- Prologue

by Sharon Lee

  She sipped her tea, which was cold; sipped again and put the empty cup on the table.

  "Thank you," she said, because she felt she had to acknowledge his last statement. She took a breath. "How do you have your key with you, if you were captured?"

  He sighed. "It is Old Tech, and it is imprinted on me. It returned itself to me as it was able." He used his chin to point at it, there on the table between them. "There, take it up."

  She picked it up, feeling a sense of relaxation, of welcome—and something more. Her key warmed agreeably between her breasts, and she heard a buzz, as if the captain's key was . . . acknowledging the copilot's.

  "I feel it," she murmured, hardly aware that she spoke aloud.

  "No difficulty?" Win Ton asked. "No headache?"

  She shook her head, and put his key back on the table, not really wanting to. Her fingers moved gently—all fine better good.

  He sighed, quite loudly. "May I hold yours?"

  Reluctantly she drew the necklace, and handed to him.

  He held it in his fist a moment, then returned it across his open palm, face gone Liaden bland.

  "What's wrong?" she asked, holding the chain in her hand.

  "Yes, Pilot, that is the question. The answer is like the birds you mentioned, Theo, the gooselets. That key, it has imprinted on you. I did not think—but there, that is given, is it not?" He moved his head, maybe he meant to shake it. "You not only hold the captain's key, Theo, but the key has also been imprinted. Bechimo accepts you as her captain."

  Thirty-Eight

  Conference Room Able

  Pilots Guildhall

  Volmer

  "Theo?"

  The chain was bright, the odd-shaped pendant familiar and comforting. In fact, so comforting that she was inclined to accept Win Ton's tale of Old Tech imprinting; the key almost radiated comfort . . . which was enough to set her teeth on edge when she thought about it. Theo glanced between her chain and his, seeing not much visible to set them apart. What would happen, she wondered, if they switched keys or got them mixed up by accident?

  Win Ton's voice was more insistent this time, a little stronger. That was better—he almost sounded like his old self for a moment.

  "Theo?"

  She looked up into his face across the scarred table, feeling the smile trying to twitch at the corners of her mouth despite the annoyance that informed her shoulders.

  "What am I supposed to do, Win Ton? You're not looking up to sitting a board and I—I don't know where this ship is, I haven't the first clue where to find it. You knew where it was, and now you don't; now you know who the pilot is but not where she can board it! What a pair of First and Second we'd make for Bechimo, eh? A pilot who wouldn't recognize her ship and a Second—well, if I'm the captain, what am I supposed to do with you?"

  "Theo, I am a Scout. A Scout on duty . . ."

  "How can you be on duty, Win Ton? Look at you!"

  That hit him like a blow; if he'd been feeling stronger she was afraid she'd taken it all back from him with an ill-timed word.

  He bowed one of his consequential bows, and spoke with eyes down, voice low.

  "Pilot, I doubt anyone is more aware than I of my state."

  "Then surely you know you need more than a pilot for a missing ship!"

  "Theo, I am here to meet with a . . ." He hesitated, the pause stretching; and Theo couldn't tell if it was his vocabulary or his attention that was failing him. He raised his hands, fingers stuttering through something she couldn't catch. He drew a hard breath and lowered his hands, pressing palms flat.

  "My team is here to meet with a person of special knowledge, one of those fringe type who exist, but who are rarely mentioned in reports or acknowledged in public. This one fell heir to a title belonging to one who aided in the building of Bechimo. An owner—this we think not. Yet there are features on the Bechimo . . . that this one has particular knowledge of. Features which speak to my thriving again, Theo. Which speak to my survival."

  Dread flooded her and she dared to lean toward him, reaching toward his hands pressed against the table.

  "Survival?"

  "My captors insisted on my assistance, Theo. They assumed they could compel it quickly enough that I would be in their thrall when they recovered the ship."

  "I don't understand, Win Ton."

  He nodded a firm Terran yes. "No, you do not. May I have some tea, please? It is well chosen."

  "Thank you."

