Mighty Good Road

by Melissa Scott

  “Why not bring someone in from the Loop? At least we’d know they’d be reliable.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Heikki said. “I think what we’d gain in reliability we’d lose in local knowledge. No, our own program’s pretty sophisticated; with that and the local mets, we should be all right.”

  Two days later, they left Exchange Point Seven for Iadara. They travelled by startrain to Exchange Point Six—halfway across the Loop, despite its number—and then Heikki sent the others on ahead on the FTLport while she supervised their container through Customs. She had done this a hundred times before, and never yet had it gone smoothly. This was no exception: by the time she reached the entrance to the FTLport, container floating behind her on its grav disks, shepherded by a pair of union handlers, her temper was growing short, and she glowered impartially at both the handlers and the lanky steward, frowning over her manifest. To Heikki’s surprise, however, the steward seemed concerned only that the crate’s mass match the numbers she had been given in the shipping order. Once that had been confirmed, she saw the container aboard without trouble, and turned to show Heikki to her cabin. “Unless you want your partner to show you,” she added. Her tone made her preference clear.

  Heikki glanced up the boarding tunnel, and saw Djuro’s wiry figure just inside the circle of the hatch. She hid her frown, and shrugged. “That’s fine with me,” she said, and the steward nodded.

  “Rec room and passengers’ mess are on the same level, unless you want meals in your cabin. Times and the surcharges are posted for that. Engineering and control are off-limits—no offense—and you should remain in your cabin any time the red lights are on. Otherwise, enjoy your voyage.”

  “Thanks,” Heikki said, but the steward had already turned away, her mind fully focussed on the next piece of cargo to come aboard. Heikki shrugged to herself— she was used to the vagaries of FTLships’ crews—and started up the tube toward the hatch, her single carryall balanced on her shoulder.

  At the top of the hatch, Djuro came forward as though offering to take her bag; at the same time, he said, “We’ve got company.”

  “Oh?” Heikki waved away the offer of assistance, her eyes suddenly wary.

  “Yeah. Electra FitzGilbert, her name is—she works for Lo-Moth.”

  “I’ve met her,” Heikki said. “She’s the director of operations, was the director for this particular flight. She belongs on Iadara, not in the main offices—she may just be going home.”

  “Do you really think so?” Djuro asked, and Heikki smiled.

  “No. But what else can we do? Show me my cabin, Sten, and then we can talk.”

  The cabin proved to be about what she had expected, small and spartan, with most of its space taken up by the bunk and the limited-access console wedged into one corner. At least it had its own bath, Heikki thought, tossing her carryall onto the mattress, and the bunk, at least, was reasonably large. “Relax, Sten,” she said aloud. “Even if FitzGilbert is going back to keep an eye on us, what harm can it do? We’re honest—and if she isn’t we’ll deal with her.”

  “I hope to hell you’re right,” Djuro said morosely, and looked instinctively for the monitor.

  Heikki smiled, “It’s good to be back in the Precincts, isn’t it?”

  Djuro flushed slightly. “There are times,” he said, “when a person can’t remember where he is.”

  “Let it ride for now,” Heikki said, lowering her voice. “Which cabin is she in?”

  “Two upship and across the corridor. They aren’t numbered. I’m in the one in between.”

  Heikki nodded. “I’m going to unpack, then. I’ll see you at dinner.”

  “Right,” Djuro said, and closed the cabin door behind him.

  The freighter left dock on schedule, but Heikki, rereading the tapes she’d received from FourSquare, was barely aware of the shifts of power. She looked up when the bulkheads around her seemed to lurch as the ship went from dock gravity to its own generators, but then returned to her reading. The faint thrum of the engines deepened as the tug cast off, but she heard that only as a counterpoint to the Iadaran wind. Of all Foursquare’s data, the only useful tape had been the record of the locator’s automatic transmissions: it showed routine readings for LTA status and weather alike, then the rising temperature that often preceded Iadaran storms. The LTA had dropped a few hundred meters—normal precaution, in case they were forced to land—and then the transmissions had ceased. Heikki stared at the strings of numbers, seeing instead one of the massive silver-enveloped ships soaring against the brassy Iadaran sky. She could almost see the heat rippling up off the jungle, could hear the first faint hiss of a rising wind…. The crew would have been worried, certainly—back country weather was nothing to fool around with, everyone knew that. She pictured them talking to each other, Firsters murmuring back and forth in their lilting accent, and then the decision to drop lower, perhaps swing off course toward one of the safe-harbor clearings every back country pilot knew about….

