She looked up hopefully. A nattily dressed young man wearing a newsvid monocle stood several meters away. He smiled. "It is you, isn't it?"
"Rue. It's just Rue." She watched him step up and stick out his hand. She flinched, remembering Jentry, but when he just stood there, hand out, she realized he wasn't going to hit her. What was he doing, then?
"Help you up?" he said.
"Oh." She took his hand and he drew her to her feet.
"Would you like to comment on your discovery of the first cycler to visit Erythrion in ten years?" His voice had changed subtly; he was in newshound mode now. Suddenly self-conscious, Rue stammered and blushed.
"Don't worry," he said, "this isn't live. We can edit you however you want. If you don't want something to go out, just say, 'off the record. Is that okay?"
"I don't know," she said. "I just—"
"Get away from her, you parasite!"
It was the fellow in the rumpled clothes, who had approached and now waved at the news hound as if he were some kind of irritating insect. He was in his late thirties, had greasy hair and a paunch and dark circles under his eyes. His clothes were rumpled, Rue realized, because he had probably slept in them. "Shoo," he said to the news hound, "there's nothing for you here."
The newshound raised one eyebrow (the one opposite the monocle). "And who are you, sir?"
"Maximilian Cassels," said the rumpled man, drawing himself up to his full meter-and-a-half. "And I'll not have you leeching off my cousin."
"I just want an interview," said the newshound. "Look, all the other guys ran off to the Permanence monastery when they learned your comet's really a cycler. They're all trying to interview the abbot; a new cycler is a much bigger story than a new comet. But… I think there's a human-interest angle here, with her." He turned back to Rue. "I understand you're probably upset and tired right now. Can I leave you my number? You can call me later when you're ready for an interview. And listen, it'll probably be a good idea for you to do one. Get you the sympathy of the public, you know?"
"Well, I—"
"She doesn't need sympathy," growled Maximilian. "She needs her family." He went to take Rue's arm; she stepped away from him.
"What about my family!" she said. She took another two steps back. "They were supposed to meet me. Aunt Leda and the whole clan, she said. Not that I believed it really, but then… who the hell are you?"
The rumpled guy put his hands on his hips and cocked his head. "I really am your cousin," he said. "Leda really is your aunt and she did come to meet you. They all did. I came by myself since none of 'em will have anything to do with me. When the news came down that you'd staked a claim on a cycler, they all threw up their hands and left. No money in you, so why hang around?"
There it was. The humiliating truth. "And you stayed?"
"Damn right," said Maximilian. "You're family."
"Oh. I don't know what to…" Rue was seeing spots. Without warning she found herself on her knees. The sunglasses had flown off her face; blinded, she waved her hands and cried out. Everything was turning around her. She must be feeling Treya's rotation, she thought crazily.
"Hang on," said somebody, "I'm a doctor." She felt a hand on her shoulder. People were arguing over her head. One of them, she realized, was the woman in green who'd been talking on her phone a few minutes ago.
"She's got heatstroke," she said. "Probably lived her whole life in one of the stations. Never been above ten degrees before."
"She stays with me," said her cousin.
"We'll let her decide that," said the doctor. "Right now, the only place she's going is the hospital."
3
THE DOCTOR'S NAME was Rebecca France, though as she admitted, she wasn't quite a doctor. "An intern," she told Rue the next morning when she came to visit. "I was actually practising back on Terisia, but licensing is much stricter here. I had to go back to med school when I emigrated."
Terisia was a deep colony three light-days from Allemagne: Rebecca was from the stations too, which, she explained, was why she had known what was happening to Rue outside the elevator building.
"They're supposed to mail you a package on how to adapt to Treya. I take it you didn't get it."
Rue shrugged. "I missed a lot of important mail."
She had awoken to find herself in a hospital bed, dusk light brighter than Allemagne's gardens at mid-day glowing through heavy drapes. The nurse who came in when she buzzed had shivered. "I can't believe you need it this cold," she'd said.
The nurse, like Rebecca and everyone else here, was deeply tanned. "You'll get like this, too," said Rebecca now as she put her wrist next to Rue's for comparison. "After a year or two. Believe it or not, this is still considered pale by Earth standards." Rebecca had black hair like Rue, but she kept it up in a complex braid. She was slim like Rue as well, but much taller. They shared the wide gray eyes most station people had, but that hardly implied any family resemblance, as there was genetic engineering way back in most people's lines. Where Rue had an oval face that she considered far too fragile-looking, Rebecca had a square jaw and wide cheekbones, implying a different racial origin, though it was hard to tell nowadays.
Rue nodded absently. She thought it was probably gauche of her to ask, but she'd been brooding on a problem since she awoke. "Thanks for helping me out, Rebecca. But… who's paying for my stay here?"
Rebecca looked surprised. "I don't know. I assume they're charging it against your credit. — Except that you're still on a visitor's visa, I guess. I understand you thought you'd come into a lot of money and now it's all gone. Do you have any money?"
Rue shook her head. "No." she said. "But I can work. How soon can I start?"
Rebecca laughed. "You're getting ahead of yourself. First you have to adjust to the heat here. That'll take some time."
Rue opened her mouth to object that she wouldn't have that time if she got deported as a debtor, but decided it was too ugly a discussion to have with someone she'd just met. "Then how do I adjust as quick as possible?"
Rebecca sat back. "Well, there's three ways. First, you can buy a cool suit and go nocturnal. That's the easiest, but the only jobs you can get for that shift are service jobs. Not a good start. Or, you could move to the mountains at Penumbra North. It's much cooler in the alpine biomes; that's what I'd do if I were you."
"What's the third way?"
"Well, that would be to ingest some medical nano that can protect you while your body adjusts. It would fix you up instantly, but the problem is they're expensive."
Rue frowned at the beige ceiling. "The mountains it is, then."
"So, you're planning to settle down here?"
"Yeah. I guess so— I've got nowhere else to go."
Rebecca gnawed on a thumbnail for a while, then said, "Since the coup, they've raised the bar on citizenship requirements. You know, isolationists." She rolled her eyes. "Okay. Here's what you do. You've got to apply for citizenship and to do that you've got to put in your quota of eco-work. It's usually a minimum of planting twenty trees and seeing them through at least two seasons. There's always plenty of eco to do in Treya. Then, you've got to pay off your debt. That means getting a job, which will be hard to do while you're doing eco-work. So, you get something part-time to convince the bureaucrats that you're sincere in paying them back and spend the rest of your time on the eco. Make sense?" Rue nodded. "You'll also need bribe money from time to time," added Rebecca.
The prospect was daunting. "Um, Rebecca… could you help me with that stuff? Just a wee bit?"