by Sharon Lee
Theo’s head rang, even as her hands moved over the board, the heads-up images flashing from ordinary status reports to the start of the targeting module.
“Ship in peril?” That was Clarence.
“Yes, Pilot.”
“We have a transmission,” Joyita added, “coming in off an odd, old band. Transcribing…translating, I should say, pilots.”
“Where is it?” Theo demanded, and the ID and image splashed onto the screen, green and red intermingled, targeting options dropping away as Theo waved hand over the boards to raise shields.
“Bechimo…” she began, and stopped as Joyita began to speak.
“Spiral Dance, Spiral Dance, late out of Solcintra. Cantra yos’Phelium, master and owner.…Message repeats on auto-loop.”
“Out of Solcintra?” demanded Win Ton.
“With those lines?” added Kara.
“yos’Phelium?” asked Clarence, with a sideways look to Theo, who ignored him in favor of asking her own question.
“Bechimo, is the same object a target and a ship-in-peril?”
“Yes, Theo.”
“Why?”
“The vessel carries a subetheric device; there is significant shed of timonium molecules; analysis indicates that the ship is adrift; and…”
“And?” Theo asked, feeling the ship’s reluctance and not yet understanding the underflow of a particular set of sensors.…
“There is a life-form on that vessel. Not human. But alive.”
“Joyita, open comm, please.”
“Yes, Pilot Theo.”
“Spiral Dance, this is Theo Waitley, captain of Bechimo. Please report your condition. Are you in need of rescue?”
There was a long pause. Theo looked ’round at her crew.
“yos’Phelium?” she asked back at Clarence.
He shrugged. “Cantra yos’Phelium, that’s an old, old name, if true. What I’ve always heard said was that her and her co-pilot brought those who now style themselves Liaden out from the old place, to the planet they’re on now.” He paused, as if considering the reliability of a memory, sighed and shook his head.
“The way I always heard it, the ship they came in, that ship is still in the possession of Clan Korval.”
Well, Theo thought, there wasn’t anything strange about Korval having an old ship or two in its possession. What it might be doing here, in peril…
“Pilot, we have no response,” said Joyita, looking sober. “It could be that the automatics are working, but that whatever set them adrift took out comm, too.”
She nodded.
“Bechimo, is the ship Spiral Dance in danger of exploding?”
The sensor feeds showed colors to her, and some she felt as a kind of distant vibration; the images gave her clues to energy states now and Bechimo’s own voice came to her rather than echoed through Joyita.
“I detect no such conditions, Theo.”
She looked ’round at the faces—her crew, weary but willing—and nodded again.
“We’ll stay alert, and have lunch. We’ll scan all details, and watch the area for more flotsam.”
Theo looked across to Clarence and Kara at their boards, and Win Ton, back in the Jump Seat, and nodded.
“Then, if it looks stable, then we’ll bring her in. She’ll fit In the hold where we kept Arin’s Toss.”
“Yes, Theo,” Bechimo said, sounding positively cheerful.
In Screen Six, Joyita smiled.
* * *
It was Win Ton who made first contact. He had suggested, even argued, for the duty, citing his language background, his Scout training, and his previous experience in contacting old-line ships. Theo let him have it, on the basis of experience. Neither one of them said what they both must have been thinking—that he was the one who was most expendable.
As if any of them was.
The hatch presented some initial difficulties. They lacked entrance codes and key, and without an able-bodied person inside, there was no clear way forward.
Eventually Bechimo was able to assist, and Kara’s remotes. The air that flowed out to mingle with their own atmosphere was good, fresh, even, and a little on the high side for oxy content.
It was only then, the remotes showing an inner door that appeared to need palm pressure to open, that Win Ton used the hold’s airlock, and entered, reassured the while by Joyita’s voice and presence on the comm.
Win Ton’s shoulder-camera showed seals that were used, but not worn, clean decking and polished bright-work.
Lights came up in an orderly fashion as he progressed; nothing impeded him until he came to the flight deck.
