NaNoWriMo, Day 19: 1,510 / 41,280.

Hey! Got past 40,000 words.

“Nur!” I said the next day. “Tell me about deathheart. I want to hear about the weird stuff.”

“What am I, a circus animal?” Nur shook his head at me. “I don’t just make up stuff, you know. I hear things. People send me things to read. I have methods.”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize you couldn’t do it.”

“Nice try, Pam, but your reverse psychology won’t work on me.” Nur grinned. “Regular psychology does, though. What do you want to know about deathheart that The Process couldn’t tell you?”

“For starters? Just how it could get here from off-planet.”

“Smuggle it on one of the Earth agency ships,” Nur said immediately.

I looked at him. “That was fast.”

“That’s because that’s the standard answer, Pam. Corp- and colony-registry ships are checked when they leave a planet, checked when they arrived, checked while they’re there, and then they get checked again. But a Terran ship — from, say, S/CI, or the Lunar Authority, or, hey, the Adjudication Council! — nobody inspects their holds. You think the crews don’t know that? Hah! They totally know. And they don’t miss a chance to make some money off of that, too.” Nur paused. “Needless to say, I have no personal knowledge of any of those things.”