“Well then,” he said as he poured, “that means those drinks weren’t for you. Let me buy yours now.”

  She stared at the two glasses. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you did five shots. That was theirs. And I know at least some didn’t drink alcohol, that’s not the point. It was theirs. They live in your memory. This one is for you. This is for you, living.” He picked up his glass and held it out. “What do we toast to?”

  She looked at him in confusion, then at the remaining glass. “I … I don’t know.”

  He emptied his glass, then picked up hers and drank it back as well.

  “Well, it seems you should figure that out. You can’t carry that weight without having a life to carry it with.” He shrugged. “I know it sounds like something an Elowan would say, but you should think about it. Whatever you’re doing now isn’t working.”

  He walked a few steps down the bar to greet a new customer, leaving her to stare down at two empty glasses and the same feeling inside that she knew the alcohol wasn’t able to touch.

  She had come up to inspect the shipyard’s progress on the new ships. The landers going out in the first few ships were going to be the same “one size fits no one” version they had, but new ones were being made with different terrain options per her specifications. She had managed to avoid the minister, but in going back to their old bar she ran back into herself. The high-grade jet fuel was starting to erode her façade. She retreated to the Interstel administrative section and the small office she was given during her inspection visits. She closed her eyes, knowing she would soon be seeing her friend die again.

  “So when you find yourself crawling in the bottle and using alcohol abuse to cope, what do we say?”

  “I ask consent of my best friend before putting him deep inside me, making me feel warm and happy,” Benu said.

  Doctor Yihhslhis, an Elowan therapist, chuckled. “This has become quite the ritual – I ask questions to see if you understand the self-abuse, and you find humorous ways to acknowledge you see it.”

  “Yeah, well, Human docs tend to get upset and worried, which makes it more fun.”

  “Of course, they have sympathy. I do not feel as you do, so I have only empathy towards my favorite primate.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Tree. So am I gonna live?”

  “Of course not. You’re being stupid and accelerating your likelihood of early death.”

  “Excellent,” Benu said. “I can’t tell you what I know, or why I am stressed, or anything going on so you can’t disagree that what appears to be irrational acts of a scientist going off her rails is actually a quite sane and rational deliberate --

  “Act of suicide because you have the fate of Arth in your hands?”

  Benu’s mouth gaped, staring at her Interstel-approved therapist lounging in the earth-filled stone tub that served as Elowan furniture.

  “Why do you think I am assigned to you, Benu? I’m a scion of one of the strongest Elowan branches on Arth.” The therapist’s arms gestured unironically, using human body language to go with the words.

  “And no, you do not hold our fate in your hands, so you can drop the martyrdom as well. You were brought in as a fresh pair of eyes, unburdened with the long history of this tangled thicket of a forced colony. Don’t give me that look, you have not lived your entire life keeping such secrets let alone enforcing them. I commend your commitment to security and I won’t ask you to divulge anything. It’s one thing for me to say it, and another for you to confirm. I have only shared my knowledge so you know you’re not alone and not going crazy. Director Phexipotex has been very concerned about you. You have not processed losing your family.”

  Benu’s face had reassembled itself into her normal neutral mien while her therapist spoke. Now she snorted.

  “My family? Doctor Yihhslhis, with all due respect, the Director worries too much. My parents had died while I was in university, well before I joined the program. My grieving is complete, my psyche eval even said it would add resiliency for me should something happen out there.”

  The bulbous head swayed up and down, like a small animal was somehow behind its head and pushing on a branch, getting ready to jump. Benu knew nodding was a behavior learned from Humans and Thrynn, but somehow the doctor made it seem a natural Elowan action instead of aping a Human or Thrynn movement. The compound eyes, more like interlocking pools than the faceted eyes of the Velox, were still locked on hers, real and artificial.

  Yihhslhis cocked their head, seeming to be considering something it had probably long had decided upon, then sinuously stretched its limbs, got out of the tub, and sat on the couch on Benu’s left. The sudden scent of fresh earth and Elowan pollens enveloped Benu even before the prehensile vines wrapped behind her and around the right side. Without thinking, she leaned into the trunk, the skin feeling like a sun-warmed smooth-barked tree. This is how she sat with Sohhh-Mitth after her first brush with death. She felt split between two moments in time. Her therapist’s gentle tones felt like the same undulating rhythm as Sohhh-Mitth’s when he was trying to calm her.

  “Benu, you have been watching your family die, over and over. Your family. Dead. Dying. Over and over. The other ships, your ship, they were your family.” The arms hugged gently even as the words cut in, deliberately, like an ice-edged scalpel.

  “They are gone and the Hyperion crew act like you don’t exist. You. Are. Alone.”

  An invisible foot slammed into Benu’s gut, bending her over as the air fled her body. Something tore in her chest. Water flooded her eyes. Her mouth ripped open wide in pure primate pain, teeth bared, as a wordless sound ripped from the back of her throat. For long heartbeats she was locked in that position until her body tired of waiting and forced her to inhale, releasing long, racking sobs.

