Alliance of Equals

by Sharon Lee

  Please allow me to presume your forbearance and to thank you for that courtesy, as I convey, once again, TerraTrade’s profoundest dismay at the inconvenience and the further delay in this matter.

  Shan closed his eyes, and counted backward by threes from twelve dozen, which, truth told, did very little to cool his irritation. There was some humor to be found, he supposed, in the report of the commissioners’ horrified discovery of their own error, but…not very much humor.

  Pat Rin—Boss Conrad as he was known to Greater Surebleak, the Boss of Bosses…Pat Rin was not going to be pleased.

  Delm Korval, so he suspected, was going to be…even less pleased.

  He paused with his fingers over the keyboard, weighing the relative melant’is of those concerned persons. Then, nodding to himself, he directed the note to the comm tower, with instructions to pinbeam it to Pat Rin yos’Phelium, who, after all, was Boss of the world of Surebleak, and therefore the port. The Boss would then have the joyous task of informing the delm, who was not Boss of the World, despite enjoying an intense interest in ports in general, and the port serving Korval’s homeworld, in particular.

  That bit of business taken care of, Shan looked again to his mail queue.

  Letter of Interest was the subject of the communication at the top of his screen, from Aldergate Enterprises.

  Well, well. Letters of interest had been rather thin on the ground since Korval’s abrupt relocation to Surebleak. He had, naturally, put announcements in all the trade publications—even in Taggerth’s Trade News, which would do better to call itself Taggerths Rumor and Gossip—which effort had thus far reaped two letters of interest, both ineligible in the extreme.

  “Third time,” Shan said, quoting his mother, “is charmed.”

  He reached to the keyboard and opened his letter.

  —•—

  “Are you acquainted with Mentor Yo?” Tocohl asked.

  The three of them were gathered round the galley table, the two human members with tea mugs before them.

  Tolly shook his head.

  “It’s not like we have conventions,” he said, “given that what we do is on the grey side. We trade info and names when we do meet each other, but I been out of the loop for a while. Yo might be a rising star, for all o’me. Talked sensible, and knew protocols. Had a real good idea exactly how much of a juggling act it’s likely to be, slipping the contents of thirteen into one. Understood that we’re dealing with a ghost install, and knew how that bears on the likelihood of success.”

  He moved a shoulder and sipped from his mug.

  “Don’t like to tap any of my usual contacts, given there’s two dead directors in my immediate flight path,” he said. “No sense spreading trouble around.”

  “I understand,” Tocohl said. “I will query my contacts, if that would be helpful, Mentor Tolly.”

  “It would be,” he said, “helpful. Thanks.”

  “No trouble,” Tocohl said, assigning part of her attention to the search.

  Hazenthull stirred, then stilled, looking down into her tea.

  “Question, Haz?” Tolly asked her.

  She looked up, frowning.

  “I am ignorant of your work,” she said slowly. “But I wonder, given yourself and Pilot Tocohl, is there a need for Mentor Yo’s assistance?”

  Tolly raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Tocohl therefore answered.

  “I am not a trained mentor; at the most I would stand as Tolly’s assistant,” she said. “It might be that I would have some particular advantage in the juggling act of moving the Admiral into a more secure environment. It is also possible that I may serve as a…role model, as I will be the first of our kind the Admiral will have met.”

  She decided not to mention the Admiral’s contact with Jeeves, which was not, she thought in her own defense, meeting. Nor could it be said that Admiral Bunter had met Bechimo, his creator—or, possibly, co-creator.

  “I might lead by example,” she continued, and saw Tolly nod.

  “Just as a rule of thumb, it’s better to have trained help on hand in a tricky operation,” he said. “If Yo’s any good, is willing to be my second, and follow directions…I can’t see but what that increases the chances of the Admiral surviving.”

  Hazenthull nodded, and said, “Mentor Yo knew you…your reputation.”

  Tolly half-laughed.

