University [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 6]

by Michelle Levigne

  “I wouldn't put it past him. What's the transfer for?” Lin said, addressing the control station again.

  “A passenger, on Ranger business. He needs to go by the shortest route to Centralis. Until you logged your destination, his shortest route went through six different stops."

  “Just one person?” She frowned a little more, eyes narrowed as she visibly weighed the skimpy information. “What kind of Ranger business?"

  “Required travel to Centralis,” the woman at the control station said.

  “Probably testifying like we are,” Lin muttered. “All right, send him over. Tell him to hurry. We're just about to turn over the engines."

  “He's on his way, Captain.” The other woman chuckled. “Thanks. He's been more jumpy than a cat with six tails in a room full of rocking chairs.” The communications channel closed.

  “What's a cat?” Bain asked.

  “Remember those big striped animals on Dovrekis? The ones the governor's daughters rode? Those were felines, the same genus as cats—but cats are generally smaller, with fewer fangs and claws. Very independent animals."

  “Do they have six tails?"

  “Hardly.” She laughed. “This passenger ought to be interesting. Hurry on down to the hold and open the hatch for him, will you?"

  “Where is he going to stay?” Bain unbuckled his safety belt and got up.

  “That's what I'm going to take care of. We can finish the cleaning once we reach free-fall, I suppose.” Lin stood and headed for one of the sleeping cubicles that hadn't been used for nearly a year now, since the Ranger medical team had traveled with them.

  Bain hurried down the access tube to the cargo hold. He smiled at the echoes his shuffling footsteps raised. It had been a long time since the hold was empty. Too many times, it had held beds, making it a dormitory for refugees, then plague victims, or scientists traveling to different places affected by Mashrami tactics. Tomorrow morning they would have had a new cargo, if Lin had made arrangements while he was gone. Maybe she hadn't had time. Even if Lin had arranged for a new cargo and destination, that would have all been scrapped because of the summons to Centralis.

  Just the thought of going to the central world of the Commonwealth gave Bain a shiver of excitement. Vidan was the homeworld, but it was the headquarters of the Order, of art, of history. The headquarters for the Commonwealth Council and the Commonwealth Upper University was Centralis. The planet was actually an asteroid, made livable by a series of domes, and sometimes domes inside of domes for double protection of sensitive areas. Most of the really important areas, like records storage and the Council's deliberation chambers, were underground, deep inside the metallic skin of the asteroid. It would take more firepower than the Conclave and every pirate ever encountered to cause enough damage to hurt Centralis.

  Bain pressed the buttons controlling the hatch, manually overriding the safety locks that had engaged when the pre-launch procedure began. The hatch hissed and thumped and slowly slid open.

  “Hello, Sunsinger!” a breathless young man shouted. Heavy boots thudded on the thermal-crete. Bain shoved the hatch open wider and stepped back.

  Just in time, too. A gray-clad figure leaped up the steps and hurtled into the cargo hold. Platinum, short-cropped hair and a neatly trimmed beard framed a face made red from running in the heat of Cooristeen. The young man skidded to a halt, dropped his duffel bags and leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees as he gasped for breath.

  “Okay, Ganfer, it can shut now,” Bain said. He waited until the hatch slid closed, then checked all the security lights to make sure all the seals had re-engaged. “Can you walk up to the bridge yet?” he asked, stepping over to the gasping figure. He recognized the clothes now; the uniform of a Ranger cadet. For a moment, Bain felt a thin stab of envy. He did like the uniform, and it would have been nice to go through training with some of his friends, even if the training was only half as bad as Captain Gilmore threatened.

  “Just a second.” The Ranger cadet snatched up the straps of the two duffel bags he had dropped when he hurtled into the hold. He took a deep breath, coughed, and finally turned around to face him.

  “Gorgi?” Bain stared. He knew he looked stupid, with his mouth hanging open, grinning wide enough to crack his face in half. “I was just thinking about you!"

  “Five minutes,” Ganfer announced.

  “We'd better hurry up to the bridge,” he said, before his friend could reply. Bain yanked one duffel bag from his hands and started up the access tube. “Why are you going to Centralis?"

  “School.” Gorgi coughed again. “I thought I was in good shape until I had to make that run. What do they put into the air here? Rejected fuel?"

  “It doesn't smell that bad. Lin, look who's here!” Bain said as he led the way through the hatch.

  “Gorgi Cole?” Lin stared for two heartbeats, then turned back to the control panel. “Welcome, Gorgi, whatever the reason. Don't tell me you've made captain already? Is that what gives you the priority status?” She grinned as she said it.

  “The Rangers are sending me to school, Ma'am.” Gorgi fumbled between trying to salute and shifting his duffel bag into his other hand.

  “On Centralis? You'd better hurry and stow your gear, and get under the net in that open cubicle over there.” She jerked a thumb in the direction of the open curtain. “The mattress ought to be thick enough to handle the launch stresses. Have you been going through launch with the Rangers outside the stasis field?"

  “Yes.” Gorgi grimaced as he answered. He hurried over to the open cubicle and jammed his duffel bag into the first open cupboard under the bed. Bain helped him.

  “You don't sound thrilled with the experience.” Lin ran her fingers over her control board, checking every light and button and switch.

  “I don't get sick anymore.” He climbed up onto the bed and lay flat on his back, then pulled the net over himself. Bain took another twenty seconds to check the fasteners for the edges of the net, then ran to his seat at the control panel.

  “One minute, twenty seconds,” Ganfer announced.

  “Cooristeen control, this is Sunsinger. We're ready to launch on schedule,” Lin said.

  “Acknowledged, Sunsinger. Smooth flight and swift journey,” the woman at the control station answered.

  * * * *

  “I like science, and I'm really good at it, so the captain decided I needed specialized training to become a team scientist,” Gorgi said. He scraped at the pudding in the bottom of his bowl and then glanced up at Lin and Bain with a grin. “I think the control people were putting one over on you. I've been stuck here for six days, trying to find a faster ride than the tourist chartered ship they stuck me on. After the first three days, there was really nothing to do that I hadn't already done—besides getting into trouble. The people at the port master's office didn't want me underfoot, and when they learned you were going to Centralis straight, they told me to break the sound barrier to get ready. They wanted to get rid of me as badly as I wanted to get away from those stinking tourists."

  “Tourists,” Lin said with a snort of disgust. She shook her head. “We're still at war, if nobody remembers."

  “Did they always wear this uniform kind of outfit?” Bain asked. He snorted, getting a bit of hot chocolate up his nose when Gorgi nodded.

  “There's this fat, sloppy idiot who's the head of the group. He tells everybody else what they have to wear every day. You should have seen them today. These fancy white shirts with those billowy sleeves, and these ridiculous candy colored vests like a little kid would wear for festival. The kind of vests kids hate after they're ten years old. You know what I mean."

  “Unfortunately,” Lin said with a giggle. “Bain had a little run-in with them."

  By the time Bain told his side of the story and Lin related what the security guard had told her, all three were laughing. Lin had followed through on her intention, and pressed charges of harassment and breach of manners against the portly leader of
the tourists. Gorgi toasted them both with his cup of chocolate.

  “I wish I'd had the foresight to write up my complaints and log them in before I left. You wouldn't believe how much studying I did during the flights between planets, just to avoid socializing with that group.” He shuddered. That only brought more laughter from Lin and Bain.

  Chapter Three

  Bain found it a little odd to be envied by Gorgi. The other boy was two years older than him, a Ranger cadet, heading to Centralis and the Commonwealth Upper University with his whole education paid for by the Rangers—plus he had a good start on a decent-looking beard. Still, Gorgi wanted to know everything about Sunsinger and never tired of asking questions and experiencing something new inside the ship.

