by Sharon Lee
He rose, smoothly unwinding to his modest height, and bowed to Jethri again.
"On my name and my House, as witnessed by one not of my clan, they will not just ignore me on this. Again, I promise you, Jethri Gobelyn, I will do my utmost to bring you face-to-face with these miscreants, that we may together return to you what is yours."
*
Apparently the "witness" part was even more formal than he'd gotten from tel'Ondor's training since it required a solemn stand-up bow from both the Scout and his mother; and the insistence on "Gobelyn" in this had some depth he didn't at first fathom.
"It occurs to me that I may have my own backups stand down," Norn offered judiciously as they sat again. She had her hands spread on the table then. Jethri saw her staring hard at her Master's ring before she looked at him, her mouth going straight, and perhaps grim, before she turned her attention to the waiting Scout, her look giving him permission to speak.
"Yes, that would be the case," he said. "If we are to move among Terran boundaries--you understand that we have no time frame for this, except as soon as possible? They have to pull together a team and the pair of us shall move with more speed, and perhaps have more access, as well as less likelihood of a crossing of my Balance with your own."
Norn bowed acknowledgment and looked at both of them.
"You, Scout, for yourself and for your organization, have brought this to us for solving, and the solving requires great trust. This I accept. My son has necessity and must be gone from the ship for the purpose of Balance both ethical and physical, a purpose he agrees with, and which may have cultural subtlety beyond my comprehension. Is this agreed by all?"
There were bows from both Jethri and the Scout.
"In that case, you will know your business better than I," she said, a hand motion indicating them both,. Then to Jethri: "My son, never forget that you may call upon the clan as you need. You will take and wear your collar pin, and use Ixin's name among any of our allies as needed. Take the choker, it is yours, if luck so follows. Dress as trader, and take at least one of the good suits."
She glanced toward ter'Astin's bland face and saw something there Jethri must have missed, continuing with an emphatic slap on the table.
"In fact, take the very best suit, for you will be a diplomat for yourself. Jedante will be properly served if necessary. This is a matter of necessity on several fronts, this venture. Do us proud, for I expect to be by your side when you tell your tales to my foster mother!"
She stood, bowed. "Safe lift, my son. Move as quickly as you can, that you may return to me as soon as may be, to make yourself, Ixin, and Elthoria whole again."
Chapter Seven
Control Deck, Keravath, Outbound from Boltston
Dim almost to the point of too dark, the board colors were close if not exact, and ter'Astin's toss was good, and into the right-hand seat.
"I'll sit pilot, of course, you'll sit left seat, and since you'll be at the board, we'll log you in as sitting second."
It was, Jethri knew, some kind of a sop to his honor, but he could feel his shoulders clenching. If there was one thing his mother the captain had made sure he knew was that he wasn't any pilot and wasn't worth teaching: on the Market he daren't ever sit in a command seat, not even while doing stinks on port. He shuffled the largest of his bags toward the bin to the back.
"Not a seat for me, I think. There are two more and I'll just . . ."
The Scout's tone firmed. "If you please, do take the left seat. I appreciate your understanding of etiquette but I dislike having to talk over my shoulder. You'll sit second and earn some keep."
Jethri looked up, the pilot's hand motion designating Jethri's spot with emphasis. "Bully and fool,"he said with a touch of asperity, tucking his day pack into the indicated cubby and testing the catch web with a stronger tug than it deserved.
"Forgive me, young sir; this trip is not likely to be an easy one, and if you think the pilot's a fool, we can cancel it and let your . . ."
Jethri snickered. "Just naming the seats the way I was taught, sir."
"I find it hard to believe that the Gobelyns traveled on a ship where they allowed the captain and first board to be called a fool."
Jethri turned to him, realizing that Pen Rel's excellent teaching had the pair of them playing Balance games; the more his mood was uncertain, the more the Scout would automatically react and . . .
"Good," ter'Astin bowed to him. "Let us not waste adrenaline in such a fashion. I am still at a loss for the words . . ."
