For Want of a Latke

“So,” Gil said, pausing, “what is this again? Why did we grab it?” Mel sighed, but Lehr spoke:

“We don’t know what it is. We grabbed it because the jarfliesA slang term for tettices, the extensively psychically altered work drones employed by Hesper Technologies throughout the Eos star system. For an in-depth examination of their social and economic role in the system's history, see my upcoming book, Iterated Frontiers: A Survey of Corporate Colony-Systems and Stations. wanted it, and we have an interest in keeping it out of their hands. At least until we figure out what it is.” Pat shrugged, moving other things she’d bought ashore while the rest of the crew had been having their little adventure.

“We grabbed it,” she said, “because it’s a couple kilos of platinum. Anything else is gravy.” Lehr shook his head.

“It’s probably not more than two kilos—it feels heavy because it’s artfulAn adjective referring to an item or place with associated mindware, originating in and associated with the tradition of "thoughtcraft" centered on the cryptic text Ymnes Odde & Vertuose (members of which are known colloquially as Yovites)..” Pat raised an eyebrow. “Cunning? Clever? It’s clearly got mindware attached to it.” She nodded.

“It might be PrevColloquial term for the alien civilization known as the Previous or the Bygones, who seem to have vanished centuries before humans arrived in the Eos system, for reasons not yet clear to xenoarchaeologists.,” they all looked at Mel, “though probably not—don’t get your hopes up. The jarflies want it bad, they sent a whole flight after it. We should bring it to an expert, someone who can tell us what it is. If it’s Prev, at least.”

“If it is,” said Gil, cautiously, “wouldn’t it be worth a fortune? Prev mentechUmbrella term for technology incorporating psionic components. is scarce.”

“It’s scarce because HesperHesper Technologies, the corporation behind the initial human settlement of the Eos system. By no means the largest of mentech manufacturers, but locally very powerful. has all of it,” Lehr said, grim. “We have no idea how much of it there actually is. They claim rights to all of it, something to do with hitting the system first. Interstellar law doesn’t actually work that way, but it’s not like anyone is going to call them on it—the precedent would be catastrophic for corp control of xenarkXenoarchaeology. in other systems and consequently the entire mentech industry.”

“Damn.” Gil looked longingly at the orb, tracing its intricate grooving with his eyes, following lines down, paths into the tangled depths of its subsurface complexity. It seemed like he was walking along a narrow path, a smooth silver road sloping and twisting into richly fragrant darkness.

“Gil?” Pat looked at him, concerned. He blinked.

"Uh. Nothing, I'm fine. Wait, so if Hesper thinks they own all this stuff—would we even be able to sell it? If it is Prev, I mean." Mel grimaced.

"Yeah, we definitely can't sell it on Boreas. I wouldn't want to book it to Emathion, the lanes what they are and moorage what it is over there. I think EurusThird planet in the Eos system, a bit warmer than the Earth. is our best bet." Lehr cocked his head.

"Don't they have a presence on Eurus?"

"Sure, but they don't own it. If we go somewhere that keeps them on a short leash, like PetheAn autonomous religious community on Eurus. or ChatzenAn independent city and the land surrounding it. The Chatzen patch is one of several on Eurus that sharply curtails corporate rights to protect its local interests., we shouldn't have an issue. I mean, as long as they don't know we have it. We should keep it quiet." Pat perked up.

"Ooh, let's do Chatzen. I've been hearing about it from Gil for years." Gil shrugged.

"It's fine. I don't really care." Pat gave him a baffled look.

"You grew up there!"

"Yeah, but there's not much for me there anymore." Pat nodded, but seemed doubtful. Lehr was looking something up on his pad.

"Chatzen's cheaper to moor at, let's do that."

"Sure," said Gil, "as long as you don't mind how much the river stinks, I guess."

***

The girl rushed about her room, packing no clothes save a change of underwear; anything she wore in the Midden would get filthy almost immediately, anyway. She didn't care enough to write the notionsA notion is a mindware program. Depending on its function, it may also be referred to as a routine or a number of other more specific terms. to keep her clothes clean, she was using that attention elsewhere. She brought a mentech camplight she'd built, which could be narrowed to a spotlight or broadened to a lantern with simple mental controls; a book or three, on paper this time (nothing too salacious or subversive, but she'd grown to passively resent the idea of some mentech manufacturer knowing what she'd been reading on her pad); and a magnetic goGo (known also as weiqi or baduk) is an Earthly strategy boardgame, involving the placement of black and white pieces at intersections on a grid. It is a game of relatively simple rules and deeply complex emergent strategy. set. She'd gotten the impression that it was interested in games, though it hadn't said as much. She wanted to see if she could get it to learn go, so she'd found a text file which explained the rules and basic strategy.

She looked at the smooth miniature brick of metal on her desk. She didn't know what it contained—wouldn't until her contact returned it to her—but then again, neither did the Hesper employee she stole it from.

