The shuttle must have been a hundred meters long, a slim and tapered ovoid, fttened in the vertical dimension, its underside still glowing with the electrodynamic backwash of its flight systems. It dwarfed the mobile hab, which Trish had always thought of as comically ungainly. Her hackles had immediately gone up when it entered its nding pattern — no doubt this was the new affini case worker that Koer had mentioned, come to kick in her door and do a wellness check by way of a hello. "Get in the hab, Piper," she said, not taking her eyes off the ship.

  "Why?" All innocence, even now.

  "Just do it," Trish said. Seams began to form in the unbroken surface of the shuttle, a door unfolding into a stairway that extended to the ground below. She braced herself for the biorhythm, the hypnotic sense of presence, that would surely be noticeable any moment now...

  But no affini stepped out of the shuttle. Instead, dwarfed by the massive doorway, there was a single terran figure, silver-haired, wearing loose trousers and a light shift over it that left her shoulders bare — how it stayed up, Trish had no idea. On some level, Trish recognized her, but it wasn't until the figure reached the bottom of the stairway that her conscious mind accepted what she was seeing.

  "Hey," Cass said, waving zily, smiling as if it hadn't been sixty years since they'd st seen one another.

  This can't be real. Trish took a step forward, then another. This absolutely cannot be real. Soon, she was only a few paces away. "What are you doing here?" were the first words out of her mouth; not the ones she might have chosen, but choice really didn't enter into the equation at the moment, crowded out as it was by shock.

  Cass's smile only fell ever so slightly. "You...didn't get my letter?" Now she was close enough, Trish could see how blown-out her pupils were, two pools of inky bckness surrounded by a thin band of green. She looked older, but not nearly as old as she should have looked — her hair had gone silver, only her eyebrows hanging onto the deep bck-brown her hair had once been, and there were wrinkles here and there, especially around the eyes, but in no world, not even the one that Trish and all the rest of humanity now lived in, did Cass look like she was over a hundred years old. She didn't even look as old as Trish herself did.

  Shame pricked at Trish's neck. She'd received letters from Cass from time to time — every couple of months at first, then once a year, then once every few years. It had been more than five years since the st one. They were sitting in a box in her bookbinding workshop. She had never written back. "Was this- was this a recent letter?"

  "I sent it off about a month ago," she said. "When we started back for Rinan-Terran space. It should have gotten here ahead of us."

  "Well, I never got it," Trish said, gd to leave the matter of the letters alone. "So why are you here?"

  "To see you, of course. I thought-" She paused, blinked, and licked her lips. "I thought, after sixty years, you might be a little less upset. About me volunteering for domestication. Now that you've had a chance to know other florets, to-" She paused again. "I should say, for the record, that I am very high right now."

  "Yeah," Trish said, no small amount of acid in her voice. "I noticed."

  "I was nervous. So I medicated appropriately. It was all fast-acting xenodrugs, so I should start coming down in a little while. But I am very happy to see you." The smile came back at full tilt, the kind of smile that only a floret could give, a smile totally untroubled by anything at all. "I missed you, you know."

  "Yeah, I bet," Trish replied. "But I wasn't the one that made the choice that did this."

  "You're still upset about it." Cass sighed and looked away, the smile faltering once more. "Mulch. I was really hoping, you know? I regretted not pushing for reconciliation before we left, but I worried I might cause you problems. I never wanted to cause anyone problems."

  "...it's not your fault," Trish said quietly, her stomach churning. "It's theirs. They got inside your head. It's what they do." It was true, and she knew it. She shouldn't be mad at Cass for having had her mind scrambled by the enemy. Scrambling minds was what they did.

  "Trish, I told you this before, they didn't make me do what I did. In fact, Mistress Tsuga went out of her way to not." She bit her lip and worried at the ground with her toes awkwardly, like she was some kind of lovestruck teenager instead of a centenarian. "She's a romantic by nature. I never realized that at the time, but I know that now." She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let it out slowly. "I know that now."

  "Oh holy frost," came a voice from behind Trish. She turned to look, and saw Piper leaning out of the door to the mobile hab, eyes wide. "You're Cass Hope!"

  And Cass ughed. She actually ughed. "I haven't been Cass Hope in a long, long time, dear," she said lightheartedly. "Please, call me Lay."

  "So you do remember your name, now?" She still remembered the horrible shivers she'd felt when she'd first learned how they'd cut it out of her — and now that they'd trained her not to use it, apparently they'd just handed it right back.

