by Paul Chafe
Tskombe's eyebrows went up. That's the first time Curvy has expressed anything remotely sentimental. It shouldn't have been surprising. Dolphins were highly social and he could only imagine the sacrifice involved in leaving the oceans to work with a species which was, to them, as alien as the kzinti were to humans. “Listen, we're on borrowed time here. The UN here is treating you well based on your clearance. Once the left hand figures out what the right hand is doing, that will end.”
“No, you have been on borrowed time. My position is different. If you will forgive any implied discourtesy, you are easily replaceable in the UN hierarchy. I am not.”
“Granted, but you're the one who got me off-world. Ravalla's group is going to see you as the enemy now. It doesn't matter how hard you are to replace if you aren't working for them.”
Curvy clicked something and the translator said “Untranslatable,” then “I will see to it that they see me as a friend, and more importantly, as an asset.”
“You've already deserted from the UN, if not all the way to Wunderland. How are you going to explain that?”
“I will blame Commander Khalsa. Humans are too willing to see dolphins as their tools. Their prejudices will be satisfied, and they will be disposed to believe an answer which seems to serve their purposes.”
“And Khalsa's reputation will be ruined.”
“Irrelevant. His reputation is of no further use to him.”
“His family won't get his pension if they process him with a dishonorable release from the service.”
“The Commander had no pensionable relatives. Those he has might suffer a worse fate if my freedom of action is constrained.”
“What if that doesn't work?”
“It has already worked. A UNSN fleet is enroute here. I have been asked to serve as Fleet Strategist.”
“That's not good news.”
“Secretary Ravalla is wasting no time. I have some information which indicates UN and Wunderland forces are already operating together against the kzinti. You are running in front of the storm.”
Tskombe nodded. “I can't run until the ship is ready to boost. Then…” He spread his hands. They talked some more and played a last round of poker. Tskombe felt a twinge of regret. He had come to like the dolphin, and he realized now that their paths might not cross again. But I must do what I must do, for her purposes and my own.
Much later he went up to Trina's small room and knocked on the door. He could hear her sobbing inside. He called her name and got no answer. He stood there awhile, uncertain as to the right course of action. Finally he left. Let her get it out, and then she'll feel better.
He slept fitfully and spent the next day packing, using Curvy's UN credit to get the few essentials he'd need for the journey. Trina slept through breakfast and was silent and distant at lunch, but at dinner she had cheered up, chattering happily about some friends she'd met out on the pedmall. She raced through her food and gave him a hug on the way out.
“I'll see you later, check?”
“Check.” Her smile was radiant. It was the right thing to get her off Earth.
He napped after dinner, set his alarm and woke before it went off. Trina was still out, a disappointment, but maybe it was better that way. One final tube ride, once more not diverted to the ARM. And now I don't have to worry about that anymore. Bay seventeen was small and well used, but it looked functional. That was more than could be said for Black Saber. He looked with some concern at the ship he'd hired. She had perhaps four times the volume of Valiant, and was easily four times older. She was night-black, with her registration in bright yellow on her nose, in both Arabic numerals and the dots and commas of Kzinscript. Umbilicals snaked from her belly: power, data, and more that he couldn't identify. Two heavy hoses were crusted with frost and steaming gently; liquid hydrogen for the attitude jets and liquid oxygen for the life support, he guessed. A smaller hose, heavily shielded and also frosted, was probably for tritium deuteride. The freighter's hull was covered in discolored patches, marking places where laser gouges in the ablative armor had been repaired. The landing skids were worn and still caked with the mud of some distant world. The lasers in her turrets were too big for a ship of her class, her sensor suite seemed patched together from spare parts, and her hyperdrive had been cannibalized from some other vessel, if the change in the hull plating at that section was any indicator. The ship's polarizer nacelles, also cannibalized, bulged out of proportion to her size. She would be fast at least, if she could hold together.
