Keller shuddered and rubbed her arms as if Park had mentioned a horror story. “Yes, but HERCULES and the other robots weren’t like that. The ones I grew up around were functional, metallic. Not . . . a human imitation, like Jimex. Why would they need a janitor bot to look like a person, anyway?”

“I don’t know. I’m used to androids like that.” Park’s throat flexed as if she were holding in a cough. “Dr. Keller, where were you?”

The older woman sighed and sat down on the couch they usually had the patients sit on. Park sat down again in her usual chair, bewildered, as Keller said in a resigned way: “I’m afraid I have to tell you something, Park, and I don’t suppose you’ll be very happy about it.”

Paranoia and dread overtook Park in a moment, like a cloud suddenly darkening the sun. She said suspiciously, “What is it?”

Keller spread her hands in an expression of regret. “ISF is pulling me off regular duty for a—special project. I can’t say anything about it. But it will take up all my time, starting today.”

“That’s why you were late this morning?”

“Yes,” Keller said. “Events transpired rather quickly—” Then she broke off and shook her head, giving Park an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. It’s conscripted business. You understand.”

Park sat back sharply in her seat, feeling as if Keller had slapped her. Yes, she thought bitterly, she understood all too well the lines between the conscripted and the non-conscripted. It had been one of her biggest concerns before this mission—and her biggest complaint while on it. The ISF often conscripted its members into service in exchange for free transportation and housing in the colonies. Such a person was beholden to the ISF’s every order and command, under threat of having their home and access to space taken away, while a non-conscripted person—a person such as Park—merely had to worry about being fired. That meant the ISF entrusted the conscripted with its secrets more willingly, knowing the consequences of spilling those secrets were much more severe for someone who owed everything to the Frontier. It was why Park was not allowed to see Eos. There was the implicit fear that she might observe something, learn something—then sell the data back to the information companies on Earth.

And now Keller was saying that it was why she could not know what her mentor was up to. Because Keller was conscripted and Park was not.

Because the ISF didn’t trust her that much.

“You can’t tell me anything?” she asked, trying not to sound helpless—like a forlorn child being abandoned by a parent.

Keller grimaced at her. “No,” she said. “Nothing except that . . . I’m not to be disturbed. This project will take up all my time, all my attention. You’ll have to be acting psychologist from now on.”