Starsight

Kauri flew him off, and scud, I found myself sincerely wishing I were Alanik. Maybe we could accomplish something together—with the knowledge of Hesho’s people, along with my people’s fighting skills. Except my people were humans. The very things that frightened him into following the Superiority’s strict mandates.

I felt suddenly exposed, talking like that to Hesho. Sure, the docks were busy—but our conversation had flirted with treason against the Superiority. Wouldn’t that just be fitting for me? To hide that I was human but still get arrested as Alanik? What did the air smell like? Grease. Sterile cleaning fluid. Nothing suspicious.

I really needed to start sniffing for Vapor’s presence before I engaged in suspicious activity.

I boarded a shuttle alone this time, and flew out along the docks toward the city, where I braced myself for the music of the stars to vanish. Even prepared, I felt a sense of loss as it happened.

They minimize wireless communication—but it still happens. They need it to exist. I could understand that. They had to balance fear of the delvers with the need for societies to communicate.

As I was thinking about this, something else struck me. The protesters. They were gone. I’d grown accustomed to seeing the group out here at the edge of the city, holding up signs and complaining about the rights of “lesser species.” But the area had been cleared of people, though some diones in brown-striped outfits were cleaning up the refuse left behind by the protesters.

“What happened?” I whispered to M-Bot. “To the protesters.”

“They struck a deal with the government,” M-Bot said. “Compensation to the families of those who died at the testing, and a promise to put more safety protocols in place during any such future tests.”

It seemed an anticlimactic ending to the protest. A bureaucratic ending, where nothing really changed. But what else had I been expecting? Riots in the streets?

I sighed and watched out the back window of the shuttle, my gaze locked on that spot and the working diones for as long as I could see them.

27

The next morning, I awoke to find a collection of boxes on the embassy doorstep.

“Oh, what’s this?” Mrs. Chamwit said as I hurriedly gathered them up. “Can I help?”

“No!” I said, perhaps too forcefully. “Um, it’s nothing.”

“Cleaning drone?” Mrs. Chamwit said as she read the label on one. “I . . . Oh.” Her attitude grew visibly subdued as she spoke, continuing her hand signals. “Have I been doing a poor job?”

“No!” I said again, balancing the stack of boxes. “Just . . . I like my privacy, you know . . .”

“I see,” she said. “Well, do you need help setting it up? I’ve used a few cleaning drones myself in my time . . .”

“No thank you.”

“I guess . . . I guess I’ll be leaving you to enjoy your day off, then. I made you a lunch and a dinner. In the refrigeration unit.” She stepped out the door.

“Thanks! Bye!” I said eagerly, shutting it behind her, then carried the boxes up the steps. It was perhaps a little callous, but at the same time I couldn’t have Cuna’s spy hanging around finding out what I was doing with

this cleaning drone.

I hurried to my room, placed the boxes on the bed, and locked the door. “M-Bot, you there?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said, his voice coming through my earpiece. “Hold those up for the camera at your workstation so I can confirm that everything came.”

I let him inspect the label of every box. Then, at his instructions, I broke them all open and laid out what we’d ordered. A cleaning drone roughly the size of a lunch tray and perhaps fifteen centimeters thick. It had its own small acclivity rings under the wings—each no larger than an O made by my thumb and forefinger. This type of drone could fly around a room, dusting shelves and washing windows. It would be virtually silent, moving slowly on its rotating acclivity rings.

M-Bot had also ordered a full set of tools, a large tarp, and some spare parts I could use to affix M-Bot’s systems to the drone’s chassis.

I spent the next two hours carefully removing the bottom sections of the drone—the dusting pads, the storage for debris, the cleaning fluid sprays. I left on the drone’s little robot arms, but otherwise removed all of its attachments.

As I worked, M-Bot kept me entertained by reading articles for me off the local datanet. I was surprised at the extent of things the Superiority let the public read—no military or hyperdrive secrets, of course, but I learned about Old Earth. Of particular interest to me was the record of first contact, the first official time humans had met aliens, which had been facilitated by an old telecom company.

A thought occurred to me as I worked with some screws, and M-Bot finished telling me about the history of the kitsen interactions with Earth, which were older—but more vague—than the first official contact.