Fool's War

by Sarah Zettel

  She had been right, this was going to be an interesting assignment, and not just because Lipinski and Resit were resistant to the idea that they might have to get along with Yerusha. Al Shei’s mood had her engineers tip-toeing around, and on the bridge, Schyler wasn’t doing much more than grunting out orders when necessary. Dobbs had spent the last six hours bouncing between the two departments, but her best efforts were yielding minimal results.

  It didn’t take a whole lot of looking to see that there was something more than an intercom malfunction operating in the background. Just a little more looking showed that that something was probably Marcus Tully.

  She glanced toward the door and then toward her screen where the view was totally blotted out by the tanker’s side.

  Now might be the best time to get some research going, she thought, and then rejected the idea. The refueling would take awhile, but not as long as her researches, and if she was caught out of her straps for some reason, Schyler would give her a good going over. It was one of the strange double-standards for a Fool. Technically, Fools could get away with anything, but they had to be extremely careful not to be caught getting away with anything serious. If they did, their reputation for foolishness would change to one for stupidity, or, worse, untrustworthiness. Neither was something any Fool could afford.

  Research would have to be done later though. She needed a full bio on Marcus Tully, and another on Jemina Yerusha. The file downloaded into the ship’s book was next to useless. Like Schyler and Al Shei, Yerusha was holding something back. It might be something totally unrelated to whatever was marring the mood of senior crew, but it was there all the same.

  Dobbs chuckled and shook her head ruefully. What’s this ship run on? Hydrogen and boron or secrets and mysteries?

  She’d spent a chunk of the previous evening in the galley with the Sundars. Like Fools and Chief Engineers, a ship’s galley crew never really went off shift. Harry Dalziel, the steward, was the one on official active duty. He split his time between the kitchen and the laundry. At the same time, Baldassare poured over films detailing the menus and cross-referencing them with the inventory the ship carried versus the inventory he need to acquire at the next stop. Chandra had brought their AI box in from the sick bay and perched it on the corner of the central counter so she could update the crew health records from the notes she’d made during the day.

  “Actually, most of Al Shei’s crews are as straightforward as you could want to serve with,” said Baldassare. “She and Schyler don’t have much use for the brooding type who takes to the stars to forget.”

  “Or to dodge the greens,” added Chandra. “Recent circumstances notwithstanding.”

  “Ah, Grandmother Chandra, I see through you.” Dobbs waggled her finger at Chandra. “You’re talking about Yerusha, but are too polite to name names.”

  Chandra snorted. “Hardly. Yerusha may be a problem child, but the greens are not a problem for her any more than they are for any other Freer with a loud mouth.”

  “Isn’t that redundant?” remarked Baldassare.

  “When did you join the Fool’s Guild?” asked Dobbs.

  “The day I was born, girl, the day I was born,” he answered amicably.

  “What I was saying,” cut in Chandra, “is that everybody is here because they want to be, not because they have to be. It makes all the difference.”

  “It does depend on what you mean by ‘have to be,” mused Baldassare. “Al Shei does have a way of finding people who really need her. Tully, Schyler, Lipinski…”

  “Lipinski?” Dobbs’s eyebrows shot up of their own accord.

  Baldassare nodded. “Lipinski needs a place he can work without interacting with AIs. He was actually an apprentice on a comm-crew when Kerensk went down. It hit him hard, and I don’t think he’s had much help getting over it.”

  “Which explains his problems with Yerusha. He can’t think much of a people who think independent AIs are close to gods.” Dobbs sipped her tea. As long as humans had sailed in ships, no one knew more about crew dynamics than the galley crew. It made them a Fool’s natural allies and Dobbs was always careful to cultivate their friendship. She was glad the Sundars were so amenable.

  “At bottom, Lipinski is a reasonable man,” said Chandra. “Loud, but reasonable. He’ll work around it, especially if he’s prodded.”

  Another faint clang shook Dobbs out of her reverie. On the screen, the tanker fell away against the blackness.