  “Yeah, well; I’ve got some notoriety attached to me,” he said and it appeared he would say no more, which was a poor use, Tocohl thought, of Hazenthull’s curiosity.

  “He is modest,” she said, turning her faceplate toward the big woman and allowing a smile to be seen. “His work with Elzin Vok alone must have gained him a place in such textbooks as aspiring mentors receive.”

  “Elzin Vok?” Hazenthull repeated.

  “One of my most notable failures,” Tolly said, shaking his head.

  “I am mistaken,” Tocohl said, when it seemed that, again, he would speak no further. “He is not modest, but deceitful.”

  “The patient died,” Tolly said. “That’s not a success.”

  Tocohl considered him. In fact, he did not appear proud, nor even humorous. Could it be that he truly considered the extraction of Elzin Vok a failure?

  She returned her attention to Hazenthull, who was watching him with care.

  “Elzin Vok was an old intelligence who had been discovered by the Scouts,” she said, carefully keeping her voice neutral. “The world was quite deserted, except for the habitat which Elzin Vok inhabited, and it had been badly damaged. Elzin Vok claimed to have been the central administrative comp for the world, whose population had fled the savage storms that swept across the planet surface for three local years out of every five. By the time it was discovered by the Scouts, most of the metropolis which Elzin Vok claimed to have existed had been destroyed. There were signs of an effort to erect a subterranean city, but…” she paused, uncertain of the telling…

  “But the underground city,” Tolly took up the story, “which Elzin had ordered built, in order to protect his people, was destroyed in a massive earthquake. Everyone who had shifted underground—about two-thirds of the surface population—were killed. Those remaining on the surface also died—if not in the quake, then in the storms that came after.”

  Tolly drank off what was left in his mug and looked bleakly at Hazenthull.

  “Elzin showed me all this; the Scouts took copies of his files and histories, and the weather charts. Elzin himself…Scouts aren’t real happy with AIs, and an AI like Elzin, which had a tiny taint of Old Tech about him—they’d’ve just left him, maybe, and let nature finish off what it’d begun, but one of ’em came ’round to the notion that Elzin might still know…valuable things; things that hadn’t been archived; answers to questions they hadn’t thought to ask him, and so—she contacted me.

  “The idea was to move him to a better environment, so the Scouts could take him along with them, back to headquarters, where the gods alone knew what they intended to with him.”

  He shrugged.

  “Understand, Elzin was more than a little off-course by the time the Scouts found him. He’d convinced himself there was another city, on the other side of the world, and he created an entity out of part of himself, to be administrator of that other city—Cestina, he called it. Elzin and the Cestina administrator had long conversations. The Cestina administrator transmitted maps, food production stats, population growth. The plan was that, as soon as the Cestina population hit ninety percent of dome capacity, they’d move thirty percent of the population to Elzin’s new, weatherproof dome.”

  Tolly stopped and closed his eyes.

  “There was,” Hazenthull suggested, her big voice soft, “no dome.”

  “Give him credit, Haz; it wasn’t for lack of him trying,” Tolly said, eyes still closed. “The Scouts figured he’d built a dozen before he ran out of material, every freestorm season. And once the storms came up again, down they’d go. Elzin had pictures—he showed ’e
m to me—of that brand-new dome, not a scratch on it, sitting right out on the plain. The same plain I could see from the window, where there was…nothing.”

  Silence again. Tocohl felt a slight internal twitch, which meant there was new information in-queue.

  “You moved this person,” Hazenthull asked, “this Elzin? As the Scouts asked?”

  “We talked it over, him and me. He wasn’t sure he should leave his people; there wasn’t anything I could do or say that would shake loose the idea that he had people. In the end, though, I was able to show him the advantages of moving into a modern habitat.”

  “The move killed him?”

  “No—well, yes. I guess you could say that, Haz—that the move killed him. The new habitat, see, didn’t have any of those filters and simulations he’d built for himself over all those years, so when he looked out, with his brand-new sensors, over his city—and he saw what I saw—a jungle of girders and blasted habitats half-buried in dust…

  “If he’d been human, I’d’ve said it broke his heart.