  She poured again for them both, hands flippantly presenting continue at will as soon as they had each sipped from their fresh cup.

  Win Ton allowed his mouth to curl into the veriest ghost of a smile.

  "This is not easy for any of us. The crew that travels with me does so to keep me alive insofar as they may, because of the problems I have caused, and the solution only I may effect. If I die, well then, Bechimo would be free in the galaxy with no guidance at all from a Scout, and with the danger that it may take some other group of people—these not attempting a forced entry—into dislike and eliminate them. Only my key, and yours, stand between this ghost ship becoming released to do whatever bidding it gives to itself."

  "My key—" she began.

  He shook his head. "Your key—is not widely known. It is in fact, underreported."

  "I still am missing pieces of this . . . why can you not be cured? Why am I so bound up in this?"

  "The melant'i of the situation is complex. We have sat at the same board, and because of my overstep, we sit at a new and strange board in absentia. Worse, and more complex, is the mix of the Old Tech in this, which inspires Headquarters to lend energy to a scheme depending on the trustworthiness of scoundrels and the very technology the Scouts wish to dispense with entirely."

  The tea was having a bracing effect; his voice was clearer now.

  "After my report reached a dishonest agent within Headquarters and was noted, waves happened. While the actual administrator was attempting to route me to a safe place to be questioned, this group, this Department, captured me and inflicted torture in the hope that I could, and would, give them Bechimo. They used Old Technology and new in service of their goal, but I was truly ignorant. Alas, the Old Tech they wished to embrace did as Old Tech so often does; it moved to its own whim, or to a design so grand it is beyond us all.

  "In the course of this . . . questioning, I was injected, on purpose, with a slow-growing set of nanobugs. They—the rogues—had a controller, and could make me sicker, and better, or so they thought, and they used them to change functions, and even to hide and replace certain DNA, they claimed."

  Theo kept the tone even, and only succeeded in making herself tenser as she heard her own words. "They were wrong? If you're sick to being in danger of your life . . ."

  "The Old Tech, Theo, it—interacts with other devices of its kind, and not always at direction. The key—our keys—they are aware of our presence, or even our distance; in some fashion I do not understand. They interact with each other and they draw on the power and ability of other Old Tech. How else would the key forcibly taken from me keep returning to my cell? And when it returned the final time, why, the hand of the man who sought to reclaim it was burned as if he grabbed a live torch, while the necklace was cool and comforting to me."

  "Is the key keeping you alive?"

  "I do not know that. Neither do the techs, nor the Scouts who specialize in the study of Old Tech. But the ship on which I was captive—it orbited a world that held Old Tech in abundance, and my keepers told me they would unleash these devices they had collected to destroy Liad. They promised—as if it were a chernubia!—to allow me to help. All I need do was give them Bechimo and my future would be returned to me.

  They would fix me, cure me, make me whole. And that ship that these rogues held me upon, it suffered when I suffered; the Old Tech systems were changed while I was there. It would whisper to me, in Terran sometimes, or else dementia from the nanobugs did, but it mentioned names and repeated words."
/>   "Words?"

  " 'There are secrets in all families,' it said to me, and whenever it did, there was a change. The first time it told me was when the food robot brought me dinner with my key buried in the food. The next time was just before the air-leak alarms went off. I am not certain of the next time—but they left that planet when a ship without call signs kept appearing at the limits of scans, appearing and then moving elsewhere. I suspect it was Bechimo. But I was kept well away from any comm devices or viewers.

  "We grounded at Caratunk, for emergency repairs. The ship let me out, Theo, the ship and the food robot conspired and let me out."

  He paused there, watching her. Not trusting her voice, Theo let her fingers reply: continue information I copy.

  She could see his eyes follow her hands, but it was as if he needed to translate what she said, instead of just absorbing it, and when he looked into her face before going on she knew that it was so.

  His words came, slowly.

