Galatzi Trade

by Robin Roseau

  I lay there panting, willing the headache to dissipate, wishing I could clutch my head.

  From behind me, Sartine asked, "What's wrong, Darling?"

  "Headache," I said. "It will pass."

  "Oh, Darling," she said. "Please tell me what is wrong." She sat up beside me, and I felt her looming over me, but I didn't open my eyes to look up at her.

  "No."

  She paused. "Do you need your pills?"

  "No. It's not bad. Please, I'm sorry I woke you."

  "I'm not sure I was asleep," she said. "Please, what can I do to help?"

  "Promise me if it gets worse, you'll let me go see an imperial doctor."

  "Of course, Darling," she said.

  I wasn't sure how I felt about her calling me that. I wondered if she did it to see how I would respond, but right now, I had more important worries.

  I rolled onto my back. When I opened my eyes, her expression was full of concern. She reached out and caressed my face. I closed my eyes. Her touch felt good. I lay there while she caressed gently.

  "I admit it," I said quietly. "That feels nice. But that doesn't mean I agree you have the right to do to me what you're doing."

  "You have granted me the privilege of touching you."

  "That's not what I meant, and you know it."

  She paused before responding. "I should not have joked about it. I am sorry. I will not interpret your occasional acceptance of my comfort as agreement I may keep you."

  "Carefully said."

  "You are having less trouble understanding me."

  "You are more consistently speaking slowly, and your accept grows more familiar."

  "And you are speaking only Talmonese. Does that help you learn?"

  "It does."

  She continued to caress me, and it continued to feel nice.

  "Cecilia, how many languages do you speak?"

  "It depends upon how you count them," I said. "There is an English word dialect. It means two languages that are very, very close together, but with differences by region. One language can have dozens of dialects. Sometimes those dialects are nothing more than differences in how some words are pronounced, but sometimes it hardly seems as if two people are both speaking the same language, but they are. Do you see?"

  "I think so, at least partially."

  "If we count only major languages that I speak about as well as I speak Talmonese, and perhaps a few of the dialects that are so distinct they are almost their own language..." I counted. "Seventeen. Maybe eighteen."

  Her hand stilled.

  "Please don't stop," I whispered. "It feels good."

  And so her fingers began moving. "Seventeen. This means one less than three sixes?"

  "Yes," I said. "Seventeen. One for every finger and almost one for every toe."

  She laughed lightly. "How could you learn so many?"

  "The same way I learn Talmonese. I worked very hard at it, and I learn the local language everywhere I travel. Sometimes a planet has several languages, and I learn any that I expect to encounter on a frequent basis, as best I am able."

  "Seventeen."

  "Three are dialects. And many of those languages are related, so once you know one, learning the others is not difficult, although they are distinct languages."

  "Say something to me in one of these other languages."

  "I have spoken English to you."

  "Then another."

  I switched to French, and I told her how she caught my eye the first moment I saw her. And I told her I wished she had asked, not taken. Finally I grew quiet.

  "What did you say?"

  I smiled, and she could feel it under her fingers. "Thank you."

  "You did not use so many words to say 'thank you'."

  "No. I am not answering your question, but thanking you for your touch."

  I didn't access Minerva again that night.

  * * * *

  We rode northwest, always northwest, as best the land would allow. When we came to large clearings, I used my eyes on medium zoom, but I did not see any mountains.

  Luckily, my eyes did not require Minerva's help, although she could normally access them, and she was my normal means of any diagnostics on them. But they were operating perfectly fine, and so I didn't think they were contributing to Minerva's issues.

  For the next week, we traveled eight to ten hours each day. I hurt at the end of each day, and Sartine apologized, but she stated only that, "It is necessary or we will arrive after the snow grows too deep for travel."

  I didn't complain about the hours in the saddle, but we continued to fight over her right to force me to Indartha. She remained strictly resolute, and if the fights grew too heated, she bound my legs and walked away.

