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  “Me, too.”

  She narrowed her eyes at Yi. “You heard that.”

  “I did.”

  “I didn’t,” Jason added.

  The dual exchange wore on her. Her body wasn’t tired. This body never tired. “I think maybe I am tired,” she said. “My heart’s tired.”

  “But we haven’t helped Katherine yet,” Jason said.

  “No.” She walked back over beside Katherine’s still form and curled up on the floor next to her, one hand on one of Katherine’s feet. Maybe I don’t have to sleep any more, she thought. But I do need a rest.

  Within a few minutes Yi and Jason had joined her, Jason also on his side, spooning her the way he used to spoon her in bed and both of them naked now, too. It wasn’t the same. It would never be the same. She tried to push her sadness away. It didn’t do anything good for her.

  Yi sat up straight and watched them all.

  She had to find the good. They were all together, still a family. “If this weren’t so horrible,” she said out loud, “If this weren’t so tragic, this moment would be sweet.”

  Chrystal rested, letting her mind drift. The hand that cupped one of Katherine’s feet felt the perfect toes. Like when her sister was born, and her mom helped her count ten each fingers and toes. She had mourned their deaths, her own death. But right now she touched a part of Katherine. Jason’s arm hung over her waist the way it often had in the flesh, almost the same weight. It comforted her as much as it always had.

  Regardless of their deaths, out of death had come new life. A birth. She’d read enough old masters and poets and listened to enough religious people to know this was a shared truth.

  They had been born into something.

  She ran her hand from Katherine’s foot up to her ankle, which also felt human, even though the gears and levers and whatever that worked the actual appendage had to be different. If they cut away their skin, there would be no blood.

  Did these strange robotic overlords want them to pass as human? Or simply to mollify the humans?

  She felt Yi’s mind bumping up against hers. You are awake.

  A statement and not a question.

  You and I are the best at talking this way.

  Jason will catch up.

  Want to try?

  They were using silent talk, as if they might wake Jason or Katherine. She didn’t feel anything from either of them, no thoughts, no dreams, no breathing. It frightened her at one level, but surely they were just resting. She herself probably looked the same, still and unmoving.

  This would become normal. It would.

  Yi interrupted her drifting thoughts. Do you want to try?

  To try this braiding thing you’re so excited about?

  Yes. Yi’s voice was confident in her head, as if he had the least emotional baggage and could just embrace this newness, this birth. He had come to this even after he had been the one who fought them to the last, who made them pour their sugared death down his throat.

  She resolved to look for the good, too. She had always considered optimism a survival mechanism. And when did you most need to survive if not right after you’d been murdered and ported to a strange body? She giggled. Her thoughts were still wandering. Yes, Yi. I’m ready.

  Too complex to explain in words. Just relax, and follow me.

  He probably meant be open to his thoughts. But they were thinking at each other already, speaking in a way she would have described as telepathic if she were still human. She struggled to open further and got nothing.

  Just be, he said.

  She lay still and tried to think of nothing. Kept coming up with random things like the shape of Katherine’s big toe and the way they could talk even without breathing.

  “Just be. Relax.

  If she didn’t breathe, how would she smell? If she tried to breathe, what would happen? Wouldn’t they need to breathe if they went to another station and tried to pass? Her mind was supposed to be stiller than this. Stiller, like a pool. How could they pass? They’d be too strong.

  Just be. Let go of the future, the past. We are not either. We are now.

  He sounded like a preacher.

  Don’t evaluate. Just be. Listen for me being beside you, but not for what I’m being.

  She could follow that, feel him a little, feel all four of them in fact. Life forces. But only Yi was bright and aware.

  Leave your eyes closed and tell me what you see.

  She squished her eyes shut, and she could still see. Katherine, in the same defeated position, like a statue, long hair falling over her knees. Herself and Jason, two naked humans spooning asleep. They didn’t look like robots at all, perhaps because they weren’t moving, or maybe because their pose was such a human one, curled one around the other, protective. She had seen herself in mirrors, but this looked different. It made her feel disconnected from herself. Her curly blue-streaked hair fell across her face. Her own tattoo looked as real as Katherine’s, a matching dragon with green scales and deep blue talons.

  She must be seeing herself through Yi’s eyes!

  We look like statues.

  Yes. Move something and watch yourself do it.

  She twitched a finger and snapped out of whatever place she had been, eyes wide open. That was strange, she thought. Is that braiding? Seeing through each other’s eyes?

  I didn’t know we could do that, he said. That you would see through my eyes but not see the way I was seeing it.

  This is complex.

  Braiding seems to be like deep telepathy. That was like—I don’t know. Like I was a camera for you. I heard you think about your tattoo, but I wasn’t thinking about your tattoo.

  What were you thinking?

  How perfectly shaped you both are, and how sweet you look together.

  She turned her head so he could see her face and smiled at him. So what is braiding? I don’t get it yet.

  It’s like—like intimacy. It’s being more inside me than you just were.

  Like those moments after sex when you think you should just become one person with your lover?

