by Audrey Faye
The small, lithe woman behind the desk rolled back the balance ball she used as a chair and bounced up. Her dreads bobbed madly as she closed the distance and placed a big, hard kiss on my cheek. “Kish! You look like hell. Didn’t Tyra feed you and make you take a nap?”
I grinned, well used to the unnecessary mothering. “She did. I saved a piece of bread for you.” I dug in my bag to rescue it before it turned to crumbs.
Bean opened a corner of the small container and inhaled deeply—and then her eyes shot open. “You got real butter?”
“Ssh.” I laughed, quietly. “You want to share that with half the habitat?”
She tore off the lid and popped a good chunk of it into her mouth. “Nope.” She chewed twice and closed her eyes, humming a note of quiet bliss.
That was better for my loggy brain than caffeine. “Boss lady ready for me?”
Bean waved her hand vaguely in the direction of Yesenia’s inner sanctum.
I took that as invitation and stepped toward the door. It slid open moments before I got there. Yesenia came around her gleaming desk, hand out in royal greeting. “Welcome back, Journeywoman Drinkwater.”
The urge to tweak her was irresistible. “Gods, Yesenia—when are you going to call me Kish like the rest of the solar system?”
Her eyes glinted sharp steel. “I very rarely seek to be like the rest of the solar system.”
Truer words were never said—and I wasn’t dumb enough to mess with the steel in her eyes twice. “I hear you have a new assignment for me.”
“Always straight to business.” She sighed, which froze me in my boots. “I used to be like you, mind always focused from one assignment to the next.”
Yesenia was a Fixer legend, one of the few Travelers who’d done her stint and could still talk in complete sentences. I didn’t know whether she started out tough as nails, but she’d certainly finished that way. Regret wasn’t in her vocabulary. I stepped very carefully, on high alert for exploding space debris. “KarmaCorp trains us to focus.”
“Yes, we do.” Something in her demeanor shifted. “And you do it very well, Lakisha—I never meant to suggest otherwise. What do you know of your next assignment?”
I knew that a backwoods planet needed a Fixer—and I knew the situation had somehow merited enough attention to get labeled high security. “The file said ‘Ears Only.’”
“It did.” She waited a long moment, her face the impassive mask that could start a miscreant babbling in two seconds flat. “Lucinda didn’t fill you in any further?”
I didn’t throw friends under mining carts, and this time, Bean had known very little. “She told me Bromelain III was an outpost colony.”
Yesenia raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “A little weak on your quadrant geography, are you?”
There was no point trying to explain standard human weakness to a woman who had none. “I’ve learned a little more since I got the file.”
She tapped her fingers on a tablet that could probably turn mine into a pile of metal shards without even trying hard. “Other than a quick review while you were in contact with Lucinda this morning, I have no record of you accessing the briefing materials.”
Knowing KarmaCorp tracked my every move was far less annoying than having it shoved in my face. “You might look at the records of my GooglePlex activity since then—I’m sure those will be more informative.”
My prickly tone had Yesenia’s eyebrow sliding up again, more dangerously this time. She took a seat in a narrow, angular chair in front of her desk and gestured to its twin. “Sit.”
I didn’t want to, but that was a piss-poor battle to pick. I was a grown-up now, not a fourth-year trainee who’d been caught greasing hatch locks. I made myself as comfortable as possible in a chair that clearly didn’t want people sitting on it for long. “These are new.”
“They are indeed.” Her face gave nothing away.
I was too damn travel lagged and grouchy to keep my best manners in place. “If you put a bunch of these in the detention pod, trainees would probably be a lot better behaved.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
It was way past time to stop talking about the furniture. “Intel on Bromelain III is sparse. Good climate, large grasslands sustaining the oxygen levels.” Which mattered because people locked up in astrosuits all day long got really jumpy. BroThree, as the locals called it, was probably a pretty mellow place compared to my last assignment. “Eligible for Federated planet status soon.” Which was a big deal, and the only clue I’d found about why I might be headed that way. Federation status was the doorway into the inner circle of power, governance, and everything else that mattered in the galaxy—at least according to the people already in there.
My boss was doing an excellent imitation of a statue. An impatient and possibly displeased one.
I tried to think what else I’d dug up that might matter. “Not much chatter on the sim waves. Inheritor planet, so governance is pretty straightforward.”
“Ah.” Yesenia leaned forward, interrupting my spiel. Statue awakened. “Tell me what you learned about the Lovatts.”
Other than knowing they were the family that ran the place, not much. I wondered what I’d missed. “Standard Inheritor structure—ruling title passes to the most-suited child, as voted on by the council and citizens.”
She nodded her head once and looked marginally less displeased. “Did you know that in Earth-based feudal societies, it was the firstborn male child who inherited?”
I was no Anthro, but that sounded dumb as rocks. “Doesn’t that just provide incentive for the firstborn to end up dead?”
“Indeed.”
My brain was sending high-alert signals again. There was something going on here besides a history lesson. “Is the Inheritor Elect in danger?” That was an unusual assignment for a Singer, but I’d had stranger.
