"Then it's just a bonus," Savitri said.

We were sitting in my office on the day before my final departure from Huckleberry. Savitri was sitting in the chair behind my desk; I was sitting in one of the chairs in front of it.

"How do you like the view from the chair?" I asked.

"The view is fine. The chair is kind of lumpy," Savitri said. "Like someone's lazy ass had deformed it beyond all recognition."

"You can always get a new chair," I said.

"Oh, I'm sure Administrator Kulkarni would be delighted with that expense," Savitri said. "He's never gotten over the idea of me as a troublemaker."

"You are a troublemaker," I said. "It's part of the job description of being an ombudsman."

"Ombudsmen are supposed to resolve trouble," Savitri noted.

"Well, fine," I said. "If you want to get snippy about it, Miss Literal Pants."

"What a lovely name," Savitiri said, and swung back and forth in her chair. "And anyway, I'm only an assistant troublemaker."

"Not anymore," I said. "I've already recommended to Kulkarni that you be made village ombudsman, and he's agreed."

Savitri stopped swinging around. "You actually got him to agree?"

"Not at first," I admitted. "But I was persuasive. And I convinced him that at least this way you'd be required to help people rather than bother them."

"Rohit Kulkarni," Savitri said. "Such a fine man."

"He does have his moments," I allowed. "But he did give his approval, finally. So just say yes, and the job is yours. And so is the chair."

"I definitely don't want the chair," Savitri said.

"Fine," I said. "Then you'll have nothing to remember me by."

"I don't want the job, either," Savitri said.

"What?" I said.

"I said, I don't want the job," Savitri said. "When I found out that you were leaving, I went looking for another job. And I found one."

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's another assistant job," Savitri said.

"But you could be ombudsman," I said.

"Oh, yes, be ombudsman in New Goa," Savitri said, and then noticed my look; after all, that had been my job. "No offense. You took your job after you'd seen the universe. I've been in the same village all my life. I'm thirty years old. It's time to leave."

"You've found a job in Missouri City," I said, naming the district capital.

"No," Savitri said.

"I'm confused," I said.

"This is not news," Savitri said, and then continued on before I could retort. "My new job is off-planet. On a new colony called Roanoke. Maybe you've heard of it."

"Okay, now I'm really confused," I said.

"Seems that a two-person team is leading the colony," Savitri said. "I asked one of them for a job. She said yes."

"You're Jane's assistant?" I asked.

"Actually, I'm assistant to the colony leader," Savitri said. "Since there are two of you, I'm your assistant, too. I still won't get you tea."

"Huckleberry's not one of the colonies that was allowed to send colonists," I said.

"No," Savitri said. "But as the colony leaders, you are allowed to hire whomever you like for your support staff. Jane already knows and trusts me and knows that you and I work together well. It made sense."

"When did she hire you?" I asked.

"The day you gave notice here," Savitri said. "She came in while you were out to lunch. We talked about it and she offered me the job."

"And neither of you bothered to tell me about this," I said.

"She was going to," Savitri said. "But I asked her not to."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because then you and I wouldn't have had this wonderful, wonderful conversation," Savitri said, and then spun around in my chair, laughing.

"Get out of my chair," I said.

I was standing in the bare living room of my packed-up and stored-away home, getting misty, when Hickory and Dickory approached me.

"We would like to talk to you, Major Perry," Hickory said to me.

"Yes, all right," I said, surprised. In the seven years that Hickory and Dickory had been with us we had conversed a number of times. But they had never once initiated a conversation; at most, they would wait silently to be acknowledged.

"We will use our implants," Hickory said.

"Fine," I said. Both Hickory and Dickory fingered collars that rested at the base of their long necks, and pressed a button on the right side of the collar.

The Obin were a created species; the Consu, a race so far advanced of ours that it was almost unfathomable, had found the Obin's ancestors and used their technology to force intelligence on the poor bastards. The Obin indeed became intelligent; what they didn't become was aware. Whatever process that allowed for consciousness—the sense of self—was entirely missing from the Obin. Individual Obin had no ego or personality; it was only as a group that the Obin were aware that they were lacking a thing all other intelligent species had. Whether the Consu accidentally or intentionally made the Obin nonconscious was a matter cf debate, but given my own encounters with the Consu over the years, I suspect they were simply curious, and the Obin were just another experiment to them.

The Obin desired consciousness enough that they were willing to risk a war with the Colonial Union to get it. The war was a demand of Charles Boutin, a scientist who was the first to record and store a human consciousness outside the supporting structure of the brain. Boutin was killed by Special Forces before he could give the Obin consciousness on an individual level, but his work was close enough to completion that the Colonial Union was able to strike a deal with the Obin to finish the work. The Obin went from foe to friend overnight, and the Colonial Union came through on Boutin's work, creating a consciousness implant based on the CDF's existing BrainPal technology. It was consciousness as an accessory.

Humans—the few who know the story, anyway—naturally regard Boutin as a traitor, a man whose plan to topple the Colonial Union would have caused the slaughter of billions of humans.

The Obin equally and naturally regard him as one of their great racial heroes, a Prometheus figure who gave them not fire but awareness. If you ever needed an argument that heroism is relative, there it is.

My own feelings on the matter were more complicated. Yes, he was a traitor to his species and deserved to die. He's also the biological father to Zoe, who I think is as wonderful a human as I've met. It's hard to say that you're glad the father of your beautiful and terribly clever adopted daughter is dead, even when you know it's better that he is.

Given how the Obin feel about Boutin, it's not in the least surprising they would feel possessive about Zoe; one of their primary treaty demands was, essentially, visitation rights. What eventually got agreed to was a situation where two Obin would live with Zoe and her adopted family. Zoe named them Hickory and Dickory when they arrived. Hickory and Dickory were allowed to use their consciousness implants to record some of their time with Zoe. Those recordings were shared among all the Obin with consciousness implants; in effect, they all shared time with Zoe.

Jane and I allowed this under very limited conditions while Zoe was too young to really understand what was going on. After Zoe was old enough to grasp the concept it was her decision. Zoe allowed it. She likes the idea of her life being shared with an entire species, although like any teenager she has extended periods of wanting to be left alone. Hickory and Dickory turn their implants off when that happens; no point wasting perfectly good consciousness on time not spent with Zoe. Their wanting to be conscious talking to me alone was something new.

There was a slight lag between the moment Hickory and Dickory activated their collars, which stored the hardware that housed their consciousness, and the moment the collar communicated with the neural overlay in their brains. It was like watching sleepwalkers wake up. It was also a little creepy. Although not as creepy as what came next: Hickory smiling at me.