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“A Cosmic Thriller for the IPC ambassador,” says the waitress, sweeping towards the table. In her hands is a tray brimming with refreshments.
The other players gesture towards Aventurine noncommittally, too engrossed in their cards to look up. As for him, he smiles at the pink-eyed, blue-haired woman as she sets his order in front of him, noting with faint sympathy the glossy, dead-eyed gaze of a worker one too many hours deep on their shift. It’s impossible not to notice the fact that she’s pretty (what self-respecting intergalactic travel system didn’t hire attractive workers for their VIP lounges?), but the air of perpetual exhaustion around her brings up one too many uncomfortable memories for him to feel any sort of attraction towards her.
A pity for his friends here, really; flirting with someone might’ve distracted him enough for one of them to win a round or two. His winnings on trips like these tend to be relatively modest — constantly leaving the rest of the flock in the dust isn’t something that endears you to business associates when you’re networking, and Aventurine isn’t so small-minded that he can’t tell when to fold and when to raise the stakes.
He doesn’t like throwing games, of course: who does? But he’s different from who he was back then — the boy reluctant to give in, terrified that facing defeat meant suffering loss. He barely even remembers what that boy looked like.
“Done with your turn yet?” he asks the player across from him, careful to keep his tone genial.
The man shakes his head absentmindedly, attracting a few eye-rolls from the others; Aventurine just laughs and leans back in his chair, snagging the body of his glass (a cup for a martini, really?) and twisting it in his hand idly. The IPC-issued ring that he wears on his pinky flashes once, then glows a soft, near-imperceptible green; all clear.
“Take your time,” Aventurine says, taking a sip. Less sweet than he’d anticipated, but not bad. “We’re in no rush. Isn’t that right?”
“Perhaps you are not, but I certainly am,” grumbles the Intellitron on his right. “Are you going to pick up the pace or not?”
“I’m almost done,” snaps the Foxian. “What are you even in such a rush for? Got something planned after this?”
The Intellitron’s voice crackles with annoyance. “Indeed; winning the game, my good sir. It’s one thing to be incapable of securing victory yourself, but isn’t it too petty even for you to deliberately bar others from victory?”
“What does me taking my time have to do with you?”
“It could not be more clearly a time-wasting tactic.”
As the two of them break into a heated argument, Aventurine polishes off his drink and sets it aside. He estimates it won’t be long before one of them leaves or finally finishes up the stalemate the game’s been stagnating in for some time now: a couple of minutes at best, probably.
Either conclusion is fine with him: there’s a bed calling for him back at the hotel, luxuriously warm and decked out with all the mortal pleasures that money can buy, and if he stays well — it’s not like he’s worn himself out to the point of being unable to enjoy a conversation or two, and the rest of the IPC members in the lounge are still animatedly talking to each other over drinks. Looks like their latest assignment had left quite the impression on them. Even members of the Intelligentsia Guild are mingling, despite the fact that their default attitude towards the majority of the IPC tends to be relatively… distant.
Maybe he’ll take advantage of the opportunity and strike up a conversation with one of them. He considers it, scanning over their faces to pick out the most promising prospects: Lachlan, a quiet, studious man primarily invested in the mathematical analysis of nebulous concepts like fate, seems like the most interesting, but he’s engaged in conversation with Ratio. Aventurine barely manages to hide a grimace remembering how his last conversation with the esteemed doctor went. Hard pass. Maybe not, then. But Lucille at the corner table isn’t a bad choice either, even if she does have the peculiar habit of pretending to be a fish from time to time…
“Your turn,” someone says, breaking him out of his reverie. One seat is now conspicuously absent, their cards guarded by a sedate, featureless robot hovering in the air; a holo-net wraps itself over their section of the table.
“Apologies, gentlemen,” he says smoothly, turning his attention back to the cards in front of him. “I—”
Something crashes in the background. Aventurine turns around, only nominally interested and following the gazes of his companions mostly out of a lack of desire to stand out; it’s not uncommon for overenthusiastic patrons to have one cup too many, and the novelty of shattered glasses and upturned chairs from rowdy drunks wore off after the first few altercations he’d witnessed. They all have the same playbook, same sound; he could narrate one of them with his eyes closed and hanging upside down. Only—
The figure who’s toppled over from his seat at the bar isn’t an overenthusiastic patron at all. It’s Ratio, who’s staggering with one arm over the countertop for dear life as the other scrabbles at his chest. A member of the Intelligentsia Guild stands next to him, supporting him from the elbow; the bartender’s calling to the security staff, but he’s not paying attention to they’re going, what they’re doing. Aventurine’s already standing. His exposed hand lies forgotten on the table.
Ratio looks at him. His white-knuckled fingers are helplessly clutching the ornament at his throat. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. There’s no fear in his eyes: only rare shock at being taken off-guard when he’s least expected it.
