by John Barnes
Later, Jak thought that perhaps he should have guessed anyway. Piaro was a good-looking heet; how terrible could his sister be? Ship's companies are almost uniformly brainy due to the combination of self-selection, genetic modification, early stimulation, and constant social pressure; Phrysaba was competing, in that smart aggressive pool, for a post as an astrogator. As a future rigging chief, Piaro had the native perfect manners that are a necessity for people who live in close quarters and meet strangers often; Phrysaba added an upper-class, officer's polish to them.
But although in hindsight Jak realized he should have expected Phrysaba to be a remarkable and interesting person, and quite likely beautiful, in fact the revelation hit him like a dark meteor from a high orbit. About three minutes after politely meeting Dolegan Fears-the-Stars, Piaro's father, who shook Jak's hand and said a word or two of welcome before pulling up a ship's financial records screen at the table, and less than a minute after meeting Laris Fears-the-Stars, Piaro's mother, who appeared to be bored and was doing something on her screen all through dinner, Jak found himself gazing into Phrysaba's eyes, feeling what he always did when his heart was grabbed—simultaneously like the luckiest heet alive and like the biggest gweetz the human race had ever produced.
She was slim and taller than average; she had the sort of sharp, clear features that seem to express every passing feeling. Her skin was a slightly deeper brown than Piaro's, her eyes a little less wideset, but the family jaw and eyebrows were unmistakable, and they graced her as if some wise genie had chosen them specially. She laughed only when things were funny, smiled as if the world were constantly singing-on the way she wanted it to be, and asked the sort of question that quickly converted Jak from feeling like a babbling gweetz to the discovery that he was a more interesting fellow than he'd ever thought he could be.
Toward the end of dinner, Phrysaba turned to Piaro and said, "You're right, he'll do just fine."
Piaro sighed. "He'd better, you have him hypnotized by now, Sis."
Jak was trying to frame the question when Piaro explained, "It's the time of year for the Exchange Dance. Basically because there's so few of us on the ships, people tend to get paired up and stay that way even though they may not be crazy about each other. So at the Exchange Dance you go and dance with everyone except your date—old-style ballroom dancing, so that everyone gets to talk. The idea is that it provides a relatively painless way for people to get out of arrangements that might no longer suit them, but that they've been in for years. Well, as it happens, Phrysaba doesn't have a mekko and never has, and the ship is short of heets her age, so she needs someone to go to a dance with her and not dance with her, so that she can see about stealing someone else's mekko."
"That is not the purpose. I just want to go and it's bad form to go without a date and everyone else in my class has a date and is going and—"
Piaro raised his hands as if being held at gunpoint. "You see what happens. I try to help her social life and she gets violent—"
"The only way you'd ever help my social life would be if you spread the rumor that you were adopted!"
Jak watched the two of them bicker for several minutes; he was starting to dak that this was how the twins were affectionate with each other. Probably anyone who was silly enough to harm one of them would be dead at the hands of the other, almost instantly.
"Uh, by the way, the answer is yes," Jak said, when he judged that their score was about even; she had just told Piaro that looking at him made her wonder why Mother hadn't eaten her young, and he'd indignantly replied that undoubtedly she'd thought about eating Phrysaba, but refrained for fear of being poisoned.
The two of them stopped and stared at Jak.
"The answer is yes," he said. "You were leading up to the idea of my escorting Phrysaba to the Exchange Dance, masen? So I was saying yes."
"You're supposed to ask her, tove," Piaro said. "And then she has to consider."
Jak shrugged. Sib had thumped it into him any number of times that customs were not a matter of making or not-making sense; they were a matter of playing the game or not. After all, which "makes more sense"—only touching the ball with your hands in basketball, or never touching the ball with your hands in soccer? "Well, then," Jak said, "give me some help and guidance here. Is there a formal way to ask? Anything I have to do while asking?"