He went up to the bay's observation deck for Trina, but she wasn't there. He'd hoped she'd appear before he had to boost, but it looked like she wasn't going to be. Not entirely unexpected. The girl didn't want to be abandoned again, so she was abandoning him first. I hope at least she has the sense to go back to Curvy. Night Pilot came down the ramp, two meters of mottled tabby now wearing a tight fitting stretchfab pressurization suit with a fighter pilot's helmet carried easily under one arm. Tskombe didn't have a pressurization suit, and looking from Night Pilot to his battered ship, he wondered if he should have bought one.
“Welcome aboard, Quacy-Tskombe.” Night Pilot beckoned him up the passenger ramp. Behind him the ground crew began removing umbilicals. Despite her larger size, Black Saber's passenger space wasn't much bigger than Valiant's. Most of her internal space was given over to cargo. Night Pilot showed Tskombe his cabin, small but adequate for his purposes, and surprisingly clean in view of the generally run-down appearance of the rest of the ship. The kzin ran through a detailed list of procedures to be followed in emergencies ranging from gravity failure to cabin depressurization. Such briefings were standard on any commercial transport, and Black Saber's were not materially different from any of dozens Tskombe had heard before, but Night Pilot delivered the information with such intensity that Tskombe found himself paying close attention. Under the circumstances it was simple prudence. There might be a test later, graded pass/fail, and the penalty for failure would be death. He'd broken the rules on Valiant and it had nearly killed him.
After the briefing Night Pilot took him up to the cockpit. There was a creature there, like a five-armed octopus with joints, if you didn't look too close. Each arm had an eye where the limb met the featureless central body, and it sat on a crash couch shaped like a mushroom with five indentations. Two of the limbs were acting as legs to hold it on the couch, the other three as arms to run the controls as it set up the ship.
“This is Contradictory, my partner and copilot.” Night Pilot sat in his crash couch and started strapping himself in. The Jotok wasn't wearing a pressurization suit, and Tskombe felt a little relieved at that. It, at least, didn't expect the rattletrap freighter to lose atmosphere as soon as they hit vacuum.
The Jotok bobbed on its supporting limbs and swiveled three eyes at Tskombe. “We are being Contradictory and we are being pleased to meet you.” Its voice had an odd whistle to it, like a parrot who'd been trained to speak. The arms facing the instrument panel, and presumably the two eyes attached to them, kept running through the preflight procedure. Tskombe bowed to the alien in return. It calls itself a we. Jotok were composite entities, he knew. Each limb began as a free-swimming larva, and it sought out and joined with four others before they all grew to adulthood as a group.
Night Pilot pulled his helmet on and snarled something that Tskombe didn't quite catch, then listened for a reply. He raised the helmet visor and snarled at Contradictory, “We are cleared for our launch window.”
Contradictory tapped controls and snarled back, “Prelaunch checklist is being complete in two minutes.”
Tskombe raised an eyebrow. The Hero's Tongue was the language of Black Saber's bridge, but its pilots used human measurements. Alpha Centauri system was a crossroads.
Night Pilot's tail lashed slowly as he set up his own displays. Once satisfied he looked back over his shoulder. “Quacy-Tskombe, we will be departing in approximately ten minutes. You should strap in to your crash couch now.”
<
br /> So there would be no opportunity to watch the undocking. It was reasonable, given the situation; he was just a passenger here, but since his experience in the Swiftwing he'd grown fond of being on the bridge. No more breaking the rules. He went back into his stateroom and strapped in. No sign of Trina, and now it was too late. He hoped she'd be okay.
For half an hour he lay in his crash couch, staring at the ceiling and not thinking of anything in particular. There were occasional gentle surges as Black Saber maneuvered out of the docking bay and into exo-system transfer orbit. Eventually Contradictory came on the in-com and told him he could unstrap.
