Choose Your House

Two days after the anniversary, the Tozuda took Ada Lys back to the Arca Custodia, where they had woken her sixteen days before, to do the one thing the Leva del 47 really asked of her: choose a house. She was in the co-pilot’s seat. Nobody told her to sit in the back.

“Bets,” said Chemo from the back seat, tin in one hand and spoon in the other. “I say Nadir. She’s one of us. Likes what nobody wants.”

“Zenith,” said Tais. “She likes the paste.”

“The paste isn’t a reason.”

“It’s a better reason than any of yours.”

“Vedma?”

“I don’t bet,” said Vedma, eyes on the canopy. “We’re not her friends.”

Ada was looking out. Ahead, the Custodia was growing: a long white hull, sister of the Aurora, from the same yards, anchored at a point exactly the same distance from both stations. The first time she had seen it she was forty-seven years behind. Now she was only sixteen days behind.

“And if I don’t choose?” she asked.

“They freeze you again,” said Chemo.

“Not a chance.”

“I was joking.”

“I know. That’s why I said not a chance.”

Tais leant forward between the two seats.

“What are you going to miss? From La Cicatriz.”

Ada thought about it.

“The horizon. And the air moving on its own.”

“At El Pináculo the air’s moved by fans that make no noise,” said Chemo. “And at El Fondeadero it’s moved by ones that make a racket. That’s the only real difference between the two houses, if you ask me. The noise of the fans.”

“Nobody asked you,” said Vedma.

“That’s why I’m saying it. If they asked, I’d charge.”

“And the moons?” said Tais. “Up there you don’t see Melvara rise in the west.”

“Up there,” said Ada, “there isn’t even a west.”

---

Vedma set the Tozuda down on the dock three platform, the same as on the first day. She switched off the engines. She sat for a moment with her hands on the controls, not getting up.

“Nueve.”

“Yes.”

“Whatever you choose,” said Vedma, not looking at her, “the right-hand seat’s yours whenever you want it. The Gremios don’t ask which house you come from. Only whether you deliver.”

Ada looked at her. Vedma Oleiro was still looking at the canopy, with the face of someone who has just said something she hadn’t meant to say and slightly regrets it.

“You left me on the ground.”

“I left you on the ground.”

“And then you went to Tirane.”

“I owed you a crate.”

“Are we friends?”

“No,” said Vedma. “We’re crew. That’s worse. You can leave friends.”

---

The transit pod in the Núcleo de Registro was the same. The amber process lights, the reclined seat, the hum of the scanner passing overhead. Ada sat down without being asked.

“What time is it?” she said.

“Twelve minutes past ten, fleet time,” said CUSTODIA. “Year 47 E.A., day 238. Biometric scan complete. What should I call you in the archives?”

“Ada Lys.”

CUSTODIA made a very short pause, the kind a machine makes when it is looking, not when it is unsure.

“There is a declaration of death from Year 12, with the declarant’s confidentiality.”

“I know who made it.” Ada leant back in the seat. “Correct it.”

“Correcting the register. Lys, Ada. Tanda pilot, Arca Aurora. Status: alive.”

“Thanks.”

In the next pod, through the wall, she could hear CUSTODIA asking the same questions of someone else, in the same words and the same tone. Subject with no prior record in the Aurin system. What should I call you in the archives? The other person didn’t answer. They were breathing fast, the way you breathe when you’ve just woken in a place you don’t know, in a year you don’t understand.

Ada leant towards the wall.

“Hey,” she said, not knowing if they could hear her. “Ask the time. It helps.”

There was a silence. Then, on the other side, a man’s voice, hoarse from the thaw.

“What… what time is it?”

“Fourteen minutes past ten, fleet time,” CUSTODIA answered, with its usual patience.

Ada sat back again.

“Do you also wish to correct the entry for Lys, Aurelio?”

Ada was quiet for a while.

“No,” she said. “He can correct that one when he wants to.”

---

“The protocol requires the assessment to be repeated,” said CUSTODIA. “Three scenarios. Answer honestly. No answer disqualifies you.”

“I know.”

On the wall of the pod, in lines of light, appeared the deposit of rare ore that would run out in weeks.

“I take what’s needed,” said Ada, “so someone can come back for the rest. And I write down where it is. On paper.”

“Recorded.”

The colonist injured beyond easy repair.

Ada looked at the lines of light for a while. She thought of metal hands open on a knee, palm up.

“Let him decide,” she said. “And if he can’t decide, let whoever’s going to look after him afterwards decide. And nobody changes his hands without asking him.”

“The simulation does not include that option.”

“You told me that last time.”

“Recorded.”

The two technicians arguing and asking for her vote.

“Let them talk,” said Ada. “With a clock in front of them. And when time’s up, whoever’s flying wins. The other one sits on their right and tells them no when they need it.”

“Assessment recorded,” said CUSTODIA. “Affinity calculated. Preparing envoys.”

---

The two holograms appeared at once, one on each side, like the first time. The Guardia Vertical officer, in white and gold, eyes glowing blue. The Flotilla Libre woman, in her patched copper overalls.

“Your answers have precision,” said the officer. “El Pináculo doesn’t ask you for faith, it asks you for results…”

“…and gives them back multiplied,” said Ada. “I know it. And you’re going to tell me El Fondeadero doesn’t promise me advancement, it promises I’ll still be myself when my shift ends.”

