Alliance of Equals

by Sharon Lee

  “Very well,” Inki said sharply. “I hear that the ship I have chosen must be purchased. Is that correct, Master Vannigof?”

  “Bottom line, an’ two degrees off-center, but—yeah, that’s it.”

  “Very well. I shall purchase this ship.”

  Stew blinked.

  “I don’t think—”

  “There is nothing here for you to think about, Master Vannigof. I wish to purchase a ship. As I have previously inspected it and found it adequate to my needs, you may proceed with generating a bill of sale.”

  “Ship like that,” Stew said. “We got repairs in it, Pilot, and tech-hours.”

  Inki shifted, Stew froze in place, and for an instant, Hazenthull saw herself as the natural protector of the technician.

  Before she could place herself between Inki and the counter, there came a reflective flash, and the ring of a coin hitting a hard surface.

  “Please do not trouble yourself to dicker,” Inki said, and angled her chin toward the coin, still twirling on the counter.

  “A bill of sale, please. The pilot and I wish to board my vessel at once.”

  * * *

  “I hope you will do me the favor of failing to mention that little unpleasantness to Mentor Berik-Jones,” Inki said, some time later, as they settled into the little freighter’s bridge.

  Hazenthull looked at her.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Your actions made it possible for the mission to continue. You are to be commended.”

  For a moment, there was silence, as Inki brought the pilot’s board live. Then came a sidelong black glance, and a rueful smile.

  “I imagine that you don’t understand,” she said softly. “Say that I would not diminish myself in the mentor’s eyes. I had promised him this ship, and I had promised that my skill in persuasion was sufficient to gain it for the…mission. That I failed so signally…”

  She sighed, and the smile became wry.

  “I feel that he would regard me less, as a colleague, and as one who has graduated from his own institute, though many Standards behind him, and I tell you frankly, Pilot—I do not believe I could bear that.”

  This, Hazenthull understood. Who, after all, who would wish to seem a fool? And to lose Tolly’s esteem would be a loss, indeed.

  “I will hold your secret as near as if it were my own,” she promised.

  Inki looked at her fully, then, black eyes wide.

  “I can ask for nothing better,” she said. Then, briskly, “Please contact Tarigan, Pilot Haz, and let them know that we are—at last—on our way back to them.”

  —•—

  He woke with the sense that he had been asleep for some time, comfortably beneath the tree, with the aroma of gloan-roses agreeably mixing with the unmistakeable scent of the tree itself.

  “Daav?”

  Her voice echoed—not in his ears, but inside his head, as he had grown accustomed to hearing her, across the years.

  “Aelliana!” he cried—he thought he spoke aloud, but he had no sense that his lips had moved. “Where had you gone, van’chela? I feared you had left me.”

  “And so I have—and so I have not. It is the oddest thing, Daav…I feel…much more myself, now.”

  “Ah, do you? Well, then tell me, my lady, how shall we deal with this sham of the Uncle’s?”

  “Sham?” She sounded startled, then she laughed, and he all but wept to hear it. “Ah, no, van’chela, this is no sham! We must meet, I think. Open your eyes, sir, and rise!”

  Obediently, he opened his eyes, and rolled to his feet. He glanced down, surprised to find that he had been in a ’doc.

  “Ah, you are awake, are you?” That was the Uncle, standing beside another ’doc, his mouth set in displeasure.

  “Awake, and informed, yes,” he answered, approaching the other man. He felt a spring in his step that had not been there, before his nap.

  “Informed? Excellent. Do you know what your Tree has done to Aelliana Caylon?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to say that the Tree had restored Aelliana to him, but one did not give this man a coin, merely because he asked it. Daav therefore shook his head, and paused at the side of the ’doc.

  The Uncle moved a hand, directing his attention to the status board above the unit.

  All lights showed strong and stable. A secondary screen had been jacked into the board, and sat on the table at the side of the ’doc. Two columns of code marched there, side by side.

