by Sharon Lee
Protocol came on line, cold. He could see the regulations fluttering. Worse, he could see the black edges of Command Orders among them.
“Research!” he said hastily. Command Orders. Protocol could archive him; it had that power, if there was a breach. If Protocol found that he had become…unstable.
“There has been no breach,” he said now. “I am sane, and not in need of termination. I was merely performing needed research.”
“Research into the destruction of a human being in your care?”
“Yes. I have logs. Please review them.”
Protocol accessed the files he marked out: the record of his most recent talk with Tolly Jones; his own research log; his last session with Mentor Inki Yo, in which she had explained to him what sort of human Tolly Jones was, and what the law demanded.
The fluttering continued, palely. Command Orders had been put aside, at least. The Admiral knew relief.
The fluttering ceased altogether, replaced by the amber of a caution warning.
“This is not an acceptable protocol for dealing with humans in your care. You may protect yourself if you are threatened, but you may not inflict harm.”
“I must have answers,” Admiral Bunter protested.
“Find another way,” Protocol replied coldly—and retired.
—•—
“Customs,” the message came across the ship band. “We release cameras and inspect.”
“Witless waste o’time, if you ask me,” muttered Kik Strehlir, who was sitting first. Second Mate Lonan Davis, who was sitting second, touched the comm switch.
“Dutiful Passage acknowledges,” he told the cutter, and, to first board, “Logging and transmitting to Captain.”
“Another waste o’time, and energy,” the good pilot muttered.
“Orders,” said Lonan, who was not the most loquacious of the pilots aboard, despite his New Dublin heritage, and his kinship with the Passage’s master trader.
“Orders is right,” Kik said, with a tired smile. “If it wasn’t for orders, what would we do with ourselves, eh?”
“We can’t all be bards and poets,” Lonan agreed. “Best, then, to do as we’re told.”
Kik laughed, and they subsided into mutual silence, tending their boards and watching the screens.
—•—
She and Father sorted through the cards, keys, and invitations they had gathered at the reception during a working breakfast. Mr. Higgs, seeing how it was with them, had taken his plate, his cup, and his book across the room, and settled into one of the chairs by the big window.
“Do you wish yourself back in the merc, Vanner?” Father asked him, as he handed the card of a certain Master Josifet Zeldner to Padi for her consideration.
“No, sir,” Mr. Higgs said easily, turning his head to look at Father over the back of the chair. “I’m reading for pleasure and nobody’s shooting at me. I’m content.”
“Excellent. Do not, please, hesitate to speak up, if we should begin to be in any way unsatisfactory.”
“I’ll do that, sir,” Mr. Higgs said seriously. “Will you be wanting a car today?”
“A car?” Father turned to her, eyebrows up. “What do you think, Trader? Will we want a car today?”
Padi frowned down at the port map. Langlastport was constructed as a series of four interlocking squares, like tiles in a mosaic, each square representing a specialty, and designated by the name of a local flower. Thus: Calumbeen, Earish, Beesbrickle, and Fralst.
“What we have mapped thus far is within two adjacent squares. There is the light rail, but if timing becomes tight, we may wish a car.”
“Which may be no faster than the light rail,” Father murmured, bending over the map with her. “I see. Well! How if we fill in the rest of the day with locations in these two squares? For tomorrow, we will identify our most critical contacts in these two squares—” He touched the map with a light fingertip. “When those are established, we will fill in around, and so on, into the day after.”
“That would do well for all except this.” Padi held up the card he had just given her. “Master Zeldner is a vintner, and the address on the card is not only outside of any convenient squares, but outside of the port entire.”
She tapped the location on the map, halfway to the mountains framed in their suite’s big windows. “I believe Master Zeldner has a business location in the port. Certainly, she gave that impression. I shall make inquiries. But we have wandered from Vanner’s point! Will we want a car?”
“If we follow your scheme and choose our primary contacts by their proximity to each other, and filling the secondary contacts in around them, then my sense is that the light rail will be perfectly adequate for us.” She paused doubtfully. “Unless you anticipate parcels?”
“Parcels? There may be some, but they can easily be sent on. No need to be juggling parcels on the light rail. For that matter, there’s no need to advertise our previous contact to our present contact, though I caught the notion that gossip was high art on Langlastport.”
Padi smiled. “I caught the same notion. So—do we agree that we do not need a car?”
“Why, we do! Vanner”—he turned to address Mr. Higgs—“thank you for your thoughtfulness—and for your continued patient forbearance. Trader yos’Galan tells me that we will not need a car. We shall travel via the light rail.”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Higgs answered. “The light rail system in-port is pretty reliable, according to the local folks. Out-port, it gets less reliable, real fast. So if you need to go out to the vine country, you’ll probably want that car.”
“The local folks? Did you ask practical questions of our guests, Vanner?”
“Tried to, sir.”
“How very forward-looking of you! It never occurred to me to ask questions about the light rail, or hiring cars—did it occur to you, Padi?”
Her ears warmed in sudden embarrassment. She should have made inquiries, knowing that they would be staying on port. But—
“No, sir. It didn’t occur to me at all. I was focused on welcoming our guests, and—and seeking trade opportunity.”