Phrysaba got a strange gleam in her eye. "Well, it's customary to stand on one foot with your hands over your ears and all the pockets on your coverall turned inside out. And the family likes to have a picture of that—"
"Sis!"
"Okay. Okay. Just thinking of the fun we could have. Actually, no, you just ask."
"Not quite. You also have to pay her one or two really flowery compliments," Piaro said. She glared at him. "And that's not a prank."
"No, but it's embarrassing. I was hoping to skip it."
Without looking up from her computer screen or raising her voice, Laris said, "Go all the way around the orbit or don't even chart it, Phrysaba. If you want to be asked according to custom, then be asked according to custom. If you want to skip over parts, then let the young man make up his own way and don't hold him to custom. No picking and choosing."
"Yes, Mother," Phrysaba looked down as if she'd been bawled out.
After an awkward pause, Jak said, "Well, then, Phrysaba, you are so beautiful that I can barely think at all when I'm looking at you, and you have completely fascinated and charmed me the whole time we've been talking, and I would be deeply honored if I could escort you to the Exchange Dance."
She seemed to choke up—he hoped from the extravagance of the compliment, and not some gaffe he'd made—and said, "I will have to consider. I'll have my brother carry word of my decision to you."
"Did it, Sis, did it! Just like a regular person! Anyone who didn't know you would never know what a gweetz you are, toktru!" Piaro exclaimed.
Even their parents laughed. Somehow that broke the ice. Within a few minutes, Jak was once again completely enthralled by Phrysaba.
Afterward he knew that he must have eaten the rest of dinner only because he was full, that Piaro was there only because the two of them went to one of the canteens for coffee and conversation after, that he had said good night to Phrysaba because he remembered her warm sad smile. And he knew he had a problem. He was supposed to be rescuing Sesh, not falling in love with another girl.
Two days later, he was playing dodec handball with Piaro, a game at which they were very evenly matched, and both of them were beginning to pant and to shake off sweat that hung in the air for many seconds thanks to the microgravity. "I feel like I'm breathing liquid me," Piaro said. "Like to take a break, or better yet just quit?"
"Toktru, yeah, one or the other, and I'm starting to like quitting." Jak pulled up his shirt to wipe his drenched face; when he dropped the shirt back it was soaking. "If nothing else this trip is getting me into the best shape of my life, which is going to be handy if I end up spending months under house arrest on Earth."
"Yeah. Given what a full gravity feels like, and what it does to your joints and muscles, no wonder people moved off the Earth as soon as they could." Piaro stretched and said, "I'd say a warm soak and some cold juice?"
Jak nodded. "Sounds good."
Passengers rarely used the ship's Public Baths. Those from the Hive, the richer parts of the Aerie, and the mining colonies generally had strong privacy taboos, and people from planets and larger moons got seasick in the sloshing of the warm low-gravity tanks. Jak had discovered, the first time Brill and Clevis had invited him, that his psyche was apparently missing the modesty component of his home culture, and the slow, gentle rocking of the big warm tank of water worked miracles on tired, sore muscles. Now he preferred the Public Baths to the awkward shower in his stateroom.
The two toves left their clothes on a bench and wandered among the dwarf trees that surrounded the bathing pool; generations of developing the perfect graft host had brought about tree trunks straight
as a post, on which grew branches of a dozen fruits. After picking and paying for an apple, a peach, and a mango, Jak tossed them into the juicer, selected the temperature, and threw the switch. After a brief shriek of machinery, his pitcher of ice-cold juice emerged.
As he settled into the bathing pool beside Piaro, he said, "You live a fine life on the ships. I'm starting to wish I had the mathap to join the Spatial; this has to be better than push-ups and rifle cleaning."
Piaro shrugged. "Spatial ships are tighter, more rules and more enforcement and all, than free merchants like us, but supposedly they have better amenities. As long as you don't count not getting blown up as amenity."
