“My problem isn’t with the plan,” Abek Goa, tall and thin, wrapped in a heavy coat, leaned over the table. His stoop made his face, his head hanging disturbingly close to hers. His drawl added extra syllables to his complaint. “It’s with them.”

He pointed out a double finger jab at Traejan and Kyso.

Althea pursed her lips.

“Care to share the reason why?” she wanted to know.

“Bad luck is all,” he told her, glanced around the table for support. A couple nodded. “I heard all about what happened, what he did.”

She sighed.

“You mean surviving a full out attack by ground and flying constructs?” she offered nonchalantly. “How many of you can say that you saw them that close, and survived.”

“Pretty suspicious,” Teffa offered gruffly. The lone woman in the group looked and tried to act tougher than the men. “Twelve go down, one comes back.”

Althea leaned back in her chair, trying to project an air of comfort and command.

“Pretty lucky,” she replied, gave a narrow eyed glance around the table. “As far as I can tell. Any of you ever get that close and lived to tell? Any of you ever get caught by constructs, drop your finds and run?”

“What do you know, about the south, about what’s down there?” Nur bek Nur challenged in his raspy voice. “Coming from where you do? Have you ever even seen one of those things?”

A story cooked up with Kyso; Tamas’Anef, a rumored settlement, perched on a frozen sea far to the north – her fictional hometown.

“That’s why I’m looking for your help, your smarts,” she responded, “and theirs. How many of you have worked in micronics fabrication first hand. How many of you learned how to rig tech after my friends here woke up and spread the knowledge?”

Enos didn’t like the sound of that, stopped scratching his beard, rattled the metal shards riveted to his coat.

“I learned plenty they didn’t teach.”

She smiled at the sideways admission.

“So you admit they did teach you all a little,” she continued applying the pressure. “Fair reason why we could use them along, wouldn’t you say?”

Slowly but surely she was piercing the bigotry, providing novel thoughts to counter their assumptions, compounding the allure of even a few grams of trilium.

Abek Goa pulled back a bit, long thin, if dirty hands still resting on the dusty table. His coat hung around him as if it was on a rack, his voice a high reedy tone “I still don’t see how much we’re gonna get out of this… Each.”

She was still having to teach some of them a little rudimentary math, picked up the trilium cylinder again, showing them the glitter of what remained.

“There are ninety–six grams of trilium left,” she showed them the glittering reflected light from the container, holding it between her thumb and forefinger, “to be divided between the six of you. That means 12 whole grams each.”

They all seemed pleased by that – as well they should – from the look of the place; there probably hadn’t been more than a hundred grams in all of Panak before tonight.

“Even for them,” Enos asked. Althea shrugged.

“There’s six of you,” she noted. “Two of them – seems fair to me.”

Obe, just Obe, wasn’t clear on another subject. Neither was the mumbling speech of his she could barely parse.

“And what exactly are we looking for again?”

“As I told you,” she held her voice – bearing – unflustered and unfrustrated. “Working tech, not trinkets, not pocket gadgets – bigger stuff: alloy and composite fabricators, compound synthesizers, com systems. The stuff we need to live – not just scrape along by. I looked around your town. It’s not that much different from back home. That’s why they sent me – to bring back something that will improve our lives.”

There were specific points that she continued to press: living, making life better, easier, more gratifying. Words in a language that would get them excited, enthusiastic, committed – hopefully reducing their suspicions.

“If this trip is successful, there will be many more,” she added with a smile. If they succeeded, it wouldn’t be a lie, Althea told herself. They would be free to go wherever they wanted.