by Sharon Lee
“The field may be small, but that does not negate the fact of your mastery, Tolly. Our contact praised you in the highest terms. I have no questions there.”
Tolly took a breath.
“Where do you have questions, then?” he asked her, but he already knew.
There was a small pause, as if Pilot Tocohl needed a moment to gather her thoughts. Tolly sighed gently.
“A sigh, Pilot Tolly?”
“I was thinking I’d like to meet the mentor who had the teaching of you. I could learn a thing or two.” He paused, and added, just to be clear, “No disrespect, Pilot.”
“Certainly not. If you think such a meeting would be of use, I will ask my mentor if he will see you, when this mission is done.”
“I’d like that, thanks.”
“You are very welcome. And now, I fear, my questions.
“What are you, Tollance Berik-Jones?”
That was asked well enough that he was persuaded she already knew. No point in lying, then, or in remaining silent. “I’m a manufactured human, Pilot. The human’s so I don’t offend the Complex Logic Laws.”
“There are also laws against manufacturing humans, I believe.”
“A lot harder to prove ‘manufactured.’”
“I see.”
There came another pause, as if the pilot were considering his answer.
“Are you the Uncle’s?”
He blinked. Hadn’t seen that one coming.
“No, Pilot,” he said, not surprised that she knew the Uncle—and that she expected the same of him. People on the underside knew their neighbors, that was all.
“This vulnerability of yours, which you have been working to…limit. How much danger does it bring to our ship, and our mission?”
Well, that was the question, wasn’t it?
“Pilot—I don’t know. The pool of available directors is pretty small.” He allowed himself a moment of grim humor. “Smaller, now, thanks to Haz. Even if they mean to have me, no matter what, it’s going to take time for word to get back to the school; time to send another team out; and then they have to find us. I’m not saying it’s impossible that they will…”
“I understand,” she said, after his words ran out. If she’d been human, Tolly had the notion she’d’ve sighed right then.
“This vulnerability—what is its nature? An implant? A construction? Something biologic?”
He shook his head. “Pilot, I don’t know.” He hesitated, then decided it wouldn’t do any harm to tell her. “I figured to steal the specs, back when I was young and really stupid. I can tell you that the directors keep them locked up tight. And that they’re stinting of praise when one of the students shows initiative and has a go at the locks.”
“I see. Describe to me, please, the effects of control.”
“My will is overridden; my…self is submerged. I am compelled to do such things as the operator deems necessary. When I have completed a mission, I am allowed to return to…what I believe to be myself.” His felt his lips quirk. “This may be a flaw in the system.”
“Perhaps so. One would assume that there was a reason for it, however.”
“Yes’m. Could I ask you a favor, copilot to pilot?”
“Yes.”
“If it seems to you that I’ve fallen…victim to my vulnerability, will you please kill me?”
Her face came fully visible for an instant, before the pilot angled the screen downward and tipped slightly forward in a bow.
“Yes,” she said. “I will.”
It soothed him to hear her say it, which was maybe stupid. Still, he figured her good for the promise; whoever’d designed Pilot Tocohl had been uncommon clever; she wouldn’t be caught in any whistling glamor.
It came to him then that he had two solid allies, standing at his back, given what Haz had already done for him and that thing the pilot promised. Two allies; people he could depend on, without question.
He couldn’t remember, in all his life, having so much as one ally, and he hoped, his eyes pricking a little as he looked to his screens—he very much hoped that he would stand just as firm, for them.
“One question more, Pilot Tolly.”
He drew a breath, and turned back to face her.
“Yes’m?”
“I wonder if you have heard a…rumor, let us say. Presently, I hold it no higher than that—a rumor of a very old AI recently wakened. The Uncle may be in it—there’s that rumor, also—but surely he would be, so it’s no surprise, there.”
An ancient AI waking—reawaking, it would be. And if it were reawakening, then it had likely fallen asleep due to lack of needed repairs…
The Uncle was well placed to repair such a thing…
Tolly laughed, and shook his head, looking up at the pilot with an apologetic grin.
“I haven’t heard any such rumor, myself, but I’ve been out of the loops, this last while.” He felt his grin widen.
“Sure would be interesting, if true,” he said, and saw an answering grin in the shadows of the pilot’s face.
“It would be,” she said. “Wouldn’t it?”
—•—
A chime sounded.
Shan raised his head, blinking out of an abstraction of First Thoughts. It occurred to him, somewhat distantly, that this was not the first time the chime had sounded.
Or the third.
A quick series of taps saved his document, and cleared the screen. He spun his chair about, and reached for his glass—which was empty.
“Come!”
The door opened and Lina Faaldom stepped through, tiny and definite, brown hair just slightly disheveled, as if she had only now come back inside from a turn in the garden.
He considered her; most especially, he considered the flavor of her emotions: determination wedded to a certain wariness. Determination—certainly, he knew Lina to be a determined woman, a Healer of rare skill; devoted to helping those who were perhaps less determined to achieve and maintain Balance.
