Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(58)

“So. Besides these pilgrims, how many more are there?”

“None.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“Thank you,” he said. I think he meant it.

Over the next two weeks, I pestered the shit out of Nadim.

We had to finish analyzing all the data before we could go on to the next stop on the Tour, which for me mainly boiled down to prepping samples, making minute logs of the times and places we’d taken them from the surface, and sending on the results. We were far from home, so it would take—according to Nadim—a year for the signal to reach Earth. Everything had to be packaged properly and stored. The physical samples would be transferred once we came back at the end of the Tour.

Added to our routine maintenance, it left surprisingly little time for unrelated tasks, like, say, imploring a sentient ship to spill the remainder of his secrets. Since he’d confirmed that there was one race of aliens thriving enough to conduct galactic pilgrimages, it stood to reason there would be more.

The one thing I didn’t do was cut off contact with him again. Maybe it would’ve gotten me what I wanted, but since I knew it frightened Nadim, that would make me no better than Typhon, whipping him to get my way.

No better than my father. And damned if I’d ever go down that road.

Tired of failure, and just generally tired, I trudged down the corridor to Beatriz’s room. It was late in the evening, or the Icelandic equivalent, so I didn’t know if she’d be up. I rapped twice, and only went in when she keyed open the door. “Can’t sleep?”

I shrugged. “I should probably work out more. What’re you doing?”

“Recording a personal log.” She seemed slightly abashed to admit it.

So far, I’d only done one, and it was like ten seconds long. Mostly I felt like a jackass talking to myself when I could be learning every humanly accessible inch of Nadim. Privately I admitted I might be obsessed. Slightly. Okay, a lot.

“Do you mind if I come in?”

“No, please.” She stepped back, and I came into a room that was nothing like mine.

Not only did her room feel warmer, it smelled better too, faint hints of dark chocolate and cinnamon. She’d brought some small, colorful pillows and a picture of the Rio skyline at night. Those touches made it . . . personal. “Nice.”

“Make yourself at home.”

I read that offer as sincere and collapsed on her bunk. “You can finish the log if you want. I won’t make any noise.”

“If you’re sure.”

She went back to the table, where she’d set up her H2, and resumed. Since she was speaking in Portuguese, I only caught the occasional word, not enough for a ballpark translation. Certain phrases echoed close to Spanish, which I’d heard a lot of in the Zone. That took me back to listening to old ladies haggle in the street market.

To entertain myself, I studied up on Nadim’s circulatory system. Being a human doctor wasn’t my dream, but Leviathan physiology was considerably more intriguing.

When Bea fell silent, I asked, “You done?”

“For now. I have a lot of thoughts.”

“Me too.” I decided on impulse to test the waters, see how she’d react to what Nadim had told me. It wasn’t like he’d sworn me to secrecy, and maybe if I enlisted Bea’s help, we could coax some more information out of him. There could be terabytes of forbidden knowledge taunting me from behind a firewall. “You remember how I flipped out that day on Firstworld?”

“How could I forget?”

“Well, when I asked you to sweep, I spotted a second burn circle in the flora.” At her questioning look, I added, “Where another ship likely put down.”

Her eyes widened. Her mind went in the same direction mine had. “Did we cross paths with another Honor? Good thing you didn’t shoot them. Try explaining that in your personal log.”

I laughed. “That doesn’t make sense, though. If they were human, why run? Why not say hello?”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“I got Nadim to admit we weren’t alone down there, Bea.” She just stared at me. “Whoever was down there with us, they weren’t human.”

Since she was bright, it didn’t take her long to come to the right conclusion. But she didn’t take it well. She bounced to her feet and paced, rubbing her hands together in what psychologists liked to call a self-comforting gesture. Mumbling in Portuguese, she eventually settled on, “Are you serious?” in English.

“From what I gather, it wasn’t supposed to happen. Are you game to find out more?”

She was already shaking her head violently, which surprised me. “There have to be reasons we’re kept in the dark. It’s . . . security clearance, or on a need-to-know basis.”

“So? They didn’t hurt us, we didn’t hurt them. Help me talk Nadim into opening some of the files to show us what these aliens look like?”

“No. Leave it, Zara.” That was sharp, coming from Beatriz, and after a moment she said, “I’m sorry, but I just . . . I need to rest.”

Didn’t take a genius to figure out that she wanted me gone. It was possible she’d change her mind in time. Space travel hadn’t immediately enraptured her either, but she’d come around. With those silent reassurances, I said good night and headed for my room in low spirits.