  Only once did I pick a fight while we were riding. She let me rant and bitch for forty minutes before she gave me the choice to shut up or accept a gag. I just couldn't hold back, and I let her know what I thought of that. The gag appeared in front of my eyes, and I stared at it for a long time before I let her fill my mouth.

  She didn't even ask if I would behave; she tied it firmly, far more firmly than she had the first days.

  "This is your fault," she said when she was done. "You may stew on that."

  Other than meals, she kept me gagged until we were in bed that night. "Then she asked me, "If I remove your gag, will you be verbally abusive?"

  I promised to be pleasant, and the gag disappeared. I then gave her the cold shoulder, but she rubbed my back and spoke soothingly. Finally I said, "It's not fair."

  "What isn't?"

  "That it is so easy for you to take my anger away."

  She laughed lightly, and I shivered when she kissed the back of my neck.

  * * * *

  Every night, after I thought she was asleep, I woke Minerva. And slowly, I worked my way around all the major systems and subsystems. The extent of her damage was vast; it seemed like every system was touched, and I just couldn't believe that. But I couldn't understand what was causing such problems. Her main processor seemed just fine, and she could run memory diagnostics all I asked with no trouble. She could communicate with me just fine as well.

  But she couldn't access any of my monitoring systems. She could record any of my vitals, any audio, any visual. She could record diagnostic reports. I could dictate notes to her. But when I tried to save the notes, she crashed.

  We'd been past the river for a week. Sartine had been quiet for ten minutes, and I waited for Minerva to boot.

  "Ready."

  I had a thought. "Minerva, report but do not record heart rate."

  "Heart rate: 64 beats per minute."

  She'd always crashed when I asked her to record heart rate.

  "Minerva, report but do not record respiration rate."

  There was a fifteen second pause. "Respiration rate, eleven breaths per minute."

  She had been failing to record that.

  "Minerva, report but do not record blood pressure."

  Three seconds later, she crashed. I avoided groaning, but I stiffened for a moment before willing myself to lie still.

  "Every night," Sartine said. "Every night, fifteen to twenty minutes after I pretend to sleep. Every night. Why, Cecilia?"

  But when I rolled onto my back, she began to caress, and I closed my eyes.

  "You have been pretending?"

  "I have been trying to sleep, and hoping you will sleep, and I grow quiet. If you did not twitch beside me, and if your headaches did not come, we would both sleep. Do not turn this on me. Explain what is happening."

  I said nothing.

  "You thought I was asleep. You try to hide your headaches. You are not trying to convince me you need medical help. You are trying to hide it from me."

  I didn't say anything. It was all true.

  "Tell me."

  "No."

  "Tell me, or I will stop soothing you afterwards."

  "And now you find out how I respond to blackmail." I rolled away from her and bu
ried my face so she couldn't easily touch it.

  She propped herself up behind me, looming over me, and tried to pull me back. With my arms bound, it wouldn't have been difficult for her, but she was not forceful.

  "I am worried, Cecilia."

  I rolled back. "And I am worried about what will happen to you when the marines come, but that doesn't seem to change your course of action."

  "You must tell me."

  "You can say that all you want, but I will not tell you until the day I can tell you I must see a doctor, and I know you will take me."

  "Then you will tell me right now."

  "Were you listening?"

  "Yes. Now you listen to me. If you tell me you must see a doctor, then I will send everyone else home, and we will turn around. I will take you to a doctor."

  "An imperial doctor?"

  "Well, I will take you to Sudden, and you will arrange it from there. Yes."

  "I don't believe you."

  "Why not? I would believe you."

  I didn't answer that.

  "I believe you are doing something to cause these headaches. I believe you wait until I am asleep, and then you do something, and it causes these headaches. But I do not understand what you could do, or why you would keep doing it."

  "Maybe I am having bad thoughts, and they give me headaches. Maybe I lay here, and after a while, I remember what you are doing to me, and it makes me so upset the headache flares up."

