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When Nile wakes, she isn’t alone.
“Welcome back,” says Councilor Copley. “How are you feeling?”
There’s silence in her head. It’s not the sort she’s accustomed to. This feels expectant. It’s the silence of a room with an audience present, listening and waiting.
She isn’t alone.
Hello, she thinks carefully. Deliberately.
< Hey, > says another voice in her head. It’s a woman’s voice, older, rough around the edges. < Welcome to the club. >
“There’s a mission,” Copley had said at their first meeting. “Your aptitudes suggest you may be well-suited for it.”
He’d slid an infofiche stick across the desk. The seal of the Councilor for Heritage had been prominently featured.
“I trained as a pilot,” Nile had said.
“You’ve been chosen,” Copley had told her. “Not by me.”
“What sort of mission does Heritage need a pilot for?” Nile had asked.
“A very unusual one,” Copley had answered. He’d steepled his fingers. “I can’t tell you any more than that. You’ll be briefed by the rest of your team.”
“Who’s my team?”
< It takes some getting used to. > The voice in her head - Andy - is brusque, but not unsympathetic.
< Don’t push yourself, > advises a new voice. It’s friendly and kind. She can hear the smile in it.
Joe, she thinks, and doesn’t know if that’s come from her or Andy.
< Push yourself a little. > That’s definitely Andy. < We don’t have a lot of time. >
What am I - she trips over the pronoun, not yet accustomed to ‘we’ - supposed to do?
< Retrieval mission, > Joe puts in. His voice is clearer than Andy’s. Newer.
Retrieving what? Nile asks. She still has to concentrate her thoughts, directing them into her own head.
< Not what, > Andy answers. < Who. >
It takes a while for them to integrate. Joe is impatient with automated doors; Nile nearly walks into them a half-dozen times when they don’t open fast enough.
Andy is impatient with everything.
They’re at the computer, poring over star charts and communications logs. Nile has the sense of several people looming over her shoulder. It makes her shoulders itch.
You’re sure this is the system?
Nile has read the mission briefing and the reports. The paper trail is centuries old and well-buried, but enough of it has been unearthed for credibility.
There might be someone out there. She just doesn’t like the look of their options.
There are no habitable planets, Nile points out. Who would be out that far?
There’s a long silence. Then Nicky says, < Her name is Quynh. >
Nicky is the quietest of the voices in Nile’s head. Andy isn’t exactly chatty, but she needs Nile to be a functional operative. That means talking and training.
Nile worries for the first few days that Nicky’s imago-memory has decayed or been damaged, but he answers whenever she addresses him.
When she finally manages to communicate her concern over his silence, he says, < I thought two new voices in your head might be enough for now. >
Andy’s memories are old but still clear. Nicky’s are often doubled strangely with Joe’s. Nile puts it down to an echo in the imago until she realizes she’s seeing different perspectives of the same events.
They’d known each other. More than that; they'd loved each other. It takes some time for her to come to terms with the horror of that. One of them had carried Andy’s imago-line until death, and then the other had been found compatible.
She doesn’t know which of them had died first. There isn’t really any polite way to ask.
They all remember Quynh. Joe and Nicky as a sister; Andy as a lover. They all share the same awful impression of what she must be going through, stranded in space.
She’s in stasis.
No one can survive that long, Nile had argued. Brain function deteriorates in long-term cryostasis.
They’d explained then that Quynh wasn’t just sleeping among the stars. She’d been cycling in and out of stasis; returning to consciousness for just long enough to be confronted with the void of deep space before being pulled under again.
Nile goes for a long run at the station gym after that conversation. The others leave her alone.
Okay, she says when she returns. What’s our plan?
The plan is straightforward. Take a seed-skiff to a spaceport, sabotage security, steal a transport, and cross the full length of Teixcalaanli space to the system where they’ve tracked Quynh’s stasis-signal.
Nile learns a lot about her imago-line during that conversation.
Why aren’t we going through diplomatic channels?
< We have a complicated history with Teixcalaan,> Nicky tells her.
Quynh had been the Interim Ambassador for Lesl Station at the time of her disappearance. Someone had certainly wanted her out of that post.
I’m just a pilot, Nile says. Do any of you even know how to steal a transport?
There’s a pause.
