a frantic doctoral candidate over a pile of earnest but largely nonsensical theories from eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds desperate to be taken seriously any day.
He fell into step beside her as they both continued on toward the cluster of tables in the shaded green space between the laboratories and the science library. “For your general botany course, or practical plant taxonomy?”
“General botany,” she said, setting her bag on the bench of the first table they came to and sitting next to it. “Most of the students in the taxonomy course are planning on an agriculture degree, so they take it seriously. General botany seems to attract a lot of students who think that growing up on a farm or with a backyard garden will make it an easy pass.”
He grinned. She had a reputation among the faculty and student body as a capable instructor, but one who did not suffer foolishness or laziness from her students. They’d work for that passing grade, and come out of the experience more knowledgeable about plants and about succeeding in higher education.
She read him a few choice lines from the first few essays as he devoured his sandwich and vegetable sticks. An overwrought analogy between seed germination and the awakening of human consciousness nearly made him choke. “Philosophy major?” he wondered when he’d managed to swallow without mishap.
She chuckled. “Probably for a term or two at least.”
He took the last bite of his sandwich and looked thoughtful as he chewed it. Reflectively, he said, “You know, it’s actually rather wonderful that young people here are allowed to indulge in such fancies. It’s not all about scoring well in a track that will lead you to a better job than your parents had.”
She seemed a bit startled by that thought, but after a moment she nodded and said, “I suppose it is. Were your parents geologists as well, if you don’t mind me asking?”
He shrugged, folding up his cloth lunch sack and tucking it into the small bag he carried. “I don’t think so. I only remember one of them at all, and I was only five when he died. I think he, or at least one of my parents, must have been lower-level management, because I was taken for testing instead of being dumped in the laborer’s orphanage until I was old enough to work. I recall them being surprised that I showed a strong aptitude for the sciences, which is why I presume I descend from supervisors rather than techs of some sort.”
“Who did you live with then? Relations?”
He shook his head. “No, I was placed in the company’s residential school for technology and science. If I had any other relatives, they couldn’t afford to support me. I was fortunate to end up at the school, though. I got a very good education and my augments. And unlike some of my coterie, I actually enjoy the field that was selected for me.” He smiled, but it was all she could do not to let her horror show. If being placed in a boarding school at a young age and having his entire future—and probably his augments—imposed upon him was good fortune, she knew that she couldn’t even imagine what he’d call bad luck.
“I suppose,” she said, as neutrally as she could manage, “that the price of your education and upbringing was a life contract?”
“Of course. That’s how it works. The company took responsibility for me when I was orphaned, and I was expected to repay the debts incurred. I know it probably sounds inhumane to you.”
“It does. I notice, though, that despite apparently thinking it perfectly normal, you chose to leave?”
He smiled wryly. “It was perfectly normal for that situation, in that place. That doesn’t mean I agreed it was right, or that I was resigned to spending the rest of my life paying for the privilege of having been kept alive and healthy to adulthood. I’ve never been able to simply accept what was presented to me as unquestionable.”
She smiled. “Too much the scientist?”
“Yes. And perhaps also too much the dreamer, contradictory as that sounds.”
“Aren’t the best scientists the ones with the imagination to conceive of alternate hypotheses?” When he inclined his head, she reached into her bag. “On the subject of imagination, there’s a particular reason I was glad to run into you. I’ve been hoping I would.” She pulled a parcel wrapped in green fabric forth and set it before him. “It’s dreadfully late, but happy birthday.”
His birthday had passed over a week earlier, and she had only learned of it a day before at their survey group meeting, when Dr. Mensah had wished him a happy day if she didn’t see him. This had, of course, led to the rest of the group exclaiming that they hadn’t known, and did he have any plans, and since he didn’t, should they arrange a dinner? He had smiled and declined. She had sent him an animated greeting on the feed the day of, but her mind had gone instantly to this, and she had decided it would be worth the embarrassment of being late with her gift. What she hadn’t anticipated was that it would take several days to run into him after she’d acquired it.
“Oh, you didn’t have to…” he protested, though he gazed at the parcel with ill-concealed longing. Its contents were obvious, even wrapped as it was.
“I wanted to.”
“Thank you.” Carefully, he pulled off the string holding it together and absently folded the fabric as he gazed in surprise at the book’s cover, black stamped with bronze letters forming the title Too Clever by Half, and the author: Elyot Bellincote. According to the synopsis on the inside, it was about an ordinary space station whose central system inexplicably achieves sentience and has very different ideas of how the place should be run than the humans do. “I hadn’t heard of this one,” he said at last.
She grinned. “It only came out the week before last. You were so delighted by my little collection I thought you might like to start your own, and, well, it seemed like perfect timing that this had just been released.”
“Have you read it?”
“Not yet. I got myself a regular copy, but I might save it for the trip to the next survey. I’m a bit of a nervous space-farer. Wormholes,” she said with an exaggerated shudder.
“Hm. There hasn’t been a collapse of an established wormhole in our lifetimes. Our journey doesn’t call for the use of any recently-opened ones.”
“I tell myself that, I do. It doesn’t make me any less nervous,” she admitted with a laugh.
