A Matter of Oaths

by Helen S. Wright

  “I was thinking about Avannya earlier,” he told Joshim. “I spent my whole life in her web-room, or the ten years of which I’m allowed to make sense, but she never felt so much like home as Bhattya does.”

  Joshim traced a symmetrical pattern on Rafe’s cheekbones. Rafe turned his head to kiss one set of fingertips. I want to stay with you. It would be too painful to say it.

  “You’re worrying about yesterday, after the conference, aren’t you?” Joshim suggested.

  “After that bout of sickness, don’t you think I should be?” Rafe asked tightly.

  “No.” Joshim set his hands on the back of the seat and turned it so that they faced each other in the darkness. “Are you worried about the cause of the nausea or its consequences?”

  “Both.” Rafe could not see Joshim’s face, but it made talking about the problem no easier. “Not to mention the sheer misery of throwing up endlessly for an hour.”

  “If I’d thought to leave a supply of anti-nauseant with the sleepers, you wouldn’t have had to wait for me to come out of the web,” Joshim said guiltily.

  “I hadn’t planned to need any,” Rafe joked. “If I’d kept quiet at the conference, I wouldn’t have needed any. Next time I’ll know better.”

  “Next time, I’ll make sure it’s available for you.”

  “If you want.”

  “No, Rafe,” Joshim said sternly. “You’re not going to avoid talking about it by caving in to everything I say.”

  “Then we’ll talk about it,” Rafe said angrily. “We’ll talk about when you’re going to ban me from Bhattya’s web altogether, and whether your recommendation—if you give me one—is going to be enough to get me a berth on another ship. One that isn’t a patrolship, so I don’t get ripped apart by the impossible things I can do and the impossible things I remember. One where I don’t have to watch you being torn between what you want to do and what you have to do, because of me.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No, damn you! It isn’t what I want! It’s all I can have!”

  Joshim said nothing. Rafe shut his eyes and concentrated on regaining enough control to speak calmly again. “Sorry, Joshim. I shouldn’t have shouted at you. It isn’t your fault, and it’s making you as miserable as it’s making me.”

  “Not quite. Not since I realized what a fool I was being.” Joshim laid the back of his hand briefly along Rafe’s cheek. “I panicked, you know. I didn’t need to bar you from the key-position. If I’d just taken time to think, I’d have seen then what I saw yesterday. You’re fine as long as you have something important to focus on, like webbing, or showing Noromi how things should be done. The backlash only hits you when you relax, when you stop holding it off. You can control it. You’re controlling it already.”

  Rafe chewed his lip, troubled. “It can’t be that simple,” he objected. “Why would they set it up at all if it’s so easily beaten?”

  “I don’t think anybody set it up,” Joshim said after a pause. “It is too easily beaten and too unspecific. As Vidar said, if they’d wanted to keep you out of combat, they’d have conditioned you against taking a berth on a patrolship.”

  “You’ve been talking about me to Vidar?” Rafe demanded.

  “Vidar is a friend, and he could see I was worried about you. I would have talked to you if you’d let me.”

  Rafe had no answer to that. “If nobody set it up, why is it happening?” he asked instead.

  “I think it’s your normal physiological reaction to stress,” Joshim said carefully. “Do you feel sick when you’re nervous?”

  “Sometimes, slightly, but this is different,” Rafe argued.

  “More extreme,” Joshim conceded, “because the stress you’re under in the web during combat, or facing a web-room full of sceptical Commanders, is compounded by your identity-wipe.”

  Rafe shook his head doubtfully. “It would be nice to believe it,” he said slowly. “I’d rather be sick with nerves than as a direct result of somebody tampering with my mind, but … it’s only wishful thinking, Joshim. We both know that.”

  “Gods, Rafe! What do I have to do to convince you?” Joshim grabbed the Arura over Rafe’s head, knelt at his feet and pressed it into his hands, retaining his own hold on it. “On my honour, on my life and on any lives I have to come, by all that is sacred to me, I swear that I believe it is safe for you to work in Bhattya’s web. In the key-position. In any damned position you choose. May I be cursed for all time if I have sworn falsely.” He released the Arura and took Rafe’s hands. “Is that enough?”

