Page 20

I felt it against the inside of my wrist, a faint pressure transmitted through the household link between his collar and my personal interface. Most owners kept the biometric feedback visual, something they could check when needed. I preferred tactile monitoring. Lucca's pulse was simply there. Always. When he slept, it was slow and steady, barely noticeable beneath my skin. When he became excited, it fluttered rapidly enough that I sometimes found myself smiling before I even knew what he'd gotten into. Fear had a different rhythm. So did anger. I had spent four years learning the variations.

This was irritation mixed with stress. Not an emergency. I reminded myself of that as I adjusted the magnification on the specimen in front of me.

The main botanical facility was nothing like my home laboratory. My private space had been designed around my preferences, and, eventually, around Lucca's presence. Here, everything was built for function. Long workstations stretched beneath suspended growth chambers. Atmospheric containment fields divided the room into sections with radically different temperatures and humidity levels. Specimens from across the district grew beneath calibrated lights while monitoring systems tracked every measurable change.

There were no humans. The prohibition was absolute in the development laboratories. Some of the compounds we handled were harmless to Aconchian physiology but dangerous to human respiratory systems. Other areas used atmospheric compositions a human body couldn't tolerate for more than a few minutes. Even a perfectly behaved pet would be a liability.

Lucca was not a perfectly behaved pet. The thought warmed me despite myself.

"O'li?"

I looked up.

Terosm stood across the workstation, waiting for my attention. Their skin had the gray-green tint common in the northern districts, and their horns grew almost straight back from their temples. Three displays hovered between us, each showing data from the frost-damaged growing towers.

"You disappeared for a moment," they observed.

"I was thinking."

"About the root samples?"

"Eventually."

Their mouth twitched.

"Your pet?"

I returned my attention to the specimen. "My pet is at daycare."

"I gathered that."

Terosm knew me too well.

The tissue beneath the magnifier had been taken from one of the southern agricultural towers after the most recent frost event. The external damage was obvious, ruptured cell walls and collapsed vascular channels, but the internal structure interested me more.

I adjusted the display.

"The weather modification team is lowering temperature too quickly," I said. "Not enough to damage established crops under normal conditions, but these hybrids are maintaining higher moisture concentration in the outer tissue."

Terosm leaned closer.

"The cells aren't adapting." I pulled up the overnight weather data and overlaid it against the plant's moisture cycle.

They made the low harmonic sound Aconchians produced when something pleased us intellectually.

"That could explain the entire southern failure."

My wrist pulsed again. Fast. Then faster. My fingers stopped. Terosm noticed.

"Still not an emergency?"

"No."

I knew the thresholds programmed into Lucca's collar. If his heart rate reached a genuinely dangerous level, or if his blood oxygen changed, or if the collar detected impact consistent with serious injury, the sensation at my wrist would become impossible to ignore and the facility interface would interrupt whatever I was doing.

This was simply distress. Daycare distress. Which was precisely why he needed daycare. I resumed typing. Terosm watched me for several seconds before returning to their own display.

"My Eli hates daycare too."