by Sharon Lee
There was a silence. Rather a lengthy silence.
The ship will be able to depart in six station days.
So soon? She bowed her head.
“That is well, then. Keep me informed.”
* * * * *
The schematics were fascinating—and horrifying.
Jen Sin had been a member of a Scout exploratory team. He, as all explorer Scouts, had been well drilled on the seeming and the dangers of what was called Old Tech. His team had discovered a small cache of what might have been toys—small, crude ceramic shapes that might infiltrate a man’s mind, make him receptive to thoughts that he would not recognize as belonging to an Other.
The cache of toys they had found had been depleted, being able to effect nothing more than a sense of melancholy and foreboding in those unheedful enough to pick them up. His team—well. Krechin had wrapped them in muffle, and sealed them into a stasis box until they could be properly handed over to the Office of Old Technology at Headquarters.
The toys had been frightening enough, but he had an extra burden of knowledge, for he had read the logs and diaries of Clan Korval as far back as Cantra yos’Phelium, who had brought the understanding that the old universe and the old technologies had together been the downfall of vast civilizations. And that had been Old Technology in small gulps, as might be found in a toy, or a personalized hand weapon, or a geegaw worn for nefarious purpose.
To find a working, aware structure entirely built from forbidden tech—that was enough to give a Scout nightmares. Even Korval might quail before such a thing.
And the light keeper’s purpose was to keep it from doing mischief?
Mischief, by the gods. And his ship was in its keeping. Worse. His ship was in its power, being modified, never doubt it, as he stood by—and did nothing.
Jen Sin closed the schematics and rose from the desk. He quit the library, and walked toward the hub, where there was a gym.
Exercise would calm him.
And then he would need to speak with the light keeper.
* * *
“Tell me,” he said to the light keeper, as she settled her cheek on his shoulder, “about this place.”
She stirred, eyelashes fluttering against his skin.
“This space?”
“No, the station,” he murmured. “The schematics woke questions.”
She laughed softly. “What sorts of questions, now?”
“Well. How did the station come to be? Who built it? How did you come to keep it? Where are the others?…Those sorts of questions. I don’t doubt I can find more, if you wish.”
“No, those will do, I think.”
She sighed, relaxing against him so completely that he thought for a moment that he had been cheated and she had slipped over into sleep.
“How the station came to be. My sisters of the Sanderat believed that the Great Enemy built it. We found it abandoned, and riding in space where a waystation had been sore needed. The Soldiers were in favor of destroying it, but it was in Sanderat space, and we undertook to Keep it.
“Three of our order were dispatched…Faren, Jeneet, and…Lorith.”
She tensed. He held his breath.
“Lorith,” she breathed. “That is my name.”
“May I address you thus?” he asked, when several minutes had passed and she had said nothing more, nor relaxed.
“Yes.” She sighed again, and became…somewhat…less tense.
“What happened,” he murmured, “to Faren and Jeneet?”
“Faren died in the storm,” she whispered. “We were without power, adrift, for many elapsed units. When we came to rest and repairs were made—it was no longer possible to reclaim her. The Light took new samples, from Jeneet, from me.”
Samples. He repressed the shiver sternly and asked his next question softly, “What storm was that, Lorith?”
“Why, the big storm that shifted everything away from where it had been. When it was done, the Light was…where you found it, and not in orbit about Tinsori, as it had been. Tinsori, we were not able to locate. The coordinates of our present location…were not possible. Jeneet took our boat and went out to find where we were. That was…much time has elapsed since then. I fear that she has been lost, or died, or taken up in battle.”
Korval had an odd history; it was odder still to hear that history from other lips, from another perspective, and yet, that war that had displaced a universe or more…from one space-time to another.
That war had ended hundreds of years ago.
He stroked her hair, feeling the crystal beads slide through his fingers.
“Lorith,” he said gently, oh, so very gently. “I cannot allow my ship to rest any longer in care of the Light.”
She raised her head and looked down at him, eyes wide and very black.
“It said…six days, as we measure them here, when time is aware. Six days, and your ship will be ready.” She frowned. “I have exerted my will. You will come to no harm, though I will…miss you.”
“You need not. Come with me.”
“No, who would Keep the Light? It might do anything, left to itself.”
So it might.
He sat up, and she did, drawing a crimson cover over her naked shoulders.
“I must go,” he said and slid out of bed, reaching for his leathers.
* * * * *
He was determined and she could not—would not—influence him to wait. She showed him the way to the repair bay, hearing the voice of the Light.
