by Judith Tarr
“I might,” said Rama. “Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
“I need you to help me find a way to keep Nevermore from turning into a U.P. colony. And you need me to help you make your way through this universe you’ve found yourself in,” she said, though she wasn’t as sure of that as she’d been when she worked it all out. “You can get into the computer, but you don’t know how people are when they’re face to face: what kinds of things they do and say, and how they keep from strangling each other. I know those things. I can take care of them while you follow the trail. There is one, isn’t there? You’re not just running around at random?”
“All I know is that the answer is out here,” he said. “I’m following my gut, you would say. I can’t explain it any more clearly than that.”
“I know about gut,” said Aisha. “You do that, and I’ll keep people from figuring out that you’re really not from around here.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “You have a plan?”
“I always have a plan,” said Aisha.
People laughed when she said that. So did he, but he wasn’t laughing at her, exactly. He appreciated her.
It was good that somebody did. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re not sending me back?”
“That’s not possible from this place,” he said.
“What about Centrum? What will you do there?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
“Look,” said Aisha. “Just keep quiet and I’ll take care of the rest. I promise I’ll send a message to Mother and Pater and Jamal when I can.”
He didn’t like being told to do anything. She knew that already. She braced against his glare, and didn’t more than half wilt under it.
When he relaxed, so did she. She shouldn’t have. “So you’re going to swear yourself as my servant,” he said.
She looked down at her clothes. She’d decided on black robes and veils—not like Malia’s, exactly; the tribes weren’t the only people in the worlds who followed that tradition. She didn’t have any weapons, and she wasn’t likely to get them. “I’m not swearing anything,” she said. “This makes it easier to be invisible, that’s all.”
“You know what these robes mean where I come from,” he said.
“Yes, but who else in the universe does?”
“I do,” said Rama.
Aisha resisted a sudden urge to shrink down small. “My religion has these, too. They’re called the burqa. It’s very old-fashioned and some people think it’s horrible, but we can use it. I don’t need to turn into a fighting machine.”
“No?”
“No,” said Aisha.
“Then what will you be? My concubine?”
Aisha knew what the word meant. She didn’t mean to blush. “You’re ’way too old for me,” she said.
He stared; then he laughed. “Oh! My wounded heart. A warrior you’ll be, then. I’ll teach you enough to keep you safe.”
Aisha could argue with that, but she decided not to. “I know some of it already,” she said.
“Good,” said Rama. “You’ll be learning much more before we’re done.”
“I’m ready for that,” said Aisha. Maybe she even believed it. Some of it.
19
Ship’s night found Khalida unable to sleep. The consensus that dimmed the lights in the public areas and put the majority of the crew off duty was out of sync with the time zone she had left. Her body still, after three shipdays, insisted on waking up halfway through ship’s day and staying awake well into the night.
Tomiko was sound asleep, curled in a ball in the middle of the doublewide captain’s bunk. Khalida kissed her ear, which made her stir, but barely; then slipped softly out of bed.
She was hungry, maybe. The buzz of last night’s brandy had worn off. The headache was no better than it had been when she started, if no worse.
The captain’s quarters had a direct link to the ship’s main computer. Khalida’s clearances got her in; she found the files where she knew they would be.
Hands slid across her bare shoulders and down over her breasts. Tomiko’s arms clasped tight around her.
She clasped them in return, but most of her mind was on the link that Tomiko had refrained from mentioning. Her orders were here, not on Centrum. She could go that far to get them from someone higher up, or she could access them now.
If she did that, there was no getting away from them. No last few T-days of strictly relative freedom. No blissful ignorance.
She keyed the codes. The locks let go one by one. Her orders from MI streamed through the implants into her brain.
~~~
“Khalida?”
She was lying on her back. Tomiko bent over her. Her headache was gone.
“God damn,” said Tomiko. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” Khalida said. She caught herself groping around inside her mind, hunting for the pain that had been part of her for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to be without it.
What she found instead made no sense at all. It was like the strongest, clearest, highest-security uplink she had ever been part of, but the ship’s feed was off. She should have been alone inside her head.
She looked at Tomiko and saw layer on layer on layer. Worry on top, love and fear below that, calculation down deeper, a quick run-through of possibilities, including the one that Khalida might be a security risk or worse. Psych repair was supposed to be foolproof, and Khalida had been duly repaired—but she had refused followup therapy. She might have been more broken than anyone knew, or have broken all over again for reasons Tomiko could not know. She had been isolated on a nearly deserted world, after all, with only the most basic medical services.
That barely stung, even the parts that were true. Tomiko was Spaceforce. She ought to be thinking that way.
Khalida should not be inside Tomiko’s head. She was not psi-five—because that was what it took to be doing what she was doing.
What was Rama? Was there even a number for what he was?
That thought appeared completely at random. It shut off the stream of thoughts that poured from Tomiko. It put her face to psychic face with the man—psi master—mage—whatever he was—from Nevermore.
Nothing ever seemed to surprise Rama. He did something that she would replay over and over in her memory, to try to understand it. It felt as if he had tucked in all her flapping edges, smoothed and secured them, so that nothing could get in and she could not, inadvertently, get out.