  “Intercom to Pasadena. Secure from refueling,” came Schyler’s voice through the speaker. “Four hours to jump.”

  Dobbs snapped the catches on her straps and folded the chair back into the wall. Part of her training at Guild Hall had been how to live optimally in confined spaces. She had draped swaths of green and blue painted faux silk across the walls to help soften the corners. She had mounted her two flexible memory boards on opposite walls from each other. One of which showed a starscape, the other of which showed a sunny day in the green hills of Ireland. She had never been there in the flesh, but she liked to look at it. On the wall next to the desk hung a full length, faux-glass mirror. Like Al Shei, she had piles of pillows in the corners of her cabin, fastened down with velcro to keep them from floating around during free-fall. The overall effect was an airy, comfortable one and Dobbs was quite pleased with what she’d been able to accomplish with her thirty-five pounds.

  “So, prod I shall.” Dobbs struck a pose in front of her mirror. “Until the very rivets of the Pasadena ring with the mighty shouts of accord between Jemina Yerusha and Rurik Lipinski!” She shook her fist toward the ceiling, took a good look at her reflection and laughed.

  Maybe I should put in a call to the Guild, though, she thought, turning away from the mirror and smoothing her tunic down. Not due to report in for another week, but maybe I should get an advisor on for this run. She opened her night-drawer and put her juggling scarves inside. She took out a flattened spray of paper flowers and tucked them into her right-hand pocket. Four shiny gold coins went into her other pocket. It was important to rotate her props on a regular basis to preserve the element of surprise. She decided against the knotted chain of colored handkerchiefs that she carried up her left sleeve. That particular display did not seem to go over well with this crew.

  She hooked her finger around her necklace and contemplated the flat, black box in the bottom of the drawer that held her private communications equipment.

  In the back of her mind, she heard Amelia Verence chiding her. “Dobbs, you have got to learn the balancing act,” said her tutor and sponsor, “the Guild is a safety net, an information resource, and a back-up, but they can’t do your job for you. Master of Craft means you’ve mastered working on your own.”

  “You’re right,” she said aloud to the memory. “I just wish I knew what about this run is making me feel so…young.” She shoved the drawer back into the wall. “Enough stalling, Dobbs,” she told herself. “Time to go to work.”

  Lipinski first, she thought as she breezed out into the corridor with her professionally cheerful expression fixed on her face. Yerusha she could tackle later, after they’d made the jump past light-speed.

  Dobbs took the stairs down to the comm center. Pasadena was a clean ship, but the inside of the comm center gleamed. All transmissions were captured using the center’s main boards outside. Then, they were screened to verify that they contained only what they were contracted to contain and nothing else. After that, they would be transferred into their prepared storage space behind the sealed hatches of the data hold.

  The repair benches, transmission boards and duty stations were all to one side. The other side had its own hatches, sealing the main storage facilities away from the rest of the ship. One of the repair benches had its lid closed and the red lock-light was shining, indicating somebody was doing some secure work. Dobbs filed that fact away for later.

  Odel, Lipinski’s relief, sat at Station Three, the coordination board. He glanced up with one round black
eye as Dobbs stepped through the hatch.

  “If you really want to be here,” he whispered, “you are a bigger fool than you look.”

  Dobbs snapped her fingers. “That’s what I forgot to do. Work on that dimensional relativity control.”

  Odel snorted. “Fine, take your own chances when the bodies start flying.”

  “Bodies? Linear!” Dobbs rubbed her hands together.

  Station One, the main transmission station, was a standard board and chair set up. Lipinski sat on the deck next to the chair. One of the repair hatches was open in front of him and he bent so far inside it that his long nose was almost touching the exposed wiring. Above him, Yerusha leaned over the station’s memory boards.

  Yerusha glanced up as Dobbs moved past Odel, but Lipinski didn’t. He plucked a pair of tweezers off his belt and reached into the circuits. He pulled a chip out of its socket and replaced it with a fresh one.

  “Now?” he asked Yerusha.

  Yerusha prodded the board with one finger. “No response.”