< All of us, actually, > Joe answers. < We’ll teach you. >
Nile already knows she hasn’t been given a standard pilot imago. That becomes even more clear at the spaceport.
Andy keeps her off the surveillance cameras, spotting each one before Nile is within their range. Nicky guides her through disabling the transport’s security. Joe translates every computer readout almost without a thought.
There’s a tense moment when their override codes don’t work. The screen blinks red in warning, and Nile’s hands freeze over the controls.
< Book, > Andy says sharply. Nile looks around for a manual or infofiche; anything to fit that definition.
Then a new presence unfolds in her mind. It’s so strong that she can’t believe she hadn’t sensed it before. It’s like someone had been crouching, hunched over in her mind, and suddenly straightened up.
That’s when she finds out there are four of them.
Booker teaches Nile how to hack, and then folds up again. None of the others speak while he’s there. Nile hadn’t realized how loud silence could be, especially in her own head.
When they call station control for permission to depart, Joe’s tongue curls hers around the military pass codes in strings of verse, pausing for a perfect caesura.
You’re Teixcalaanlitzlim, she thinks without meaning to. It sounds suspicious; an accusation.
< No, > Nicky says gently. < We were spies. >
Nile wonders if that’s what got them killed. She wonders if the same thing will happen to her.
< We were used against each other, once, > Joe says. < That’s part of why we don’t trust the Empire. >
What about Booker? Nile asks. Was he a spy, too?
They don’t answer.
They hit a defense satellite for the codes and charts that will get them through Teixcalaanli space. Their arrival attracts the attention of several unmanned security drones, all with active weapons systems.
Can we shoot? Nile asks tensely.
< We can shoot, > Andy answers, dry and amused.
Nicky slides into Nile’s mind, into her hands, and she hears the echo of Joe relaying targeting data in the back of her head while Nile exhales and Nicky takes each precise, steady shot.
It’s just as unsettling the second time around when Booker surfaces to hack into the satellite.
< I can’t get in, > Booker says after several minutes, while the chorus in Nile’s head waits on edge for him to finish. < This is state-of-the-art. Everything I know is out of date. >
< Can’t, or won’t? > Joe asks, voice hard.
Andy says, < Plan B. >
Nile understands very little of the argument that follows.
< He betrayed us, > Joe says hotly.
< I’m not lying, > Booker defends. Nile believes him, but she isn’t sure that’s what this is about anymore.
< He can get us through to Quynh, > Andy counters.
The memories that slam into Nile are Joe’s, tangled and furious. She can only grasp the edges of them, and the thread of pain and anger that connects them to Quynh.
< He sold us out to Teixcalaan, and you want to trust him? >
< He won’t do it again. > Andy, implacable and sure.
Nile finally breaks in. What are you talking about?
The news they drop on her then is almost as much of a shock as learning she has a fourth set of memories.
Booker, it turns out, is still alive.
Nile orders noodles from the mining rig’s canteen, and brings them to the table where a tall man sits alone, nursing a drink. From the look of him, this isn’t his first.
“I’m Nile,” she says, taking a seat.
“Tell me why I should care,” he answers. His voice is disconcerting; familiar and strange at the same time, older than the memories of him in her head.
“I need your help for a job.”
He looks at her, red-nosed and bleary-eyed, then says, “No.”
Nile’s hand moves without her direction, flipping a table knife into her grip and slamming the point down into the table.
“Listen to me, you son of a bitch,” she says, only it’s not her at all, the accent and inflections foreign in her mouth. “You owe us, Sebastien, so get your head out of your ass and sober up, because we’re leaving.”
Nile blinks, stunned by the complete, violent loss of control over her own body, which is just as suddenly returned. Anger rises like acid in the back of her throat, harsh and scalding. Her own endocrine system, reasserting itself against an intruder.
Across from her, Booker stares. Then his expression changes to understanding.
“Hello, Joe.” Booker raises his glass to tap his fingers against his forehead in a mocking salute. “It’s been a while.”
“They told you the story?” Booker asks.
< I could, > the Booker in her head says.
< Stay out of this, Book, > says Andy. She sounds as tired as he sounds reluctant.