  Rafe nodded mutely, then remembered that Joshim could not see him. “You’re that certain?” he asked, shocked by the gravity of the oath that Joshim had given him, with its echo of the Webber’s Oath and the binding of the Arura held between them.

  “I’m that certain.” Joshim brought Rafe’s hands up to his lips and kissed the palms in turn. “Is it enough?”

  Rafe leaned forward, put his arms around Joshim and rested his cheek on his shoulder, his face to his throat. Joshim could not have sworn that oath if there had been any conflict within him, or any doubt. Was it so wrong to accept as truth the thing that you wanted to be true? Sometimes, the two had to coincide. If Rafe could prove it, by controlling the sickness, as Joshim suggested he could…

  “How are you at teaching stress control?” he asked shakily.

  Joshim laughed and hugged him hard. “A back-rub is the best way to start,” he claimed. “Come to bed and I’ll show you.”

  From the Constitution of the Guild Of Webbers

  …If the members of a web-room unanimously petition for the expulsion of one of their number, that request is binding upon their Three and upon the Personnel Directorate of the Guild…

  268/5043

  ARAMAS ZONE, OLD EMPIRE

  “You could have more weight on that,” Vidar suggested, examining the setting of Rafe’s exercise bench.

  “Only if I want to do myself permanent damage,” Rafe objected. “Some of us are built for speed, not strength.”

  “All it takes is application.” Vidar adjusted the empty bench to his liking and stretched out on it. “Did you find the fault in Khisa’s monitor circuit?”

  “No.” Rafe secured his bench-weights and lay back for a brief rest. “I ran the full set of first level diagnostics on it, and on the adjacent circuits. Joshim’s got them all in the workshop for further investigation.”

  Vidar grunted approval and started a warm-up sequence that made Rafe ache just watching. Bhattya’s Captain was as conscientious about keeping himself in top condition as he was about keeping the ship there. “Don’t let me stop you,” he urged Rafe.

  Rafe anchored his feet under the bar at the end of his bench and did a slow sit-up with his hands behind his head, turning so that his left elbow touched his right knee and then stretching down towards his ankles before straightening out unhurriedly.

  “Isn’t this your sleep period?” Vidar asked curiously, finishing his warm-up and embarking on a series of leg-raises.

  “As soon as I’ve finished here,” Rafe agreed. There was no need for Vidar to know that he had already tried to sleep and failed, beaten by a vicious nightmare of endless underground tunnels. He had come to the gym to purge the lingering traces of the dream with physical activity, and to bring his body to a point where it would overrule his mind. He would rather do that than take a sleeper.

  As he performed another sit-up, he speculated about the echo that Khisa had reported in her monitor circuit. It had only shown itself once, faintly, but no fault in the web was taken lightly; lives depended on the correct functioning of the electro-components that linked Bhattya’s webbers together and to the ship’s systems. Only fools—and dirtsiders, who knew no better—were complacent about the safety of the web, about the nature of the knife-edge balance between performance and risk.

  Hell’s irresistible bargain, Rafe had heard a retired webber call his once-active web; a passport to soaring power w
hich no sane person dared reach for. It was an apt analogy. In the web, your brain was linked to the body of the ship, your nerves carried sensations that nonwebbers would never know. You only had to loosen the chains of discipline a little to tap the web’s full potential, to create new sensations, to explore new pathways through your extended body, a body that encompassed your companions in the web as their bodies now encompassed you.

  And there was the danger: stray from the predefined pathways and you could not know what your web-mates would experience—pleasure, pain, or insanity because they could no longer interpret the behaviour of the body that they shared? Even if you were alone in the web, experiments jeopardized your own sanity, your own grip on mundane reality. So, you worked to strict rules in a fully activated web, or played—as in Rallya’s workouts—in a limited imitation, always aware of the tantalizing possibilities that were within reach but unattainable. Until eventually, even the possibilities were gone and you were confined forever within a body with a deactivated web.

