“Really?” he asked, stepping inside her room.

“Yeah.” She leaned close, nibbled him delicately on the neck. “I won’t be a minute.” Heart pounding, she stepped back and hit the door close button. Then she tapped the panel next to it, the privacy lock. Her heart was trying to climb out through her rib cage: “Did I really just do that?” she asked herself. “Wendigo. Suite, can you hear me?”

“Greetings, passenger Strowger! I can hear you.” Its voice was tinny, coming to her through the external control plate.

“Please lock my suite door. Do not unlock the door until one hour after arrival. I want to sleep in. Divert all incoming calls, cancel outgoing routing. Maximum sound damping. Return to full privacy mode and add voiceprint authentication to keyword.”

The simpleminded suite agent swallowed it. “Warning! Privacy may be overridden by authorized crew members in event of accident or medical emergency—”

“How many crew does this flight carry?” Her stomach lurched, icy cold soup sloshing.

“This is an unattended flight.”

“Keep it that way. Now shut up and don’t talk to anyone.” There was a tentative knocking from inside the cabin, almost inaudible through the smart foam. Then a faint bump as if something massive had bounced off the inside of the door. Wednesday pouted at it, then headed for the staircase, a wistful urge to run back and apologize still fighting it out with her common sense. Sex on legs, packaged just for her? Where were you during Sammy’s party? “Vacc’ing out Mom’n’Dad,” she muttered to herself, half-blind with anger and loss as she hunted round C deck for an empty row to colonize. “Unless he’s the best friendly fuck I’ve ever dropped by mistake…” She carried on arguing with herself for a long time before she dozed off, and by the time she was awake again the ferry had passed turnover and was nearly ready to dock.

“Okay, I’m here. What do I do now?”

Noctis concourse wasn’t built with fail-safe operation in mind. It was a product of the ebullient Septagonese economic miracle, so optimistic that nothing could possibly go wrong. Gravity thereabouts was a variable, vectored in whichever direction the architects had willed it. There were jungles on the walls, sand dunes on the ceiling, moebius walkways snaking through them for maximum visual impact.

Wednesday hurried along a strip locked to a steady half gee, trailing behind a flickering lightbug. She passed occasional clumps of other long-distance travelers — a mix of emigrants, merchants taking the long caravanserai, wanderjahr youth on the Grand Tour — and a variety of variously enticing and annoying shops disguised as environmental features. Butterflies the size of dinner plates flapped slowly past overhead, their wings flickering with historical docudramas. A small toroidal rain cloud spun slowly over a bright crimson nest of muddy-rooted mangroves, small lightning discharges clicking across its inner hole. Wednesday glanced past it, through a chink in the artistic foliage that led into a sudden perspective shift; stars glinted through diamond windows over a kilometer away. It was very Septagon, life defying vacuum, and for a moment she was dizzy with homesickness and the infinitely deep pool of depression that waited just beneath the thin ice of her self-control. If we hadn’t come here, Mom and Dad would still be alive. If. If.

“Follow the lightbug to your connection with the liner Romanov. Once you reach the Romanov’s dock you should go aboard and remain in your stateroom until departure. Which is due in under six hours. I can cover for you for some time, but if you venture around the terminal, it is possible that a police agent will spot you and place you under volitional arrest. I believe there is a high probability that no charges will be brought, but you would miss the departure, and there is a high risk that the individuals pursuing you would locate you and make another attempt on your life. At the very least, they would be able to regain their lock on you. Good work with the suite, by the way.”

“But what do I do?” she demanded nervously, stepping around a gaggle of flightless birds that had decided to roost in the middle of the footpath.

“Once you are on the liner and it is under way, they cannot reinforce their surveillance. I believe they are stretched thin, covering the orbitals around Centris Delta. There may be one or more aboard the ship, but you should be able to avoid them. Use the funds in your account to buy essentials aboard the ship; keep yourself alert. The next port of call is New Dresden, and I expect by that time to have fully identified your pursuers.”