“I’ll be sure to let you know if I think this story will be a sufficient distraction, then.” He turned the book over in his hands, looking at it as though he could hardly believe it existed. “I’ve been a reader as long as I can remember. And I’ve been fascinated by the idea of solid-state books since I first heard of them. I suppose it’s a bit like someone who enjoys cooking wondering how different it would be to do it over a wood fire.” He glanced up at her with a tentative smile. “I look forward to finding out.”
“I’ve always found it relaxing,” she offered. “It’s so easy to rush through normal text, to just scroll and scroll. But with a physical book, the weight of it in your hands and the texture of the paper are reminders that life exists outside the feed. The act of turning the page is an invitation to pause and reflect upon or simply savor what has just passed. I often find myself doing just that, stopping with the corner of the page between my fingers, reluctant to cover what I just experienced with whatever comes next.
“We lead such busy lives. Sometimes it’s good to feel as though an hour has ambled, rather than sprinted, by. Sometimes, it’s even…healing.”
Late that evening, seeing she was still online, he sent her a message: You were right. I’ve just spent two hours reading with my notifications silenced, and I feel as relaxed as if I’d taken the day off.
She sent back: See, this is why we’re friends. [amusement-sigil(smile)]
***
The first thing she consciously registered was a voice. She couldn’t place it, but after a moment she recognized the words—they were from Bellincote’s debut novel, Faraway Station. Funny that she could identify that, she thought muzzily, when she felt so very strange. Was she floating? Was she in water? Why were her eyelids so heavy? Why was one of her hands so cold and the other so perfectly warm?
Oh, she knew this part. It was in the first quarter of the book, just before the explosive decompression incident and everyone realizing that the new maintenance bot was more than it seemed. With a great effort, she managed to open her eyes.
Okay. She was in a MedSystem. Its arms glinted overhead, its lights and numbers and charts glowed in her peripheral vision. The recitation stopped, and she looked toward where the voice had been. Ah, of course. Gurathin. Why hadn’t she recognized his voice? He was pale and rumpled, eyes bruised with exhaustion, but he was smiling.
“Hey,” he said softly. “There you are. Welcome back.” He squeezed the hand that was enfolded between his own.
“Where am I?” Her tongue felt thick; her voice was slurred. “Not Central Medical.”
“No, we’re on the survey. This is the medical unit in the habitat. Remember?”
Yes, right. The survey. How odd that she had forgotten. “Wh’happened?”
“Do you recall the anomalous depressions on the coastline?” That sounded vaguely familiar, so she nodded. “You were investigating one when you found out the hard way that they’re the burrow entrances for a large carnivorous species,” he related carefully. “It wasn’t in our survey package.”
A memory flitted through her awareness—flying dirt, a gaping maw, teeth, pain like fire—and she shied away from it. “How bad?”
He hesitated. “All parts present and accounted for, but this MedSystem isn’t up to everything you need. You’ll be in some discomfort until you get home and receive further treatment. In a few days, when you’re better, we’ll talk about whether you want to go on ahead of the group or stay for the rest of the survey.”
The mere thought of making a decision was exhausting, but she didn’t have to. Just then, the door to Medical slid open and the rest of the team piled in, exclaiming over her return to consciousness. They crowded around her bed, his hands slipped away, and after a moment she lost sight of him entirely.
***
He was in the crew hub to grab another crate of supplies for loading onto the hoppers when she approached him, leaning heavily on her cane. It was only because she was so obviously exhausted and in pain that his words came out weary rather than angry or defensive.
“If you’re going to yell at me for how I treated SecUnit, can it wait until we get where we’re going? My ears are still ringing from Pin-Lee’s scolding.”
She shook her head, smiling faintly. “No, that’s not why I’m here. Though I don’t agree with you about SecUnit, I respect your concerns and appreciate your desire to protect us all.”
He just stared at her for a moment, flummoxed. “Really?”
“Really.” She was close enough now to lay a hand on his arm. “I know it’s going to be difficult for you to work with it going forward, with the doubts you have. I want you to know that you can talk to me, and I will continue to respect your opinion even when we disagree.”
“Difficult? Damn near impossible! It’s the product of a system that treats life as a low-value entry on a ledger sheet!” he said, hands waving in frustration.
“Yes,” she replied gently. “But so are you.”
As he stared at her in shock, helpless to deny that painful truth, she continued, “You rejected that system, and I believe SecUnit has also. Would a free being who considered life ‘low-value’ have shot itself to protect the rest of the team on that shuttle? Would it have gone head to head with the creature that attacked me rather than firing on it from a safe distance? I don’t think so. For that matter, it could have killed us all after you revealed its secret and no doubt found a way to blame the people who arranged for what happened at DeltFall. If it’s been clever enough to survive for years inside the bond company, I’m very sure it could come out of that intact, too.”
“So you trust it?”
“I do,” she agreed. “With my life, quite literally.”
He sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Then I’ll try to trust it also.”
She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.” She turned away to hobble to the hopper without noticing the wave of red that overspread his cheekbones, or the fact that he watched her until she rounded a corner and vanished from sight.
***
The days they spent hiding in the jungle, SecUnit too damaged to move or communicate, waiting for the company transport to arrive and hoping GrayCris didn’t find them first were, to put it mildly, harrowing. They were all (to put it equally mildly) tense, jumping at shadows.