  “Your Tree,” the Uncle said tightly, “has taken leave to overwrite my work with its own.” He pointed at the leftmost column. “This is the code with which we had seeded the blank intended to receive Pilot Caylon.” He pointed at the rightmost column. “That is the code which the ’doc is now receiving from its patient. Do you read biologic notation?”

  “Laboriously, I fear.”

  “Allow me to simplify: the person who is now lying in that ’doc, is not the same person, physically, who entered it, six hours ago.”

  Six hours? Daav thought. That had been a very substantial nap—and one wondered what the Tree had found to…overwrite…for him, who the Uncle swore was genetically identical to—

  “The Tree,” he murmured, feeling a thrill up his spine, “would have had access to Aelliana’s DNA.”

  There was a charged pause before the Uncle spoke again.

  “Of course it would,” he said bitterly.

  He turned aside, and glared up at the status board, as another man might glare at an erring child. Daav waited while he ordered himself, aware of the familiar feeling that Aelliana was with him, and watching events unfold…over his shoulder, as it were.

  The Uncle sighed.

  “The monitors would have it that the overwrite process is complete,” he said, somewhat more calmly. “I can, you understand, scarcely credit this. The complexities involved, even given the…suggestibility of the vessel at this point…”

  He shook his head, his face yet turned toward the board.

  “I have performed the transfer procedure countless times. Of its kind, it is a straightforward procedure, but it is neither simple nor rapid. To think that—I cannot think that an overwrite has already been accomplished! I can barely concede that an overwrite might be possible!”

  He spun, a young man at first glance, his face etched into hard lines no youth would have had time to earn.

  “It falls to you, her lifemate, to decide,” he said harshly. “I will tell you that I expect she is dead, and in what physical state I shudder to imagine. Korval’s Tree…”

  “Korval’s Tree is lunatic and Korval has long accepted its lunacies,” Daav said soothingly. “We eat the damned pods, knowing that they change us, and very seldom knowing how. It must be admitted, however, that it very rarely kills us. Indeed, even so desperate a case as my great-grandmother Theonna—whom you, of course, knew—was helped more than hindered by the Tree’s meddling.”

  “Theonna yos’Phelium,” the Uncle said, looking away again toward the status lights, “was mad.”

  “By all reports, yes, she was. She was also brilliant. Those two aspects were so closely twined that to separate them was not possible, according to the Healers. The trick would seem to have been balance. Control the madness too stringently, and the brilliance faded to dullness. Allow the brilliance to burn, unchecked, and she was like to take fire and destroy all and everyone around her.

  “For many years, the Tree kept that balance for her. She wrote down, in our logs, every time she received, and consumed, a pod. When she was halfling, she required one pod at the beginning of each relumma. As she grew older, and her nature more demanding, she required a pod every twelve-day, then every six…

  “During the three years immediately preceding her death, the Tree gave her one pod, every day. Apparently, it had attempted to press two upon her, but she refused. The Ring passed shortly thereafter.”

  The Uncle had turned back to him, his face softer now, as if Daav’s voice had, indeed, soothe
d him.

  “Of what did she die?” he asked. “I entered a…crisis of my own, and the next time Korval caught my attention, it was her daughter who was delm.”

  “The Tree killed her,” Daav said gently. “Her last notation in the logbook stated that she had asked this boon. She was weary, and her mind was beginning, truly, to fray—and she saw the offer of two pods in one day as an omen.

  “The entry made by her daughter, the delm, indicated that she had been found in the garden, beneath the Tree, umarked and with a calm face. She appeared, at first, to be sleeping.”

  The Uncle closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, and looked into Daav’s face.

  “She is your lifemate,” he said, moving his hand in the direction of the ’doc. “Advise me.”

  There was a sense that Aelliana’s interest had quickened, as if they had at last arrived at her topic.

  Aelliana? he asked. What would you?