“Doctor,” says Aventurine. His voice sounds odd.
And Ratio falls to the ground, unmoving.
“I’m telling you,” he says later, leaning against the corridor wall as the healers attend to Ratio inside. He’s spinning a coin between his fingers, weaving it between his knuckles; up and over, like pull of a stitch. The conversation around him is dizzying in its intensity, hushed as it is; the hum of the rumor mill, “It’s not the waitress.”
An exasperated voice. “And you know that because…?”
A pause. When he speaks again, his smile is audible. Sharp. “I just know.”
“That can’t be all,” Topaz argues. She’s tired, too: he can envision the lines around her eyes, can hear the frustrated edge to her voice that only comes out when her defenses are crumbling at the edges. “Aventurine. How am I supposed to tell Diamond to let her go based on a hunch?”
The walls here are thick, but not that thick. He can hear a sharp inhale. Someone saying — are you sure? The reply: just do it. The hum of nano-machines, the squeak of the medical equipment’s wheels. His own breathing. The thrumming of his heart, too rapid to pass for restful quiet. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Too close for comfort.
“Tell him it’s not a hunch.”
He flips the coin. Heads.
“Tell him it’s a lucky guess.”
“It looks like he’ll be fine,” says the medic, shaking her head; her fingers press lightly into the pale flesh of Ratio’s throat, testing, and press against the underside of his jaw to test his pulse. If Aventurine hovering above her shoulder makes her nervous, she doesn’t show it — barely a moment passes before she lifts her hand to signal to her assistant, and the sleeves of her healer’s robe fall away from Ratio’s frame as she steps back to finalize her diagnosis. “You’re very lucky that your cups were swapped, Mr. Aventurine.”
“That’s what I am,” Aventurine murmurs, not bothering to look up from Ratio’s slumped body. His mouth hooks up at the corners humorlessly. ”Lucky.”
“Normally,” she continues, her pen moving over her notes rapidly: he can make out some words, but only just. Looks like even the most advanced of Synesthesia Beacons can’t account for doctors’ handwriting. “The bodies of humanoid lifeforms such as you two have — broadly speaking — negligible differences in their biology. Yet the assassin employed a form of poison that would have caused lethal harm to you based on the idiosyncrasies of your Sigonian heritage, which allowed Dr. Ratio here to avoid the brunt of the damage.”
A pause. Then: he laughs. His heart slides back into rhythm. “I wasn’t aware that professionals familiar with idiosyncracies of Sigonian heritage existed in this sector of the universe, madam. Forget luck — what are the chances that I happened to run into one here?”
“You misunderstand,” says the medic. She closes her notes and hands them to her assistant, her eyes fixed on Aventurine even as he turns to watch them hurriedly leave through the door. His own mouth ticks downward. Fleeing already? That’s fine. The IPC’s actual presence on the ship may make up a fraction of the passengers, but their influence is a wide, wide net; if they do have something to do with Aventurine’s — Ratio’s — situation, the chances of them being able to escape are infinitesimally small.
It’s not that he’s unused to hearing the word Sigonia from others’ mouths. He hears it all too-often, actually: dropped out of others’ mouths with scorn, tracing over the shape and luster of his eyes speculatively… but this context is different. His IPC-approved medical representative knows about the details of his native physiology because the IPC conducted — tests, research, something, the details of which he’s not privy to, and certainly not only limited to the Avgin — before the tribe was effectively… removed. How does this no-name medic entire solar systems away know about Sigonians?
“I’m misunderstanding something?” echoes Aventurine. His cheer sounds fake even to his own ears. He stops leaning on the wall beside the head of Ratio’s sickbed, stepping closer to her with long, smooth strides. His head tilts. His voice grows deceptively pleasant. “Well — I hope that you’re right about that, for your sake as much as mine.”
“It was merely my conjecture,” answers the healer. Her voice is carefully level. “Which I suppose is nothing more than speculation. An irresponsible instrument in this field, certainly — but I’ve heard that it rarely rained in Sigonia-IV. Species with arid climates often evolve to absorb or retain water more efficiently comparative to others’.”
“Oh?”
She lifts her chin. “Do you suspect me, ambassador?”
“Should I?”
“I would never harm any of my patients.”
“But I’m not one of your patients,” muses Aventurine, “Am I, doctor?”
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Says, with an air of measured patience, “You understand my meaning either way, Mr. Aventurine.”
He laughs. “I do,” he says, and lets his tone relent. “I see your point — if I had ingested the poison, I would have absorbed enough for it to be lethal. It was a clever trick: the IPC’s standardized testing on our consumables wouldn’t have picked up on what would otherwise be a nonlethal dose, especially since the drink would have only diluted it further. They just happened to accidentally mix up our cups.”
