The Strangers were predictably jealous of my new title. I didn't tell them about it myself; I didn't have to. I arrived at breakfast the next morning to find them already discussing it.

"Come on, Avery," Kylie said as I sat down. "A rank and a uniform? Are you going to have all the luck? Fucking leave something for the rest of us, can't you?"

I shrugged and repeated my final waking thought of the night before. Kylie scoffed. "Right. They're transporting you halfway across the known universe to be a bloody janitor."

"Well, they could be. Councillor Seidel did say it was 'effectively a service role.'"

"Avery Alcott," Scott murmured. "Bringing harmony to the galaxy, one toilet at a time."

I pointed a French toast stick at him. "That's Novi Alcott to you."

Rajani said skeptically, "So they're just going to hand you a uniform and hope for the best? An alien civilian, with no relevant training and no clue about their policies or procedures? Are they giving you a sidearm too?"

"No sidearms," Scott said. "They don't carry weapons on board. Their fleet is quasi-military at best. Their ships are only armed enough to destroy asteroids in their path. They covered all this in yesterday's briefing, you know." I thought there was an unwarranted edge to his tone. Judging from the sharp look Rajani gave him, she thought so too.

In an attempt to smooth things over, I said, "Anyway, it looks like I won't be completely untrained." And I filled them in on what Elena had just told me: that arrangements had been made for a member of the Pinion's crew to spend the day prior to launch training me in the rudiments of my tasks as a novi.

"Which crew member? Do you know?" I understood Scott's interest; he had been one of the men interviewed during the morning sessions with the Pinion's crew.

"Not yet. But it probably won't be a senior officer."

"Not Saresh, then?" Kylie teased.

I rolled my eyes. "You're as bad as Elena. If it's Saresh, I'll find a way to introduce you, I promise."

"Don't count on it," Rajani said. "Whoever it is, they're not just going to let him wander around the facility. Quarantine procedures will be airtight until we know more about the risk of cross-species contagion."

Kylie waved a hand. "Whatever. I'll spy on him through a window. I don't care, I just want to see one!"

"They're not fairies," Scott said testily. "And you'll be seeing plenty of them soon enough. It's not like you're going to be stuck on an orbit crawler." He glanced at his watch and pushed his chair back from the table. "First session in five, people."

After he had gone, I looked inquiringly at Kylie. She shrugged. "Preliminary assignments come out at the end of the week. There's a new arrival who's supposedly tearing it up in one of the other training groups—some kind of linguistic savant, I guess. Scott's worried. For no reason, but try telling him that."

I made a face. "Maybe I shouldn't have talked so much about my thing."

"Don't worry about it. He knows he's not competing with you." She looked thoughtful. "Not any more."

As I rose to carry my tray to the dish room, Rajani caught my wrist. She was frowning. "Listen, Avery, I know you're excited. But you know what they say about things that seem too good to be true. Be careful, okay? You're not like the rest of the Strangers. We're paranoid assholes. We had to be to get here. You're a different breed—a gentle soul. And you can bet the Vardeshi saw that in the interview. They may be from another planet, but they're not blind. They may be trying to take advantage of you somehow. Don't let them. Even if it means . . ."

"Being a paranoid asshole?" I nodded. "I'll try. Seriously."

My final training sessions had a perfunctory feel to them. I had learned as much Krav Maga as I could in two weeks, which to me was a depressingly inadequate amount. My food and gear were packed and ready for transport onto the Pinion. Anton had numbed my right wrist with an anesthetic spray and inserted a tiny medical transmitter under the skin. A second transmitter had been inserted on my left hip, below the line of my underwear. Anton had checked a dozen times to make sure both devices were functioning properly, which they were, sending a constant stream of medical telemetry to designated locations in the cloud and the Villiger Center's data banks.

Tristan was finally satisfied that I would be able to at least approximate our covert signals under real strain. "Don't worry about getting the codes wrong," he said, deadpan as ever, at the conclusion of our last session. "The important thing is to keep sending messages. We know the Vardeshi have glitches in their communications network. No message doesn't automatically mean there's a problem. Silence isn't a signal."

