Welga also had to help Papa, first with his space suit, then his entry into the passenger capsule. Oscar grumbled over every step and scowled as she buckled him into his seat. They’d managed to pack up her mother’s old fabricator. It wouldn’t work in microgravity—hell, it probably wouldn’t survive the launch with all its parts intact—but that wasn’t the point. It was one of Laila’s most beloved items, and small enough that they could carry it into space. Oscar had used half his weight allowance for that.

A good portion of her own allotment had gone to spices—and two kilos of whole arabica beans, to savor when she couldn’t stand the crap they called coffee on Eko-Yi.

Welga settled into the familiar sensation of weightlessness and watched as Connor tried to hold the contents of his stomach. He’d never been good with motion sickness. Along one side of her visual, Nithya, Carma, and Luis slept. Ammanuel woke next to their partner and flung a lazy arm over them. Hassan sipped at a mug.

Could she do it? Be the bridge between the Earth and space, between past and future? What the hell did she know about diplomacy? She’d have to deal with designers wanting to investigate her tech—her body—in action. Multiple project groups had applied to come up to the station, to see how the dakini came into being and how they functioned in microgravity. Since Welga had twenty years on the other dakini, the groups had expressed curiosity about her physiology compared to theirs.

It’s not the first time you’ve reinvented yourself. You became a Raider instead of a biogeneticist. Then you became a shield instead of a Raider. Now you’re a dakini, and next you’ll be an ambassador.

Clemence and the others won’t understand how to deal with all the publicity. I can help them with that at least. Save them from basic mistakes. And I’ll get to interface with the new council members from China and India. I wonder what they’ll ask of me. It’s hard to imagine remaking the rest of the world, blurring the lines between humans and WAIs.

We’re like that already.

True, and I have no regrets about what we’ve become. We’ll have to show everyone else how good this is.

She released her buckles and floated to the windowpane, close enough to fog it with her breath, and looked down at her planet. Like every image she’d seen of Earth, the land had no divisions. Neither did space. The haze of atmosphere faded into blackness with no clear boundary. Welga pressed a hand against the cold glass of the capsule. Where did her flesh stop and the machine begin? Maybe the answer didn’t matter. If she had to help the world move toward a better future, they would need to work as one.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS