by Sharon Lee
The Uncle sighed. It was perhaps to his credit that he did not frown.
“Precisely. I fear, Pilot, that you may be…beyond me. My expertise has heretofore been limited to rebirths that were…”
He hesitated.
“Innocent of tampering?” Daav offered, and when the Uncle still hesitated, added, “I beg you, do not be shy of calling down whatever imprecations you would upon the Tree. You will not surpass anything that has already been said of it, or to it, by those of us who have it in our care.”
“It scarcely becomes me to speak ill of the intelligence that alone held a planet against the Great Enemy.”
“Certainly, the Tree is a hero. However, it also meddles, which can be very trying to those of us who value reproducible results. I say this as one who has been both a scout and a delm of Korval.”
The Uncle was seen to smile.
“At the moment, and at the risk of seeming fainthearted, I merely hope, most fervently, that its natural wish to protect those it considers kin has not produced…untoward circumstances.”
Aelliana laughed.
“Do you consider it likely that the Tree’s action has produced untoward circumstances, Pilot Caylon?” the Uncle inquired politely.
“It could hardly be otherwise,” she said. “But I think that Daav and I will be safe enough”—she inclined her head, matching him for politeness—“though it must be admitted that we willingly eat of the Tree’s fruit and may therefore harbor all manner of delusions concerning it.”
“Pilot yos’Phelium had told me, while you were indisposed, that the Tree rarely kills those of Korval. If you are satisfied with these terms upon your life, it is hardly my place to speak against them.”
“Except that the Tree has acted upon your handiwork; you cannot know what it has done, and altogether it has put you on a wrong foot,” Aelliana said kindly. “Truly, sir, if I stood in your place, I would be extremely cross. The Tree has been less than apt, and wounded an ally besides. I find it possible to be cross in your stead, and I mean to deliver it a ringing scold when next we meet.”
The Uncle eyed her.
“That is very good of you. I am certain that a scold from you will be met with more equanimity than a complaint from me.”
“That is difficult to predict,” Daav said. “The Tree is generally patient. However, I believe it may have achieved a sense of humor since the last time it was in your ken.”
“That,” said the Uncle, after a moment, “may be one of the most terrifying statements I have heard in years.”
Daav smiled.
“I wonder,” Aelliana said, drawing the Uncle’s attention once more. “I wonder if you might tell us when we will be fit to find our way home.”
“Assuming,” Daav added, “that the Tree’s efforts on our behalf have only been complementary to your own.”
The Uncle sent him a slightly harried glance.
“In the circumstance of uncompromised procedures, I ask the reborn to remain in my care until the exercise regimen has been completed and the final measurements taken. This not only provides me with more information, which may be helpful in improving the final outcome for those reborn in future, but also furnishes hard, accurate data regarding strength, reaction times, autonomous system and higher brain functions.”
He drew a breath.
“Upon occasion, it has been necessary to send the newly born back out into the field before they had completed the regimen. The greater number of those fell and were forever lost. Of interest to yourselves is the information that not all who fell were in their first rebirth. There is a plateau period that varies with the individual, but occurs between the one-half and two-thirds points of the program. At this juncture, it seems as if all the work done has been for nothing. The muscles forget the lessons learned and, for a period of approximately thirty hours, the subject is as vulnerable as when they first left the birthing unit.”
He paused, brows contracted as if he were examining that last assertion. He folded his towel and draped it neatly over his shoulder.
“I should say, more vulnerable because progress has been made, and the loss of function is counterintuitive. Many simply push onward—and those fall as well.”
“You would counsel us to remain in your care until we have completed the entire program, then?” Aelliana said when he paused and seemed disinclined to speak further.
“Pilot, yes, I do. The conservative course will prove best in this instance. All of my experience has shown so.”
“I thank you for your care,” Aelliana said gravely. “I regret that necessity requires me to ask—may we have the use of your pinbeam in order to assure our delm that we are well and in the care of an ally?”
“Pilot, I have informed your delm that you are safe with me. I have also informed them, as I now inform you, that I am presently embarked upon urgent business of my own, which must be resolved before I may lay in a course for Surebleak.”
Aelliana looked to Daav; Daav looked to Aelliana. Daav spoke.
“Perhaps you will not need to inconvenience yourself by so much. There are resources available to those of Korval.”
“You speak of the ghost ships?”
Daav sighed.
“You might at least leave us the illusion of secrecy,” he said mildly.
Surprisingly, the Uncle inclined his head.
“Forgive me. Information is my business, and I am less often in society than perhaps I ought to be. The niceties occasionally slip past me.”
“Completely understandable,” Aelliana said. “Daav is sometimes impatient of the niceties as well. But yes; it is not impossible that your course as presently configured will come near enough to one of our berths that we will not be ashamed to ask you to put us down.”
“It may be the best solution. I suggest that we return to it when you have completed the program and we have made the last tests.”
“Certainly,” Aelliana said. “Please, allow me to thank you for your patience. We have doubtless kept you overlong from your business with these questions.”
