Ironheart

by J. Boyett

  At the word “mystery,” a striking expression swelled Anya’s face: something like a blissful hunger.

  Seven

  Willa returned to the Canary safe and sound; Madaku had to resist the temptation to say “I told you so” to Burran, even though he’d secretly been worried for her himself. Anya continued to spend time on the Canary, but less than before. She could come and go as she pleased now, using Ironheart’s own shuttle.

  “She has an operational shuttle over there?” said Burran, during one of their crew meetings. “How come she hasn’t used or mentioned it till now? Where was it before this?”

  Willa asked Anya that question the next time they were alone. “In storage,” replied Anya. They still spent a good bit of time alone together, chatting and visiting. It was mainly Anya who sought Willa out, and not vice-versa. But Willa enjoyed these times, too. She liked Anya. And besides, the woman was fascinating, a bottomless mystery.

  “Who knows what other amazing stuff she’s got, in storage,” fretted Fehd, when he heard this answer. For while it might be an exaggeration to call the shuttle amazing, it was still remarkable enough just by virtue of having no other example of its make listed in the Registry.

  Meanwhile Fehd started being more heartfelt in his morning offerings to the little altar he’d set up in his quarters to Gallyan, the ancient goddess of profit, luck, and childbirth (he didn’t worry much about her third aspect). Whenever Fehd was around Anya, he dropped hints about wanting to trade for the suspended-animation coffin. His hints were too crude to be mistaken for anything else, but he didn’t have the gumption to come out and get the negotiations started for real, so Anya just pretended not to understand him.

  Except she did finally say to Fehd, as if in passing, “Willa is a most lovely young woman. And I do have need of an intuiter, at least a temporary one. I wonder if there might not be some way she could pilot me to the nearest population center? Someplace where I could have more extensive repairs done, and where I could engage a permanent intuiter.”

  “Um. I guess my first concern is, it sounds like that would leave us stranded.” Willa had told them about Anya’s claim to have a pure-cyber intuiter aboard, but the contradiction didn’t bother him. It had never occurred to him to even wonder if such a claim could be anything but nonsense. “Besides, I don’t think Ironheart should go on any long voyages till we figure out why the realspace engines stopped working.”

  Anya nodded, acknowledging that his first point was reasonable enough while ignoring the second. “We would need to make some accommodations for that, of course,” she said, as if it were a problem that would work itself out when the time came.

  Later that day, while Anya and Willa were hanging out elsewhere, Fehd discreetly scheduled a meeting with Burran and Madaku. He told them about Anya’s request to “borrow” Willa, then said, “Obviously, we could never part from our intuiter that way, it would be too dangerous.” With one eye on Burran, he added, in an exploratory way, “Of course, it isn’t like we would be stranded out here, if for some reason Willa didn’t return as soon as planned. We could always just send out a subspace communication for help.”

  “You’re right,” said Burran. “Obviously, we could never part from our intuiter that way.”

  “All right. Well, anyway, that’s what I just said. But I wanted to talk to you two about finding some way that we can safely use Willa’s intuiting abilities as a bargaining chip.”

  “If you’re so excited by her suspended-animation coffin, why don’t you just offer her money for its secrets?” asked Burran. He was joking, clearly; the idea of paying someone for information like that was absurd. It was the Registry that paid for information.

  But Fehd snapped, “Maybe I will! All right? But that’s a business decision, so please don’t either one of you go around talking about it, to either Anya or Willa.”

  Madaku frowned. “I don’t understand,” he said. “If Anya were concerned about money, why would she sell the technology to you? Why not just upload the plans to the Registry, and take the pay-out herself?”

  Fehd looked embarrassed. Burran, who had been making a fist ever since Fehd had blurted his order to keep Willa in the dark, started laughing. “She doesn’t know she can upload it to the Registry, from any computer, and get billions of credits. Is that what you’re counting on, Fehd? And you’re hoping she doesn’t realize that Registry guidelines forbid us from denying her use of our own subspace links to upload data. And you want to buy it from her before she figures it out.”

