own this building, many people feed their families because I provide them with jobs. I got there on my own. Nobody tells me what to do."
"Except Lienne."
Ven grinned. "Except her. She never lets me forget that I have family obligations. The other day she actually sent a pulse through the building looking for me. It's a kind of psycher wake-up call."
Yes, I know, it gave me a headache. Claire bit her tongue.
"Besides, I'd have to be married to Castilla." He grimaced.
Claire sipped her wine, feeling the pleasant heat slide down her throat. "Why aren't you married, Ven?"
He shrugged. "I work. A lot. Psychers aren't exactly a common kinsman variant and dating non-psychers is difficult." His face slid into a suave expression. "Hello there," he said in a smooth bedroom voice. "My name is Venturo Escana. I can read your mind!"
Claire laughed.
"I can tell when you're lying and I can discover all your secrets. I'll know when you fake it in bed, I'll know when you cheat, I'll know when you spend too much. I'll know what you really think about me. Don't you want to marry me?"
She finished off her glass and squinted at him from above the rim. "Would you read your wife's mind? You don't read our minds at work."
"Probably not," he said. "But there is always the possibility that I could and that's enough. Your turn to tell me about yourself."
"It's not that interesting," she said.
"I'm interested. I'm dying to know how you ended up on that planet."
She sighed. "Very well. Melko and Brodwyn are actually large mining conglomerates. Both of them owned mining fleets and they strip-mined asteroids for years. It takes a lot of skilled workers to run mining operations on that scale. Mining fleets always attract weird people, individuals who don't fit anywhere else, and the employees of both conglomerates had pretty varied histories.
"Then Brodwyn scouts discovered Uley, which is basically a mineral treasure trove covered with a thin layer of rock. The scouts came back but somehow Melko found out about the find. The official Brodwyn version is that one of the scouts was captured and Melko tortured the information out of her, but official versions are usually untrustworthy. The Melko fleet was more mobile at the time, so they wrapped up their operation and landed on Uley, on the Eastern Continent. It took Brodwyn almost three years to untangle themselves from their trade agreements and then they landed on the Western Continent."
"And the arms race began," Ven said.
She nodded. "The resources were severely limited so both Melko and Brodwyn adopted no-waste policies and encouraged population growth to build their armies. There was only one city on each continent and they looked exactly the same: picture a hive of uniform rectangular buildings about a half-kilometer tall. The buildings were so large, each one was like a village run by a Building Association. You would be born, live, work, and die in the same building sometimes."
"It sounds bleak."
"It was. On most worlds when a war breaks out, both sides have access to prior culture, to art, to pre-war luxuries such as gardens, clothes, entertainment. We didn't. Most clothes were standard issue and un-dyed. We had one solid meal a day, usually a meat block and some sort of grain, the rest of the time we had nutrient paste." Claire hesitated, not sure how much to share. "When I was fourteen, I was taken away from my mother."
"What do you mean, taken away?" He refilled her glass and emptied the rest of the wine into his.
"It was decided that I should become a part of the military support staff, so some soldiers came and took me away from my mother. I was given new rooms in a Military building and I had to live there. My father had died years ago, and my mother was sick with Meteor Shower Virus. A lot of mining people get it - it looks like black burn marks on your skin. Nobody knows why it flares up, but the outbreaks will spark and die out on their own. MSV is incurable. It attacks the nervous system and it's a very slow killer. The victim becomes weaker and weaker, until they lose the ability to walk and then fade into death. All you can do is make the person comfortable."
She took a swallow of her wine.
"Normally a child of my age would be working and would be expected to take care of their parent, but I wasn't allowed to do