On the third night after the beacon launch, the last night before it was possible the company might arrive, Bharadwaj was on watch inside the hopper while Ratthi patrolled outside, when Gurathin arose from his cot and sat next to her.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she whispered.
“No. Too many thoughts,” he whispered back. A hesitation, and then, “One in particular I keep coming back around to. Life is short, and there’s rarely a perfect moment for anything. So I’m going to use this extremely imperfect one to ask, when we get back home, can we go out somewhere? Just us? Dinner, maybe?”
“Are you asking me on a date?” she replied, smiling.
“I am.”
“Yes,” she said. And then, because the moment was perfect enough, she kissed him.
And that was close enough to perfect, too.
***
Their time on Port FreeCommerce would remain a blur in her memory, an endless whirlpool of meetings, statements, faces, questions, documents, and the throbbing pain in her leg as she trudged from one white-walled, comfortless room to another, to say the same things to different people. On the rare occasions when they were not in meetings, choking down company-supplied “meal-pacs” left over from the survey to try to slow the hemorrhage of funds Preservation was experiencing, or trying to sleep, they hardly spoke, exhausted by all the words they had been called upon to produce already. Even Ratthi usually had nothing to say.
She recalled only a handful of events of those weeks clearly. First was the shock of the realization that SecUnit was gone, had left them, had ventured off alone into corporate space. They had all been taken aback and frightened for it, but she and Mensah had been the most upset by the fact of its leaving and the knowledge of the danger it was now in. Everyone on the team knew that they would almost certainly be dead now without it, but it had saved her and Mensah personally, placing its body between them and the threat, sustaining damage they could not have hoped to survive.
He approached tentatively, with a questioning gesture toward the empty seat next to her. She managed something like a smile and nodded. There had been a few remarks already, to the effect that perhaps SecUnit wouldn’t have left if some people had been nicer to it, but she didn’t think that had anything to do with it. Mensah had shared a portion of its farewell message with them all, in which it had mused upon what a SecUnit might do on Preservation, and whether that life would just be another instance of humans dictating the terms of its existence. They had, every last one of them, somehow assumed they had that right—if only temporarily, in the name of keeping it safe and ‘helping it adjust’—and the regret was a bitter pill. They had all played a part in its flight, and at the moment she rather resented certain of her colleagues for giving into the impulse to mask their own culpability by highlighting someone else’s.
“Do you think it can manage out there?” she asked once he was seated. He’d have a better idea of what SecUnit faced than any of them. “It’s never been on its own before.”
“I think…it has a chance,” he replied carefully. “I won’t say its course isn’t dangerous. But it’s very intelligent, very capable. It came up with the plan that got us all off that planet, after all.”
“It nearly died executing that plan.”
“True. But now it won’t have any fragile humans to protect,” he said with a faint smile. “It will be free to be cautious, to avoid hazards. It was always telling us to do things more safely. Now it won’t have anyone to put it in danger by going against its advice. It hinted it was leaving the Rim, too—I bet it’ll end up on some out of the way station somewhere, where they’ve hardly even heard of constructs, doing some sort of manual labor that will allow it watch its serials while it works.”
That sounded like a really nice life for it, she thought. None of the stress of keeping humans who didn’t listen to it safe from themselves and others, more time for its shows. She hoped it would send them a message when it was settled somewhere, let them know it was okay. Surely it cared enough about them to do that much?
Then, a week later, the various groups of solicitors and administrators agreed that they were done with everyone but Preservation’s core representatives—Mensah and Pin-Lee. Mensah asked Gurathin and Ratthi to remain with them, the former for his knowledge of corporate practices, the latter for his ability to smooth ruffled feathers and convince opposing parties to speak candidly with each other. She, Volescu, Arada, and Overse, however, would be boarding a ship to Preservation in just a few days. As happy as she was to be going home, the thought of splitting their group was disquieting. They’d been through so much together, it didn’t seem right that they wouldn’t step back onto Alliance territory side by side.
When the day came, Mensah firmly refused all meetings around the time of departure, ensuring they would all be at the docks to say their goodbyes. There was a great deal of hugging, and chatter—finally, at the last moment, everyone had something to say.
When they came face to face, she summoned up her brightest smile and urged him to take care of himself and remember that he’d be home soon. He promised that he would, and reminded her that wormholes were really quite safe, urging her to try to treat the journey as a well-earned vacation.
She wanted to kiss him again, like she had in the hopper, but she didn’t want to answer the questions that would raise in the others and she was pretty sure he wouldn’t, either. So she contented herself with a single peck to the cheek, his stubble prickling her lips. He’d only be two weeks behind her. She could wait.
***
By the time the ship carrying them docked at Preservation Station, nine weeks after they’d been expected to return and with the addition of one slightly addled SecUnit to their party, he almost thought he’d imagined that brief interlude in the hopper on the survey planet. He’d convinced himself that if it had been real, she’d changed her mind by now.
She came to see them early the next cycle, shortly after Mensah notified the other members of the original survey team of their location. Arada and Overse messaged that they were coming up from the planet, and Volescu suggested a vid-link, but Bharadwaj was already on Station. She showed up while he and Ratthi were installing cameras for SecUnit’s use. He was happy to see that she’d discarded the cane and looked rested and healthy, and as they worked she cheerfully filled them in on all the little pieces of news they’d missed while they were gone. Dr. Hellan had finally finished that paper they’d been working on for five years, Dr. Otumbe was a great-grandparent now, and scandal had rocked the physics department when one professor had accused another of stealing research data.