I thanked him and left. The hours seemed suddenly to be accelerating toward the moment of my departure. I had the same unsettling feeling I'd had on the flight over from California of being a fixed point at the center of a vastly complex machine, a maze of tiny whirring parts ceaselessly clicking over. The sensation wasn't entirely unpleasant, but it was peculiar.

The next day was the one set aside for me to see my parents. The visit didn't go as badly as I'd anticipated. I wondered if someone—possibly Dr. Okoye—had cautioned them against upsetting me so close to launch. They didn't question me or make me feel guilty or urge me to change my mind. I showed them around the facility, and they made polite comments about it, and equally polite conversation with the Strangers we met on our way. We toured the local winery and had dinner at a little bistro in the village. To me it all felt as perfunctory as my last few training sessions. There was a hollowness to our interactions, a sense of artifice about the day, with its carefully composed itinerary. Inside, I was counting the hours until tomorrow, when my real training started, and from then until the next day. Launch day.

The good-byes were real. I hadn't expected that. After dinner, we walked along the main street of the village to the end of the sidewalk and back again. It took only a few minutes; there wasn't much to see, only a cluster of storefronts, a café, a train station. The café was warmly lit and inviting, the other buildings dark and shuttered. When we returned to the restaurant, the inevitable black sedans were waiting by the curb: one to take me back to the Villiger Center, one to take my parents to the airport. My father began to cry. I had never seen him cry before, and I was horrified. I looked at my mother. She wasn't crying. She was looking at me. Her expression was sad and intent at the same time. I understood. She was trying to fix my face in her mind. She was afraid she would never see me again.

She said quietly, "Avery, the hardest thing about being a parent isn't the sleepless nights or the tuition bills. It's that you have to trust so many people. So many strangers. And the leaps of faith just keep getting bigger. First day of school. First sleepover. First boyfriend. First trip abroad."

"First trip offworld?" There was a catch in my voice: a laugh, maybe, or a sob.

"You have to believe, over and over again, that other people mean no harm to your child. And you have to do it knowing all the while that we live in an imperfect world." She sighed. "At least all the people we had to trust before were human."

"I trust the Vardeshi," I said.

"You made that choice for all of us. Without asking us." There were still tears on my father's face, but his voice was steady.

"Dad . . . I can't promise you that everything's going to be fine. I don't know that. But I do know that absolutely everything I've done has been leading up to this. I'm not saying it's meant to be. I hate all that destiny garbage. You know that. But Dr. Sawyer picked me, and the Vardeshi asked for me, and I'll be damned if I'm going to walk away from them just because I'm scared."

"So you are scared," said my mother.

"Of course I'm scared! How could I not be? Jesus, Mom, they're aliens!"

"Well, good. I was afraid you'd lost all your common sense." Her tone was matter-of-fact, but she wrapped me in a tight embrace and held me for a long time.

At breakfast the next morning I was nearly silent. The Strangers were preoccupied too. That evening they would receive their assignments to the various ships and starhavens the Vardeshi had designated as suitable for human habitation. Immediately following breakfast, they would be assessed on the linguistic progress they had made in two weeks of intensive TrueFluent sessions. Language skill wasn't the only or the most important predictor of placement, but it was the only one that could still be altered. The Strangers knew this morning's examination was their last chance to climb (or fall) in the rankings. I wasn't surprised to see that most of them were bent over their notes. Scott and Rajani were studying together, at least at first. Halfway through breakfast, their collaboration degenerated into an argument. I listened for a few moments and then asked diffidently if they wanted a third opinion. By the time Elena arrived to collect me twenty minutes later, the discussion had turned into a full-on review session. It took me a few moments to process what she was saying.

"He's here," she repeated. "Zai? Zhey? I'm probably saying it wrong. The officer from the Pinion?"

"He's here? Already? I thought he was coming at nine!"

"Apparently he wanted to get started. He's waiting for you in the conference wing."

I leapt to my feet and started stacking dishes on my tray. Elena waved a hand. "Don't worry about that, someone will take care of it. Are you ready?"