  "I ran, as well as I could. The observatory staff hid me and eventually Scouts came, and they failed to believe my story. They thought me an agent or an enemy, and then they took me for debriefing to Nev'lorn, the reserve headquarters, under guard. The agents of the Department came there, and my key whispered to me, and we had fighting . . ."

  "Then Ride the Luck arrived, and turned the battle," Theo suggested, remembering Casey Vitale's excitement.

  Win Ton sighed.

  "Perhaps it did; for my part, I was involved in the fighting on station. I robbed the dead of their weapons. There were injured and wounded all around. I defended a hallway leading to the administrators who were holding me as prisoner, because the attackers were this same Department that had tortured me.

  "Of course, the important news to the universe was that the Caylon's ship broke the back of the enemy, and that there is a missing yos'Phelium returned to Korval." There was real annoyance in his voice; he gave a half laugh, and a shrug.

  "Far more important to me was the understanding that the catastrophic healing units were first for the casualties of the battle. Understand, Theo, that meant for the people they knew might benefit. But these things I've been infected with—the ordinary units, even the catastrophe units, they are not adequate."

  "The healing units don't work?" Theo barely heard her own whisper.

  "They stall matters for a while, it seems. Every time a fresh series begins, there's something new, as if the bugs learn the unit's cure, and so have restructured themselves. The techs therefore have held me free of autodocs and the like, afraid the bugs might learn all that the unit might do."

  "And this place—Volmer. There's someone here with a cure?"

  Win Ton sighed. "Not, I think, a cure. A lead, a chance. Headquarters cannot afford to have me take up healing space that is needed for others, and they do not want the Department to control Bechimo. They want no one to control Bechimo. And thus they mean to find it, and kill it—which they consider me too ill or too stupid to have deduced. So we come here; which intercepted your course—a bonus for me."

  Theo touched her necklace, the familiar weight of it calming, soothing—active.

  "Do they expect me to hand this over to them, then?"

  Win Ton looked startled.

  "Who? The crew with me? As I said, it is . . . not well known that there is a second key. Those who travel with me are doing a favor for a comrade who may not have much time left, by allowing me to meet with you for whatever we might bring to such a meeting. Call it a casting of Balances, and celebration of my life."

  Theo reached for his hand then, barely covering his right hand with the strange scarring. His skin felt cool to her, even cold.

  "And you, do you expect this to be our last meeting?"

  That sounded hollow to her, but she didn't want to say . . .

  "Do I expect to die? Yes—we all do, and pilots often earlier than others, it seems. I am not . . . advocating my death now, and I have an account I would prefer to Balance."

  "Then this meeting delays you? You must get to your contact, Win Ton, because I'm not advocating your death, either. I'd rather settle accounts, if we have them, in proper time, than rattle off some unthoughtful words just to . . ." She stopped.

  "Just to settle a dying man's mind?" Oddly, he smiled. "Sweet Mystery, yes, this heartens me. We will come into Balance, I have no doubt. And I cannot meet with this person, until they announce their presence to us—my crew is waiting for news now."

  Barely were these words spoken when a knock came at the door, and a respectful two heartbeats after, one of the Scouts stepped in, with a Guild staffer.

  Theo thought they'd overstayed their time, and rose to leave.

  "Forgive us, Pilots. There is a message, the Guild holds a message, for Pilot Waitley."

  The staffer showed the memory pad he held, and spoke with animation.

  "Pilot, I can't believe this—someone has sent you a message marked urgent, but it's not pinbeamed and it isn't properly addressed! It goes by relay to the whole route of your ship, I gather. But you are here, I knew, and rather than send it on to the ship, or wait until I saw you again, I thought to gain what speed I could by bringing it now, here."

  He handed the pad to Theo.

  "Wipe and return before you leave, or if you must, take it and we'll deduct it from your credits."

  Theo received the pad, staring at it like she'd never seen one before. A route-following message for her? But—if it was so important it couldn't be sent to her mail drop, why not a pinbeam?

  The Scout and the staffer left. Win Ton was making a painful motion with his hand, and this time she could read the signs: privacy query.