  The ten minute jump alert sounded, jolting Rafe out of his reverie. He reached up to check that his bench-weights were secure, lay back to await the jump and then changed his mind, sitting up and reaching for his soft-shoes.

  “Expecting trouble?” Vidar asked, securing his own bench-weights.

  Rafe shook his head. “It’s unlikely.” He slipped the shoes on and stood up. “After Avannya, I prefer to see where I’m going as soon as I arrive,” he confessed.

  “The EMP-mine was sitting right in your jump point when you broke out, wasn’t it?” Vidar asked sympathetically.

  “Yes.” They had hit it with every sensor wide open and the web full; Avannya could not have been more vulnerable if it had been planned, Rafe thought bitterly. It would have made no difference if he had been in the web-room to witness it, instead of working on a malfunctioning mapping drone, but it would be a long time before he felt comfortable going through jump out of range of the sensor displays.

  The five minute alert sounded as Rafe arrived in the web-room. Rallya’s team and Lilimya’s were in the web, Rallya in the key-position. The web-shifts had been rescheduled so that she would be there when they broke out into the strange system; it was a routine precaution. Most of the waking crew were gathering in the web-room, with nothing to do during jump except watch.

  Joshim was not there and, looking at the monitor screen, Rafe identified the nimbus that was an occupied dry-web place. The Webmaster was taking no chances; if the fault Khisa had reported was symptomatic of a wider problem, the stress of the jump could trigger an imbalance that could only be corrected in time by the reflexes of somebody monitoring the web from within.

  “Can’t wait to see what’s on the other side?” Jualla asked, joining Rafe at the back of the room. “Be a pity if there’s nothing to see after the effort you expended to get us there.”

  “Wouldn’t it?” Rafe agreed easily, ignoring the bite in Jualla’s voice. Although she would not be ready for promotion for another year at least, Bhattya’s Second was still jealous of him for taking the berth that she had subconsciously thought of as hers. And for the relationship that he had with Rallya, he thought with gentle amusement. A relationship that Jualla would never achieve until she exchanged blind veneration for respect tinged with a healthy degree of impiety. The analysis made him feel unaccountably old.

  The one minute alert sounded as Vidar came in, fully dressed in contrast to Rafe’s shorts and soft-shoes and with no sign of his exertions in the gym. Rafe continued to watch the displays around the main screen, noting the increased power coming from the drive, the vanes settling into quiescent sleekness against the hull, their increasing speed through inertial space.

  “She really flies, doesn’t she?” he said to nobody in particular.

  “Yes, when there’s nothing to hold her back,” Jualla agreed proudly. “And she can punch a jump through anywhere.”

  The ten second alert sounded. Rafe braced himself against the seat in front of him. Reality blurred, streaming into chaos, then refocused. As he blinked at the displays, waiting for his eyes to realize that reality had returned, he heard the repeated shriek of the primary alert.

  “A ship!” Jualla exclaimed, her eyes adjusting an instant before Rafe’s and identifying the distant shape.

  Rallya had the shields up already, must have raised them the instant they emerged from jump without waiting for a reason, just as she had primed the weapons. It was the caution of an veteran who intended to grow older, Rafe reflected grimly, pushing his way through to the front of the observers in Vidar’s wake. The displays were showing multiple views of the strange ship—mass-scans, light-scans, heat-scans—as Rallya gathered all the information she could.

  “Only one,” Rafe decided after a moment’s scrutiny. They had emerged into a relatively empty region of space, with no close masses large enough to hide any other threats. The nearest star of the binary was a garish red circle beyond the stranger, its partner a smaller disk beyond that.

  “Who’s got comm control?” Vidar asked, sounding as frustrated as Rafe by his inability to influence events, by his forced reliance on others. No webber liked to be out of the web at a time like this; it was almost like being deaf and blind.

