Well. There was nothing she could do about that now. Best consider the future. She did have skills, and connections. She could support herself, she could pay her debt off, even if it took decades. She just had to get through the next few weeks—to face admitting her failure to Netano, and face Danach’s contempt. If only there was some way to avoid that. Or better yet, to strike preemptively at Danach, to humiliate him the way he constantly tried, time and again, to humiliate her.
But wait. What if she could do exactly that?
She gathered her hair and shoved a few pins in to hold it. Got out of the bunk and went down the corridor to the ship’s tiny galley. The table was folded out from the wall, and Captain Uisine sat watching the doorway, as though he had been waiting for her.
“Captain,” she said, from the corridor, “I wonder if you could delay processing the refund of … of my friend’s fare. Until I’ve had a chance to talk to em again.”
“Had an idea, have you?” Since she had first met him, not two hours ago, his dark, square face had shown nothing but calm seriousness. That didn’t change now, but something about his manner seemed edged. Tense. “I’ll delay if you like. But maybe you should eat first. Our supper should be here soon. Though I must warn you, I’m in a difficult mood just now.”
“I’m … sorry to hear that, Captain.” Ingray wasn’t certain what else there was to say. It probably wasn’t wise to ask what the problem was.
“Do you,” he asked after a long, awkward silence, “have opinions to share, regarding current events?”
“About the Geck, you mean?” From that brief glimpse of news and opinion pieces she’d seen earlier, Ingray knew that the arrival of the Geck treaty delegation had brought out into the open any number of old conspiracy theories about the Geck, and about Radchaai involvement in the treaty. Ingray remembered hearing whispers, once or twice, to the effect that the Geck didn’t actually exist. They seemed never to leave their homeworld, and as far as Ingray knew they only ever appeared in images in the person of human representatives. Maybe, these whispers suggested, the Geck were an invention devised to give the Radchaai extra influence on the treaty. And that wasn’t the most unhinged of the rumors about the Geck she’d heard—or seen hinted at during her short sampling of recent news. But she wasn’t sure why Captain Uisine would care about any of them. “No, I don’t have any opinions about the Geck.” Or about the business with the treaty—she’d been too busy with other things.
“If you discover any,” said Captain Uisine, “please don’t share them with me.”
She wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, or if she should respond at all. A movement caught her eye—a spider mech, two brown cartons of what Ingray supposed was supper held above its body, jointed legs squeezed together in the narrow space of the corridor, stepping delicately toward the galley. She suppressed a shiver. She had seen mechs before, of course; everyone had, they were all over. Quite a few of them were designed in imitation of insect models. But she had never been so close to one that was so … so buglike in such a disturbing way. It made the back of her neck itch, made her want to frantically brush herself off.
She backed down the corridor to make way for the spider mech, managed to keep absolutely still as it squeezed through the galley doorway and set the cartons on the table, and then backed into the corridor and scurried off. “They’re just mechs, excellency,” said Captain Uisine as she came back to the galley doorway.
“You’re … they’re not alive?” They seemed alive.
“That depends on what you mean by alive. There is … a larger biological component than you’re probably used to. But they’re just mechs. They can’t think for themselves. Can’t think at all, really. They can perform a number of automated functions, just like any other mech, but I promise you there’s no conscious AI here.”
And that, Ingray realized, was what had been troubling her about the spider mechs. Their fluid, graceful movement reminded her of artificially intelligent villains in a popular entertainment. “Who controls them?” Ingray hadn’t seen anyone else, or any signs of anyone else. Anything beyond the very basics of mech-piloting took a lot of attention, and some of the jobs a mech would be used for on a ship required specialized skills. Most ships Ingray had traveled on had one or more mech-pilots as part of the crew. The way these moved, so quick and unhesitating, each hairy leg placed so precisely right every time—didn’t seem very mechlike. It must be that whoever was piloting them was very, very good.
“I do.” Captain Uisine opened one carton. “Don’t worry—I’ve had a lot of practice.” Steam wafted up from the open carton, and the smell of spiced noodles. “Eat. Your friend is probably sitting in a waiting room. Will be for hours yet. The only way to avoid a long wait at the Incomers Office is to be very obviously rich, or well connected. You’ve got plenty of time to have supper.”
She didn’t go into the galley. Though the food smelled wonderful and it had been far too long since she’d eaten. “Why are you being so nice?” He hadn’t seemed to care when she’d said she was too broke to eat for two days. Had shown no sign of caring about her at all.
“I’m an owner-operator with a small cargo ship,” he said, perfectly calmly, as though the question had been an entirely ordinary one. “I’ve been doing this run for five years or so. The thing about small independently owned cargo ships is, lots of people think you’re for sale, or easily stolen from, or available for smuggling or illicit trade. I’m not any of those things, and I’ve had run-ins with bad passengers before. I don’t think you’re a bad passenger—you could have behaved very differently when I refused to open cargo for that suspension pod. Or when the person inside that pod refused to go with you.” He picked up his carton of supper. “But don’t think I make a habit of this.”
“Of course not, Captain.” He was right. There was no rush to find the person who’d come out of that suspension pod—e was probably only just now reaching the Incomers Office, and e’d have a long, long wait ahead of em. She stepped into the tiny galley and sat down. “Thank you for the supper.”
Ingray found the person who (she had decided) wasn’t Pahlad Budrakim on a bench in the lobby of the Incomers Office, right where the unpadded bench met the corner of the room. Eir head leaning against the notices actually written in stark black on the white wall—presumably so that incomers who didn’t yet have access to system communications, and thus couldn’t see any overlays, couldn’t claim ignorance of rules or regulations. Captain Uisine’s blanket—a standard extruded one, dull orange-brown without even stripes or a pattern on the edges—was wrapped around em, like a lungi or a sarong. Eir arms crossed, eir eyes closed. Eir hacked-off-looking hair half over eir face. Asleep, Ingray thought. No one else was in the room—most incomers to Tyr Siilas probably had somewhere to go, once they’d managed to get a place in the queue. This person had nothing, no money, no friends, no place to stay. From what Captain Uisine had said, a wait could take days.
Ingray hadn’t made a sound, she was sure, but e opened eir eyes. Looked unsmiling, unmoving, at Ingray. “Netano Aughskold’s daughter,” e said. “What do you want?”