by Sharon Lee
“Theo, if you are…becoming…an adjunct of Bechimo and Joyita…”
Theo shook her head. “Joyita’s an individual. Bechimo and I are bonded…” She smiled slightly, recalling the bonding ceremony. Not much of a ceremony, not with Kara and Clarence being held hostage off-ship, and Win Ton not completely convinced of the necessity.
Necessity is what had driven her; even then, there had been that moment of hesitation, of fear, that the bonding would diminish her—exactly what Kara was worried about. The fear passed quickly, followed by an upsurging joy as the…connections were made and space opened around her.
“I wish I could let you feel what it’s like,” she said to Kara’s worried eyes. “Really, Kara, I feel better—more alive—than I’ve ever felt. The extra data, the collaboration with Bechimo—these are all good things. And anyway…”
She hesitated, but Kara had asked—specifically asked a question—and it wasn’t in Kara’s nature to let a question go until she had an answer.
“As to unbonding,” she said slowly. “I don’t know all of the exact processes, though I could—should—ask Bechimo. My sense, though, is that…breaking the bond is…not an option.”
That didn’t make Kara happy, at all.
“You can feel ship systems working, you said…”
“Right. That’s part of the bonding. I’m…integrated into the ship systems, at least as an observer.”
“So you cannot—ever—have privacy?”
“I can have privacy. We have privacy, right now. Bechimo has removed his attention from us. He is not actively listening or watching. And—” She stopped abruptly, struck by a certain lack.
“And?” Kara prompted.
“And,” Theo said slowly, “right now, I can’t call to mind more than a dozen words in the pathfinders’ language.”
* * * * *
The device had been modified, Stost saw, and reasonably so. It had clearly been intended that the one acted upon should lie within, and thus it had been constructed to accommodate one of Clarence’s approximate size, or perhaps…somewhat larger.
Stost, however, was several somewhats larger. Even bent in half…
But it was no matter. Clarence showed him the cot placed next to the device—a cot extended to its full length, which would fit Stost so long as he arranged himself carefully—and the extension wires jacked into the device.
He understood that he was to lie down on the cot, allow Clarence to fit the helmet over his head, and to engage the device. Stost would hear a tone, which was the warning that the device was about to place him into a trance state, whereupon it would directly act upon certain sections of his brain and embed new information.
The entire mechanism was terrifying, and for a moment, Stost thought fondly of the repair bug.
“Is fine?” Clarence asked.
Stost made a rocking motion with one hand, palm turned toward the floor.
“Maybe not fine,” he answered. “Pathfinders have training. Maybe I resist your device. Maybe I not learn.” He did not add, Maybe I die. Truly, he had proved difficult to kill, but he would not like to anger the captain by destroying valuable shipboard equipment, however inadvertently.
Clarence looked grave.
“From the captain: harming pathfinders is not fine,” he said and moved his hand toward the cot. “Down—we will be sure you are fine. Safe.”
Safe. Stost considered Clarence, but it did not seem that the other intended insult. It was meant as a reassurance then, a promise that no harm would be allowed to come to Stost, by order of the captain. Which elevated it, and the situation entire, to the level of farce. The little captain held her hand above the soldiers, defying the universe on their behalf. And it was his part to allow himself to be protected, to be calmed by the promise of safety. To lie down, as directed, and to allow the helmet to be placed upon his head.
As predicted, there came a tone, whereupon the helmet was removed.
Stost blinked up at Clarence.
“Good waking, Stost. Do you understand me?”
The words were…perfectly understandable while at the same instant they were entirely foreign.
Stost rose up on an elbow.
“What language…?” he began—and clamped his jaw shut when he heard the same foreign words issue from his lips.
Clarence grinned.
“Trade,” he said. “The learner ran a diagnostic; you were found able, so I dialed in a quick tutorial. You have four hundred words. Ready to learn to read?”
Four hundred words. Four hundred new, never before spoken or heard words. Stost concentrated, but the protections Command had seen embedded in him were intact. The new knowledge was not obtrusive; it was simply there.
“How long?” he asked Clarence.
“To learn Trade? About an hour, ship-time, for the first layer. Reading will take longer, for less gain, at first.” Clarence glanced at a dial on the side of the device. “Two hours to learn. Somebody will be here when you wake up and will take you back to quarters.” He held up his hand, fingers bent against his palm. He extended the first finger.
“Learn.”
Second finger.
“Wake.”
Third.
“Eat.”
Four.
“Practice. Clear?”
No, thought Stost, but he supposed he would discover clarity on the other side of learning.
He lay back down.
“I am ready,” he said.
* * * * *
“That,” said Win Ton slowly, “is a difficult question.”
“I feared that it might be so,” Bechimo said.
“And yet, it is a question which must, in honor, be asked—and answered. Allow me to compliment you, on the nicety of your timing.”
“We cannot, so Theo tells me, hide forever.” Bechimo said.
Win Ton bowed his head. “As always, Theo thrusts to the heart. Indeed, we cannot hide forever. Nor may I.”
Bechimo waited.