  He and Bain acted like little boys half their ages, bouncing around in the empty cargo hold, enjoying free-fall. Bain spent hours explaining Sunsinger's schematics to his friend. Gorgi went up into the dome with them during Knaught Point transitions. He lay still and quiet in his acceleration couch, eyes wide and face pale with the vastness and constantly changing aspect of space. Gorgi couldn't hear the music of space, though he tried until he worked himself into a headache. He listened to Bain and Lin explain their theories for the phenomenon and tried to be still, physically and emotionally. Bain couldn't imagine Gorgi being unable to hear the music; he wanted to, he tried to, and he didn't think Lin or Bain were joking when they explained it. That little lack in his friend's wide range of talents bothered Bain.

  What bothered him more, though, was Gorgi's discomfort with Ganfer.

  It took Bain until evening of their second day into the trip to notice. When he thought about it, something felt very wrong.

  “How come you don't talk to Ganfer?” Bain asked, when he and Gorgi were settled in at the control panel for first watch.

  Gorgi was allowed to sit in Bain's seat, while Bain used Lin's chair and took care of anything necessary during the first watch cycle of the night shift. Gorgi was forbidden to touch any lights or switches or buttons. Lin had deactivated Bain's side of the control panel, and Bain knew it, but he also knew better than to tell his friend. Lin believed in being cautious, but also teaching people to be trustworthy and giving them more and more responsibility. Probably by the end of their ten-day trip to Centralis, the control panel would be fully active while Gorgi sat there, as long as he continued to keep his hands where they belonged.

  “I talk to Ganfer,” Gorgi answered after a slight pause and a frown.

  “I know that—but you don't ask him anything. You only say something when he talks directly to you. The rest of the time, when we're all talking about something, it's like you don't really hear what he's saying."

  “I do?” Gorgi shrugged and hunched his shoulders. “Didn't really notice."

  “Ganfer's real, you know."

  “I know that."

  “I bet you wouldn't treat a real—” Bain stopped short, startled at what he had been about to say.

  “A real what?” Gorgi wanted to know.

  “You know he's real, but you don't think he's a real person, do you?"

  “He's a machine."

  “He is not. Ganfer's just as real as you and me."

  “He's a machine.” Gorgi gestured at the panels that protected and hid Ganfer's memory banks. “Wipe all that information stored there, and you'd still have the voice, but you wouldn't have the personality."

  “Only people have personalities,” Bain said, almost pouncing on the word.

  “That's not what I meant."

  “What did you mean, then?"

  “I don't know.” Gorgi turned the chair, as if he would leap up from his chair and run away. That was impossible in free-fall; he would just bounce off the walls until he could grab onto something, or he ran into something that absorbed the impact and held him in place.

  “Gorgi, why don't you think he's a person?” Bain asked, keeping his voice soft.

  “Because he's a machine!"

  “Humans are machines, too. We just have muscles and bones instead of crystal panels and wires; we use food instead of fusion or electricity or sonics; we have blood instead of carrier frequencies and lubricants."

  “You sound like a poet,” his friend grumbled. Gorgi turned back to face Bain, and his mouth started to curve into a sheepish grin at one corner.

  “What's wrong with poetry?"

  “Oh—You—It's—I don't know.” He sighed and sank back in his chair. It was hard to slouch in free-fall, with no gravity to help the slide downward in the chair. Gorgi had mastered that art, at least.

  “I think being a person doesn't depend on what kind of body you wear. It depends on you being ... aware, that's the word. Aware of what's going on, and being able to communicate. Intelligence."

  “That means a lot of people out there aren't really people,” Gorgi grumbled. He grinned a little more.

  “You know what I mean.” Bain punched his shoulder.

  “What about having a soul?"

  “What does a soul look like? I don't know, do you?” He waited until the other boy thought a moment, then shook his head. “How can you prove somebody doesn't have a soul if you don't know what it is?"

  “Fi'in makes souls and people make machines.” Gorgi didn't sound quite convinced as he said it.

  “Last year, you didn't even believe in Fi'in."

  “Yeah, well.... “He grinned and shrugged again. “You spend enough time with Rangers, you have to believe. Some of the things they do ... there has to be someone out there helping them, or the whole squad would have been dead a long time ago."

