Pawn

by Timothy Zahn

  Bungie shrugged. “He’s not saying it anymore. Not saying anything else, either.”

  Nicole felt her throat tighten. Now she remembered where she’d seen that gun before. “That was Jerry’s gun, wasn’t it?”

  “Hey, I had to take it away from him.” Bungie patted his injured side gently. “His next shot might have hit something important.”

  “Oh.”

  Bungie chuckled, a dark, unpleasant sound. “Oh, don’t sound so worried. I’m not gonna do anything till I’m good and ready. And like I said, I need my gun back.”

  There was a sudden grinding sound. With an effort, Nicole tore her attention away from Bungie and looked back at the work site. One of the men—a Canadian named Bennett—was using Kahkitah’s machine to spray a thin, shiny mist over the new wires the team had installed. As she watched, the liquid dried into more of the tough plastic coating. Bennett played the nozzle back and forth until he’d covered the whole area, then shut off the machine. “Done, and done,” he announced.

  Carp stepped over to the wall and gave the work a quick but careful look. “Okay,” he said, gesturing. “Everyone back. Fishface? You’re on.”

  Kahkitah stepped to the edge of the raised wall and braced his big hands against it as Bennett and one of the other men pulled the sealant machine back out of the way. Two of the other men went to the ends of the panel and released the locks, and Kahkitah lowered the section of wall carefully back into place.

  “And that’s dinner,” Carp announced with tired-sounding satisfaction. “Good work, everyone. Let’s stow the gear and go eat.”

  four

  Over the next month, in fits and starts, Nicole settled into her new life.

  At first she missed alcohol. Missed it terribly. She ached for the taste and for the familiar and welcome fog it brought. The days seemed to stretch out, with evening and nighttime hours she’d almost forgotten even existed suddenly returning to full awareness. Her moods swung wildly, from relief to anger to excitement to long and bitter crying in the privacy of her room.

  But gradually, the aches faded and the cravings subsided. There were still times when she missed what had once been her most loyal companion. But slowly those regrets became less and less frequent.

  The rest of the adjustment wasn’t nearly so hard. By the end of the first week she’d memorized all her co-workers’ names, faces, and quirks, plus the faces and quirks of people like Allyce, whom she saw only occasionally in the living or work areas. Most of them were people she could probably get along with, or at least could fake getting along with, with only a couple on her list of people to avoid as much as possible.

  One of the latter group was Dr. McNair, or Sam, as Plato insisted everyone call him. His anger at being snatched from his hospital’s parking lot cooled a bit after the first few days, but it never went any cooler than a dark, brooding resentment. Much of his anger was focused on Plato, which Nicole thought was unfair since Plato had already said he wasn’t the one actually running the Fyrantha.

  Even more unfair was the fact that a lot of Sam’s remaining animosity seemed to be directed toward her, which was completely ridiculous. Nicole hadn’t asked for this any more than he had. But straight thinking didn’t seem to be Sam’s strong point, at least not in this particular matter.

  Fortunately, Plato assigned him to the medical center with Allyce and another doctor named Lena, and unless someone got hurt out on a job all three doctors seemed to stick close to that one area. As long as Nicole stayed healthy, she should be able to avoid Sam until he finally calmed down. If he ever did.

  By the end of the second week she’d become fully accustomed to her translator. In fact, she became so used to it that her brain stopped noticing those first couple of seconds of foreign speech and only picked up conscious focus again when the English translation kicked in.

  Adjusting to the physical device itself proved somewhat trickier. For several of those first days her scalp itched furiously as the hair started growing back, and incautious scratching of the area was a good way to catch her fingernails on the translator’s metal lines and circles. Several times an itch turned into a jolt of pain as her nails dug into the still-tender skin around the translator, and more than once she managed to hit one of the handful of slightly jagged edges hard enough to draw a few drops of blood.

  By the end of the third week she finally had the Fyrantha’s layout and room-numbering scheme figured out. There were still times when she got turned around, especially when their repair work took them to a more distant part of the ship. But even then, she could usually figure out from the nearby room markings how to find her way back to the group of rooms, facilities, and connecting hallways that everyone simply called the hive.

  Her own room in that complex was a strange mixture of the simple and the luxurious. The furniture was simple and compact, with the same basic layout as the cheap motel rooms her family had stayed in on the rare occasions when her grandmother had the money to take them someplace out of town overnight. But it was her own space—her own, private space, with a lock on the door and everything—which was something she’d never had before. She had a bed, a comfortable padded chair, a couple of lights, her own private bathroom, and even a nice-sized TV built into one of the walls.

  Granted, there was nothing to watch but what seemed to be nature documentaries set on exotic alien worlds, with commentaries that her translator annoyingly wouldn’t translate. But it was still something to do in her free time when she didn’t feel like socializing.

  And by the end of the fourth week, she’d finally mastered her job as Sibyl.

  That was the hardest part of all, and it was as hard on the rest of the team as it was on her. There was a huge amount of technical language she had to learn, as well as methods and equipment descriptions that she had to correctly relay to Carp and the other workers. Not always successfully, either, and there were several times when the whole bunch of them wasted hours on something that turned out to be a misunderstanding on Nicole’s part.