Hesper didn't have much presence in the Chatzen patch—just a small office—and they tried to keep a low profile. Locals didn't like them, so they had obtained an exemption from the company uniform policyMany corporations maintain strict policies around the public behavior of their employees; these kinds of cultural controls help sustain a corporate identity in the minds of employees and clients alike.; but they were easy enough to spot, she'd learned, when you knew what to look for.

They never carried themselves like a local—never knew their way around the streets or the people. Hesper rotated them with regularity, and intercepted ymailsYmail is a type of digital correspondence system using mentech networks collectively referred to as the y-net. The Y in question is yliaster, the only known psychic superconductor, whose discovery some three centuries prior completely revolutionized mentech. made mention of Chatzen being an unusually stressful office. She thought of how most people she knew thought of them, and it made sense. Nobody wanted them there. They didn’t speak like locals, but they tried not to draw attention to themselves. Like a suspiciously quiet tourist: someone here with sinister motives. Which, she supposed, they probably were.

This one had made it easy; she’d seen him walking out of the Hesper office by the rear entrance. No one used that door who wasn’t an employee; they used some kind of mentech authentication. Maybe keyed to implants. She couldn’t get in if she’d wanted to, but her contact said they didn’t need to.

As she'd tailed the Hesper guy, she'd pulled the previous membrickMemory brick, portable psychic information storage. Often shortened just to "mem"; bricks are the most common form, but there are memsticks and memcoins and so on. she'd stolen from her pocket, and looked at the back pocket of his baggy locally-made pants. As he'd passed by the cafe, she'd run a routine she'd written at the start of all this. It had latched onto the membrick in her hand and followed her gaze, finding its twin in the man's pocket. Pulling the membrick from her hand, it carried it over to the man's pocket, where it rapidly swapped the two. The new brick floated back to her, slotting precisely back between her thumb and bent forefinger where its sister had been a moment before. The man hadn't noticed the switch, and continued walking. It had been all too easy.

She tucked the mem into her bag. Hesper doubtless knew the first one had gone missing, but ever since then she'd replaced each with the previous, stocked with appropriately-formatted dummy data provided by her contact. The stolen data made it fairly easy to fake. She worried that they'd insert some passphrase that her friend would unknowingly erase from the data and thereby give away their interference. Her contact didn’t seem to think it was likely, but she’d gradually made plans to disappear if they caught on.

She eyed the larger bag stored under her bed, but decided to leave it.

***

“The way an o-driveOrectic drive, the most common form of faster-than-light mentech ship engine. works,” he said, “is by amassing a sanitized, prealigned motive charge in a psychic cumulator—kind of like a battery—and discharging it gradually into an assemblage of components that use transmotive converters and logicked components to transform the original intent of the orectic charge into the intent to arrive at our destination.”

“Wait wait, slow down, I lost you at—“

“Fancier o-drives—the generations that have come out since the y-boomThe explosion in mentech development and interstellar prospecting following the discovery of yliaster.—have parallel banks of cumulators that let you charge from multiple orectics, or multiple motives from a single orectic, to say nothing of y-drivesYliaster drives, expensive ship engines making use of substantial amounts of yliaster, allowing for nearly-instantaneous travel across great distances., which—“

“Look, stop. Just give it to me in plain language.”

“You know how orectic thoughtcraftOrectics is the field of psionics involving the use and manipulation of desire and intentionl; "thoughtcraft" is a term for psionics popularized by Yovites, students of the Ymnes Odde & Vertuose. works, right? You want something enough in just the right way, and your subtle fieldYovite term for the psychic field emanated by humans and other living organisms.—“

“Yeah, yeah. Like how telekinesis works. Got it.”

“O-drives store up that energy—from an orectically operant person wanting something just so—and tweak the motive it carries to ‘I want to get where we’re going’. The drive’s components channel and amplify the charge to the point where it actually moves the ship towards the destination, potentially even faster-than-light.”

“Guess you gotta want something really bad.” The engineer standing by him sighed and pressed a temple with two fingers.

“No. The intensity of the desire doesn’t affect the speed of the ship, which is set by the computer, it—“

“But intensity of desire affects magnitude of orectic charge, so presumably a more intense desire charges the cumulator faster—“

“—Well, yes, but—“

“—and while it’s official procedure on most ships to have sufficient charge in the cumulator before departure to make it to the destination, in common practice—“

“—people often charge as they go. Yes. Fine, alright. If you’re traveling with an empty cumulator at transluminal speeds, yes, you have to really really want whatever it is you’re wanting. And if you stop, the ship drops subluminal.”

“Motive doesn’t have to be related to travel, right? Could be anything?”

“Yes, although intents more congruent with arriving at the destination are easier to sanitize and align, and so conversion into usable charge is more efficient.”

***

“Do you have your stuff ready for school?” Ladya called from down the hall. Moxie could smell something all the way from her room, a fresh green smell. Her mother seemed to feel she had to overcompensate for selling greasy food all day; Moxie just hoped it wasn’t another smoothie gritty with seeds.

“Yes, mom,” she lied, hefting the bag they’d gotten her for her school pad and other supplies. She walked out into the front room to show her mother her packed bag. After bestowing a brief nod of approval, Ladya rushed out the door. A moment later Moxie heard the cart’s engine whir up, and she was alone with the smoothie.

