Thirty-two minutes later, I heard movement. I thought Tapan was getting up to go to the restroom facility, but then she settled on the pads behind me, not quite touching my back. I had set my breathing to sound deep and even, like a human sleeping, with occasional random variations to add verisimilitude, so the fact that I had frozen in place wasn’t obvious.

I had never had a human touch me, or almost touch me, like this before and it was deeply, deeply weird.

Calm down, ART said, not helpfully.

I was too frozen to respond. After three seconds, ART added, She’s frightened. You are a reassuring presence.

I was still too frozen to answer ART, but I upped my body heat. Over the next two hours, she yawned twice, breathed deeply, and snorted occasionally. At the end of that time I changed my breathing and moved a little, and she immediately slid off my pad and over to hers.

By that time, I had a plan, sort of.

*   *   *

I convinced Tapan that I should go to the meeting, and she should get on a public shuttle to the transit ring immediately. She was reluctant. “I don’t want to abandon you,” she said. “You’re only involved in this because of us.”

That hit home so hard my insides clenched. I had to lean over and pretend to look through my bag to hide my expression. Company emergency protocol allows clients to abandon their SecUnits if necessary, even in situations where the company might never be able to retrieve them. Tapan was making me think of Mensah, yelling that she wouldn’t leave me. I said, “It’ll help me the most if you go back to the transit ring.”

It took a while, but I finally convinced her this was for the best for both of us.

Tapan left the hostel first, wearing both extra jackets from her pack to change her body shape and with the hood of one pulled up to conceal her hair and shadow her face. (This was mostly to make her feel more confident, and because I didn’t want to explain the extent to which I could gain temporary control over portions of RaviHyral’s admittedly not-great security system.) I watched her on the security cameras until I saw her reach the public dock about one hundred meters away, go down the walkway to the embarkation area, then board the shuttle that was scheduled to leave in twenty-one minutes. ART sent me an acknowledgment as it slid into the shuttle’s controls to guard the bot pilot again. Then I left the hostel.