by Sharon Lee
There was an abrupt decrease in the pilot’s anger, as if the common question of protocol had calmed her.
“Certainly, Pilot,” she said. “This way.”
That quickly, and without a word to Bechimo, she guided the yos’Phelium to the Heart, and brought up the comm at the pilot’s own station.
“Thank you,” he murmured. He looked toward the ceiling, by which Bechimo understood that he was being addressed.
“I wonder if the ship will speak to Jeeves, who handles House security.”
Bechimo felt contempt. He had “spoken” to security systems in the past, and found them uniformly stupid, utterly focused upon their programming and their match algorithms. Surely, he had no need—Protocol pinged, tentatively, and Bechimo yielded. Let the Scout Pilot demonstrate his house’s security system. It would be educational, and show his pilot the wisdom of staying on port, with her ship.
“I will speak with Korval House security,” he said.
“Thank you.” Scout Pilot yos’Phelium bent to the board, opening a line and setting in the code with an economy of motion that Bechimo had learned to approve in pilots.
“Jelaza Kazone.” A male voice emanated from the speaker.
“Jeeves, good-day to you,” said the yos’Phelium. “I wonder if you have a moment to speak with Bechimo? I propose to bring Theo to House for a visit and her ship naturally has some questions concerning our ability to insure her safety.”
“I would be delighted to speak with Bechimo, Master Val Con. Is she present?”
“I am aboard.” The pilot turned, glancing once more toward the ceiling. “Bechimo, here is Jeeves.”
“Jeeves, good-day to you,” he said politely. “You are in charge of House security?”
“Indeed, I am. Please, before we continue, allow me to say how very, very pleased I am to finally speak with you! You will naturally wish to make a thorough examination of my protocols and arrangements. Would it be possible to open a secure connection so that we might communicate directly?”
Bechimo’s interest pricked. A secure connection? It had been a long time since any mere programmed entity had sought a secure connection with him. The last had been a security system, as well. True to its programming, it had attempted to tie Bechimo to it as a peripheral system.
Poor security program.
“Opening secure connection,” he told Jeeves, and did so, waiting for the simple touch of a machine mind.
What met him was far from simple, and by no means a mere machine.
- - - - -
Val Con straightened away from the board and looked to her, green eyes dancing.
“They may be at it for a few minutes,” he said. “In the meanwhile, may I beg the pilot for the honor of a tour?”
She considered him. “Do you promise to behave yourself?” she asked, hearing the question come out half teasing, like she might have asked Father, when she was living in his house and everything was still the same between them.
“On my honor,” Val Con said. “I will be a pattern-card of good behavior.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she told him, and moved her hand, fingers spelling, this way, crew quarters.
She gave him the same tour Bechimo had given her, just a few days ago, ending in the family galley.
“I’ve got something I want to show you,” she said, opening the closet. She put the teapot into his hands.
His eyebrows rose; he held the pot with care and inspected it closely, looking for a maker’s mark, maybe, on the bottom, then lifting the lid and peering inside.
“An antique,” he said, when he had finished. “Where did you find it?”
“Bechimo found it,” she said, putting it away and latching the cabinet. “In a dead area. She says that things are always Jumping in, usually pieces—there’s a bin of stuff in one of the holds. The teapot was intact and didn’t test dangerous, so she thought the family—when there was a family—might like to have it.”
“You intrigue me. Have you the coords for this dead zone?”
“Yes,” she said, having taken care to memorize them. She looked up at the ceiling, but if Bechimo was present, she was being unusually quiet. “Jeeves and Bechimo, they’re—all right, you think?”
“I think they’re likely to be having several far-ranging conversations. Jeeves is always excited to meet a new mind, and very proud of his security arrangements.” He turned slightly, to hitch a hip onto the counter. “Now, Sister, I have a question which I hope you will answer honestly.”
Theo blinked at him. “All right.”
“Good. Left entirely to your own decision, without fear of Bechimo’s displeasure, or of my disappointment, would you choose to guest with us while you are on-planet?”
She opened her mouth—and closed it, turning the question over and looking at it from all sides. The refusal she’d given before—right, that had been because she hadn’t known what Bechimo would do. But, if it were her decision alone . . .
“I’d like to visit,” she said. It was true, and not only because she wanted to talk to Father. If she was related to all those people on the datakey, and they considered themselves to be her family—like Pat Rin—then, yes, she wanted to know them, to find out who they were.
“If,” she added, “there’s room for me.”
Val Con laughed. “Theo, there is enough room for you and the family and crew of this ship, were there any.” He touched her hand. “I am glad, too, that you want to speak with Father.”
She blinked at him. “You are? Why?”
“Because I think he feels that you are . . . angry with him, a little, and that he feels it all the more keenly because you are right to be.”
She shook her head. “I’d really like to understand . . .” She ran out of words.
“Of course you would,” Val Con said, as if he knew exactly what she meant. “What do you say that we take our leave of Bechimo and drive out to the house. Is there anything you would like to take with you?”
“My kit,” she said, and led him back to her quarters, where he stood good-naturedly out of the way while she packed.