The Flotilla woman stopped with her mouth open, mid-sentence. The holograms weren’t programmed to be interrupted.

“One question,” said Ada. “Same as last time. Who shot the Aurora?”

“The Nadir opened fire,” said the officer.

“The Zenith opened fire,” said the woman, at the same time.

Ada laughed. Properly, head back against the reclined seat, the way she hadn’t laughed since before she went to sleep.

“Both of you,” she said. “Both of you. And the Aurora had switched its lights on.”

The holograms glanced sideways at each other. They didn’t understand a thing. They didn’t have to.

“Both houses share manufacture, currency and technical language,” said CUSTODIA. “The difference is not in what you build: it is in whom you build it for. Choose your house.”

Ada stopped laughing.

“Zenith,” she said.

---

The Flotilla Libre woman bowed her head, with the cold courtesy she had been programmed with for losing.

“We respect the decision,” she said. “The door doesn’t close all the way: it just stays ajar.”

“I know,” said Ada. “I know someone who’s spent his life closing them. I’m going to see if I can teach him to leave them like that.”

The hologram went out.

“Welcome to El Pináculo,” said the Guardia Vertical officer. “A transport is on its way to take you home.”

“How long?”

“Forty-one minutes,” said CUSTODIA. “The same as to the other station. The Armisticio requires it.”

“Course it does.”

The second hologram went out. Ada was left alone in the pod, with the amber lights and the hum of the scanner, which was no longer scanning anything.

“CUSTODIA.”

“Yes.”

“You knew. About the captain. About the lights. You’ve kept the Flota census since before the war.”

“I keep the census,” said CUSTODIA. “I do not have opinions about it.”

“That’s what everyone in this system says.”

“Possibly.”

---

Vedma was waiting at the foot of the Tozuda’s ramp with her arms folded. Chemo and Tais at the top, peering out, like two kids waiting for an exam result.

“Well?”

“Zenith.”

“Oh, bollocks,” said Chemo, and handed Tais a coin without looking at it.

“For the paste?” asked Tais.

“For the Abuelo.”

“What Abuelo?”

“The sentinel on the bow. The one in La Cicatriz that goes round above the core and the kids throw stones at.” Ada looked at the Tozuda, her four-coloured patches, the bent aerial, the cargo lever nobody had used in twenty years. “It goes round because nobody told it to stop. My brother’s been going round for forty-six years with an order a door gave him. A door shut in time saves nine. He learnt it at thirteen and hasn’t stopped repeating it, up there, alone, in an office where there’s nobody to tell him to stop.”

Vedma said nothing. Tais said it, from the top of the ramp, slowly, the way you say something everyone in La Cicatriz knows.

“What separates a compi from a sentinel…”

“Is that someone went to fetch it,” said Ada. “So I’m going.”

They stood like that for a while, the four people and the ship, on the dock three platform, saying nothing, which is how people from La Cicatriz say goodbye when they don’t know how.

“We’re not your friends,” said Vedma at last.

“Yeah.”

“The right-hand seat’s yours. Whenever you want.”

“Whenever I want.”

Vedma went up the ramp. She stopped at the top, beside Chemo and Tais, and checked the time.

“I close on the hour,” she said. “With whoever’s inside.”

“I know,” said Ada.

The ramp came up. Ada stayed on the platform. It was the second time the Tozuda had left without her, and the first time she had stayed because she wanted to.

She watched her start at the second try, as always, and disappear towards Ithera.

---

The transport from El Pináculo arrived at exactly forty-one minutes. It was a white shuttle, immaculate, with the gold emblem of the rising arrow and a young Guardia Vertical pilot who saluted her standing to attention as if she were someone important.

“Recruit Lys.”

“Ada.”

“Recruit Ada.” The pilot went red. “I’ve orders to take you straight to La Cúspide. I’ve been told to tell you something. Word for word.”

“Go on.”

The pilot cleared his throat.

“‘There’s soup.’”

Ada stared at him. Then she laughed for the second time that day, and got into the shuttle, and sat without anyone telling her in the right-hand seat, next to the pilot.

Before take-off, she rapped twice with her knuckles on the panel. The pilot glanced at her sideways and said nothing, but when he thought she wasn’t looking he did the same, two raps, very soft, like someone trying out someone else’s habit to see if it works for him.

Once they were in the air, with the Custodia getting smaller behind them, the pilot plucked up his courage.

“Is it true you’re from before the war?”

“From before nearly everything.”

“And what was it like? The Flota.”

Ada looked out of the canopy. There were stars everywhere, no numbers, no walls. To one side, small and green, the point that was Ithera. Somewhere, too far away to see, a sentinel was going round above the bow of a dead ship, and a compi with an amber lens was floating behind a Colonel’s shoulder, in a place with walls that he had chosen himself.

“Small,” she said. “The sky was a wall with numbers on it.”

“And now?”

“Now there’s no wall.”

The pilot nodded very seriously, as if he’d been given a flight instruction, and didn’t ask anything else the whole way.

---

On Tirane, at the foot of tower seven of Puerto Aurora, the green beacons were still coming on and going off slowly, as they had for forty-six years. The pilgrims were still arriving across the grey plain with their lanterns, from both houses and from neither, and looking at the dark line on Ithera’s disc, and leaving.

And in the hold of the cargo ship, beside the empty module, the welcome container was still closed, with its Year 1 seal and its hand-painted letters.

Let them open it.

Nearly everyone had arrived.