  "I would believe that, but if that were so, you would tell me to make me feel guilty. And you are always thinking about how unfair this is, and so you should always have this headache."

  I sighed. "You would trust me if I said I needed to see a doctor, and it could not wait longer."

  "Yes."

  "So you admit you trust me."

  "I trust you wouldn't lie. If the situation were reversed, I do not believe I would be as honest as you have been, and that thought troubles me."

  "You don't know I wouldn't lie for my freedom."

  "And yet, so far, you haven't. If you truly wanted your freedom badly enough, you would be willing to lie, if that's what it took. But you haven't. Why is that?"

  "Shut up."

  "Roll back and I will soothe."

  "I won't be blackmailed."

  "No blackmail. Please, Cecilia. Tell me. Or stop doing whatever you are doing to cause these headaches."

  I rolled over slowly. "You would trust me if I said I needed a doctor. Then trust me when I tell you I do not. Well, I do, but it is not urgent. If we were in Sudden, I would wait until my next scheduled trip to leave Talmon."

  "When would that be?"

  "A year or two. I would move it up if the situation grew worse, but it could take me three months just to arrange it. Then it is two months to a planet with a doctor, the time I spend there, and two months to return. It is a long time to be away."

  "If you require a doctor before spring, you must tell me right now. Tonight."

  I thought about it. "Why?"

  "Because once we arrive in the mountains, we will not be able to turn around, and if we arrive in Indartha, we will remain until spring."

  "When will we arrive in the mountains?"

  "The day after tomorrow."

  "I do not see the mountains."

  "It is night."

  "Smart ass."

  "If it were clear enough, we would have seen them two days ago. We will see them by lunchtime tomorrow, if the weather is good."

  "Then I have tonight and tomorrow, and I must tell you by the day after."

  "You must tell me tonight."

  "I have until we reach the mountains. That is what you said."

  "And somehow you will know more the day after tomorrow than you know now?"

  I thought carefully. I was giving her far too many hints. "Yes."

  "Fine. But in two days time, you will tell me everything or promise to stop causing the headaches."

  "We will discuss that in two days when I know more."

  "Cecilia, you are not vendart."

  "You know how I react when you grow heavy-handed. Did you want to fight? I can close my mouth right now and say nothing further, and there isn't a thing you can do about it."

  She sighed.

  "Do you have my pills?"

  "Yes. Do you need them?"

  "Four."

  "You have never asked for four."

  "You have given me a time limit, and so I require four."

  * * * *

  It took hours for the headache to fully dissipate.

  There was something wrong with my recording system. I could record the results of diagnostics reports, but I couldn't do anything that required the recording facility. I could access previously recorded information, but I couldn't store so much as half the blood pressure.

  By the end, Sartine was begging me to stop doing whatever I was doing. "You're scaring me, Cecilia. Please. We'll turn around tomorrow. I'll take you to a doctor. Please stop. Please stop."

  I almost wanted to accept, but I wanted to win, and it wasn't winning if she took me back because she believed I needed a doctor.

  Yeah, I'm an idiot. A stubborn idiot.

  I let her soothe me and promised I would stop for the night.

  "So you admit you are causing this!"

  "I never denied it."

  "Please tell me. Please."

  "You can't do anything about it, Sartine. I am not dying. I don't think. Now shhh. It hurts to think."

  And so she soothed me, and eventually I slept.

  But in the morning, we were both still tired. I told her she should just gag me now, because I didn't know how I was going to make it through the day without being incredibly rude to everyone.

  She didn't gag me, but it was a quiet horse ride.

  She was right; we saw the mountains. They were beautiful. I was too crabby to appreciate them.

  That night, she forbid me from doing whatever I was doing. "We have to know," I said. She gave me the Ibuprofen, and I didn't even wait until she slept.