  Warm, wiry arms pulled her into the therapist’s trunk. Benu felt her body shaking, again putting her back on the Flower as Yihhslhis rocked her just like her friend had, adjusting the motion until it somehow found the natural frequency her father had used when she was little. In the back of her mind, Benu knew her therapist was using all their skills to create this moment, but the rest of her unlatched her arms from around her own middle and wrapped them around the trunk, burying her face in the warm, reassuring mix of loam and flower-like Elowan scents, the human words becoming Elowan language, softly sung, the swaying rocking her into a quiet snuffle, until Doctor Llano of the ISS Enduring Flower faded into her father’s Little Benny and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, still supported in a cradle of branches and vines swaying to an invisible, faintly musical wind.

  The next twelve days she stuck to her routine of integrated therapy, making up for lost time in the Old City, followed by grinding out the logistic details needed for the new program due to launch early in the next year. She used puzzle solving skills to visualize project requirements as a 4-D mushy puzzle piece, putting the pieces together into a kinetic sculpture. It was tantalizing work, with gaps diminishing but not quite disappearing.

  Benu was switched to therapy every other day, so she started working out on the open days, using the old Interstel training programs she used to get into the once-covert exploration program. She had finished the previous bottle of whiskey and had just cracked the second a month after she started the new routine. She had been going through a bottle every two or three days before that.

  It had occurred to her that Interstel had been monitoring her the entire time. It’s possible the six weeks in Old City was at least partly a ploy to put her in a more controlled environment. That’s what was bothering Benu – she just didn’t know what to think. Now that she knew there was a shadow government behind the elected one, it made everything seem like a conspiracy. She understood the need to manage the tensions of four very different biologicals, all of whom had a history of conflicts on their homeworld and now are stuck on a single shared planet with its own history of conflict. She had been taught it was because Arth had chosen wisdom and peace, as if a simple pledge eliminated natural competition within and between species. Of course, she had believed it because it’s what she was meant to see.

  It was five days before the new year when a courier brought a sealed case. Once alone, she broke the seals. It was a summary briefing of the unofficial Arth power structure. The cover sheet showed over a dozen sign-offs, meaning this was a very deliberate in-brief of how things actually worked on Arth. Her previous research had revealed it. This mapped it out, had made it clear people and even groups could be discredited or disappear if they threatened the delicate dance. The lack of overt threat for failing to maintain secrecy was more chilling than any formal list of consequences.

  It layed out power structure, hard and soft, between different species and groups. Most groups were within a species, such as Szphaotxi’s hive. Not “hive section”. It was a full hive, the largest one and a solid 15% of the Velox population. Other groups, like Interstel, cut across those borders with a more specific interest. The document itself was a dry discussion of relationships and historical associations. In and of itself, it would not undermine the democratically elected government. It’s the context she is operating in, what the security wonks call “aggregate intelligence”.

  The names of various leaders were often different than what the public saw. Willwater was both the head of Interstel as well as the head of a Human faction, Szphaotxi was in charge of his but publicly was a minor functionary. Her friend Sohhh-Mitth had been as high up as Dr. Yihhslhis, but Phexipotex did not rate a mention. Elections and public positions were variables in the power structure. The factions of Arth learned the sincere support of the population was a force of its own and was not always predictable. Some of the leaders, such as Willwater and his father before him, successfully leveraged popularity to build upon their behind-the-scenes power in mineral mining and marketing control.

  With the names came organizations, resources, capabilities. Her inner librarian had been silent, drinking in the torrent of information. Now she was adding commentary cross-correlated from a lifetime on Arth. Overall, Benu had understood the big picture as an image, but not how it worked. Elowan, Thrynn, Human, Velox were all moving in and out of each other’s orbits. Even the androids were independent actors. Some organizations were run by a single faction, some by a single race, and others like Interstel were designed to be a nexus of sorts. Her previous projects were not wrong, per se, but they did include what was driving the various dynamics.

  Pieces formed, spun around, and started to click together. The mushy boundaries firmed up. Some pieces broke into smaller ones, as they had only looked like a single entity. Others that had looked like disconnected groups came together as a single entity. It wasn’t enough. She couldn’t see it.

  She started tapping on her tablet but the screen was too small. She transferred the work space to the wall screen. Benu keyed up an organic chemistry modeler. Designed for xenobiology work, it was a freeform modeler unconstrained by known patterns. Mentally substituting atoms for resources, molecules for factions, reactions for changes, Benu used animation to move the resources over space and time to model the finite resources of Arth.

  She knew the endstate she wanted. She had a solid start point set two years in the past to set the resource and alignment baseline. She was able to model and track the planet’s mobilization, but only to a point. Armed with new knowledge and a new mental construct, she began to move the constrained resources, tapping different factions and organizations with imperial if virtual ease.

  For hours she moved her small galaxy of molecules around. Cold food remained untouched. Cold coffee was consumed mechanically, a simple maintenance function. The model included current alignments and commitments, which added another layer of constraints. If something was critical, she bent it to her will. Her job was to find the path. Others would have to do the work to make it happen.