I picked up the tote bag that contained my laptop, spiral notebook, and pens. I wasn't sure exactly what form my novi training would take, and I wanted the freedom to type, hand-write, or sketch as the situation required. I nodded to the Strangers. "You'll be fine, guys. Scott, remember to adjust your seventh tone if it comes after a third. Kylie, try not to reverse your demonstrative pronouns. I'll see you tonight.

"So what's he like?" I said excitedly as Elena led me down the hall.

"You'll have to tell me. I haven't met him yet, I just got a message that he'd arrived. It's down this corridor, second door on the right. I'll be back at noon to bring you to lunch. Good luck!"

I took a deep breath, smoothed my hair nervously, adjusted the strap of my bag, and opened the door. This was it—my first encounter with a crewman from the Pinion since becoming one myself. I was suddenly acutely nervous. What if he had some impenetrable regional accent? What if I couldn't parse his descriptions of Novi duties? What if he didn't like me? Khavi Vekesh clearly hadn't, and he'd only been in the room with me for five minutes. I was going to be closeted with this Zai or Zhey or whoever for an entire day. And the year that followed it. I had to make him like me. Somehow.

The individual who met me was the least intimidating of the Vardeshi I'd seen thus far. For one thing, he was smaller than any of the others, a full head shorter than me. He looked younger too—scarcely out of his teens, though I had yet to learn how their ages mapped onto ours. His features were elfin, delicate; he had wide dark eyes, the characteristic high forehead, and a pointed chin. A shock of artfully spiky silver-white hair stood out from his head like a halo. He studied me with frank curiosity. I liked him immediately.

"Hey," I said by way of greeting.

He shook his head, placed his right hand on his chest, giving me a clear glimpse of a tattoo similar to the other ones I'd seen, and said, slowly and clearly, "Zey."

I laughed and explained in Vardeshi, "'Hey' means 'hello' in English."

"Vai," he breathed. I recognized the word, an exclamation of surprise which appeared in several of Dr. Sawyer's recordings. "You really do speak Vardeshi. I didn't believe it."

"I speak a little." I held out my hand. "I'm Avery Alcott."

"Eyvri," he repeated carefully, taking my hand and shaking it like someone who's had the procedure described to him but never seen it. He gave my name the same Vardeshi lilt I had heard from Khavi Vekesh; I liked the sound of it. "My name is Zey. Zey Takheri."

"Takheri? Really?" The shock of hearing that particular surname snapped me back into English.

Zey stared at me, dismayed. "My name . . . angers you?"

"No!" I said hastily, returning to Vardeshi. "No, no. I'm not angry, just surprised. One of the officers who interviewed me was named Takheri as well."

"One? You mean two. You met both of my brothers at the interview."

"Your brothers," I repeated.

"Saresh and Hathan."

I frowned. "I met Saresh. He didn't give his family name. He's a Takheri too?"

Zey nodded. "He's the oldest. Then there's Hathan."

"About my height? Gray hair?"

"Right. Then me."

"Huh." I looked again at the bright hair and fine features. "I guess I can see the resemblance to Saresh. But Hathan doesn't look anything like you."

"Saresh and I look like our father," Zey explained. "Hathan looks like our mother. If you saw us all together, you'd understand."

"Are you sure . . .?" Still unconvinced, I took out my notebook. We spent a few convoluted minutes sketching out family trees and confirming my translations of father and brother. Over the course of the discussion, we oscillated between languages, finally settling on Vardeshi liberally salted with English as the most conducive to communication. At last I gave a resigned shrug. "Okay. You're telling me that Novak Takheri—the same Novak Takheri who recorded the messages sent to Earth twenty-five years ago, yes?"

"And visited," Zey said. "On the Seynath."

"Right. That same guy has three sons, and somehow all of them ended up on the same ship, on the same mission? How is that even possible?"

"Why wouldn't it be possible?"

I fumbled for words. "On Earth . . . First of all, we wouldn't put three people from the same family on a ten-man ship. If there were an accident . . ."

Zey waved a hand dismissively. "We do that all the time. Space travel is difficult. Long trips, huge distances. It's commonplace to send families starside together."

"Okay, but even so, how did all three of you end up on this particular mission? Bringing the first human to Vardesh Prime? It's a pretty"—I wanted to say "historic" but settled for—"important mission. Wasn't there a lot of competition?"

