by Sharon Lee
Another image formed behind his eyes—thunder heads boiling over the distant shoulders of mountains, lightning dancing between the clouds.
“On my way,” he whispered, and got his feet under him.
He approached the orange-lit board, and frowned. It had been locked all the way down to deep sleep, on the pilot’s own orders, the last time he’d seen it.
There were a number of ways to gimmick a piloting board, some more fatal than others. He wished he had a precise reading on how much Cantra had distrusted the Uncle. He sat himself down in the pilot’s chair, engaged the webbing and studied the situation.
The status lights showing stand-by were main engine, weapons, and navigation brain. The combination tickled a pattern at the back of his untidy mind. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize a blank screen, but instead of a clarification of the thought, he got thunder heads again, augmented this time with an evil, edgy wind that snapped mature branches like twigs—
“Not helpful,” he muttered. “If I don’t get this right, my guess is that neither of us will see a thunderstorm again.”
The wind died; the storm clouds dissipated. The internal screen went blank—no.
Another image was forming—lightning again, one single orange bolt, blazing into and merging with a second; the doubled force striking down into water.
“Not—” he began—and the image repeated, with an edge of impatience to it: One bolt, two, one, strike.
Jela blinked.
“She wouldn’t have . . .”
But she might have. A pilot’s first care was her ship, after all. And to what length might a pilot who dared not let her ship fall into the hands of someone who was a little too fond of sheriekas-made goods go?
His fingers, apparently placing more faith in tree-born intuition than his thinking mind, were already moving across the board, taking them off-line in deliberate order: nav-brain first; then the main engine; lastly, the guns.
Satisfyingly, the stand-bys went dark. Jela sighed—and jumped as the board came abruptly live. The internal lights came up; blowers started; and behind him the door to the tower slid shut.
Screens came on-line, showing him cannon in the docking area; and the comm opened, admitting a man’s breathless voice.
“Surrender yourself and the ship, and you will be well-treated. Attempt to lift and this habitat will defend itself.”
If a pair of quad cannons was the best they could field, leaving wasn’t going to be a problem.
He reached to the weapons board, pulled up the ranging screen, acquired the target—and stopped, finger on the firing stud.
“Dulsey,” he said, and saw a flicker of green at the back of his eyes. Hole the habitat, which Dancer’s guns were fully capable of doing, and there was a chance Dulsey wouldn’t live through the experience.
He thought of Cantra, dependent for her life on alien technology that was itself dependent on the well-being of the ship it traveled in.
“Surrender yourself!” The demand came again; a woman’s voice this time, sounding more angry than scared.
“Well,” Jela said to the tree. “I think we can take what they’ve got to dish out.”
Quickly, he put the weapons to rest, and slapped the shields up. He thought of the defenses his former ships had carried, and was briefly sorry. He thought of Cantra again—and engaged the engines.
Dancer leapt away from the dock. In the screens, the cannon flared, the shot so hopelessly bad that he reflexively checked the scans—and thereby discovered bad news.
The route outspace—and there was only one reasonable route outspace, as there had only been one reasonable route in—was crossed and re-crossed with what appeared to be ribbons of colored light.
Particle beams.
“This might be rough,” Jela told the tree, as he brought the shields up high. “We’ve got a field of charged beams to get to the other side of.”
A legitimate merchanter would have foundered, its shielding shredded by the beams before it had passed the halfway point.
Dancer, with her up-grade shields and her quick response to con, had a better chance of surviving than that legitimate merchanter, not quite as good a chance as a real military craft.
He brought the guns up, knowing he might be needing them as soon as he was clear of the defenses . . . and now they were ready.
The field wasn’t extensive; just enough to be nerve-wracking, and they lost a layer of shielding before they got through it, but through they came, guns at ready, and the pilot in the mood for a scrap.
He was unfortunately disappointed; there was no sheriekas-built battle cruiser—or even an armed corsair—awaiting them at the maze’s end. Only the dust and the emptiness of the Deeps.
“Now what?” he asked the tree, but no answering flash of images appeared behind his eyes.
Scans reported no beacons; even the chirping that had guided them in was silent. And he was no Cantra yos’Phelium, able to pilot blind and—
“Fool!” he snapped at himself, his fingers already calling up the nav-brain, hoping that for once in her life she’d followed a standard protocol and recorded the—
She had. Jela sat back in his chair with an absurd feeling of relief.
“All we have to do,” he told the tree, like it was going to be easy, “is follow our own path back out.”
He had never done such a bit of piloting himself, but he had talked to pilots who had.
And what else did a Generalist need besides knowing that something could be done, and a bit of luck?
TWENTY-EIGHT
Spiral Dance
The Little Empty
HE WATERED THE TREE, ate a high-cal bar and drank a carafe of hot, sweet tea.
He slept, webbed into the co-pilot’s chair, one ear cocked and one eye half-open.
He cleaned house, thinking unkind thoughts about the Uncle the while, and retrieved his belt and the captured disruptor from the lock, throwing the hand into the recycler, and swabbing the deck clean of blood.
He consulted the charts, and he consulted the tree.
He tried the comm.
He checked the first-aid kit. Several times.