The nurse’s shoulders relax incrementally. “Most people think that ingesting poison is merely a matter of imbibing food or drink that’s been tampered with, and they forget that many other objects — such as the utensils you use, the plates you eat off of, or in this case, the cups you drink with — can be poisoned as well.”
“I thought it was strange that my drink was served in a cup,” comments Aventurine idly. But everyone else at the table had been served with the same, too, though he’d ordered late.
“All of our drinks are served in cups,” corrects the medic. “The kitchen staff are equipped with certain idiosyncracies that make it difficult to handle more complex shapes.”
Aventurine hums. “And what about the patient’s condition?”
“Ah,” she says, and looks at the body sprawled on the bed. Ratio’s brow is faintly furrowed as if he can’t muster the strength to wrinkle it further, the red around his eyes faintly smudged. What does he use to draw it on, anyway? “Though he’s presently unconscious, he should wake up any moment now. You should anticipate a loss of control over his limbs, physical sluggishness, and the temporary loss of some of his senses despite the fact that his mental faculties seem largely unimpaired. It’s not unusual for patients like this to become immensely frustrated with the discrepancy between their clarity of mind and their diminished bodily autonomy: connecting him to an advanced Synesthesia Beacon may make it easier to determine his needs.”
“The medicine—”
“Will be delivered directly to this room by my assistant in approximately half an hour with the instructions. I’ll finish up the medical report as soon as possible.”
For a minute, Aventurine says nothing. Instead, he studies her. She looks younger than he’d thought, though that means nothing: between Pepeshi and Foxians, guessing ages across planets tends to be a perilous endeavor. More concretely, the edges of her eyes droop down, weary; her gaze, determinedly meeting his, can’t hide her mild discomfort at being confronted so directly. In the glassy reflection of her irises, he can make out the reflected green of his clothing, the glint of his earring, the shape of his silhouette; not a person but a shadow streaked with color, flattened by the medium of her perception.
“Ambassador?”
His thumb runs over the coin in his pocket, the embossed words he can’t understand without translation pressed meaninglessly against his skin. Tails. The absurdly plush chair next to Ratio’s bed sinks downwards underneath his weight as he enfolds himself onto it, lounging loosely on its frame; she watches him warily, not sure how to take his brief silence. His fingers tap against the arm of the chair.
“I’d like a physical copy of the report.”
“That can be arranged.”
“The IPC will be in touch if it has any further questions.”
“I understand.”
“Alright,” Aventurine says, soft. He leans forward. Smiles. “Thank you for your time, doctor.”
“I didn’t expect you to pick up so quickly,” says Jade. Her voice is startlingly clear even through the simulated wind of the spaceship’s top floor, which projects sunny, picturesque beaches and endless sky to Aventurine as he leans on a marbled balustrade. “What with the recent events.”
“It’s not like I was poisoned,” says Aventurine breezily, watching a knot of inebriated passengers point at the clouds expressively. “Besides: it’s hardly the first assassination attempt the Ten Cornerstones have weathered, is it?”
“I suppose that’s true,” she says, pointedly thoughtful. “You’ve always been blessed in that regard, though this one’s managed to strike closer than we anticipated. That doctor from the Guild…”
“He’s expected to recover within the next week.”
“Is that so? Maybe your fortune rubbed off of him.”
“I’d hardly call him getting poisoned lucky,” says Aventurine, resting his weight on a crossed arm, “Unless you’re one of his students.”
Jade’s amusement is palpable. “I never said it was good fortune.” Something clicks on the other end of the line: the press of a button, maybe a switch. The low hum of machinery begins to filter through the comms. It doesn’t sound like she’s in her office. “Aren’t you a gambler, Aventurine?”
He laughs as his fingers curl around the railing, looking down into the deep blue sea beyond. “Don’t you think that’s unfair of you to bring up? It’s not like I was the one playing with his life.”
“Of course not,” she says lightly. He can make out the sound of her heels clicking against tiled floors. “But in order for you to win, someone has to lose.”
All things considered, it takes longer than he expected for Ratio to wake up. Aventurine’s returned to the room with a brand-new IPC-approved package, double-checked the security records, administered him the medicine via injection, installed the new Synesthesia Beacon, and he’s even managed to make considerable headway on his veritable mountains of ignored correspondence before before the shape on the bed stirs near-imperceptibly. He looks up, twists the edge of his pen. The nib disappears.
“Looks like you’re awake,” says Aventurine. His voice carries in the sterile room more easily than he’d expected: he hadn’t exactly been talking to himself while he’d waited, much less paying attention to the quality of sound when he’d — conferred — with the healer overseeing Ratio’s care.
