Ghost Ship

by Sharon Lee

  Theo sighed, closed her eyes, and nodded off.

  The cat stretched, rose lazily and ambled across her knees to her lap, where she matter-of-factly curled up, purred briefly, and resumed her nap.

  - - - - -

  Daav yos’Phelium Clan Korval, as he was once again named, entered the final data-string and sat back in the desk chair, waiting for what his inquiries might bring.

  Many years ago, this room had been his office—as much his as anything else in a dwelling that had housed generations before him and, with a smile from the luck, generations after. It had, according to the note on the door, been tied down and cleared for transport. He opened the door, discovering thereby that the note was accurate; though it was but the work of moments to liberate desk and chair, and to bring the computer, still gratifyingly able to find the planet-net, online.

  That same computer now chimed, requesting his attention. He leaned forward and touched a key to accept the queued files.

  Theo’s license, of course, was an open book to one who was not only a Master Pilot, but who had the use of Korval’s access codes. The records of her ship, proud Arin’s Toss, even now resting at Solcintra Port . . . those were trickier.

  Daav was no stranger to trickery, and he possessed what was very nearly a supernatural touch with a research line. Still, whoever had the ultimate keeping of Arin’s Toss had taken great care to be discreet, and he didn’t like to force the issue, when doing so might lose Theo her employment.

  She came very quickly, commented the voice only he could hear. Did you expect her so soon, Daav?

  “I hardly know that I expected her at all,” he answered. “A pilot new-come to first class surely has better things to do than to be wondering after the whereabouts of her aged father.”

  Kamele must have written, Aelliana said, to tell her that Jen Sar had gone.

  That, he conceded, was very probably how it had been, and what Kamele’s state of mind might be at this point in her relationship with Theo’s father, he found himself reluctant to imagine. As she was a woman of great good sense, it was likely that she wanted to murder him—for which he would blame her not at all.

  Ought we to write? Aelliana asked.

  “How would we begin to explain ourselves? We will seem either mad or craven.” He shook his head, frowning at the screen. “And truly, Aelliana, it seems a poor Balance, to involve Kamele in Korval’s little unpleasantness.”

  There were those who wanted Korval—all of Korval—dead, or worse. There were those; their number and disposition as yet unknown. And Kamele, who had lived all of her life on a Safe World . . .

  “Perhaps it’s best to let that connection die.”

  How? Aelliana asked. Theo has found us.

  There was that.

  Daav sighed.

  “I propose that we plunge our ship into a sun and have done.”

  Inside his head, Aelliana laughed. That never works.

  His lips twisted toward a smile, then straightened as the door opened.

  “Father,” Val Con said from the threshold, “may I come in?”

  “By all means! I have here for your perusal Pilot Waitley’s tale thus far. The ship’s is murkier, and I hesitate to push my point.”

  “How murky, I wonder?” Val Con asked, coming cat-foot to the desk.

  Daav spun the screen, watching his son’s face as he took in the data. One eyebrow twitched; he hitched a hip onto the edge of the desk and leaned to touch the scroll bar.

  “The pilot is . . . conservative,” he murmured. “That hardly seems like us.”

  “The pilot was taught young to distrust herself and to set the good of the many before her own necessities.”

  “Hm,” said Val Con, touching a key. “Hugglelans Galactica, second to Pilot Rig Tranza”—he looked up—“who appears also to have been conservative, and unwilling to push the pilot beyond her comfort. An odd sort of care, from elder pilot to junior.”

  Daav tipped his head.

  “Yes?” Val Con murmured.

  “Pilot Waitley was . . . let us say, rusticated from Anlingdin Piloting Academy. I believe the phrase was ‘nexus of violence.’ ”

  Val Con smiled. “Now that,” he said, “sounds more the thing.”

  “Yes,” Daav said earnestly, “but recall that she was gently raised—unlike yourself—and taught to honor safety above sense. Such a dismissal, and in such terms—it would not be wonderful if the pilot had entered a period of . . . overcompensation.”

