by Sharon Lee
A tap on the keyboard banished the port feed. Another put the lighting back to night-rest. She stood and stretched to her full lean height, then headed for the hatch, snagging her kit-bag out of the empty co-pilot's chair.
First, food from something other than ship's store, maybe with a mild stimulant, to keep the edge on. After that—not ale, not today. Today, she'd have wine. Good wine—or the best on offer. And that food—nothing out of some grab-a-bite. No. She'd have plates, and linens, and pilots. Top of the line, all the way. She could afford it today, which wasn't always the case.
By the time she reached the edge of the field, she'd almost convinced herself that she'd have a great time.
* * *
FINDING A ROOM HAD been easy enough. The clerk at the Starlight Hotel was pleased to reduce her credit chit by a significant sum in return for a room complete with a wide bed, smooth sheets overlain with a quilted coverlet dyed in graduated shades of blue. A deep-piled blue carpet covered the floor; and the personal facilities boasted a single shower and a hand-finished porcelain tub wide enough to hold two, this not being a world which was exactly short on water.
She stowed her bag, had a quick shower, hesitated over maybe putting on something a little fancier than 'skins, decided that safety came first on Faldaiza, and headed out. The sweet smell of the hotel soaps and cleansers clung to her, distracting until she forgot them in her search for the rest of the list, which had proved unexpectedly difficult to fulfill.
The first fancy eatery she approached advertised all kinds of exotic and expensive food-and-drinkables, but she caught the gleam of armor 'skins as she approached and decided against. The next place, the woman holding the door acted like maybe pilot 'skins smelled bad, and the third place was standing room only with a line out the door.
She was about to give up on food and move on to wine and companionship, when she happened on The Alcoves.
It didn't look so fancy as the others, but the menu scrolling over the door promised fresh custom-made meals at not-ruinous prices, and a list of wines she recognized as on the top level of good.
She squared her shoulders and walked in.
The master of the dining room wore a sleeveless formal tunic, the vibrant green tats of his Batch glowed against the pale skin of his forearms, short gloves and hosen, all shimmering with embedded smartstrands.
"Pilot," he said, with a gratifyingly respectful bow of the head. "What service may this humble person be pleased to provide?"
"A meal," she said, slipping a qwint out of her public pocket. "Company, if a pilot's asked."
He palmed the coin deftly and consulted his log.
"There is one guest who has requested the pleasure of sharing his meal with a fellow pilot, should one inquire. Happily, he has only recently achieved a table, so your meals may be coordinated."
She felt something in her chest she hadn't known was knotted up ease a little and realized how much she had wanted another face, another voice, another self across the table from her. Someone who spoke the language of piloting, who knew what it was like to pour your life into your ship . . . .
She inclined a little from the waist.
"I would be pleased to accept an introduction to this pilot," she told the master formally, and waited while he made a note in his log with one hand and raised the other, the strands of the glove glowing briefly.
From the curtain at his back, another Batcher appeared, also in smart formals, the same glow-green tats on her arms, her face an exact replica of the man's.
"This pilot joins the pilot seated in the Alcove of Singing Waters," the master said, and the waiter bowed.
"If the pilot would consent to enter," she murmured, and stepped back, sweeping the curtain aside with a tattooed arm.
She stepped into a wide hallway floored in gold-threaded white tiles. A subtle sound behind told her that the curtain had fallen back into place, and she turned slightly as the attendant approached.
"If the pilot will follow this unworthy one," the Batcher murmured and passed on, silent in gilded sandals.
Her boots made slightly more noise as she followed the Batcher, passing alcoves at measured distances. Across the entrance of each hung a curtain heavy with sound absorbing brocade.
She had counted eight such alcoves on her right hand. At the ninth, her guide paused and placed her gloved palm against the drawn curtain.
Some signal must have been traveled from the brocade to the strands in the gloves and thence to the attendant herself, for she drew back the curtain slightly and made a bow.
"This one requests the guest's forbearance," the Batcher said softly. "A pilot comes to share food with a pilot, if this is still desired."