He leans back in his chair and crosses his legs, allowing his weight to swivel the chair in the direction of their infirm patient; gold-filled eyes stare back at Aventurine, hazy with the fogginess of disorientation. Ratio’s arm twitches — spasms would be more accurate, falling limply back to his side. His whole body is more lax than Aventurine’s ever seen it.
“Don’t look at me like that, doctor,” Aventurine says lightly. “I’ve activated a new Synesthesia Beacon for you. Care to try to communicate? We’ll need to test the sensitivity settings.”
Confusion morphs to annoyance. The Synesthesia Beacon is a fascinating invention: one that Aventurine’s studied before, but never in-depth; he suspects that even if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to decipher how it operates. The translation of language is one thing, but what the IPC produces can simplify the communication of even pheromones and physical responses across a variety of physiological and mental characteristics. When he’d been young, he’d thought it was nothing short of magic.
It’s like they’re getting inside of your head, he’d told Topaz off-handedly before. They’d been watching the IPC distribute their equipments to the residents of a star so small it hadn’t even been given a name: one of their only assignments together, necessitated only by the personal request of one of their largest investors. He’d watched their heavy machinery split the surface of the ground apart. Just like that.
Don’t be ridiculous, Topaz had said, crossing her arms. Her gaze was fixed squarely ahead. It’s just technology. They can’t transmit anything you don’t voluntarily provide the data for.
That might have ordinarily been true. But now, looking at Ratio: frissons of data worm their way forth, making up for Ratio’s inability to speak or move by eagerly installing one-sided empathy into his awareness. There’s the thin, thready annoyance underlying his confusion, and then the weight of his logical, clear-headed rationality; the murkiness of Ratio’s thought manifests as a slightly sluggish understanding of the world, as if he’s piecing something together instead of looking at a whole. Aventurine can even taste the instinct rising up in Ratio’s throat to take a look around and evaluate his surroundings.
What happened? Wordless understanding. It’s odd to hear the doctor’s voice without actually hearing it.
Aventurine’s smile flashes, all teeth. “You were poisoned.”
There’s no need to state the obvious, comes Ratio’s response. He blinks, oddly composed. It’s strange to have a conversation with someone who’s not looking at him. What’s my condition?
“I’d give you the medical report, but it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to hold it,” says Aventurine. He spreads his hands, lets one drop onto the adjacent table. “Want me to read it to you instead? No need to thank me.”
Shouldn’t someone examine me first?
“The healer already examined you while you were asleep.” Aventurine taps his fingers against the fine wood grain of the table once, twice. He inclines his head. Laughs a little. “Give me some credit. Do I look that incompetent to you?”
Don’t be obtuse, says Ratio. A minute flexing of his fingers. Any physician worth consulting should know to consider the patient’s testimony. Where are they?
“The security department is talking to them,” says Aventurine, waving a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry. She’ll be back when she’s cleared; they should have vetted her earlier, but your condition seemed too critical to have your treatment delayed, even if it was a risk.”
The IPC wouldn’t have agreed to that.
“I did,” says Aventurine. His fingers flatten from their half-dome, laying still against the surface of the table. He pushes himself off of it, rises from his seat, takes a step closer to Ratio where he’s arranged motionlessly on the bed. The lack of motion from him is uncanny; someone might said he looks dead, but Aventurine’s seen enough corpses to tell the difference. He reaches out to smooth the fabric of Ratio’s collar, smiling. “I told them I’d take responsibility for the gamble if anything happened to you.”
Ratio’s incredulity is like an itch in the throat, a scoff on the cusp of breaking. Aventurine pulls his palm away, tucks it into his pocket.
“Surprise, doctor — It’s not fatal.”
I gathered. Dry.
“What, did I not seem concerned enough?” Aventurine raises his eyebrows. “You wound me. I thought I was fairly convincing.”
You still haven’t changed your habits, says Ratio coolly. Convincing? I don’t know how you manage to fool other people, gambler, but you always overplay your cards.
“I suppose I was expecting too much from you when I thought you’d be grateful,” sighs Aventurine, taking a seat on the edge of the table. The documents that he’d been reviewing are pushed back, hovering dangerously on the edge; he picks a packet up and half-heartedly leafs through it, unconcerned. “You’re lucky it was me who took care of you. Who knows how you might’ve ended up if someone else took that risk?”
Ratio’s eyes slip shut. There’s a faint crease in his forehead that makes him look like he’s deep in thought at odds with the smooth, textureless features of the bust that he usually wears. Aventurine’s fingers itch. It’s not a tangible difference: the loss of direct eye contact — peripheral eye contact, skimmed above the edge of the papers — doesn’t change the way that Ratio’s mind is rendered clear to him through the beacon. But it still sets him on edge.
You’re mistaken, says Ratio. His low voice crackles crisply in Aventurine’s ear. It’s not that you always win your bets, gambler. It’s that you never lose them.