  "It was only ever a psuedonym, Trish," Cass said. "It just...took over the rest of my life. After a few years, I was more than settled enough in who I really am for Mistress to let me remember it. Lay is my name, and it always was. I understand why you remember me as Cass, and I don't bme you for it, I'm not upset about it — it's not like you're calling me by my deadname or something. God, I think I might be the only person in the universe who even remembers it by now..." She shook her head, and chuckled again. "But that's neither here nor there." She waved Piper over. "Come here, let me have a closer look at you. These eyes aren't everything they were, even with veterinary science keeping them trim."

  "Uh, yes, ma'am!" Piper said, hopping down the stairs and jogging over with the kind of energy that only someone in their twenties could muster.

  "Uh oh, I'm getting called ma'am again," Cass said in an aside to Trish. "This is dangerous, isn't it?" She grinned and, just a little too slow, gave her a wink. "My God, but you are very familiar. What's your name?"

  "Piper Raeburn, ma'am."

  "Oh, please, don't ma'am me," she said, "I'm just an old floret. But I thought you had the Raeburn look about you! The hair, the freckles, the chin...you're definitely reted to Maggie."

  "Her granddaughter," Trish said. This is maybe worse than an affini showing up, she thought. The st thing she needed was another floret role model.

  "No! Granddaughter?" Cass ughed and wrapped Piper up in a bear hug, suddenly moving much faster than she had been, as if hugging had become a reflex for her. "Well, Miss Piper Raeburn, it is wonderful to meet you at long st! I must have years of birthday presents to catch up on, hmm?"

  "Layaaaaa," a voice called from inside the shuttle, "are you done with your heartfelt reunion?"

  "Oh for- one moment," Cass said, releasing Piper and raising her voice to call back up the stairs. "Yes, obviously, come on out!" Almost the instant she was finished speaking, four identical women in identical graphic crop tops, short-shorts, and oversized indigo jackets piled out of the shuttle, their only distinguishing features the color of their undercuts: light blue, bright magenta, blonde, and bck.

  "Augh. Does it always smell like this?!" Bck said.

  "You get used to it," Pink replied, cpping her on the shoulder and smiling.

  "It's worse in the mountains, trust me," Blue added. As they descended the stairs, Trish was able to make out the details she couldn't before — they weren't identical women, but identical robots made to look like women. She'd heard of, but never seen, Affini-built synths; the only pce you were likely to see anything like that on Solstice, even after sixty years, was in New Landfall. Anyone who lived outside the big city tended to be the sort who preferred the genuine article when it came to what one lived in. The most Trish ever seen was a prosthetic limb on an old survivor of the Revolution.

  "Who the hell are they?" she asked as the quartet of synths milled about.

  "Duh, we're Forsythe!" three of the identical robots chorused, in perfect unison.

  "I'm Honorary Forsythe," Bck added, raising a hand.

  "They wanted to see the old neighborhood," Cass expined. "Not to mention, of course, see you."

  "...Forsythe? The weedy little techie from Bulwark Forsythe?"

  "Not so weedy now, are we?" Yellow grinned and folded her arms under her breasts to emphasize them — and Trish had to admit, they were pretty nice. She might be in her nineties, but she certainly wasn't dead.

  "I'd say css-Gs work miracles, but this isn't exactly css-G work." Pink glommed onto Yellow from behind, arms wrapped around her waist and chin resting on her shoulder.

  "Long live the new flesh!" Blue added, raising her fist to the sky.

  "She has not seen that movie, and you know it," Bck added, rolling her eyes.

  "But why are there four-?"

  "Scan-upload forking," said Blue.

  "Brain tissue xenoparasitsm," said Yellow.

  "I'm the original!" said Pink.

  "I stole Jess's chassis and everything else feels wrong now," said Bck, crossing her arms and shrugging. "And after forty years of doing everything with these goobers, they've rubbed off on me a little."

  Pink struck a weird pose, crossing her arms and then thrusting one out at an angle. "Jenny!"

  "Ooh!" Yellow immediately stuck its mirror image. "Ryder!"

  "Jess!" Blue shouted, falling into position alongside the two of them with a complementary pose.

  Bck shook her head, ughing, and did likewise, mirroring Jess on the far side. "Scout!"

  "We are the Unbreakable Four!" They held the group pose for all of three seconds, then all but colpsed on the ground ughing.

  "...what the hell did I just watch?" Trish said, finally remembering to blink.

  "Oh, the usual, with them," Cass said, putting a gentle hand on Trish's shoulder. She startled at the touch, having almost forgotten Cass was there. "They'll settle down once the excitement of seeing you again wears off, I think. If you'd gotten the letter, it would have given you a little bit of- well, warning isn't the right word, but you know what I mean." She took a deep breath, her smile settling in on her face. "And I think I'm starting to come down. So...why don't we catch up a little? I've sent you so many letters, but you haven't told me anything about the life you've made for yourself here."

