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By the time the Port district hospital doctors announced their satisfaction with Elys’s health, and somebody adjusted her ankle brace to stop its squeaking, Alyansa’s imitation sun had set. The watch on Elys’s wrist had cracked and stopped at 17:13.
She no longer feared she’d pass out from dizziness or pain, and her thumbs now felt the way they had for most of her life. On the walk out to the street she kept closing her hands into fists and opening them, just to feel them. Taia walked so close beside her that she must’ve noticed the movement, but she didn’t comment on it.
The doctors also claimed to have fixed whatever bouncing Elys’s head off a car had done to her brain, although they’d given her a list of symptoms that should send her rushing back to the hospital if they appeared. Aside from a persistent ache in her forehead, she had more energy and less pain now than she’d had in weeks. And unlike the Republic equivalent, all this medical care was free.
Nobody had dropped dreams, so far as Elys could tell. She’d complied with the treatment because she wanted to, not because some chemistry was draining her of her will to resist. That was a nice change too.
Outside the hospital, the enormous Union Tower residential building near the city center bisected uncanny ripples of orbiting debris drawn together across the pitch-black night. The planet’s rings shimmered white, gray, and pale pink, reflecting light from an unseen sun. Dots and lighter circles in the rings must’ve been some of Mayari’s moons.
A Republic station would’ve decorated their dome like the sky on Earth. Elys had always felt more grounded under the honest dimness of the independent stations’ skies, like on Reznikov, where she grew up. Her older relatives claimed that the first thing the Republic changed was Reznikov’s sky.
Still, Mayari’s real sky wouldn’t be as beautiful as this one. Elys had crossed an unthinkably vast stretch of universe between Mars and here. The dots of small moons among the silent rings above her made her feel smaller than that long journey ever did.
Taia had stuck with her, despite the late hour and the sling that kept Taia from wearing her armor. Two on-duty mediators in full armor made up for that. Elys’s new protection escort walked far enough behind that their heavy footsteps blended into the delivery bots, public transit, and pedestrians around them.
Taia followed Elys’s gaze toward the stars. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Elys shut her mouth before she spouted any of the romantic clichés her brain suggested in response. Taia summoned another car for the brief ride into Renforcé district, and then they were under Mayari’s rings again.
Elys snuck glances at Taia walking beside her. One of the few streetlights the other pedestrians hadn’t activated lit as Taia and Elys approached, angled down so it wouldn’t dim the brilliant sky. Its low light glinted off Taia’s black earrings.
Using her pickup’s magnifying function, because every one of its functions reminded Elys that she was freer and safer than she’d been in two years, she took a closer look at the earrings. “What are those symbols on your ears?”
Taia touched one earring. Her short fingernails reflected the light too. “It’s Mayari. The outer circle with the black gems is the rings and the moons. The inner one’s the planet.” Now that she’d explained, the dots of tiny moons sparkled along the jewelry’s outer rings. “Everybody was wearing this design last year, but most people moved on. I still like it.”
“Me too.” Elys tilted her chin up as they walked on beneath an artist’s rendering of the same subject, cut through with extra rings of transit tracks. “You’re off duty now, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. If you need anything your assistant can’t get for you tonight, just ask those two nice folks.” Taia turned and waved to the armored escort behind them. The other mediators waved back.
The motion drew other pedestrians’ gazes to the armor. Instead of veering away from the mediators like Elys had seen them do earlier in the day, several people crossed the street to walk on the same side. Now that the city was making visible mistakes and reducing their station’s security, they wanted all that armor nearby. Which was one thing if Taia was in it, and another when it contained strangers hiding behind a small number of fake faces.
Taia was watching the pedestrians too. “I don’t remember the last time someone on our Not Welcome list even reached the space elevator. The CRU should’ve activated when that off-worlder grabbed your arm. The city didn’t even put them on alert until you were all in the car and witnesses were calling for help.
“I’m sorry, this has to be more frightening for you. But it scared us too. The city should’ve activated mediators in the marina too, and it didn’t, not until Vatirah was in the elevator and on her way down. We’re still piecing together how the Port mediators lost those other off-worlders in the elevator base. And we’re going to figure that out, and propose a policy solution to fix it even if the city... Well.” Taia sighed.
Elys had heard every word Taia said. Whatever issue the city had with physical security, it’d equipped Nisse with better audio filters than any Elys had used.
“Anyway, I’d like to walk you home.” Taia smiled and maybe blushed a little too, although the streetlights weren’t bright enough to be sure. “I’m professionally offended that we haven’t gotten you there once yet.”