Jethri stared into a corner--there were lots of them, and they were dim, because measuring one's space was a good plan for anyone on a ship's flight deck, in any case and at any time--and he didn't have to look at the Scout.
Gathering energy he finally relented of his silence.
"There's a saying a family saying, maybe, or a Terran one. I heard it enough though, and maybe it was just my ship . . ." He paused, considering melant'i and knowing that any time a Terran-born tried to play with that delicate balance there was a chance of error. So he looked directly at the Scout, who was by now in his seat, and testing straps for the away phase . . .
"So it was said, sometimes, that 'when the first board's a bully, second board's a fool? That means I sit fool."
The Scout allowed a slight grunt to acknowledge his hearing of the phrase; but his hands were already talking to his ship with the same kind of surety Jethri'd seen Iza display, or Khat. Jethri'd longed for that kind of surety when his father had been at the boards, and when he's assumed that one day he would . . .
"Your father," said the Scout accusingly, "was a pilot. His father was a pilot, and his before. Your captain-mother Iza was a pilot. Is it odd that you are not?"
Jethri settled back, hands already reaching to the slightly wrong spots for the belts, and then, with a glance, discovering the right spots on this ship and tugging them into place, checking the lock/unlock sequence, sitting tight against it for sizing. This was also a useful way to hide his perplexity--was the Scout testing him, aware that Iza was not truly his mother? The mention of Arin's predecessors . . . made him nervous.
The seat was a remarkably good fit to start with and he could feel it adjusting itself as he reached his hands to the board as he'd seen others do too many times to count.
He wet his lips, finding there was no retort there when he expected something, though resentment was a fringe aura to all his thoughts still.
"Dunno 'bout odd," he said in Terran, this being a discussion he'd prefer not to have, in any language. "Just know that them on the Market made it plain that I wasn't ready yet, and the captain, she made it plain that pilot's not in me. The others could see it too, I'm guessing."
The Scout didn't reply to this intelligence, rather used his chin to gesture toward Jethri's side of the board.
"You'll want to push the bottommost button on the right once, and then flip the secure switch to the right, and lock it. That tells the ship what it knows: not only that someone's in the seat, but that person is alert. More than this we won't do on exit."
Jethri followed the instruction, and several more, found the arming handle for the abandon ship capsule and understood those instructions, which basically said that if something went wrong and there was absolutely no way they could survive after the pilot declared an emergency and declared abandon ship, he was to pull that handle and take whatever more time the capsule gave him to breathe to transmit and record what had gone wrong so that someone else might be able to achieve Balance for the dead.
He wore the earpiece for comm, listening in; he activated, on order, enough of the board to be able to see that the front and rear hatches were secure, that the docking strut was engaged but not locked, that--well, he'd had been listening to these kinds of things since he was born, and though more than half of the traffic was in Liaden there really wasn't that much difference from a run out from a trade stop on Gobelyn's Market. Nor was the board much different, and that was likely not Liaden di
fference but the difference between a family freight ship and a Scout's light duty.
Jethri listened now: voices from Elthoria's flight deck reached out to the pilot, ignoring him, assigning, agreeing, confirming. Gaenor's voice now: this would be the official--but no, it must not be, for ter'Astin was talking, naming Jethri Gobelyn ven'Deelin Clan Ixin as second board on Keravath, while in his ear Gaenor was saying, "Communications check in process, on comm Elthoria, Gaenor tel'Dorbit, checking Keravath Second Board Jethri Gobelyn ven'Deelin."
Ship habit more than thought: "Second Board, signal caught," he said, "open line."
"Jethri, I'm sending secure relink now, please test."
He looked over the controls, close enough to Terran after all, found the symbols needed, punched the button as around him Keravath's familiar-enough preparations went on.
The two central screens were live, one with technical scan showing radar and a radio-source overlay, and one with a forward video. He guessed when the Market came out of rehab she might have setups only one or two generations behind these, but there, he'd been reading up on the Scouts and knew they often were ahead of commercial installations by a dozen Standards.
