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he’d said, “all life forms accounted for.” I wondered if his confusing kindness was meant to tell me to sell the token to someone else for currency.
    I stumbled out of the Ministry of Colonies and Travel. Aliens pushed by me on their way to the Sunspa or to the market or to their place of work. They all had somewhere to be.
    I could not think of a single place to go next.

 
    4
    When you are lost, go back to the beginning. That’s what my father always told me when I was a little girl. I remembered his canvas coveralls, thick and stiff when he would come home from the factory. I would be confused about homework, or having trouble following my grandmother’s senile logic. He’d pull me up on his lap and tell me to go back to the beginning, and sure enough, a thread would be there for me to follow.
    I wished that he were alive now. If I had known then that his death would lead me here to this moment, I would have begged my mother to stay on Earth. If he were alive then maybe my mother wouldn’t have joined the Children of Earth, and we would be safe at home. I could have been happy on Earth. I could have been happy in the small garden my father and I tried to grow. I could have been happy looking at the stars and keeping them far away. I wanted my family back.
    Right now I would have settled for any Human, just to have someone familiar to ask for help from. But I was the only one of my kind. I wanted to stop and fall down every time I reminded myself that.
    Movement meant survival. So I kept moving.
    The station was big, but my feet moved quickly and covered a lot of ground, past the stores on the shopping quarter and the sleeping quarters and station operations. I went up and up and up in the elevators until I reached the docking bays. I didn’t stop until I reached Docking Bay 12. I must have stood there and stared at it for hours, thinking that the Prairie Rose would somehow return and retrieve me, even though that would never happen. I could only think magically now. Reality would crush me.
    Nothing happened. No ship docked. Not many aliens were around. For a docking bay, there was very little action. But that was the way that it was on the whole station.
    I went now to the anteroom and sat down with my stolen plant. I imagined entering the airlock and opening it and falling out of the station and into the darkness of space. Everything about my thoughts was ugly.
    But the plant in front of me was beautiful. And while my thoughts were numb, my eyes fixed on the yellow of the blooms.
    It kept me from doing something that could not be undone.
    *   *   *
    “How much do you want for the plant?”
    I opened my eyes to see a large insect-like alien. I remembered him from the day I was found.
    “It’s not for sale,” I said. My voice cracked. My throat was dry, and the air mask the med bay had issued me itched. It was losing its ability to filter air. I wish they had given me the nanites, but I could not afford them and they were not automatically given, especially to Humans. And even though I was thirsty and hungry and I hadn’t eaten in days. I knew that if I lost the plant, I would lose the war waging inside of me. The plant meant life.
    The alien made a noise.
    “Oh, you Human, don’t speak! You are trying to kill me with your sounds.”
    I wasn’t sure where his eyes were. I chose to focus on the two protuberances on the side of his head. That seemed to work. He pointed at the plant again.
    “How much?”
    “It’s not for sale,” I whispered in the Universal Galactic my dizzy brain could remember.
    The alien’s face changed. Perhaps he was smiling. Perhaps he was angry. I could not tell. He rearranged himself, and his tiny wings fluttered for a moment.
    “There, talk low like that and I won’t steal it from you. Instead, we can negotiate. My name is Heckleck.”
    “Tula Bane,” I croaked.
    “I’d like your plant,” Heckleck said.
    I looked at my plant, knowing that I should sell it. The