Where he stopped and said plaintively, “What?”
Theo didn’t blame him. The camera showed the scene, lit by the low-key flight-light oft preferred by courier pilots.
The pilot’s chair was empty, the main board locked and cold. Only the all-call seemed to operating—there was no sign of pilot or injured crew.
Also—also there was this. A fiber box had been grey-taped to the co-pilot’s chair, in front of the board that showed no lights.
Win Ton moved in that direction, knew the camera to be carrying the view back to Theo should there be an issue.…
In the box…was a tree, its leaves green with health, and moving slightly in what may have been the breeze from a ventilator duct.
On the whole, it seemed happy to see him.
Epilogue
Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
The front door was made of dark wood, with Clan Korval’s house-sign—the “tree-and-dragon”—carved in bas-relief. In the frame of the door on the right-hand side was a palm-pad; on the left side was a rope. Attached to the rope, fixed above the frame, was a bell made of cloudy yellow metal.
Kamele frowned, raised her hand—and yanked down on the pull-rope.
The noise was louder than she had expected, and she jumped, dropping the rope as if it were hot.
Scarcely had she settled to her feet again, than the door opened.
“Good-day,” said the neat individual in the doorway, in strongly accented Terran. “How may I assist you?”
“Good-day,” Kamele answered, relieved to find Terran offered. Though she had painstakingly memorized the formal request in High Liaden, she suspected that her accent and emphasis was…not precisely canon.
“My name is Kamele Waitley, Professor of the History of Education at the University of Delgado. I am here to see the delm of Korval, on business of the clan.”
The gentleman inclined gravely from the waist, not so much a bow as an acknowledgment of having heard, and stepped back, pivoting slightly as he did so.
“Please, Professor Waitley, come in.”
She did so. He closed the door, gently, and once more inclined toward her.
“Please follow me. I will show you to the saloon, and leave you for a few moments while I seek the delm on your behalf.”
The saloon was scarcely a dozen steps into the house. The gentleman opened the door—the same dark wood as the front door, but lacking the carved house-sign—and moved his hand gracefully, indicating, she hoped, that she should enter.
Three steps into the room, she stopped, the sound of the door closing behind her lost in her astonishment at the room in which she found herself.
Beneath her feet was a handsome rug of bronze and brown, the design suggesting leaves. Before her was a cluster of chairs, upholstered likewise in brown and bronze, and a few small tables. To her right was a large piece of furniture, brown, with bronze drawer pulls. To the left was a sofa, brown, piled high with bronze and brown pillows. A window at the end of the room gave a garden-view of the central garden.
Kamele took a hard breath. Jen Sar—Jen Sar’s house on Leafydale Place was full of things to challenge and, yes, delight the senses. Not a proper scholar’s dwelling, according to the aesthetic of Delgado, which preferred white walls and utilitarian furnishings that would neither call attention to themselves nor divert a scholar�
�s mind from study.
This room—if Jen Sar had been accustomed to living in—to interacting with—rooms like this one…it was almost alive, this room, the parts producing a whole that was tantalizing, layered, and faintly dizzying.
Kamele drew a breath, heard a faint snap behind her, and turned, relieved to find that the formal gentleman had returned.
“Professor Waitley, Korval will see you. Please, I am asked to bring you to another room, if you will follow me.”
* * *
The room was bright with sunshine, curtains thrust back from a long wall of windows looking out over a bank of white-and-yellow flowers. A trellis at the back of the flowers supported leafy vines.
Once again, Kamele stopped a few paces within, in order to take stock. Here was no elegant bronze-and-brown room. This room’s wooden floor supported a simple and somewhat grubby blue rug, across which a baby was crawling, gurgling and determined.
On the far side of the rug stood a slender young man with untidy brown hair, wearing a high-necked black sweater and grey work pants.
He smiled at her.
“Professor Waitley,” he said, his voice soft and his Terran free of accent. “Be welcome in our house.”