He took a sip of his own banana-orange mix and said, "And actually, in kind of a roundabout way, we might be able to help you with getting into the Spatial, along with resolving an awkward social problem." He stretched again and said, "Oh, that's good on the shoulders."
For a long while, the two stretched and scrubbed, till at last Piaro said, "It so happens that my sister found three separate occasions to talk to me yesterday."
"That's unusual?"
"Three in a month would be unusual. This was bizarre. We're better friends than we let on but we're headed for different roles in life and we don't have much to talk about. Furthermore, all three conversations were about trivial matters. Further-furthermore, each trivial matter then led around to a single topic, which was you, old pizo. Don't ask me why, there's no accounting for taste, but I think Phrysaba toktru likes you. And she seems to also really like the fact that you're off to heroically rescue that princess, too—she won't let me make jokes about 'heroic house arrest' or you being a 'heroic errand boy' anymore—and to me, anyway, it makes no sense, because if she has a crush on you, that's more than problem enough, and if you add in that you're obligated to this other girl, it makes everything completely impossible. But somehow you've made a big impression, and Phrysaba's never been really strongly interested in any particular heet before. And I bet you know that that's going to be trouble if anyone older than us notices it."
Jak didn't quite know what to do or say. His friend dakked it singing-on that this was going to be trouble. And he had no business getting involved with a girl on this trip, especially not when the whole point of it was to rescue Sesh, who was probably languishing in a prison cell right now, or at least being forced to hang around in a garden with a heet she didn't like, which, for Sesh, was practically the same thing. So the entire situation was a disaster, and he had to hope Piaro had thought of a way out.
On the other hand, his heart was leaping up for pure happiness. What could that mean?
"Well," Piaro said, "the last I knew you were planning on joining the Hive Army—assuming that for the next few years your occupation isn't 'prisoner' or 'hostage'— but as far as I know nobody prefers the Army to the Spatial if they can get into the Spatial, masen? So you don't have one of the aps. Well, did you know that if you earn United Association of Spacecrew points, that gives you a leg up for joining the Spatial?"
"Yeah, but the UAS is even harder to get into than the Spatial. It's considerably harder to get into than the Hive's PSA, which I didn't get into, which is where all the trouble started in the first place."
"It's harder to get into if you walk into the UAS office in the Hive, or connect via net, and apply. But UAS wants everyone who works in space to have a union card. And on every union ship, if anyone wants to work, there's always work, and there's always training available. So if you applied to work on general labor for the Spirit of Singing Port, you'd be able to get both work and training—about as much of both as you wanted— and work is good for UAS points and training is good for lots of UAS points. You'd need about six voyages before you could join as a full-ranked voting member, but any points at all count very strongly toward your application to the Spatial, and if you worked this voyage and the one back to the Hive, especially if that's a long one, my guess is you'd be pretty nearly certain of getting into the Spatial. Or if you didn't want to do that but you found out you liked sunsailing, well, with a provo membership and that many points, you could probably ship out from the Hive within a year or so—they give some extra consideration to anyone trying to earn his permanent card."
"Toktru? To tell you the truth, even with all you toves being so nice and inviting me for all the rec and games stuff, I'm pretty bored, and it would be great to have more to do."
"Don't mention that around the ship's shrink when you interview with him—they don't let insane people work. But I suppose in the abstract I can kind of understand how you might feel that way." Piaro drank again, stretched, and said, "I assume you see that besides maybe helping you get into the Spatial, there's the other advantage, which applies right now. It gets you and Phrysaba out of all kinds of trouble. Anything between a passenger and a crewie is frowned on, even just a social friendship. But if it looked like you intended to be a crewie someday… then you and Phrysaba could spend time together, and I don't speck people would disapprove. Better for my family, better for you, even better for my sister."
