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The primary physical transfer, Azia knew, would take place elsewhere. Pluummuluum, of course, hadn’t told her where, since what she did not know she could not tell.

As they left the space, Pluummuluum gripped her elbow and pulled her close. They moved at a fast clip, needlessly, of course, since Gerson Culley could put the arm on them at any time. Azia thought of how the Rosarian delegation all looked like Federation officers themselves. They might once have been—or even still be—officials employed by the Federation. Rosario was a maintenance and disposal depot for more than half the Federation’s fleet. They possessed the cermetophage because all the space garbage, spent technology, and obsolete weapons the Federation and its worlds generated got dumped on Rosario. The people on Rosario felt exploited; the size of their population had grown sufficiently that they were interested in making a viable world culture of their own. The Federation, however, was doing its best to discourage this, since a viable economy would threaten its monopoly on jobs and provision of goods and services, and could eventually lead to challenges of the Federation’s right to use it as a dumping ground.

That was the story behind the Rosarians being willing to deal illegally. It sounded good and matched what little Azia knew of the recent history of internal Rosarian politics. But could they trust the Rosarians not to double-cross them? If the Rosarians could pull off the trade without Federation interference, they surely could be tricky enough to cheat the Corollians. Although… it did seem to Azia that Pluummuluum could… take thoughts from her mind. (It had to have done, given the content of the dream it had given her.) Could it do so without touching? Or while suffering the headache and visual distortions caused by the threedy? If it could, it would know, surely, whether the Rosarians had negotiated in good faith.

When they accessed the tube leading to the hatch of their ship, they found a station security search in progress. Gerson Culley met them at the hatch and prevented their boarding. Azia still held the comforter. She remained calm as she recalled the search of the Emma G.

A woman wearing the uniform of the station’s security force joined them. She looked at Pluummuluum. “Major Haberkamp, sir. My apologies for the inconvenience. Federation Security asked that your ship be searched. As you know, this is a sensitive site for the Federation, requiring more stringent attention to security than most stations do. I’m afraid we have no choice but to agree to FS’s request.” She gestured at the hatch. “You have my personal assurance that it will be as neatly and discreetly conducted as possible.”

Pluummuluum bowed, then lightly touched Azia’s forehead. Azia said, “My principal thanks you for your courtesy, ma’am.” It had also suggested to her that Haberkamp was present to protect them from a setup, probably at the Rosarian delegation’s request.

“I must ask that you both submit to bioscans,” Gerson Culley, who had in no way acknowledged Haberkamp’s statement, said sharply.

The agent’s eyes narrowed when Azia regretfully gave up the comforter. “Is that what makes living with mold tolerable?” she said, sneering. “After seeing this ship, I can’t imagine how you could believe you want such a life.”

Azia said nothing. She thought about the kind of life Gerson Culley must lead and wondered how she could stand the homeless existence of a mobile agent attached to—at most—one human being. Someone chasing suspects from station to station surely could not have a family of any sort. The power and cliches of the Federation apparently made up for the desolation of such a life, so much so that she believed the abstraction of “citizenship” could tempt Azia. Azia wondered how that kind of abstraction could tempt anyone. The strange intimacy she shared with her bonder, while not her choice, touched her body and soul, and in fact kept them together, as Pluummuluum’s version of her mother had urged. It understood enough of herself and her family to enable them to speak together in a dream. And it was right, she absolutely knew, keeping body and soul together was everything, even if it meant alienation from her own species.

18.

While their ship was being searched, the transfer was made in orbit around a gas giant in the system where radio transmission was poor. The Corollians had put a small fast ship into orbit there days before Pluummuluum’s ship arrived. Once the Rosarians knew the deal was set, they sent a cruiser to hand over the cermetophage and collect the lyric crystals, vaccines, and various strains of viruses that, in addition to the germ stocks delivered directly at the station, made up their side of the exchange. The ship carrying the cermetophage reached jump point just as Azia was entering hypothermal stasis. She would wake, Pluummuluum had informed her, in Corollian space.

Waking in Corollian space, in a place more alien than she could imagine… The thought made her anxious, though not frantic. It would be difficult. But she had the beginnings of trust—trust of Pluummuluum, trust of herself. And she was curious, young, and strong. And most importantly, she was living, now, in the grammar of her choice—not her family’s, perhaps, but surely her own.

Humans never remember their dreams in hypothermal stasis, though it is known that at such times their neurons do occasionally fire. Though Azia’s dreams cannot be known, they might be easily guessed—of times past on the Emma G., of times to come on her bonder’s home world, of brilliant-winged creatures soaring over a world of oceans punctuated with delicate spires and spirals, of glittering green glop and its teeming, teasing pleasures. Azia may even have dreamed of meeting again with her virtual family in the space of one of her bonder’s dreams, telling them I’m going elsewhere, now, to a place that’s totally unknown, living in a grammar you never taught me much less gave me a name for. I choose it, yes—I choose life with the alien, I choose to live in strange new grammars.

I choose life with feathers and dreams.