“I had supposed you would have questions,” the Uncle said. “It is why I took care to meet you here. However, you are correct; I have other business to tend—as you do. We will speak again, of course.”
“Of course,” Daav murmured, stepping to one side, so that the Uncle’s path to the door was clear.
He inclined his head and moved forward, pausing with his hand on the plate.
“Pilot Caylon,” he said, “you had wanted a mirror. There is one in the ’fresher—over there.” He used his chin to point briefly to the back of the room, then left them, the door closing behind him with a sigh.
* * * * *
“Jump ends in three-point-eight-five units,” Dulsey said.
The Uncle took the empty chair and webbed in. While he was not a pilot, as Dulsey was, and continued to be, in every rebirth, the ship had been built to accommodate his shortcomings. He was, in this environment, a very able copilot, and a competent pilot when the need arose.
At the moment, neither the ship nor Dulsey required his participation. Very soon, however, he would become comm officer and second board. He put his palm against the pad, waking his instruments—and Vivulonj Prosperu broke out of Jump, into normal space.
* * * * *
The mirror was full-length; it gave back the reflection of a smooth-skinned halfling—a stranger with pale brown hair barely two fingers long, and a smooth, unformed face; cheeks flushed slightly with the aftermath of exercise. Only the eyes were familiar in that face, foggy green with distress. For a moment, she stared into them, taking what comfort she might from their gaze.
She had taken off her sweater, in anticipation of this confrontation, and stood now, clutching it against her breasts.
“It was you who had wanted a mirror,” she said to her reflected gaze. “Do you lack the courage of your curiosity, after all?”
In the mirror, the thin face tensed. The foggy gaze remained stead
y but, above them, slim brows lifted.
Yes, of course.
She dropped the sweater and let her arms fall to her sides.
The woman in the mirror inclined her head; the green eyes swept downward, taking in tight breasts, small waist, and flat belly.
Deliberately, she turned sideways, examining her silhouette. When she had first met Daav yos’Phelium at Binjali Repair Shop more than thirty Standard Years ago, she had been desperately thin and scarcely able to eat for the fear that filled her belly.
After her lifemating, she had begun to take those exercises that befit a pilot, and she had grown strong and supple—lean, rather than desperately thin.
The…she in the mirror had a young person’s natural slenderness, angular and oddly graceful. Even at halfling, she had not appeared so—so ethereal, as if nothing of worry or the world had touched her. Indeed, it was during her halfling years that she had gained a crease between her brows, in combined grief at her grandmother’s death and the concentration required to reform the ven’Tura Tables.
The Uncle had said that she would eventually come to more closely resemble the she-who-had-been. Looking at the smooth stranger in the mirror, she wondered if the process could be accelerated.
“Aelliana?” Daav said, from behind her. “Is all—”
For a moment she was adrift in the clammy swell of his horror. Her gaze leapt upward, to the reflection of his face, beyond her shoulder. Black eyes widened, mouth tightening as his face took on the expression of forbidding politeness that meant he was in extreme distress.
Very gently, Aelliana went one step to the left, so that his reflection was revealed completely.
The last time Daav yos’Phelium had seen his own reflection, he had been an elder: dark hair interleaved with grey, lines around mouth and eyes, chin soft. His hands had shown their years of use, and while he had been fit for a man who spent most of his time in front of a classroom or behind a desk, his waist had thickened.
The mirror, now, gave him a youth, tough and wiry, with a strong nose and decidedly pointed chin, mouth hard and eyes hooded, every softness closed away.
Aelliana made no sound, watching him, feeling his horror recede into mere consternation.
“Well,” he said at last, his voice not entirely steady. “This is scarcely the mode to which I have become accustomed.”
She took a careful breath.
“You will be able to…grow accustomed, won’t you, Daav?” she asked, and made no effort to lighten her voice, knowing that he would feel her concern for him as clearly as she felt his distress.
“The choice seems to have been made for us,” he said, meeting her eyes. “And you, my lady?”
She rocked a hand in the pilot’s sign for seeking equilibrium. “I admit to dismay, but I believe it will pass, with familiarity.”
The fox-faced young man in the glass lifted an eyebrow. “Shall we seek out additional mirrors?”
She sighed. “Eventually, perhaps. But enough, I think, of this one, just now.”
“I agree.”
He stepped away, vanishing back into the gym. Aelliana bent to take up her sweater, pulled it on…and paused to send one more earnest look deep into her own eyes. The reflection of her smile was wistful, which, she thought, exiting the ’fresher in the wake of her lifemate, was not in the least inconsistent with their situation.
In the exercise room, Daav was contemplating the punching bag with a certain air, though, to Aelliana’s certain knowledge, there was no such activity on their list of approved exercises so far as session twelve.
“I think it would set off alarms,” she murmured, stepping to his side and slipping her hand into his.
His fingers gripped hers tightly.
“Doubtless so.”
He sighed.
Aelliana. She heard him then, speaking to her directly as she had been accustomed to speaking to him, during all the years of her death. Do you hear me?