Moxie thought back to their conversation the night before.

Don’t go in there, her mother had said, it’s dangerous. Kids die in there.

Idiots die in there, she’d said, and regretted it; the look on her mother’s face reminded her that her mother had lost a childhood friend in the Midden, to a taunting dare, a slip on slick rock.

She needed to return; whatever she’d met in there, whatever she’d begun, was more important than school; of that much, she was certain.

***

Gil thought back to the lesson in o-driving he’d received from Lehr earlier.

“Are you sure I should be—“

“Look,” Lehr didn’t turn from the drive console, “Yes, the captain's our driver. He's burnt out. He needs to sleep. If we don’t keep moving, the jarflies will be on us in maybe an hour. They don’t need to rest. We depart in twenty minutes tops—you charge now, or you don’t get breaks later.”

“She.”

“Hm?”

“Mel—“

“Don’t you read his semipubSemipublic journal. Common practice among younger generations, built on the foundation of that venerable Earthly cultural practice, the blog.? I thought he gave the whole crew the password.”

“I have the password, I just forget to keep up with it.”

“He’s moved into putrefactioSuggests that Mel is rebisexual, a personal identity label indicating a somewhat esoteric relationship to gender. Many use frameworks built on alchemical or mystical terminology to express the ongoing process of gender development in their lives. May be connected to certain Yovite psychic practices, but resources on the subject are scarce; the community is tight-knit and somewhat secretive.. He/him, for now.” Gil nodded, then furrowed his brow.

“What do I focus on, though? Like. Can I just think about getting away from—“

“Fuck no, Gil, we went over this. If you just focus on getting anywhere far from them, the charge will be a pain to align—“

“—and we won’t keep speed, sure, yeah.”

“Isn’t there anything back on Eurus you want? See old friends? Old haunts?” Gil looked thoughtful, then shook his head.

“None of my friends are still on that damn planet—the ones who aren’t aboard with us are dead or fled offworld. Some of them both.” Lehr bowed his head.

“Sorry, Gil, I didn’t think about—“

“No, no, it’s okay.” He lifted his head, smiling. “I hate the place, anyway. It’s kind of nice to know I don’t have anything waiting for me back—ah fuck, what’s that? It smells delicious.”

“It’s not nice! Fuck! Look, we don’t have time to eat right now. I think Pat’s making something with onions. Charge now, eat during your break. We need to figure something out that won’t be totally screwed on alignment.” Gil turned to look at the corridor leading to the galley.

“I don’t know, man, that smells good. You sure it’s just onions? I’m not even that hungry, but—”

“No, I don’t know.” Lehr sat on the stool by the console and held his head in his hands. “I don’t want to be a jarfly, Gil. That’s—I think I might rather be dead.”

“You think they’d kill us?”

“I’m saying I hope they’d kill us.”

“Well, I don’t. Maybe it’s not so bad being a tettix. Damn, I smell the fat too. You know what it makes me think of—ah, what is it?”

“Not so bad? You know they’re brainwashed and lose control of their bodies, right? Logics and shit—they only get to drive the old meatsuit if they stay in line. One wrong move and bam—someone else at the wheel.”

“Look, Lehr, I don’t know, I’m just saying shit. I can’t stop thinking about food.” He took a deep breath through his nose, closing his eyes. “Oh, that’s it—smells just like the fritter stand on Hart and Roste—you know the one I mean?”

“Fuck’s sake, Gil, it’s just oil and—wait, that’s it.”

“What?”

“Where’s that stand, Gil?”
Hart Road, just off Roste Street?” Lehr squeezed the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“Where’s that?”

“Oh, I thought you knew that area—it’s just across the river from the conservatory, you must have—“

“It’s in Chatzen.”

“Well, yeah—“

“Which is on Eurus.” Gil took a second, then lit up with understanding.

“Oh, yeah, true.” He laughed, embarrassed. “Guess you better bring in some of whatever Pat’s making, get that smell in here. I’ll zip us right off to Eurus, no problem.”
“You can’t eat it, though. You stop being hungry, there goes our gas.” After a pause, Gil glanced at the door again.

“…I mean, I’d still want to stop by that stand—“

“We need you hungry, Gil. We need the urgency. I’ll get the food, but I’m strapping you in first.”

“What?” Lehr gestured to the cuffs built into the arms of Gil’s seatSome older models of ship included restraints for o-drivers, who often faced cruel working conditions. Before the inefficiencies inherent in aligning motive charges produced under duress were well-understood, it was not uncommon to strap in a driver and release them only on the condition of traveling some predefined distance; the desire to be freed was not completely misaligned, and so the charge was usable.. “You said nobody uses those anymore! The Nimrod’s just old!” Lehr shrugged, walking over to his friend.

“It is. Mel never needs ‘em. But they seem perfect for this, don’t you think?” Gil blushed deeply, but allowed Lehr to bind his wrists.

“I—" He paused.