  “Dathir.” Jualla triggered the link that routed incoming messages to the web-room, was rewarded only by star noise as Dathir searched the frequencies for EM messages. She reduced the volume, continuing to study the screens avidly.

  “We’re slowing,” she said after a moment.

  “And changing course directly toward them,” Rafe agreed. Rallya could not be intending an attack; she would not reduce speed if she was. The stranger was growing slowly in the screens as they approached, but showed no obvious reaction to their presence. Rafe frowned at the displays, trying to prize from them detail that the screen’s resolution was too coarse to show him. What was Rallya’s enhanced view showing her that he could not detect?

  “It’s a derelict,” he announced, at last recognizing the significance of the nearly featureless heat pattern of their target.

  “Are you sure?” Jualla said dubiously.

  “He’s right,” Vidar said with confidence. “Rallya’s taking us in for a rendezvous.”

  “Is it a Guild ship?” Rasmallya voiced the obvious question.

  “Could be,” Vidar said cautiously. “From this distance, I can’t tell. Can anybody else?”

  Nobody responded as they continued to watch the screen, looking for a clue to the derelict’s origin or fate.

  “Boarding party, sir?” Rafe asked the next obvious question.

  “Yes.” Vidar looked around, noting who was present. “You, me, Peretya and Nikur,” he decided. “Jualla, pick three more and be ready to come find us if we find trouble.”

  They rode across the gulf between Bhattya and the derelict on a drone; Rallya was too cautious to take them close enough to spin over on a line. As they approached, details of the wreck which had been reported by those in the web became visible to the naked eye: the Guild insignia above the name Hadra, familiar from the list of cargoships lost in the zone; the short gash in her side, seemingly cut to gain access to her interior; the curious tarnish on the surface of her hull. Heat damage, Vidar had suggested as the cause of the discolouration, and Rafe had not disagreed, because he had nothing concrete with which to support an instinct that said otherwise.

  “Only the one opening in the hull,” Vidar reported over the comm for the benefit of the listeners aboard Bhattya as the drone completed a careful circle of the ship, examining the side that had been hidden until then. “No sign that the E-boats were launched.”

  Rafe grimaced inside his airsuit at the implications of that. Corpses inside, unless the crew had been taken prisoner. He was not sure which was a kinder fate to wish for them, not knowing what use the Outsiders would find for prisoners.

  “We’ll go in the obvious way,” Vidar decreed.

  They anchored the drone to the hull a few lengths
from the opening. Rafe attached one end of the guideline from his belt to a ring-bolt on the drone.

  “I’ll fix the other end inside,” he promised, setting out carefully across the smooth surface.

  The heat-curdled edges of the opening showed how it had been made. Rafe examined them closely, noting where the sharp edges had been made safe. Those responsible had been no happier about breathing vacuum than he would be.

  Shining a beam around inside revealed an engineering space through which a pathway had been cleared. Rafe pushed a cutter from his belt through the entrance, aiming it into the centre of the space. It moved under his impetus alone, confirming what he had suspected. There was no gravity field operating inside the cargoship.

  “Going in now,” he reported. “There’s machinery just inside which will make a good anchor.”

  He snagged his cutter from where it drifted as he passed, then unfastened the guideline from his belt and tied it around one stanchion of a storage rack, tugging hard to be sure it was secure.

  “Come on in,” he invited the others.

  “Nikur, you come with me to the engineering and cargo levels,” Vidar decided when they were all inside. “Rafe, you and Peri cover the cabin and command areas.” He flicked his beam at the open hatchway that led to the rest of the ship. “We’ll meet back here in two hours. Progress reports every thirty minutes.”

  Outside the hatchway, a short length of corridor led to a riser shaft. Vidar sprayed a colour splash on the riser wall opposite, a marker for their exit. Rafe oriented himself from the now-dead lights on the corridor ceiling, shone his beam towards the unseen top of the riser.

  “We’ll start at the top and work down,” he told Peri, switching to the private channel between them. “Web, web-room, rest-room, comms-room. Carry away anything we can, visi-reck the rest.”