A Matter of Oaths

by Helen S. Wright

  An irregular pulse out of place on the edge of the web caught his attention and held it. It was not Churi’s doing, he realized immediately. Was it the echo that Khisa had reported in the monitor circuits, the one they had not traced in spite of an exhaustive search? Whatever it was, it was growing stronger, too quickly to take any risks with it. Safer to examine it from outside the web.

  [Immediate. Disengage.] He broke into Churi’s practice with the order.

  [Acknowledged. Disengaging,] Churi replied promptly. Rafe sensed him begin to obey, then halt abruptly.

  [Disengage,] Rafe repeated.

  [Inability.] Worry made Churi’s signal less than perfect.

  Rafe triggered the web-alarm by reflex, simultaneously sent [Stand by for monitoring] to Churi.

  [Standing by.] Still worried, but under control.

  Rafe made a rapid survey of Churi’s linkage with the web, found nothing to account for his difficulty in breaking it. The intrusive ghost was still getting stronger, interfering with the signal circuits, threatening to cut them off from each other before there was time to make a more thorough examination. He had to get the youngster out now.

  [Disengage. Will operate override,] he sent to Churi.

  [Acknowledged. Disengaging.]

  Rafe triggered the override as Churi tried again, using it to forcibly eject the youngster from the web. For an instant, it worked. He felt Churi disappear, felt him emerge into the dimly lit shub around him, felt him become aware that—incredibly—Rafe was still with him, felt the flare of panic as he dropped them both back into the ghost-ridden web, setting up a wild oscillation that drove them sickeningly back and forth across the boundary between body control and web control.

  Rafe tried to damp down the feedback, but the ghost was amplifying it, blocking his attempts to contain the situation. He swung uncontrollably between the unstable web and the horrible awareness of sharing a body with Churi, not sure which of their bodies he felt struggling for breath in the shub, not even sure that it was the same body each time he occupied it. There was nothing but overwhelming fear coming from Churi, the emotion combining with the ghost to cloud Rafe’s control and destroying any chance of coordinating their efforts to survive.

  Close to panic himself, Rafe fought desperately to isolate himself, from Churi, from the web, from the insane combination they had become. He could feel his nerves being seared by the overload channelled through them, not yet true pain but the promise of it. He prayed that he was feeling the flow through Churi’s nerves as well. His nerves would never survive that apparent volume of current…

  He realized that Churi’s terror was fading with his consciousness. The result of over-breathing in the shub, or the effect of the overload? If both of them passed out, both of them would die. One of them had to maintain a core of body control. Unable to check the overload or to pull free, Rafe gave up the losing battle, concentrated only on regulating their breathing, keeping it down to a level that the shub could support. It had only been seconds since he triggered the alarm; it would only be seconds before help came. Churi was no longer fighting him, consciously or unconsciously, but Rafe refused to think that he might be breathing for a dead body. He had no choice; breathing for himself, he had to breathe for both of them, until they were torn apart.

  Now they were being pulled out of the shub, laid on their backs on the floor. Rafe had a confusing vision of Jualla and Lilimya bending over him, one superimposed on the other, their separate voices coming from the same pair of lips. The web-contacts were wrenched away from Churi’s neck and wrists an instant before his own were torn off. He sank into the haven of one controllable body, seeing Jualla’s frantic face through a blessedly single pair of eyes. Then his brain reregistered the damage his nerves had suffered. He screamed and thankfully gave in to unconsciousness.

  * * *

  “Attention, Bhattya’s Three. Attention, Bhattya’s Three. You have a Class One web-alarm. Repeat, you have a Class One web-alarm.”

  Joshim was moving before the repeat, leaving Vidar or Rallya to silence the broadcast. Class One was serious injury or death! He pushed through the packed corridor towards the docks, the webbers there making way as they saw his insignia and made the connection with the continuing broadcast. Gods, if they had still been in the observation gallery, instead of on their way back…

  “Attention, all Webmasters. Attention, all Webmasters. Bhattya urgently requires assistance. Repeat, Bhattya urgently requires assistance.”

