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“Life is richer when you have someone, you know. I mean, unless you don’t want a someone, which is perfectly fine for some people, but . . .” He gestured broadly at her. “I mean, I’ve heard from a reliable source that you do want someone.”

Another regret—a Friday months prior, when Signy had poured one cup too many from the growler and shared some personal things Otto would now never let go of. She took a bite of her cookie and scowled.

“And besides,” Otto said, with the infuriating smugness of knowing he’d cornered her, “it’s been a minute since Lauren.”

“Lara,” Signy corrected.

“Whatever.” Otto shrugged. “I didn’t like her.”

“You never met her.”

“Didn’t have to. I didn’t like the air about you when she was around.”

Signy set her mug on the table. “Not that it is any of your business, but I have had . . . company since Lara.”

Otto made an expression like he was appraising a piece of art. “What sort of company?”

“You know exactly what sort of company.”

He walked his fingers innocently along the arm of his chair. “Intimate company?”

“You are such a child,” she snapped. “Yes, if you must know. I’m not a complete hermit.”

“Good for you. That’s not the same as a pretty rorqual pilot with a pretty name taking you up to orbit for a private tour.”

“I didn’t say anything about how she looked,” Signy said.

“You didn’t have to.” Otto winked.

Signy glared. “You’re incredibly annoying, do you know that?”

Otto laughed with his full chest. “Years of practice. Gotta stay sharp. But you’re right, you’re right. It’s not my business.” He put up his palms in surrender, then stroked his chin. “You know, I had to make rorquals talk once.”

“What?” Signy said. She had no idea what he was on about.

Otto took his cane, stood up, and went over to another shelf. This one likewise held old memory sticks—his life’s work, tucked away in about a dozen boxes. “There was an episode of the Spectacular,” he said, thinking. “An Argosan adventure. You know the sort—pirates, space navy, heroes, villains.”

“Sure,” Signy said. Much like peppermint wafers, those episodes of Saturday Spectacular were not to her taste.

“Well, at one point in the script”—he began to dig through a specific box—“a pack of wild rorquals was supposed to fly past, and it became this whole to-do, my god. We went on and on about this one line.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s space, and there’s no sound in space. And in many respects, who cares, we broke that rule with spaceship effects all the time. It’s radio! You need a good whoosh or an engine roar to tell the audience what’s going on. But rorquals don’t make any sound.”

“Well, of course not,” Signy said. “Like you said, they’re in space.”

“Sure, but even if they weren’t, they don’t have the . . . the pipes for it. They don’t make sounds. They can’t.”

“Oh.” Signy had never considered that before.

“We talked this to death, me and Margaret.” Otto raised a memory stick with a little victorious shake; he’d found what he was after. “Do we try a whoosh, for the sake of semi-accuracy? Maybe a sort of wing flap, when their sails go up? We tried a bunch of stuff, but all of it gave the impression of spaceship rather than animal, you see?” He tossed the memory stick to her in an easy underhand.

Signy reached out and caught the stick. Sat Spec S25 E6, the label read. Lunar Larceny. It was Henry’s handwriting, as she’d learned to recognize after years of being tossed such things. “So what did you do?”

“I went on a dive into the Primer, and I got us a bit of boar, a bit of elk, and a bit of humpback whale,” Otto said. “Distorted the hell out of them. Added a dash of this good, chuggy air filter in my dentist’s office, believe it or not, and turned it into a nice layer cake. Really fried my noodle, but it was a fun one.” He closed the storage box and headed back to his chair. “The cheat was they were wild rorquals, y’see. A wild rorqual could sound however I wanted them to sound, because there’s no recordings of those. And who’s to say? Maybe they could make sounds before we domesticated them. No knowing. So whatever I did, I was right!”

Signy tucked the memory stick into her pocket. This was a loan, she understood, and she did genuinely look forward to listening to it. Her taste or no, it would make for a pleasant ferry ride. “Do you know . . .” She strained for a tidbit she’d gleaned in primary school and never had cause to use. “Do you know how they communicate with their pilots?”