  “All right!” Fehd took his cap off and almost looked like he was going to throw it on the floor—then he just stuck it back on his head, since that was the simplest thing to do. “All right, so I’m a sleazy businessman. So what? I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last.”

  Madaku was stunned. “How could she not know that?” It was one of the most basic rules: when you learn new data, upload it to the Registry. If it’s really new, the Registry will give you a treat. Fehd really would be the first sleazy businessman of this particular type in the last few thousand years, if this sort of plan really worked out. “I mean, how is it possible?”

  Burran leaned toward Madaku and spoke firmly and slowly, as if trying to impress something upon a child who’s so far refused to listen: “She’s from someplace else, Madaku.”

  “But still. If she just scrolled through the subspace feed for five minutes, wouldn’t she figure it out?”

  “I think she’s been too busy hanging out with Willa to scroll through our subspace feed,” said Burran. Less sarcastically, he added, “Anyway, I’m not so sure that would immediately pop out at her. It isn’t as if the feed is full of sites called, ‘Welcome to the galaxy, here are its unwritten rules.’”

  Fehd cut them off: “Rather than offering to lend her Willa, I’m willing to offer her transport to the nearest population center, plus enough credits to effect repairs and hire an intuiter, in exchange for both the suspended-animation coffin, and the secrets of her alien code.”

  Madaku was speechless. Burran smirked and shook his head: “That’s pretty dirty. That code alone is worth billions.”

  “I’m asking you not to mention that to Anya. And that you use your influence with Willa to persuade her not to mention it, either.”

  “Nah,” said Burran. “I mean, for myself, probably not. Then again, I’m no angel, and I’ve been known to let people talk me into some pretty shitty things. But Willa? She’d never go for something like this, even if she didn’t like Anya as much as she does.”

  “Okay. Well, that’s fine. That’s what we love about her, after all. But, Burran, do we want Anya to figure out the power she has, all of a sudden, while we’re right under her nose? Do we want her to suddenly become a billionaire, capable of summoning mercenary warships to our claim, on a whim? Isn’t separating her from such power the best thing to do, simply from a security point of view?”

  Burran didn’t meet either of their eyes; instead, he gazed at a point somewhere near the center of the table, and wore a wry, bitter smile. “You guys call me paranoid, and then you trundle out a fantasy like that,” he said. “Sorry, Fehd, but I don’t believe I’m going to play along with this one. Willa would never forgive me, even for suggesting she keep quiet.”

  Fehd started to reach for his cap, to push it back and forth, but he forced his hands back into his lap. “Okay, well, that’s your choice, but just if you could not mention any of this to Anya, or Willa. All right?”

  “I’ll mention it to Willa. I’ll let her handle warning Anya.”

  “No, Burran! Do not do that! As captain, I’m ordering you not to.”

  Burran laughed. “I don’t think our contract gives you the right to give me that kind of order, Fehd captain. And if it does, fuck it. The only reason I never warned her before about you trying to scam her was that it never occurred to me how vulnerable she was. But I’m not going to go looking for her, so you’ve still got a window of opportunity.” He got up from
the table and walked to the door. Fehd glared after him.

  At the door, Burran paused and turned back. “You know the real reason I’m not rushing to warn her off you? It’s that I’m not worried about her. She may have some blind spots, but she’s sure as hell not stupid. In fact, I bet she’s savvier than any of us. I’d bet you all my credits she has a much better idea of what her resources are, than we do. So take my advice, Fehd, spare yourself some embarrassment, and drop it.”

  With that, he pushed the door open and left.

  Fehd sat there, red-faced, fists tight in his lap. Madaku had never seen him so angry. “That asshole!” he spluttered.

  It was true, Madaku reflected, Burran was an asshole. On the other hand, by taking a stand against cheating Anya, he’d spared Madaku the stress of having to choose one side or the other.