“Why so bashful, anyway? We’ve used cuffs beforeI.e., for sexual purposes..”

“Yeah, in your quarters! On you!”

“No one else is on the bridge anyway, who cares. Unless you want me to bring Pat back with me?” Lehr’s voice was teasing. He knew Gil had a bit of a fondness for the galley cook.

“You bring her in here and I won’t be thinking about her cooking.”

“Oh my! How very bold of you, first mate.” Lehr draped himself delicately across Gil’s lap.

“I don’t mean—I just—I’ll be really embarrassed—“ Lehr burst into laughter, standing back up.

“Rest easy, mate. I’ll grab a plate and be back—alone. You take some deep breaths and get hungry.”

Lehr reentered with a steaming plate of some kind of starchy pancakes. Pat peeked in by the door, and waved briefly at Gil, raising her eyebrows and stifling a laugh. Gil smiled sarcastically, but could feel himself blushing deeply. She dipped back out of the room, and Gil closed his eyes and took a slow breath, calming down. Unfortunately it was a breath rich with the smell of fat, onions, and potatoes. His stomach gurgled loudly, and Lehr laughed again. He put the plate down on the console desk near Gil, then seemed to realize something.

“I forgot the sauce! I’ll be right back, darling.” He strode off the bridge again quickly, and Gil’s eyes flitted back to the plate as soon as he was out of the room. He stared intently, weighing his options, then tried moving his arms in the restraints. Barely any give, though the cuffs were broad enough to not be uncomfortable on his wrists. He fixed his eyes on the pancakes again.

Gil had never done much telekinesis, though he might theoretically be good at it. Testing told him he was an OLS-typeA popular typology types people by their relative inclination for the three major fields of psionics: orectics, dealing with desire and intention; logics, dealing with information and the manipulation thereof; and somatics, dealing with the body and other biological systems. The science supporting this popular understanding is shaky at best, but it is not uncommon to ascribe all kinds of personal traits to one's type., but in practice he’d only done orectics in combination with logics, in basic autopsych routinesAutomatic psychic processes to perform simple mental or physical tasks, like calculating tip at a restaurant or brushing one's teeth. or interacting with mentech. He tried to remember the workshops and talks he’d attended about telekinesis. He took another deep breath, taking in the scent of the food. He had to want it.

He reached out with his mind, and felt it extend—he didn’t know much about the mechanics of thoughtcraft, which had never especially interested him, but it felt like reaching out with a limb he didn’t have. He felt it stretch to the desk, a long tendril of solid intention. He couldn’t see it or feel things with it—but knew precisely where it was. It snaked over to the pancakes, and he managed to worm the tip of it under the top patty, coiling his hunger to form a thin disk under its object.

He gasped, watching the latke float half an inch or so above its brethren, but his concentration broke, dissolving his tendril of force, and the prize flopped back down on the stack. He began again, and his progress was much faster. Once he started hovering the latke over to him, he saw it slide around on top of the platform, which seemed to have little friction. If he could wrap the tendril around the top to—

Lehr reentered with a little dish of a thick sauce. The pancake floated about an inch above the rest, and slid slowly through the air towards the restrained first mate.

“Ah ah ah!” He walked over and snatched the food from the air. “Save your effort for the cumulator.” He keyed in a sequence on the console, flipped a switch, and Gil felt his desire flow into an attractor above his head. He tried again to extend a mental tendril, but no sooner had he extended the barest nub of want from his mind than it was dissolved and whisked away into the bowels of the ship’s engine.

Lehr sat down in his lap, bearing the pancake, the sauce, and a smile. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

***

As the girl walked across town, her heart pounded an anxious rhythm. She felt the membrick heavy in her pocket, weighty beyond its actual mass, full of stolen data. She was sure no one knew she had it—even the Hesper guy she’d taken it from hadn’t noticed her make the swap. She’d replaced it with an identical Hesper-branded membrick, and while it was full of dummy data, it was encrypted—like the one she had stolen—requiring higher clearance than he had. She turned west two blocks before the walk, even though no one should be walking it this early.

She fingered the brick in her pocket, sweat making her fingertips slide across the smooth metal. She didn’t know how her contact could crack the Hesper data—it was notoriously difficult—but it wasn’t like she had a lot of opportunities to ask questions of it. What matters is it could—they’d made a few of these hand-offs already, and it shared the decrypted contents of the bricks with her when she brought the next one. It was a mercy the local broodI.e., of tettices. They seem to organize into semiautonomous local groups, when not requisitioned for some specific task. kept out of Chatzen patch; they would have caught her by now, she had no doubt. She reached the edge of town; Eos was just beginning to rise, but the system was mid-eclipseSince the Eos system is a binary star system with one star completely occluded by a Prev megastructure, every planet in the system regularly experiences eclipses where Tithon (the aforementioned megastructure) obscures Eos. On Eurus, they happen every few weeks and last a couple days. and it would be dim all day. She started down into the Midden, the mud squelching softly under her boots.