  She couldn’t find it. The next wave would launch. Those assets were committed. Just the known potential colony targets and mining sites would surpass Arth’s current logistic capacity, and the second wave would be finding more. The critical shortfall was not finding enough resources, although that was still uncertain. It was developing the logistics base to springboard into a multi-system government to disperse the population in a matter of months, not decades.

  Roughly speaking, she estimated there would be sufficient resources assuming the next wave’s discoveries panned out. As those riches came in, there would be a natural response for others to push out by any means available. That could be channeled. For example, people already hauling ore in-system will try to rig their ships into interstellar cargo runners, trailing behind the finds of the next exploration wave.

  It wasn’t until she switched from evaluating resources to evaluating bottlenecks did she find it. The one gap that no amount of movement could bridge. It was the in-system transportation assets needed to manage the incoming materials, outbound ships, and manage their construction and maintenance. There was a massive cluster of resources dedicated to mining the oceans that could be repurposed, but as manifested it resisted repurposing. If this could be shifted to supporting the space infrastructure, then the whole plan has a chance, but the window for this to happen was closing.

  It was one of the multiple organization nexus operations like Interstel, so the model defaulted to not letting her break it apart. In order to release this model constraint, she had to dig down to see who was the final authority. There was always one belly button to push if you looked hard enough, even if they didn’t actually have a belly button. She tunneled through the various layers of families and corporations until she found the key file to open. There it was. Third Minister Szphaotxi.

  Even as she read the file, her comms buzzed. Szphaotxi’s face appeared on the inset video image, floating over the constellation of ersatz organic molecules.

  “Ah, Doctor Llano,” Szphaotxi said. “So good to see you have come to the same understanding I have. I can tell because you opened that file. I think we can help each other out. I will see you at 0900, at the place you used to work. Have a good evening.”

  “Silowrr will die. Is that plain enough?”

  Benu had been let past security at Old Town. She was clearly expected. She had reached her old quarters and work room. It would take days to get used to the semi-rotted organic smell from the recyclers again. She hoped she had those days. It would be even better if she wasn’t stuck down here.

  Phexipotex was with Szphaotxi. At first, the sight of the second most powerful person in Interstel gave her hope. Szphaotxi crushed that hope.

  “Silowrr is leverage and could one day lead. He would matter even if he didn’t matter to you. Phexipotex is like you, Doctor, he is no one. Unlike you, people know him. He is a useful lackey. Why do you think Willwater uses him? Respect? What is there to respect?”

  Phexipotex’s body language said everything. He was clearly subservient to the minister. Every time Szphaotxi made a demand or even an offhand suggestion, the Interstel executive scuttled forward, tapping away on his tablet. It felt like Phexipotex did not even acknowledge Benu was there.

  Benu was past scared. She was angry.

  “Why drag Silowrr into this? He has done nothing, he’s not part of any of this.”

  The Velox didn’t bother making Human laughter, just rubbed the front arms together in dry, raspy amusement.

  “We are all part of this, Doctor. That’s why you are here. You were picked as an approved interlocutor, a problem solver. And you were not even supposed to be here. You were excess, but useful excess. Did you not understand my earlier lectures in this place? I was telling you how easily you can be put in the recycler, but as long as you are a resource you will be allowed to live.”

  Benu felt like she had been slapped. Her previous fear of Interstel was designed by this Velox, the shame of wrongful blame further angering her. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words formed. The scar on her face was livid, something even a Velox would not miss. The minister’s casual dismissal with the gesture traveling from the middle pair to the back pair evoked brushing dirt off the legs.

  “No, Doctor, you were not projected to survive. Your intelligence and abilities indicated you would have realized the significance of discoveries instead of simply gathering data, and this would have spurred you into encouraging the captain and crew to keep pushing forward until your collective luck ran out.”

  Benu winced again. While recovering she realized she was the one keeping the crew pushing forward, convinced their discoveries would be the critical data Arth needed that no one else would be able to gather. She had not know that over a third of her data was confirming what was recorded over a thousand years ago. As a scientist she understood the value of independent confirmation, but even lab rats don’t like being lab rats. The logic of necessity didn’t take the knife out of her guts or the nightmares out of her head while she tried to sleep.

  “But you did survive. Your undeniable analytic skills in making non-intuitive connection based on sparse data defies the machine learning AIs. Add to this, you have no significant political connections. Our society was, and is, held together through coercion, austerity, and a belief in the ‘Four As One’. It’s an engineered belief drawn from elements of all four species’ most powerful belief systems. It’s mean to keep those like you in their place.”

  Benu almost reflexively responded. Instead, she kept her arms down. Both hands were fists, but for more immediate reasons.

  “You are uniquely qualified in scientific ability, personal experience in exploration, and a non-partisan perspective to be entrusted with these secrets on behalf of Arth. Everything is about to change, and for the first time in centuries, we don’t know how.

  “We used you to work through a range of problems. We couldn’t fully trust each other’s analysis or reports because everyone had their own interests. You had no conflicts and no resources. You are an incredibly useful tool, although less so now that you know what your role is.