Please shut up, Park thought, but she didn’t say it. Taban touched her shoulder gently; she tried not to recoil at his touch, at the too-light feeling of his metal limb. It felt as if he were immaterial—a phantom from another time. “It will be dangerous,” he said.

“Yes,” Park said. She looked at Jimex. “The others have guns, too. I can’t promise that none of you will be—hurt.”

“You will protect us,” Dylanex declared, from the back of the formation. “You and the sleeping god.”

“We can protect ourselves,” Jimex rebutted then. “We know how.” His shirt was still soaked in blood.

Park looked at Taban, to see if he would refute their claim that he was a god; but he only met her eye and said with a shrug, “You can always turn on the gravity again.”

Park shook her head and kept going.

On the way to the bridge, she saw Fulbreech and Sagara standing in the hallway, bristling with weapons and arguing in low, furious voices. When Park and the synthetics drew up, Jimex said in greeting, “Dr. Chanur is dead.”

Fulbreech paled at the blood on his shirt, but Sagara didn’t bat an eye. “Good,” he said in his clipped way. “She was probably the smartest of them; one less thing to worry about. Though medical knowledge for the trip back might have been useful.” He glanced at Park. “Are you all right?”

For some reason she thought his tone was loaded with meaning; as if he knew what had happened to her, or what she’d done to the ship. She said, feeling her brain throb in that new way, “I sent the message. Did you feel the gravity flip?”

“Yes,” Fulbreech said in answer; he looked flushed, though she didn’t know if it was by her arrival or whatever he’d been arguing with Sagara about. He looked unfamiliar to her, somehow. Almost unrecognizable—as if the kiss had transformed him into someone else. “I damn near impaled myself on a rack,” he said. “Boone and the others must have lost control of the ship.”

Sagara shot Park a significant glance, which she carefully avoided returning. Fulbreech continued, “And you shot Chanur?”

Was it better for her to take responsibility, or for them to know the synthetics were capable of killing if they had to? She realized belatedly that she was still holding Chanur’s gun; somehow she’d been clutching it without knowing this whole time.

“She shot at me,” was all she could think to say. “She . . . attacked us.”

Dylanex stepped forward then. “We will take some weapons,” he said confidently, accepting the gun that Sagara was proffering—ostensibly to Park. “It will give us an advantage against the mutineers.”