As she wound her way through the pools and bends of the Midden, she wondered what it would have for her this time. Data for data, sure, but they had another deal: she brought it food and it gave her anything useful it found in the caves. She assumed it found them, anyway; people didn’t go missing down there often enough for it to be robbing them. Not lately, anyway. Chatzen’s early days plenty of people were disappearing, but everyone was pretty sure that was Hesper’s doing. She tried not to think about it too much.

Today she was bringing it fritters; unless she had to go on a Tuesday, which she could usually avoid, she brought it fritters. It didn’t seem to care where the calories came from; she wasn’t sure it had a mouth. Or sure, it ate, with the same orifice it retrieved objects from, but it didn’t seem to care if she brought the same greasy food every time. Once, she’d brought it the barely-edible nutricubes from the service hub in her neighborhood; hard, chalky, they were meant to be boiled in water for a few minutes to soften them. It didn’t seem to mind. The cubes were free, but so was grabbing a few hot fritters from the cart while her mother was around the corner, and she liked to think it might enjoy them more, even if it never said as much. Even if it never said anything.

***

“Huh,” said Gil, turning the corner onto Roste, sniffing the air. “I don’t… maybe they’re closed today? Is it Tuesday?”

“No, it’s Friday.” Pat was eyeing the bar across the street, which hadn’t opened for the day yet. Gil mumbled something, and she turned to him.

“What was that?”

“…It’s fish-fritter Friday.” He was almost pouting. “Ladya gets fresh catch from the market down on Threnn. You should be able to smell it from here.” His face hardened, his pace quickened. Pat kept up with him, but grumbled about it. They reached the corner with Hart and turned—and Gil stopped dead.

“Looks pretty closed. But it's here, at least?”

“It… should be open. She brings it over each day.” Gil rushed to a stand selling meat buns across the road. “Wen, where’s Ladya?” Wen shook his head, but continued filling buns.

Closed up before lunch, said she wouldn’t be back for a while. Asked me to watch the cart.”

“She’s closing?” Wen shrugged.

“Said something about the Midden, and Moxie—“

“Who?”

“Her daughter.”

“She’s not going in there, is she?” Wen shrugged again.

“She wouldn’t tell me. Moxie’s been missing classes, though.”

“Ah, fuck.” Gil turned walked back to Roste and turned north, towards the river. “Pat, you have any thoughtcraft?” She sucked air through her teeth.

“A little somatics, a little logics. SLO-type, I think. Why? Where are we going, what’s the Midden?” Gil started walking off down Hart, beckoning to Pat. She followed.

“The Slagwater runs into a cave system just outside of Chatzen. It winds a lot and runs through a lot of brush on the way, though, so all the shit that floats downriver from Chatzen—from the whole Chatzen patch, really, and further upriver—builds up there.” They reached Southbank Walk, which ran along the Slagwater, and turned west. “It’s filthy, but people have been digging stuff up in the Midden as long as people have been living here—maybe longer. Upriver dross, sure, but Prev stuff too, apparently. Of course most of it was trucked off decades ago, but every year a couple idiots go digging around in there and get themselves killed.”

“Killed?”
“Well, yeah. Midden-Devil lives in there.” She looked at him, unamused; he laughed. “No, it’s just dangerous. Chatzen kids tell stories about a bogeyman that lives in there, but the bodies that get recovered it’s always drowning, or a fall and a crack—“ he gently knocked on his forehead with his fist. “Nothing so spooky. It’s just a filthy cave.”

***

As Moxie picked her way down through the Midden, she tried not to get distracted, which was impossible. The Midden was at one turn a garbage heap, at another a scrapyard of useful components, at a third an impromptu museum of the culture of the Chatzen patch. You’d never find yliaster in here, of course; any that somehow made its way into the Slagwater would have long been picked up by processing at settlements or enterprising y-dowsers along the river. There was plenty to choose from among cheaper components, however: manufacturing in Chatzen, and on Eurus broadly, was booming. People threw away plenty of useful technology.

Moxie, the inveterate tinkerer that she was, couldn’t help but stop every few yards to pick up a bit of something. A muddy antenna here, a waterlogged compad there. Nothing that would work as-is, of course, but almost guaranteed to have worthwhile components she could salvage. There was always something for her latest project she’d need to buy or steal properly, but she could save quite a lot by visiting the Midden now and again. She never seemed to find anything quite as good as her contact did, though; she imagined it coming out at night and picking over the fresh wave of debris that arrived that day, hoarding them in the cave. She was always happy with what she got, but she knew it couldn’t be giving her everything. What did it use the bits for?

***

As they neared a mouth of the cave, they came across the missing cook. A middle-aged woman, graying hair tied back in a loose braid; she looked determined, if utterly unprepared. Simple street shoes, baggy pants, a loose shirt with puffy sleeves barely restrained by an embroidered vest.

“…Ladya?” Gil’s voice was hesitant, though he’d spoken with the woman a thousand times as a youth. She turned, confused, before recognizing him a moment later.

“Gilfred? What are—I haven’t seen you in years, what on—nevermind that. Why are you here?” To win back your fritters, he didn’t say. To save the last thing worth saving on this planet.