"We didn't know we'd be chosen. The Echelon only made the final decision a couple of months ago."

"The Echelon," I repeated.

Zey explained that the term referred to the governing body on Vardesh Prime. "It could have been any number of ships," he went on. "We knew we'd be hosting a human, but that was all. And also I think my father might have pulled some strings. He's a senator. Oh, and Saresh wasn't even assigned to the Pinion. He was transferred here at the last minute, just before we launched from the last starhaven. He was originally supposed to stay on Earth. So it would have been just me and Hathan."

I had to smile at the image of Saresh on Earth, earnestly trying to understand why most of the women (and some of the men) h(e spoke to instantly grew flustered and incoherent. Maybe that was why the Echelon had pulled him out of the program. I also had to admit, grudgingly, that what Zey was telling me was starting to make sense. To be selected as the spokesperson for an entire planet, Novak Takheri would have had to be a prominent figure. It followed that he would have the political connections to engineer an advantage for his own children when the time came to choose a ship to ferry the first human back to Vardesh Prime. It also made sense—given his manifest belief in the promise of further contact between our people—that he would have taught his children to speak English.

Zey was grinning at me. "Do you have any other questions about my family?"

"No. . . Wait. Do you have any sisters on board?"

His laugh was so infectious that I couldn't help joining in. It was the first time I saw—or heard—a Vardeshi laugh. To my overwhelming relief, he sounded exactly like a human, although unlike us, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut and wrinkled his nose. I had been mentally readying myself to accept some eerie alien facsimile of laughter, but the familiarity made things much easier.

"Let's get started," he said when he'd recovered. "We have a lot to get through in just one day."

I opened my notebook. "Tell me what I need to know."

Zey turned out to be a veritable fountain of (somewhat haphazardly organized) knowledge about life aboard the Pinion. The first and most important thing he taught me was the name and rank of everyone aboard. We started at the top and worked our way down. The title of khavi, as I already knew, translated to commander or captain. Each ship had one khavi. Then there was the suvi, or second-in-command. Some ships had more than one of these; the Pinion, being small, had only one. Next came rhevi, which was similar to lieutenant. This was the most common rank. Lastly, there was novi. "I'm a novi," he explained. "The lowest-ranking person on the ship." He brightened visibly. "Until tomorrow. Then it's you!"

"I don't mind," I said. "I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I'm just excited that I get a rank. And a uniform."

There was one more title, Zey explained, but it had no obvious analogue in English. The Vardeshi word was hadazi. We talked around it a bit and settled on mentor or monitor. The role of the hadazi was to provide guidance and support for the other members of the crew, particularly the younger ones. Serving as hadazi wasn't obligatory; officers could apply for the role or be recommended for it. It was a temporary title, typically held for a single year by those transitioning from suvi to khavi. The hadazi wasn't directly within the chain of command, but in dire circumstances he could step into a position of authority either above or below the suvi, as the khavi decreed.

"Huh," I said. "Sounds vague."

When I had written everything down, and Zey had checked my Vardeshi script, we added names. "Khavi Vekesh," Zey said. "His first name is Reyjai, but you'll never use it."

"Vekesh." I wrote it down. "I met him. The one with the black hair."

"Next is Hadazi Takheri. That's Saresh."

"Oh, good." I was relieved. "He seemed friendly."

"He is. We're lucky. He's a good hadazi—and I don't just say that because he's my brother. He'll help you. Then Suvi Takheri."

"That's Hathan?"

"Right."

I looked at my notes. "Hadazi Takheri. Suvi Takheri. And you're Novi Takheri? This is . . . unseemly." I was going to need a word for ridiculous.

"It's really not that bad. You can just call me Zey. And for the others, most of the time you'll just use their titles. That's what we do for superior officers." Zey sighed. "Which is everyone."

Next we ran through the rhevis: Ziral, Daskar, Khiva, Vethna, Sohra, Ahnir. I dutifully wrote them down. "You'll meet all of them tomorrow," said Zey. "And then there's me. Novi Takheri. And you."

"Novi Alcott," I said.

"Novi Alkhat," he repeated, his accent transforming the name.