“Not at all.” Yesenia’s fingers tapped a riff on her knee. “Devan Lovatt was chosen most suited for leadership at the council plenarium last year. The vote was unanimous.”
I shifted gingerly in the chair. “So he’s the heir apparent.”
“It wasn’t a difficult vote—his sisters have made clear that they aren’t interested.”
As I’d learned at ten years old, lack of interest doesn’t always get you off the hook. “Do they show any aptitude?”
Yesenia inclined her head, teacher to adequately bright student. “One shows significant talent with solar mechanics, and the other is pregnant with her fourth child and writes a well-respected series of vidbooks for children.”
“A family with varied skills.” And ones that didn’t provide a lot of clues about why KarmaCorp was interested in the political machinations of a backwater colony. “I assume the sister with engineering skills is on a ship somewhere.” Good solar mechanics were literally worth their bodyweight in gold.
“She is, for the past two years now. Her mentors report admirable progress.”
And somewhere in there might lie the reason that a Fixer was being sent to an outpost colony. Any genes that could produce solar mechanics would have earned themselves a place on KarmaCorp’s radar. I didn’t ask for details—there was no chance in any planet’s hells that I’d get an answer, and I didn’t really want one. Commonwealth politics were as convoluted and labyrinthine as it got. I was just a Singer who did what I was told, and very glad to keep it that way.
Time to get the down low on my assignment and get out of here. “Forgive my lack of patience, Director, but why are you sending me to Bromelain III?”
“You’ll be observing Devan Lovatt.”
I raised an eyebrow of my own, thoroughly confused. Fixers didn’t generally get sent to babysit, even for royalty.
Yesenia’s hands played that riff on her knee again. “And a young woman by the name of Janelle Brooker.”
Sometimes notes sound bad even before they’re played. “And who would she be, exactly?”
“She’s the middle daughter o
f another well-respected colony family.” The boss lady’s game face did nothing to calm my gut. “The Brookers can trace their roots all the way back to the grain fields of Saskatchewan.”
That bit of geography I did know. Canada hadn’t been the first of Earth’s countries into space, but they’d been one of the last left with water and land that could grow things, and that had fueled their colonization of half the star system. A country of pioneers used to cold and isolation, they’d had the right DNA for space exploration. That made the Brookers at least minor relations to galactic royalty, and Yesenia wanted to make sure I knew it.
This was getting stinkier than a compost droid. We had two young people on some backwoods space rock, and either their family connections or some situation they’d managed to get tangled up in had qualified them for a high-security KarmaCorp intervention. “Did they get themselves into something sticky?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
I sat quietly, not at all sure I wanted to hear what came next.
“Our astrologers believe the two are compatible and intended to marry.”
I tried not to gape, shocked to the core that they’d pointed a StarReader at two kids on some outpost planet. Astrologers were a credit a dozen all over the galaxy, but KarmaCorp employed the ones who ended up right most of the time—and there weren’t nearly enough of them. They were the company’s most valuable commodity. “What, I’m supposed to keep the two of them out of trouble before the wedding?”
“No. Apparently the two parties are not yet convinced of their future together.”
That was crazy. “Nobody argues with a KarmaCorp StarReader.”
Yesenia’s lips pursed. “They aren’t to be told. No one is. That information will not leave this office.”
That was even crazier.
She eyed me with a look that regularly froze the blood of people two decades my senior. “That directive comes from the highest levels, and you will comply with it, Journeywoman.”
That could only mean StarReader edict. One that likely had far more tentacles than a simple marriage on some boondocks colony. I grimaced—and then the other shoe landed, the whole reason a Singer was being pulled into this mess. To create harmony where none existed. “No. No way.”
Yesenia’s eyebrows warned of impending death should I choose to keep up my foolish babble.
The knots in my gut cowered and kept talking anyhow. “That’s insane.” And far, far worse than babysitting.
“That is for others to decide.” She was Yesenia Mayes in full throttle now, and no one would dare to cross her. “You will do your job, Singer, and you will do it with all the skill, talent, and training at your disposal.”
Of course I would—there was never any other choice. Fixers did what we were told.
But sweet holy shit. I was being sent off to a backwater rock—to be a matchmaker.
4
I’d forgotten how thirteen-year-old girls were such an odd mix of lingering child and the adults they would one day become. No boys in this class, but that wasn’t a surprise—Fixer Talents most often manifested in girls, especially at this age.
I’d campaigned hard to do this in the student lounge, which was a mess of gel-chairs, holo-covered walls, and excellent snacks, but I’d been overruled. Which sucked, because my stomach was kicking up a fuss about the lack of decent sustenance I’d sent its direction recently.
The trainees were impressively still under my gaze. They were older than the last class I’d talked to—less wiggly, less wet behind the ears, and less obviously impressed by my presence in their midst. Good. Maybe their questions would be a little less awestruck, too. “Well, I could stand up here and say a bunch of stuff about Fixers and the important work we do, but I bet you’ve heard it all before.” And I’d probably find it hard to say with a straight face when my next assignment involved adjusting some guy’s hormones so that his dick pointed the right way.
Hands shot up all over the room. I picked a waving one at random.
