A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(55)

‘Okay, Jane, it’s time to plot our course,’ Alain said. Jane’s interface panel changed. There was a picture on it – a bunch of coloured circles with little curvy lines between. ‘These are the tunnels that can get us from here to Hashkath, the moon where Heshet lives. Can you figure out the shortest way to get there? Draw your finger from here to there to give it a try.’

Jane looked at the lines real careful, then at how they connected to the blinking circle they were supposed to get to. It reminded her of rewiring a circuit. Easy. She traced her finger along the screen, the path behind it turning blue.

‘Wow!’ Manjiri said. ‘First try! Good job!’

Pinch made animal sounds and clapped his hands. She hadn’t done much, but Jane felt good anyway.

‘Great!’ Alain said. ‘Now hit the autopilot button and we’ll be on our way! It’s the big red button in the middle.’

Jane saw the big red button. There were a lot of other buttons, too, and . . . oh no. All the buttons were marked with reading squiggles. Would these kids need her to push buttons fast? Did she have to be on task? Her stomach sank. ‘I can’t read,’ she said.

‘We know,’ Alain said in a voice that made her feel safe. He reached over and squeezed her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry! Everybody has to learn how. We’ll help you practise.’

‘This one says “autopilot”,’ Manjiri said, pointing at a big red button. ‘And this one says “stop”.’ She got a big grin. ‘And this—’ She pointed not at a button, but the long block on top of the console. ‘Do you know what this says?’

Jane pressed her lips together and shook her head.

‘That’s you,’ Manjiri said. ‘That’s how you spell “Jane”.’





SIDRA


Everything was gone for a while. When it came back, Blue was there, looking hugely relieved.

‘She’s awake!’ His face melted into a smile. ‘W – uh, welcome back,’ he said, squeezing the kit’s hand. Sidra wondered how long he’d been holding it. She had no record on that point.

There was the sound of someone getting up fast. Pepper appeared, placing a hand on Blue’s shoulder as she plunked herself into a chair. A chair. Tak’s chairs. They were in the tattoo shop.

Why were they in the tattoo shop?

‘Oh, stars,’ Pepper said. ‘Stars, it worked.’ Her head fell forward, pressing against the side of the kit. ‘Shit.’ She sat back up, quickly, her eyes darting over the kit’s face. ‘Are you feeling okay? Gimme a diagnostic.’

Sidra ran a systems check, as directed. Line by line, the results came back: Go. Go. Go. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and she felt it, too. ‘Though—’ She rifled through her memory files. ‘I don’t know how you got here. I don’t know when you got here. What time is it?’

‘A little after thirteen,’ Blue said. ‘You’ve, uh, you’ve been out for an hour.’

An hour. In Tak’s shop. And Pepper had told her to run a diag— oh, no.

The kit sat up, and Sidra looked around. The front shutters were drawn. The door was shut. Tak was leaning against a corner wall, as far away from them as he could be. He puffed his pipe, face taut, cheeks a pensive yellow.

He knew.

Sidra looked back to Pepper, away from Tak’s silent stare. ‘What happened?’ she whispered.

Pepper sighed. ‘So, as it turns out, nanobot ink doesn’t play nicely with your bots. Their signals interfered with the signals travelling from your core to the kit. It made everything flip out.’ Her eyes flicked to Tak, her gaze hard and careful. Sidra knew that look. It was the same look Pepper had when she was assessing something combustible. ‘Tak called us, and we . . . we figured it out. I—’ She frowned with discomfort ‘—I directed you to go into standby mode until all the bots were out.’

Sidra had no record of the directive, but she knew Pepper well enough to know that triggering a system protocol that forced Sidra to turn herself off would not sit right with her. ‘You had to,’ Sidra said. ‘I understand.’

Pepper shut her eyes and gave a single nod.

‘He re – um, removed the ink,’ Blue said, looking at Tak with a smile. ‘It was a – a real, uh, a real – a real big help.’ His tone was friendly – too friendly, and his words were sticking more than usual.

Tak gave a short, polite Aeluon smile that vanished almost as soon as it had appeared. His cheeks roiled with nervous conflict. He emptied the ash from his pipe, then began to refill it.

Pepper and Blue exchanged a worried glance. The same concern crept through Sidra. Tak knew, and they didn’t know him at all. I don’t even know him, Sidra thought. We had a nice conversation, and I confused that for knowing someone. So stupid. So stupid. And yet, of all the deadly serious things she was scared of in that moment – Tak calling the Port Authority, Pepper and Blue getting in trouble, the likelihood of the kit being deactivated with her still in it – the situational variable that was stuck in the loudest, most unhappy processing loop was the thought of Tak no longer wanting to hang out with her. So stupid.

‘Can we go home?’ she said quietly, doing her best to not meet Tak’s eye.

Pepper turned to the shopkeeper. ‘Listen. Tak. I’m truly grateful for your help today. We all are. And I’m really sorry for the scare you went through. Blue and I – we take responsibility for that.’