Win Ton smiled, slightly. “So! You ask after my loyalty. Insofar as I am a Scout and by definition a misfit within my society, my loyalty lies…” He sighed and turned his hands palm up. “My loyalty lies with Theo, with this ship, and with this crew. I might have flown into the boughs and declared that I have no loyalties, save to myself, which would be fine, indeed. Only I have lately perceived that I require guidance of a higher order.”
“This is welcome news,” Bechimo said.
“Well you might say so; however, you have not heard the whole of it. For one does not, you know, merely have loyalty. One also has duty.”
A glance at the screens. Rubble tumbled and flowed against a smear of muddy space.
“I am a Scout,” Win Ton said, keeping his eyes on the screens. “When I was struck unto death, my comrades kept me alive. When it was discovered that healing my wounds was beyond them, they took the extraordinary step of bringing me to the Uncle himself, known to deal in areas and items abhorrent to Scouts, to find if he could heal me.
“He returned me to you, and I have therefore been healed. Had this not been so, we would not now be engaged upon this difficult discussion.”
“They made you a bargain, your comrades?” asked Bechimo.
“In fact, they did propose a bargain. I am certain that you have deduced its outlines, but allow me to state it completely, for your records and for the captain’s information.
“The price of my life, quite reasonably, is what they are pleased to style the Old Tech ship. Deliver that ship—by which I of course mean you—into their hands, and I will have paid my debt and will be returned to the lists of active Scouts, with no mar upon my record.”
He sighed again and closed his eyes against the endless tumble of rock.
“My duty, then, is to deliver you to the Scouts.”
“Your loyalty stands at odds with your duty,” Bechimo said. “One must yield. As someone who holds you in regard, I would suggest that it is duty which must give way.”
“I concur in this case, especially as I do not…quite…believe that I will see a return to active work, even if my name is reentered into the lists.
“The difficulty, of course, is that I may not be allowed to choose.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Bechimo
“Are you well, my Stost?”
Chernak rose from behind the desk. Debriefing long completed, Joyita had asked her assistance with his growing dictionary. She had accepted the work with alacrity. Better—far better!—to be usefully employed, than to sit in a chair, reviewing her past actions and trying to pinpoint her errors.
The door closed behind him. He seemed…rested, though there was a slightly mad look in his eye, as if he had witnessed great wonders or vast stupidity.
“I am well, Senior. Have we rations?”
“More food was brought while you were away,” Chernak said. “I stored it in the coldbox.” She did not say that the delivery had been made by a small ’bot. They would discuss this detail soon enough and what it might mean. Stost was the priority at this moment.
“Sit,” she said instead. “Rest, and I will—”
“Senior, I am rested, only hungry.”
“Eat, then,” she said, waving toward the coldbox. “I will join you.”
* * *
“Tell me, then,” she said aloud, for this would be a reasonable—if not urgent—topic of conversation. “Have you language?”
“I do,” Stost answered. “Clarence tells me that I have four hundred words of the Trade language. This is a beginning. After it has settled, then another session, during which more words will be added. Also, the base has been laid for reading. This is a more difficult proposition, according to Clarence. I am to practice, after I have eaten.”
“Joyita promises an infopacket and auxiliary list.”
“Yes,” said Stost.
“How many sessions, until you are fluent and literate?”
“Elder, I don’t know. Practice is key.” He smiled faintly. “So I have been told, repeatedly.”
“Eat, then,” she said, and Stost bent his full attention to the meal.
Chernak, long satisfied, sipped juice and watched him eat with interest. Stost was not so notable a trencherman as some of their comrades, but then, field rations were known for nutritional value, rather than flavorfulness. The food aboard Bechimo tasted good and Chernak had, herself, been moved to have a morsel or two beyond hunger’s defeat.
Finally, he was through, picking up his juice with a sigh, and gave Chernak a faint smile.
“They will want you, after our next sleep shift. It would have been now, but I asked for a trial period, to be certain that my new knowledge does no harm during use or while I am at rest.”
“Well done. When you open your books, I will sit with you and you will tell me what you have read. We will amuse ourselves with breaks where you will point and say in the Trade tongue.”
“Yes,” said Stost, and stood. “Let us begin.”
* * * * *
“A little nervous of the learner at first, which was reasonable.”
Clarence was finishing up his report on Stost’s session in the sleep learner. All hands were present on the bridge, including Hevelin, though not including the tree, despite the norbear’s petition on its behalf.
“He did say, Captain, that he’d had specialized training, or maybe conditioning, that might make it hard-to-impossible to learn. I’ll say that learning seems to have taken, but we agreed to a settling-in period for him before we teach Chernak.”
“Reasonable precaution,” said Theo.
“The annotated file has been accessed, Captain,” Joyita said. “Stost is reading and summarizing for Chernak, who is sitting with him at the screen.”
Theo grinned.
“Proactive,” she said. “I like that. Anything else, Clarence?”
“That’s the whole of it,” he said. “Assuming all’s well with Stost through their sleep shift, we’ll get Chernak into the way of higher education after breakfast.”
“Good. Thank you.”
She paused, nodded, and held up a hand.