In the hall and some steps behind, for decency's sake, she heard nothing from the room in response to this, but the answer must have been in the affirmative, for the attendant pulled the curtain wider and beckoned.
"Pilot, if you please. The pilot welcomes you."
She went forward, walking easy, keeping her—specifically empty—hands out where they could be seen. On the edge of the alcove, she paused, letting the light outline her, giving the other pilot—and herself too, truth told—a last chance to have a change of requirement.
The man seated in the lounger next to the wall of flowing water that apparently gave the alcove its name was dark in the hair and lean in the face. From the breadth of his shoulders she judged he'd top her not-inconsiderable height, but when he stood up to do the polite, she found herself looking down into eyes as black as the empty space beyond the Rim. His 'skins were dark, and it was hard to definitively decide where the man ended and the dim room began.
"Pilot," he said, and his voice was a clear tenor. "In peace, be welcome."
There weren't many who would violate the terms of peaceful welcome, and if the small big man was one, well—she had long ago learned to err on the side of mistrust.
So. "Pilot," she answered. "I'm pleased to share a peaceful interlude."
Behind her, she heard the curtain fall. Anything that was said between them now would be absorbed and erased by the brocades. Unless there were paid listeners, of course . . . .
"The room sweeps clean," the other pilot told her, reading the thought on her face, maybe—or maybe just naturally assuming she'd want to know and looking to save her the effort of scanning.
As it happened, her 'skins were on auto-scan and, lacking a warning tone, she decided to take his word for the conditions.
"That's good news," she said and came another step into the room. "I'm Cantra."
"Welcome," he said again, and gestured toward the loungers by the water. "I'm Jela. I sent for a bottle of wine, which should be here soon. In fact, I thought you must be it. No doubt the house will provide another glass, if you'd care to share a drink before the meal?" He raised a broad, brown hand, fingers spread.
"You understand, I have a forgiving schedule, and set myself the goal of a leisurely meal. If your time is limited . . . "
"I've got a few local hours to burn," she said. "Wine and a relax would be—something a lot like nothing I've had lately."
He grinned at that, showing white, even teeth, and again indicated the loungers. "Have a seat, then, and listen to the singing waters, for if I'm not mistaken—" A gong sounded, softly, from the brocaded ceiling.
"Enter!" Jela called, and the curtain parted for the female Batcher, bearing a tray holding a bottle of wine and two glasses.
Cantra sat down and let the lounger cradle her body. Jela sought the chair opposite and the attendant brought the wine to the table between them. She had the seal off efficiently and poured a mite of pale gold into each glass, handing the first to Jela, the second to Cantra.
Passing the glass beneath her nose brought her a rush of scent and a growing conviction that she was in the right place.
She sipped: sharp citrus flavors burst on her tongue, followed by a single note of sweetness.
"I'm pleased," Jela said to the attendant. "Pilot?"
"I'm—pleased," she replied, handing her glass back to the attendant with a smile. "And pleased to have more."
This was accomplished without undue fuss. Both pilots being accommodated, the attendant bowed.
"This humble person exists to serve," she said. "What may it please the pilots to order from our available foods?" She placed her gloved hands together and drew them slowly open. In the space between her palms, words formed—the house's menu.
Jela ordered leisurely, giving Cantra time to peruse the offerings and settle on the incredible luxury of a fresh green salad, non-vat fish steak, and fresh baked bread.
The attendant bowed, closed the menu and departed, silently slipping past the brocade curtain.
Cantra sipped her wine, relishing the flavors and the layers of taste. Across from her, the man—Pilot Jela—he sipped, too, cuddled deep in his lounger, forcefully projecting the impression of a man relaxed, indolent, and slow.
She having projected just such impressions herself from time to time in the interests of not frightening the grounders—maybe she was a little too aware of what he was doing. It might have been polite, not to notice. But it irritated her, to be treated like a know-nothing, and she brought her glass down to rest against her knee.
