Sue’s Pal, on the other hand, looked like a sphere with a giant eye in the middle, with two metallic arms and a thick antenna on the top. It floated around her like a combat drone, rotating its arms and making buzzing noises that Eva expected would get very old, very quickly.
Both Min and Sue were completely enamored with their strange new toys. Min crouched next to hers, watching it scoot back and forth and occasionally petting it on the back, eliciting a wriggle that suggested the bot was pleased by the contact. Sue giggled over and over, turning in place to track the Pal’s airborne trajectory, even though it seemed to be orbiting her.
Something about them made Eva uneasy. Hell, everything about them did. Hopefully Sue and Min hadn’t been foolish enough to give unrestricted commlink access to the bots, or they could be rummaging through confidential information easier than they were currently meandering around the room.
And speaking of that, no sense in further delaying the inevitable.
“I’d better make that call,” Eva told Vakar. She stood and summoned her isohelmet in full privacy mode again, running a few scrubbers and relays before the harsh buzz of the line connecting began to make her teeth ache. It took so long for her mother to answer that she had already started composing a message she probably wouldn’t leave, because she hated voicemail.
“Hello?” Regina said. “Eva, qué se cuenta, mija?”
“Mami,” Eva replied. “I, uh, got your picture. You’re on Garilia? Looks like you’re having fun.”
Regina paused, the sounds around her shifting as she apparently moved. “Sí, bueno. The ocean is beautiful, and everyone has been very nice. So much personal attention, more than any other resort I’ve visited, and I’ve been to a few.”
“Good, good. Are you on vacation, or was this the big work trip you were telling me about?” Eva paced around the room, avoiding Sue, who had grounded her Ball Buddy and was examining it while a pair of her own yellow bots watched.
Regina paused again, and this time all the background noise vanished. “I’m flattered you’re so interested. You usually ignore my q-mails.”
Mierda. That was true. Hell, Eva had already spoken to her mom more in the last week than she had for years, and they hadn’t ended their last call on good terms. Then again, it was also a dodge.
“Just curious,” Eva replied. “Garilia is pretty far out there, and not super well known.”
“Sí, cierto,” Regina said. “I’m surprised you’ve heard of it. Y además, I’m wondering how you know where I am. I never mentioned it in the q-mail.”
Mierda again. Eva had punctured her hull and everything she said made the hole bigger.
“The building behind you was pretty unique,” Eva said casually. “I had one of my people look it up. Are you sure things are safe there?” Not that she expected any Attuned to randomly attack her mother, of all people, but she didn’t know what the xana were up to. The vibe she got from Damaal wasn’t good, and while that wasn’t a lot to go on, it was enough that she didn’t want anyone else she cared about to get involved.
Worse, since Damaal knew who Eva was, it might not be a huge leap to connect her to Regina . . .
“It seems perfectly safe to me,” Regina said. “The coup was years ago, and things have been mostly peaceful since then.”
“Mostly peaceful,” Eva repeated. “Cuídate, vieja, ‘Mostly peaceful’ can turn into ‘arroz con mango’ in a second.” Madre de dios, she sounded like Mari. It made her want to scream.
“I’m sure you would know, Eva-Benita,” Regina said, her voice growing colder. “The last time I talked to you, you were still trying to find that missing engineer for his criminal sister. Y ahora qué?”
Eva exhaled in a huff, weaving around Min, whose caterpillar-like bot regarded her curiously, its antennae waving at her. “How long are you planning to stay?” The last thing she needed was to run into her mom while she was trying to find Josh.
“Why, do you need me to help you again?”
“I was just curious.”
“You already said that. Are you writing a book, mija? Ya tu sabes what you can do with this chapter.”
“Shove it up my ass and make it a mystery?” Still not a straight answer. Eva made a disgusted noise. “Bueno, ya, whatever. Enjoy your trip.” Watch your back, she almost said, but instead she hung up before her mother could respond. Then she immediately felt guilty for doing something so immature, so she stalked over to the corner of the room and screamed into her isohelmet before resuming her pacing.
So that conversation had gone nowhere. But she was fairly certain of one thing: this was the business trip, not a vacation. If it had just been a vacation, her mom wouldn’t have evaded her questions the way she did. Regina hated lying, but she was loyal to her work, the same way Mari was, so it made sense that she would duck and weave instead of saying something outright untrue. Which meant that not only was this a work trip, it was probably confidential.
What was BOFA up to on Garilia, and why was her mom involved?
She stopped her agitated pacing just in front of Sue, recoiling with a shouted “Ave Maria!” when she saw what the engineer was doing.
Sue was systematically disassembling her Pod Pal, which stared sightlessly, serenely up at the ceiling. She’d started by taking apart the larger sections, which meant it was already in three main segments, and she was now sitting cross-legged on the floor with one of the segments in her lap, surrounded by tiny glittering pieces of robot.
Eva deactivated her helmet and glared down at Sue. “What are you doing?” When Sue didn’t answer, Eva nudged her with the toe of her gravboot.
“Ah!” Sue shouted, startled. She dropped the piece she was working on, and tiny shards flew off like a spray of glitter, clattering against the hard floor.
“This is a giant mess,” Eva said. “How are you going to put it back together?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve been tagging every piece as I remove it.” Sue tapped her head. “Got a working schematic open, you know?”
Eva nodded. “Find anything interesting yet?”
Sue frowned, her lips pursed in an exaggerated way that made Eva think of a cartoon fish. “A lot of this is weirdly familiar, but there are things that don’t make sense. I’m trying to figure out how it grows and shrinks without, you know.”
“Violating all the known laws of physics?” Pink asked. She’d emerged from the bath and was dressed in her newly laundered spacesuit.
“What does a doctor know about physics?” Eva asked, eyebrow raised.
“Enough to know nobody’s invented a shrink ray yet.”
Min, also still fiddling with her Pod Pal, perked up. “I saw a holovid about that! It was pretty funny. This guy made himself super small, and he found this whole species that like, rode tardigrades and he had to save them from an evil scientist.”
“I remember this holovid,” Vakar said, smelling like jasmine. “You and Leroy were very concerned about whether a particular tardigrade would survive the hostilities.”
Min laughed, her robot buddy climbing her leg. “You were so confused. You kept telling us it wasn’t real and that we probably ate tardigrades every day by accident.”