SIX
As before, Malu ate with quick efficiency. She did not compliment the food, or attempt to make conversation. Jethri sipped tea and watched her, from time to time taking a bite of a cheese pastry that he didn’t particularly want.
In an astonishingly short time, the tray was empty, but for the dishes. Teacup in hand, Jethri sat back, and Malu did the same, leaving her empty cup on the table.
“Can you tell me,” he said, “how many active fractins are in those cases I purchased?”
Malu looked up, raising a hand to the jeweled necklet, fingertips stroking the glittering points.
“No, Kohno,” she said after a moment, “I cannot tell you. Which is to say that I do not know.”
She seemed truthful, even regretful, yet Jethri felt the unmistakable fizz of fractin energy. He considered her.
“I wonder if the answer would be the same, if I asked it with the pen activated?”
She glared at him, plainly exasperated.
“The answer would remain the same. You may be able to see through people and find such things, but I cannot.” She paused, and glanced a little aside. “We did know that there might be Befores where we were going, when we found the dead ships. It was information passed to us by someone who has worked with the—with your—uncle in the past.” She inclined her head slightly.
“Minsha advises that, while you are not the Uncle’s own person, you are to be treated openly on these topics. Therefore, I tell you what I know of these matters, as I would tell the Uncle himself. I do not know how many active fractins are in the lots you purchased from us.”
“And this site—the dead ships? What killed them?”
She stroked the necklet again, and shook her head. “I do not know. We found wreckage, and bodies, and stored items. Some of them were clearly not true Befores. Others were as you have seen—powers that we do not know.”
“But you’ve been using some of these things!”
“Not all of them came from that site. Some have been with us, or with Minsha, for many Standards. I will tell you, Kohno, that finding out what they do—that is best accomplished a little way apart from crowded places. Some of the devices did come with notes, but most, we found their purpose ourselves, or—like the pen—not at all.”
“The device that you used to steal the jewelry up at the mall,” Jethri said. “Did that come with notes?”
Malu looked down her nose at him.
“I stole nothing, Kohno. I was testing the device, which, as you saw, pushes things. It has been useful to us on occasion. Minsha advises that if we continue to use it, we will be taken up by the garda, or port admin. So, it is no longer in our inventory.”
Again, a fizz along his nerves. Jethri leaned forward.
“You’re wearing something now, aren’t you? Something from Before.”
“Am I?” She stroked the necklet again. The fizz was definite this time and he leaned forward, pointing.
“That,” he said. “The object you wear around your throat.”
“This?” Another touch, another fizz. “We think this is not Old Tech. It was a gift, wrapped for sending, in the ship’s mailroom. There was a name on it—I think…Isa— Vally and another found it. Clearly it is old, but not so old as to have been from Before. It is a fine thing, and we thought we might sell it, but we would first need an inspection by a jeweler, such as the one we expect to be on the ship arriving soon.”
“Every time you stroke it,” Jethri said carefully, “I—feel—it respond. I’ve felt this around other Befores.”
She continued to stroke the net, and Jethri had the conviction that it was aware, that it was trying to do…something.
“When you move your hands like this,” he said slowly, demonstrating the motion on himself, “at the top, near your neck, there’s less energy. When you stroke downward—over the jewels, then there’s more energy. It may have been a gift, but it’s no ordinary thing you’re wearing. Not contemporary. There’s—This is not an ordinary thing you wear—it’s Old Tech.”
“We looked, I say to you, Kohno. We are not novices, though we are not so experienced as your uncle. And now, I think that I will not answer any more questions until we have settled on my fee.”
That was certainly fair, he thought, and nodded, putting his cup aside as he stood.
“Excuse me while I go talk with my copilot. He’ll help you find a rate that’s fair to both sides. While you’re doing that, I’ll fetch the devices.”
She inclined her head, granting him permission to attend his business, and he left her, not without a quiver of the nerves.
Happily, he met Kel Bin in the corridor.
“We have finished,” he said in Liaden. “The lady ate with very good appetite. The food was flavorful and the tea well-chosen. My compliments.”
Kel Bin bowed the Liaden equivalent of an ear-splitting grin.