The link showed live; Jethri spoke.
"Keravath Second, testing secure link, Keravath Second testing link . . ."
"Shield ratio?" Gaenor's voice had changed--maybe it was the secure line's special harmonics, or maybe it was her playing on a sudden sense of privacy, but--ah, darn!
Jethri was stonkered: he'd never tested a secure link beyond touching a button--and that just once, with Iza off-ship.
Apparently it was a secure link: the Scout was carrying on so rapid a conversation in jargon-laden Liaden that it took Jethri's frantic hand-signal to gain his eyes.
"Shield ratio?" he asked doubtfully of the serious face, fearing that he'd interrupted . . .
Ter'Astin gave a sharp bow that was almost a nod, pointed to one of the small sub-screens down on Jethri's right side, hand underlying the duplicate on the Scout's board.
There: a clear-reading color bar, with the red side showing a reading of three digits, the blue . . .
"Elthoria, that would be, 937 over 063."
Almost without pause came the rejoinder, in a quiet purr of a voice . . .
"Jethri, that is very fine," she said in Terran, which words he'd heard next to his ear not all that long ago, and which reminder was distracting at best and . . . "and so, since you shall miss the Festival here and I gather also Festivals where you travel, I am to relay to you Vil Tor's hope that we three may, as he says in his best Terran, be 'festive as all get-out' on your return . . . and that you return soon. In the meantime, he points out that we shall party in your honor, shall we not?"
Jethri wanted to frame a good reply in Liaden, but the modes crashed his thoughts for a moment, and then the ship around him shook with the preliminary cast-offs, going to internal power entirely, and the gravity shifting oddly, a reminder that Elthoria was easily a hundred times more massive than Keravath.
"Gaenor," he managed finally, "yes, I would very much like that, but you must tell him I am unpracticed . . ."
She laughed gently in his ear.
"Jethri, believe me, you'll find him just as pleased as I to help rectify that situation."
"Second," came ter'Astin's voice, amused, "we'll be needing some concentration here in sixty seconds, if you please . . ."
"I--he began, but Gaenor's voice in his ear came quickly.
"I heard the pilot's voice, my friend. Quickly then, Vil Tor and I offer a commission to Jethri the trader, to acquire for all of us, if you can, such scarves or scarf clothes to make our festives better. You have a measure of the cloth and the wavelengths; if necessary Vil Tor can tailor from base cloth. We shall make it worth your while, indeed . . . Elthoria secure out."
That was said just as Keravath shifted slightly, announced by the shifting center of gravity . . . and Jethri heard the Scout say, "Control jets test good, we're set now," this unlikely sentence in Terran as the Scout looked at him meaningfully from little more that an arms length.
"You don't understand--the connection is broken . . ."
Jethri hoped he wasn't blushing bright enough to light the ship; ter'Astin laughed very lightly, and went on in a gentle voice, and a mode of comrade.
"Acquit me of such, Second. I have been flying solo courier long enough to understand very well the sigh of departure and the problems of connections being broken. And for you, so early in your career, and so badly used by my timing, I owe another Balance yet.
"Now, then, practical piloting lessons--pay attention! I shall expect you to retain much of what I tell you."
*
There was a phrase known among Liadens and Terrans alike, and Jethri began to appreciate its nuance quickly under ter'Astin's tutelage. That phrase was "to fly like a scout . . ." and it meant to move a ship faster, more accurately, with less fuss, and with more elegance than most ships moved--and the Scout had begun it before Elthoria's call of "well-away" was fully voiced.
The little ship was nothing so gaumy as a shuttle nor as laggard as a trader's family freighter; spinning on axis as neatly and carefree as Jethri might have in a stinks-run zero-G leap; the press of correction jets exact and efficient, with none of the overburn Khat deplored in Iza, nor none yet of the prissiness that Iza accused Cris of when he filled the chair.