She considered him. The baby shrieked merrily and continued her journey across the rug.
“I have come to speak to the delm of Korval,” Kamele said, for surely this gentle-spoken boy was no hardened administrator.
“Yes, so Mr. pel’Kana had said. We will be able to accommodate you, Professor, in only a moment. Please, will you have tea? Wine? Coffee?”
“Nothing, thank you. I realize that my call is unexpected, however, it is necessary that I see the delm of Korval.”
“And so you shall,” the boy promised, and looked toward the hall door. “Very soon, now.”
The baby shrieked again and gleefully captured the hem of Kamele’s pants.
Carefully, she went down on one knee, and offered a finger as ransom. The baby snatched it with a grin.
Kamele felt her own face relax into an answering grin.
“You’re quite the adventurer, aren’t you?”
Before the baby could answer, the hall door opened to admit a wiry, sharp-faced woman, red hair falling in a single braid, far down her back. Like the boy, she was dressed in work pants and sweater, and like him, she was surely much too young to administer the star-spanning businesses of Clan Korval, and far too open-faced to have given an order for genocide.
“Cha’trez,” said the boy, as the woman stopped at the edge of the rug and gave Kamele a perfectly friendly smile. “Here is Theo’s mother, come to speak with the delm.”
The woman—Shatres?—laughed.
“Never rains but it pours,” she commented, and held her hand down so that Kamele could shake it.
She did so, surprised at the strength of the girl’s grip.
“Pleased to meet you, Professor Waitley. I’m Miri Robertson.” She jerked her chin at the boy. “That’s Val Con yos’Phelium. You’ve met Lizzie.”
“Lizzie is extremely charming,” Kamele said, disengaging her finger from the tiny fist while her mind worked.
Her studies had taught her that yos’Phelium was the delm’s bloodline. Was it possible that this boy—
Careful of the child, she stood. Miri Robertson swooped down and gathered Lizzie up and against her shoulder. The baby laughed, and snatched at the tempting braid.
Kamele turned to the—to Val Con yos’Phelium.
“Forgive me,” she said. “Are you the delm of Korval?”
“No, I am half of the delm of Korval,” he answered earnestly, green eyes bright.
“And he’ll make you pull the rest of it out of him, question by question,” Miri Robertson said, bending a stern look on the boy, “because he’s bored today.”
She looked back to Kamele.
“What it is, we’re what’s called lifemates—equal partners. So that means, between us, him and me make one delm. It might be you don’t actually need the delm, though—you’d be surprised how many people don’t. If you’ll just acquaint us with your trouble, we can maybe solve it without having to wake up the delm.”
Kamele took a breath, and met Miri Robertson’s grey eyes.
“I am here on behalf of Jen Sar Kiladi,” she said, as calm an as factual as if she were in the classroom and these two children were her students. “I would like to see him, please.”
“Alas,” Val Con yos’Phelium said. “Jen Sar Kiladi is not here.” He glanced to his…lifemate. “Indeed, I have been only lately instructed that Kiladi does not look to Korval.”
The red-haired woman snorted a laugh, and reached ’round to disengage her braid from Lizzie’s busy fingers.
Kamele frowned.
“Forgive me, but Theo, whom you apparently have met, has let me know that he is here.” And if he is a prisoner, she thought, denied visitors—his very presence in the house denied—then what will I do?
“I think,” the boy said gently, “that Theo may have said that her father was here. It is an impertinence and it is true that I have not seen what Theo has written to you. It is, however, what I myself would write in a similar circumstance—that Father was with Korval.”
Kamele pressed her lips together.
“That’s what she wrote,” she agreed, but—
“Theo and I, you see,” the boy continued in his gentle voice, “have the honor to share a father. I am the child of…Father’s first alliance. And, yes, he has been here, but—”
“He was wounded,” Miri Robertson continued the sentence seamlessly, “by enemy action. Right now, he’s—ow!”
Val Con moved, all effortless, flowing grace. He came to Miri’s side, freed her ear from Lizzie’s grip, and lifted the baby away.
