Role: Reclusive street doctor / cybernetics surgeon
The Babushka doesn’t speak — at least, not directly. Most interaction with her goes through Zhenya, a hologram assistant who appears as a small child and does the talking on her behalf; she’s her main interface to the outside world. She’s known across Prospero’s Dream for treating both paying clients and those who can’t pay, and for taking on patients — criminals, people avoiding official channels, anyone who needs work done quietly — that other doctors won’t touch. She does a lot of cybernetic upgrade work.
Marge trained under her and was treated by her after “the rat incident,” repaying the debt by working as a nurse in her clinic for a few years. During the Baobun Incident, Marge was back in her clinic — by sheer luck — at the exact moment the alien creature she’d swallowed tried to force its way out.
The Babushka (via Zhenya) has given Marge a job: recover a genetic sequencer, custom hardware of her own design, stolen by a former protege who fled to Siddhartha’s Peace.