"You don't have to go to all that trouble for me," she said. "Pilot."
There was a short space of charged silence, as if he weren't used to being called on his doings, then a nod—neither irritable nor apologetic.
"Old habits," was what he said, and lifted his glass to sip with a respect that she registered as real. The relaxation he showed now was properly tempered and much more restful to the both of them, she was sure.
They sat quiet for a while then, each sipping, and letting the water whisper its song down the wall and disappear.
"Where are you in from, if it can be told, Pilot Cantra?"
"Chelbayne," she answered. Nothing to hide there, now that she was away, the cargo delivered and the fee paid. "Yourself?"
"Solcintra."
Kind of an Inner world, was Solcintra, or near enough that somebody from the Rim might think it not quite on the Arm, proper. A kind of has-been old settle in a quiet area where everyone traded with neighbors, that was all. Not a place she'd normally find herself. Still, you never knew.
"Anything special?" she asked, and saw him shrug against the lounger's deep back. She hadn't asked what kind of pilot he was; he might be anything from a cruise liner captain to a freight hauler to a relief man. 'Course, his presence on Faldaiza Port kind of argued against the cruise liner.
"There's a military unit garrisoned there," he was saying carefully over his glass. "A good few dozen ships attached to it. Most of them seemed to be in twilight."
Well, and that was news, after all. Soldiers were inevitable, in Cantra's experience. Garrisoned soldiers—they were something of an oddity. And even moreso, squatting down on a not-especially-prosperous world, trailing a buncha dozen sleepy ships . . . .
"And how did you find things at Chelbayne?" he asked, taking his turn, which was polite and his right under peaceful welcome.
"Spooked," she said frankly. "Pilots doubling up on port. Rumors thicker'n star fields. Reported sightings of anything you like, including world-eaters, manipulators, and ancient space probes showing up with 'return to sender' writ on the power panels."
"Huh," he said, sounding intrigued in the way somebody would be by somebody else's craziness. "Anything stand up to scrutiny?"
She shrugged in her turn, feeling the lounger move to accommodate the motion. "The probes I heard about from somebody normally straight. On port for repair, she was, and looking to sign a new co-pilot. Could be she was ground-crazy. My inclination is to discount all I heard, no matter who gave it out. But maybe somebody really is collecting old space probes. Why not?"
"Why not?" he echoed comfortably. "See any yourself on the way in?"
She snorted. "Not to recognize." She sipped the last of her glass and put it on the table. "You been on port awhile?"
"A while," he allowed, finishing his own glass and leaning out of the embrace of the lounger. "More wine?"
"Yes," she said. And then, thinking that might have sounded too short, "Please."
He poured, splitting what was left equally between the two glasses, handed hers over, then sat back with his.
"Anything I should know, port-wise?" Cantra asked. "Don't want to be here past scheduled lift, paying for a mis-step."
He was quiet—thinking—honestly thinking, was her sense, and not mumming. She sipped her wine and waited.
"There seem to be some odd elements on the port," he said slowly. "I'm not clear myself what makes them odd, or if odd translates into dangerous. The locals . . . " he paused to sip his wine gently. "The locals may have caught some of that spooked feeling from Chelbayne. Usual rules apply."
The last was said without irony, and with enough emphasis to move him well out of the passenger liner column on the pilot rating chart, as far as she was concerned. That was with the usual rules being: Watch your back, watch the shadows, and always expect trouble.
"That's something," she acknowledged.
He nodded, seemed about to say something more, but the gong sounded again, and he called "Enter," instead.
The Batcher attendant slipped into the room and bowed.
"Would it please the pilots to receive their meals?"
* * *
THE FOOD AND the discussion of the food having both come to satisfactory conclusions, Cantra called for a third bottle of wine. It came promptly, was poured, and the two of them again sat deep into the loungers.
Cantra sighed, inert and content. The dinner talk, light on info as it had been, had finished unknotting the tension in her chest. She was in no hurry to move on; even the itch to find someone to share the upscale lodgings with had gone down a couple notches on the gotta list.