  “What does he even actually do?” continued Fehd. “He doesn’t actually do anything, he just acts all the time like he’s the only competent one. The robot could probably do the same job as him, and then I’d save some money.”

  Madaku thought of that crappy robot in its niche on the bridge. For a second he was tempted to quip that, if Fehd was correct, then they’d all be glad Burran was there the day they finally needed the robot and it broke down and Burran was able to take over for it; but of course he didn’t say that.

  Fehd shot a finger Madaku’s way. “Don’t you say anything! To Anya, or Willa!”

  Madaku shrugged his shoulders. Why should he? It sounded like, thanks to Burran, there wasn’t going to be any need.

  ***

  Fehd sent a message to Anya that he’d like to see her alone before she returned to Ironheart, if she wasn’t too tired. No, said Anya, she wasn’t too tired. So after she and Willa had said goodnight, Anya waited for Fehd on the observation deck.

  He walked in, compulsively wringing his hat in his hands. Realizing what he was doing, he slapped it onto his head. As he made his way to the sofa under Anya’s cool, aloof regard, he had to fight the urge to take the thing in his hands yet again.

  He sat beside her and smiled. She did something faint with her mouth that could have been called a smile. Fehd had trouble meeting her gaze—it was a combination of the intimidation he always felt around her, the guilt he felt for trying to cheat her, and the things Burran had just said to him, about how she was smarter than he was. To escape her eyes, he looked out at XB-79853-D7-4. Its aquamarine glow reflected off the white walls of the observation deck. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said, gesturing at the planet.

  “Mm,” she said.

  “I guess you’ve seen plenty of views like this, what with how long you’ve been around,” he said, then turned to her in alarm: “Not that you look old! Subjectively, I’m sure you’re not any older than I am.”

  “That’s not the sort of remark that’s likely to offend me,” she reassured him.

  “I only meant because of the amount of historical time you’ve seen. Or, uh, the breadth. Because of your suspended-animation coffin.”

  “Yes. And there were times, even before I got the coffin, when relativity played a part in helping me eat great swaths of time.”

  That gave Fehd a superstitious pause. There were legends of travelers from the very edge of prehistory, before the discovery of the hyperdrive, who had traveled in realspace vehicles near the speed of light, who had aged with incalculable slowness while their crafts had inched with somewhat less slowness across the galaxy. Legends, hell—there were plenty of examples in the historical record of such ancient craft being intercepted or arriving at their destination, to find that while only twenty, fifty, or a hundred years had passed for them, a whole new age of hyperdrive travel had blossomed everywhere else.

  But as far as Fehd knew, no such interception had been made in a long, long time. And Ironheart, old as it was, was still a hyperdrive ship.

  He got down to business. “Actually, what I wanted to talk about was your suspended-animation coffin.”

  Anya just kept looking at him, waiting.

  Her inscrutable eyes made him nervous, but he forced himself to go on: “I’m a businessman, you know. Lately I’ve been into mining—it’s fun, going out into the wild, opening up a new planet. But for years before that I was a trader.” That was true, although in the modern galaxy one traded only in goods that had to be physically transported, not data and design. Most price negotiation had to do more with transportation fees than with the goods themselves.

  Anya still didn’t speak. From her expression it was impossible to tell whether she cared what he was saying, or whether she was just humoring his rambling small talk.

  He said, “Anyway, I’ve been thinking that the design for your suspended-animation coffin is something I’d be willing to trade for.”

  At first it looked like she still wasn’t going to respond. But then she said, “I’m very sorry, Fehd. But I prefer not to part with any of the items aboard Ironheart. Each one of them has a value which far outstrips its material worth. A sentimental value, if you will.”

  Fehd nodded with a pained grimace, as if to say he understood and was sorry to hear that, because in the end that sentimental value wouldn’t matter. His heart rate increased slightly with the excitement of their roles, for he was picturing each of them as archetypes he’d absorbed from adventure vids as a boy: himself as a pre-Registry hero-adventurer-trader, and Anya as a dragon coiled jealously around her hoard of unadium and other exotic minerals. “I hear you, I hear you. The thing is, well, you’re in need of passage out of here....”