Wariness, though…that was not at all like Lina. Oh, she was hardly a fool, and certainly he had seen her frightened a time or two in their long friendship. Caution, he might expect, but wariness…?
“I have disturbed your work,” she said, pausing a mere three paces into the room. “Forgive me, old friend. Tell me when I will be convenient, and I will return at that hour.”
“In fact, your arrival is a happy circumstance, and not only because I’m always pleased to see you,” he said. “I fear that I may have been overthinking something. It will do me good to step away from it and entertain another problem for a time.”
He tipped his head and gave her a half-smile.
“You do have a problem for me, don’t you, Lina?”
He expected a laugh; she produced a slightly harried smile.
“I fear so,” she said, drifting forward again, and slipping into the chair.
No, this was not much like Lina. Shan considered her again as she settled herself: determination, wariness, puzzlement.
Well.
“Would you care for wine?” he asked. “I am about to pour for myself, as my stupid glass has come empty. I can’t think how it might have happened.”
That earned a slightly less harried smile, and a small inclination of the head.
“Wine would be pleasant, thank you.”
Lina drank red. He rose and filled two glasses, placing hers on the desk near her hand before he once again took his own chair.
He raised his glass. She raised hers. They drank.
The wine was pleasant, though spiced with increased dismay. He thought he understood that she was unsure of the best way to broach her topic.
“Best to leap in with both feet,” he murmured.
Lina moved her shoulders, neither a shrug nor a shiver. “It seems I must, since I have no facts to lay before you, merely feeling.”
“We are Healers; emotion is the primary tool of our trade.”
Lina sighed, and sipped her wine again. Sh
an allowed a breath of calm to waft between them, which took only the tiniest of liberties with their long friendship. Unless Lina chose to see it differently, of course.
She smiled slightly.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
She put her glass aside with a tiny click, and raised her eyes to his.
“As we had arranged, Padi came to class and danced daibri’at today. I will say immediately that I have had students who were more eager to embrace the art.”
“Was she disrespectful?”
Lina shook her head.
“Disrepectful—no. Perhaps a little disdainful, at first—but that is not unusual for one coming to the Small Dance after having partaken of menfri’at. I had the impression, when she entered the room, that she had not expected to find so many co-students. Definitely, she was…displeased to find Jon among us. She kept her temper, however, and after an initial misunderstanding regarding the timing of our dance, she comported herself well.”
She reached for her glass and sipped again, frowning.
“I noted that it was very difficult for her to move in proper rhythm. She wanted speed; her body wanted speed. To move so slowly was, not merely a novelty, but physically stressful.”
Shan swirled the wine in his glass; looked up to meet her eyes.
“She is a pilot, with a pilot’s reactions; newly come from an…intense course of specialized training.”
Lina nodded. “From which spring Jon’s concerns: that the specialized training had been too intense, and had unbalanced her judgment. His hope is that the Small Dance will assist her in reasserting her balance, as he and I have seen it do for other dancers.”
She paused, and Shan considered her carefully.
“You have reason to believe that this therapy will not be of benefit to Padi?”
Here was the crux; he felt the heat of her frustration even as she blew out her breath.
“Padi…is—oh, bah! I will say it, and it will sound like idiocy, but perhaps we two may then parse it into sense. Padi, old friend, does not relax.”
Shan laughed.
“Korval as a clan is driven to succeed. Surely that hasn’t escaped your attention? Padi is very much a child of Korval. Worse, she is one of Korval who has been forcibly diverted from her life-path and her plans. She is running hard to catch herself back up.”
He stopped here because Lina was shaking her head.
“It is…something more than that. Something other than that. You have studied the Small Dance; what is its purpose, aside from focusing intent?”
He had studied daibri’at, when he had been Trader yos’Galan and scarcely older than Padi was now. Its principles and purposes had long ago entered his general repertory of skills. Trying to isolate its purpose, rather than seeing it as a part of the tapestry…
“Options,” he said. “Daibri’at defuses reflexive action, and opens the mind to possibility.”
“Yes. It is, at its heart, a tool to relax and to expand the awareness.” Lina drew a hard breath. “Padi does not relax. She is always on high energy. Even at the end of our practice, when we sit together and breathe…I saw her”—a sharp headshake, as if Lina was out of patience with her inability to find the perfectly correct words—“I saw her divert the energy, rather than accepting its benefits.”
Shan frowned.
“Divert it…where?”
She gave him a wry look.
“That, I did not see. However, I may make a guess. As she rose to leave, I noticed the suggestion of stone in her aura, as of walls within.”
Shan blinked.
“You think Padi is hiding something, and is diverting energy from everything she does in order to keep a…secret…behind walls?”
“Yes! I knew you would shape it sensibly!”
Well, he might have done so, but the feat gave him no joy; not when the next question was, naturally, Hiding what? closely followed by Why hadn’t he noticed?
But, no; he had noticed. The children—all of the children, save perhaps the infant twins—had returned from Runig’s Rock…changed. The nature of the training—the very reason for their presence at the Rock—who would not be changed by such things? And he had noticed, not walls, but a reserve, certainly. Priscilla had also noticed…and Anthora. Between them, they had made the decision to give the children time to heal themselves—if Healing was indeed required—while their elders kept watch. It was a conservative course; self-healing was in almost all cases to be preferred.