  “Thus requiring a deft touch of Pilot Tranza.” Val Con looked back to the screen and touched the scroll bar. “Yes, it might be read that way. Well.”

  He was silent for a moment of study.

  “Arin’s Toss, out of Waymart, as all good ships must be out of Waymart. Owned by . . .” He paused, then looked to Daav, his face exquisitely bland. “Crystal Energy Consultants?”

  “Thus my reluctance to probe further.”

  “I understand. Perhaps the pilot will be forthcoming.”

  “If a father may say it, she is rarely elsewise. Speaking of whom—has she broken the furniture from boredom yet?”

  “When I stopped in the morning parlor just now, she was asleep on the window seat, with Merlin’s assistance.”

  “Excellent,” Daav said, feeling not only his relief, but Aelliana’s.

  “Indeed. Now.” Val Con straightened, and gave Daav a stern look from vivid green eyes. “What odds that the pilot’s sole reason for arriving here is yourself?”

  “Low,” Daav returned promptly. “She had said whatever trouble she carries is complicated—and she is a truthful child. Her father vanishing from the arrangement she has known all her life is fairly straightforward, however distressing.”

  “As I have cause to know.” Val Con sighed. “What part, if any, does the delm play in those matters that might lie between Theo Waitley and her father?”

  “None at all. Theo and I shall deal between us, as we have always done.”

  “Ah. And Theo’s mother?”

  Daav glanced slightly aside.

  “Your mother and I had just been discussing that.”

  “That’s fortunate. I don’t suppose you’ve achieved a solving?”

  “Alas,” Daav answered, and met Val Con’s eyes. “We were not, you know, a very good delm.”

  “Yes, so I read in the Diaries, and so did Uncle Er Thom instruct me,” his son returned, with a certain amount of acid.

  Seated, Daav bowed, allowing irony to be seen.

  “If Theo should petition the delm for her father’s return?” Val Con asked after a moment.

  “Korval does not command Kiladi,” Daav answered.

  Val Con shook his head.

  “No, that will not do! Should she ask, it will be in terms of her father, which leaves no room for melant’i games—and is precisely what I would ask, myself, were our positions reversed.”

  Daav sighed. “If the delm will humor us—remand all questions and demands that Theo may put forth regarding her father to me. It is true that we have left some untidiness behind and would make what amends we might—but those difficulties are outside of the clan.”

  There was a pause—a very long pause, as Daav reckoned it—before Val Con inclined his head.

  “Unless and until the matter is brought specifically to the delm’s attention, you and Mother may pursue your own Balance,” he said. “But, mark me, Father; if it comes to Korval, it will be solved—and fully.”

  “Of course,” Daav said, and smiled.

  THREE

  Jelaza Kazone

  Liad

  Tranza had the music playing on the open band again, Theo thought groggily. Not bad music, actually; something she almost recognized, cheerful and uncomplicated. She listened, drifting nearer to awake as she tried to place the—

  “Pilot Waitley?” inquired a plummy male voice. Not Tranza, was her first thought. Her second was that there was an intruder on Primadonna and if that were so, Rig Tranza was either in
capacitated or dead. She kept her eyes closed, though her heartbeat was suddenly loud in her ears.

  “Pilot Waitley,” the voice said again. “The delm will see you now.”

  She took a breath, remembered that she was on Liad at the house named Jelaza Kazone, waiting for the Delm of Korval to find time to solve her problems.

  Which, according to the voice, they had.

  Theo opened her eyes.

  The room was just as she had seen it last, minus the grey cat, and the addition of a man-tall metal cylinder surmounted by an orange globe, with three articulated arms spaced eccentrically around the central cylinder.

  “Good day, Pilot,” it said, the orange globe flickering. “I am Jeeves. Master Val Con asked me to escort you to him.”

