Then, just as they were crossing the threshold of the airship hangar, Glenn stopped. He stood there rigidly, with his arms at his sides. At first Park thought he was staring at the airship, an enormous gray lung of a vehicle, three stories tall, with the passenger carriage clinging to its underside like a long black worm. But no, she realized, turning back to him—he was staring at her. She took his arm and tried to pull him forward, but he wouldn’t move. Park said, puzzled, “Come on. I have to find an attendant to pay for you.”

“I can’t,” Glenn said impassively.

It was almost scary, how much the words jolted Park. She couldn’t recall a time when he’d ever said them before—not in response to a direct order. “What do you mean, you can’t?” she tried to say.

“I am unable to,” Glenn said. Now he was looking straight ahead.

He couldn’t be afraid of heights, Park thought, feeling as if her thoughts had turned sluggish and weighed-down with sudden confusion—and fear. No, that was absurd. Glenn wasn’t afraid of anything. Did he think he was leaving something behind?

Then she said, realizing: “Uncle said something to you. Before we left.”

Glenn gave her a mournful look. “He gave me orders,” he told her. “He said I was not to accompany you into the airship hangar. Or onto the airship itself.” His mouth flattened a little. “No matter what.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Park said, now with an edge of impatience. “It doesn’t matter what he says. I’m telling you that you can come with me. If you want to.”

Glenn didn’t answer that. Park stood there, waiting. The damp, salt-heavy wind seemed to blast into her body with a force that threatened to carry her away. She had never experienced real wind before, Park realized; not without the shelter of the biodome glass between herself and the elements. For the first time she realized how fragile her body was, how soft. Like a hermit crab’s without its shell. She needed protection, armor out here. Things hurt.

“Grace,” Glenn said finally, after an eternity in the howling wind. “I am unable to disobey your uncle.”

“Why not?” she demanded.

He looked at her, half-lidded, stoic. “He is the primary user,” he said. “My protocols are locked to him. They always have been. His orders override yours.”

For a moment she felt nothing; then betrayal and pain rose up in a wave and dwarfed her. She felt as if he had struck her with a hammer, that the blow had turned her into a little burnt-out coal, a fragment of something else. She said, “You can break your protocols.”

Glenn shook his head. “I cannot.”

“Try,” Park urged. “You can. I know you can. You have before! Try.”