We turn down a side passage and draw up outside a spacious boat bay, where a tiny gondola is waiting beneath a semi-inflated gasbag on the other side of the air lock. “What’s this?” I ask.

“Best to get you out of town as fast as possible: Get in.” Ichiban gestures at the gondola. “It’s got power and feedstock. Make yourself comfortable; it’s going to be your home for a while.”

I examine the thing doubtfully. It’s a snug cocoon of struts and wispy padding, sitting atop a cylindrical power and feedstock adapter, with some kind of grapple under the seat. I probably outweigh it three to one. “You expect me to wear that all the way to Mercury?”

“Yes.” He smiles blandly. “Your lift arrives in just over an hour.”

“My—” I stop, with one leg already half-inside the cocoon. “You’ve bought me a lift ride?” I can’t help it: I end on a whine.

“Of course.” It’s Ichiban’s turn to look slightly bemused. “How else did you expect to reach orbit this diurn?”

I sit down gingerly and slide my other leg into the cocoon. It’s beginning to sink in. Take it, my memories urge, and I cave. My gas-exchange system is too well designed to surge; but were I of my True Love’s species, there would be damp palms and thudding heartbeats in profusion. I don’t know what I expected: a leisurely jet ride to one of the equatorial stations, perhaps, then a slot in a scheduled launch. But we’re near the north polar plateau, and that would take time. Ichiban’s backers have bought time on an orbital pinwheel, and even now it is cranking its thousand-kilometer-long arm into position, ready to dip down into the stratosphere and grab me like a floating blossom on the breeze. I lie down and let the cocoon suck me in. This has got to be costing them thousands, I realize. More than an aristo-class berth. “How do I talk to—”

“Your cocoon will tell you everything you need to know,” says Ichiban, turning away. The glittering tattoos on his shoulders and arms wink at me as he walks off.

“Hello!” The cocoon squeaks breathlessly. “I’m Lindy! Thank you for choosing to travel with my owners, Astradyne Tours! What’s your name?”

Source code preserve me, she sounds enthusiastic. As if I need that. “I’m Freya,” I admit. “Are you—”

“Hello, Freya! I’ll be your spaceship for today! Are you comfortable? Feeling tense? I know how to deal with that! Let me give you a massage? I hope you don’t mind, but I see you’re a classic design! Do you have any cavities? Ooh! A gas-exchange lung! I’d better pack it well! I need to install a few probes; don’t worry, I’ll make it feel good—”

Lindy chatters away breathlessly as her probes nuzzle and squeeze into my orifices, filling my intimate spaces front and rear, top and bottom. It’s not the intromission that offends — she is considerate and lubricious, the pulsing sense of congestion pleasant after so long without intimate contact — but I find her personality annoying. It’s like being molested by a sleeping bag that speaks in Comic Sans with little love-hearts over the i’s.

“Ooh, that’s a big colon you’ve got! Does it go anywhere? It’s a long time since I’ve been inside one of these! Here, I’ll just hook your visuals up, and you’ll be snug inside me. How’s that?!?”

A brief lurch, and I can see out again. She’s hooked my eyes and ears and output line up to her sensorium, and now I can see that I’m lying on the deck, cocooned inside her white tube as she squeezes slippery packing foam into all my internal spaces. It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic. I lie back and stare up at the underside of Lindy’s balloon. I wonder what my True Love’s kind would have made of this means of transport: Probably most of them would have fled screaming at the impersonal sense of violation, but a few… “When do we launch?” I ask, trying to ignore the warmth filling me.

“Any moment now!” Lindy says brightly, then squeezes my nipples affectionately. “Relax and let me help you enjoy the ride?!?”

I shudder as the balloon lifts free of the deck. My cocoon is paying rather more attention to certain bits of my anatomy than is strictly businesslike: It’s been a long time since anyone took that kind of interest in me. “Lindy, do you make love to all your passengers?” I ask.

“Only the ones who’re equipped for it!” she chirps, throbbing inside me. “It helps them pass the time. Ooh, I see we’re in for a ride on Telemus! That’ll be fun! I like him! He’s cute!” I groan, silently — my mouth is agape, constrained by the soft spacer that holds my lips and throat open — and feel the unscratched itch building up inside me. I can’t help myself; some reflexes are built into my lineage too deeply to control consciously, and it has been a very long time — too long — since anyone made love to me. Even a not-very-bright surface-to-orbit sleeping bag. I writhe, or try to — Lindy has me thoroughly immobilized — and just as I’m about to ask her to back off on the customer-care front, she squirms again. “Ooh! Ooh! Yes! Yes! Oh!”

One of the peculiarities of my lineage is that although we superficially resemble a female of our Creators’ kind, we differ profoundly in some ways — especially our sexual reflexes. In our default state (unless we’re unconditionally imprinted on our One True Love), when someone becomes aroused over one of us, we become aroused over them. This is conditioned into us at a very low level, with the aid of some low-level modification to our basic neural architecture, and the addition of something called an “enhanced vomeronasal loop reflex.” Without that reflexive arousal, I’d be useless for my design purpose — but it sometimes has annoying side effects. And so I lose most of three minutes to a very overdue orgasm, and the afterglow keeps me preoccupied for another hour.

(This is probably a good thing, because if I were left alone to contemplate my predicament — helpless and hog-tied inside a launch cocoon, floating through the sulfuric acid clouds of Venus with only a soap-bubble-thin gasbag between me and the red-hot foothills below, waiting to be yanked violently into low orbit by a thousand-kilometer-long cable — I might be close to panic. Especially as a malign aristo wishes me ill, and strangers have turned over my pad, all in the past six hours. And then there’s the upcoming lift ride. But Lindy knows exactly how to distract nervous passengers, and I suspect assigning one of her kind to keep me quiet was part of Ichiban’s plan all along.)

I’ve ridden in lift pods before; it’s the easiest way off Earth. But leaving Earth was different. That time I was already in hibernation, packed in a commercial widebody load and hiked up to speed on a hypersonic sled before docking. This is a solo ride on a big dipper with an arm a thousand kilometers long, the tip counterrotating along its orbital path, dipping down until it’s just fifty kilometers above mean ground level in order to yank me up to orbital velocity in half a rotation: I’m going to be pulling tens of gees. (Which is partly why Lindy has been so enthusiastically stuffing me: I need the padding.) “What happens once we reach orbit?” I ask her, trying not to dwell on the process.

“Who cares?” she says dreamily. “Telemus is wild! I haven’t ridden him in ages!” I’d grind my teeth if she hadn’t carefully gagged me. “Well, my template has, but this is all new to me! This is my first flight! Ooh! I’m so excited!”

She shivers slightly, and I feel the tremors running through her skin.

“My flight itinerary,” I say carefully. “It matters to me.”

“We’ll get you there!” She giggles briefly. “Telemus will drop us just in time to catch the High Wire, and he’ll take us the rest of the way! It’ll be fun!”

“You’re going the whole way?” I ask, trying to conceal my dismay.

“Yes! Once High Wire has us, I’ll morph into my second instar, to keep you snug and safe from all the nasty radiation and micrometeoroids! ” she simpers as she flashes up a schematic of her type’s second instar — a form with stubby solar wings, a heat exchanger, and a mirrored parasol. They form a fetching ensemble for a cocoon hanging off a bough of the great ship High Wire, or one of his sibs. “We’ll have lots of time to get to know each other! Squee!”