When they had finished, Ratthi went to tell SecUnit about the camera network and the two of them were left alone.
“It’s good to see you again,” she said. “I can’t imagine…” She spread her hands helplessly.
“After what happened on the survey, I expect you probably can,” he replied wryly. “But it’s good to be back. To have all of us back safe.”
She nodded. “We were so worried. And then the message came through that you were all on your way home, and you had Mensah and SecUnit. I’m looking forward to hearing that story, if any of you want to tell it.”
“I’m sure we will. Arada and Overse will be here in a few hours, do you think you can wait that long?” he asked with a hint of a smile. “I doubt I could do it as much justice as Ratthi and Mensah.”
“Just tell me one thing—however did you find SecUnit?”
“It found us. And, as you might expect, that’s why any of the rest of us are alive today.”
Her eyes widened and she couldn’t restrain a small gasp. She quickly composed herself and even managed a smile. “Well, then, I’ll be sure to thank it.”
“It’ll hate that.”
“Ah, then it hasn’t changed too much,” she said.
“You might be surprised,” he replied mysteriously, but though she asked, he wouldn’t explain what he meant by it. He wanted to see the look on her face the first time she saw its altered appearance.
“So, um…you mentioned possibly getting dinner when we were back here,” she said hesitantly. “Did you still…?”
“Yes,” he answered quickly, far too quickly to hide his eagerness. “Yes, absolutely. If you’d still like to.”
She smiled, her cheeks going faintly pink. “Perhaps something a little more low key? I could make koshari, have you round to mine?”
“I love koshari. And I love the idea of not being around a lot of people,” he agreed. He thought being alone with her sounded fantastic, too, but he managed not to say that out loud.
“Tomorrow?”
“I look forward to it.”
“Great.” They stared at each other awkwardly for a moment. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later, when Arada and Overse are here.” She leaned in and kissed him quickly on the cheek, then with a last, brilliant smile, left him standing in the corridor, wishing the hours away.
***
He appeared at her door at the appointed time bearing a small lemon cream cake from the bakery down the way, bleary-eyed from the latest in what seemed like an endless string of dream-wracked nights, but unwilling to miss or even reschedule this. She took one look at him, shook her head, and turned on the coffee pot.
Ratthi and Mensah, with occasional commentary by Pin-Lee, had made a good showing the previous evening, telling the tale of her rescue and the attack on the gunship with more humor than the reality of the events had deserved. But, he’d thought, best the others weren’t confronted with the sheer horror of it all right away. He was sure it would come out eventually, in little comments and in thinking back over what must lay behind the witty phrasing. Now was a time for everyone involved to be as happy as they could be, because they had emerged triumphant. And if any of the others also suspected that triumph might prove short-lived, they didn’t voice it any more than he had.
SecUnit had joined them briefly, and the newcomers had been stunned by the changes in it, the way it moved so much more like a human, the longer hair softening its features. He’d captured and stored in his augment the laughing, chiding look Bharadwaj had given him when she’d gotten over the shock enough to realize that this was what he’d been so close-mouthed about earlier.
When they had finished eating and set their utensils down, she reached across the table and laid her hand on his, asking, “How are you really?”
He looked startled, his mouth opening and closing before his head sagged and he clutched her hand convulsively, admitting, “I’m exhausted, and I probably need therapy.”
“Okay,” she said. “We can work on getting you in with the mental health service tomorrow. I’ve been doing the trauma treatment myself, since I got back from the survey. It’s not difficult to make the arrangements. For now, let’s get you rested.”
“I’m not sure I can rest. Too many memories, spinning around in my head. Too much anxiety, even though we’re home now.” He felt stupid as soon as he said it, old prohibitions against showing weakness making his pulse jump uncomfortably.
But she just smiled softly, like she understood. She probably did. “You need something else to focus on, to quiet those thoughts.”
He lifted his head, his expression questioning. “I’m open to ideas.”
She stood, keeping his hand in hers, and he rose also, allowing her to lead him over to the bookshelf, where she selected the blue-bound volume of Galaxy’s Edge, then to the couch. She sat, pulling him down with her.
“You can lay down if you want,” she invited, opening the book. “I’ve been told my lap is a decent pillow.”
He looked at her for a long moment, wondering if she’d read his mind, then curled up on his side with his head on her thigh. Holding the book with one hand, she combed the fingers of the other through his hair. He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes.
“Chapter One,” she read. “It wasn’t until the second missed supply delivery that the residents of Hamline Colony became concerned. The schedule had never been rigidly adhered to, and wormholes were fickle things besides. But as the days rolled by and the colony administrators began to calculate whether rationing was prudent, Yena Margolin prepared her ship and crew of three for a trip to the wormhole to send a message buoy back to Jennen-Hafferdal Explorations…”
***
He woke hours later to find her asleep, head flung back over the top of the couch, sure to have a sore neck in the morning if she stayed like that. Still, he took a moment to drink in the sight of her face, soft with sleep, before he woke her. Together they stumbled into the bedroom, falling onto the bed fully clothed, tangled together like vines reaching for the same patch of sun.