  She stopped abruptly. I don’t even know if the crew were Firsters or Incomers, she thought, with some surprise. And it might make a difference. She sighed then, and set her workboard aside. The chronometer on the console showed nearly 1900 hours by ship’s time: almost dinnertime, for the passengers. She touched keys, checking the schedule for the first FTL run—it wouldn’t happen until well after ship’s midnight; she could afford to eat a decent meal—and then touched the button that would project a schematic of their planned course and present position on the main screen. After only a moment’s hesitation, she blanked the workboard, locked her tapes into her personal strongbox, and started toward the passengers’ mess.

  The larger cabin was surprisingly comfortable: whatever money had been budgeted for the paying passengers had been spent on its fittings. A galley console filled one narrow end of the room, and a much larger media center took up perhaps two-thirds of the long inner wall. At the moment, its green-black surface was broken into facets, each one showing either the ship’s projected course or an elaborate relative-times chart. They meant nothing, of course, but the room’s sole occupant had not bothered to adjust the controls. Electra FitzGilbert looked up as the door sighed back, and gave a curt nod of greeting. Heikki was too well-schooled to show her dismay, but she felt her heart sink. Where the hell’s Sten? she thought, and said aloud, “Good evening, Dam’ FitzGilbert.”

  “Dam’ Heikki.” To Heikki’s surprise, the dark woman did not return to the workboard propped beside her tray, but blanked the screen and set it aside. “The dinner isn’t bad at all.”

  A typical oblique ‘pointer invitation, Heikki thought. I wonder exactly what she wants? “Thanks,” she said, and turned to the menu displayed on the galley screen. It was typical FTLship fare, heavy on the ubiquitous grains and shipgrown vegetables, but healthy and satisfying. Heikki considered the list for a moment, then touched keys. A moment later, the serving hatch slid open, and Heikki collected the steaming dishes and slid them painfully onto the recessed tray. There was a small bar as well, but she settled for a pot of tea instead—alcohol and FTL travel did not mix well—and returned to the table. FitzGilbert was watching her from under lowered lashes.

  “Your partner was in,” she said, after a moment.

  “Oh?” Heikki hesitated for a moment, then decided that there was no point in refusing the overture point blank. “Did he eat?”

  FitzGilbert shook her head. “He went off with the big man—he said he knew someone aboard?”

  Nkosi would, Heikki thought. Pilots tended to have friends—or friends of friends—scattered across known space, precincts and Loop alike, and Jock was not the sort to miss any chance of renewing connections. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “Pilots do know people, and Sten used to be in FTL engineering.” It was a concession, she thought, but a cheap one: anyone could check Sten’s records.

  “And you, you’re Iadaran?” FitzGilbert asked.

  Not subtle, Heikki thought. Not subtle
at all. “I lived on Iadara—with my family—for about twelve years.”

  “With your family,” FitzGilbert repeated. “And your mother worked for Lo-Moth.”

  It was not a question, but Heikki shook her head anyway. “She was an independent consultant, under contract to Lo-Moth.” I’ll answer about three more questions, she decided silently, and then we’ll see.

  To her surprise, however, FitzGilbert did not seem inclined to pursue the subject. “You’ve reviewed the tapes? Ours and Foursquare’s?”

  “Yes.” Heikki poured herself a cup of tea, watching the other woman curiously. She could not decide if FitzGilbert were deliberately skirting the edges of insult, or if she were simply naturally ungracious. I’ll treat it as the latter, she thought, at least until proven otherwise. “There are a couple of questions I’d like to ask, since you were the operations director involved. If you don’t mind talking over dinner, of course.”