“Wait — you mean you don’t know who they are? What is this?” Her voice rose.

“I believe them to be a faction of a group calling themselves the ReMastered. Whether they are an official faction, or a rogue splinter group, is unknown at this time. They may even be using the ReMastered as a cover: they’ve concealed their trail very effectively. If you go along with my suggestions, you will force them to expose themselves. Do you understand? I will have help waiting for you at New Dresden.”

“You mean this ship is going to New Dresden? I—” She found herself talking into silence. “Shit. ReMastered.” Whoever they were, at least she had a name, now. A name for something to hate.

The loop path branched, and her lightbug darted off to one side. Wednesday followed it tiredly. It was past midnight by her local time, and she badly needed something to keep her going. Here, the concourse took a turn for the more conventional. The vegetation thinned out, replaced by tiled blood diamond panes the size of her feet. Large structures bumped up from the floor and walls, freight lifts and baggage handlers and stairwells leading down into the docking tunnels that led out to the berthed starships. Some ships maintained their own gravity, didn’t they? Wednesday wasn’t sure what to expect of this one — wasn’t it from Old Earth? She vaguely remembered lectures about the place, docutours and ecodramas. It had all sounded confusingly complicated and backward, and she’d been trying to keep Priz the Axe from cracking her tablet instead of listening to the professora. Was Earth a high-level kind of place, or backward like home had been?

The lightbug paused in front of her, then went dark. “Welcome to embarkation point four,” piped her itinerary, somewhat muffled from inside a jacket pocket. “Please have your itinerary, identification documents, and skinprint ready for inspection!” The bug lit up again, darting back and forth between Wednesday and a powered walkway leading to the level below the concourse.

“Okay.” Wednesday unsealed her pocket. “Uh, identification. Hmm.” She fumbled with her rings for a moment. “Herman,” she hissed, “do these rings authenticate me?”

Click. “Default identity, Victoria Strowger. Message from owner: Have fun with these, and remember to check the files I’ve stored in them under your alias.” Clunk.

She blinked, bemused. “O-kay…”

Down below the wild efflorescences of the port concourse she found herself in a cool, well-lit departure hall fronting a boarding tunnel. A redheaded woman in some kind of ornate blue-and-gold uniform — How quaint! she thought — stood by the entrance. “Your papers, please?”

“Uh, Vicky Strowger.” She held up her itinerary. “Have I come to the right place?”

The woman glanced aside at some kind of internal list. “Yes, we’ve been expecting you.” She smiled with professional ease. “I see you’ve got a companiotronic guide. Would you like me to update it for shipboard use?”

“Sure.” Wednesday handed the furry blue nuisance over to the woman. “If you don’t mind me asking, who are you and what happens next?”

“Good questions,” the woman said distractedly, stroking the back of the guide’s skull while it spasmed in a fit of downloading. “I’m Elena, from the purser’s office. If you have any questions later, feel free to ask room service to put you through to me. We’re not scheduled to depart for another five and a half hours, but most passengers are already aboard, which is why — Ah, hello! Mr. Hobson? You’re earlier than usual, sir. If you’d care to wait one second — Here you are, Victoria. If you’d like to go through into the elevator it will take you straight to the accommodation level you’re on. Do you have any luggage?” She raised an eyebrow at Wednesday’s small shake of the head. “All right. You’re in Sybarite-class row four, Corridor C. There’s a fab you can use for the basics in your room, and a range of boutiques two levels down and one corridor across from you if you want to shop for extras later. Anything else you need to know, feel free to ask for me. Bye!” She was already turning to deal with the unusually early Mr. Hobson as Wednesday slid the talking travel guide back into its pocket. She shook her head: Too much, too fast. So Earth had fabs? Then it wasn’t a backwater like New Dresden — or home — and she wasn’t going to have to camp out in a refugee cell for a week. Maybe the journey would turn out all right, especially if Herman had given her his usual thorough map of the service facilities …