“I had noticed a certain…reserve,” he said carefully, not wishing to lie to Lina, and equally unwilling to burden her with Korval secrets. “I would not have said a wall.”
Lina nodded. “It is well hidden. I think I would have not seen it, but that I had just danced, and was thus open to all input. Which leads me, old friend, to the last of the problems I have to place before you today.”
He raised an eyebrow and inclined his head.
She smiled.
“It comes to me that Padi is a halfling.”
He raised his hand.
“You will say that she is ripe to come into her powers. I ask her, as often as I might without becoming entirely tedious, you understand—and she denies the classic symptoms of onset. I also scan, of course, but I’ve found nothing to indicate a budding Healer.”
“I venture to predict that Padi will come dramliza,” Lina said.
“Based on this glimpse of stone?”
“And the fact that it is so very well hidden, yes.” She seemed about to say more, but at the last moment changed her mind.
Shan, however, knew what she might say—that a dramliza coming into her power was a far different—a far more dangerous thing—than a Healer coming into hers. Such a coming of age might even endanger the Passage.
“I will speak with Priscilla. Will you be available to assist, should we decide it best to force the issue?”
“Certainly. One dislikes such methods, as I know you do, but the ship…”
Indeed, the ship.
Lina rose and bowed as between equals, which put a fine point on the discussion they had just completed: Healers discussing the proper concerns of Healers.
He rose and returned the bow, then walked her to the door.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dutiful Passage
They would break out into regular space within the next ship half-day, and begin Andiree approach, the Passage sending information packets and news ahead.
She would be on the trade bridge with Father, trading catalogs, questions, offers, invitations, news packets. The catalogs would be her priority; Father would answer queries, and review the catalog entries that she marked for his interest, if any.
Depending on the planet, and the number of traders on-planet seeking an early and advantageous connection, the double shift on the trade bridge might be either exhausting or boring. It would, in any case, be a double shift, and she ought, really, to be sleeping now rather than studying.
Padi sighed and rubbed her eyes. She’d been diverting two hours of her sleep shift to study since the Passage had departed Surebleak, having long ago found that she didn’t need much sleep—not really.
Not when there was so much work to do…
Not when there was so much catching up to do.
Father had said she would be running double time, in effect, taking two lines of training simultaneously: cabin boy and ’prentice trader. He’d told her, quite seriously, that even with the double-track training, she would very probably not meet her goal of achieving her trader’s license on her eighteenth Name Day. He had been quite kind, and laid the fault where it belonged, on the attentions of the stupid Department of the Interior, which had taken Korval so very much in dislike, and had therefore interrupted everyone’s proper life-course, and not on any deficiency she had displayed. He had said, too, that it was no shame to stand a full trader on one’s nineteenth Name Day, which goal he was confident she could meet.
She had chosen to, well…not discount his wo
rds, no. She had merely chosen to see them as a challenge. After all, it wasn’t as if she had come to the Passage with no training at all. She had served two trips as cabin boy on Pale Wing, one of Korval’s first-tier tradeships, and would have transferred to the Passage herself for the next long circuit, save that Plan B had been brought into effect at the most inconvenient moment conceivable, sending her, Quin, Syl Vor, the twins, Grandfather Luken, and Cousin Kareen scurrying to hide in Runig’s Rock.
There they had taken lessons of a very different order, in addition to their usual school fare, and accelerated piloting study—disappointingly, on the sims—while they had waited for word that Korval’s enemy had been vanquished.
In truth, their sojourn in the Rock had not been so ill as it might have been, given close daily proximity to Cousin Kareen, who was a stickler of the first water. Quin had minded it, of course, in addition to being all a-twitter over Cousin Pat Rin, when, if he had only taken a moment to consider—but there. Quin was made of nerves. She had known there was no reason to worry, though she did allow that she might have felt differently, had it been her father who had failed to report in, not once or twice, but at all…
In any case, eventually, they were called home. Or, not precisely home, but to Surebleak, a planet of which no one had ever heard, nor was that circumstance anything to wonder at, once one actually saw the place.
It had all been rather bewildering—indeed, it was still…unsettling…to recall that Surebleak was now the home port of Dutiful Passage, and the seat of Clan Korval.
Father and the delms—including Uncle Val Con, who had been away for so very long with the Scouts, now joyously returned to the clan, and bringing to Korval a completely unexpected lifemate, who was forthwith revealed to be a Tiazan of Erob, so that was all right…
Father and Priscilla, the delms, and Cousin Pat Rin—all of them had been there, around Liad, when it had happened. All of them had taken a hand in the event.
And they had explained, very carefully and very thoroughly, exactly what had happened; why, and what the stakes had been, not only for Korval, but for all of Liad; and why they dared not fail nor take half measures.
Padi understood the situation perfectly, though the Council of Clans had not, which had led to Korval’s removal to Surebleak in the Daiellen Sector.