  “I haven’t requested that.”

  “Well. No. But I assume you will. What you did request was that we lend you Willa, but I’m afraid we just can’t do that.”

  “If Madaku can replace my subspace antenna, I can hail someone else for help.”

  “Sure, sure. Except it wouldn’t be easy for us to part with any of our spares. And it’s hard for me to release Madaku for such a big job right now, because of all the mining work that’s still got to be done.”

  “I could send out a light-speed, realspace distress signal, go back to sleep, and set an alarm to awake me when help comes in a few hundred years.”

  Fehd gaped at her. “You don’t want to do that!”

  She shrugged mildly.

  She looked serious. But Fehd decided that she just had to be bluffing, so he pressed on as if she hadn’t said anything. “You’ll need us to give you passage out of here.”

  “Perhaps. I take it you are not willing to help?”

  “No, no, we’re totally willing! Only, that’s a valuable service. It doesn’t seem fair that I should give it for free.”

  “It costs you something to take me aboard as a passenger?”

  “Well, no, it’s not that your presence would add any costs. That’s not why the service is valuable, because of what it costs us. More like, it’s valuable, because of how much you need it.”

  “Ah. And it is a service you would withhold, despite how badly you think I need it. Because of how badly you think I need it, I should say. You believe that threat will pressure me into giving up more.”

  “Hey, now! Who said anything about ‘threat’?!” Without even noticing, Fehd took his cap off and began wringing it in his hands. He leaned in closer to Anya, almost imploringly, elbows on his knees. “I don’t mean to make any threats. I would never make a threat! I’m not a threatening type of guy. But it doesn’t seem fair for you to just come and take what you want, does it? And not give anything in return?”

  “No, I suppose it is not fair that I should take what I want. Did I claim to be fair?”

  “And, you know, the coffin isn’t even much to ask for, in the scheme of things. People don’t really even actually need suspended animation very often. I mean, most people would be a lot less scrupulous than me, and ask for that exotic code of yours.” Now, why had he said that? His original intention had been to try to get both the coffin and the code from her. Now here he was, promising her he’d never ask f
or the code at all, merely for the sake of not having to feel so bad.

  “Yes, that is true.” Anya finally, mercifully looked away from him, and gazed out upon XB-79853-D7-4. She looked contemplative, and Fehd quivered with excitement at the thought that she was about to give in. Then she turned back to bore her eyes into Fehd’s and said, “Or I could simply upload the schematics for the coffin into the Galactic Registry, no? The code, too, if I wished. My understanding is that this would gain me credits by the billions. Am I wrong?”

  Fehd said nothing. His face burned and his throat was closing up. Tears of shame danced on the edges of his eyelids and he willed them not to spill over. So Anya had been gleaning the galaxy’s new rules from the Canary’s subspace feeds after all.

  Anya coolly studied his reaction, then looked back out at the planet. “And then there is your offer. I shall have to consider which option to take.”

  Fehd tried to laugh and make the whole thing a joke. He noticed his cap was in his hands, and flung it back onto his head. “Well, I guess you caught me,” he said, then felt pathetic and so let his voice trail off.

  They sat in silence. Fehd couldn’t just get up and leave on that note, but he couldn’t think of anything to say either.

  Finally, it was Anya who spoke. But her words didn’t make much sense: “In the stretch of time,” she said, “the great danger is boredom. The only danger, I find. So one must create little challenges. Small games. One says to oneself, ‘Of course I could do such-and-such a thing. But I will wait, I will restrain my own power and only act if certain arbitrary things occur. Sometimes one says, ‘I shall only act when the circumstances are right for me to cast myself as the villain.’ Other times, for variety’s sake, one changes the game. One says, ‘I shall act only if and when I can play the poor victim. For it has been so very long, since I have been able to seem one.’”