He went over the charts again, ate a high-cal bar, and had another nap, during which he debated with himself—maybe—weighing ship’s safety against the necessity of reporting in.
When he woke, he compromised. He set course for Gimlins, and locked it, but did not initiate. Instead, he kept her shielded and quiet in the Shallows, pending the pilot’s accepting the route.
That done, he sent his query again.
No ack from his primary.
No ack from the back-up.
No ack from use-this-only-in-extreme-emergency.
Growling, he extended a hand to sweep the comm closed—and pulled up sharply as the incoming dial lit.
Hope rising, he watched the message flow onto the screen—
My very dear Pilot Cantra, and esteemed M. Jela—
Please accept my sincere apology for the inconvenience surrounding your departure from our humble habitat. I hope neither of you has taken lasting harm from the incident.
I do very much thank you for your assistance in identifying certain of my children who have become somewhat over exuberant in their pursuit of our common goal.
Dulsey asks that I send you her warmest personal regards, to which I will add my own hope that you will consider my family as your own.
Uncle
Jela closed his eyes, tasting dust in his mouth. Wearily, he sent the message into the pilot’s queue, then shut down the comm and went to check the first-aid kit.
The smooth black box sat as it had for the last four ship-days, lid down, doing whatever it did, however it did.
He had to take it on faith that the thing was working; that it would have given some notification, had Cantra died in the course of its treatment. Her injuries had been terrible, he had seen that for himself; he didn’t dwell on the question of whether they were survivable.
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He’d taken counsel of the tree, which was wary, but willing to wait. Himself, he was getting impatient, and had decided to give the thing two more ship-hours to finish up, or at least provide a status report, before he opened the lid himself.
Standing over the damned box, he admitted to himself that he might have made a mistake. What he could have done instead—that was the sticking point.
“Damn’ Ms,” he muttered. “Always know better.”
Except when they didn’t.
He was wasting time, hovering over the box. It would open in its own time, or he would open it in his. Meanwhile, there was this and that of ship minutiae to occupy himself with, and for a change he could worry about not being able to make contact. He turned and left the alcove, heading for the galley to make tea and maybe a real-meal.
He hadn’t reached the door when the chime sounded, and he spun ‘round so fast he almost tripped on his own feet. An image flashed inside his head—one of the youngling dragons tumbling wings over snout down a long mossy slope.
Grinning, he went back to the first-aid kit—not running. Not quite.
PERFECT, WHOLE, neither happy nor unhappy, she lay swathed in light.
Gently, the light parted, admitting a crystalline whisper, bearing choices. Perfect though she now was, there existed an opportunity. She might be made more perfect, exceeding the arbitrary limits set by her original design. Smarter, quicker, more accurate—these things were but minor adaptations. The ability to bend event to her will, to sculpt the forces of the mind—those might also be attained. If she wished.
The cusp was here and now: Remain perfect and perfectly limited, or embrace greatness and be more than she ever dreamed. How did she chose?
Bathed and supported by the light, she considered. And as she did, a breeze sprang up, bearing scents of living green, while across the light fell the shadow of a great wing.
Startled, she looked up—and the light faded, the voice withdrew. She heard a chime, and opened her eyes.
Lean cheeks, black eyes, mobile mouth—doing his best not to look worried, and making a rare hash of it. She made a note to herself to remember that look. For some reason, it seemed important.
“Cantra?” Letting the worry leak into the voice, too. Deeps, but the man was going to bits—that’s what came of talking to trees.
“Who else?” She looked up, saw the hatch above her leaking sickly green light, and took a breath, tasting ship air—and that quick memory came back on-line.
“You hurt?” she snapped.
Jela blinked and gave over a half-smile. “I’m hale, Pilot.”
“Good. The ship?”
“Ship’s in shape, and we’re well away,” he answered. The half-smile twisted a little. “There’s a note in queue from Uncle, apologizing for any inconvenience and thanking us for smoking out his insurgents.”
She snorted a laugh. “I’ll send him a bill,” she said, which pleasantry got a genuine grin from Jela and an easing of the muscles around his eyes.
“So.” she said, swinging her feet over the side of the pallet. “Got tea?”
TEA WAS HAD, and a bowl of spiced rice mixed up by her co-pilot, who insisted that he’d been on his way to make the same for himself when the chime sounded and that doubling was no problem.
So, she’d leaned against the wall, wearing a robe she carefully didn’t ask how he’d gotten out of her quarters, and sipped her tea, watching him work. She smiled when he handed her a bowl and followed him to the tower.
The bowls were empty now, and they sat sipping the last of the tea, companionably silent.
She rested her mug against her knee and waved her free hand at the board.
“I imagine you got a course set.”
Jela looked wry. “It’s my intention to raise Gimlins.”
“Never come up on my dance card,” she said. “What’s to want on Gimlins?”
“Maybe contact,” he answered, slowly, and looked at her straight. “I’ve been trying to report in, but I’m not getting any answers to my signals.” That bothered him—and it bothered her that he let her see it.
“It could be,” he said, but not like he believed it, “that we’re too far out.”
