“Yes.”
“The operative word is once, Counselor. Once and only once. Even then, it was cookie-cutter heterosexuality, which didn’t go anywhere substantial until this body”—Oscin gestured at himself—“left him alone with Skye in what his limited imagination was able to consider privacy. It wasn’t, of course; our gestalt was still involved even if this male body could not be. But from what you’re saying, Lastogne now rationalizes what happened between us as his own skillful seduction of Skye behind Oscin’s back, which is of course an absolute impossibility and a ridiculous insult. And now, to make matters worse, he seems to be blaming what I am as the handiest excuse for Skye’s lack of interest in a sequel. Please. Take what he said as the self-serving garbage it is. I’m not an exclusive club. I just don’t want him as a member.”
It was an interesting fresh take on Peyrin Lastogne, who had tried so hard to paint himself as a distant, cynical observer of humanity. I wondered whether he’d taken on that persona for my benefit. It was possible. One thing I’d learned, from being such a sincere bitch for so many years, is that some people wear misanthropy only as a fashion statement.
Lastogne could be one of those.
But maybe not. Oscin’s revelation established only that the man was not, entirely, the island he claimed to be. He was just a deluded, vindictive ex-lover. So what? He could still be a son of a bitch. Or even a murderer.
I said, “So if you didn’t want to talk about him, what did you want to talk about?”
Oscin switched gears with no visible difficulty. “I don’t know how to say this, Counselor. Considering where this conversation was a few minutes ago, it’s a risky thing to say. But, you know, the individuals Oscin and Skye were once very angry people. They both felt trapped in a place they did not want to be, in a life they did not want to live, and they made themselves miserable sharing their resentment with anybody else who could have been allowed into a world that, as far as they were concerned, allowed room for only the two of them. After a while they had so much anger between them that they started to direct it at each other. They began to fight. To leave scars.” For a moment his face seemed to shift, and became no longer his own but a reflection of how Skye might have looked were her body the one telling the story. “They didn’t link just so they could be indentured together. They linked because they were a few harsh words from breaking up forever. They linked because joining together as this new creation greater than the sum of its parts was their only alternative to walking out of each other’s lives and feeling incomplete for as long as they lived.”
I pushed myself away from the wall, tested my ability to stand alone without help, and found that I was now as steady on my feet as I ever managed to be. “Why tell me?”
He cocked his head again, and flashed a secret smile at himself. “I don’t have much time, Counselor. Skye and Lastogne are coming back. They’re not far away. I don’t think Skye will be able to delay him for more than another minute or so.
“So here’s the little I have time for. I’m an expert at angry people. I know that they come in many different flavors and I’ve learned to recognize what they are. Like Gibb and Lastogne. Like Warmuth and Santiago. Like some of the exiles you’re about to meet.” He had not faced me at all since beginning this speech, focusing instead on some distant point somewhere beyond me, beyond the blue walls, perhaps even beyond the territories encompassed by One One One. “Like yourself. I don’t know all the details yet, but I really don’t need AIsource help to feel like I already know you.”
Lastogne had said something much like that yesterday, and I’d reacted with little more than wry acknowledgment that he was right. Others in my life had confronted me with words to the same effect and I’d displayed boredom, defiance, even pride.
Oscin Porrinyard made me want to hit him.
But before I could go through with it, Skye and Lastogne turned the corner, at a junction some fifty meters up-corridor. Lastogne still wore his grimace-as-smile, and Skye walked with a sprightly bounce to her step that from this vantage point seemed deliberate mockery of whatever he’d had to say to her.
When I caught her eye, she winked.
It had to be meant for me. She wouldn’t have needed gestures to communicate with her other half.
When I glanced at Oscin, for confirmation, he was winking too.
My moment of anger faded, replaced by open confusion.
What the hell was all this about?
9. EXILES
The Dip Corps ship, an unlovely bullet bearing the service’s much-parodied trademark of a starscape in the outline of an extended human hand, sat berthed at the far end of One One One’s many hangars, a glowing, blue-walled chamber large enough to hold four ships its size.
The chamber had more than enough room to house my transport as well, but the AIsource had berthed that in another chamber. Why, beyond some sense of courtesy toward visitors who’d arrived at different times, I didn’t know, and didn’t particularly care. A number of inflatable sleepcube tents, perfect for wilderness accommodations, and just odd in this context, sat just outside the ship, each glowing from a soft internal light. There was also a portable table, flanked by a pair of stasis crates pressed into service as chairs. It looked like a place people lived, but nothing at all like home, not even as much of a home as the indentures had made of Hammocktown.
I suppose it was close enough to camping, for people deprived of any outdoors beyond a vast empty room with a spongy floor and luminous blue walls.
The air was warmer than the neutral setting preferred by most space docks, warm and humid in a manner that suggested, without actually providing, the presence of an overhead sun. It was the kind of environment I liked: all straight lines.
“The poor bastards sure make themselves comfortable,” said Lastogne.
“It’s no fun for them,” said the Porrinyards.
The ship’s hatch opened, revealing a tanned, muscular man with shoulder-length black hair. He was stripped to his waist, the planes of his chest shining with enough perspiration to suggest a recent workout. He had a massive nose and tiny gray eyes which seemed to light on Skye before turning, with sad self-knowledge, to me. “You’re from the Judge Advocate.”
“Brilliant deduction,” said Lastogne, dripping more than his usual concentration of scorn. “Counselor Andrea Cort, meet Exophysiologist Third Class Nils D’Onofrio, current status inactive. De facto commander of the three height-sensitives confined to this chamber on Mr. Gibb’s orders.”
D’Onofrio offered me a hand, kept it extended, then let it drop, a grim disappointment already burning in eyes that knew the cruel emotion well. “I see you share Mr. Gibb’s attitude toward us untouchables.”
“Not at all,” said Lastogne. “She just hates everybody.”
D’Onofrio gave me an appraising look. “Really, Peyrin. You must feel like you just found your soul ma—”
I cut him off. “Mr. Lastogne doesn’t speak for me, sir. It’s true that I try to avoid physical contact whenever possible, but the number of people I go to the trouble of actually hating comprise a very small and very select group, who had to earn their places there. Deal with me properly and I promise you we’ll have a pleasant, professional relationship.”
D’Onofrio studied me for signs of mockery. “I’ll take that at face value, Counselor. How do you want to do this? You want to question us together, or one at a time?”
“Together will be fine, for now.”
D’Onofrio acknowledged that with a nod and returned to the ship, a portrait of wounded dignity.