“I forgot,” she said, pausing in the process of sealing her bag to look over her shoulder at him. “Do you know a mathematician?”
“Several,” he said promptly. “And I can get introductions to several more beyond that. What sort do you require?”
“Interspatial, I think. This . . . thing that Bechimo does—translating, she calls it. I don’t know how it’s done, but it’s quick—quicker than Jump—and she can translate to the surface of a planet—I told you.”
“Indeed you did.” He paused, head cocked to one side. “I think,” he said slowly, “that you will want to apply to my mother.”
Theo stared at him, some of her enthusiasm for her visit cooling.
“Val Con,” she said carefully, “your mother’s dead.”
“In a manner of speaking. You will wish first to speak to Father.”
“All right,” she said slowly, meaning to put Father to no such unnecessary cruelty.
He smiled. “My parents are lifemates, Theo,” he said sounding perfectly sane and reasonable. “Speak to Father, do, when he returns to us. In the meanwhile, I suggest that we take our leave quickly, or risk missing dinner.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
“Not long now,” Val Con said, touching the stick and guiding the nimble little car around a pothole deep enough to have swallowed it entirely. Theo settled back into the seat and deliberately relaxed.
Not that there was anything worrisome about Val Con’s driving; if anything, he had surprised her by being somewhat conservative. Of course, there’d been a fair amount of foot traffic in town, and the road itself wasn’t as well kept as it should’ve been, in Theo’s personal opinion.
In fact, there’d been roadwork in process just past the last tollbooth. The surface had been good for a while, then they hit a patch where roadwork had h
ad to pause for road widening, and road filling, and from there the going went from conservative, to slow, to something like evasion practice.
“Is this the only road?” she asked, as Val Con avoided a tree stump that was taking up half of the roadbed.
“In fact, it is. And the contract of hire between Clan Korval and the Bosses of Surebleak requires Korval to keep the Port Road open from end to end.” He gave her a sidelong glance from beneath his lashes. “Little did we know that in order to keep the road we would in large measure need to build the road.” Another touch of the stick and the little car safely skirted a rock half buried in the surface.
“Progress is being made, though somewhat slower progress than we had initially supposed, because of the need to also widen the way, remove obstacles, such as that boulder, and fill the bed to an equal depth. Also, there are some who unfortunately feel strongly that an open road is not in their best interest, meaning that we occasionally find our work . . . undone. Despite these challenges, it is the project manager’s most earnest hope that all will be completed before winter.”
Theo looked out the window. It was true that the leaves and grasses were green, but the temps at the port hadn’t exactly been temperate.
“What season is it?”
“I am assured by my lifemate, whose homeworld this is, that we are well into spring and shall in a matter of local weeks enter the relumma of summer.”
Theo stared at him, remembering Delgado’s long, mild summer, the flowers that overfilled Father’s garden and the two harvests of free-grown fruits and vegetables before the farming grid needed to raise its thermal houses again and grow hydroponically through the cool season.
“Does it snow here?” she asked Val Con.
“Rather a lot,” he answered, and used his chin to point, ahead and up.
Theo looked through the windscreen, at first seeing only the vegetation crowding the edges of the road, and then, soaring above them all, the Tree, impossibly tall, its leaves glowing in the last of Surebleak’s daylight.
The first time she’d seen the Tree had been like this—and not like this. She’d taken a taxi from Solcintra Port to Korval’s Valley. She’d been concentrating on what she was going to say to the Delm of Korval, staring out the window without really seeing the passing scenery until the sheer improbability of it, rising out of the landscape, had grabbed her attention.
Soon after, she’d seen the Tree again; spoken to the delm, a Clutch Turtle and her father under its branches.
She cleared her throat.
“It seems to have survived the move all right.”
“Indeed. I would go so far as to say that the move has proved to be a repairing lease,” Val Con said. “The Tree apparently likes travel, and is reminded of its days as a seedling, when moving about only required having someone on hand who was willing to carry a pot.”
It sounded as if Val Con were recounting a conversation he had had with an elder aunt or grandmother, Theo thought, and wondered if he was just having fun with her, or if this was another apparent . . . delusion, like thinking his mother was alive. Either way, it seemed safer just to nod and move on.
“How did the house make the trip?”
“In very good form. I don’t believe we broke so much as a teacup, which Anthora declared a pity, as she had formed a dislike for a certain tea service during her most recent stay.”
The car’s forward motion slowed shockingly, and in a moment the reason was revealed. The road—track, really—they had been following had degenerated still further, into a stone-studded washboard. Val Con’s piloting was exquisite and the car went as gently as it could, but still Theo felt the shaking in her bones—and then they were through with one last definitive bump, and rolling down a smooth driveway between browning lawns and a drooping formal garden, to the house called Jelaza Kazone.
The car slowed to a stop between what might have been garages and the house itself. Val Con turned off the engine and looked at her with a wry smile.
“That last bit is atrocious,” he said. “Miri tells me that it keeps us safe from our enemies, for no one would risk a car over such ground.”