They came awake slowly, late in the morning, both reluctant to break the lazy comfort of the moment with words. Finally, he reached out to brush his knuckles across the curve of her cheek. “I’m a mess right now, there’s no denying that, but I still want to see where this goes.”
“So do I. And I’m also a bit of a mess. But the trauma treatment is helping, and I’m sure it’ll help you too.” She smiled softly. “We’re not going to have the luxury of showing each other only the best parts of ourselves. It won’t be like most new relationships.”
“No,” he agreed, smiling wryly. “We’ve known each other too long for that, anyway. Maybe that’s good. We’ve both got a fair idea what we’re getting into. And I’m definitely getting the better end of the bargain.”
“Hush,” she chided gently. “First rule: don’t put yourself down to me. I do have a good idea who you are, and I like that person.”
He nods. “Sorry, I just…” He took a deep breath, blinked hard a couple of times. “I’ve felt so damn helpless for so long. The survey, Mensah being taken… Helpless, and useless.”
“I understand why you felt helpless—we felt the same, sitting here, waiting for news! But I know for a fact that you were never useless,” she objected. “Pin-Lee said that it was an idea of yours that got GrayCris to bring Mensah to a place where SecUnit could get her away from them. And Ratthi said you’re the reason SecUnit made it off that station at all.”
“I suppose I did a couple of things right,” he admitted with a wry smile.
“Everyone is home safe and GrayCris is on the run. It doesn’t get much more right than that. You succeeded. You all succeeded together. It’s so easy to look back and think what might have been done better, but why not try to just take the win?”
“I’d like to do that,” he agreed. “It’s hard, though. I think being in the Rim for so long brought back some old habits, like constantly criticizing my own performance, so I could fix it before the supervisors noticed.”
“Hm.” She sat up, smiled, and said, “That sounds like something to work through in therapy. But first, I’ve got everything we need for pancakes. How does that sound?”
He hadn’t been hungry—his appetite had been hit or miss for weeks—but it stirred at that. “Do you have fruit syrup?”
She arched a lone eyebrow. “I have cherry, peach, and blackberry syrups. Oh, and lemon-lavender, if you’re feeling fancy.”
Impulsively, he lunged forward, capturing her face between his hands and pressing his lips firmly to hers, muffling her eep of surprise. “You keep getting better,” he said, drawing back.
“Just you wait,” she replied, with a smile that wasn’t about breakfast at all. He might have done something even more impulsive if she hadn’t rolled out of bed at that very moment.
***
She was surprised but pleased when he reached for her hand in the waiting room. He was such a private, self-contained person she hadn’t expected any sort of public gestures until…well, she hardly knew when. At least until they were firmly established in their own minds as partners, assuming they got that far.
She’d been surprised when he’d asked if she would come with him today, too. He’d been so obviously taken aback when the system offered him a same-day intake appointment that she’d wanted to offer her company but had refrained, fearing he’d acquiesce only because she wanted to be there and not because he wanted her there. But he had asked, and she had agreed, and now she folded his hand between her own and offered him a reassuring smile.
“The intake is pretty general,” she told him, speaking softly so as not to be overheard by the young person waiting on the other side of the room. “They need to know why you’re here so they can match you with a counselor whose experience is a good fit. You won’t be baring your innermost thoughts just yet.”
“Do they have a lot of experience with people who have chased the kidnappers of their friend-slash-supervisor-slash-planetary-leader halfway across the galaxy and come perilously close to death and/or recapture by their contract-holder while attempting to free her?” he asked wryly.
“Probably not, but they do have several counselors here familiar with trauma induced by corporate practices,” she replied. “Refugees from the Rim aren’t unheard of at all, and, well, there’s me.” She shrugged, smiled faintly. “I haven’t been attending just because of the incident with the giant worm, you know.”
“Of course,” he said slowly, with the air of someone who’s just been slightly surprised by something that should have been obvious. “And…it’s been helpful?”
“Very much so,” she assured him. “And this isn’t your one and only chance at feeling better. If you find it isn’t helping, or you need something more, you could go down to Makeba. The unit there is extensive. But for the moment, all you have to do is follow their lead and see where it takes you. They’re the professionals.”
“You realize you’re asking me to put my trust in complete strangers,” he said dryly.
She chuckled. “It’s daunting, isn’t it? But I found that actually made it easier—it doesn’t matter what they think of me. I don’t have to worry about earning or retaining their good opinion.” A view of it that might resonate with him occurred to her. “It’s transactional, in a way. You give them an honest account of the things that are troubling you, and they give you their expertise in how to reframe those thoughts in a healthier way. You do the work to implement their suggestions, they monitor and coach your progress.”
He nodded. “I think I can probably do that. I—” He stopped abruptly, gaze turning inward for a moment, then back to her. “They’re ready for me. I’m sure you have things to do, but…could we maybe get together tomorrow? Lunch?”
She gave his hand a squeeze before releasing it. “I’d like that.”
***
They met at Khaled’s Curries the next day-cycle. He updated her on SecUnit: “It’s decided to stay here for a while, apparently. While it figures out what it wants to do longer term. I’m not sure what ‘a while’ means to it, but…maybe it’ll actually say goodbye in person next time.”