Elys laughed politely, but the suggestion unsettled her. The public record system wouldn’t allow her to hide her address in Alyansa. Besides...
Her steps slowed. Taia had proven her intentions, again, by helping to subdue those hunters without the heavy armor her colleagues had worn. And now she was waiting for Elys to say something.
“This time I might make it all the way through the front door.” Taia’s bright laughter, even though what Elys said hadn’t been particularly funny, made Elys grin. “I really enjoyed the first two-thirds of today.”
“Oh?” Taia said. “You looked kind of angry all day.”
“That’s just my face. It was fun. Around Alyansa. With you.”
“Aw, thanks. Can I hug you real quick?”
Elys put all the warmth she could into the word “Yeah” while she tried to figure out why Taia felt the need to ask.
Taia gave her a squeeze around the shoulders with her uninjured arm. It was warm and firm despite the lack of armor in the loose shirt she wore. Maybe it lasted a little too long to be platonic, or that was Elys’s wishful thinking. Maybe Taia wasn’t into women, or romance, or Elys, or she hadn’t known Elys long enough to be interested, or she had a romantic commitment to somebody else, or Elys wasn’t making herself clear and Taia was being professional...
“I had fun too,” Taia said. “I don’t meet a lot of people who aren’t from here. It’s nice to look at Alyansa the way you see it.”
“Good. But I don’t want to keep you out if you’ve got people waiting for you.”
When Elys could bear to glance over at Taia, she looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be confused, amused, or sad. “I set up a cooker schedule for them, and Mama or someone else in the family has visited them at least once today. They’re half Mama’s dogs, really. I just keep them fed and switch out the cleaning bot every week so I can have one that’s not full of dog hair.”
Elys accepted Taia’s digital request to show her something. Two medium-sized dogs appeared, bouncing around in the street in front of them as the humans walked. One was short-haired and muscular, with a square face and bulging eyes. The other dog was longer, taller, and much hairier, with a pointed nose and ears.
Nisse appended text beside the visualization: Smells good! I want to bite it!
Elys laughed in delight. Although Nisse translated people’s speech for her often, this was the first time it’d translated an animal’s communication. Alyansans valued their canines so much that they made sure the city paid attention to dogs too, and helped digital assistants translate. Someone must’ve been holding treats out of the visualization area, to keep the dogs facing the person recording.
“That’s Troll and Mighty.” Taia beamed proudly at the visualization. “They’re rascals, but they’re my rascals.”
“Adorable,” Elys pronounced, a word which pleased pet owners and parents of children under fourteen. Taia smiled wider.
––––––––
The Renforcé district apartment that the city chose for Elys was near the massive Union Tower residential building. The lobby door reflected bruises darkening her forehead right up to her hairline. If Alyansan medicine had a quick fix for that, the Port district hospital doctors or Taia would’ve offered it by now.
On Elys’s floor, Taia walked at Elys’s pace past multicolored doors in a variety of styles. At her address, a bright blue and yellow crate sat beside a blue door that matched it. The crate said Welcome home! on the side and contained a bag of rice, a smaller bag of chocolate coins in gold and silver wrappers, dream pods themed around relaxation and refreshment, and coffee beans from the lobby café.
Behind them, the elevator dinged. Both Elys and Taia turned to confirm that it was Elys’s bodyguards of the evening. The mediators positioned themselves by the elevators. That’d take some getting used to.
“Okay, take the rice out and go in with that first, for good luck.” Taia held the apartment door open while the other two mediators stationed themselves midway between Elys’s doorway and the ones on either side of it.
Elys extracted the rice. “Is the key in here somewhere?”
Taia released the door to point at her pickup. “The doors read IDs and photophore patterns. If you need the extra sense of security,” which nothing would give Elys tonight, “you can make an access list and accept photophore scans only. If you want to have the apartment let in someone with signal impairment while you’re away, you can tell your assistant so. Oh, and you can set the delay duration and all that through your assistant too, if you’re worried about pets running out.”
Taia was assuming the city’s error hadn’t extended to its part in managing apartment doors. “I don’t keep pets that need a lot of space,” Elys said, “but, good to know.”
The door swung open to reveal a living room furnished with a couch that looked like nobody had ever sat on it before. Beyond it was Elys’s kitchen. The doors in the back wall might lead to her bathroom and bedroom. She was comparing it to her most recent residences in a prison cell and a passenger ship belonging to one of the universe’s smallest planetary governments, but that made the apartment feel like a whole world of her own.