  “We’re Bhattya! We’ll handle it!” Rallya yelled from behind him as somebody else started to run.

  Joshim ignored them all, concentrated on the end of the corridor ahead and the curve of the docking ring beyond. He swerved left as he got there, heading around the ring towards Bhattya’s open hatch. Hitting the ramp at a run, he bounced off the safety rail into the riser and triggered the speed override so that his stomach reached the top a second after he did.

  The web-room was a blur of anxious faces, the web monitor a blaze of chaos that yielded no useful information.

  “I’ll get it.” Rallya again, diving for the rest-room and the R-K-D as Joshim entered the riser to the web without breaking stride.

  As he emerged at the top, his first glance confirmed that the casualties were Rafe and Churi. He had calculated that it would be so, prayed that it was not. He dropped to his knees beside Lilimya, who was stubbornly breathing air into Churi’s lungs as Peri and Caruya set up the respirator.

  “What happened?” he demanded. “Anybody.”

  “Full wave compound feedback,” Jualla said, looking up from Rafe. “And—we think—transference. Rafe’s breathing for himself,” she added, the simplicity of the statement underlining the harsh fact that it was the only good news she had to report.

  “How long since you got them out?”

  “Five minutes. Six since the alarm sounded.”

  Joshim had not even noticed the banshee wail of the web-alarm filling the ship.

  “Turn it off, somebody,” he called. “Lilimya, you’re tired. Let Caruya take over.”

  If Rafe was breathing, he was in better condition than Churi. That made the junior Joshim’s first priority.

  “Churi was breathing when he came out of the shub,” Lilimya reported, relinquishing her task. “He only stopped when we disconnected his web-contacts.”

  Joshim grimaced. “Was he breathing in time with Rafe?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Lilimya looked down at her hands in her lap, biting her lip. “That’s why we suspect transference. And we haven’t been able to start a pulse. Or get a brain trace.” She gestured at the electrodes lying on the floor beside them, and the flat traces on the physio-monitor that they had already hooked up to the youngster.

  Joshim took Churi’s flaccid wrist, looked at the burned contact, the blue nails. Hypoxia, or the shock of third degree web-burn, either would have been enough to kill him. If there was no brain trace and they had not started a pulse already…

  “Here.” Rallya thrust a vial of R-K-D into his hand. “How bad?”

  “Bad,” Joshim said baldly, rising to his feet. “Get Churi onto the respirator. Lilimya, keep trying for a pulse.” They had to go through the motions.

  “Rafe?” Rallya asked anxiously.

  “Breathing.”

  Gods, if Rallya had told him last night what she had told him this morning, none of this need have happened, Joshim thought angrily. He turned away, unable to trust himself not to fling that accusation at her, knowing that it was not her but Elanis and the vile shadows behind him that he ought to accuse.

  Rafe’s breathing was shallow with shock, his pulse erratic, his skin waxy grey under the congealing shub. But his brain trace was regular under the spikes of residual discharge and he had never stopped breathing, Joshim reminded himself hopefully.

  “Has he been conscious?” he asked Jualla.

  “For a moment, when we pulled him out. Long enough to feel the web-burn,” Jualla answered. “I put
ten units of Daraphine into him.”

  “Good.”

  The web-alarm fell silent and when Joshim looked up briefly, Vidar was moving away from the central monitor. “Pass me an empty injector,” he told Jualla, breaking the seal on the vial that Rallya had given him. “Then get something to dry him off with, and a blanket to wrap him in.” He took the injector and used it to give Rafe twenty units of R-K-D.

  “How is he?” Rallya repeated, taking the place that Jualla vacated.

  “Alive,” Joshim said shortly. “Gods know how.” He gestured angrily at the livid burns on Rafe’s wrists and neck, evidence of the unseen damage to the nerves. “Or for how long.”

  Rallya frowned calculatingly. “Can you move him?”

  “Not far.”

  “Your cabin?”

  “That’s what I planned.” Joshim watched Rafe’s brain trace as he spoke, looking for the first effects of the R-K-D.

  “He’s as tough as they come,” Rallya promised. “He’s going to make it.”

  “A pity Churi isn’t so tough,” Joshim said bitterly.