“Wen said—your daughter?” He stumbled.

“Moxie.” Pat’s hand was on his shoulder. Ladya nodded.

“She’s been skipping school, and she keeps talking about the Midden. Today, a customer said he’d seen her walking west out of town, and I couldn’t just… I couldn’t—“ Her expression hardened, and she looked down. “I need to make sure she’s okay.”

“Ladya, you’ll get yourself hurt.” She frowned at him. Gil felt bad telling her not to look for her daughter, but she wasn’t prepared for spelunking. She didn’t even have a light.

“We’ll find her,” came Pat’s voice from behind him, and he turned to her, startled. He quickly composed himself, however, and turned to nod to Ladya.

“Go home, Ladya. We’ll bring her back.” She shouldn’t trust them; she had nothing to go on but a dozen dozen dozen momentary interactions with Gil, pleasantries over a quick transaction, a time-lapse experience of his childhood, loss, growth, and departure. She looked at her clothes, her shoes, and the misty, breathing maw of the Midden, and nodded.

Some time later, they began the muddy descent into the cave. Both had brought suitable boots: most of the crew’s forays onto solid ground were relatively unsettled planets, so all their outdoor gear was meant for trekking. As it grew dark, Gil reached for his flashlight—which wasn’t there. Not anticipating any adventure, he’d left it on the Nimrod. He grumbled, but then the darkness lit up with soft red light. He looked up at Pat, who now had a wispEvocative name for small mentech devices made to float near the user and emit light. For many thinkwrights, programming one's own is a matter of self-expression and an opportunity to show off. Some run other utilities, like exchanging contact information, geolocating and navigation, etc. lazily orbiting her head.

She held up a finger and it perched there like a tiny, fat bird. Her brow furrowed, and its light shifted, red to yellow-green to a gentle blue, brighter but not dazzling. Satisfied, she released it and continued into the cave.

For a time, there was only one path the girl could have taken—assuming Moxie had even entered this passage and not another. Gil seemed to think that this was the entrance spoken of in the children’s stories, and that was as much of a lead as they had. Once they came to a branch, Pat had paused, staring at the muddy floor, tapping her temple a few times. She squinted at the floor, looked around a little bit, and nodded before continuing down the left passage. Gil didn’t ask, choosing to trust her.

She marveled at the muddy trickle of water as they descended further into the cave—it practically glittered with discarded items of all kinds, from food wrappers to high-end consumer electronics. She wondered how the people of Chatzen could throw so much into the river—she’d been raised to hold xenogenic biospheres in almost sacred regard, polished mirrors showing spacefaring humanity what it had left behind, scarred, on EarthEarth is still inhabited by humans, but the overwhelming majority of the human population lives elsewhere, and the governing bodies on Earth have put in place restrictive policies for landing on the surface, to mitigate the potential environmental impact of tourism. As a result, Earthly culture has been relatively isolated from cultural developments elsewhere in space, although the advent of the y-net means the flow of information, at least, has accelerated.. Maybe that’s how it always was, with systems that started as corporate colonies. She paused, looking at some discarded student ID from a decade ago. Gil stopped, behind her.

“Your name is Gilfred?” She heard him groan behind her.

“Yes. I usually shorten it.”

“No kidding. I would too. Why not just change it?”

“I chose it, and it’s important to me.” She nodded, still looking deeper into the cave. She started walking again, and Gil moved to stay in her light.

“Good reason.”

They rounded a corner and found themselves nearly face-to-legs with a strange, gangly creature, a dozen or so spindly jointed limbs vaulting overhead, suspending a meaty body something like a large octopus, twenty feet in the air, all bulbous misshapen mantle and dangling tendrils. It reached down, bending too many knees, a delicate tendril outstretched towards… the missing girl, who stood on the balls of her bare feet to offer a small object to the nightmarish creature. A wisp floated by her head, red light dull enough they hadn’t noticed it until they had reached the chamber.

“—!—” Gil let out a sound of surprise, and the tentacle snatched the object—looked like a membrick—coiling with elastic speed into the bulbous body as Moxie turned to look at her would-be rescuers.

“Are you—you came for me? Did mom?” Pat nodded. “Ugh. I tried to tell her I was going for a good reason, and that I’d be safe.” Gil opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again, puzzled. To its credit, the horrible creature remained relatively still, its only movements the gentle passive writhing of its tendrils.

“Why did you tell her at all?” Gil look at Pat like she had just confessed her love to the horrible creature towering over the teen girl. “And what makes you so sure you’ll be safe? You’re barefoot, for fuck’s sake! Who knows what kind of infections you could pick up in here.” Moxie rolled her eyes.

“I’ll be fine. I’m… tough.” She looked away, then up at the creature. “It’s not going to kill me, either.”

“How do you know?” Gil was glad one of them had words, even if he didn’t follow Pat’s line of thinking exactly.

“We’re working together.”

“What?” Gil found his words, or one of them anyway.

“It needs information. I just picked up… some data, and we’re trading.” The membrick.

