This is from the new first-person POV chapter:
“What in Raiji’s name is it?”
I peer over my friend Amr’s shoulder at the desk monitor. I — even after all these centuries the concept startles me at times. I am separate from Amr, from the rest of his triad here in the scanning room of the colony, from my own life-partner. My friend is Amr and I — I call myself Lontano now, because Tel likes the name.
I will not be able to access Amr’s mind, to see what he is looking at or feel what has frustrated him. I look through my own eyes at the image. A mountain range wrinkles the skin of the planet. Amr told me they’ve hooked in a human satellite to study the range immediately around the colony. The Shadow Mountains are the same reddish-brown desert as our planet. I feel at home here, even more so than in Australia.
Our mountains are dotted with the green of Earth plant life, in this case cacti and perhaps mesquite bushes. I have not yet learned the names of local plants. From this distance, human changes to the planet look small and insignificant. The mountains are too vast to be overwhelmed, and that pleases me somehow. Velyr burrow down into the warm rocks of their planet, leaving the surface the way Raiji created it.
Rather than answer Amr’s question immediately, I turn to his youngest life-partner. “How long has it been broadcasting?”
Hani, his skin and hair pale with youth, replies. He smells a bit puzzled, perhaps by my change of subject. “I picked the signal up three days ago, but there’s no way of telling how long it’s been out there wandering around.”
“But it is moving?” I ask. “It’s probably not a human spy team, then.”
Humans would have set up a scanning station of their own, if they were sending out that odd signal. They’d be operating on more than one frequency, too. Video and audio both, for one thing. What would be broadcasting such a signal out in the middle of the mountain range? And at this time of year — weren’t most animals hibernating in the cold?
We need to home in on that signal and get a better image. I glance around the room. It’s barely larger than our apartment’s living room. With the fourth stool Amr’s dragged in for me, it feels too cluttered. I wonder who chose the bland beige wall paint, eschewing a more traditional color or texture..
I spot a jacking station at one corner of the triangular desk, to Amr’s and my right. I tap Amr on one shoulder and indicate the station with a jerk of my chin.
“Do you mind?”
“That’s why I dragged you into this,” Amr replies. He’s older than I am, and darker because of that, and his emotional control is solid. Still, he gives me a brief smile. “See what you can do, rock star.”
I have to smile in return, though I immediately get my face back under control. The fact that humans enjoy my music has nothing to do with my real talents, nor is it pertinent in this situation. Amr just thinks it humorous that a sawt al’kamb, as I’d been once, now spent his days entertaining unwitting humans on a stage. As the voice for our home planet’s AI, I’d enjoyed much the same celebrity, though, so being a “rock star” hasn’t been that much of a stretch once I realized I could, as the humans put it, “make a living at it.”
I untwine a sync cord from my braid, leaving the other end plugged into the Augmentation at my nape. The cord is warm from my body and feels soft and homelike in my hand. These are made of an alloy not found on Earth, and are our only connection to the home planet, now who-knows-how-many light-years away. I roll the hard tip of the cord between my fingers for a moment, just to remember, then jack it into the station.