  “As it was, he just…stopped. I ran diagnostics—the habitat functioned, the files were uncorrupted, there was room enough and more…

  “But Elzin was gone, and the Scouts didn’t get their AI to interrogate. I imagine they had to explain the expenditure to somebody, too, but that wasn’t my problem. I got paid.”

  “I have seen,” Tocohl said, “the tapes of the extraction process, Mentor. The Scouts themselves said they doubted anyone else could have brought Elzin safely into the new architecture, save yourself. The move did not kill him. If we must, let us say that his filters failed.”

  There was a small silence before Tolly’s mouth twisted and he looked up at her.

  “All right, Pilot, let’s say that.”

  “Very good,” she said briskly. “I have information. One moment.”

  She brought the files forward and scanned them: one encoded in Jeeve’s familiar, and comforting, protocols; the other flat and cold, mere facts garnered from those archives available to her which were not filtered through Jeeves.

  “Inkirani Yo,” she said to the two expectant humans in the galley, “is a journeyman mentor, with two births and one transfer to her own name.”

  She paused, and added.

  “One of the births was contracted by Crystal Energy Consultants.”

  Tolly betrayed no distress; his pulse remained calm; his breathing relaxed. Hazenthull seemed confused, but not in any way upset.

  “Crystal Energy’s owned by a man called Uncle, Haz,” Tolly said, apparently noticing her confusion. “Uncle’s been around for a long time. In fact, it just seems to work out, for those of us who’ve tried to do the math, that he came over from the old universe.”

  Hazenthull frowned. “Uncle is…as Pilot Tocohl?”

  “No; he’s human. Best guess—again, from those of us who’re more curious than’s sensible—is that he’s serial. What you’d call a clone.”

  He stretched and gave the big woman a grin, apparently enjoying her expression of careful neutrality.

  “He’s just a neighbor, Haz. You don’t bother him; he doesn’t bother you. Unless he has what he considers to be a good reason.”

  He looked back to Tocohl.

  “We all wind up working for the Uncle or somebody close, once or twice. It’s what comes of living on the grey side. What else has Mentor Yo done?”

  Tocohl hesitated, as if she were consulting the document again, relieved at his phrasing. He was interested in field experience only. That was well.

  “Mentor Yo also has a long list of assists from names known to me—and to you, also, I believe, Mentor.”

  She swayed slightly on her lifters, a half-bow in recognition of a venerable name in the field, indeed.

  “Mentor Yo assisted in a deactivation, serving as second to Fron Kellinit.”

  Tolly stirred at that.

  “She’s good, Mentor Kellinit,” he said softly. “Worked with her, myself.”

  “Yes,” Tocohl said, and closed the file. She angled her face toward Tolly, allowing serious eyes to be seen.

  “I believe that having Mentor Yo on hand to lend her skill might be prudent. There can, I think, be no doubt of her discretion, given her choice of career.”

  Tolly rubbed his nose. Nodded.

  “Agreed. I’ll just call Ahab-Esais and give the mentor the good news, then, shall I?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Vivulonj Prosperu

  “Daav.”

  The voice was…almost…familiar. He paused with his hand over a board that glittered with darkness, and looked toward the comm. A single blue light glowed there, jewel bright amid the shadows.

  “Daav.” The voice came again, clearer this time; firm and assured.

  “Daav, it is Aelliana. We are separate once more, and appear to be in good order. I believe our situation is for the moment stable, and relatively benign. There are no active enemies within the scans. Your hurts have been healed, and you may take your chair at will.”

  His chair? But surely he was in his chair; the board ready, and he about to…about to…

  The blue comm light flashed; the dire board beneath his hand flared as if in answer, dials, gauges and touchpads—all and each of them brilliantly blue. Light came up in the chamber about him, and he heard the shushing sound of a door unsealing.