“That is not how we honor our mother,” he told her. “When will you learn manners, Talizea?”
Lizzie gurgled and snatched a handful of his hair.
“Is it too late to send her back?”
“I fear so.”
Kamele could only be grateful to them for turning their attention away from her, and giving her a moment…
She swallowed, hard; blinked her eyes to clear them. All of her study, all of her theories—Jen Sar bound unwilling to the service of Korval, and she an avenging scholar, come to liberate him!
Oh, very fine, Kamele, she told herself sharply.
But, no. Jen Sar had dropped his entire life, risked everything he was and had, in order to fly to the side of his child, who was…in a very great deal of trouble.
That made sense of everything; and was entirely consistent with the man with whom she had shared so many years.
And yet, there was still…
“When,” Kamele asked, calling their attention back to her, “will Jen Sar—will Theo’s father—return?”
“We don’t know,” Miri Robertson said solemnly. “He was wounded and now he’s in the care of—an ally.”
“It is our hope that the clan will receive him within the relumma,” Val Con added. “However, much is unsettled, especially in Korval’s orbit, and the time-frame is a hope, Professor, not a certainty.”
Another jolt, this one striking somewhere in pit of her stomach.
Jen Sar was…wounded. Wounded!
She glared at Val Con yos’Phelium, who lifted an eyebrow and tipped his head to one side in a gesture so familiar she felt her heart catch, mid-beat.
“Theo’s father is an elder scholar with more honors attached to his work than Clan Korval has ships!” she snapped. “He is a treasure, to be protected and cherished! Not sent out to be—wounded! It is not the work of elders to be wounded! Where were you, when Jen Sar was wounded?”
There was a silence—even Lizzie held still.
“He was someplace else, and in just as much danger,” said a clear, cool voice from her right. Kamele turned to look at Miri Robertson, who nodded, once. “I sent him—Theo’s father. Job had to be done, and there wasn’t anybody else.”
> Her expression was firm, her eyes unwavering, and Kamele believed—believed without doubt—that this woman would, if necessary, order a planet fired upon—would do the deed herself, if there was no one else to do the job.
She inclined her head.
“I’ll go to him. Where is this…ally?”
“We don’t know,” said Val Con yos’Phelium, and raised the hand not full of Lizzie placatingly when she rounded on him.
“We don’t know, Professor—and that is wise. Korval is hunted, and space is dangerous. Our ally is old—old and very canny. As much as I would rather the clan enclosed him, Father is well-protected where he is.”
“Space is dangerous…” she repeated, and took a breath. “I have another topic.”
He inclined his head, Lizzie grabbed another handful of hair, and he sighed, lifting his hand to work her tiny fingers loose.
“Yes. My daughter flies for Tree-and-Dragon. The news reports—”
“Ah.” He smiled at her. “We are aware. Master Trader yos’Galan, as contract-holder, has sent that Theo must come home—here to Surebleak. I have sent, as her brother, suggesting the same. Once she is here, where it is, strange to say, somewhat safer than space, we can together consider what is best to do. Certainly, she will wish to fly. It only falls to us to discover how she may fly without inviting unprovoked attacks upon her ship, and slurs against her good character.”
“Depending on where she was, exactly, on that Loop Shan sketched out for her,” Miri added; “she could definitely be here within the relumma.”
“There’s more,” Kamele said, looking between the two of them. “I was—I believe that one of my fellow passengers on the cruise liner wished to take me as a hostage to the reward for Theo’s apprehension.”
Val Con frowned, his mouth tightening.
“How did you elude this ambitious person?”
She sighed. “I left the ship and everything I had with me, except what was in my jacket, and hired as working crew on the Judy, bound in to Surebleak.”
He smiled.
“Excellent.”
“What I think you ought to do,” Miri said, “since you brought these things to us—I think you ought to stay here. Sooner or later, Theo and her father are bound to show up, and when they do, you’ll be on the spot.”