The girl who stood up was as wide as she was tall, and every inch of it was clearly muscle. “Is being a Fixer dangerous?”
She obviously hoped the answer was yes. “It can be, but danger takes a lot of different forms. And usually means we didn’t do our job right.” Or someone higher up the chain hadn’t, but thirteen-year-olds didn’t want to hear about bureaucratic fuck-ups.
“I thought Fixers didn’t make mistakes.” A girl down in front looked fairly distressed about that possibility.
I recognized her elfin looks—she came from one of the most overprotected families in the quadrant. Unfortunately, they also produced a lot of kids with Talent. “Everyone makes mistakes, and those of us with Talent sometimes make the biggest ones. That’s why it’s important to work on your judgment, too.”
The elf frowned. “How do we do that?”
In her family, I had no idea—probably by running away from home. “You make decisions every day, right?” In her case, not very big ones, but still. “You decide what to eat, what to wear, who to be nice to, who to share your lunch with.”
She looked totally confused.
This kid would last ten minutes on a mining rock, and someday she might get sent there. I sighed—I was a Fixer, not a nanny. “Basically, you practice. You notice when you make smart decisions and when you make dumb ones, and you try to get better.”
Her eyes crossed. “But I thought we’re supposed to do what we’re told.”
We were, and I’d just been reminded of that in no uncertain terms. “Absolutely. Fixer assignments are decided with great care and planning and access to a lot of information that we don’t have.” So far, I was spouting the company manual, but it was time to change that up a little. I glanced over at the wall where the teacher stood, looking a little bored. “But there are good reasons that KarmaCorp puts Fixers on the ground. We do what we’re told, but we have a lot of freedom to decide how we do it.” Something some of us took more advantage of than others.
The teacher wasn’t looking bored anymore—but she hadn’t stopped me, either. And every pair of trainee eyes in the room was riveted.
Which left me trying to explain a line I hadn’t remotely understood at thirteen. “Everything has resonance, energy—right? We have the Talent to tap into that energy, to shape it.” Thanks to a few Saskatchewan farmers with pretty interesting genetics that had been seeded out into space. “That can’t be done from an office. Energy needs to be felt, and every person in KarmaCorp knows it. That’s our job.”
I could Sing however I wanted—so long as I got the job done. And complied with KarmaCorp’s very long ethics manual, but that was a different conversation, and one plenty of other people would be having with the trainees. I wasn’t here to tell them about the limits. I was here to tell them how to find enough freedom to stay sane—the wiggle room that had allowed a mining brat to do the job with dignity and pride. Elf girl was still looking confused, but several other heads were nodding. Idea planted. Time to head back to safer ground. “Any more questions?”
A girl with dark skin and an appealing grin bounced up next. “I heard your next assignment is to an outpost colony.”
She said the last two words with the light disdain of a kid who’d been born on one of the Commonwealth’s inner planets. “It is.” Which was probably a secret, but if the thirteen-year-olds already knew, not a very well-kept one.
The grin ratcheted up a notch. “What are you going to do there?”
That was a secret, and I was pretty damn sure Yesenia kept trainees out of the Ears Only files. “Whatever is necessary to help alignment and the flow of good energy in the galaxy.”
The questioner scowled, not at all impressed with being quoted KarmaCorp’s mission statement. “A colony planet doesn’t sound very important.”
Definitely inner-planet born. “I bet fixing Andrew Takli’s fear of small spaces didn’t sound very important either.” Even a first-year trainee would know the story of the eight-year
-old boy who had gone on to develop modern cryo-travel. They would have also heard the horror stories of Fixers who had failed in something simple they’d been sent to do and put whole cultures into tailspin. “Even the smallest assignment can have vast ripples out into the universe.”
Which didn’t make me any happier about being sent off to get two people all hot for each other, but it would keep me doing my job.
My interrogator wasn’t done. Her head cocked to the side, thinking. “Do you know why your new assignment is important?”
“No.”
The teacher shifted on the wall.
I held the kid’s gaze. They wanted me to talk about what it was like to be a real-live Fixer, and that included flying blind more often than not.
The girl met my gaze, her dark eyes thoughtful. “How come they don’t tell us?”
The long answer would bore her to tears—the one about the very delicate balance of trust and autonomy that lived at KarmaCorp’s core and helped sustain a galaxy with more decency, generosity, and happiness than had ever been seen in human history. So I went with the short one. “We’d have to be in meetings all day and read reports until our eyes bled.”
Groans rose up all over the room. I grinned. “We’re people of action, right?” And the price for that sometimes included not understanding why we acted. I’d try to remember that while I was encouraging two boondocks colonists to hop into each other’s pants.
I looked around for another question and picked a nondescript girl with sharp, savvy eyes.
She stayed seated and spoke in a clear voice full of bells. Definitely a Singer. “What’s the hardest part about being a Fixer?”
I blinked. Most trainees didn’t see past the glisten and gloss for years yet. “Working in the field alone, I think. Having to make hard decisions without really knowing what the best answer is.” And knowing that if you screwed up, people died and communities failed and doorways into important futures slammed closed.
The savvy eyes had a follow-up. “And what’s the best part?”