  The fact that Carp wasn’t a patient man didn’t make it any easier. Nor was he reticent about expressing his thoughts and frustrations, usually in a loud, angry voice, and always right in front of everyone else. More than once during those first weeks Nicole had to fight to keep back tears as he told her in a clipped, barely civil tone exactly what he thought of her as a Sibyl, as a woman, and as a human being. Usually in that order.

  Jeff sometimes tried to intervene, and Kahkitah was invariably distressed at her humiliation. But Carp didn’t seem to care. Still, for all his loud temper, his outbursts and anger never lasted very long, and within a few minutes he would be back to normal. Occasionally, he even went so far as to compliment Nicole when she had some insight or timidly made a suggestion that proved worthwhile.

  And then there was the Fyrantha itself, which seemed determined to keep her under ever-increasing pressure. Before Nicole was fully comfortable with one level of her new job the damn ship invariably upped the ante. First it was new technical terms for her to memorize, then it was increasingly complicated repair instructions that she was supposed to repeat word for word to her crew, and then it was not one but two sets of entirely different instructions for the two different squads of the crew.

  And when Nicole finally struggled her way to some kind of proficiency at that, the instructions started coming in two different chunks, which then required her to move between the two squads, trying to keep the messages clear in her mind and hoping she didn’t get them mixed up. That happened once, and Carp made like he would never let her hear the end of it.

  There were times—lots of them—when Nicole seriously considered giving up and telling Plato she was done. But each time she kept going. Part of it was because she was afraid to find out what Plato would do if she refused to work, the other part because there was no way in hell that she was going to let Carp’s opinion of her turn out to be right.

  Back home, Trake had always told her she would never be
more than the group’s lookout or distraction. Even when she’d tried to make something better of herself, like her attempts to learn how to pick pockets, he and the others had treated her efforts with contempt or amusement.

  True, all she was doing here on the Fyrantha was inhaling some dust and repeating what the voices in her head said. But she was at least doing that accurately, which was still apparently more than Carp had expected. Maybe it was more than Nicole had expected, too.

  And slowly, so slowly that she didn’t even notice it happening, she began to realize that her kidnapping had possibly been the best thing that ever happened to her.

  True, in many ways the Fyrantha was a prison. But so was her life before that Wisp swooped in and grabbed her. Here, at least, she had her own room, plenty to eat, and no muggers, killers, cops, or crazy street people lurking around every corner. None of Trake’s friends or enemies were here, which meant she never had to keep one eye over her shoulder making sure no one robbed her, groped her, or put a knife in her back.

  There was no whiskey, of course, and there were times when she lay awake in her darkened room, sweating profusely and unable to sleep, desperately wanting a drink. But by the end of the first month even that was starting to fade.

  In fact, there was really only one thing that kept her from persuading herself that the Fyrantha was the idyllic home she’d never had.

  That one thing was Bungie.

  He was always there—at her work, during her meals, even at the times when she was trying to socialize and figure out her co-workers’ hooks. He was seldom helpful at any of those times, either. During working hours he mostly loafed, or else pleaded helplessness due to his mostly healed injury, or simply disappeared to wander the area around the work site.

  Sometimes he even carried out small bits of sabotage when no one was looking. Nicole caught on to those events only when the next whiff from her inhaler suddenly showed a completely new problem that hadn’t existed before.

  Twice it earned her a scolding rant from Carp about making sure she’d given the team the complete list of repair information before they started work. Both times Nicole had to just stand there and take it.

  Bungie had stood silently off to the side and smirked.

  She’d thought about turning him in. She’d thought about it a lot. But something always held her back, always made her take the blame for whatever he’d done this time.

  Part of it was fear. She’d never actually seen him hurt a woman, but there were a lot of stories about his behavior, and she didn’t doubt a single one of them. And there were way too many places aboard where Bungie could catch her away from the others.

  Part of it was distrust. It would be her word against his, and no one had ever taken her word over someone else’s. Once she blamed him for something and was brushed aside, no one would bother listening to anything she might call him on in the future.

  But part of it—maybe even the biggest part—was that she really didn’t want Plato to lock him up or send him away. Bungie was the one connection to her past life that she still had, and even in her new safety and comfort she sometimes felt a perverse longing for the Philadelphia streets.

  Bungie seemed to realize that, too. Even while he was going out of his way to antagonize everyone on the ship, from Plato to Sam to the members of the other work teams when they ran into them in the corridors or dining room, he was careful not to push Nicole herself too far. He was also careful to back off his other interactions before they got to the point of blows or even loud arguments, which Plato had warned him against that first day.

  Nicole’s first theory was that this was part of some plan he and Sam had come up with, that Bungie was maybe acting as a distraction while Sam worked behind the scenes on a scheme to get them home. But Bungie was just as unpleasant to Sam as he was to everyone else. Her second theory was that he was hoping to make such a nuisance of himself that Plato would eventually get exasperated enough to send him home. True, he’d already said he couldn’t do that, but Bungie probably figured he’d been lying.

  It wasn’t until that first month was past that Nicole finally figured it out.