"But if she's already, urn, infatuated, and especially if you think it's not going to work out—"
"I have faith in both of you, Jak. You're about the most unromantic heet I've ever seen, and she's about as romantic as they make'em. Two weeks of being mekko and demmy and the two of you won't be able to stand the sight of each other. Just be nice about it if you decide to dump her; I know she'll be kind if she dumps you. Want to towel off and drift toward mess?"
After dinner, Jak was at loose ends; all the crew his own age happened to be working that shift. He wasn't going to make a complex situation worse by trying to contact Phrysaba. After admitting to himself that there wasn't much that was fun to do, just now, he went back to his stateroom, got into his pajamas, and rummaged around in his bag. He found his purse wadded up in the bottom, where he'd tossed it the first chance he got, and pulled it on to his left hand, making sure his fingers moved freely and that it felt comfortable on his palm, fastening the straps around his wrist, flexing to wake it up. He darkened the room, and said, "Bring up news access."
"Now you tell me," the purse said. "You haven't wanted that in years. I'll have to get all kinds of modules that I deleted years ago, and reorganize memory. This is going to take a full minute and you'll probably reprimand me for it. Great."
Jak fingered the pain button, just above his wrist, significantly.
"All right, all right, all right. I'm getting it. I was just telling you it would take some time," the purse said. "You're just very hard to predict. I've almost got it. And will you want it all projected on the wall?"
"Yeah."
"And will you need this more in the near future?"
"Toktru."
"All right. Then I have to do a couple more things with memory before I can get started. Please don't zap me. I'll get it as fast as I can."
"Do it." Jak wondered idly if a purse that liked you, like Dujuv's, was better than this, or even worse for chattering.
The news access brought a shock. Uncle Sib had told him not to expect to find much, because after all Sesh was being held in secret and probably word would not leak out for a long time, if ever. But to his surprise, he found ninety-two stories immediately, most of them referencing an initial story by Mreek Sinda, who had been at Centrifuge, working on a fashion-and-art piece about Y4UB, when her cameras and microphones had picked up Sesh's kidnapping. Across the following weeks, she'd done a commendable job of digging up the rest of the story—that Princess Shyf had been living as Sesh Kirop-ing, who the friends who tried to rescue her were, and so forth. And now half a dozen rivals of Mreek Sinda were also doing followups.
Jak sat scratching his head. It was funny how news reporting could change what everything meant, even when it did get the facts singing-on. If he hadn't known it was himself and Duj, he'd have thought they were a couple of heroic toves, toktru. On the other hand, he winced when he saw the malphs hold himself and Duj, unconscious
and spread-eagled, and swiftly and efficiently do the damage that had put him into a regeneration ward. There are many good things to be said for style and mastery of craft, but they don't apply to all crafts.
Furthermore, Mreek Sinda had eventually established that he was on his way to Earth and that he was proba-bly carrying a secret back-channel message from Green-world to Uranium. So she had managed to penetrate to several different places where Uncle Sib had planted the primary cover.
Her most recent stories, and those of her competitors, focused on the reaction in Greenworld—Jak noted that Sesh really did resemble King Scaboron. Mostly the news from Greenworld consisted of diplomats saying that the situation was grave, that Uranium had behaved badly or at the least that one of its ducal house had, that the whole situation had to be watched carefully and that this was the most serious kind of matter in diplomacy, and that simultaneously there was nothing to worry about, everything was being taken care of, it would all turn out fine, and any speculation about a diplomatic rupture, let alone a military intervention, most especially let alone a war, would be completely irresponsible and had no basis in reality.
Well, at least this explained some of the hero-worship he was getting from Phrysaba; if he'd tried to look her up and found something like this, he'd have been impressed too.
It didn't seem to him that it would affect his mission much; after all, when he arrived at Fermi, he was supposed to try to contact Psim Cofinalez's household, as well as the public affairs office of the Palace of Uranium, and proceed as if he really were mainly concerned with delivering his message. And it was kind of flattering as long as he remembered not to believe it—Mreek Sinda's reporting made him sound like someone interesting.