“Next order of business. We all know that we’re at this location temporarily. We want to give the pathfinders time to do their research and make an informed decision about their next move. We need to do research, too, as a ship, so that we can make an informed decision about our next move.”
She looked around; everybody was listening. Clarence, report given, had taken up monitoring the screens. She could tell he was listening by the angle of his head. Win Ton and Kara were watching her—and Hevelin, too, from his perch on Kara’s knee.
“Eventually, we’ll be going to Surebleak. Master Trader yos’Galan canceled the rest of our route research and directed us there, for our own safety. It’s not an unreasonable request. Laughing Cat does have some small amount of trade goods, but we’re not remotely able to set up a route of our own. Also, we have the ship and tree that apparently belong to Clan Korval, now based on Surebleak. All that said…”
She paused; her crew was calmly attentive. Her interface with Bechimo was also calm. They had, of course, discussed this, but she still half expected him to suddenly come up with a better—by which he would mean safer—alternative.
So far, so good, then.
“We want to do this in an orderly fashion. Surebleak is undergoing cultural turmoil, and it’s certainly being monitored by the Department of the Interior. We don’t want to expose ourselves unnecessarily to risk or danger. We know that we have enemies—”
Part of her cringed. Properly brought up Delgadans didn’t have enemies. Oh, they might have professional rivals, but not enemies. Still…
“Enemies,” she repeated firmly. “We want to avoid any additional confrontations like Ynsolt’i or Jemiatha’s Jumble Stop. That means we need to gather information. We need to know what’s being said about us in the news services; we need to find if anyone’s filed anything against this ship or crew. We need to ascertain the state and situation at Surebleak, and the state and situation of Clan Korval.”
“None of which is available to us here,” Win Ton murmured, waving a hand at the screens.
“You’re right,” Theo said. “We’re going to need civilization before we can get answers to our questions. But what we can do here is compile a list of ports we might raise quietly, do our research, and make plans. Bechimo has compiled a list of the twenty-four most accessible Jump-to ports from this location. We’ll each go through the list and rank the ports, most likely to least. Weight should be given to Jump points—how many and how accessible—local trade routes, military situation. As a general precaution, we’re going to suppose that locations where we’re less likely to encounter Liaden ships to be more desirable options for us.
“Once everybody’s been through the list and made their rankings, we’ll discuss the top six and make three choices, ranked most desirable to least. When the time comes for us to leave, we’ll Jump for the first port on the list.”
She looked around.
“Questions?”
No one spoke.
Theo nodded.
“One more piece of business. Each one of us will be given two coordinate sets to memorize. Each set represents a safe or quiet location, such as this one, which Bechimo has utilized within the last fifty Standards.”
Again she looked ’round at their faces. Clarence was seemingly absorbed by the rock garden in his screens; Win Ton was calm; Kara frowning slightly, but not, Theo thought, in puzzlement.
“Questions?” she asked again.
Kara raised her hand.
“I have no questions,” she said. “However, Hevelin wishes the captain to know that he has an urgency in the matter of making the acquaintance of Grakow, Stost, and Chernak.”
She looked wry.
“That is the sequence I am given, Grakow first, Stost, Chernak. He reiterates urgency and is becoming quite a nuisance on the topic. Captain.”
&nbs
p; “Is he?”
Theo gave the norbear a stern stare. He stared back, unblinking.
“Indeed. He invokes his ambassadorial privilege. It is his duty, one is to understand, to greet Grakow personally, and also Grakow’s attendants.”
Clarence’s laugh was a sharp crack of sound. Win Ton was keeping his mouth straight with some difficulty. Even Kara seemed slightly more amused than exasperated.
“Well, then,” Theo said, rising. “I guess I’ve got my orders. Joyita, would you please ask the pathfinders if now would be a convenient time for Grakow to receive the norbear ambassador?”
* * * * *
The “norbear ambassador” may have wished to make the acquaintance of Grakow, but Grakow was not of a similarly gregarious frame of mind. After a quick search of their quarters, Stost found the cat curled comfortably atop a pillow in the second sleeping room, snoring.
Stost spoke to him, but the cat did not wake. Mindful of the wounds he had lately gained from this warrior, Stost did not attempt to pick him up, though he might, he said to Chernak, transport the entire equipage, if it became needful.
“Let him sleep until this ambassador arrives and gives his orders,” he said. “At least we will know where he is.”
Chernak raised the soft fist in agreement and looked toward the screen.
“Joyita, what language does the ambassador norbear speak?”
He looked up from his study of something, perhaps on the desktop, which was below screen level.
“Pathfinder, the ambassador has his own form of communication. Captain Waitley will translate, if necessary. I note that it has not often been necessary. Ambassador Hevelin is adept at making himself understood.”
A notable statement, being both informative and opaque at once. They had been fortunate beyond their ability to understand, when Grakow came under their care. Chernak would not have supposed a cat to be so interesting to persons of rank, but—it was true she knew nothing of cats, Grakow being the only such creature she had spent any amount of time with.
“Pathfinders,” Joyita said, “Ambassador Hevelin and Captain Waitley arrive.”
The chime sounded and Stost crossed the room to open the door.
