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    â€œWhere’s your sister?” he asked. Ginger and her sister, Honey, were near-constant companions, the one exception being Ginger’s periodic forays into the core of the Hooke in search of Maxwell. It wasn’t that Honey disliked Maxwell (or so he hoped). They had a cool, professional relationship. They knew—and were respected by—a lot of the same people. In brief, Maxwell believed that Honey considered them to be colleagues , which seemed a desirable state of affairs. The exceptions, naturally, involved the moments when Maxwell worried whether Honey might feel some personal animosity, which their creator, Nita Bharad, claimed was impossible.
    Whenever he had voiced his concern, Nita had simply stated, “I like you, so they like you. That’s the way it is.”
    â€œBut, Nita,” Maxwell frequently replied. “One of them likes me a lot more than the other. What about that?”
    â€œSometimes I like you more than at other times,” Nita explained. “It’s complicated. Emotions are complicated. They’re complicated for us with all this squishy gray stuff up here . . .” At this juncture, Nita would usually point to her skull with two fingers (which Maxwell always found curiously endearing). “Imagine how it is for them!”
    â€œBecause they’re spiders?”
    â€œThey’re arachnoforms,” Nita said matter-of-factly. “Not spiders. And, no, imagine what it’s like for them being so smart.”
    â€œSmarter than we are?” Maxwell always asked, at which point Nita would always shrug and finish her drink.
    â€œThey won’t tell me,” she would say. “I keep asking, but they’re being coy.”
    â€œDo you need something, Ginger?” Maxwell asked, tapping his thumb against the electronic lock. She swayed in the breeze. She chittered, a mild gurgling kind of sound that, fortunately, never produced moisture. Streams of drool would be more than Maxwell could handle, though he believed Ginger too polite to drool.
    She continued to spin above his head. Usually, if Ginger spent this much time near him, it meant one of two things: she was worried about him or she thought Bharad needed something. Maxwell asked, “Does Nita need help with something?”
    Chelicerae clicked.
    â€œAh,” Maxwell said. “Well, I have to go meet some people in ops. Can I go see Nita after I take care of the visitors?”
    Ginger exhaled sharply. Annoyance . The tips of her long hind legs touched the thread from which she dangled and contracted three times in rapid succession, pulling her back up into the shadows under the stairway. There was a vent cover there, Maxwell knew, that Ginger must have pried away and stuck to the wall with her silk. The sounds of the core covered most of her movement, but Maxwell was able to just barely detect the clink and clatter of the arachnoform squeezing into the vent and replacing the cover. He briefly considered turning around, going back down the stairs, and returning to the storeroom/bolt-hole he had set up as his private lair. It was secure against every manner of intrusion—Ginger, O’Brien, Finch, everyone. He looked back down the stairs and considered his options. Why not?
    His wrist communicator chirped and Maxwell tapped it. “Go ahead,” he said.
    â€œHey, Ben. This is Uchiha on deck four. You know, toward the back?”
    â€œSure,” Maxwell said. Uchiha worked with complex decahydric polymers—something to do with either construction material or long-term food storage. “Hi, Ken.” Maxwell always tried to address everyone by his or her first name. “What’s up?”
    â€œUh, something with the toilet.” Uchiha sounded embarrassed. “I think someone tried to flush something down it that maybe they shouldn’t have. Could you come take a look? When you have a second?”
    â€œOf course,” Maxwell