  FitzGilbert scowled, but said, “Might as well get it over with.”

  “Gracious of you,” Heikki murmured, and saw the other woman flush.

  “What did you want to know?” FitzGilbert’s heavy brows were still drawn together, but she was making some effort to be conciliatory.

  “The latac crew,” Heikki said. It was a little frightening, she thought vaguely, how easy it was to slip back into a linguaform she hadn’t used in almost thirty years. “Who were they, regular employees, free-lancers, or what, and how well did they know the back country?”

  FitzGilbert took a deep breath, her voice becoming more professional. “They were regular flight crew, of course—Firsters, so they knew the area pretty well. The area they were supposed to be flying over, anyway! They were well off course, or either our flights or Foursquare’s would’ve found them. What more do you need to know?”

  “How many aboard?”

  “Five—pilot, back-up pilot, systems op, engine techs.” FitzGilbert shrugged. “The usual crew.”

  “And you think, as ops director, they’re all dead?” Heikki could not keep the edge of distaste from her voice, and saw FitzGilbert wince, her color deepening again.

  “They didn’t walk out,” FitzGilbert said, in a voice too harsh to be anything but false. “Either they were part of a planned sabotage, or they’re dead.”

  Maybe I underestimated you, Heikki thought, and let her own voice become conciliatory. “What do you think the odds are? When I was on Iadara, Lo-Moth was well-respected. People didn’t try things like that.”

  FitzGilbert looked down at her emptied plate. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re the ops director,” Heikki said. “They were your people.”

  “They were Firsters, I told you. And I’m not.” FitzGilbert’s voice was deceptively matter-of-fact. “I don’t know what they’d do for me. No, I’d’ve thought, that lot wouldn’t be in on a hijack—but you know as well as I do that’s the way things are done, ninety percent of the time.”

  Heikki nodded. “I know. And you’re saying you don’t think this crew would’ve gone along with that?”

  FitzGilbert shook her head. “No.”

  “So we’ll work on that assumption, anyway,” Heikki said, and saw FitzGilbert’s face ease slightly. “FoursSquare’s tapes don’t seem to be much use. I’d rather work from the original material you have—fresh copies, if possible. We might be able to pick up something they missed.”

  “I’ll see to it,” FitzGilbert said. She glanced down at her emptied plate, pushed it aside, grimacing. “If you’ll excuse me?” It was hardly a question, despite the faint rising inflection.

  Heikki nodded as automatically, and turned her attention to her own plate. She did not look up until she heard the door sigh shut behind the other woman. Then, sighing, she reached for the shadowscreen that sat in the middle of the table, and ran her fingers across the surface, getting the feel of the controls. The media wall flashed and shifted, until at last she’d found the chronodisplay: two hours until the FTL run. She killed the image, leaving the wall blank, and leaned back in her chair. Not much point in going back to her own cabin yet—there was always the chance that either Djuro or Nkosi would show up—but there didn’t seem to be much use in staying, either. She pushed aside her almost untouched dinner, poured herself a second cup of tea, and curled her fingers around the warmed ceramic cylinder.

  And what am I supposed to make of FitzGilbert? she demanded silently, staring at the other woman’s empty plate. I wish to hell I knew if she was meaning to be insulting, or if she’s just inept. Still, I think she did care that the latac crew is—probably—dead, which is one thing in her favor…. She put the thought aside, and reached for the plates. After a moment’s search, she found the disposal chute and slipped them in, hardly hearing the machinery whir up to speed to return scraps and plastic plates to reusable components. I’ll leave things as they are, Heikki thought, and hope we don’t have to work too closely with Dam’ FitzGilbert.