All of it passed in the fraction of a second. She reached up and pulled Tomiko down and kissed her until they were both dizzy.
~~~
With luck Khalida might have kept Tomiko distracted until the alarm called her to her day’s duties on the ship, but Khalida had never had much of that. When their breathing had quieted and the sweat had dried on their bodies, Tomiko propped herself on her elbow and said, “I’m putting you in for a psych evaluation.”
“Good,” said Khalida, and she meant that.
Not just because she needed it, either. A new evaluation would delay the orders, if not invalidate them. Whatever had knocked her flat on her back had not even touched that memory.
Report to authorities in Centrum. Secure transport to Araceli. Mission specifics attached.
Those were secure in her head, too. She had been breaking apart by then, but the download had completed before the blackout.
The situation she had supposedly resolved, was not. All those lives were gone for nothing. Castellanos was still at war with Ostia. Ostia, broken, battered, be-nuked Ostia, would not stop fighting. Would not stop demanding that she come back, not because it wanted to indict her for high crimes and misdemeanors, but because it would not negotiate with Castellanos unless she served as mediator.
It was insane. It was impossible—which was why Ostia was insisting on it; she needed no terabytes of analyses to be sure of that.
She could not go back there. She was broken already. That would crush
her to powder.
A psych evaluation would show MI exactly how damaged she was. It would end her career, too, but by now she was ready to let it happen. No one had any business using Khalida for anything more challenging than cataloguing artifacts on an archaeological site at the back end of nowhere.
It was all so simple after all. Clean, almost. Clinical. Insane, no question, but insanity was good. Insanity would keep her away from Araceli—and Araceli far, far away from her.
“I owe you,” she said to Rama in her head. She had no sure way of knowing if he heard, but she suspected he did. He sent no answer that she was aware of. He had his own insanity to wallow in, and his own obsession to chase after.
Khalida smiled at Tomiko. It was a great relief to have everything settled.
Tomiko did not look relieved at all. But there at last was the bell for the day shift, and she had a ship to run. She left Khalida with stern orders not to get into any more trouble than she could possibly help.
Those were orders Khalida could easily obey. She found she could sleep then, and when she woke she treated herself to a long, blissful session in the cleanser. When she was clean inside and out, she dressed in a fresh uniform and ate a solid meal of shipboard rations. Even those tasted good in the mood she was in.
~~~
A ping waited for her in the ship’s system. Captain’s dinner tonight. She was expected to attend.
Captain’s dinner was a formality she could hardly avoid. Whatever Tomiko was to Khalida, Captain Hashimoto of the Leda and Captain Nasir of MI were expected to observe certain proprieties. Which meant at least one official gathering during the voyage, and suitable courtesies paid to the ship’s officers.
It also meant that she would have to face the boy from Psycorps. She braced for that, fortifying herself with the assurance—even if it might be false—that he could not get into her head. There were protocols for that, and MI had backups of its own. She was safe.
So, she hoped, was the other guest at the captain’s table. Civilian passengers were always invited, and if they were wise, they accepted. Rama was wise.
He seemed to be on his best behavior. He wore the plain grey suit that Vikram had given him, and no torque. No jewelry at all that she could see. He still refused to cut his hair, but tonight it was clubbed at his nape: enough of a Govindan style to avoid attracting notice.
For the most part he kept quiet. He ate enough to be polite, and sipped the wine that came with each course. The conversation flowed over and past him.
It dawned on her gradually that he was controlling it. He was very subtle. A glance, a word, a brief question: he steered them all in the direction he wanted.
She could not tell exactly what that was. War stories, old jokes and older gossip, the virtues of this wine over that—there seemed to be no particular order in it.
Lieutenant Zhao had got married not long ago. He linked them all to an image of a handsome young woman in Psycorps green, with five pips on the collar.
He was transparently proud. No one said what most of them must be thinking: that the Corps was breeding for more than looks. This was an island of civility; the response that was expected was to share one’s own joy, one’s spouse or family or child, or if one had none, one smiled and asked after those who did.
What it must be like for someone whose whole world was so long gone that no one else alive remembered it, Khalida could not imagine. Rama was perfectly opaque, and perfectly polite.
Then Lieutenant Zhao said, “You’re from Dreamtime, yes? Bai was stationed there before we married, in Woomera. Have you been there?”
His gaze was limpid, his expression perfectly innocent. As traps went, it was not too badly laid.
Rama smiled. “There is no Psycorps station in Woomera.”
“She was liaison to the ambassador from Araceli,” Lieutenant Zhao said.
Khalida’s spine went stiff. This was a trap, yes, but maybe it was not laid for Rama.
He raised a brow. “Ah,” he said. “So you are both from Araceli.”
“Bai was born there,” said Lieutenant Zhao. “I was born on Earth, in Chengdu.”
“In the old city?”
Lieutenant Zhao nodded, with some regret. “We left before I was old enough to remember. I grew up on Araceli, near the Ara itself.”
