Von Squidgie was very far and removed in their life and lineage from direct personal danger. Their mother and their mother’s mother and their mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother going back for hundreds of generations had not dealt with even the direct threat to life and limb that Miss Aleph and Miss Omega had dealt with on their home creche of Terra.

If confronted with the roar and teeth of a lion, they would have no appropriate instinctual response. It was simply too abstract a concept for Von Squidgie. They understood that Miss Aleph would not understand this lack and be equally confused by the keening terror that bubbled within them now.

For Clerks did understand other kinds of danger deep in their brains. Threat and precarious risky propositions suffused their lives after all. Squidgie’s Mother was, after all, a refugee from the catastrophic and life destroying disaster that was the dissolving of an entire economy that had taken over fifty generations to build.

All lost in a single spurious bubble.

She had grown to consciousness after that event but the elder clerks in their cans told stories of it. And she imagined just such a yawning precipice of doom all around her now.

This was like riding the terrible rocketing mountain of an economic bubble while every indicator said it was about to all come apart at the seams.

“Can I get you anything Ship Mistress Pylo?”

An incorrect misstep here could ruin everything they had spent their entire life trying to build.

Could bring ruin and horror down upon their most precious of people.

Von Squidgie was a bundle of terrified nerves which desperately tried to hold onto that concept only in the context of how overwhelmingly powerful and beautiful and rich Mistress Pylo was.

The Siren was obviously showing signs of rampant exhaustion. The motion under acceleration was not something she was suited for. It was actually somewhat painful to watch them slump and drag themselves in roiling tumbles across Tunie. Each of those impacts costing many dozens of times the calories Squidgie could use in even the most demanding of shifts.

Ship Mistress Pylo’s cellular and structural repair processes were to put it bluntly overkill in the extreme. And the waste heat of those processes added to those of the motor actions themselves. She had studied Siren anatomy and health treatises in preparation for this.

Pylo’s compiler was partially activated in order to perform what in most other living things was wholly autonomous and hard coded repair and maintenance routines. She spontaneously regenerated the same method for every microfracture and blunt trauma.

If these had been deadly omni-pathogens, Direct info-warfare gene shredding signals or even if they had been injuries of incredible lethality and force that would have rendered Von Squidgie a smear of burst cellular membranes? Pylo would have been performing comparable computation and recovered just as quickly.

But it was barely notable bruising that could have safely accumulated for shifts without impacting her at all.

But every single time she rested she ramped up her full self repair scheme and applied it to everything whether it was mundane or catastrophic.

How long had this been going on?!

“I’m fine Clerk... I just need another rest. Some more grist and then a good venting and I’ll be as good as new.”

Any living being besides a Siren or a God that was going through this kind of routine self refactoring would have collapsed into a cancerous heap of mutated tumors in a terran century.

Even accounting for time dilation and different cultural drift rates Von Squidgie was almost certain that the last updated entry to crew and care of a Tabelarium Minorum was at least ten times that age in local time. Predating redweed by a massive margin in exterior reckoning.

Maybe less given the math. It was hard to infer drift in culture and language with so much spottily recorded.

The exact date stamps were not something that was readily translatable.

“Perhaps I can scout ahead in your route Ship Mistress? Go down a few of the ancillary capillaries and meet back up with you while you convalesce?”

Pylo brushed over Squidgies neural tissue with a great deal more intensity then she had before then huffed softly.

“You’re Alephs’ little gofer right? What did she send you out here for? Is there a problem with the Terrans?”

Squidgie was alarmed, the Siren started venting heat explosively and brute forcing the recovery process, which was actually making the whole thing liable to take longer!

Squidgie jumped on the opportunity that she saw.

“She sent me to help, she’s worried that you are always so tired all the time so I asked the Custodian-”

There was a harsher lashing across the neural tissue of their communicative ganglia. Something with a hint of menace and violence. It felt like a rival undercutting out one’s economic base.