“It could be,” she agreed, seriously. “The Deeps do funny things to comm sometimes—even the Shallows can play tricks on you.” She finished her tea, slotted the cup and sat up straighter in her chair before meeting his eyes.
“We gotta talk.”
He gave her a nod, face smooth and agreeable, which return to normal behavior she observed with a pang. Might be she’d taken a bad knock on the head, back on the Uncle’s dock.
“First off—” She raised a hand and pointed at the tree, sitting quiet and green and for all the worlds like a plant in its pot. “What is that thing? And I don’t want to hear ‘tree.’”
Jela glanced over his shoulder at the tree in question, settled back into his chair and sipped tea.
Cantra sighed. “Well?”
He lifted a hand, showing empty palm.
“You said you didn’t want to hear ‘tree,’ Pilot. Since that’s what it is, I’m at a loss as to how to answer without violating my orders.”
“That coin would spend better,” she told him, “if I had any reason to believe you ever once in your life followed orders.”
He grinned. “I’ve followed my share of orders. It’s just that I have a bias against obeying the stupid ones.”
“Must’ve made you real popular with your commanders.”
“Some of them, yes; some of them, no,” he said, easily, and flicked his fingers over his shoulder.
“That, now—that’s a tree, and if it has a personal name, or a racial one, it hasn’t shared them with me.”
“A telepathic tree, is what I’m hearing,” Cantra said, just to have it down on the deck where they could both consider it at leisure.
“Why not?”
“It’s not exactly usual,” she pointed out. “Where’d you get it? If you don’t mind saying.”
He sent another over-the-shoulder glance at the subject of the conversation. When he looked back, his face was serious.
“I found it on a desert world; the only thing alive in a couple days’ walk. We’d seen some action and it was my misfortune to be shot down. By the time I found the tree, I was in pretty bad shape. It saved my life and I promised, if rescue came, that I’d take it with me.” He glanced down, maybe into his mug.
“Promised I’d get it to someplace safe.”
“Safe,” she repeated, thinking of Faldaiza, Taliofi, the Uncle, and of a dozen chancy ports between.
“It’s probable,” Jela said, “that ‘safe’ is a relative term. The tree was in danger of extinction when I found it. When things are that bad, someplace else is pretty much guaranteed to be better. Safer.” He looked down into his mug again, lifted it and finished off his tea.
“I’d hoped,” he said, slotting the empty, “to find a planet where it would have a chance of a good, long grow . . .”
“Which doesn’t,” Cantra said when he just sat there, eyes pointed at the empty mug, but clearly seeing something else, “address what it is. Or how it was able to tweak the Uncle’s hydroponics long-distance.”
He glanced over his shoulder, and then gave her an amused glance.
“I don’t know how—or what—the tree did,” he said, “but I’m not surprised it was able to act in its own defense—and in defense of its ship.”
Cantra closed her eyes. “Now its official crew, is it?”
“Why not?” Jela returned, damn him. And, no matter its vegetative state, the tree had acted to protect the ship, and made it stick when both pilot and co-pilot were cut off and helpless.
“All right,” she said, opening her eyes with a sigh. “It’s crew.” She stretched in her chair to look past Jela to the end of the board.
“Done proper,” she said to the tree. “The captain commends you.”
The top leaves moved, probably in
the breeze from the circulation system, but looking eerily like a casual salute.
In that breeze there was a sharp snap; a branch carrying two small pods fell to the deck, and bounced once.
Jela laughed, picked up the branch, and felt the pods relax, almost as if they ripened in his hand.
“Here,” he said, smiling. “The tree commends the captain and the crew!”
She looked them askance.
“What’ll I do with it? Plant it?”
His free hand fluttered pilot talk—Eat up, eat up.
She lifted an eyebrow, watching him carefully as he approached, teasing, as she read it, and leaned conspiratorially toward her.
“You’ve never tasted anything quite like this,” he suggested in a mock whisper.
“You sure it’s good?” she asked, not so much playing as seriously wanting to know.
The tree’s top branches waved slightly—she was really going to have to check those fans soon if they were creating that much disturbance.
“Edible? Yes! Good? Really good . . .”
He broke the pods into sections; she took them into her hand to avoid him hand-feeding her, which it looked like he might.
He challenged her then, holding a piece to his lips while watching her expectantly.
She looked to the fruit, caught a bouquet reminiscent of half-a-dozen high-end eats she could name.
Damn’ thing smelled good—
“Not very big, is it?” she asked, by way of buying time while she sorted past the inviting smell. She knew all about nice smells, now, didn’t she?
“You’ll like it,” Jela said, suddenly serious. “I promise.” He popped the piece into his mouth then, and, not to be outdone, or seen to be timid, so did she.
He was right. She liked it.
SHE’D EATEN THE pod, cleaned her fingers, and studiously did not give herself over to considering Jela’s person, though there was that urge. She noticed it on the two previous occasions she’d had to make use of the first-aid kit. It was like the unit brought everything right up to optimum . . .
“If it can be told,” Jela said, breaking her line of thought, “Where did you get those devices you gave the Uncle?”
She sighed. “Like I said, a couple ports back. A lucky find, since the Uncle has this interest in sheriekas artifacts.”