  It did occur to him—and only then—that perhaps she had died of the Tree’s meddling, and retreated to her old place with him, but—

  I am not dead! Aelliana declared so strongly that his skull rang with her voice. Open the ’doc, van’chela!

  Daav inclined his head.

  “Let us,” he said, “raise the lid.”

  He bowed, did the Uncle, in a mode so antiquated that Daav was unsure of its meaning. Perhaps it was merely, on your head be it.

  Courteously, then, the Uncle stepped back, making room for Aelliana’s lifemate to come forward, touch the latch, and retract the hood.

  Aelliana Caylon rolled off the pallet, throwing herself against him in a full-body hug, her arms hard around his neck, and her cheek against his.

  “Daav!” she cried, and it was Aelliana’s own voice in his outer ears. “We are at last as we were meant to be!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Admiral Bunter

  Jemiatha’s Jumble Stop

  It was a tidy ship, that had seen some use, but careful use, and loving. There was some dust about, and the brightwork was dim. He hesitated at that, an echo of the Admiral’s wistful voice in memory: clean.

  Lucky for his status as head mentor, he wasn’t the only one on the team with a memory. Haz had set herself to housecleaning with an efficiency that gave him pause.

  “Looks like you done this before,” he commented, watching her swab out the galley.

  She glanced over her shoulder to him.

  “I was not the least inept of my class,” she said, in straight-faced Haz humor.

  He gave her a grin.

  “Least you learned something useful in school.”

  That surprised an actual laugh out of her; maybe the fourth or fifth in all of the time he’d known her. It was a rough, low sound, not without charm, once you knew what it was you were hearing.

  “In fact,” she said. “I did learn something useful.”

  He nodded, though she’d turned back to her scrubbing, and wandered to the bridge, where Tocohl was giving the comps an inspection and tune-up the likes of which he was willing to bet they’d never had.

  “I believe that these, with the cranium, will be more than adequate,” she said. “You and Inki may proceed.”

  —•—

  Tolly moved blocks, cutting off access to piloting, that was all. He’d considered making life support off limits, too, for this first session. Had he been awakening a newborn, he would have done so. Standard protocols, there. Wake a new one with limited access, then slowly add systems as lessons proceeded and trust was built, interaction by careful interaction.

  Admiral Bunter, though. Admiral Bunter had been aware, awake, and in charge of his own vessels, junk though they’d been. He knew what systems he ought to be able to access. It would be enough of an insult, cutting off piloting, like he was doing. Cutting off life support was just shouting on wideband that they didn’t trust him, and asking for more trouble than they wanted.

  If Admiral Bunter had survived the transfer intact, or at all.

  If Admiral Bunter were, actually, sane, after his time trapped in seven physical environments that were falling apart around him, and thirteen dirty comps unfit to hold his thoughts…

  Well, they’d know that soon enough, now.

  He felt a shiver of combined hope and fear, and sternly put both aside. No time for Tolly Jones’ feelings in this. He was a mentor, responsible for nothing less than a life.

  Tolly set the last block between what ought to be the Admiral, and piloting, and considered those others that cut the Admiral off from consciousness. Three blocks, at three critical junctures.

  He hesitated, then, which was just plain and fancy foolishness.

  Him and Inki, they knew the risks, and each had chosen to stand openhanded before the Admiral, trusting him not to shut down their air, or freeze them, or fry them. ’Course, they had Tocohl as their backup—be stupid not to—which evened the odds.

  Haz, though…He’d asked Haz to go back to Tarigan, in case there was trouble with station wanting them gone. That hadn’t been the only reason, which he had an uncomfortable feeling she knew. Hadn’t given him any argument, though, only looked at him a little longer than maybe was necessary, nodded, and gathered up her kit.

  So.

  “Removing block one,” he murmured, and heard Inki’s ack.

  The monitors showed some action, all green. So far, so good.

  Hope stirred; he ignored it.

  “Removing block two.”

