“How long was I out?”
“About half an hour,” Jim said. “How are you feeling?”
“Might skip my workout. This shit’s tiring.”
“It’s happening more often, isn’t it?”
“Nope.”
“Because it seems like it’s happening more often.”
“Well, yeah it is. But not because anything’s going bad. The doc’s pushing harder.”
Jim looked at the autodoc, confused. Amos shook his head.
“Okoye. She’s running on full burn trying to make sense of things out at Adro, and since all of us with—” He pointed to his eyes. “We’re all connected at the back. I get the spillover.”
“Really?”
“Pretty sure. Every time I get the wigglies, I come back up knowing more.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing useful,” Amos said. “There’s holes in the spectrum where the idea of being in a place breaks down. And there’s a kind of light that can think. I mean, it’s interesting I guess, but it doesn’t get the tools stowed.”
“Can you tell if she’s making progress?”
“It’s not like it’s a tightbeam. We don’t talk about stuff,” Amos said, then frowned. “Not exactly, anyway. More like I’m listening to someone doing shit in the next cabin over. And . . . You know how it is when there’s people in the room with you, and even if you’re not looking at them, you still know they’re there? It’s like that. There’s always three of us.”
“The girl and her brother,” Jim said.
“Not sure about that, but there’s three of us. I know it’s a pain in the ass with me getting messed up like this, but I don’t think there’s much I can do about it. I mean, besides train Tiny so she can cover for me.”
Jim was about to say I’m not sure I want a sixteen-year-old mechanic in charge of keeping us alive when a happy bark sounded from the hallway. A moment later, Muskrat and Teresa came in. The girl was carrying a tube from the galley in one hand and a drinking bulb in the other. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun that wouldn’t get in her eyes when they went on the float. Her mag boots were turned off, but she was wearing them. The dog was grinning and wagging her tail in a wide circle.
“Feeling better?” Teresa asked.
Jim was astonished by her casual, matter-of-fact manner. Even though he’d been crewed up with her for almost a year, some part of his mind wouldn’t let go of the memory of her as she’d been when he first met her on Laconia: a too-serious child with the weight of the empire on her shoulders, but still a child. She was old enough now to take long-term apprenticeship contracts, old enough to claim emancipation and her own rights on basic if she’d lived on Earth, old enough to see her only friend in the world suffer a massive seizure and take it in stride.
“I’m working my way back up,” Amos said.
“I got you white kibble and lemonade. Salt, sugar, and water. I figured, you know, electrolytes.”
Jim’s stomach shifted at the thought of food, and he wasn’t sure if it was hunger or nausea or a little of both.
“Thanks,” Amos said, holding out his hand. She slapped the tube smartly into his palm like she was giving him a tool. “You take the stress inventory?”
“It’s where I’m headed now,” she said, then turned toward Jim for the first time, met his gaze, and nodded before she left. Muskrat pushed over, demanding a scratch behind the ears from both Jim and Amos before trotting back after Teresa. If the old dog was having hip trouble after the hard burn cycles, Jim couldn’t see it.
“What’s on your mind, Cap?”
“Thinking what it would be like to be sixteen and important enough that people kill each other over you.”
“Yeah. It’s gonna fuck her up,” Amos agreed, amiably. “We did the only thing we could, though.”
“Keeping her?”
“Yeah.”
“I know,” Jim said with a sigh. “It’s going to be a problem, though. I don’t see Tanaka giving up.”
“She reminds me of Bobbie,” Amos said as if he was agreeing.
“Naomi is wondering if Trejo was always going to double-cross us.”
“You don’t?” Amos sucked at the tube of kibble and nodded for Jim to go on.
“I’ve never known Trejo to lie. I’ve never known Duarte to lie either, and he was the personality that set the tone for all of this. He was grandiose. He was ruthless. He was a genius at a couple of things and under the misapprehension that it meant he was smart about everything. But in his mind, he was doing the right thing.”