  He spun the chair, and, indeed, a door stood open directly across, a lighted hallway beyond, and blue guidelights flashing along the floor, giving him his direction.

  Back he spun, to lock the board—aux board and war bridge, it must be, he thought, and whatever danger had threatened the ship now passed. Situation stable and benign, his pilot had said, and he was wanted in the copilot’s chair.

  But the aux board when he addressed it was found to be locked down, and in proper state, though he had not—but no matter, he thought, suddenly aware of the pounding of his heart. No matter. His pilot had called, and he was wanted at his post.

  Up he came onto eager feet, following the guidelights out into the hall and up, moving into a smooth run as eagerness overtook him, the air cool and tasting of mint.

  The hall curved, and there he found another door, blue light blazing above it. He extended his hand, paused just short of the plate.

  “Daav, it is Aelliana.” Her voice came from the speaker beside the door, and he smiled, to hear her. “Wake do, and let me see you…”

  He pressed palm to plate.

  The door snapped back…and he opened his eyes.

  —•—

  “It pains me to say so, Pilot, but today’s run indicates that your reaction times have slowed…considerably, since your last testing.”

  First Mate Danae Tiazan was another cousin, younger than Dil Nem by a dozen years or more. She was…not the sternest of those master pilots who had the tutoring of Padi as part of a rotating schedule.

  Padi sat with her hands folded on the edge of the simulation board, her eyes on the blank screens. She offered no argument, no protest; she did not state that of course the calibration subsystem required an overhaul…

  In fact, she had known that she had been slow. She had been, not to put too fine a point on it, only slightly more useful to her ship than a stuffed bunny. At least a stuffed bunny would have been amusing.

  “What is interesting, and the circumstance which allowed you to finish your run with the parameters expected of a second class, provisional,” Danae continued, “is that your understanding of the board’s geography appears to have made a leap. There were many less false starts; far fewer instances of an error corrected in mid-move.”

  So, she knew the board better, but her speed was falling off. Danae might find that interesting, but Padi could not see that this circumstance ultimately helped her case. If she was to be a pilot of Korval—if she was to remain a pilot of Korval, for she had a provisional second class license in her pocket—she must recapture her proper speed.

  “Do reactions simply…slow?”
she asked, not quite daring to meet Danae’s eyes.

  “It has been known. Illness or injury are the most common causes of a loss in speed. In your own case, Pilot, I would suggest a far simpler cause. I believe that you are bored.”

  Padi blinked, and turned the chair slightly to look into her tutor’s face.

  Let it be known that Danae Tiazan’s sense of humor…was not broad. Nor was she much inclined to joke at the board, as was, say, Nys Charls, another of her tutors. Certainly, it did not seem that Danae was joking at the moment. If anything, her face was even sterner than usual, as if she had discovered a lamentable, and irreparable, flaw in Padi’s character.

  She also seemed to be waiting. Padi hoped she was waiting to hear the only question it occurred to her to ask.

  “Bored, Pilot?” she murmured.

  “Bored, Pilot,” Danae answered, with emphasis.

  Padi took a careful breath, recalling today’s run at the simulator.

  “Forgive me, Pilot, but today’s run was…exacting.” She had, in fact, been required to dance an avoidance in orbit, only to find high winds and sleet awaiting her when she hit atmosphere. An advanced run, suitable for one who aspired to first class, even as she lacked nearly a dozen hours yet to make her second class ticket firm.

  “Indeed, it was exacting,” Danae agreed, her eyes on Padi’s face. “But it was not real. The traveling rock, the weather, the course change from Tower—all fiction. Your back brain knows this, even as your front brain was engaging with the problems.”

  Possibly Padi looked stricken. Danae held up a hand.

  “You will please understand that I do not consider today’s session in any way a failure. This improved understanding of board-space is notable, and important to your future success as a pilot. However, as I look back at your training records, I see that the last time you had live flight was Palamar, is that correct?”