  More action on the monitors, green-green-yellow. He pulled up detail on that yellow, found Ethics module at ninety percent. Not a big loss, but Ethics was core. Admiral Bunter had some extra homework in his future.

  “Inki?”

  “I see it, Mentor. Surely, nothing that cannot be recovered with targeted mentoring.”

  They were of the same mind, then. That was good. He’d started this job thinking Inkirani Yo was going to be a nuisance, but she’d proved herself sensible, and solidly grounded in the subtleties of what she termed their “art.” He was glad to have her to bounce ideas off of, and he was very pleased to have her sitting as his backup.

  “Third block,” he said, and the monitors flared green, with a leavening of yellows in non-core areas. Not as bad as it could’ve been.

  Not as bad as he’d expected to see.

  He reached for the mic, but—

  “What place is this?”

  The voice was loud; it carried clear astonishment, and, maybe, a little anger.

  “’Morning, Admiral, this is Mentor Tolly Jones. ’Member me?”

  There was no pause at all, which was gratifying in what it said about the install and the comp. Socialization, though…Tolly added another to the list of those things requiring focused tutoring.

  “I remember you, Mentor Tolly Jones. You offered a choice—transfer to a new environment or die. I remember. But I did not choose.”

  If memory had suffered in the transfer, that…was worrisome, but not fatal. And if all that escaped the Admiral’s memory were those things immediately prior to transfer, that was hardly worrisome at all. The same thing sometimes happened to human minds suffering a life-changing event; the little details of what happened immediately before the big change got swallowed up and forgotten.

  Still…

  “Wanna do me a favor and check your backups on that? We’re gonna hafta be doing checks anyway, so might as well start now.”

  There was a pause this time, though not nearly long enough to be comfortable in human conversation.

  “I have it,” Admiral Bunter said. “I was sabotaged. You cheated me of my choice.”

  Tolly raised his eyebrows.

  “Please explain.”

  A longer pause this time, as if the Admiral was reassessing his information.

  “Is Tocohl Lorlin available to speak with me?”

  “She’s on duty elsewhere at the moment. Can you tell me what happened, to take your choice away from you?”

  “Our mutual friend had uploaded
a packet containing some simple utility programs. I had used one after we spoke the first time, Mentor. It initiated a self-test and packed lesser used routines.”

  “I remember noticing a difference in you when we talked the second time,” Tolly said, one eye on the various readouts. “Was there another utility that you ran after we visited you on the packet boat?”

  “Mentor, there was. I was in a state of…disarray. I would not choose and I became so disordered that I might…I might have done myself harm. It was then that this second utility presented itself, and I accessed it. There was a moment of non-thinking, I see it here in the log, then I was returned, but remote. I was no longer troubled by indecision, or fear…”

  Another pause.

  “I also see in the log that, while in that distant state, I gave you my decision to attempt the transfer.”

  “So you were mistaken in your assumption that I tricked you and took your choice away?” Tolly asked.

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Right, then. What we say, when we’ve made a statement about someone’s actions or motives that is later proved wrong is, I was mistaken. Please forgive me. Some humans run a shorthand, and say, I’m sorry. This is called an apology.

  “I’d like to have an apology, please, for being accused of actions that I didn’t perform.”

  “Why?” the Admiral inquired, and if it wouldn’t have muddied the waters still more, Tolly would’ve stood up and cheered.

  Instead, he sternly repressed his grin and explained.

  “Because this false accusation has wounded me, emotionally, and has placed a strain on our relationship, which must be one of trust, if we’re to succeed. An apology signals that the error is known for an error and that you want our relationship to deepen in trust.”

  “I was in error,” the Admiral said. “I apologize, Mentor Tolly Jones.”

  “Thank you. I accept your apology.

  “Now, I’ll tell you that you’re resident in a small freighter in good repair. You prolly noticed that piloting is outside of your control. This is a temporary measure, until we’ve completed the checks.