“Dress like this. Walk like that. Talk like so.” The Honorable and Most Adored Katherine Sorico is aristo through and through, an elven bishojo princess of one of the first lineages to buy itself out of indenture and make the leap from owned to owner — the aristocracy of our brave new barbarian order indeed. (Do I sound embittered? Hah!) She is older than I, impeccably mannered, descended from a lineage of diplomats and dominas — built to command. Or at least that’s what her public identity would have you believe. In fact, Kate Sorico doesn’t exist. She went into retreat about twenty years ago, and while isolated from polite society, she met a very nasty end at the hands of a couple of escaped slaves. How the crime went undetected, and how Jeeves came to be in possession of her identity, is a mystery to me; but she is such an unlovable person that I don’t really care one whit. Masquerading as Katherine Sorico is challenging. There are few people other than Jeeves in this cantonment, and the need to learn my lines and stay in character stops me from socializing, because she wouldn’t be seen dead in their company.

“When you enter a room, try to remember that you own everyone in it,” Miss Rutherford pointedly reminds me when I fall halfway out of character and let my guard down for a moment. A creaking and ancient educationalist, she lurks in a corner of the third-floor dining room, watching me with unblinking severity. The dining room is transformed for a public reception, dumb zombies drafted to play the part of camp followers. (All for the sake of my social training.) “You’re not just the center of attention, you’re the reason why everyone else is there in the first place.”

I blink my too-big eyes (they feel strangely tight and bloated, as if they’re about to fall right out of my head) and try to internalize her instructions. The desired behavior is not mysterious; nevertheless, it is difficult for me to achieve. I know how to be a lady — femme mannerisms are part of my repertoire, available on demand — but there’s a big disjunction between attracting attention and demanding obedience. And aristo is not a role any of my soul-mingled sibs have ever played. “I’m not sure I’m going to get the hang of this,” I admit. I take a deep breath and stride toward the big chair at the middle of the receiving line. “Dominus Mao, I presume.” I try to invoke the correct notes of offhanded disdain and muted respect. “So pleased to meet you.”

“Eight out of ten,” Oscar drawls. “You noticed his seconds. That would lose you face right there. Real aristos don’t care about the hired help.”

“Yes they do,” snipes Miss Rutherford. “They just don’t care for the hired help.” She turns to me. “Your posture is wrong, dear. You move with confidence, but you are prepared to step aside if anyone crosses your path. Domina Katherine would order any of her serfs who obstructed her in public to suicide rather than allow herself to be impeded by them.”

“But she wouldn’t pay them any attention until they got in her way. Little Twinkletoes here isn’t even getting that far,” Oscar replies. “She’s too anxious—”

“Oh fuck off,” I snap, momentarily falling 100 percent into the desired rich-bitch persona. “I’ll offend whomever I want to as and when I want!”

I notice Oscar looking away from me, and follow his gaze toward the open door.

“One hopes one was not interrupting anything of great importance?”

“Nuh-oh.” I can’t say precisely what it is about Jeeves’s expression that makes me edgy, but I focus on him immediately. “What is it?”

“We must talk,” he says, and retreats.

“Looks like school’s out,” says Oscar.

“You think?” I hurry after Jeeves before Miss Rutherford can further critique me. I know she means well, but it becomes wearing.

“This way.” Jeeves strides past a dojo where masked agents practice low-gee violence on each other, then along a corridor and up to a secure door I have not been through before. I hurry to keep up with him. “We apologize for the haste, but it appears that the consignment is due to arrive here shortly, and there is word from the Port Authority that a fast liner, the Pygmalion, is beginning preparations for departure in the next couple of standard days.” His eyes twinkle. “A rich eccentric has offered to pay for all accommodation remaining unoccupied at departure in return for an expedited charter flight.”

“To Mars…?”

“The Jeeves Corporation is not infinitely rich, my dear; it is not our doing. But fortuitous happenstance is something that we are adept at diverting to our purposes, what?” He opens the door. “Katherine, I should like to introduce you to Dr. Murgatroyd, from the Sleepless Cartel. Needless to say, they’re the supplier we’re working with. Excellence, Katherine is to serve as the courier for your payload. Perhaps you would care to brief her on its care and handling?”

I gulp and take a hesitant step forward. What the Honorable Katherine would do slips from my mind and shatters beneath a many-faceted gaze as Dr. Murgatroyd turns his three heads and two instrument platforms to bear on me.

I’m no morphophobe. I can cope with people who look strange or are the wrong size and shape; ancients know, I’ve had enough experiences of that kind myself. But the doctor’s design puts my fight/flight response on notice: Part of me expects him to chop me up for spare parts at any instant. “Greetings, Katherine.” His voice resonates from a pedestal off to one side. It sounds like it’s being put together by cut and paste from raw phonemes. “I am very pleased to meet you. Would you sit down over here?” One three-fingered arm swings around to gesture at a reclining examination chair.

Several of my selves scream No! distractingly loudly, but I steel myself and step forward. “What do you have in mind?” I ask, trying to put the right note of arrogant disdain into my voice.

“A preliminary examination of the host’s abdominal cavity is indicated, ” Dr. Murgatroyd buzzes. “No intrusive surgery is required at this time. You have no cause for alarm.”

“Alright.” My voice wants to quaver, but I don’t let it. I climb into the chair and pull my feet up into the stirrups without so much as a glance at Jeeves. “So. What exactly is it you want me to deliver?”

MUCH LATER, RECLINING on a chaise in the grand saloon of the Pygmalion as I stare through the crystal porthole at the burnished disk of recessional Mercury, I think back to that examination, and to Dr. Murgatroyd’s explanation of what it is I am to do. I stifle a cold shudder.

“The payload is inactive,” Murgatroyd explained, “and it is not going to replicate uncontrollably. It will be supplied to you frozen, in a cryogenic container, and in this state it can survive anoxia, low temperatures, and high acceleration. However, it must be activated and transferred to an appropriate thermal carrier prior to delivery, and it must be concealed from customs inspection while it unpacks itself…”

I’m sure the Honorable and Most Adored Katherine Sorico would have told Murgatroyd exactly where he could put his payload — probably at gunpoint — but I am not so tough. I simply reminded myself that I was in desperate need of paid employment and gritted my teeth.

Jeeves is certainly making the job worth my while. If this is the worst it has to offer, then… we’ll see.

From my new perspective, sitting pretty in the first-class lounge of an express liner as Mercury recedes below us, the worst threat is boredom. One does not gladly hibernate if one is paying for first-class accommodation and entertainment, but this is a long journey; the distance between Mercury and Mars varies between 170 million kilometers and nearly 300 million kilometers at opposition. Pygmalion is a speedy M2P2 ship, not a slow interorbit cycler like High Wire, but even with constant acceleration on the way out and assistance decelerating from the magbeam transmitters on Phobos, it’s going to take us nearly ninety days to make the passage. The package I’m carrying needs to be activated twenty days before we arrive; until then, it’s concealed in a small cryostat in the base of a profoundly ugly black model of an extinct airborne replicator that preyed on other similar avioforms. My mission is to avoid succumbing to depression, creating a scandal, or otherwise attracting attention. Which may not be so easy, for I am one of only eight principal paying fares on this flight, and the face-achingly strange disguise I’m wearing tugs at my awareness constantly, squeezing me into the shape of somebody else’s life.