“We can hope,” she said. “Mind if I run something by you? I’ve been considering a…personal project.”
“Please do.”
She told him about the idea she’d had on the trip back to Preservation, of doing something, a documentary perhaps, about constructs, the realities of their sentience and enslavement. She’d completed a minor in media studies in undergrad, purely because it interested her, and she thought she might be able to dust off those skills and use them to help spread the truth she’d so lately learnt. Now that SecUnit was here, and possibly would be for some time, she wondered if it might agree to participate, should the project become reality. She’d discussed it only with Mensah so far, and that with an eye to gauging her opinion of doing something that might possibly draw corporate attention to Preservation yet again. Mensah had been supportive, though she didn’t fail to recognize the potential downside.
He listened carefully and said it was an interesting and ambitious idea, and one worth exploring. He even offered some information about how constructs were generally viewed by those at his level of corporate society, non-supervisory specialist professionals: as a useful but rather distasteful class of bot, created to do jobs that humans couldn’t or wouldn’t and fully inorganic bots couldn’t do well.
“It’s widely believed they aren’t sentient, then,” she said.
“Almost universally, I should think,” he replied. “The propaganda has been extremely effective. If it is even propaganda, really,” he added thoughtfully. “Possibly the manufacturers have never realized that they created more than they intended. It’s…very easy to be blind to anything but the project plan, in a corporate atmosphere.”
Tunnel-vision was certainly not unknown in academic circles, but the thought that an entire class—no, several classes—of sentient beings could be created and deployed for decades without their own manufacturers understanding the scope of their abilities was difficult to credit. “I rather think the governor module gives the lie to that notion.”
He shrugged. “Probably. They say the organic neural tissue makes their processes more flexible but less stable than a traditional bot’s, and the governor module is there to maintain stability. I’m sure scattered individuals in the industry have figured it out, if nothing else. It’s probable the research and development teams know. But I’d guess your average worker in that industry probably doesn’t, even if there’s an element of choosing not to.”
“Is there a lot of that—choosing not to know things—in corporate spaces?”
“It’s an essential survival skill,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “And one that’s difficult to un-learn.”
After dinner, they walked through the commercial area of the station, enjoying the window displays and informational holograms. She finally got up the courage to pose a question she’d been turning over in her mind since the previous day.
“May I ask you something you might choose not to answer?”
He looked at her curiously. “Feel free.”
“Yesterday, you mentioned something about nearly being recaptured by your contract holder. It didn’t really register with me until later, but I do wonder what you meant. If you’re willing to share it.”
“Did I say that?” He smiled wryly. “It’s not a secret. Well, not here, it isn’t. My old company has an installation on TranRollinHyfa. ‘Nearly recaptured’ was a bit of an exaggeration. They had no reason to be looking for me there, but I felt as though their eyes were on me, their security forces a step behind me, every second I was on that station.”
“That sounds terrifying,” she replied quietly. “It’s been less than two years since you escaped, hasn’t it?”
He nodded. “No chance at all of facial recognition being diminished by the passage of time. I suppose they didn’t feel there was value in paying for Station Security to run their fugitives list. Some companies do that everywhere they have an installation.”
“I expect most fugitives would avoid stations where their former company has a presence.”
“I certainly intended to.” They paused for a moment to examine a display of beautifully carved wooden serving dishes in a shop window. When they continued on, he commented, “You seem to be walking easily these days.”
“I am,” she affirmed with a smile. “I went down to Makeba almost as soon as we landed. The doctors were rather appalled at how little the MedSystem in our habitat had done. I had several corrective procedures, and though my sprinting days are probably over I have very little pain in the ordinary course of things.”
“I’m sorry to hear you have any at all,” he said gravely.
“Even if I’d been taken directly to the best MedSystem in the galaxy, there would have been permanent damage. Someday, maybe, we’ll be able to fully repair any injury, but not yet. I’m fortunate to still have the leg and a mostly normal life. To have a life at all, really. It’s astonishing any of us are here, much less all of us.”
“We’ve been lucky,” he agreed, and drew breath to say more, but was interrupted by someone hailing her.
“Pavani. What a surprise. You’re usually on the planet during the academic term,” they said coolly, and her heart sank. Unconsciously, she edged closer to Gurathin.
“Dr. Ennis,” she answered in a polite, reserved tone. “I’m on sabbatical.”
“Oh, of course. You went on that survey that ended early.” They smirked, flicking a cold, rather hostile gaze over them both. “I heard you were injured.”
“I’m perfectly recovered, thank you,” Bharadwaj answered, as though Dr. Ennis had been polite enough to inquire. “Please excuse us, we’re expected elsewhere.”
“Of course you are.” With a shallow nod, they continued on their way, and she and Gurathin continued on theirs.
“I’m so sorry about that,” she murmured when they’d put some distance between themselves and Dr Ennis.
“Professional rival?”
She grimaced. “No, former partner.”
He blinked in surprise, then said, “I picture you as someone who remains on good terms with your exes.”
