Ghuh’loloan continued her thread. ‘Instead, she’s interested in making a donation.’
‘What kind of donation?’
‘Well, she mentioned ambi storage facilities—’
‘That wouldn’t be of much use here.’
‘That’s what I said. I suggested that rather than her deciding what would be of help from an outside perspective, I could perhaps open a line of communication to the Fleet itself to see what would be of most use.’
‘I can tell you exactly what the labour guilds’ consensus would be,’ she replied. ‘Exodan problems require Exodan solutions. They’ll say we’ve already relied too much on alien charity.’
‘Charity from the GC parliament, and from Aeluons collectively. But this is a representative of a civilian business offering what amounts to a personal gift. A potentially enormous gift, but a gift nonetheless.’ Ghuh’loloan took another disquieting gulp from her mug. ‘The thing about gifts is, with correct, careful phrasing, they can always be turned down. Plus, you have me as an . . . an ambassador of sorts. I can easily deflect her if this offer would be poorly received. But I felt obligated to, if nothing else, pass the message along.’
Isabel tapped her fingertips together as she thought. A personal gift. Yes, that might open some doors. ‘I could set up a meeting with the resource oversight council,’ she said. There was no harm in a conversation, right? Like Ghuh’loloan said, they could always say no. But you couldn’t know what you were declining until the option was at least on the table.
‘Splendid,’ Ghuh’loloan said. ‘I’ll hold off on my reply to Tirikistik, then.’ She raised her mug in a mimicry of a Human cheer.
Isabel returned the gesture with a smile. As she drank, she thought of the artigrav nets beneath her feet, the solar harvesters orbiting outside, the limited-cognition AIs installed in public corridors for safety’s sake. All gifted in decades past by species who couldn’t imagine life without such things. Now, it was her own species who couldn’t imagine life without them. She wondered what else could – and would – be replaced. What essentials would disappear.
Kip
Kip (10:13): are you awake
Ras (10:16): yes
Kip (10:16): can we meet up
Kip (10:16): I need to talk
Ras (10:20): I can’t, I have chores
Kip (10:20): I really need to talk
Ras (10:21): there’s nothing to talk about
Kip (10:21): uh yes there is
Ras (10:21): no
Kip (10:21): Ras come on
Kip (10:22): this is serious
Ras (10:23): I have to study
Ras (10:23): like actually study
Kip (10:23): okay fine I can come over
Kip (10:23): we could study together
Kip (10:25): and I could help with chores
Kip (10:30): Ras?
Kip (10:42): come on man
Kip (10:48): stop ignoring me
Kip (10:54): stop
Kip (10:54): ignoring
Kip (10:54): me
Kip (10:75): Ras please I just want to talk
Bastard.
Kip had hoped Ras would change his tune after they’d both slept and sobered up – both of which had been a profound fucking relief. Or at least, it had been a relief, until Kip had awoken enough to realise that everything that had happened really happened, and that the conversation they’d overheard wasn’t a dream or a trip or anything so convenient.
Somebody had hid a body. It wasn’t exciting, like it was in vids. This was terrifying. This was real.
As soon as the garden had cleared out, Ras had made it clear that he got how fucked up this was, but that they weren’t going to say anything. They didn’t know who those people were, and if they told someone, those same people might come after them. They might end up down in cloth recycling, too. Ras had left no room for argument. End of discussion. They didn’t hear anything.
Except they had. They had heard it, and there was no forgetting it. There was no wishing it away, no matter how hard Kip tried.
He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. He was starving, and his mouth was so dry his tongue felt sticky. But he hadn’t left his room, even though he’d been awake for hours. The thought of facing family was too much. He couldn’t put on an easy face. There was no pretending with something like this.
He was really hungry, though. Like, really hungry. He had a weird headache, too, and he felt tired to his bones. He was never doing smash again, he decided. Not fucking worth it.
Maybe somebody’s already found him, he thought. Yeah. Yeah, that was comforting. If those people had stuck the – stars – the body down in cloth recycling . . . well, there were lots of people who worked there, right? Somebody would have to find him. Even the people who’d put him down there knew that. Yeah, somebody else would find him – had found him already, probably. Somebody had found him, and the patrols would take care of it, and Kip didn’t have to worry about it. Nobody would know that he knew.
He wondered if someone was looking for whoever it was. His hex had to have noticed that he hadn’t come home. The dead guy had been a bad dude, if he was working for those folks. But . . . he’d been someone, right? He’d been someone. They’d called him ‘kid’. Someone else had to be looking.
Kip dug around the clothes lying by his bed and found his scrib. He did a skim through the news feeds. Bot upgrades, council meetings, Aeluons at war, Toremi at war, boring Human politics, boring alien politics – nothing about a body down in cloth recycling.
Shit.
He rubbed his face. Maybe they just hadn’t found it yet. They’d find it today, though, definitely. Kip thought back to the time he’d won the shit lottery and spent two tendays in the recycling centre. He’d been on food compost, not cloth, but he’d walked through there, and seen all the folks washing and folding and stitching, all the folks walking by the . . . the . . . the giant piles of cloth. The piles you’d never get through in one day.
Kip thought about what it would be like to pick up an armload of everyday laundry and discover something horrible shoved underneath. A dead face lying silent. Cold eyes staring still. He wondered how it would be – how it would look – if the body lay there for a few days. His empty stomach knotted. He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop.
Someone else would find the body, yeah. Someone else would find it, and xe wouldn’t expect it, and it’d be the worst day of xyr life.
And those people he’d heard the night before . . . they were gonna get away. Throw a person away like it was nothing and hop to some planet where no one would ever find them. That wasn’t okay. That wasn’t right.
That wasn’t right.
Kip thought about what Ras had said – how those people in the garden might come after them. He thought a lot about that. That thought made his stomach hurt, too. But he also thought about the opposite: what if they went after someone else? What if they did this again? Could he sit with that? How would his stomach feel if he read the feeds one day and . . . and . . . ‘Fuck it,’ he muttered. He sat up and searched for some trousers. His head tightened, the last remnants of smash sleep still making him feel crunchy around the edges. His heart hammered, too, but that wasn’t because of the smash. That, he’d done on his own.
He stood at his bedroom door for a while before waving it open. Mom and Dad were in the living room, reading their scribs, drinking tea. The scene was so normal, so boring. So comforting. His heart beat harder, and even though there was nothing in his stomach, he wanted to throw up.