Page 21
“Is she okay?”
“She is alive, and I believe she is acting as Kazi’s personal assistant.”
The image boggled her mind, so Aya continued with the coordinates of Harwin until she hit enter, and the call began to go through.
“Now, get some tea or water or kio from the dispenser. It will take thirty minutes for the signal to reach Aten.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“Sometimes it takes hours. It depends on what is in the way.”
She nodded and looked around, finding the dispenser. “Would you like anything?”
“Water, please.”
Aya nodded and got herself a cup of tea and a glass of water for Devran.
She set it carefully on his desk near his hand, took her own tea to her smaller desk, and kept the com open while she worked on her terminal. Now she understood why she needed a spare visual unit. After the call, it took a very long time to get a connection.
She started to look up food, and that was way too large a topic. She looked up Devran and got no response. Then she looked under global deities, and there he was. She saw statues of him with one hand lifted, with a swirl of ribbons around it.
He glanced at her. “What are you looking up?”
“You. You make a nice statue.”
He snorted. It was the most human sound she had heard from him.
A voice on her left said, “Hello, do I know you?”
Aya turned her head and was looking at a gold statue. “Hello?”
The statue smiled. “Ah, you are new. Consort?”
“Oh, no. I am Amaya Merryweather. Aya for short.”
“Well, you called me, so I am Harwin, consort of Ra, Queen of Aten, and cousin to a surprising amount of survivors. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I wanted to ask you to pass my thanks to Ra for the repair enhancement. Sorry. I haven’t actually talked to another human in four years.”
That got a reaction. “What?”
“Um, yeah. I was a soother and, apparently, good at it, so I was confined in a windowless room on a space station. I never left it. Never. Everything came to me.”
Harwin blinked. “How big was the room?”
“Fifteen by fifteen. I saw my first stars today. That was nice.”
“You mean in space, right?”
“Well, the first stars since the skies at home went dark. I have been kept indoors like a potted plant.”
“Ohmygod. How are you not crazy?”
“I think I am, a little. I am letting it out, getting over my agoraphobia, my fear of being alone. Devran is helping me.”
“Was that your entire issue?”
“No, apparently, I need something called a live diet. I don’t really absorb nutrients from rations. They compared my readouts to other soothers, but there were no other human soothers, so I was moving and talking and working, and that was all they needed me to do. That is why the special repair unit was needed.”