  “Thank you,” Theo said, rolling off the window seat. She danced a quick stretch, and nodded to the ’bot.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  * * *

  The ’bot’s wheels were astonishingly quiet; in fact, Theo noticed, the whole thing was considerably better constructed than its unsophisticated chassis would suggest. There was no rattling or clanking, like you might get out of a cargo ’bot, nor did it appear too large for its surroundings.

  “Were you built to work here?” she asked. “Inside the house, I mean.”

  You didn’t talk to a cargo ’bot, except to give simple orders, but a deeply programmed entity like the Concierge, back on Delgado, could hold up its end of a complicated conversation so well you’d think you were talking with a real person.

  “I was built by Master Val Con and Master Shan to serve as the butler at Trealla Fantrol,” Jeeves said. “As Trealla Fantrol will not be making the transfer, I have been reassigned to Jelaza Kazone.”

  The music was louder now. Jeeves paused and gestured with one of its arms, showing Theo an open doorway.

  “Please enter,” it said.

  She stepped into a library, but a library improbably wrapped and ready for transport. The shelves were sealed with cargo film; the furniture anchored to temp-clamps adhered to the wooden floor, the rug rolled and secured to the wall beneath the open windows at the bottom of the room.

  Nearer at hand was a pleasant grouping of three chairs around a low table supporting three glasses and a stoppered blue bottle, beaded with condensation. To the right of that grouping her . . . brother Val Con stood at a tied-down desk, playing a portable omnichora.

  The tantalizingly familiar music peaked, paused, and ended with a glissade of notes like a warm spring rain. Val Con stood for a moment, fingers just a whisker above the keys, head bent as if he was listening to the echo of the music. He turned, smooth and easy, coming toward her with one hand extended, fingers flashing the pilot’s sign for welcome.

  “Thank you for your patience,” he murmured. “I trust you put your time to good use.”

  Theo considered him, teased again by the sense of his looking like someone—she would have said that of course he looked like Father—except he didn’t, precisely. Father’s hair was dark brown sharpened by grey, his eyes were black, and his face—Theo had once heard Kamele say that Father’s face was interesting.

  Val Con, on the other hand, was . . . pretty, with his vivid green eyes, and his smooth, high-cheeked face. Where Father kept his hair cut neat to the point of severity, Val Con’s was positively shaggy, and had a tendency to tumble into his eyes.

  On Delgado, Miri would’ve had to have been tenured and hold a named chair to have any hope of keeping so comely and biddable a man. Theo appreciated manners herself, but he didn’t seem to have much in the way of spark.

  He raised a slim hand on which a heavy ring glittered, and stroked his hair off his forehead. Theo started, remembering that she had been asked a question—sort of.

  “I had a nap,” she said, “with the grey cat. I’ve been flying hard, and the chance to rest was welcome.”

  She hesitated before adding, “Thank you,” then quickly nodded at the ’chora. “That was nice, what you played. My mother—Kamele—is a singer.”

  Val Con smiled faintly. “My foster-mother was a musician by avocation,” he said in his soft voice; “it was she who taught me to play. My mother’s passion is mathematics.” He moved a hand, showing her the grouped chairs.

  “Please, sit and be comfortable. Miri is delayed for a few moments. When she arrives, Korval will hear you. In anticipation of that, I wonder if I may ask you a question.”

  “All right,” Theo said, eying the arrangement: one chair with its back to the door; one facing the bookshelves; the third with the shelves behind it. She looked to Val Con.

  “I don’t want to offend,” she said carefully. “Is there an . . . intent . . . in the grouping that I might not understand?”

  He smiled.

  “In fact, there is not. With only three present, it is not possible to divide the delm, and no necessity for either of us to be at the right or left hand of the other. Please, sit where you will.”

  Sitting with her back to the door would show that she felt absolutely safe in his house, and might gain her some points. Theo thought about it, but the truth was that she didn’t feel absolutely safe—and she had a feeling that Val Con might’ve inherited Father’s sharp eye for a lie. She moved to the chair that backed on the larger room. It was a compromise position: she could see both the door and the window, but was still slightly exposed to the rear. In case there was, oh, a secret panel in the room’s opposite wall, or an assassin hiding under the omnichora.