“With one exception, I do,” she said with a sigh. She should explain. She didn’t want him to think she’d treat him poorly if things didn’t work out. “We'd only been together for, oh, twelve or fifteen weeks when they began pressing for a serious commitment. An engagement, preferably a short one. I’m not against marriage in principle, but I already knew we weren’t compatible enough for a lifetime. I tried to be kind about it, told them I simply wasn’t ready for marriage and didn’t want to hold them back from finding what they needed, but they chose to be insulted that I had my own ideas of what my future would be.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “We split three years ago, but it’s still like this every time we bump into each other. They married someone else a year later, and I’ve heard they’re engaged to a third. I wish we could just be on civil terms on the rare occasions we happen to meet.”
He cast her a sympathetic look, then chuckled to himself and said, “Would you like to hear my worst ex story?”
“If you’d like to tell it.”
“I don’t mind. It’s rather amusing, looking back.” He took her hand and said, “This was, oh, ten years ago now. I was fresh out of my PhD program, and a little overwhelmed by the attention I was suddenly receiving as someone with what most people considered a good job and good prospects. Then I met Zan. He was a chemist at the same company; his job was just as good as mine, so neither of us was looking at each other as a way to lift ourselves up the ladder. We had the luxury of choosing partners out of personal preference. We were together for over a year, and I thought things were going great. We’d moved in together and I was thinking of broaching the topic of marriage. Then one day he came home, sat me down, and told me he was leaving me. He’d met someone with two prosthetic limbs and that was just so much more exciting than my neural interface, visual augments, sensors, and data port.”
Her jaw dropped. “He was…?”
“…only ever with me because he had an augment fetish, yes.” He shrugged, smiling sardonically. “If there had been any hints of it, I’d missed them completely. At the time it was horribly painful and absolutely wrecked my self-confidence, but looking back I see how ridiculous it was. He built a whole life with me because my hardware excited him. We don’t control what we find attractive in others, of course, but to have one and only one feature you want in a partner, and moreover for that one thing to be a physical trait? It’s so shallow, I can only pity him.”
“Goodness,” she breathed, shaking her head in wonder. “I’m glad you found out before you were even more committed. I’ve heard divorce can be brutal in corporate space.”
“The courts will require you to hire lawyers to divide your assets, only to find there’s nothing but debt left once the lawyers have been paid,” he agreed. “Most people just separate informally, but of course that doesn’t allow you to cut ties completely.”
“How inhumane,” she said softly. “It’s a wonder more people don’t leave, like you did.”
“That takes resources, too, or outside help. If people could just walk away, the whole system would collapse.” They shared a look of resigned understanding, and then he asked, “Did you have any plans for the rest of the day?”
“Oh.” She sighed. “I need to organize my data from the survey before we start compiling the final report.” Mensah had sent them all a message that morning summoning them to a working group to compile the report, to commence in two days and continue until it was done. She knew Mensah had a lot on her plate and needed to get this report (already greatly delayed by the many felonies committed against them during and after the survey) off of it. But the botanical data was in quite a jumble, due to many of the samples having been gathered and even analyzed by others after her injury and exacerbated by their hasty flight from the habitat. She appreciated that the work had continued when she was unavailable, but now the data was in the preferred styles of several people, and analysis was incomplete on much of it. She was not at all looking forward to the grind of setting it to rights.
“I dealt with mine while we were trying to get Mensah back. It gave me something to focus on while we waited for news, or for GrayCris to make a move. If an extra pair of eyes would be useful, I’d be happy to help,” he offered, with a caution she interpreted as a reluctance to be seen as overstepping. “I don’t know a thing about botany, of course, but if you’ll explain your system I can do some of the grunt work.”
“I'd appreciate your assistance,” she agreed. “Honestly, if you just want to keep me company while I do the boring bits, that would also be wonderful.”
They ended up at his place, since he had a display surface large enough for them both to work on comfortably. His apartment was smaller than hers—no guest room or office—and rather bare, though the furnishings were comfortable. She reminded herself that he’d been here for less than two years and had probably arrived with very little. He wouldn’t have a grandparent’s quilt to throw over the back of the couch, or a tapestry woven by an uncle, or a lifetime’s worth of pictures, artwork, and sentimental items. The only decorations were a few beautiful geological samples on a small shelf, and the copy of Too Clever by Half that she’d given him, centered on the table in front of the couch. He noticed the direction of her gaze and appeared briefly self-conscious.
“Shall I put the kettle on? I have coffee and a few different teas.”
“If you have a black tea I could use a little pick me up,” she replied, smiling. He moved to the small kitchen area as she connected her feed interface to the display surface and called up the different result sets she needed to synthesize, shaking her head over Ratthi’s slapdash approach to data entry. All the information she needed was there, but half of it was in freeform text rather than discrete fields. On the bright side, she got to learn some interesting words in Gurathin’s native language when he got a look at it.
They worked through it all steadily, pausing only to order their evening meal and consume it when it arrived. It was rather past mid-evening when they both slumped back and looked with weary satisfaction on the revised and reconfigured data, now ready for her to analyze and write up.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “This would have taken days on my own.”
“Happy to help,” he replied. A pause, and then, “However, if you ever let Ratthi touch your data again, you’re on your own with it.”
She chuckled. “I will remind you that it was not my decision.”
“Duly noted. Do you think if I hacked the university system and enrolled him in Intro to Data Science, he’d take it?”
Her chuckle became a laugh. “I’d say it’s worth a shot!”