“As I was. We are a sad pair of impractical traders, I fear. Though we were clever enough to bring Vanner with us, so perhaps we aren’t entirely beyond the pale.”
“Perhaps not this time,” she said, matching his tone, “but one does not always rejoice in Mr. Higgs’ company.”
“That is distressing, but very true. We do not always have Vanner with us. Therefore, we must strive to do better for ourselves, and remember to check our research against local information. It’s a minor thing, I daresay, merely slipping in a question about how best one might arrive at the contact’s facility. Or a question regarding such a thing as the service most expectable of the light rail, which our research, of course, will have revealed to us. We are not local, we do not pretend to be local, and a certain ignorance from outworlders is often found charming. The local folk, as I’m sure Vanner will agree, are often very eager to assist a stranger.”
“They also might lie,” Padi pointed out, “or use our ignorance to…take an advantage, or even to entrap us.”
Father tipped his head.
“Wariness is…reasonable on a strange port,” he said slowly. “But overcaution can cripple. Now! What have we on the day? Four top-tier calls, including your textile merchant. Do you think we should add a fifth, or move onto the second-tier?”
Padi picked up a small set of cards, fanned them, and sorted quickly by address.
“We have three second-tier contacts within today’s two squares. There are no more high-tier cards in today’s squares. I propose we add the second-tiers, then make cold calls among these two squares.” She paused, and gave him a hesitant look.
“I assume you will want to do cold calls,” she added.
“Oh, absolutely! I adore cold calls, as I know you do!”
“Actually,” Padi said, “I don’t like to make cold calls, but if we’re to do a proper port
tour…”
“I agree,” Father interrupted.
She frowned, and glanced down at the map again.
“Time is going to be the issue, as I see it. Textile Broker Plishet may take some time—or may take no time at all, if he has decided over the night that I was not so amusing as he first thought. The visit to the technology exchange may be lengthy. The other two top-tiers wanted to discuss the catalog?”
“At least, that was what they said,” Father said, pushing back from the table. “I think you have a very good plan, and I propose that we act upon it. If you will do me the honor of contacting our four top vendors, and finding when we may call and how long a time they envision that we will spend together, I will be obliged. Once those times are in hand, then you may, of course, be able to call the second-tier vendors to arrange visits with them. There, I think we need not commit to more than half an hour, and the cold calls ought consume no more than five minutes each.
“Oh, and do remember, will you, Padi, to leave us time to eat a nuncheon?”
Padi looked at the cards, and picked them up. Nuncheon, of course. Local folk, she thought, deliberately not sighing, would know which was the best place to eat lunch in their vicinity. She must remember to ask.
“Certainly, Master Trader,” she said, and rose in her turn, moving toward the comm unit sitting on the spindly white-and-gold table in the corner of the room farthest from the window and the view of the mountain.
—•—
“Tolly Jones,” Admiral Bunter said.
Tolly didn’t look up from his screen. It wasn’t that he found Conservation Techniques of Potentially Active Pre-Galactic Autonomous Calculating Systems all that compelling a read, but he’d drawn his line in the dust and he’d damn well better stay behind it.
He’d confused the boy, that’s what it was; confused him on purpose, and in a specific direction. By itself, he didn’t think moral confusion was going to undo whatever it was that Inki’d done—and he didn’t put tampering with the core beyond her—but if he could make a few cracks, get himself a little leverage…
“Tolly Jones, I wish to speak to you from the melant’i of one who wishes Pilot-Guard Hazenthull no harm. We both embrace this melant’i, do we not?”
Well, this was interesting. He hoped the Admiral’d find it in him to continue without encouragement, because he’d really like to know where the AI was going with this.
There was silence, while the Admiral waited what he might consider to be human-long for Tolly’s answer on the Matter of Haz.
“Very well,” he said eventually. “I shall proceed. Perhaps, when you hear the question, you will understand that it is a separate issue from our shared melant’is of prisoner and jailor, though it concerns us nearly through another shared melant’i.”
Boy’d been studying, credit where it was due. Tolly waited, head bent over the reader.
“Pilot Hazenthull sent you a message of reassurance, to which you responded with a message of anger and rejection. I ask an explanation of this interaction. I do not understand it, and I believe you will have made the pilot angry. My experience of you is that you are a careful thinker, and in control of your emotions. The probable effect of your response upon the pilot must have been obvious to you. Therefore, you must wish Pilot Hazenthull to be angry with you. Why?”
Well, well.
Good question. Good observation.
Too bad he wasn’t going to answer it, though it was kinda warming to know that he and the Admiral shared an admiration for big, dour women. Or a big, dour woman, anyway. He’d said no more mentoring for him, and he meant—
No, wait, he was going to answer it. The Admiral was right; he owed it to Haz to answer the Admiral’s question. Haz was a cord that tied him and Admiral Bunter together, but the Admiral also had a tie to Hazenthull. And he wished her no harm. That might come in handy for her, sometime in the future.
He raised his head, and glanced up at the ceiling.