  Back in her cabin, Heikki settled herself on her bunk, propping her workboard in front of her, but she could not seem to concentrate on the preliminary search pattern she had mapped out before leaving EP7. Her eyes kept straying to the chronodisplay, its numbers moving inexorably toward the time of translation. She kept at it, doggedly, but knew her work was worthless. When the buzzer finally sounded at the half-hour mark, she switched off her board and set it aside, then stretched out unhappily on her bunk. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached for her remote, and ran her fingers over the shadowscreen until the console’s main screen was tied into the display net. As was customary on passenger ships, the captain had tied the display to part of the visual security system; the picture shifted slowly, and at random intervals, from one corridor or working compartment to another. In the control room, glimpsed only briefly before the duty tech looked up at the camera, frowned, and cut it from the circuit, the ship’s full astrogation team hunched over the consoles, comparing the readings from the buoys at the edge of the Exchange Point’s parent system with the numbers already plugged into their equations. The picture wandered then through the corridors, catching a steward manhandling a balky emergency suit back into its locker, then switching to the special-cargo hold, where a woman in a flat grey cap was running a mass pulser over the last layer of crates. One view showed only indistinct figures crossing the corridor, just out of the camera’s circle of focus: the system stayed with the shot for what seemed an interminable time.

  Then, as Heikki had hoped it would, the system switched to the drive compartment at the center of the ship. The Tank—the reinforced housing for the ship’s crystals—loomed in the center of the picture, almost filling the compartment; the dark-goggled engineers, busy at the consoles at its base, seemed almost ant-like by comparison. Light, a light so hard and white that it seemed almost solid, or at best as slow-moving as glacier ice, glowed behind the test-ports, seemed to turn the narrow line of the calibration bar to white-hot steel. Heikki blinked and reached for the shadowscreen to dim the image, even though she knew that the camera was already shielded. Before she could make the adjustment, however, a familiar three-toned chime sounded and the picture went dead. At the same time, the room lighting went red: five minutes to translation, and all non-essential personnel were to stay in their cabins. Heikki grimaced, and braced herself against the edge of the bunk. Sometimes, she thought, sometimes I think it would be better if they left the cameras on, let us watch the purposeful confusion—at least I hope it’s purposeful; Sten always swears it was—and take our minds off what’s really happening, off the fact that space and time, reality itself, are being bent around us, are being persuaded to ignore, however briefly, the laws that usually define the universe—

  The red lights dimmed slightly, marking the surge of power that initiated translation. Heikki swallowed hard, feeling the first uneasiness beginning at the pit of her stomach. The sensation grew rapidly, until if she closed her eyes she could feel herself, the ship, and everything around her tumbling end over end, somer
saulting lazily, each individual cell, each molecule, trying to turn itself neatly inside out. She kept her eyes open, staring at the red-lit ceiling, hoping translation would end before she was sick. Then, at last, the sensation peaked and began to fade even more rapidly than it had grown. Heikki drew a ragged breath, blinking eyes that watered from the constant light, and shifted slowly to a more comfortable position. The lights flickered again, brightened, and a moment later shifted from red to the normal spectrum. Heikki pushed herself upright, leaning against the lightly padded bulkhead, and ran her fingers through her sweat-dampened hair. The intercom clicked then, and a steward’s voice said, “Post-translation check. Everything all right, Dam’ Heikki?”

  Heikki reached to the console to thumb the intercom switch—her hand seemed steady enough, but she did not want to risk the shadowscreen—and answered, “Everything’s fine here, thanks.” This time, anyway, a small, pessimistic voice whispered, but Heikki contrived to ignore it.

  “Good-oh,” the steward answered, and cut the connection.

  Heikki ran her hand through her hair again, and fumbled with the shadowscreen until she’d recovered the chronometer display. It was late, by ship’s time, and later still by her own internal clock. Even so, she pushed herself up off the bunk and made herself shower, washing away the fever-sweat of translation, before allowing herself to sleep.

  There were three more major translations before the ship settled into the almost imperceptible microhops that would position it at the entrance to the Iadaran Roads, and Heikki faced each one with the same dour resignation. There was no chance that she might become acclimated—it took years of constant exposure to build up any tolerance at all, and some people never did—and by the time the ship swung into the Roads she was even glad to see Iadara’s disk on the viewscreen. It was a bright planet, the rich green of the forested islands almost perpetually obscured by swirling patterns of cloud. Nkosi, watching on the large screen in the passengers’ mess, shook his head at the sight.