She stood and stretched, and so did he. When they’d worked the stiffness out of their necks and shoulders, they moved into each other’s arms and kissed as though they’d done so a thousand times before, instead of just the once. This time, there was no danger lurking on the edges of their awareness, no sleeping colleagues who might wake and puncture the bubble of their privacy. They had time and peace now, and they savored it.
When at last they drew a little apart, he offered to walk her home with just enough reluctance to give her the impetus she needed to speak her mind.
“That would be nice. Or,” she continued, looking up at him through her lashes, “you could ask me to stay.”
***
He was a little surprised that she was the one to wake them both with a nightmare. After her breathing slowed into the normal range and he convinced her to stop apologizing, he asked, “Do you want to tell me about it?”
She shrugged, snuggling in even closer. He trailed a hand through her hair and waited.
“I was back in Medical, in the habitat. I couldn’t leave because of my injuries, but GrayCris was coming so…you all left me behind.”
He blanched, glad the darkness hid his expression. “That sounds horrifying. In reality, of course, we would have barricaded ourselves in there with you. SecUnit probably would have set traps. Now that I think about it, maybe we should have done that instead of flying off into the jungle.”
Her shoulders shook with silent laughter. “No, discretion was definitely the better part of valor there.”
“You’re probably right. I would have liked to have seen what traps it would have come up with, though,” he joked.
“It probably would have blown half the hab up. But not the half we were in.”
“Pin-Lee would have loved getting those charges reversed.”
“She could have done it, too.” She yawned, and he pulled her closer.
“Go back to sleep,” he said quietly. Her breathing soon deepened and slowed, but he kept himself alert for a time, savoring their closeness and nursing the tentative hope that he’d finally found not only the place, but the person, he could happily belong to.
***
Epilogue: 27 weeks later
He applied the glue with a small paintbrush, and she carefully bent the fabric around the corner and held it while he applied the ridiculously tiny clamps that would hold it in place for the next cycle.
“There,” he said as they both stepped slightly back from the raised worktable, “Once that dries, our work here is done.”
“And we’ll be onto the next one,” she replied lightly. He smiled, an expression that no longer startled her or anyone else, really. It was a visible and welcome indication of how far he’d come, not just since his return from TranRollinHyfa, but since his arrival here on Preservation. He was rapidly shedding many of the habits of his life in the Corporation Rim—though his absurd daily sugar intake would probably never change—and becoming more open, at least with those he trusted. He would always be reserved by Preservation standards, she thought, but there was nothing at all wrong with that. She treasured the fact that she was the only one he shared certain things with, and vice-versa.
“Are we ready to tackle This Unknown Sun?” he asked.
“Hmm, I think so.”
Six weeks earlier, just as the term was starting and they were settling into her house near the campus, they’d come into possession of a crate of old books in poor condition. A friend of a relation of a friend had found them in a family member’s attic after their death, and they had made their way to Bharadwaj by virtue of the fact that she was known to enjoy solid-state books. Some of them had been beyond saving, crumbling to confetti at the slightest touch, but others had a chance.
They’d plunged into the project in their free time, watching restoration videos and speaking several times with the rare documents curator at the university library. They’d started with the volume in the best shape and worked their way slowly through two others. This one, their fourth, had been a challenge, with a number of torn or detached pages and a cover too scuffed and faded for direct restoration. They’d created a new one by using an image of the original and digitally filling in the gaps as best they could. This, they’d passed to an artist friend who made it look beautiful rather than merely serviceable. Then they’d printed the image onto the fabric, and wrapped it over the original cover.
“I recall it’s not much worse than this one was,” he said. “We can inspect it tomorrow, make a list of what we’ll need.”
“Why don’t we take a break until the weekend?” she suggested. “I have all those papers to mark in the next two days.”
“Oh, right, I forgot. Sorry. I’ll plan on making dinner tomorrow, then, shall I?”
“I’ll know it’s ready when the fire brigade arrives.”
He chuckled. “You’re never going to let me live that down.”
“No, never,” she replied, grinning, slipping an arm around his waist and leaning into his familiar warmth. “I should probably go through a couple before we get ready to go. I’ll thank myself later if I do.”
He dropped a kiss onto the top of her head and said, “I’ll put the kettle on. Jasmine?”
“Please.”
“Coming right up.”
She smiled to herself as she curled up in the armchair, donning her feed interface and selecting a paper from one of her better students to start with. He suddenly reappeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Before you get into that, I meant to ask—have you heard anything about why Mensah called us together tonight?”
“Nothing at all,” she lied cheerfully.
“Hm. New survey, I’d bet on it.” He turned and vanished into the kitchen again.
She smiled to herself. The dear man had completely forgotten he’d come to Preservation two years ago exactly. He was going to be so very surprised when he realized tonight’s gathering was a celebration. They had video messages from Arada, Overse, and Ratthi, who were out on another survey. Mensah, Pin-Lee, Volescu, and several of his colleagues from the university would be there along with Bharadwaj’s parents, who were already starting to hint about their desire to welcome more grandchildren, a sure sign that they thoroughly approved of him.
No one was rushing them, however, no matter delighted they were by the possibilities. And they certainly weren’t rushing themselves. Love, like a good book, was a thing to be savored. One had only to enjoy each page in its turn, and the ending would be revealed in its own time.