  “Gods and Emperors, do you think I don’t know it’s my fault!” Rallya hissed. “Do you think I don’t care?”

  Joshim shook his head. “I know you do,” he muttered. “And you couldn’t have predicted this. Only filth like Elanis would think of this.” He shook his head again, fixing firmly on the present. “How is Churi?”

  “On the respirator. Otherwise the same. Vidar’s with him.” Rallya leaned forward, ostensibly to watch the traces with him. “Now listen,” she whispered. “Rafe is going to die—officially—shortly after you get him to your cabin. And you’re going to stay in there grieving while we take his body into deep space for committal. Clear?”

  Joshim nodded comprehension. Rallya’s idea made sense, he thought angrily. The only way to keep Rafe safe—if he survived—was to convince his enemies that he was dead.

  “I’ll need more R-K-D than we have aboard,” he warned.

  “You’ll have it. Anything else?”

  “You could try praying, if you ever knew how.”

  “I’m praying already,” Rallya promised vehemently. “For Rafe’s life. And for vengeance.”

  Death certificate dated 309/5043,

  Aramas Zone, Old Empire

  I, JOSHIM (OE-P5971-17529), Webmaster of Bhattya, hereby certify that RAFE (NE-P9000-42775) and CHURI (OE-P81113-07375) died this day as a result of injuries sustained in the web, namely (i) systemic nervous overload and (ii) transference shock.

  Report by Palace Security Chief Braniya

  to the Emperor Julur

  …His body has been retained by the ship Bhattya for committal in space. It will be possible to retrieve the body from space later, if you wish, but not to intervene at this stage…

  …I have already made arrangements to question Carher’s agent. The explanations for his absence during this incident and the incident last year are plausible, but…

  …It remains a possibility that the death was an accident, although my preliminary investigations show that the ship Bhattya has an excellent safety record and her Webmaster is well regarded by his peers … If it proves to have been an accident, all those guilty of negligence will be identified…

  …I will continue to investigate personally.

  323/5043

  ARAMAS ZONE, OLD EMPIRE

  Rafe moved restlessly and muttered something unintelligible. Rallya paused in her jump calculations and watched him closely, until she was sure that he was not waking. Surely, it could not be much longer until he did wake, she thought in frustration. He had progressed so quickly to this point, just below the threshold of consciousness. She could not believe that he would hover there indefinitely.

  Nor did Joshim’s apparent patience fool her. He was as desperate as she was to know the true extent of Rafe’s injuries. To know whether there was somebody they would recognize as Rafe within the body they were tending, or whether there was deep-seated brain damage that would never heal. However much of a miracle it was that Rafe had survived the overload at all, it would not be enough unless he made a full recovery.

  There were hopeful signs, she reminded herself. Rafe’s web continued to regenerate at a speed that only his near-human blood could explain. He moved and muttered and all his autonomic reflexes operated. He took food if it was placed in his mouth with a spoon, was no longer dependent on a network of tubes. Best of all, Rallya thought, Joshim now consented to leave his side, to eat in the web-room or to work a shift in the web. That must mean that the Webmaster was more optimistic than he claimed. Or that he had admitted to himself that there was nothing more he could do for Rafe…

  At least Joshim’s reappearance had steadied Bhattya’s web-room. The death of two web-mates in the web had shaken them so badly that it had been easy to persuade Maisa that they were only fit for the Zfheer border patrol. Learning the truth about Rafe and the reasons for Churi’s death had jolted them out of their depression into a high pitch of anger and expectancy, but that had shifted into apprehension as the days dragged on and Rafe stayed stubbornly unconscious. Even the ritual farewell when they committed Churi’s body to space had only been an antidote to their confusion for a few hours. Like Rallya, they wanted to be doing something positive, instead of waiting passively at the bedside of the only card they had left to play, not yet knowing whether he was an emperor or a fool.

  Rallya still found it hard to believe that Elanis had out-thought her, that she had missed something as blindingly obvious as a trap in the web. Of course, they had found no snoops when they searched the ship; Elanis had removed them all before he left. Of course, they had found no explosives, no sign that the drive had been tampered with, no subtle changes in the comp to send their jumps astray, no evidence of anything except a tragic accident. Elanis—or his backers—had been thorough in covering their tracks.