  Haven had thought Tilndsia was a monumental accomplishment, a structure that dwarfed anything humanity had ever constructed in terms of quality, if not necessarily in size — there were rger O'Neill cylinders in the Accord, or at least, there had been, but none had ever felt as real, as healthy, as vibrant as Tilndsia.

  But Parthenocissus Station made Tilndsia look like a rowboat. During the ride down from the axial docking ptform to the surface of the First Ring, Haven had looked out across hundreds of kilometers of open space, across three broad rings; the far edge of the third was lost in atmospheric scatter, but Haven knew that there were three more beyond it. Each had more surface area than all of Tilndsia's rings put together; each was its own self-contained biome, with its own cities — cities! — and its own transit networks and hubs.

  And all of it was beautiful.

  I don't deserve to see something like this, Haven thought. And even if I deserved to live at all, which I don't, I could never deserve to live somewhere like this.

  "Lovely, isn't it?" Anix had asked, and Haven could only mutely nod. Even Tara, beside her, could only stare out at it as gravity slowly returned. They shuffled in a daze to the transit hub at the bottom of the funicur, Anix guiding them with a single vine each onto the train. It accelerated without a sound, without so much as a bump, and the greenery flew by outside the window, bespeckled with all manner of flowers recognizable and otherwise.

  By the time they had fully processed the scale of what they were seeing, the train was already slowing to a stop. "And here we are. My neighborhood." She gently coaxed the two of them out of the train, helping them down from the seats. "Most of Tilndsia's crew will probably settle somewhere in Ring Three. Ships' crew often like to stick together like that. I live here on the First Ring, though. It's where all of our fast-response veterinary emergency infrastructure is — nice and close to the axial hub for quick access, should anyone down on the pnet need specialist or long-term care. And, since I work in veterinary care, it's nicely convenient."

  "You're a veterinarian too?" Tara asked. "Didn't know that!"

  "Oh, I have been, from time to time," Anix said, "but at this point in my life I'm focusing primarily on recovery and rehabilitative care. Cases like little Harn here." A vine coiled around Haven's shoulders, and she felt sick inside, but not from the touch. "The cambium ttice and sarcotesta are still retively new technology — it's the sort of thing that needs to be closely monitored during the recovery process, even if it allows this little cutie to move about when before he'd be confined to a bed and sedated."

  "Yeah, makes sense I guess. Damn, this is a nice pce. I mean, I thought Tilndsia was open and fancy but this has it beat, hands down." They were walking down a path that, not a hundred meters from the transit station, had practically turned into a forest.

  "Well, we have the room to be a little more extravagant than a little ship like Tilndsia," Anix said. "And it leaves us room to grow, if need be. I'm sure in a few blooms this pce will be a bit more built up, like Tilndsia's aft rings, but for now we can spread out, have a little space, and enjoy a bit of cultivated wilderness."

  "So I could get a hab around here pretty easily, you think?"

  "Oh, certainly! It'd be wonderful for Harn to have a friend nearby for his convalescence. You'll want to talk to Sophont Housing Services — I can send you a breadcrumb trail, and I'll put in a good word for you. I'm sure they can have you all set up by tonight, it's still quite early on station time."

  "I'd appreciate that all a lot, Ms. Anix, thank you," Tara said, and stoically took the headpats that gently mussed, then tidied up their hair. Before long, Anix came to a stop outside a habitat that was half-concealed behind a stand of tall trees, something like conifers but with long, hanging sheaves of flowers. "This is you?"

  "This is indeed my hab," Anix said, "and you are welcome here at any time. In fact, I insist you visit regurly. You're both recovering from rather nasty chronodispcement, and one of the best palliatives for that is a good friend to share the experience with as you acclimate."

  "Yeah, I definitely got that feeling. Honestly, it's only been a couple hours, but I already feel better just from being around with Harn." She smiled awkwardly. "The others, uh... well, I think they saw me as one of the suits, even if that's not a thing that exists anymore, and even if I was just a paper-pusher before."

  "You were way more than just a paper-pusher," Haven said. "You were the only reason I functioned at all." Stars, what a disgusting fucking embarrassment I am.

  "Naaah," Tara said, putting one of their arms around Haven's shoulders. "You were a little weird, but seriously, I don't think you can grow up with that kind of money and that kind of dad and not come out at least a little weird. And it's not a bad kind of weird, which it could easily have been, you know?"

  "I guess," Haven said, not sure it was possible for her to be any worse than she already was.

