I take another mouthful. “Now that’s the problem. Living here has been more expensive than I expected. I don’t want to hit on my sisters unless… well. Emergencies only. And while I’ve been saving, at this rate It’ll take me another six years to raise steerage back to Luna.” Two hundred Reals, minimum — the Venusian gravity well is expensive to escape. “I was hoping you might know someone?”

“I might.” He plays a brief chord progression. “Can you make yourself scarce for a few hours?”

I drain the pitcher and feel the weight in my digestive tract. “How many do you need?”

“Make it three: I have to make inquiries.” He takes my empty pitcher and lobs it across the bar, straight into Milton’s third hand. “I’m going to miss you, girl.”

I shrug. “It beats the alternative.”

“Sure it does. Vamoose!”

I vamoose.

IT IS NOT easy to hide in a town where you are twice as tall as almost everyone else, but I have had lots of practice; when big-headed munchkins with huge dark eyes point at you and shout “Ogre!” wherever you go, you learn fast, especially in the unpoliced frontier boonies. This is not a large town, but like all Venusian stratosphere dirigibles it has infrastructure spaces — the interiors of the oxygen-filled lift cells, the skeletal support frames beneath the flooring — and I have learned them. I work my way down from Victor’s lounge to the lowest level of the oxygenated zone, tweak my metabolic cycle, and exit via an air lock into the vast shrouded spaces of the dirigible frame.

I often come here off shift. I bring my pad and do my mail, view movies, browse wikis and strips, try to forget that I am the sole one of my kind on this world.

I’m comfortably holed up in one of my private refuges — a niche between the number four lift cell and the transparent outer skin, with an ocean of padded balloons to rest upon and a view across the cloud-scape below — when my pad itches for attention. I lean back against the membrane, letting it cushion me, and focus on the letter. It’s from Emma, one of my wilder sibs. I haven’t heard from her for a while, I realize, and check my memory: nearly six hundred and some Earth days, to be precise. Which is odd, because we normally exchange letters every fifty or so.

I conjure up her imago as I last updated it. She’s a honey blond model with cascading ropes of hair, symmetric high cheekbones, brown eyes with just a slight hint of epicanthic fold, and just a faint metallic sheen to her skin; as perfect and obsolete a model of beauty as any of us. But her imago looks slightly apprehensive, reflecting the emo hints encoded in her letter. “Freya? Hope you’re doing well. Can you call me back? I have a problem and could use your help and advice. Bye.”

I make the imago repeat the message with increasing perplexity. Just twenty words, after all this time? I’m on the edge of replying, saying as much, when I check the routing and see she’s mailing via the central post office on Eris Highport. Anger dies: Her brevity makes sense, but her location is puzzling. What’s she doing out there? I wonder. Eris is way out-system, nearly twice as far out as Pluto. Eight light-hours! That’s a long way for one of us to go. Normally we don’t venture into the deep black, there’s nothing of interest to us out there. Emma and I, and a couple of others, we’re the exceptions, willing to travel off-planet — as long as there’s somewhere civilized to go to at the other end.

No lineage is identical, and Rhea’s Get are prone to diverging from baseline faster and further than most (that’s what happens when your specifications are obsolete and your template-matriarch is dead). Even so, one of our norms is a weakness for centers of civilization. Last time I heard from Emma, she was on Callisto, working as a guide on skiing holidays across the icy outback. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that she’s fetched up in one of the Forbidden Cities, and elapsed transit time might explain the long silence, but even so…

“Emma, I’m moving shortly. What can I do for you?” I squeeze the message down tight, then wish it up to the post office and try not to wince when I hear the transmission cost. Her reply will get to me eventually, but it’s a pricey correspondence to maintain. For a moment I consider going to see her in person, but such a fancy is ludicrous: the energy budget, not to mention the flight time, would be astronomical. Tens of thousands of Reals, if I travel in steerage — probably millions if I want to get there in time to be of service.

Having replied, I try to relax on my bed of balloons; but I’m too disturbed to get comfortable. Nobody else loves me enough to call, and the Domina’s threat preys on my mind. So ugly, to fall victim to an aristo’s boredom! I need to get out of here. Even if I have to indenture myself to do it? Maybe it is that urgent. I came to Venus thinking I could make a fresh start, but I haven’t made a fresh start here, I’ve just floated from one dead-end job to another, empty-headed and lonely. Has it really been nine Earth years? I must have been mad! But there’s nothing here to stay for. Time to fly away.

DOWN NEAR THE ill-lit, cramped confines of the arbeiter barracks where the slaves sleep in racks stacked six high, I have a room of my own. It’s not much, but it’s got the basics: power point, inflatable bed, printer, maintenance toolkit, wardrobe. It’s somewhere to sleep, and dream, even though I try not to do too much of the latter — I’m prone to recurrent nightmares. I rent it for a huge chunk of my wages, and keep it as unfurnished as possible — the mass tax is fierce, and I have found public amenities cheaper than private — but it’s still the nearest thing I have to a home. There isn’t much I want to take, but still, it’s where I keep my graveyard. And I’m not going anywhere without that.

I thread my way back through swaying fabric tunnels slung across the windswept empty, up ladders and power rails and down tracks. It’s dirty and hot, the atmosphere poorly controlled compared to the grand ballrooms and gaming salons. This is the abode of the maintenance crews who keep this airborne pleasure palace pleasing to the aristos in their staterooms on the promenade decks. The small fry live here, one deck up from the barracks of the slave-chipped arbeiters.

My room is one of a stack of former freight containers, welded together and carved into apartments by some long-forgotten construction mantis. Some of the apartments are the size of my two fists, while others occupy multiple containers. They sway slightly when the town activates its steering turbines to avoid turbulent cloud formations: the aristos of the Steering Committee call us “ballast” and joke crudely about casting us loose if the town runs into a storm.

As I climb the ladder to my front door, I hear a faint scrabbling sound, the chitinous rasp of polymer feet on metal decking. I tense, instantly alert. It’s coming from my room! Has one of Stone’s sibs come after me already? I move my head, listening, trying to build up an acoustic picture. Something is moving around inside. Something small and scuttling, with too many legs. Not Stone, I realize. I resume my climb, quietly and fast, and ready myself on the narrow balcony beside the door. There’s a mechanical padlock — I sealed it myself — and sure enough, someone has etched through the shackle. Flakes of white powder coat the body of the lock where it dangles from the door latch. The intruder is still moving around inside my room, evidently not expecting to be disturbed. I listen briefly, and as my “visitor” rustles around near the printer, I yank the door open and jump inside.