“You’re taking us to meet your family,” Qalu whispered.

Aevi was too excited about the prospect of being on a planet again to pay much attention. Currently the Pherzul was pressed against the viewport, watching the spaceport with her tail quivering. He had never made the approach to Barath this way. Before, he had been part of the ship, perceiving trajectories and angles of approach and registering all the physical details in a much different way. Now, however, he saw the way the light glazed the spires and the color of the sky. The city was beautiful, though he hadn’t realized it before. He’d only been aware of aesthetic particulars in the abstract.

“I suppose that is the most accurate description,” he said.

“Are they expecting us? Zylar and Beryl Bowman?”

“I wanted to surprise them. Before, I sent a message updating them on my situation, but I don’t know if it reached them.” It occurred to him, then. “Beryl has a little one as well. I suspect Aevi may enjoy exploring with Snaps.”

Qalu seemed startled, her head tendrils fluttering. “Another Pherzul?”

“No, a rare lifeform native to the human homeworld. From the way Beryl Bowman treats him, I collect his people are akin to royalty.”

“Fascinating,” said Qalu. “I can’t wait to meet them.”

Before leaving the ship, they received boosters that would allow their Tiralan systems to breathe in the different chemical cocktail that comprised the air on Barath. Then they waited for their documentation to be processed, and he had a bad moment, fearing that the Barathi neural network might recognize him, and call him a fugitive AI. But apparently his brain pattern was sufficiently different when the network granted them clearance, thanks to the Tiralan hardware, that the system didn’t flag him. The bored migration agent told them to move along.

The spaceport seemed different to Helix as well, crowded and close, with all sorts of troubling and fascinating smells. Helix carried Aevi to prevent her from investigating all the various food stalls when they really needed to pass through. Qalu stayed close to his side, filling him with a soft wonder that she trusted him so much. In many ways, he was no more experienced than she, but her unwavering faith boosted his confidence.

It would be discourteous to appear completely without warning, so before they left the arrival area, he pinged a message to Zylar at his old habitat. The message came back as invalid. They don’t live there anymore? Carefully, he stepped out of the stream of pedestrian traffic and delved into the network, carefully skimming for Zylar’s current location. Other AIs scrutinized his intrusion, but he distracted them with data spikes elsewhere.