You’re upset, ART said. I had already started for the quarters section.
I was supposed to “check in regularly with my emotions,” which I pretended was a thing I had any intention of doing. Yes, this is upsetting, I told it. I am upset. Are you happy now?
Delirious, ART said.
ART’s cameras showed nothing in the corridors, and any visual surveillance it had in its crew cabins was locked down where I didn’t have access. I found Kaede, standing in the galley and eating food pieces out of a container, with the abstract expression of a human reading in their feed. That was encouraging. I didn’t have much experience working with Kaede, but I knew if it was something life-threatening she would have made an effort to intervene or get help and not just turn up the volume on her interface. She saw me and pointed down toward the quarters corridor without otherwise reacting.
Midway down the corridor, Tarik slammed out of a doorway. He stopped abruptly, just short of running into me. He looked startled. I said, “Is there a problem.”
“What? No!” He stared at me. I stared back, just above his sightline. He winced and ran a hand through his hair. “Not that kind of problem.”
“What kind of problem.” There’s no question mark there because I didn’t really want to know and was hoping he would refuse to tell me.
Ratthi stuck his head out of the doorway. “Oh, hello, SecUnit. I’m sorry we bothered you. We were just having a discussion.”
I didn’t move. I figured I only had maybe four seconds at most before they broke down and told me anyway.
It was barely two seconds before Tarik said, “I know what it looks like—”
Ratthi interrupted, “It doesn’t look like anything.” It’s odd for Ratthi to interrupt when it’s not the excited-yelling kind of conversation when the humans all feel the need to talk at the same time. He turned to me. “It was a sexual discussion.”
ART said in our private feed, I told you that you didn’t want to know.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I had an expression (I couldn’t help it) and involuntarily retreated two meters back down the corridor. Ratthi waved both hands, trying to reassure me. “It’s all right, it’s over.”
I left. I passed Kaede still standing in the galley. She said, “I’m not getting involved in that, either.”)
Now Tarik said, “Matteo and I aren’t together that way.”
Tarik and Matteo weren’t listed as marital partners in ART’s crew records. Seth and Martyn were, and Karime was listed as having marital partners back at the University’s primary site. I could share that information with Ratthi, but I don’t think he’d appreciate it right now. And at least if Barish-Estranza (a) knew our location and (b) had managed to get a listening device within range, this was a useless conversation to overhear, though I doubted they would be as simultaneously bored and appalled as I was. I looped my audio so I could filter their voices out (except for a keyword search in case one of them screamed for help) and then resumed wall-staring.
The humans managed to get some sleep and eventually ART-drone got me to watch an episode of World Hoppers. According to AdaCol2, the weather destabilization would peak in 3.2 hours and then subside. I had fifty-seven unique sources of concern/anxiety, speaking of checking in with my emotions, but nothing I could do anything about right now.
Then our comm activated: it was Trinh, to tell Iris that Barish-Estranza wanted an in-person meeting with one of us.
Make that fifty-eight.
Chapter Seven
THAT WOKE THE HUMANS up fast, and Iris had a polite conversation with Trinh about the fact that we came in here for an in-person meeting with the colonists, not Barish-Estranza who we had and could talk to all the time, whether we wanted to or not.
(The timing was also suspicious, and the humans thought so, too. Basically they had been allowed enough time to get into REM, before being abruptly interrupted, which is not an ideal scenario for most humans and augmented humans.)
This resulted in Trinh admitting that Barish-Estranza had explained it wanted to “relocate” the colonists due to the alien contamination. Trinh didn’t reveal any hint as to how she felt about that. Which could be a good sign or a bad sign. ART-drone did a voice analysis that agreed with the humans’ emotional assessment; it didn’t sound like Trinh trusted Iris, but hopefully that meant she didn’t trust the B-E team, either. If she trusted them but not us, we might as well all sit here and watch Cruel Romance Personage until the storm was over.
When the comm call ended, ART-drone tapped our private connection and said, SecUnit. It didn’t need to tell me what it wanted, I could hear the “fucking do something” tone.
Iris had an expression like she had a headache, and Ratthi was up and pacing. Tarik watched Iris, his brow wrinkled in a worried way. I said, Absolutely not.
ART-drone added, As security consultant, SecUnit has the final authority.
I could tell from Ratthi’s guilty face he had planned to volunteer to go. Iris just looked more determined. She said, We can’t refuse this meeting, it might give us intel on how B-E is planning to get these people out of here. Whether they’re going to trick them into leaving, or use force. She did something with her mouth that was not a smile. Or worse.
I could have asked what “or worse” meant in this context but there was only so much I could take and I thought I’d hit my limit about, I don’t know, four years ago.
Tarik shook his head. I’m with SecUnit. It may not be a deliberate murder attempt, but they don’t want to get you out there to just chat. They’re going to try to get something out of you, that’s what they think negotiation is.
Tarik didn’t sound like an asshole, though I distrust new humans who agree with me too quickly, especially about security. (I know it doesn’t sound rational but I have data and charts to verify my assessment, okay. Good charts, too, not like for the thing with the round hatches.) But he wasn’t wrong about the different concepts of negotiation.
It was a problem with humans from Preservation, who thought of negotiation as “let’s figure out how to solve this problem in a way everyone is happy or at least okay with,” and there was a 96 percent chance that literally nobody else in the Corporation Rim, even across all the different human cultures that the different corporations operated under, thought of it like that. But Iris was also right that we couldn’t just sit here and watch Cruel Romance Personage. On the team feed, I said, I’ll go. You can tell me what to say.
There was 3.7 seconds of unflattering silence. Ratthi frowned worriedly at me. Are you sure, SecUnit?
Nobody liked the idea, but it turned out Iris was right: as security consultant, it was my call. I just wished I knew what the fuck I was doing.
AdaCol2 picked the spot for the meeting. It was in an adjacent underground development, currently unused, which had apparently been storage for big things that the Pre-CR colony had needed, which weren’t there anymore. The Adamantine colonists used it for large building projects and recreational activities, anything that needed extra space. (If they were like other humans, recreational activities probably = throwing balls or sticks at each other really hard.) Because of that, in addition to being able to activate temporary life support inside the room, AdaCol2 had a couple of camera points in there (for collecting video of the recreational activities/ball throwing). It was actually a great spot, because if the B-E negotiator shot me, AdaCol2 would have video evidence of it, and it would hopefully make them look bad. As long as no one realized I was a SecUnit.