There was still nothing to do but lie there. Eventually he unbelted himself and went up to the ship's navigation blister to watch the stars. The Milky Way was spread like cream across the center of his field of view and he spent awhile contemplating the millions of civilizations it had seen live and die since its formation. Who could contemplate such an immensity of time and space? No human mind was large enough. Perhaps the Outsiders could. At least they lived on a timescale long enough to follow the starseeds on their eons-long migrations from the galactic core to the rim and back again. And how long do Outsiders live? And how did they and the starseeds evolve in deep space? What else is waiting for us out there? He switched off the gravity and let himself float. For thousands of years mankind had dreamed of the stars, and even with the colonization of space and the commercialization of interstellar travel he remained one of a tiny privileged fraction of humanity who would ever see the stars from outside of an atmosphere.
After a while he switched the gravity back on, got out his beltcomp, and called up the newsfeeds while they were still close enough for Black Saber's outcom to talk to Tiamat without speed of light lag becoming a problem. The news wasn't good. Muro Ravalla had publicly signed a defense-of-human-space pact with Wunderland, an obvious first step toward an attack on the Patriarchy. The shipping news announced the departure of no less than one hundred and eighty Earth ships for Wunderland, four entire battle groups. Occasionally he looked up at the stars and smiled despite his concerns. Curvy knew that was coming, and the fleet left well before the announcement. It would be hard enough to find Ayla on Kzinhome without a war going on around him. And I don't know how I'm going to get back to human space when I do. Night Pilot would take them back for free, if he could find her before Contradictory managed to find a cargo, and if that cargo was going to human space. Unfortunately, the most likely outcome was that Black Saber would be long gone before Tskombe had properly started his search. Then he'd be left alone on Kzinhome without strakh and without allies, seen as either a slave or an enemy, and in either case liable for the hunt park at the whim of any kzin who crossed his path.
Outcomes. If Curvy were here she could help me plan. She intends me to prevent a war. How was that supposed to happen? Contacting the Tzaatz was the plan. He still felt uncomfortable with it. Curvy's strategic matrix didn't require Tskombe's survival, merely the achievement of the intended outcome. So what was he going to do? He needed a contact on the planet, at least.
Inspiration dawned. Provider! He could find the old warrior's stall in the market, perhaps. If he's still there, it's a start, a base of operations. From there I'll have to play it by ear. Perhaps Provider had Ayla with him, and that would solve all of his problems at once. He closed his eyes, trying to visualize the route Pouncer had led them on in their escape from the Citadel. He hadn't been paying close attention, but years of service in the infantry had trained his mind to pay attention to its surroundings even when he was concentrating on something else. They had come through a low tunnel, on the side of Hero's Square closest to the Citadel. He could get that far easily. The twists and turns of the market were another question, but a few landmarks would be all he needed, and he remembered quite clearly what provider's stall looked like, stout posts of a distinctive yellow wood, the ranked cages of food animals, the sauce jars. Next to that was… what? Another stall, selling some kind of electronics. And next to that? He couldn't quite remember.
But there was enough there to work with. If he couldn't find Provider, he could still go to the Tzaatz and negotiate for whatever he could get. He mulled over his options as he went back to watching the stars. Technology is that which allows miracles to be taken for granted. The view was no less beautiful for the realization.
Shipboard life soon fell into its familiar routine. Night Pilot and Contradictory stood opposite watches and Quacy found himself spending his copious free time with Night Pilot on his off watches. The kzin was good company, full of interesting stories of his adventures. He was a fourth-generation kit of Tiamat, perfectly fluent in English and Interspeak and several alien tongues as well. He had grown up on Black Saber — it had been his father's ship — and he'd learned to fly almost before he could walk. His entire life had been spent freerunning cargos, into and out of situations where the consigners were willing to pay high for a pilot who knew how to fly hard, fight hard, and keep his mouth shut. He'd won Contradictory in a bet with a noble on a kzinti world called Ch'lat, and given his new slave its freedom that night, after the Jotok saved his life when the noble's friends ambushed him on his way back to the ship. Nothing Night Pilot said admitted to any crime in human space, but the lines were there for Tskombe to read between — smuggling at least, possibly piracy. Both captain and ship were capable of it. Beneath her battered exterior Black Saber was fast and tough, and Night Pilot owed fealty to no one.
