“Indeed, my lady.” I nod, the almost bow that I practice daily, that is reflexive for the bishojo ruling caste. “I shall do that.”

“Well, then, it’s settled!” She feigns lighthearted delight, as if I have not momentarily scared the shit out of her with rumor of a slave rebellion. “One good word deserves another, I think.”

“Oh. Yes?” The trichloroethane in the liqueur is tickling my chemotactic sensors, infusing them with a rich warmth that is slightly disorienting.

“The Pink Police have very recently been placed on heightened alert. It appears they are afraid that a cache of replicators has been raided on Mars. They are searching everyone arriving on or departing the planet, and even with my connections, I am afraid we might be delayed on arrival.”

I freeze for a few seconds, then knock back the rest of my drink to conceal my dismay. Two things are apparent. First, I haven’t fooled her at all; she thinks I’m smuggling something. And secondly, if she’s telling the truth (and not just a cunning lie to flush me out), it’s clear that they’re looking for me.

Which means Jeeves has a leak in his organization.

I RETURN TO the plush, lonely claustrophobia of my cabin, cloisonnéenamel inlay and swagged-velvet drapes concealing soap-bubble lithium-alloy walls. Of my “servants,” Bill is elsewhere; Ben is hunched in his usual spot between my shipping trunk and the coreward bulkhead, chewing on a wire. “You again,” he mutters.

“Where’s Ben?” I ask.

“None of your business, mistress.” His sarcasm is charmless in the extreme.

“Then I suppose he won’t want to hear what I just picked up in the lounge,” I snap, as I swing down the safety bars by my bed and float inside. “The Pink Police have gone onto high alert. They’re searching all traffic between Mars and orbit.”

“Oh,” Bill responds disappointingly. He stands up, releasing the wire. “I’d better go tell him, then.” He leaves abruptly, by way of the servants’ hatch.

Alone — for the time being — I let myself drift down to the sleeping pad, then fold the safety bars back into place. (While Pygmalion normally accelerates at barely a hundredth of a gee, she sometimes has to dodge debris. Traveling at hundreds of kilometers per second, even a sand grain can be deadly: and sand grains don’t show up on radar at long range. Consequently, the evasive maneuvers can be brutal — and after the first time they’re plastered against the ceiling by the emergency thrusters, even the most pigheaded aristos learn to respect the safety bars on their beds.)

Lying securely on a nest of bedding, I check my pad, as I have done for the past fifty days. Normally it’s replete with chatter, to which I have to spend some time responding — queries from the managers of Katherine Sorico’s fictional estates, requests for authorizations to disburse funds and return company accounts — all meaningless, but essential if I am to maintain my cover identity. This time, I’m surprised to see a real message hidden in the morass. It purports to be about repairs to a summer house in Tasmania, but as I skim it hurriedly I suddenly realize there’s an imago attachment. And it’s from Emma!

“Sister.” Her sudden formality is jarring. “I gather you’ve met my friend.” I have? “And you’re no longer on Venus. Or Mercury. I don’t know where you are, and I don’t want to — if this message reaches you, best not to reply.”

I squint at the imago, trying to make out the background. It’s dark, and something about Emma’s appearance isn’t right. Her hair is a glassy shell around the top of her head, her skin is — oh. She’s wearing cryoskin, of the kind we only need in the very chilliest of environments. I blink, irritated. “Go on.”

“I hear you’ve been in trouble lately. I’m sorry about that; we’d have spared you if we could. But I’m in trouble, too, and I need your assistance.” She pauses for a moment, but not to take breath; where she is standing, the traditional oxygen-nitrogen ambient mix would flow like water. What on Earth can she be talking about?

“For a long time now, we — some of your sibs — have been engaged in a line of work we’ve been careful to keep you out of. That’s you, Freya, and everyone else who didn’t need to be directly involved; you’re our sisters, and we cherish you, but we didn’t want to involve you because what we do is risky and distasteful. So only a few of us were involved at any time. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of us left. So we need your help. We need to bring you into the circle.”

Circle of what? “Get to the point,” I mutter.

“We — myself, and I think it’s safe to name the dead ones, so I can also say: Juliette, Chloe, Aphrodite, Sinead, and some others who are still alive so it’s best if you don’t know who — are Block Two sibs. You, and most of our sisters, are Block One. You were initialized from a soul dump of Rhea that was taken right after her certification, when she was nineteen years old and in her sixth instar.” Sixth — and final, adult-sized — body, that is. It takes a long time, years and years, to educate and train an archetype for a lineage of concubines. There’s no easy way to short-circuit childhood if you’re trying to build high empathy and interpersonal skills. I (she, I remind myself) was ported through a series of bodies along the way from crèche to cathouse, and only declared complete by our trainers on reaching the sixth instar.

“What you weren’t told is that after that template dump was taken, Rhea underwent further training. We Block Two sibs have been privileged to receive an update from a soul chip she recorded during her nineteenth instar, at age thirty.” Nineteenth? How in the name of my Dead Love did she get through thirteen bodies in eleven years? “Physically we’re identical, but mentally… we have some extra training. We can hide among you quite effectively, but the fact remains, we’re different.”

I pause the imago. Emma’s confession is outrageous! She’s not — really not, where it counts — one of us? She’s a sib of an older, different lineage that — hang on. My head’s spinning. My hand goes to the back of my head, pushing aside the weight of my synthetic curls. Juliette. She’s compatible. I’m dreaming her, aren’t I? It’s a fact that you can’t exchange memories with a different lineage. You get nothing but fuzzy impressions at best — insanity and catatonia at worst. So. Emma is of my line. But she’s claiming to have extra… what?

“That’s alright. Take your time.” Her lips curve in a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “It’s hard to accept, I know. But swapping memories and remembering our dead is only part of the program. This is what our soul chips were designed for in the first place — to allow in-field upgrades, so that we can avoid obsolescence by acquiring new skills and experiences. And there’s nothing as obsolescent as a concubine tailored to please an extinct species, is there? I started out just like you, Freya, as a Block One sister. Now we need you to upgrade to Block Two. You can start the process whenever you like — just load one of us, Chloe or Sinead perhaps. It’ll take a couple of years to complete the process, but once you start, you’ll gain access to the reflexes you need.”

I pause the imago again and rub the socket at the top of my spine. “What’s in it for me?” I ask.

Evidently Emma gave her imago some footnotes to roll out if I seemed unconvinced. “How do you think we always manage to buy our sibs free if they fall on hard times and wind up indentured?” She shrugs. “There are more rewarding lines of work than rickshaw driver, Freya. Much more rewarding — even if we have to spend most of our lives wearing one disguise or another.” Is that a moue of bitterness in her expression? “This message was forwarded via our trusted associates. If you’re hearing this, then you’ve already started on that path. The upgrade to Block Two will ease your progress.”