Abene held up her empty hand, palm out in a gesture that usually meant “don’t shoot me,” except she wasn’t afraid. She was matter-of-fact. She said, “I’m sorry, but you need treatment. Will it be better if Miki helps you?”

I said, “I don’t—” and stopped there because I didn’t have any way to finish that sentence. I needed help, I didn’t want anyone to touch me. These were two mutually exclusive states.

Abene waited, watching me. Then she said, “Miki, can you leave Hirune?”

“I’m okay,” Hirune rasped. She was blinking and clutching a bulb of hydrating solution from the emergency kit. “I’m fine.”

Abene said, “Good. I’ll work on the console and Miki, you come here and help Rin.” Still watching me, she held out the emergency kit and Miki came to take it.

As Abene went to the console, Miki said, “Please lift your left arm and pull your shirt up, SecUnit.”

I had to set down Wilken’s projectile weapon and harness to do that. I did, putting them on the station chair behind me, because it would look like a normal SecUnit thing to do, because I needed to look normal now. I was devoting a lot of attention to the response I needed to make to Abene. I decided a simple error correcting statement was best. “I’m not Rin. Rin is—”

Abene was powering up the digger control station. Not looking at me, studying the console’s interface in the feed, she said, “Consultant Rin is your supervisor, yes, I’m sorry.”

Miki scanned me and sent the results to my feed. Wow, those were kind of big chunks of metal stuck in me. Miki extended a secondary clamp out of its chest and used that to hold the emergency kit as it got the extractor probe out with its good hand. I don’t need the nerve-block, I told Miki on the feed. I can turn my pain sensors down.

That must be handy. Miki poked the probe into the wound in my side. I don’t have pain sensors, but then, I don’t have pain.

Yeah, one of the differences between bots and SecUnits. I had talked to ART about the other differences, once. How we couldn’t trust each other, because of the orders humans could give. And ART had said, There are no humans here.

Well, there were humans here. I said, Miki, did you tell Don Abene that there is no Consultant Rin, there’s just me?

Yes, Miki said. It found the projectile and carefully eased it out. I told her when the first combat bot attacked Wilken, when she asked me if I knew if you were telling the truth. Then it added, I told her because I wanted to, not because I had to.

I was sure Miki believed that. Why does she think I lied about it?