My room’s a mess: bedding ripped apart, printer overturned and leaking working fluid, cached clothing strewn everywhere. The culprit squats in the middle of the chaos. I haven’t seen its like before: six skinny arms, a knee-high body bristling with coarse fur, three big photoreceptors spaced around a complex mandible assembly. It’s clutching my graveyard, the lid open as it whiffles over the soul chips of my dead siblings. “Hey! You!” I yell.

The intruder swings its head toward me and jumps to its feet, and all its fur stands on end as it electroshrieks a blast of random microwave noise at me. Clutching my graveyard, it darts between my legs. I sit down hastily and grab it, pinning it to the floor. It’s about the size of one of the medium-sized canines my True Love’s species used as companions, back before they made us, and it shrieks continuously, as if it’s afraid I’m going to kill it. Which I just might if it’s damaged the graveyard. “Drop it!” I tell the thing. “Drop it now!” My fingertips prickle where they touch its fur, and I realize they’re sparking. Maybe it doesn’t have ears? It looks weird enough to be a vacuum dweller, oh yes.

The thing writhes briefly, then flops limply beneath my hand. I grab the graveyard and hurriedly put it behind me. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” I demand.

It doesn’t reply. It doesn’t even move. A thin, acrid smoke rises between my fingertips. “Oops,” I mutter. Did I break it? I take my hand off its back and stare. The fur is coarse and feathery, and as I inspect it, I see dipolar recursion. Okay, it is a vacuum dweller — and a loud one. It has no lungs, but a compact gas bottle and a reticulation of power feeds that show that it has adapted itself to a temporary excursion down-well. This is just too weird. I pick up the graveyard and inspect it. It doesn’t seem to be damaged, but I can’t be sure, short of loading every one of its occupants, one chip at a time. Later, I resolve, slipping the case into my battered shoulder bag. “You’d better not have damaged it,” I warn the supine burglar, then in a moment of vindictive pique I kick it across the room. It stays limp until it hits the opposite wall, but then it emits a blindingly loud pulse of microwaves, folds its legs and arms, and blasts straight at my face.

“Fuck!” I duck as it whooshes overhead, straight out the open doorway on a blast of highly illegal exhaust. The gas bottle’s not for respiration, it seems. I spin around just in case, but it shows no sign of coming back. Instead — is that a rip in the wall opposite? Whoops. Yes, it is. The little burglar just punched a hole in the outer membrane of the town. The crew won’t be happy about that, I figure. Better get out of here. I scramble down the ladder, and, carrying all of my dead sisters’ soul chips in a shoulder bag, I go in search of whatever deal Victor has lined up for me.

VICTOR’S DIVE IS barely busier than it was before I vamoosed, but there’s a stranger sitting in with Victor, and Milton nods me over as I step in the door. “Ah, Freya,” says Victor. “I’d like you to meet Ichiban.”

Ichiban — Number One, I translate — turns blue porcelain eyes the size of dinner plates on me and bows his head, very slightly. I nearly take a step back as a reflex yells aristo! at me, but then I realize: no. He wants to look like an aristo, but he isn’t one — never can be. “I am very pleased to meet you,” I say, bowing back at him. Mindless courtesies ensue as I try to get a handle on what he is.

“Ichiban has a minor problem that you might be able to help him resolve,” Victor explains. “It involves travel.”

“I’d be very happy to offer any advice I can,” I agree cautiously.

“Yes.” Ichiban nods thoughtfully. “You are very big.” He looks up at me. It’s true: I’m almost a hundred and seventy centimeters tall. An idealized replica of our Creators’ kind, in fact, unlike the super-deformed midgets who are the commonest phenotype of the nouveau riche these days. “Good thermal inertia,” adds Ichiban, unexpectedly. “And you were designed for Earth, before the emancipation.”

Good thermal inertia? I smile as my biomimetic reflexes cut in: my cheeks flush delicately, signaling mild embarrassment or confusion. Emancipation? What’s he talking about? “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow,” I say.

“My sponsors have an object that requires transportation from the inner system to Mars,” Ichiban says, then pauses delicately.

So why talk to me? I wonder. Travel isn’t my strong point — it’s too expensive for those of my lineage to indulge in frequently. When you double the dimensions, you multiply the volume by eight — and hence the mass and the energy budget required to make orbit. I’m twice as tall as the next person: That’s largely why I’m stuck here, and the solar system is a playground for chibi dwarfs instead of real people. I summon up a mask of polite attentiveness to conceal my disappointment.

“It is currently being prepared on Mercury and needs to depart in approximately eighty days. Our problem is that the object is a delicate research item of considerable value. It requires supervision and must be maintained in a shockproof environment under conditions of constant temperature, pressure, and oxygenation.” He continues to stare at me. “I believe others of your type have on occasion worked as escorts or couriers, yes?”

Where did he get that from? I boggle briefly. “My archetype was indeed designed as an escort,” I say cautiously. Escort for what? I leave unsaid, just in case. Certain prejudices die hard.

“As an escort for organisms of a strictly biological variety,” Ichiban agrees, nodding amiably. “Pink goo replicators.”

I try to hide my shock. “What exactly is this research artifact?” I ask.

“I am not able to tell you that.” Ichiban is still smiling faintly. “The details have been withheld from me for reasons of commercial confidentiality. However, I am authorized to pay for your immediate steerage passage to Cinnabar, if you will agree to meet with my colleagues and consider their assignment.” He raises a warning finger. “You are not the only contractor we are approaching. This is a task of some delicacy — our competitors would be delighted to disrupt this project — so there is no guarantee that you will be chosen. But I understand you require off-world transportation in any event, so it is my hope that we may help each other.”

They want me to transport a biological sample? A living one? I almost reel with shock. “I — I would be delighted to help,” I stutter on automatic. “But — in steerage?”

Ichiban’s smile fades slightly. “It will cost us dearly to put those big limbs of yours in orbit,” he warns. Which is to say, Don’t push your luck.

I nod, resigning myself to the inevitable. A walkabout berth would be too much to hope for. “When do you want me to leave?”

Ichiban glances at Victor. “Immediately,” he says. “You will come with me now.” And the interview’s over.

ICHIBAN HUSTLES ME out a back alley I didn’t know about and up a steep companionway to a road where there’s a waiting rickshaw, drawn by a pair of ponyboys who give me a walleyed glare when I get in. It creaks under my weight, but Ichiban seems unconcerned. “Fly,” he tells the ponyboys, and they’re off at a trot, tails held high.

I notice a couple of small ornithopters tracking us. “Are they yours?” I ask.

Ichiban gives me a bland look. “Leave them to me.” He leans back in the seat and closes his eyes. A few seconds later one of the birdbots begins to smoke and veers wildly off course. The other gives us a more cautious berth.