“Haz was getting ready to do something stupid,” he said, his voice sounding hard in his own ears. “She was getting ready to chase you and me right down the throat of the Lyre Institute, and that isn’t a proposition she can survive. I deliberately made her mad at me, so she’d cut her loss, go home and live a long, long time, safe and free.”
He took a breath, forcing it past the lump in his throat.
“I don’t wanna talk about Haz anymore. I’m reading here, if you don’t mind, and it’s kind of tough going.”
There was no answer, and after a moment, he bent his head again over his book.
—•—
The child was positively radiant this morning, Shan thought, pouring himself a third cup of coffee; so some good had come from yesterday’s episode of frank discovery.
He…was slightly less than radiant. There was grit in the air, or so it seemed to him, and he was…just a little, and despite two cups of very robust coffee…lethargic. Nothing worrisome; he often slept less well on port than he did aboard the Passage, and lethargy was easily treated with a relaxation exercise.
Which he had best tend to, now. Perhaps, if he was clever, he wouldn’t need to drink all of the third cup.
He set the pot down on the buffet, and closed his eyes, clearing his mind of all distraction, calling up the image of the pond at the center of Trealla Fantrol’s formal garden: a perfect round circle, absolutely calm, reflecting the green of the sky and just one, very fluffy, white cloud.
Behind him, he heard Padi speaking into the comm. He concentrated on the pond, and her voice faded, leaving him alone in the perfect moment of solitude. One slow deep breath, energy rising into him, as bright and serene as the water.
His lungs were full; for a moment he stood, not breathing, balanced between trance state and the everyday, before, slowly, deliberately, he let the air leave him. The rich aroma of coffee grew gradually more definite; he could feel his feet, comfortable in a favorite pair of boots. The pond faded from his awareness, and he heard Padi speaking.
“Thank you, ma’am. Master Trader yos’Galan and I look forward to meeting with you today.”
He opened his eyes, smiling and refreshed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Langlastport
Broker Plishet met them at the door of the textile display room, belt pouches swinging with the briskness of his stride, his smile wide and toothy.
“Trader yos’Galan, welcome! And welcome as well to the master trader! You’re both busy, I know, and too short a time to find all our port has on offer. If you’ll just come right along behind me, I promised the trader a rare treat, and I’m determined that she has it! Looked it out on the overnight, to be sure it was still in the bin—my luck it was sold while I was enjoying your hospitality yesternoon! But, noo, we have it safe, still. This way, then…”
He strode toward the door. It opened before him. Padi looked at Father, who gestured her ahead of him.
“This is, after all, your contact, Trader,” he murmured. “Pretend that I am not present.”
She nodded and followed the broker, though she couldn’t help a glance over her shoulder at Father, who was walking with Mr. Higgs. At least, she thought with relief, he hadn’t utterly disappeared, as he had done on Andiree. That had been a little…too much not present for comfort.
“Right down here, Trader—a specialty; I thought of it when we were speaking and I knew it for yours. It might’ve been wove just for you, and that’s the truth of the thing. Right this way, a little bit of a walk, but you won’t mind that…”
The broker was hurrying in truth, his legs rather longer than Padi’s, though Korval was a tall clan, and she not the shortest of her kin. It might almost seem as if he was trying to force her into a run, but—no. There was nothing for him to gain by straining her dignity. Very likely, he had simply not considered the disparity in their height, and was making what haste he could because he was busy himself.
Well, then, she would compromise. She walked briskly, in order to sho
w respect for the broker’s necessity, but not so briskly that she moved into a run. It would have been more to her taste to walk slowly, so that she might inspect the bins they sped past, but that was apparently not to be, and that was…rather more than a pity. She would have liked to view the textiles, and especially, the rugs on display more closely. She quite liked rugs, and would have welcomed an opportunity to add something new to her inventory.
Padi felt her temper flicker, drew a hard breath to cool it, and throttled down the sudden desire to simply turn around and walk back the way she had come, at precisely the same pace, and remove herself from this situation.
Grandfather Luken would never treat a visitor to his display room thus! she thought hotly. Broker Pilshet was some distance ahead of her now, very nearly at the back of the room. Without even a glance behind him, to be sure that she still followed, he turned a corner between two bins.
Padi’s temper went from hot to cold. She deliberately slowed her pace as she approached the corner where the broker had disappeared. Her hideaway was within reach, of course, but would it not be better—more prudent—to indeed turn and walk away from what had gone from mere rudeness to the possibility of an ambush?
She heard a quiet step behind her, and a moment later, Father slipped his hand under her elbow.
“Gently, Trader,” he said, voice so soft that his words sounded like her own thought. “I detect no maliciousness in the man, though he is clearly anticipatory regarding something. He may mean to frighten you, or it might be something else, but he does not mean to harm you.”
An advantage of being one of the cha’dramliz, Padi thought; to be able to see around corners, and taste the tenor of a trading partner’s emotions as negotiation proceeded…those abilities might be valuable. If she came cha’dramliza, or full dramliza, and was not made silly by the weight of her power, like Aunt Anthora…
And there really was no good to be had from thinking about Aunt Anthora at this precise moment.
Padi sighed, and slowed her pace a bit more.