  Val Con bowed slightly as she settled. He took the chair facing the windows for himself, leaving the most protected spot for Miri.

  “Now, sister,” he said, briskly, “it is your turn to be gentle, should I inadvertently offend. Yes?”

  She nodded, giving him her full attention.

  “It is well,” he said. “I learn from our father that you were properly enculturated according to the customs of Delgado.”

  Theo eyed him. “Father didn’t teach me Liaden custom, if that’s what you’re getting at. I did belong to the Culture Club at Anlingdin, and I’ve studied on my own since—since leaving school.”

  “Ah. I must ask, then, if you are proficient in melant’i.”

  Melant’i was a kind of social scorecard based on who you were when. It was like relational math, only with people.

  Theo shook her head.

  “Not proficient,” she admitted. “What I know of the theory is that—” She chewed her lip. “If I promised you something as a pilot, I wouldn’t necessarily be responsible for honoring that promise if you called it in while I was being something other than a pilot—say, being Father’s daughter.”

  Val Con’s left eyebrow twitched upward, which was all too familiar.

  “I’ve got it completely wrong?” She’d been pretty sure that couldn’t be how it worked. A social system predicated on which bit of a person you were talking to this time would be chaos.

  He shook his head. “In some measure, you have it precisely. Allow me, however, to agree that you are not proficient. Since speaking with the delm will involve what Miri terms ‘mental somersaults,’ I propose that you allow me to sort such melant’i as will come into play.” He gave her an earnest look. “I am accustomed to it, you see, and my interest as your brother is that you prosper.”

  Theo thought about that.

  “You’re going to stop being my—my brother when Miri gets here, and Delm Korval is in the room?”

  “In essence, but you needn’t care about it, if it will distract you from a clear recital of your case. I will also mention that time is short; our transport will engage in just under six hours, local, by which time you ought certainly to be away.”

  On the one hand, it would be easier to just tell her story, which was complex enough without having to pay attention to custom she didn’t fully understand, too. On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly advertant to let a man she’d only just met mind both sides of the negotiation, even if he was her . . . brother.


  “And, you know,” Val Con said, “our father would strongly disapprove of any attempt I might make to cheat you.”

  Well, that was so, Theo admitted. Father was a stickler; he’d expect them to deal—in Balance, as he’d say.

  “All right,” she said, and smiled to show she appreciated his efforts on her behalf. “Thanks.”

  She looked around the room, again noting the books bound tight into their shelves, and the furniture secured to the floor. Ready for transport, yes, but—

  “What kind of transport?”

  “The Clutch ship—it will have scanned as an asteroid in stable orbit when you came in. The Council of Clans named the day and the hour by which we were to depart Liad; anything we left behind to be forfeit to the Council. The delm wished to leave nothing to the Council, and my brother Edger, whom you met, was instrumental in negotiating with the Clutch Elders for the loan of a ship large enough to transport the Tree and this house.”

  It was said so reasonably that it took a heartbeat for the sense of the words to hit Theo.

  The Clutch asteroid ship in orbit was going to pick up the entire house, Jelaza Kazone, with the enormous tree growing out of the house’s center, and transport them?

  Not possible. She was opening her mouth—maybe to tell him so, when he cocked his head, as if he’d heard a sound so soft it had slipped past her own excellent ears.

  “Miri will be with us very soon.”

  “How do you know that?” Theo demanded, which might have been less rude than whatever she’d been going to say about his transport. Maybe.

  Val Con gave her a bland look from bright green eyes.

  “We are lifemates. We share thoughts, feelings and memories.”

  Some of what she thought about that must’ve shown on her face because he smiled faintly.

  “Yes,” he said, “but it does not seem so to us. In fact, nothing could be more natural. Now . . .” There was a slight pause. “Such bondings are not unusual in our clan.”