  “That's a pretty good reason,” Lin said.

  Both boys jerked and turned to look at her cubicle. How long she had sat there, listening, Bain didn't want to know.

  “Sorry. I didn't think we were talking that loud,” he said.

  “You weren't. I was reading, and I thought a cup of tea would be nice. Then I realized you were having a very serious conversation.” Lin tugged her thick robe closer around herself and pushed off from the edge of her bunk. She floated gently over to the galley.

  “How much did you hear?” Gorgi asked.

  “Enough. You might consider something, when you think about what makes a person. Awareness and communication can't be the only criteria.” Lin took a sealed cup of tea from the cold box and slid it into the heater. “What about people in comas?"

  “Yeah, but they'll come out of them sooner or later."

  “How long do they have to be in a coma before someone decides they're not coming out, and they're no longer a person anymore?"

  “Lin ... we were just talking about Ganfer being a person,” Bain said. “Ganfer, you're a person, aren't you?"

  “Many Humans haven't been able to decide if they're real or not,” the ship-brain said. “Why would I presume to make that judgment for myself?"

  “I think the best thing is to err on the side of caution,” Lin said. “Give everyone—” She stopped to pull her cup of tea from the heater. “Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Everyone is a person, whether they can talk to us or not, whether or not they look like people, whether or not they deserve to be considered a person. That includes fat, bossy tourists in bad clothes,” she added with a tiny grin.

  * * * *

  When they reached Centralis, Lin chose to land on the smaller field servicing the Commonwealth Upper University. It was only one-quarter the size of the field open for the Commonwealth Council's use. Ranger and Fleet ships, all the courier ships coming in from the colony governments, and hundreds of merchant and passenger ships supplying the vast bureaucracy and population that supported the Council needed that much space. Still, despite being so small, the University landing field had more open territory available for landing. Bain was glad Lin had chosen the smaller field; Sunsinger didn't look so lost and small among all the bigger, newer, more streamlined and powerful ships.

  The landing fields had no domes covering them. After Sunsinger landed, an environment tu
be rose from one of the many airlocks in the surface of the field. Guided by robot sensors, the tube connected with the airlock at the cargo hold and sealed. When atmosphere was pumped in, the tube expanded, making Sunsinger look like she had a long tail.

  The asteroid that made up the foundation of Centralis was large enough to be a small moon, and was in orbit around the nearest star. It had five-sixths normal gravity. Bain didn't notice any difference in the gravity as he walked the tube to the hatch leading to the tunnels under the landing field. He wondered if that was because he had spent so much time in free-fall.

  “Does this feel any different?” he asked Gorgi.

  “Not light enough,” the older boy said. He hefted his crammed duffel bag for explanation. “How do you handle being back in gravity? It hurts."

  “You get used to it,” Lin said, walking ahead of the boys. She glanced back over her shoulder and looked them up and down. “Uniforms work miracles. Bain, maybe we should try to institute a Spacer uniform. We might get more respect at some tougher spaceports."

  “Uniforms just ask idiots to start a fight with you,” Gorgi said with a grimace. “This is my fourth cadet uniform, and not because I grew out of them."

  “Ouch.” Bain had something new to think about. Maybe it wasn't that wonderful to wear a uniform and have wide shoulders and look strong and capable. What good was it if people just saw that as a challenge instead of a warning?

  “Exactly."

  “Well, whatever the cause,” Lin said, “I think the three of us make a very presentable group."

  Bain thought so, too. Both he and Lin wore black trousers with red piping up the outer seams, calf-high glossy black boots and royal blue shirts. Lin wore a long, emerald green vest, and Bain wore his usual scarlet vest. Their collar links had been shined until they were almost blinding bright when the light hit them at the right angle.

  Gorgi's charcoal-gray cadet uniform with the hawk insignia of his assigned squad was almost drab in comparison. But, as Lin has said, there was something about a uniform that added prestige to a person's appearance.