“Look, not everyone makes politeness as pointlessly complicated as Gaians do. Trust me, you’ll be fine with what I showed you already.” Shey opens her mouth to protest, but I hold up a hand and she stops. “We’ll run through it one more time tomorrow morning before we land. But that’s enough for tonight.”

“It’s not pointless,” she says.

“What?”

“Gaian etiquette isn’t just about being polite. It’s a matter of achieving harmony.”

“Ri-ight. Harmony.” While I was willing to give Shey this lesson in Nibiran social protocol, I’m really not interested in discussing theory about proper manners with a Gaian. “Well, I promise Nibirans don’t take it quite so seriously.”

“Traditions are a way of binding people together,” Shey says stubbornly. “It’s a way for complete strangers to find common ground. And that’s what I have to do with the Nibirans. I need to connect with not only one person, but all seven of the council members. So it’s… it’s important.”

I rub my temples, fighting the urge to roll my eyes.

“You’re overthinking it,” I say. “Honestly, you’d have a much harder time dealing with Deva or Pax or…” I swallow back the word Titan and hurry onward. “Everyone on Deva wants to be rich and famous, and people on Pax don’t think about much beyond their own backyard. But the Nibirans will listen to you.”

“What makes you say that?” Shey asks. “I’ve heard that Nibiran values are completely different. They’re against the use of Primus technology, for example.”

“For good reason, obviously. Gaians will hate it, too, once they find out it killed their planet,” I point out, and Shey nods reluctantly.

“Fair enough… but I’ve also heard that they’re selfish, and overly ambitious, and it creates dissonance in their communities.”

“Is that what your mother told you?” I ask—perhaps a bit too sharply, because Shey goes quiet. “Look, that kind of surface stuff doesn’t matter. People are more similar than you think. It’s like… you talked about harmony, right? On Gaia, creating harmony means finding similarities, like doing the same stupid gestures and shit, right?” Shey’s lips tighten, but she doesn’t say anything. “So being part of a community means acting as much like everyone else as possible. It means knowing your place in society so everything moves like clockwork.” Which is probably why I never seem to fit in there. “Harmony is important on Nibiru, too. But there, being a good member of a community means having something unique to contribute to it. Your strengths cover up someone else’s drawbacks, so there are no weak spots left in the whole.”

“Strength in difference rather than strength in unity,” Shey says, tapping a finger against her lips. “That’s why they have seven leaders instead of one figurehead.”