  It took me an hour, and not once did Minerva crash. I could access most of my major systems as long as I completely avoided anything involving communications or recording. I couldn't save a thing, not the slightest thing, which severely limited Minerva, but it told me something. What, I didn't know.

  "You listened to me," Sartine said. "No headache."

  I rolled to her and smiled. "I learned last night. But I'm not done. I have learned what doesn't cause the headaches. Now I am about to learn more exactly what does."

  "Please don't. Please, Cecilia. I won't be able to return to Indartha until spring if I take you to Sudden now. Promise to let me court you through the winter. I will go to your doctors with you. I will take you there tomorrow. It is downhill; the horses will not tire so quickly. We can be there in just a little more than a week."

  "No." Then I talked to Minerva instead of her. "Minerva, communications diagnostics. Which tests are first?"

  "Access of LAN hardware."

  "Review past diagnostics tests. Report last attempted test of satellite link."

  It took her several seconds. The last test was the last full diagnostics that ran to completion. The test ran with no failures.

  "Minerva, run satellite link diagnostics. Record results after each test before beginning the next test. Skip any test that accesses the storage systems."

  It took her fifteen minutes. I had no idea the satlink test was so extensive.

  She didn't crash.

  "Satellite link diagnostics complete. All tests ran to completion with no failures, two warnings. Seven tests skipped."

  "Minerva, establish satellite uplink."

  It took her twenty seconds to report, "no signal".

  We had only one satellite in orbit. It was in geosynchronous orbit, directly over the equator, directly in line with Sudden. It should be in line of sight.

  "Are you awake?"

  "Yes."

  "I would like to go for a walk
. I would like to sit somewhere we can clearly see the southern sky."

  "What do you offer me if I allow this."

  "One kiss. No tongue."

  She laughed. "Agreed."

  I didn't bother making her go through the pain of dressing me. Instead, she pulled my boots on me and settled a cloak around me, and she did little more. Once outside, it took us ten minutes to find a place we could see the southern sky. We found a place to sit.

  "When do I get my kiss?"

  "Any time after I am ready to return to our tent," I replied.

  "And when will that be?"

  "Either at the start of the next headache, or about fifteen minutes."

  She sighed.

  I closed my eyes. "Minerva, do we have enough power for a satellite uplink?" Most of Minerva's systems ran off a biophysical power source. That is, my own body powered her systems. But some systems, such as satellite uplink, required more power than that, and so she had storage systems, which were regenerated in the same fashion. But with the diagnostics she had been doing, I'd probably been draining the reserves.

  "Estimated power reserves for a four minute uplink."

  "Initiate uplink. Upon successful uplink, initiate immediate, emergency conference with all staff. Avoid all recording systems."

  "Running." Ten seconds later, she reported, "Satellite uplink established. Paging conference participants."

  "Yes!" I screamed. "Oh yes!"

  "What is happening?" Sartine asked.

  "No headache!" I replied.

  "Cecilia?" came Madge's voice. "Hey! Are you all right? We were worried. How is it in Indartha?" Then Sunny joined, then Mallory and Erica, all in a few seconds. I didn't wait for the rest.

  "Madge, my implant is severely damaged. I have at most four minutes for this conversation, and I might cut out. It appears to be some communications sections and all recording sections. If I go near those sections, the implant boots with a horrible headache. Do you think this could remotely be an emergency if I stop using the implant entirely?"

  "I couldn't tell you without full diagnostics. My gut feel is no. They're pretty well-behaved systems if you just shut them down. There's nothing to leak."

  "So it's unlikely the uplink is going to fry my brain."

  "Unlikely, but if it's giving you headaches to use it, stop using it and get it fixed. Shut it off and leave it off."

  "All right. Thank you. Next. I was kidnapped. We haven't reached Indartha yet. We're at the foot of the mountains and will enter them tomorrow. I am currently sitting on the ground with my hands bound tightly in front of me, which at least is an improvement from my first few days."