  Bungie simply hated life here.

  In fact, the more Nicole thought about it, the more she realized that the things she found most pleasant about the Fyrantha were probably the very things Bungie most despised. There were no street toughs he could intimidate, threaten, or scam. There was nothing to steal, and even if there had been there would have been nowhere to fence it. There were no drugs, no alcohol, no mood-altering substances, no excuses to kick up trouble. There were no games except the ones the workers had made for themselves, no movies except the nature shows on the room TVs, and no food except the rotating menu delivered to them in the dining room.

  Worst of all, there was no money. Money was how people like Bungie kept score on how their lives were going. When he had it, he was big and powerful and king of the world. When he didn’t, he was small and angry, ready to cheat and lie and stab people in the back to get that feeling of power again.

  She hoped he would eventually come around. This was his new life, and if Plato was right it was his new life forever. The sooner he accepted that things would never change, the better it would be for everyone.

  It was at the end of the fifth week that everything suddenly changed.

  * * *

  “… and then rewire the secondary core coil,” Nicole repeated, listening hard to the voices echoing through her mind. Sometimes there was a last-minute addition, like the Fyrantha had just remembered something. Or, the way Jeff had once explained it to her, like the ship had just run a fresh diagnostic and found a minor problem the first sweep had missed.

  But this time, there was nothing. “That’s it,” she confirmed.

  “Okay,” Carp said, tapping the end of his stylus absently against his cheek as he looked through the notes he’d made on his notepad. “Looks like a pretty even breakdown between mech and tech. Levi?”

  “Agreed,” Levi said, nodding. “I’ll take Jeff, Duncan, and Bennett and get started on the transfer node.”

  “Fine,” Carp said. “The rest of us will tackle the coolant pump assembly.” He glanced around, paused for a longer look. “Well, well—imagine my surprise.”

  Nicole looked around, wincing already at what she assumed was the problem.

  She was right. While she’d been focusing on the Fyrantha’s instructions, and Carp and the others had been busy taking notes, Bungie had once again slipped away.

  She looked back at Carp, bracing herself. Lately, he’d gotten into the habit of blaming her when this happened.

  To her relief, this time he didn’t bother. “Whatever,” he said. “Let’s see. More of us will be here at the pump than the transfer node, so this is where we’ll meet for lunch.”

  “Sounds good,” Levi said. “Let’s get to it.”

  The workers sorted out their equipment boxes, and Levi led his crew off down the corridor toward the broken module Nicole had identified. “Kahkitah?” Carp called, beckoning to the big Ghorf. “Get this open, will you?”

  Kahkitah lumbered obediently over to the wall panel, and Nicole braced herself. The question, she knew, had to be asked. “Do you want me to go look for Bungie?” she asked Carp.

  “Some reason why you want him back?” Carp countered.

  Nicole hesitated. There was actually a very good reason to make sure Bungie stayed where they could see him: the fact that he was likely to get into trouble anywhere else. Only a few days ago he’d figured out how to get into one of the atmosphere-filtering rooms, and she’d caught him throwing switches and changing settings apparently just for the hell of it.

  A quick whiff from her inhaler had enabled her to reset everything and relock the door after getting him outside. As far as she knew, neither Carp nor any of the others had any clue as to what had happened. But it had been a close call.

  She should definitely have called Carp in on that one, she knew. But again, the
combination of fear and nostalgia had kept her quiet. Her threat to turn Bungie in had gotten him out of the filter room and kept him mostly docile for a while after that. Maybe she could keep him under control, especially if he was getting resigned to his new life, and that would be the end of it.

  Besides, as long as she had her inhaler she should be able to fix anything he messed up. “I was just worried that he might get lost,” she said instead.

  Carp’s gaze flicked past her down the hallway, his lips tightening. Nicole’s tentative efforts to get close to him over the past couple of weeks had gone nowhere, stifled by a combination of Carp’s impatient and grating personality, Bungie’s continual hovering presence, and Nicole’s own diminished urgency for finding a way off the ship. Still, she’d learned enough about his expressions and body language to see that he was currently torn between not wanting Bungie around any more than absolutely necessary while also knowing that he was accountable for the man’s actions and safety.

  Responsibility won. “Sure, go ahead,” he said reluctantly. He eyed the pump machinery behind the wall—“And take Kahkitah with you,” he added. “Doesn’t look like we’ll need him for a while.”

  He snorted. “If he has to bend Bungie’s head a little to get him back here, don’t sweat it.”

  “I understand,” Nicole said. “Come on, Kahkitah.”

  “Where are we going?” the Ghorf asked as they set off down the hallway.

  “We’re looking for Bungie,” she told him, peering down a cross-corridor as they passed. The Fyrantha was a big ship, and unless he’d left a trail of bread crumbs there was no practical way to know which direction he might have gone.

  Unless he’d already started messing around and broken something. If he had, another jolt from her inhaler might give her a clue to his location. She pulled her inhaler from her vest pocket—

  She stopped as Kahkitah put a large hand on her arm. “There’s no need,” he said. “The effects of the first should still be present. If the Fyrantha is speaking, you’ll hear it.”