Rama did not move and his expression did not change, but Khalida felt his alertness like a prickle on the skin. “Is it true what they say of that? That it’s a remnant of a race that went before?”
Khalida opened her mouth to decry the myth. The flick of his glance stilled her.
Lieutenant Zhao shook his head and smiled. “That’s very pretty, but it’s just a story. It’s a natural formation, a stone arch. Someone a long time ago carved glyphs in the rock, but those are forgeries. Araceli had no human inhabitants before Earth colonized it.”
“That you know of,” Rama said.
“We’re sure,” said Lieutenant Zhao. “There’s no evidence of such people at all. Just that one arch and the carvings on it. Stargates are an old story, a fiction from Earth. There’s never been any such transport in this universe.”
“Too bad, too,” said Leda’s XO. She was a wry and wickedly humorous woman, and she had been greatly enjoying the wine. “We’d be out of a job, but imagine opening up a gate and walking from one world to the next. The whole universe would be as close as the bodega down the street.”
“We’d still need security forces,” Tomiko said. “First-contact units. Armies.”
“Right,” said the XO. “You never know what you’d find on the other side, if you opened up a new one. Still—the possibilities!”
“All sadly mythical, I’m afraid,” said Lieutenant Zhao. “There are only two ways to get from world to world: sublight slog or subspace jump. You can’t tame a wormhole and turn it into a gate.”
They all nodded and sighed. All but Rama. He sat back, and Khalida could swear he was biting back laughter, or possibly tears.
Maybe she imagined it. His face was expressionless. He reached for his cup and drank slowly, as if hiding behind it. Or else he simply admired the captain’s taste in Shiraz.
20
“Tell me about this Dreamtimer with the Govindan name,” Tomiko said.
Khalida had not expected Tomiko to miss a word or a glance, but she had rather hoped not to have to explain Rama. They were still in the captain’s mess, finishing off the last bottle of wine. Everyone else had long since rolled off to bed.
Khalida turned the goblet in her fingers. In that light, the wine looked like blood. “He does have Govindan relatives,” she said. “You know Vikram, on Nevermore? That’s his cousin.”
“I’ve read the dossier,” Tomiko said. Her tone was as dry as the pinot blanc she was finishing off. “It’s as interesting for what it doesn’t say as for what it does. Is he one of yours?”
“MI’s?” Khalida was stalling. They both knew it. “If he were, would I be able to say so?”
“No,” Tomiko said. “He looks modified, but the scans say he’s not. Whoever gengineered him, they were good. They weren’t trying to hide it, either.”
“Truth in labeling?”
Tomiko bared her teeth in a grin. “If I swung in that direction, I’d be jumping his bones. Have you noticed the way he moves?”
Khalida had noticed. No one with eyes could avoid it.
“He was doing katas this morning,” Tomiko said, “down in the cargo bay with his ninja. He’s better at them than she is. In half-gravity, he was literally flying.”
“His—” Khalida bit her tongue.
Tomiko’s grin stretched even wider. “Oh yes, he omitted to declare that part of his cargo. I’ve docked his account accordingly. So far he hasn’t said a word about it.”
Khalida was on her feet. Her head only swam a little. When she roared out of the captain’s mess, she was aware that Tomiko followed.
Good. She was going to need the backup—and the authority.
~~~
Aisha was asleep in the bunk closest to the cabin’s door. Her black robe must have been appropriated from Blackroot tribe, though she seemed not to have borrowed the weapons to go with it. The veils lay crumpled beside her.
Rama was awake. He had the walls set to show a star field approximating the one they were jumping through. It looked as if he was floating in space.
Khalida’s grand fire of outrage died, but the ember was hot enough to keep her going. “That,” she said, perfectly reasonably, she thought, “is my niece you’ve kidnapped.”
“She kidnapped herself,” said Rama. “She stowed away. I believe she found the inspiration in a novel about pirates.”
Khalida opened her mouth, then shut it with a click. “And you let her?”
“Didn’t you?”
“I had no idea she’d even try it!”
“You should have,” he said. “That is a very determined child.”
“Determined to do what?”
“Solve mysteries. Find answers. Save the world.”
That was Aisha to the life. Khalida was near to hating this alien, this creature out of time, for understanding Aisha so much better than her own family did.
“You let her do it,” Khalida said. “You abetted it.”
“I never knew she was here until just before the jump,” Rama said. “Should I have let her go through it in the hallway? Or in the cargo bay?”
“How could you not know?”
He let the echoes die before he answered. “I do not know everything.”
Was that a flicker of regret? Khalida was too angry to care. “The minute we come out of jump, she’s going straight back to her parents.”
No one argued with that. Even Aisha, who was awake: dark eyes, stricken face, staring at her. Khalida held out her hand. “Get up. You’re coming with me.”
Aisha sat up but made no move to take Khalida’s hand. “Where?”
Khalida had not thought that far. Yet. “Out of here. Where you’ll be safe.”
“She’s as safe here as she is anywhere,” Tomiko said.
Khalida spun toward her. That was betrayal, that salt-in-the-wound sting. “You knew!”