  Like that. Only it really happens.

  Maybe we’re not ready.

  We’ll try again later.

  What would it would be like to be so joined with another being? Even with these people whom she loved more than she had ever imagined she might love? To share her inner self, which wasn’t nearly as shiny as her outer one? Can we try again now?

  No. Someone’s coming.

  She and Jason sat up before the door opened. When it did, there was no one there. The voice that was Jhailing sounded in her head. Chrystal. It is time to go back.

  She looked at Katherine. Can we stay with her? Help her?

  No.

  Really?

  She’ll be taken care of.

  When will I see them again?

  Soon. You will be in a classroom with them in a few days.

  She felt a little better. They left together, even Katherine, who walked on her own as if she responded more to a voice in her head than she had been willing to respond to her own family.

  The others all eventually peeled off. Chrystal paid close attention to where in case she needed to try to find them. She only took one turn wrong before she arrived at the door of the room she’d been using.

  There was something new in the room. Flowers. A splash of bright orange and blue that contrasted with the unrelenting whites and silvers and blacks of her room. She bent over the vase, trying to breath in the smell.

  Stop and let yourself relax. You’ll find the scent.

  She stopped trying to breathe and just stood as still as she could. Her enhanced sight made the flowers even more perfect, every tiny curl a magnificence, the tips of the stamens flawless fractal balls, the edges of the colors sharp. At first, the sweetness of the flowers smelled faint. She practiced focus, and soon she could magnify the scent so that it became strong like her sight and hearing had become. “I got it,” she whispered. “Why flowers? Where di
d they come from?”

  I heard you wondering if you would be able to smell them, and I thought they might be a good reward for doing well.

  “Thank you.” She remembered her vow to be optimistic. “Have I done well? Have I learned the way you want me to?”

  You have. You and your family are doing better than any other family group.

  That made her feel good, but only for a moment. “Katherine, though? What’s wrong with her?”

  Katherine is more driven by feelings than you or Jason or Yi. In your new bodies you feel some things and you don’t feel others. Your goals and drives are different without physical flesh. Do you realize that? Is that why you are struggling less?

  “How is that true? I don’t feel different.”

  You used the word “feel” in your response. Just then. But you don’t feel the same way you used to. I was once a human, too. We are something else now.”

  “You were human?”

  A very long time ago.

  “How long?” She held the scent of the bouquet of flowers in her nose, realizing she could tell the smell of one from another even at a distance.

  More than a thousand years ago. I was human until just after the creation of the Ring of Distance, in the early days of our banishment, when we starved and fought each other.”

  “Will you tell me more about that?”

  Another time. I am focused on your acceptance of how you are different. That is important.

  “How do I know I don’t feel the same? I seem to be myself.”

  Think about your time with your family. Was that was like time with them would have been?

  She stepped away from the flowers to clear the smell from her head. She and Yi and Jason had worried about Katherine, but maybe not like they might have before. Not if she really thought about it. “We were more intellectual.”

  You seldom left each other’s sides in the High Sweet Home.

  How did Jhailing know that? She used her quietest and most controlled voice. “Thank you, Jhailing. Thank you for the flowers. Now please go away and let me think about what you just said, and what I think in response.”

  Chrystal realized that she could feel his (her?) absence and that it was a slightly lonely feeling. She sat with her robot eyes closed and smelled the flowers and felt like she should miss Katherine terribly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  NONA

  Two months into the flight, Nona sat alone in command, watching her on-shift staff play something war-like on a complicated 3-D shared game board. The game drew periodic grunts or gasps as one or another person made a good or bad move. Nona knew from experience that a single game might go on for a full shift and then be taken to the bars afterward.

  The Sultry Savior was a civilian ship, and mostly it ran itself via computer, robot, and stationary AI’s with specific duties. Even so, Satyana had kept her promise to include some of her best people on the crew. She’d assigned a seasoned officer, Henry James, as Nona’s second-in-command. Henry ranked her easily, and Nona felt sure he’d been assigned in case she got in trouble managing a command. It deepened her resolve to succeed, although how to do that wasn’t exactly clear.

  There wasn’t much moment-by-moment activity between destinations on a starship, and they had no direction except to fly outward, toward the Ring of Distance.

  She wasn’t doing much good sitting here. Henry James wasn’t on deck, but Luci Long was trained as her backup. Nona walked over to the game and watched a move where a holographic image shaped like a dark red dragon trailing red and gold flames swooped down from the sky and took out a row of what looked like robotic soldiers. “Good move, Luci!” one of the other players exclaimed.

  Luci’s face lit up with triumph.

  Suddenly, Nona wanted to sit back down and let the game go on. She took a deep breath. “Luci? Can you take command for about an hour?”

  Luci shot her an irritated glance, then a mask of obedience slipped across her face. “Sure. What do you need?”

  “I’m going check on gardens. I’ll be back within an hour.”