Their sixth day out of Tiamat, Tskombe had trouble sleeping. Eventually he gave up and went down to the cramped galley. Contradictory was there, feeding yellow, double-lobed fruits into his undermouth. They were each the size of a large apple, and so far as Tskombe could see Contradictory was swallowing them whole. He ordered whatever it was that the kitchen made that approximated roasted chicken and sat down to wait while it made it.
Contradictory finished its meal. “You are brave being traveling to Kzinhome, being unowned by any kzin.”
Tskombe looked up. “Why is that?”
“You are being eaten of, if a kzin is so choosing.”
Tskombe nodded. “I am hoping I won't be.”
“We are being presented towards a slave for our time on Kzinhome. It is being possible that this will also being working for you.”
Tskombe nodded. Not a bad idea, if Night Pilot will go for it. The Jotok's unusual speech pattern raised a question. “How did you come to be called Contradictory?”
The Jotok bobbed up and down. “We are being five self-sections. We think as a group or individually, as each task requires. Each section is possessing a self-symbolic identifier tag, and my name is being simply the sequential conjugation of those tags, being rendered as syllables.”
Tskombe raised an eyebrow. “I find it hard to believe that five alien syllables just happen to form an English word.”
“They are not being. You will being finding them unpronounceable. When being with other races we choose syllables being phonetically equivalent, being rendered as a pronounceable and relevant word.”
“And the relevance of Contradictory?”
“My species is being enslaved to the kzinti since time immemorial, our names being given to us by our masters. I am being a full partner with Night Pilot in this ship. Black Saber is possessing of two minds but only one body, and the ship is not being moving if we are not being agreeing on its destination. I am recognizing of the value in my freedom to be disagreeing until a consensus is reached.”
“Doesn't that create problems?” Tskombe tried and failed to imagine any kzin brooking disagreement from a slave species copilot.
“No. Consensus is producing toward optimized decisions. This is being part of our value in this partnership.”
Tskombe nodded. Not a problem for Contradictory, who has a five-way vote about every decision he makes, but I wonder how much patience Night Pilot has for the optimization process. He didn't ask, it wasn't his business. The kzin was living by his honor, and Black Saber
was a competently crewed ship, which was all that mattered from his point of view. There was a noise, footfalls, and Tskombe looked up, expecting to see Night Pilot. There was a flash of something outside the galley accessway, too small to be the kzin. It must have been, but…
He turned to Contradictory. “Did you see that?”
The Jotok bobbed its central body, seemingly unperturbed. “It is being human.”
The ARM? It made no sense. Or could the Jotok be wrong? He keyed the incom. “Night Pilot?”
“Yes?”
“Are you in the cockpit?”
“It's my watch.” The kzin's tone implied there was nowhere else he'd be on his watch.
“Just checking.” Tskombe paused, still absorbing the facts. “There's another person on the ship.”
“It is probably just your manrette.” Night Pilot was as unconcerned as Contradictory.
“My what?”
“Your female. She usually comes out for food around now.” Night Pilot sounded irritated at his ignorance.
“My female? I don't have a…” A hypothesis occurred. “Can you come down here? I have a couple of questions.”
“Hrrr.” There was a pause. Night Pilot didn't like his passengers interfering with his watch. “Send Contradictory to take over the cockpit.”
Contradictory bobbed in acknowledgment and left, and Tskombe went to the accessway and called. “Trina!” He didn't manage to keep the annoyance from his voice.
She came, looking scared and defiant at once. He didn't look at her, not trusting himself to speak until Night Pilot arrived. How did she…? He would know soon enough.
“Night Pilot, how did she get on board?”
The kzin wrinkled his nose, puzzled. “The usual way. She arrived several hours before you did. I put her in the other cabin.”
“I said one passenger!”
“Yourself and personal effects. This is what I understood.” Night Pilot was still confused. “Is she not your female?”