“You did,” Theo pointed out.
“Happily, I am not invading,” Val Con answered, opening his door. He paused in the act of getting out and looked at her over his shoulder. “And I never cared very much for this car.”
* * *
The last time Theo’d seen this room, the shelves and the furniture had been strapped for transport, the floor had been bare, and the delm of Korval had heard her out while the three of them sat around a game table, and shared lemon water out of a travel jar.
Now, there was a carpet centered in the middle of the dark wooden floor, and a pair of chairs and a tile-topped table beneath a cluster of ceiling lights. The shelves were free of cargo film, allowing the books to flaunt their titles, and there was a narrow table going the length of the room, its surface entirely covered with what looked to be old paper maps, over which two people were bent in study.
Miri looked up when they entered the room.
“Hey, Theo,” she said, grinning, “good to see you again.” She turned to her study mate, who had straightened to an improbable height and was looking at her with grave interest.
“Beautiful, this is Theo Waitley, the Scout’s sister by blood. Theo, this is Nelirikk Explorer, my aide, sworn to serve Line yos’Phelium.” The grin showed again, briefly. “Speaking of complicated.”
“Theo Waitley,” the big man said, with a little bow, “I have flown your sim.”
Her sim? For a moment she just stared at him, then memory clicked in.
“The sailplane recording from school?” she asked, giving him a good, hard look. Master Pilot, she decided. “I hope you weren’t bored.”
“Pilot, I was not. I believe that I was instructed, each time I flew with you.”
Theo blinked. “You flew that sim more than once?”
“Why not?” Val Con asked from her right. “I have myself flown it more than once and, as Nelirikk says, achieved insight upon each repetition.” He smiled when she turned to look at him. “We are all pilots here, Theo.”
That’s right, they were—all pilots. Theo sighed. It was like at Anlingdin, where they’d ridden sims and stuffed themselves with as many different piloting experiences as possible, so that they could be prepared—for anything, so they said. But you aren’t ever, Theo thought, really ever prepared for everything.
“Shan called—him and Priscilla are eating at Melina’s place,” Miri said.
“Progress is being made, then. Excellent.”
“He sounded pretty happy—but, then, he usually does. You wanna show Theo to her room and let her get cleaned up for dinner? Beautiful needs to finish showing me his notion for fixing that mess just outside the gate in time for the housewarming party.”
“Certainly. Theo? Let us introduce you to the house and see you settled.”
* * *
“I don’t,” she confided as she followed him up a flight of stairs, recalling times when dressing for dinner was much more elaborate than washing her face and putting on a clean sweater, “have much with me besides ship clothes.”
“Dinner this evening is informal,” Val Con told her, swinging right into the hallway at the top of the stairs. “For the rest of your stay, we will provide clothing.”
She stared at him. “You have extra clothes?”
“House stores,” he said blandly. “Of course. Now, here is your room. Someone will come to guide you down to dinner in about half an hour. I apologize for the scramble, but my aunt is presently in residence and feels it her duty to keep us all on a proper schedule.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “For the good of the children. I fear that we are dreadfully lax when she is not with us.”
That was another in-joke. Or maybe, Theo thought, suddenly concerned, it was a warning.
“Is she going to be able to put up with me? I wouldn’t want to spoil her meal.”
/> “I believe she is making an honest effort to do as Miri suggested, and study local custom. After all, we are the visitors here; it is not our customs that should prevail.” He nodded at the door. “Please, try your hand.”
Right. She put her palm against the plate and the door obligingly came open.
“Excellent,” Val Con said. “Be welcome in our House. If there is anything at all that you require, only let me know and it will be provided.” He bowed, very slightly, which Father did when he thought tousling her hair might annoy her. “I will see you at Prime, Sister.”
- - - - -
“A bridge?” he asked, looking to the dressing table, where Miri was brushing out her hair.
“Bridge,” she confirmed. “And a board road laid. Beautiful says they can have it in before the party, so the Bosses don’t have to worry about breaking their cars.”
Considering the state of most of the vehicles held by the Bosses of Surebleak, that concern was realistic. As was the concern of what might come about if even a single car broke down, thus blocking the Road all the way back to the port itself.
“If the Explorer thinks it can be done, I say let him have at it.”
“Already gave him the go,” Miri said, “and an okay for an increased watch team. We got enough people to guard the Road ’til we get this settled.” She began to rebraid her hair.
“Leave it loose,” he said impulsively.
She caught his eyes in the mirror. “You sure?”
He stepped close to take the nascent braid out of her hands, and combed it loose, auburn strands silking between his fingers.
“I’m sure,” he said, and bent to kiss the top of her head.
“Not sure I care for that. Remind me to talk to you about it, later.”
“All right.” He stroked her hair again and forced himself to step away, back to the closet.
“How’s Theo?” Miri asked. “Looked a little spooked when she came in.”
“I believe that she thinks I am demented,” he said, pulling out a high-necked black sweater. “Yes, this.”
“You are demented,” Miri told him, eying the sweater. “Dressing down for dinner?”