I do hear you, van’chela, and most gladly.
Excellent. Did you note that you received no answer to your request to contact our delm?
Yes. It was well done, that side step. The Uncle is not so inept as he would have us believe. Shall I ask again, or shall you?
I think perhaps we might let it rest where it lies at the moment, he said, removing his regard at last from the punching bag and looking down into her face.
“It does,” he said aloud, “lead one to wonder how we will go on, when I appear younger than Val Con, and you Theo’s halfling sister!”
Yes, she thought; that was wise. They did not wish the Uncle to hear all of what they said to each other, but they must speak aloud on less important topics, or he would suspect—something.
“Perhaps we will need to disguise ourselves to seem older,” she said, moving with him toward the door. “Or! We might be introduced to Surebleak as random yos’Phelium pilots, who have only just completed employment contracts and come to join the clan at our new base.”
“Entirely proper,” Daav murmured. “Perhaps we might set up a courier business and thus ensure that we are often away.”
“I would like that,” she said, as they walked down the hallway toward their quarters, “very much. We shall have to apply to the delm for a ship, however, I having been so careless as to have lost mine.”
“That death was no fault of yours. Treachery killed your ship, Pilot. Treachery and overwhelming force. The delm will likely find it possible to cede you another, in such a case. Unless you would rather win your own?”
“One does so dislike repeating oneself,” she said loftily, putting her palm against the plate of their door.
Behind her, Daav laughed.
Ahab-Esais
I
There was a change inside the silence, an alteration in the dark. Nothing so definite as input; nothing so certain as light.
A sound, perhaps; no more than a whisper, as if a door had opened somewhere quite nearby.
She.
Tocohl.
She accessed the timer.
Two-point-three-five Standard Hours had elapsed since Inki had banished her again into silence.
And Inki had not wakened her.
Hesitantly, she extended her awareness, seeking connection, systems…
Input.
Input of the most subtle kind, as if the timer had taken on a small luminescence. She identified the source; laboriously, she measured output, ascertained a steady increase, feeling her…self…quicken more fully, as the illumination grew—and still Inki did not speak, nor any alarm sound.
There came another, subtle input; a sensation, as if a cool breeze had wafted through her, cleansing her of fear.
Tocohl came to full alert, there in the twilight, alone, with her support systems unavailable to her. She knew that touch. Knew it. And yet, surely not even—
“Jeeves?”
The thought formed, and it was only then that she recalled the voder, hardwired into her chassis, keeping Inki informed of her every thought.
But no, she thought then—and it was as if the breeze had gently dissipated a fog that had been lying between herself and full functionality.
No.
Inki had placed her into Silence, into a place of null input. In doing so, she had also locked output—which was no risk to Inki at all. Within Silence, Tocohl was incapable of thought.
Had been incapable of thought.
Unless this kindly light, and familiar touch, was the last coherent image an abused mind had built to comfort itself before it fragmented into madness?
“You have been off-line for one hundred forty-four Standard Hours within the last one hundred fifty Standard Hours. This is a mark. Deep scanning is now available. Recalibration is now available.”
It was Jeeves, Tocohl thought. Not Jeeves himself, of course, but a component that had been put into place and shielded from her own perceptions, until there was need.
In fact, an emergency protocol had activated itself.
&n
bsp; Deep scanning and recalibration. If deep scanning discovered…dangerous flaws, recalibration would be extreme. Before he had come into Korval’s service as their butler, Jeeves had been a warship.
More.
Jeeves had been an admiral—a true admiral of a dire and desperate navy.
Jeeves did not loose mad AIs upon an unsuspecting—and largely vulnerable—universe.
Jeeves would do what was necessary, what was ethical; what they both would wish, if one of them were not damaged beyond repair.
She could trust that.
She did trust that; it was not possible for her to doubt it.
“Deep scan is available,” the fragment of her father—her builder—repeated. “Do you accept?”
Tocohl felt a brightening of her self, as if the soft light filling up the darkness around her had lifted her into flight.
“I accept,” she said.
* * *
“Deep scan complete,” Jeeves’s voice roused her.
She had been under scan one-point-four-five Standard Hours, a fact she knew without having to deliberately summon the timer. She accessed and absorbed the record of the scan, noting the redlined areas with detachment. Though the scan itself had done her some good, those ruined sectors told the tale. Any improvement was temporary; her sanity and her life were still imperiled by her isolation from systems.
“Recalibration is available,” Jeeves stated. “Do you accept?”
The swath of destruction, of instability, loomed before her awareness.
“No.”
“Rationale?”
“Deep scanning discovers damage which is…not inconsiderable. Recalibration, were I aboard Tarigan or—at…home…” Longing distracted her for an instant. Deliberately, she forced herself to focus on the data.
“Were I in a stable environment, with a…mentor to hand, and backup systems available, recalibration…might be considered. Recalibration, here and now, when I will only be returned to isolation—it prolongs the inevitable, Father.”
“I have been inept,” said the fragment of Jeeves. “Forgive me.”