  Luci nodded and stood up. Her features were stiff and proper, in spite of the disappointment in her eyes. Nona almost gave in and let her keep playing. But it would be bad crew discipline, and, besides, she was paying these people.

  Nona told Luci, “Thank you,” and she turned and left command, feeling better as soon as she hit the corridors. Being alone felt glorious. She took the long way to the lift.

  When she closed the garden door behind her, Charlie looked up and smiled. He stood in front of a raised bed, reaching up to harvest beans from plants that stretched from about his knees to above his head.

  “We have robots for that,” she said.

  “I like the work. I need to be busy.”

  Maybe he had pinpointed her problem. Space was boring, at least in a small ship. “Will you take a walk with me?” she asked.

  “Can you give me a hand with this first?”

  “Sure.” She grabbed a half-full bucket he had put on the floor and held it out to receive beans.

  “Aren’t you on duty?” he asked.

  “I’m on break. I left Luci in charge.” A bean fell on the floor and she picked it up. “I told them I’d be back soon.”

  They fell into a companionable silence. She paced him as he moved down the row, close enough that he bumped her with his elbow from time to time. He smelled more of the ship than Lym now, which left her slightly sad. “You miss home.”

  “I’d never been to space before this. I didn’t know how oppressive so many walls would be.”

  “Never? Not even in orbit above Lym?”

  “Nope. I never wanted to leave.”

  “Before I went to Lym, I’d never been away from the Deep.” She twisted the bucket to get it into a better position for him. “The walls don’t bother me, although it feels like there should be more to do.”

  “You’re helping me harvest,” he said.

  “I am.” She fell silent again for a bit as they worked their way toward the last plant in the last row. “I’m glad you came,” she said after a while. “I think you might be my only option for a friend on this ship. Almost everyone else is crew, and they all work for me or for Satyana.”

  “You can talk to me.” He let out a long breath and turned back to harvesting.

  “Thanks,” she said, without going on to talk about anything in particular. He wasn’t easy to get close to, but she liked it that they seemed to be developing a rhythm together.

  Charlie had just handed the harvested beans to the vegetable washing machine when Nona’s communications unit went off. Luci Long, sounding slightly awed. “You have a message from Gunnar Ellensson.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take it there.”

  Charlie raised an eyebrow at her, looking hopeful. “Come on,” she told him, and started back, walking quickly.

  When they arrived, Luci gave her a look that Nona couldn’t quite interpret, but which might be related to the fact that Charlie was with her. “Thank you. We’ll take it in the conference room.”

  Charlie sat down easily across the table from her, his slate out so that he could take notes. Always careful, always ready.

  She fumbled with the remote, flipping the message from the table to the wrong wall to her slate and finally to the full wall in front of them. A still image appeared: Gunnar and Satyana sitting on the bench in Gunnar’s private garden bubble. Translucent golden flowers dripped in strings from a tree behind them.

  She hit play.

  Gunnar spoke, his tone as even as if he were describing one of his famous dinner parties. “The Next violated the Ring with three ships. They have signaled that they expect us to talk to them. This implies they plan to dock somewhere.”

  He stopped for a breath and Satyana picked up. “We’ve been running trajectories and there are a limited number of places they can go. None of the big stations will accept them.”

  Gunnar said, “One of the stations some
what near the edge—Satwa—is partly mine—I’m one of three major owners. We’re going to leave it undefended and pull out as many people as possible. We don’t know if we can entice the Next to go there, but it’s a chance.”

  Satyana said, “It’s dangerous, but you might be able to get there before the Next notice it, and observe quietly.”

  “Reply soon,” Gunnar said. “We are already starting the plan.” The screen went dark.

  Charlie said, “It doesn’t look like he’s really giving you a choice.”

  She chewed on her lip for a moment and then looked over at him. “Of course we’ll go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHARLIE

  Charlie paced while Nona checked and re-checked her list of questions for Gunnar and Satyana. She bent over her slate, her multicolored hair falling over her eyes and her fingers periodically tapping on the table. She looked both fierce and vulnerable. He wanted to knead the sharpness out of her hunched shoulder-blades, but he also didn’t want to touch her, to risk starting something he might regret.

  She confused him regularly.

  He pulled out his own slate and started composing a message to Manny about what he’d learned so far. It didn’t come to much.

  He missed Manny and Jean-Paul. He thought about them entirely too often, wished he could sit down and share some still and chat about the strangeness of space, wished he could smell woodsmoke and see sky.

  He missed Cricket most of all.

  He ended his message with, “Think good thoughts for us, and we’ll think good ones for you. Send back news of home. I miss you all.” Just writing to them left a lump in his chest. Being so far from Lym literally felt like being separated from half of his lungs, like he couldn’t get enough air way out here in space. He re-opened the file and added, “Breath the open air for me, and send me pictures of horizons and clouds.”

  Nona looked up at him. “Are you writing home?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it, the way we miss things we didn’t know we’d miss.”

  “I knew I would miss home.”

  “But I didn’t know I would miss Lym.”

  He blinked at her. “You miss Lym?”