The blank wall across from the couch would be perfect for displaying Hochberg visualizations of city assessments. The built-in cooker, assembler and cleaning units struck a practical balance between floor space and objects they’d make or clean. The assembler’s green light flashed, indicating that the designs Nisse had sent it earlier today were ready to wear. A round bot the size of both her hands laid flat whirred along an invisible path across the ceiling, cleaning despite a total lack of dust or dirt.
And there were windows. Pale light from somewhere above silhouetted darkened buildings against Mayari’s rings and an artful sprinkling of stars. Over them, a text alert from Nisse announced six policy proposals that Renforcé district now wanted Elys’s opinion on.
“Coins next.” Taia stood in the front doorway with the welcome crate under her good arm while she toed off her shoes and nudged them into an ankle-high cubby in the wall beside the door. “Scatter them around the living room.”
“Why?” Elys slipped her shoes off near the couch, put the rice by the cooker in the kitchen, and came back for the coins.
“More good luck!” Taia gestured with both hands in front of her like Elys needed a coin scattering demonstration. “You don’t want to start your first night in your new place with bad luck, do you?”
When Elys had distributed the candy coins around the living room, Taia said, “There. You’re home.”
She almost certainly meant that as a joke, which made Elys tearing up over it even more ridiculous than the reaction would’ve been otherwise.
Taia laid her hand on Elys’s shoulder. “It’s alright?”
“Yeah.” Elys had to force the word past the lump in her throat. It was worth it to make Taia smile.
“Here.” Taia picked a candy coin off the floor and handed it to Elys. “Now you can eat them, if you’re not allergic. That’ll make you feel better.” To Elys’s relief, the dreams were apparently optional.
She chewed the first thing resembling currency she’d seen on Mayari while she considered which apartment feature to compliment. Before she decided, Nisse appeared near her feet with someone’s profile and message above it. “Hey, my assistant found somebody in a big hobbyist hacker group who wants to talk.”
“The...” Taia swallowed her own bite of candy coin. “What? We have hackers here?”
“Oh yeah. This group calls themselves l’Assemblée Tordue, or they just use the @ symbol. I don’t see much permanent damage done on this summary... I’d have to read more to be sure, but they look like the right place to start asking about who could and would sabotage the city. Do you want to come with me to meet them tomorrow?”
“Are you feeling well enough for that?” Taia asked. “That was a serious injury you got today.”
“Absolutely.” No matter how sore and exhausted Elys felt, if she didn’t show City Support some progress soon, they’d kick her off-planet and she’d end up somewhere that’d make her pay for treatment of her next bounty-hunter-induced injury. Unlike Elys’s last concussion, this one no longer felt like she was in for weeks of painful boredom in bed, at least.
“Then yes, I’ll go. Let’s see what they have to say for themselves.”
Nisse put the bio and message on the wall beside a panel of MCAI test results. City Support had finished some of the anomaly handling tests Elys had recommended. Elys spotted a few strange choices in either the city’s options or the test itself.
City Support didn’t highlight them with any particular significance. They might’ve just been quirks. All MCAIs had some. Nothing in the report could cause the CRU deployment delays that’d almost gotten Elys kidnapped mere hours ago, but anomaly handling was difficult to test.
“You could stay, if you want,” in Elys’s own apartment, for however long this job lasted.
No matter how she’d interpreted Elys’s invitation, Taia’s smile suggested she was taking it well. “The dogs really do need an evening walk. And I have about eighty people asking how I’m doing with the arm and everything. But...” Taia tilted her head a little, looking at Elys like she was seeing her in a different sun’s light. “Ask me again when none of our bones are broken.”
The swell of anger at Taia’s injury wasn’t as strong as it had been in the hospital. That might’ve been Elys’s concussion at work. It was still infuriating that anyone could hurt someone so caring and well-intentioned.
“I’m so sorry you got caught up in that earlier, with those hunters.”
“It is still not your fault. I’m more worried about how they and their weapons got into Alyansa.” Taia retrieved her shoes from the cubby by the door and put them on using just her socked feet. “But the city has detectives looking into it now, so it’s officially not my problem.”
“No, that’d be me.”
“You’re not a problem! You’re a solution waiting to happen.”
Elys grinned at her and started adding visualizations to fill the blank spaces on the wall. She couldn’t rest while Taia was putting so much faith in her. “I’ll send you the location and time to meet that hacker when I have them.” Taia waved her good arm on the way out.