Joe simmers, but doesn’t say anything. Andy and Nile had both ripped him up for his lack of control earlier. He’d apologized, but he’s still angry. Nile doesn’t care. She’ll forgive him eventually for wrenching away her autonomy, but not just yet.
Nicky is gone. It’s an absence that feels different than his habitual silence. She knows he must still be there, but she doesn’t try to force him to talk.
“Why’d you do it?” Nile asks. She has other questions, but this is the one that burns on her tongue.
Booker looks out at the starfield beyond the mining rig. “It doesn’t matter.”
The story is this:
When Booker had been with them, the newest member of their imago-line on assignment for Lesl, he’d made a deal with Teixcalaan. Political asylum, in exchange for an active, working imago.
He’d had his own imago-machine surgically removed by Teixcalaanli ixplanatl, and given it to them for study. There had been tests. Experiments.
Lesl Station had retrieved the imago-machine before their most-guarded technological secret could be replicated, and Booker had been exiled. Councilor Copley had seen to it that the data was erased.
Nile had taken the aptitude tests, and been declared a match. No one had known, then, if her imago-line was still intact. The continuity of memory had been severed when Booker had removed his implant, and the imago-machine itself had been damaged during the experiments.
Nile could be angry that Lesl had given her a potentially-faulty implant, but by the time she hears that part of the story, she has more important things to be angry about.
“Nicky’s still not talking to me, hm?” Booker asks casually, as they make the approach to the jumpgate.
Nile can’t tell if he’s talking to her or to himself; translating between Booker and the version of him preserved in memories has been surreal.
“I guess I’m not surprised. I hurt Joe, and he won’t forgive that.”
< You fucking – > Joe snarls, surging to life in Nile’s mind. He doesn’t try to take over, though, not even a curl of fingers or involuntary breath before he subsides again. After a tense moment, Nile lets the tightness ease from her shoulders.
Booker gives her a knowing look. “I just pissed Joe off, didn’t I?” He shakes his head, gaze going distant. “I said some things to them back then that I regret now.”
The Booker in Nile’s head doesn’t regret them; he’s an imprint, a recording stopped partway through. He knows himself well enough, though, to understand how his future self could.
Someone - Joe, Nicky - remembers pain, fear, disorientation. Silence and darkness, interrupted by the excruciating shock of electricity and sharp, exploratory incisions.
Booker looks away, and Nile doesn’t answer him.
< This is how you redeem yourself, Book, > Andy says.
The Booker who sits beside Nile at the transport controls can’t hear her, of course. The one in Nile’s head doesn’t say anything. He’s been quiet since they launched, making room for the others.
Nicky had slipped back into Nile’s consciousness in the middle of an argument about whether they believed Booker was providing them with correct coordinates.
< Either we trust him or we don’t, > he’d said, and everyone else had backed off.
He’s the one guiding Nile’s hands now, navigating carefully through asteroids while Joe translates Booker’s hacked data from Teixcalaanli for her in a steady murmur. It’s starting to feel comfortable working with them this way, as part of the team.
She wonders if Booker misses it.
Something’s wrong, Nile thinks at the others, reading the scans. There are no life signs.
< She’s out there. > Andy’s faith is far more certain than computer readouts. Nile chooses to believe her, because she wants Andy to be right.
There’s no stasis pod waiting for them when they land. There is, however, the flashing light of an imago-machine with a dying battery, power-cycling to save every last bit of energy.
Nile can’t integrate this imago with the one clasped to her brainstem on her own. Booker cradles the sliver of metal and ceramic in one large, cupped hand, and says, “I can do it, if you’ll let me.”
He’s asking all of them, not just Nile, and seems to know they need time to confer. There’s a palpable fear that once Nile is unconscious for the surgery, Booker could take them again, could sell them away to be cut and burned and broken open.
There’s a yearning, too, for one who’s been lost, and who could now become a part of them.
The battery doesn’t have much life left. There’s no one else nearby who could make the transfer. Whatever they decide, it has to be done now.
In the end, they leave it up to Nile.
She eases herself down onto the medical pallet and meets Booker’s eyes. “You could still come back, you know. We could run an update and download your memories.”
He almost smiles at that. “Maybe one day.”
When Nile wakes, she isn’t alone.
Neither are the others.
Hello, she thinks carefully, directing the words toward the new, shining presence in her mind. Welcome home.