Besides, she was far more concerned that at any moment she and Mahit would miss their prearranged appointment on Peloa-2, and what would be worse than fungal parasitism running rampant through the Fleet was insulting your enemy by being late to a negotiation so that there wasn’t time for fungal parasitism to run rampant through the Fleet, due to most of the Fleet being dissolved by ship-eating alien weaponry.
The shower finally turned off, and its sealed door unsealed. Three Seagrass exhaled, hard. She was very wet and very cold and very clean, and she needed to be on a shuttle right now. But on the other side of the shower door was the ikantlos-prime Twenty Cicada, not wearing any isolation gear at all. He was, however, wearing clothes, which gave him a substantial advantage over the two of them.
“Adjutant,” Mahit said, mildly. She was not trying to cover herself with anything, even her hands or the angle of her hips. Three Seagrass wondered about nudity taboo on Lsel Station, and then decided there was very little point in wondering about that right this moment. Mahit had gestured to Twenty Cicada’s lack of filter-mask or plastic plague gear, and was asking, “Are you no longer concerned that we might be emitting—what was it—spores, then?”
“I find it extremely unlikely that you are emitting anything, Ambassador, Envoy,” said Twenty Cicada, “but if you are, it’s no more than I’ve already been exposed to. I was the one who found the body of the medtech, after all. Damage, if there is any, has been done.”
Mahit said, “Why are we suddenly concerned about fungal contamination? The aliens we were speaking with—or trying to speak with—were perfectly healthy. No visible fungi.”
“Not visible,” Twenty Cicada began. “Internal. If they had any. And I am beginning to think they might have—but it was dormant, in the skull cavity, the neural structures.” He looked like he was willing to go on for a long while on the subject. He looked like a man who had been quietly frightened and quite alone for some time, and who would talk about anything if allowed to. Three Seagrass remembered how deeply at home he had been in the garden of hydroponics at the heart of his ship, and thought, Isolation protocols must be terrifying to him. To think that he might lose access to all of that—be an infective agent—it would ache like the oozing sap of a cut flower-stem.
And then: Maybe I’m still a poet after all.
She interrupted him before he could give Mahit much more of his stored-up lecture on the fungi which apparently lay secret and safe inside the bodies of their enemies until those enemies died. She said, “Ikantlos-prime—we have to go down to Peloa-2. We promised we would be there. And I quite genuinely do not know what the aliens will think—or do—if we promise one thing and give another.”
“I know,” said Twenty Cicada. “I’m going with you. I’m flying the shuttle.”
“Your yaotlek doesn’t want to expose anyone who hasn’t been exposed yet,” said Mahit, cool and calm, like an offered hand: I’m sorry for what your people are doing to you.
“Quite,” said Twenty Cicada. “But also, I insisted. I want to ask them questions, Ambassador. I want to show them this and ask them what it’s for.”
He held up a sealed clear plastic cube in one hand. Inside it was a branching fractal structure of white. The shape of it was, Three Seagrass thought, quite similar to the pale green patterns of the just-visible homeostat-cultist tattoos on his wrists. It rattled when he shook the cube.
The alarm went on forever. It was loud and high and unignorable, and it didn’t stop, and everyone but Eight Antidote apparently knew what to do about it. All of Nasturtium Terminal had transformed into a river of people, hurrying out the exits, while the entire spaceport seemed to scream, endlessly. Something is wrong. Something is wrong and you’re in danger. They were probably evacuating. Eight Antidote should evacuate too. But his feet felt rooted to the floor. He was a tiny rock the river of Teixcalaanlitzlim flowed around. What if the alarms were going off because he’d run away into the City and everyone was going to miss their flights and trains and everything because the City was looking for him? What if it was all his fault?
What if it wasn’t, and it was a real alarm, for a real problem, and no one knew where he was and whether he was safe? That was worse. That was—he’d been so selfish—and everyone was moving so fast—he wasn’t a rock anymore, he was a pebble, tumbling in the flow of people, being pushed and shoved as they tried to get to the exits of the terminal and away from the noise. Someone hit him with their backpack, and he fell down. Someone stepped on his belly, and it hurt, and he curled up into a ball like Eleven Laurel had taught him. Covered the back of his neck with his hands, protected his face and middle. He didn’t have enough air to cry; it had all been squished out of him by the person who’d run across him like he was part of the floor—and another person tripped over him and fell and scrambled back up again—
If he stayed here, he was going to get trampled.
He tried to remember that cold, clear place he’d gone to, back in the Ministry of War’s strategy room. The place that happened after you were afraid. He didn’t know where that was. He was so scared. That place wasn’t real right now.
A hand grabbed his arm. Yanked him up to his feet. A voice said, “Fucking kids—gonna get yourself killed like that—”
And he was stumbling forward, inside the river of people now, not an obstacle but one of a thousand parts of the water that flowed, and he had no idea who had grabbed him and helped him up. They were as lost as he was.
They spilled out of Nasturtium Terminal back into Tulip Terminal like a flood. Eight Antidote saw that all the exits to the subway were blocked by spaceport security—flanked by a rising number of Sunlit in their blank gold faceplates, threatening and reassuring at once. Out here in Tulip Terminal, the shrieking alarm had words in it: had please proceed to an outdoor location and there is no immediate risk to life or property and please do not attempt to access the subway at this time mixed in with the high wailing noise.
One of those subway entrances had curling tendrils of white smoke coming out of it. Eight Antidote, bruised and terrified and carried away out the doors of the terminal and into the bright, easy sunlight of a City afternoon, thought, Was there a bomb in the tunnels? and didn’t know at all how to deal with that possibility. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The subway was a perfect algorithm. The algorithm would notice a bomb if there was a bomb, wouldn’t it?
The flow of evacuating people took him beyond the perimeter that the Sunlit were beginning to set up around the spaceport, and then stopped being a river and started being a confusion again: some Teixcalaanlitzlim standing around, some wandering off, hailing groundcars-for-hire or walking briskly away. Eight Antidote sat down on a low curb that bordered a garden plot full of tulips. Tulip Terminal, he thought. Of course tulips. His stomach hurt, and his shoulder, and the side of his face. He touched his cheek and winced at the sting, and wasn’t surprised when his fingers came away bloody.