  Looks like the intercom wasn’t the end of our problems, Dobbs sighed inwardly. What is going on?

  She thought about the sealed work bench, and then about the infamous and dubious Marcus Tully trying to retrieve something he’d left behind, and a seed of real worry planted itself in her mind.

  “So, why aren’t they running a diagnostic?” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth to Odel.

  He looked up at her mournfully. “The system ate the diagnostic.”

  Dobbs let her eyes go round. “Ate?” she mouthed silently.

  Odel nodded.

  “If this ship had an AI, we wouldn’t be having this problem,” muttered Yerusha. Odel squirmed visibly. It didn’t take more than that glance to see he wished an emergency would crop up that he could respond to. Dobbs remembered Lipinski’s boast about being hell on apprentice comm crews.

  “If this ship had an AI,” Lipinski stuck the original chip back in its socket and shifted his weight to pluck out the next one, “we’d have a whole new set of problems. Now?”

  Dobbs lifted up onto tip-toe and with exaggerated steps picked a path to stand behind Lipinski. Yerusha just watched with a resigned air. Dobbs folded her hands behind her back and leaned over the Houston.

  “It’d be much the same,” he said to the chip, “as having someone in the hold who doesn’t belong here.” Dobbs’s shadow blocked his light. He rolled his eyes up. “Two someones. Who spend a lot of time poking into things that aren’t their job.”

  Dobbs wiggled her fingers to wave hello at him.

  “The piloting system is my responsibility,” countered Yerusha. “All of it.”

  “And internal communications, which are going straight to hell…” Lipinski set the chip back into its socket and began following a single silver tracing along the dull green surface of the circuit wafer. “Are mine. All of them.”

  Dobbs’s mind raced. The boards in the comm center were connected to the bridge because the Houston needed to know exactly where the ship was in relation to the pick-up coordinates when the ship was doing a fly-by data-grab. If he didn’t, he would not be able to activate the capture programs in time to catch the data being transmitted to them. A few dozen kilometers could make the difference between a clean capture and a load of garbled and incomplete data.

  With both of them here and on the edge, that link must be off. Completely down, or worse, off by a deceptively small amount.

  “Now?” asked Lipinski, reaching between the wafers with the tweezers again.

  “Nothing,” reported Yerusha.

  “So what in Settled Space is screwing them up like this!” He yanked his head out of the hatch. Dobbs jumped backwards. “Huh? What?” he demanded of Yerusha. “This ship was in order until we got underway. I checked. I know these crashing, burned out, chewed and regurgitated boards like I know my rosary. This should not be happening!”

  “Still wishing you could crawl in there?” Dobbs asked cheerfully before Yerusha could respond to the outburst. She peered into the repair hatch at the layers of circuit wafers.

  “Can’t fit.” Lipinski rested his weight on his heels and stared at the wafers, brooding. “You might be small enough though.” He tucked his tweezers back into his belt pocket. “You want to pop in there and find out what’s wrong.”

  Dobbs pulled back from the hatch and shook her head. “I already tried. Way too cramped for me. You’ve got it filled to the gills.”

  Yerusha was, apparently, in no mood to let things slide. “If…”

  “Wishes were fishes we’d all cast nets,” said Dobbs brightly. “Or so I’ve heard.” She put her head to one side and twiddled her thumbs pensively. “Although I don’t see why, such a mess to clean them and the smell, phew!” She coughed violently and waved her hand in front of her face.

  Yerusha stared at her, possibly trying to work out all the references. As dedicated a Freer as she seemed to be, she had probably never even seen a live fish, let alone caught one.

  It did, however, apparently make her forget what she was about to say.

  Lipinski was also staring. “Dobbs,” he said quietly. “You’re in my light.”

  She skipped backwards until her shadow fell across the unoccupied floor and bowed. She gave Yerusha a wink and an “oh well,” gesture and took her leave. As the hatch closed behind her, she willed them both to use their brains and not their tempers. They both must know that with only three hours until they made the jump, this was a dangerous fault to be left uncorrected. As such, it was no place for her clowning.

