Park tried not to groan. She was grateful to him—and Ellenex—for doing such a thing, but she did not trust the androids’ abilities to keep a secret. Especially not Jimex; telling him to investigate for her had half been a political maneuver, to let her opponent know she was hunting for them. But to secretly take medication was another thing entirely.

Jimex gave her a rare look of insight. “This upsets you. It was the incorrect action.”

“No,” Park said in a muted way. Then she closed her eyes and said, almost involuntarily, “Kel Fulbreech just kissed me.”

Jimex paused, just for a moment, in his wiping. “Oh,” he said, his voice milk-bland and mild. “I don’t believe Ellenex has medication for that.”

Park felt a laugh bubble up in her chest, but stifled it sharply. How like an android to think of such a thing as needing a prescription—a cure. Maybe he was right. Maybe there ought to be some tonic out there, some injection that would let her forget everything. Something to soothe the sudden turmoil. There was the MAD, but she didn’t dare use it in front of him. Otherwise Jimex would go around telling everyone who asked about that, too.

Park kneaded her knuckles into her forehead. She had always suspected that Fulbreech was attracted to her, of course. She couldn’t have missed the physical signs: she was a phenotypologist, after all. There were the usual quick, darting glances, the “casual” but strained body language. Dilated pupils. Blazing smiles that seemed like the primate baring of teeth. She’d known that he found her, on some level, sexually intriguing. The kiss itself hadn’t surprised her as much as it should have. But it was everything else—the suit, the proposed hacking, the gesture of it all. Was it all just—posturing? An attempt at currying her favor? It was so much trouble to go through. She never would have done the same.

Unless there was something more to it. She touched her lips discreetly, feeling none of the lingering warmth or tingling that she might have expected. And yet, that sudden jolt of rare contact had made her feel something. Something she’d felt just recently. But what?

“A kiss can transfer up to eighty million bacteria at once,” Jimex said, apropos of nothing. He was obsessed with things like that.

“I don’t think people generally care about that kind of thing, Jimex,” Park told him wearily. She flicked her inlays on, groping for some message from Keller or even Commander Wick to distract her from her own thoughts.

The android stared at her. “What do they care about, then?”

She couldn’t answer.

Later, when she was getting dressed for bed, shoved into her tiny room with Natalya, the surveyor, Hunter, Boone’s sergeant, and Elly Ma, the climatologist, Park suddenly remembered what Fulbreech’s kiss had reminded her of.