Jethri croggled at the front video as the Scout skimmed Elthoria's main pod-deck as if he were lifting from a planetary airport, the pressure growing as the little ship accelerated toward the line superimposed on the radar screen, a line reaching well out from Elthoria toward a Jump point that looked far too close to the world they were leaving for a safe system exit. The image almost brought on the kind of open-space fear he'd felt on planets--and that, of course, was absurd. He held on, saying nothing . . .
"We of the Scouts are like pilots everywhere," came the nonchalant voice as Jethri maintained his grip on the armrests, "we offer and expect assistance of other pilots. There, we have taken a look at several pods from a less static location, giving images available to Elthoria without the launch of a remote--and in turn Elthoria's eyes can be sure that in my haste I've not forgotten to uncap a jet nor left a cable dangling."
"Left a cable dangling?"Jethri managed.
The Scout looked across at him, serious.
"Oh, indeed, Second. Couriers and small ships are prone to such, since we often don't fit the usual attachment points and must use secondary points or transient attachments. I have myself, once only --and I tell you in strictest confidence--while I repeat once only!--managed to part from a station with technician's cleaning cart still attached by umbilical, station to cart to ship. It was not this ship, I assure you, and in the end the fault was multiples of faults, for things were powered down that ought not have been, and others powered up that ought not, and . . . in the end there were mutual fines, and I'm sorry to say I lost five good days of personal leave to the fixing of things. Ugly, very ugly indeed, I was for a relumma or more . . ."
Here he paused in recounting the story, making sure Jethri was looking at him as well as the screen where the ship was nearing the long dotted line to the Jump point . . .
"Yes, ugly I was, for I therefore missed a Festival rendezvous with a favorite. I will expect you to be careful indeed, Second, that we not fall into such a situation on this trip!"
Before Jethri could reply other than shake his head at the unlikely need for his aid in such things, the pilot did something complex on his board and visibly relaxed -
"There. The course is set. And so, the course we have set is for Balfour, and I would like you to check my course, if you would, check my math -"
Jethri stared across at his companion starkly. Balfour was on a route Gobelyn's Market had run several time within his memory, with barely even a sub-crew. Balfour shouldn't be named by itself, of course, that was silly. There was another place that ought to be part of that run . . .
But there was so much he didn't know, and he had no training at all, just--sense came to the fore.
"I am not a pilot! I don't even know where to find the course--"
The flight deck had darkened as they traveled, but Jethri could see the pilots eyes tighten, and heard the slow duff of someone not fully reining in frustration.
"This is true, Jethri Gobelyn, and not merely the handy excuse given for security reasons? It is true that you have not learned to pilot, nor to navigate, nor to plot courses?"
Jethri froze in his seat, feeling the eyes pin him where he was, reviewing his life to be sure that in none of these days had he accidentally done those things and forgotten, that he -
"None of it, Pilot,'' he managed. "I was last on the list for flight deck training. If I would have stayed on the Market, I suppose they would have broken down soon and got me my time on the lifeboat boards, but not even . . ."
"That's criminal! Surely you must know your homeworld's coords at least . . ."
Jethri heard the Scout's error and shook his head, several times, suppressing the urge to raise his voice. The Scout's choice of words became "birth home" in Terran.
"My birth home's a ship," the trader said blandly. "Now and always. The only coords I know is what I played with on the toy board my father gave me, and what I learned from playing Trade N Traipse, on the off-line spare board. You probably don't know the game . . .
The pilot lifted hand to face, eyes closed. Finally, he removed his hand and glanced forthrightly at his supposed student.
"Coords from a game and a child's toy? Well then, your father was a pilot, so I assume you at least got an accurate toy. You do know, then, where the controls are and what they are supposed to do?"
Jethri lifted his hands and held his face as steady as he might. The truth was that he'd heard Khat say something like it, and Paitor, and Cris. Seeli once or twice had even hinted that some rules "needed to be modified or the boy allowed to follow them . . ."
"Observation only, and from the 'prentice board my father . . ."