  They had provided an explanation for the accident, a heat-damaged monitor circuit which had failed catastrophically during the overload. The station web-techs had taken it away for examination, but they would find nothing unexpected, Rallya told herself sourly. To flood a web so rapidly, to bind its occupants so tightly, the circuit must have been modified by an expert. Somebody who knew their way around a monitor circuit, and how to turn one into a death-trap, and how to destroy the evidence afterwards. Somebody who had to be a webber or an ex-webber, Rallya added grimly. It was yet another piece of circumstantial evidence. They were submerged in circumstantial evidence, she thought savagely. What they needed was proof.

  “Wake up, damn you,” she urged Rafe angrily.

  “Yours to command, ma’am.” The voice was scratchy with disuse.

  She swallowed her surprise immediately. “How long have you been awake?” she demanded.

  “You can’t please some people.” He opened grey eyes and blinked at the light. “Not long.” His voice was getting stronger. “How long have I been out?”

  “Fourteen days.”

  “Gods.” He moved his arms and legs experimentally.

  “Everything works,” Rallya assured him. “You’ve been thrashing around on that bed enough for us to be sure of that.”

  “My web?” Rafe craned his head to look anxiously at the monitor screen beside the bed.

  “No permanent damage.” Rallya confirmed what he could see for himself, a little envious of his self-control. He was hardly wasting a word as he set about getting the information he lacked. He might have planned the sequence of questions in his coma, she thought approvingly. Or while he was lying there, pretending still to be unconscious, she amended suspiciously.

  “Churi?” It was the obvious next question.

  “He died in the web.” He would not thank her for withholding the truth, or for trying to soften it. He had been conscious throughout the overload; he would have felt Churi dying.

  “Damn.” He closed his eyes again. “The committal?”

  “Five days ago.”

  “Damn,” he r
epeated softly. “He’ll hate being out there alone.”

  Rallya said nothing, knowing that she had not been intended to hear his grief. There was no comfort she could offer him; even if there was, he would not accept it from her. His image of a lonely Churi drifting in dark space was one he would have to cope with unaided. All Rallya could do was to make it harder for him, by telling him the reason for Churi’s death, and Joshim had extracted a promise from her not to do so until he was present.

  “We’ve left Aramas,” Rafe said after a short silence, unfastening the bindings on his wrists to release the monitor contacts as he spoke.

  “Leave those,” Rallya suggested, avoiding his unspoken question. “Save Joshim the trouble of putting them back.”

  Rafe carried on.

  “Conscious, you’re going to be a lousy patient,” she predicted, reaching for her messager and using it to beep Vidar. Joshim was in the web; the Captain would have to relieve him.

  “Conscious, I’m not going to be any kind of patient.” Rafe pushed himself up the bed into a sitting position. “I can read those screens as well as anybody.”

  “Then fourteen days ago, you would have thought you were looking at a corpse,” Rallya said flatly.

  “Want me?” Vidar asked, coming through the door. Then he halted and smiled broadly, the first true smile that Rallya had seen aboard Bhattya since the web-alarm sounded. “Should you be sitting up?” he asked Rafe.

  “No,” Rallya answered.

  “Yes,” Rafe contradicted her.

  Vidar laughed. “I’ll fetch reinforcements,” he suggested mischievously. “They’re obviously needed.”

  “Do that,” Rallya told him. “I’ll try tying him down until Joshim gets here.”

  “You haven’t told me where we’re going,” Rafe said when Vidar had gone.

  His eyes said clearly that there was no hope of him acting the invalid for her. Even Joshim was going to have difficulty getting him to cooperate, Rallya judged. Not because he did not feel weak—there was a faint frown on his forehead that suggested pain behind it, and his hands were trembling slightly as they rested on the comforter—but because it was his way of dealing with Churi’s death. If Joshim was not firm, Rafe would be out of bed and trying to work days before he was fit. Rallya decided that she would back Joshim to win that argument, but not by much.