  "Well, I should get going. Get that housing request in, dip my toes into the station culture a bit, keep working on figuring out what the hell I'm gonna do with myself now that bills aren't a thing." She smiled and hugged Haven tightly. "You just rest up, okay?"

  Haven nodded, and awkwardly hugged her back, feeling horrible about it. She did not deserve this kindness, and she did not deserve this affection. Before, there'd been a distance between them, and Tara had been paid for her bor — it wasn't fair, but at least she'd gotten something out of it. Now, she was subjecting herself to Haven's presence and she wasn't even getting anything for it. "See you ter?" she said, hating herself for wishing it'd be soon; Tara didn't deserve to have to be around her.

  "For sure," Tara said, breaking the hug and winking. For that long moment, while Tara made her goodbyes to Anix and turned to walk away, Haven wondered if the wink meant that Tara knew she deserved better. That line of thought was broken when she felt a vine around her shoulders again.

  "Come along, Harn," Anix said, gently tugging her onto the path of smoothly polished stones and soft moss that led to the hab's entryway. "Though, now that we have some privacy, is there a name you would rather I call you by?"

  "Wh-what?!" Haven was too taken aback by the question to properly pay attention to the interior of the hab behind the door — the high, arched ceilings, the smooth and silent waterfall down one wall, the furniture that was, of course, much rger than it ought to have been, all of it seemingly grown from a single piece of living wood.

  "Little one," Anix said, reaching inside herself and pulling out a thin phytotech tablet, "The sarcotesta, and the neuromycelial bridge through which it's connected to you, is constantly monitoring every st bit of your physiology, and that includes your neurochemical state. Your emotional baseline is already quite miserable — we're going to have to work on that — but every time I say your name, there is a massive spike in certain neurotransmitters that is an obvious sign of distress. Normally, I would diagnose this with microexpressions, micromuscur contractions, word choice, and so forth, but when I have this host of data before me it's quite easy to see that you were not, and still are not, happy with your body. I'm very sorry for the hurt I've caused thus far, and I'd like to help you. So." She crouched down and looked Haven right in the ck of eyes, all four of hers glittering in shades of green and blue. "Is there another name you would prefer that I call you?"

  I can't tell her. I don't deserve it. She was scum and she was made to suffer. She knew this on a bone-deep level. It had been a mantra she'd repeated to herself all her life, until it had begun to repeat itself without any input from her. She always had a ready reminder that she was trash, filth, undeserving of what she had, let alone what she wanted.

  But there was something in Anix's eyes that said none of that is true. And that was, somehow, enough.

  "Haven," she whispered, the first time she'd ever said her name out loud where anyone else could hear it.

  Anix's soft lips curved into a smile, the vine around Haven's shoulders coiling up to stroke her head ever so gently. "Good girl," she purred. Something welled up inside Haven, like she would explode at the slightest touch. She wanted to cry, to sob, but she couldn't — she had no lungs, no tear ducts. Something cool broke through the tightness in her chest, spreading out until the tips of her fingers and toes began to tingle. Haven came back to herself to the sound of Anix's gentle ughter. "Well, that certainly did the trick, didn't it?" She cuddled Haven up into her arms and stood, carrying and rocking her gently. "I'll prescribe you a css-G — that'll help with your emotional baseline, and it'll ensure that as your body's tissues regrow, they do so properly. The sarcotesta itself, though...that, I'll have to recode the physiognomy manually."

  "The...what?"

  "Your features, dear, such as they are. I expect you'd like narrower shoulders, wider hips, breasts, and so on? It's all just phytotissue, of course, but there's no reason it has to look this way — Arvense simply coded it based on your genetic profile and what little information Tilndsia had on you from Neoxenoveterinary Archeobureacracy, and, well, their shipboard data trove was not exactly focused on terrans who vanished sixty years prior. I, on the other hand, have your full file, and even before I confirmed it in person I rather suspected you might need a bit of fine-turning, hmm?" She pnted a gentle kiss on Haven's forehead. "The sarcotesta will respond very quickly, much more quickly than your own tissue would; we can have it looking much more like a Haven by this time tomorrow, or the day after at the very test. Would you like that?"

  She would. She would like that. She didn't deserve it at all but she wanted it. She wanted to scream that she didn't deserve it, that all she deserved was to be thrown out the airlock, to be thrown from the train they'd ridden here at max speed, to be stripped out of the cambium ttice and left to finally fucking die like she should have years ago if only to spare everyone else the misery of knowing her.

  But something in Anix's eyes reminded her that none of that is true. "Yes, please," she whispered, her voice steady only because she had no voice to break under the weight of the tears she couldn't shed.

  "I thought you might," Anix said. "Now, let's get you out of that veterinary hospital gown and into something significantly cuter, shall we?"