For her coming of age she asked from her fathers a week’s residential on Old Earth. No Ball, no press conference, no gifted Executiveship, no ship, even, though all of her brothers had taken the sleekest in sublightspeed racers. They almost imploded, but she had inherited skilldirectiongrift and negotiated the week in return for a summer working in senior management. Mars summers are very long.

This was the start of her roamingramblingtravels. Drunkmadfull on the stinkpuffsnortnonsense of fifty square miles of old equatorial rainforest, not landscaped at all, she knew she wouldn’t go home, but see as much of the seven stars as she could. She paid an environmental quarantine agent to mark her down on the wrong manifest, and flew. She saw the Naturalist monasteries on Phobos, where holies refused any foodmeat treated

with more than fire, preached thinwatery beauty. She saw a demonstration station of separatist Angles: trainbreddrilled, cleantrimabsolute, rich, blond, and well-armed. Her fathers’ moneyrespected words – first ragefrothseething, then pleadwheedling, then sulkforsaking – tracked her from federal mines on Europa to unrestrainedendless parties orbiting Wolf. They had even bought time for a bulletin on the ansible network. At long last and after much effort she lost their trackers

on the unregistered Autonomist trader where, awaydeaddistracted, she took her new name and body and face, where she took time to choose and recover, which took her here to Orcadia, the Northern station closest to the galactic centre, once the edge, once the centre, fullbursting and empty still, with Darling, after buypaying her way across such a goodbig placedistancepartwhile of space, looking for a little placedistancepartwhile to listen and look.

Inga an Olaf at the lighteen

Inga’s at the helm, waatchan

fer lowes, fer shifts i’the drifts o rouk;

Olaf the sightsman’s at the daikles,

airtan oot a trail o Lights

tae a dinger, a haal.

The linecrew is raedy. A fair while fae

a geud landeen. The wind o the yotun

is sma the day: cheust a hunner

metres a second. The yole chirps

fae the gowd whips.

Sailan as quiet an present here

as a meditaetion o Phobos papar,

thay wirk the wark the staetion wis biggid

tae wirk, hintan the fuel at fuels,

the oyl at oyls

a interstellar system o industry,

traed, galactic expansion: Light.

Inga an Olaf is aye a kord

wi voltage differs, atmospheric

jabble, mairjins.

Olaf spys a peak an mairks hid.

Inga senses a chaenge i’the paitren

o his concentraetion, an waits.

Thir notheen tae deu but wait.

His een spairk.

He checks his chairter anent his ladar

anent his osc, turns – an thay see hid

black horn brakkan gowd,

hulk looman ower the yole.

“Wrack! Brace!”

Inga rives the yole tae,

the linecrew an Olaf stellt tae thir bars,

the waa atween the crew an daeth

gaen flinterkin. The hurlan pulse

o thir reid alairm.

But—the yole—pulls clear!— skewan

anunder the whalman dairk o the wrack.

Ivry lighter gies a bustan