“What is it?” Pat looked up at the thing again, which seemed to be completely unaware of the conversation going on. She kept her eyes on it as the conversation continued.

“I’m not sure, actually. Part of what I’m trying to figure out. It hates Hesper—“ Ah, thought Gil, so it’s a comrade. He was much funnier in his head than aloud. “And it seems to be scared of jarflies. It’s been hiding here since they don’t come into the Chatzen patch, I guess? No idea how long, though.”

“Is it… human?” Pat said it like she thought it might be a real possibility.

“I doubt it. Or, I don’t think it ever was, I mean.”

“What else could it be?” Gil tried to regain his composure. Moxie shrugged.

“Prev, maybe?” She scoffed. “Don’t know, don’t care. It’s got salvage and intel on Hesper, and that’s good enough for me. Anyway, go away; you’re making it nervous… I think.” She glanced up at the creature. “Tell mom I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day.”

Pat looked like she was considering it, but Gil spoke up: “She won’t like that answer. Can you at least come with us, see her? She’s worried. She closed shop today.” He tried not to let on that that was why he’d come. It’s fish-fritter Friday, he didn’t say.

Moxie sighed. “You saw how long it took to get down here. We’ve got work to do, I’ll go back when we’re done. I brought food, I’m not gonna starve.” She gestured to her bag.

Gil made firm eye contact with the girl. “Look, kid. Trust me, I’d let you stay down here if it were up to me. None of my business.” Moxie nodded. “But I am not going back to your mother and telling her we found her daughter in the Midden and just left her there. You’d have to pay me to deal with that.” Moxie looked upwards like she was doing some mental calculation. “Uh, a lot. More than you have.” She rolled her eyes.

“So just lie. Tell her you couldn’t find me.” Pat laughed at that; Gil pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

“Didn’t you hear him just now? Gil sucks at lying. Worst liar I know.” She gently punched his shoulder, and he blushed. “Besides, we do that, we’d have to pretend to keep searching, or we’d look like real assholes. We don’t have time for that, we have to find someone who can figure out what’s up with this weird orb we found.” Gil could have sworn the creature twitched slightly as Pat said that. Moxie seemed to notice.

“Orb?” Gil glared at Pat; the crew had agreed to keep its existence secret until they knew what it was. Pat shrugged. She rarely went ashore for this kind of work, and was less used to guarding her words. He sighed, and explained:

“Platinum, maybe with some iridium in it. It’s some kind of puzzle or mechanism; it’s got grooves and divots in the surface in an intricate pattern, but the design makes it clear there’s more going on under the surface. It’s also… kid, you got any thoughtcraft?” Moxie smiled. The creature seemed to be growing more agitated, moving objects around inside its lumpy sack-body. The shadows its legs cast in the light of the two wisps shifted erratically on the walls of the cave.

“Sure, yeah.”

“You know notions can be attached to objects, right?” Moxie looked a bit uncertain, but nodded.

“You know the way those things are?” Moxie shook her head. “They… seem heavier than they are when you weigh them. Containers seem bigger on the inside, but hold the normal amount. The colors are… deeper, or brighter. It’s like that.” As she spoke, the creature spat out another membrick and dangled it down in front of Moxie with a tendril.

“Oh, it wants to say something. That’s unusual.” She took the mem and pulled out a small pad, hooking it up.

“It. What?” Gil looked from her to the creature and back.

“It usually only tells me stuff in text files it leaves on the membricks it hands me. I guess it wanted to say something before I left, this time.” She tapped the screen of her pad a few times, then read something. She raised her eyebrows.

“It says it’ll give you anything you want in exchange for the orb.” Gil blinked a few times.

“It—it wants the orb?” He looked down at the ground, confused. “I mean, we—“

“We can’t, Gil. The ship needs the funds, we have to sell it—it’s kilos of platinum, even if it’s not worth anything on the xenark market.” Gil shook his head.

“I wasn’t saying we should hand it over—“

Moxie looked down at the pad. “It’s offering yliaster, hundred fifty grams.” Gil and Pat went silent.

“It’s got yliaster?” Gil looked at the creature in disbelief. “That much would be more than fair for the platinum… but if it’s really Prev stuff, we could get way more for it if we—“

“If we even had a buyer, if we could find one without Hesper kicking down our ‘lock.” Pat looked at him seriously. “I don’t think we’ll find a better deal.” Gil thought hard.

“Three hundred grams, and it’s a deal.” Pat looked surprised at his offer. Moxie opened her mouth to argue—“And, you come with us to see your mom. Even if you go right back in here.” The girl sighed, but thought on it.

“Two seventy-five, and I go see mom.”

“Deal.”

“Hardly.” The three humans turned to see the source of the new voice: a man rounded the bend into the chamber, pistol first. Red-and-blue wisplight textured his shirt, filthy travel jacket, and baggy pants woven in the local style. “You will be handing over that… thing,” he said, gesturing to the Midden-Devil, “and returning any and all stolen property of Hesper Technologies, and you—“ he cut off as the safety of his pistol clicked on. He pushed at it with his thumb, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Half a kilo if you take us both off the planet,” Moxie spoke rapidly, throwing her bag over her shoulder and grabbing one of the creature’s tendrils, which thrashed in response. Pat nodded, eyes wide, and Gil moved closer to her.