"So," said Jela from the depths his chair, and sounding as lazy as she felt. "Where do you go from here, if it can be told?"
That ran a little close to the edge of what was covered by peaceful welcome. Still, she didn't need to be specific as to when.
"Lifting out for the Rim," she said, which was bound to be true sometime.
"Heard there was some military action in the far-out recently," he said, slow, like he was measuring how much info to offer. "Maybe even a world-eater sighted."
She moved her shoulders, feeling the chair give and reshape. "Rim's always chancy," she said. "All sorts of weird drifts in from the Deeps. Won't be the first time I've been out that far."
"Ship shielding doesn't even give a world-eater indigestion," he pointed out, sounding sincere in his concern. "And ship beams are just an interesting appetizer."
"That's right," she said, puzzled, but willing to play. "But a ship can run; a ship can transition. World-eaters are stupid, slow and confined to normal space."
"You talk like you've had some experience there," Jela said, which was absolutely a request for more, and danced well outside the confidentials guaranteed under peaceful welcome.
She took her time having a sip of wine, weighing the story and what might be got from it that she took care not to say.
In the end, it was inertia and a full belly that made the decision. She wasn't ready to move on just yet, and there wasn't much, really, to be gained from the tale, setting aside piloting lore which this Jela, with his big shoulders and noncommital eyes, surely had, either from experience of his own or from training. He was no fresh-jet, in her professional judgment. Still, if he wanted to hear it . . . .
"Not a new tale," she said, bringing her glass down at last.
"New to me," he countered, which was true enough—or so she hoped.
"Well, then." She settled her head against the chair and paused, letting the whisper of the falling water fill the silence for a heartbeat, two . . .
"I was co-pilot, back when," she began. "The pilot had some business out on the Rim, so there we were. Problem co
me up and we lifted in a hurry, ducking out a few klicks into the Beyond." She paused to have a sip.
"That's some problem," Jela said after her glass came down again, and she nearly laughed.
You might allow it to be a problem when the cargo was wanted by the yard apes, who were all too ready to confiscate it and all the info there might be in ship's log and the heads of pilot and co-pilot. You might allow it to be a problem that the client wasn't particularly forgiving of missing deliveries and Garen having to make the call, was it better to lose the cargo out in the Deeps and maybe have a chance to collect it later, risking the client's notable bad grace, or chance a board-and-search?
She'd opted to dodge and jettison, a decision for which Cantra didn't fault her, though they never did find it again, worse luck, and wound up working the debt off across a dozen runs, the client having been that peeved by the loss.
"It was a problem of some size," she told Jela. "Understanding that the pilot was out of the Rim, original—and didn't maybe respect Beyond like she ought. Anywise, we're out there, beyond the Rim, just meditating, and giving the problem time to brew down to a lesser size, when an anomaly shows up on the far-scans." She shrugged against the chair's embrace.
"A pilot's not a pilot unless they got a curiosity bump the size of a small moon, so she and me, we decide to go take a look."
"In the Beyond?" His startlement seemed genuine. "How did you navigate?"
"Caught the Rim beacons on mid-scan and did the math on the fly," she said, off-hand, like it was no trick at all. Nor was it, by then. By then, her and Garen had been out Deep considerable.
"So, we went on out to look," she resumed. "And we got a visual on something that looked to be a bad design decision on the part of the shipwright. Big, too. Not much velocity, spill spectrum showing timonium, timonium, and for a change timonium. Tracking brain plotted its course and saw it hitting the Rim at a certain point, in a certain number of Common Years.
"The pilot hailed it on general band and I hit it with every scan we had."
She sipped. He sat, silent, waiting for the rest of it.
"Well, it didn't answer the hail, o'course. And the scans bounced. I'm thinking it was the scans got its attention, but it might've been the hail, after all. It started to rotate and it started to get hot. Radiation scan screamed death-'n-doom. We figured we knew what we had by then, and the pilot was of a mind to turn it back into Beyond, where it couldn't do much harm."