  She shook her head, tucked the pad against her side so she could sign—a moment only—and touched hand to key plate.

  URGENT for Pilot THEO WAITLEY Hugglelans Lines from KAMELE WAITLEY.

  She sat, heavily, waiting for the rest of the message to resolve. From across the table, she heard heavy breathing.

  The message was short and wrenching, with the unsaid as unsettling as the said.

  Daughter Theo, I am sending this to Hugglelans and to your Guild, and apologize if multiple messages reach you, or if the cost seems exorbitant. I act as your mother in this, and not as an accountant.

  Jen Sar has disappeared in midsemester, without notice to me or to the Administration, on his off day before mid-tests. The only clue I can gather is of a small and dilapidated spaceship long unflown, departing Delgado the same day, from an airfield within easy drive, flown by one of his description. His car, keys on seat, fishing gear in place, sat in an assigned spot there. The spaceship, so station informs me, is not in Delgado space.

  Within a day of his departure, I discovered that the house on Leafydale Place, all possessions, and especially the cats, are gifts to me. I continue the tea run, with fading hopes. I felt that you must be told, and can only hope your connections with your father are not as fully disrupted as my own.

  Kamele

  Theo banged the pad on the table as if the message might be shaken into something other, and then grabbed it up again and reread it, the sense of it the same, the whole of it senseless. Father wouldn't just leave!

  "Theo?"

  Win Ton was standing quite near; she'd been so concentrated on Kamele's letter that she hadn't heard him move. He was doing his best not to look at the memo screen, so much so that she struggled against a laugh and lost to a resulting snarfing giggle.

  "Theo, is there . . . a problem?"

  He stood with a steadying hand on table, and she managed to strangle the giggle into words.

  "Win Ton, my father's gone."

  His mottled face showed a change from intent interest to blandness back to some emotion she couldn't name, as if his illness betrayed his training.

  Hand still braced against the table, he bowed a special bow, indicating respect for the elders, and said something in Liaden which she understood part of, and something else in Liaden, which got by her ear
entirely. Within a heartbeat, he bowed again, murmuring in Terran, what must have been the translation: "May you have all joy in the memory of your loved one."

  "No," she burst out. "He's not dead! He's gone. Missing! Run away from his classes in a beat-up spaceship and—his classes!"

  Win Ton went through another set of changes, relief perhaps coming into his shoulders, while his eyebrows drew painfully together.

  "And has he never before—"

  "No, not ever not ever!"

  Theo realized that she'd banged the memo pad onto the table again.

  "Sorry," she said, very low, and then took it to Liaden, with proper gravity, "Forgive me if I offend in this moment of uncertainty."

  "No offense," he murmured, inclining his head.

  Theo closed her eyes momentarily. Inner calm, she told herself, deliberately relaxing tight muscles. She opened her eyes. Win Ton was still standing, braced against the table, his arm trembling with strain.

  "Please," she said, alarmed, "sit. This—this is not your problem. I'm not sure it's my problem, except—"

  Win Ton stood away from the table carefully, a soothing hand barely touching hers before he moved back to his chair.

  "Your father, this is the Jen Sar Kiladi you spoke of?"

  Theo nodded, staring again at the screen and Kamele's last, accusatory sentence. I felt that you must be told, and can only hope your connections with your father are not as fully disrupted as my own.

  "Kamele thinks I must have known," she said. "He had a spaceship on world, and he never mentioned it."

  Win Ton's hands now soothed her from a distance, his fingers moved, maybe trying to form words. After a moment, he folded them together on the table.

  She looked down at the pad again, trying to think clearly. What could she do, after all? Go to Delgado and stare at a car full of fishing poles? Witness an empty spot in a ship park she'd never known of?

  "I repeat, Sweet Mystery." The irony in his hoarse voice penetrated and brought her eyes to Win Ton's face.

  "By all understanding your father is Liaden, whether he properly wears a clan name out of history, or not. It is obvious that his clan has called him home. The delm has the right to demand, and the clan member has the duty to return."