I’m sorry, Moxie thought towards where she suspected its mind might be, I know you don’t like to be touched, or spoken to. But you need to come with us. She threw a hand out towards the man and his pistol wrenched out of his hand, clicking to the cavern floor.

follow, said a distant and unfamiliar voice in her mind, and the creature skittered off down another passage in the cave, pulling her along. She waved to Gil and Pat, who followed. Gil glanced behind at the man, who clawed at his pistol, still clinging to the cavern floor.

A bit later, though not as long as the journey down had been, the group emerged from a secondary entrance to the cave system—slightly further from town, it was well-hidden by underbrush and a small hill. They stopped to catch their breath, but the creature tugged Moxie’s hand and dropped something heavy into it with its tentacle.

Another pistol.

I can’t use this, she thought.

you must, the voice replied, they are here. aim for the skull or spine. Her eyes went wide, and Pat noticed what she was holding.

“Hey, kiddo, where’d you—“ she cut herself off and looked at the Midden-Devil.

“It says they’re here,” Moxie said, and offered the pistol, handle first, to Pat. She took it with a confidence that betrayed familiarity.

“Who?” Gil stared at the pistol in Pat’s hand. He thought, not for the first time, that he knew very little about her.

“Hesper, I think.”

not them, the voice said. soon—

At that moment an almost-human form lunged from a nearby tree, all pale ceramic carapace and wiry crimson muscle fiber; it was all Moxie could do to shout “Skull!”—and with a loud blast there was a hole in its smooth faceplate where none had been before.

Pat took off running, practically dragging Gil by his arm, and the Midden-Devil simply scooped Moxie up with half a dozen tendrils and skittered after them. She glanced back: the wound in their attacker’s face was already healing over, river-smooth remnants of human features briefly visible before fresh faceplate covered them once again.

Did you see that! laughed a voice from the inhuman form rising from the ground. Not now, said another. What’s that with them—said a third, cut off by a fourth and a fifth. The chatter of a dozen voices flooded her mind even as they receded, a comfortable conversation between friends.

them.

***

“Just the one?” Lehr paled when he’d heard they’d run into a tettix—they were supposed to keep out of Chatzen, and indeed the ship pursuing them had dropped the chase once their destination had become clear.

“I imagine there are others nearby,” Pat said, “Maybe they had one at each exit. The caves are enormous, there have to be tons of outlets.” Moxie nodded. Gil had barely spoken since they’d scrambled back into the ship.

Looming over the human crew was, of course, the Midden-Devil: it had expressed hesitation getting aboard the ship, and longing to return to the cave, to at least gather what things it had cached away outside the coffer of its body. They will be there, Moxie had said, waiting for you. It had climbed the ramp into the ship, then. But it didn’t like it. It liked orbit even less.

“It would like to have a quiet place,” she said, in the thrum of the crew’s preparations. “The bridge is loud, and it’s used to being alone.”

Gil perked up. “Sure, yeah. We’ve got a spare cargo pod worry, it’s pressurized and everything, we use it as a second guest room sometimes. You can stay in the one with a bed, since I assume, uh.”

“Yeah, it’ll be alright without furniture.” She smiled, and was surprised to see Gil return the gesture. He seemed happy to be useful, leading the scurrying creature down the main hall. As it passed, it handed her a membrick—in exchange for the one she'd handed over—and a sphere of faintly luminous blue-green metal about three and a half centimeters across. In the terror of the escape, she'd forgotten all about their deal.

“We need to figure out where we’re going,” said Lehr, addressing the room broadly. “They’re not after us for the moment, as far as we can tell, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be in an hour.”

“I only know one place,” said Mel, softly into a sudden quiet, “where we wouldn’t have to worry about Hesper or their bugs.” Lehr’s expression hardened.

“We said we would stay off MemnonFourth planet from the center of the Eos system, a lush and mostly-pristine life-bearing planet. In their slow initial settlement of the system, Hesper found hostile human communities already present, arrived after Hesper but settling immediately on Memnon. Welcoming defectors from Hesper and wielding unfamiliar psychic abilities in defense of that planet, they stymied Hesper's attempts to settle it. In the modern era, it is a haven for thinkwrights and Yovites too erratic for corporate settlements, but perhaps too wild or unwilling to accept democratic authority to live on Emathion., Mel.”

“For my own damn benefit, man. If they want this thing so bad”—he gestured to the orb where it sat cushioned in a towel on a table—“we need to take it somewhere they won’t follow.”

“What even is it, anyway?” Gil returned alone from the hall.

“I might have an answer to that,” came Moxie’s reply. She’d had a moment to load up the mem the Devil gave her just a moment ago. “I’ll—can I put my pad on that display? Ah, there we go.” Stark text appeared on one of the bridge display screens:

THE ORB IS A WAY TO A PLACE THEY MUST NOT REACH.

“A silver road,” said Gil, softly.