“I’m FINE I don’t NEED anyone else poking or prodding at Tunie with their greedy little mitts! Especially not some profiteering little leech like you or your Custodian!”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Squidgie backtracked mentally, there was no physical recoil. They were positioned just as readily in reach of one of the Siren’s limbs as before despite the bared teeth and snarling. With Sirens the directly physical confrontation was the absolute least dangerous thing about them.

And it was still considerably dangerous.

“Apologies Ship Mistress, it was never in doubt that you needed it, Just the Terrans are different Ship Mistress, they could toil like you have for significantly longer than you. Your regular and healthy maintenance and recovery stops would be indicative of serious health complications or major psychological trauma in one of their species. It is just a misunder-”

Oh dear.

The word had not even finished forming in Von Squidgie’s brain and already the vehemence from the Siren had turned bitter and Squidgie could feel an entirely different kind of lashing. This one self-flagellating.

Selling off stocks and ruining one’s own investments out of guilt.

“I am sorry, that is also not the right turn of phrase but it is all my fault. I am no Siren translator I am paraphrasing others' wishes imperfectly”

That did not help with the Siren’s mood as she started guzzling down grist and venting hot white clouds of steam.

“But they worry about you when they see this because of who and what they are Ship Mistress. Aleph does not doubt you or your competence, she just wishes to help. To give back for all you’ve done for her. Terrans are very similar to clerks and stalwart in that regard at least.”

That seemed to help but Squidgie was getting worn out from trying to edge around all of the Ship Mistress’ insecurities and tender spots. Nevermind that Squidgie had to practice rigorous self censoring and censoring of the censoring and plausible self thinking of reasons to cover up the censoring of the censoring. All to keep the wrong idea from getting lapped up by the siren’s constant resonance trawls.

“Please for the sake of my... of Miss Aleph is there something I can do for you to ease the burden? Just so there is something I could say to her that shows I’ve helped you somehow?”

Pylo seemed to be calm, or at least was no longer overtly expressing distress. With sirens it was not really possible to tell the difference if one was actively trying to deceive you.

But the Ship Mistress’ family of Courtesan was not one to practice subterfuge of that kind. They lived by their politics and honest dealings and the honor there of. If Pylo was of Clan Liason or even Clan Butcher though?

Von Squidgie Shuddered.

It would be a very different thing if Pylo was any other kind of Siren.

The records on Siren families on the ship were sparse and some as old as the ones on proper Ship Crew manifests and responsibilities.

But in many ways the clerk already knew everything you needed to know about them. It was obvious when you were given the context to look for it, and a pinch of basic ecology.

After all the great Siren clans defined the very meaning of their names in the languages of the reef.

Carving out categories in every thinking being’s lex to fit their families ideals. Shaping civilization and the words that governed it with markers of their existence.

Courtesan.

The dealmakers, politicians, diplomats and representatives, seductresses and wives, the power behind thrones, said to have chained even gods in palace cages in their dealings.

Liaison.

Master cryptographers, spies, communications officers, the keystones of a thousand empires, rumored to be the social glue of every warship and interstellar intelligence network.

Butcher.

Open cannibals, self mutilators, huntresses, farmers, warriors and assassins. The conquering horde and most prominent claimers of the terrible legend of siren Maeth'gild.

Escort.

Supreme mercenaries. Seductresses, companions, bodyguards and teachers. Selling themselves in every sense of the word possible. Ralliers of revolutions and enactors of absolute tyranny, whichever bids higher.

Surrogate.

The uplifters, unifiers, therapists, restorers, healers and martyrs. The ones who would bear whole worlds as their children and give of their very flesh and life to sustain others.

[https://i.imgur.com/qMBgwiQ.png]

And dozens more littered through every language like crystal clear monuments of meaning.

If she was any other clan of Siren Squidgie would be worried.

But Pylo was of Courtesan, by Von Squidgies reading she was also a very close line to the matriarch of the whole clan.

One could expect a degree of the ideals of said clan to have been groomed deep in the Siren.

Which is why Von Squidgie trusted the honesty if not necessarily the motive of everything the Ship Mistress deigned to express.

She was raised by politicians after all.