Little man, you will have your ship when it is properly prepared.
Jen Sin checked, then continued toward the place where the tunnel intersected the hall.
“The pilot decides when his ship is ready,” he said aloud. “I go now, and I thank you and the light keeper for your care.”
She hardened her will and pushed at the Light.
“Let him go to his duty,” she said, and added, terrified for his safety, “unless the ship is not functional.”
She was an idiot; her fear for him softened her will. And in that moment, the Light struck.
The walls crackled; she felt the charge build and simultaneously threw her will and herself between Jen Sin and the bolt.
She heard him scream—her name it was—and then heard nothing more.
* * * * *
He came to himself in the library, with no memory of having arrived there. He supposed that he had run—run like a hare from Lorith’s murder, to save his own precious self, to survive against every odd—that was Korval’s talent.
Craven, he told himself, running his hands into his hair and bending his head. He was weeping, at least he had that much heart.
But the Scout mind would not be stilled, and too soon it came to him that—he dared not leave the Light unwatched. For who knew what it might do, left alone?
He had the schematics, and his Scout-trained talents. Did he dare move against it and risk his life? Or ought he to stand guard and prevent it doing harm?
“Jen Sin?” He would swear that he felt her hand on his hair, her voice edged with concern. “Were you hurt?”
Slowly, he lifted his face, staring into hers, the pointed chin, the space-black eyes, and the crystal beads glittering in pale, curly hair.
“You were killed,” he said, toneless.
She stepped away. “No.”
“Yes!” He snapped to his feet, the chair clattering backward, snatched her shoulders and shook her.
A thought tantalized, then crystallized.
“How many times has it killed you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shockingly calm. “Perhaps I die every time we drift back to quiet after an alert, and the Light remakes me at need. Does it matter? I am always myself and I have my memories. The sample, you know.”
He stared, speechless, feeling her fragile and real under his fingers.
“The sample, of course,” he agreed. “What came of Jeneet’s sample, Lorith?”
“She did not use the beads, and when I called he
r back, she remembered nothing.”
He closed his eyes briefly, recalling the unit he had risen from, and the crystal-cold voice offering him a choice.
“Jen Sin?”
He raised his hand and ran his fingers through her hair, feeling the cool beads slip past his skin.
“I wonder,” he said softly. “Is there a…sample of me?”
Her eyes flickered.
“Yes.”
“And have you more beads?”
“Yes.”
“Then this is what I think we should do, while I wait for my ship to be…properly prepared.”
* * * * *
The operator sat at her board, and watched the ship tumble out of the repair bay. The scans elucidated a vessel in good repair, the hull intact, all systems green and vigorous.
She took a breath and watched her screens, dry-eyed, until the Jump glare faded and the space at Tinsori Light was empty, for as far as her instruments could scan.
* * * * *
He brought the pinbeam online, entered the message in Korval House code. The message that would warn the clan away and see Tinsori Light scrubbed from the list of autocoords in Korval courier ships. The message that would tell the delm the Jump pilot’s ring was lost, along with the good ship and pilot. The message that would tell the delm that when she needed another packet delivered, it could never again be Jen Sin who would do it.
Emergency repairs at Tinsori Light. Left my ring in earnest. The keeper’s a cantra-grubbing pirate, but the ship should hold air to Lytaxin. Send one of ours and eight cantra to redeem my pledge. Send them armed. In fact, send two…
The ’beam went. He waited patiently for the ack, looking down at his hands, folded on the board, ringless and calm.
He reviewed his plan and found it, if not good, certainly necessary.
A ship properly prepared by an agent of the Great Enemy? How could he bring such a ship into the universe proper, save for one thing only?
Comm chimed; the ’beam had been acknowledged by the first relay.
Jen Sin yos’Phelium Clan Korval pressed the sequence of buttons he had preset and released the engine’s energy at once, catastrophically.
* * * * *
She felt a hand settle on her shoulder and looked up, finding his reflection in a darkened screen.
“He’s gone?”
“Yes.”
She spun the chair and came to her feet; he dropped back to give her room, the beads glittering like rain in his dark hair.
“Now, it is for us,” she said. “Will we survive it?”
He smiled and held out his hand, the big ring sparkling on his finger.
“Many times, perhaps,” he said.
* * * * *
Space is haunted.
Pilots know this; stationmasters and light keepers, too; though they seldom speak of it, even to each other. Why would they? Ghost or imagination, wyrd space or black hole, life—and space—is dangerous.
The usual rules apply.