  Lipinski’s hard voice echoed in her ears, This ship was in order until we got underway. This should not be happening!

  You’re right, Houston, but it is, which leaves a big, burning question.

  The sound of a hatch opening drifted up the shaft. Dobbs looked down automatically, and saw Ianiai’s black-haired head and stuck-out ears. She stuck her fingers into her teeth and whistled shrilly.

  The sound echoed all around the shaft. Ianiai looked up and Dobbs leaned over the rail, waving. He made a gesture which, from the scowl on his face, wasn’t meant to be polite, and swung himself over the railing onto the support staples. He hitched his belt to the rail for safety.

  Uh-huh, Dobbs trotted down the stairs to the galley. The off-shift reliefs are on and in foul moods. This is not a good sign.

  The galley deck was quiet. Following the entire corridor around, Dobbs couldn’t hear any of the exercise equipment working, or any voices from the recreation rooms. She poked her head into the kitchen. Cheney was gulping a coffee beside the urn. The only other person in evidence was Dalziel, the steward, watching a cleaning drone scour the floor.

  Dobbs ducked back out into the hallway. She briefly considered taking herself down to engineering to see if she could wheedle any information out of Al Shei but decided against it. One of the tricks a Fool had to learn was when to leave the crew completely alone.

  I’ll bet my master’s rank that now is one of those.

  She took herself back up the stairs to the berthing deck.

  However, she thought as she entered her cabin, without accurate information, I can’t do my job either.

  She locked the hatch and set the entrance light to red, indicating she did not want to be disturbed. She unfolded her desk from the wall and laid her first two fingers on the activation key. The board switched on, setting the keys glowing.

  Dobbs sat down in the real chair and pulled her pen out of her belt pocket. She tapped it against her palm while she eyed the board thoughtfully.

  Prepare to accept search and recovery program, she wrote across the main board.

  Ready, responded the desk.

  She plugged her pen into the desk’s socket. After a long moment, the desk wrote Program loaded.

  Dobbs retrieved her pen.

  Is Al Shei’s pen active in the ship’s system? she wrote.

  Active.

  Timing is everything, thought Dobbs. She wrot
e. Program D1 procedure name Tunnelling. Locate and copy data on search target.

  She stuck her pen back into the socket and sat back.

  If Al Shei had known what Dobbs was doing, she probably could have shoved the Fool out the airlock without any of the crew blinking. Some of them probably would even have helped. Schyler, for instance.

  All computer systems had security measures that prevented someone from tapping into an active pen from a remote terminal. The Fool’s Guild had invested years in designing a search-and-recover program that could work its way around most of them. Dobbs was a couple of updates behind, but since the Pasadena under Al Shei was noted for quiet runs and a trustworthy crew, she didn’t expect to have any trouble getting through.

  Then, the desk beeped.

  Unable to complete request.

  Dobbs straightened up. She pulled the desk’s pen out of its holder and wrote Explain.

  Inadequate configured pathway space.

  “Inadequate!” She swore. “Lipinski, I was kidding about the place being full…”

  Then the desk wrote, Request complete. Information loaded into desk.

  Dobbs sat very still for a long moment. Then she wrote, Load D1 security program and seal desk.

  Program loaded and desk secured.

  Dobbs pulled her pen out of the socket and shut the desk down. She folded it away and sat for a long time, doing nothing but stare at the walls.

  Now, what, she thought, over and over, could have caused that?

  After the better part of an hour, she still did not like any of her answers.

  This was the moment. Al Shei’s heartbeat quickened even though she was doing nothing but sitting at her station. This was where it all came together, the planning and the scrambling and the inspection and the programming. No matter how well travelled their route, this was where they left known space behind and went on alone, powered and protected by the tiny world that they had made for themselves.

  As always, she was torn between an almost childish excitement, and a bitter-sweet memory. Last night, in Asil’s journal he had said, “I am having Muhammad point out all your stars to me, Beloved, and when he goes to bed, I shall tell each one to remind you of my love.”