“The lady will shortly be joined by Bry Sen,” Jethri went on. “Please remain until he arrives, in the event that she should want anything. After Bry Sen has arrived, please bring a thermal pot of working tea, and some sweet crackers.”
“Yes, Trader.” Kel Bin bowed again and moved toward the conference room. Jethri continued on to the bridge.
“Bry Sen,” he said. “A word with you in the galley, please.”
“I am at your side in bare moments, Trader. Only let me mark my place.”
He was exactly that quick; Jethri had barely arrived in the galley when the pilot joined him, touching the door to close it.
“Is there a problem?” he asked in Terran.
“Not—as such,” Jethri said carefully. “I want to make sure we’re reading the same instruments, like we used to say on my ship.”
Bry Sen’s face lit. “I like that one,” he said enthusiastically.
“Use it often,” Jethri said cordially. “This’ll be the quick-form ’cause we got bidness waitin’. If you find yourself not in agreement, say it, hear?”
“I hear.” Bry Sen leaned a hip against the table and crossed his arms over his chest, face serious, eyes watchful.
“Right. You know that sometimes I deal in fractins and the like—got the knack from my father, and I hear just recent from my uncle that it’s in the family. Now, it’s those things that aren’t fractins we’re dealing with, here. I bought some few items off the young person’s ship, and she’s here now to give me tutoring on how they work.
“Unnerstand me, these are devices, such like the Scouts find themselves willing to confiscate. I don’t deal dark or even grey, as the thing’s seen Terran-side, but we’re a mixed ship and gotta consider the Liaden-side as well. I don’t willingly tarnish a pilot’s reputation, and I’m right in with Master pin’Aker’s plans for your future on Genchi, but—”
Bry Sen grinned.
“Just like you to think of it! My rep’s solid, my friend—Terran-side and Liaden-side! Can’t be otherwise, didn’t we agree between us? Not with Master pin’Aker in it!”
Jethri felt his face relax into a grin.
“So long’s you’re sure,” he began, and Bry Sen clapped him on the shoulder.
“I’m sure,” he said, then dropped back a step and bowed as to a comrade. “All honor to you, Jethri ven’Deelin. My melant’i is secure.”
Jethri returned the bow, straightened and grinned.
“Thus assured, I immediately place you in peril,” he said.
“Am I to attend the young person, Trader?”
“You are, indeed, but with a mission in mind. We must find a balanced fee for consulting. The young person is unsure, her advisor being absent, and also inclined to grasp ahead of herself.”
“I will be pleased to assist the young person and the trader to find balance in this matter,” Bry Sen said gallantly. “Do I go at once?”
“Of your goodness. I must fetch those devices for which I seek instruction, and will join you as quickly as I may.”
“I go,” Bry Sen said—and he did.
Grinning, Jethri left the galley, heading for the trader’s personal cargo area.
Bry Sen and Malu were on good terms by the time Jethri returned.
“We have arrived at a range,” Bry Sen said, turning the screen to Jethri, “by triangulation, if you will, Trader. We have compared rates from recent trade journals, rates listed on Meldyne Station’s job boards, and those offered by the congress for on-site spot-work. We agreed that this is not a congress-specific project, and that a clean average of trade journal and Meldyne rates would give us our best answer.”
Jethri looked at the screen, flicked through the reference links, and back to the suggested fee.
Malu had agreed on a basic fee for arriving in answer to Jethri’s request, and then a per-shift rate, payable in quarter-shift increments, wholly. The per-shift was eye-opening, but Jethri didn’t think the consultation would take a full quarter-shift, much less flow over into a second, which meant that Malu would receive a reasonable amount of credit in exchange for her special knowledge.
Jethri looked to her.
“You agree to these terms?”
“Kohno, I do.”
“I agree, too,” he said, and put his thumb against the screen before turning it back for her to do the same. She blinked, and slipped the rings from her right hand before fixing her thumb to the screen.
Bry Sen stepped up to affix his print as witness. When it was done, he looked up.
“Else, Trader?”
“Please send a copy of the agreement to Elsvair,” Jethri said. “We will want privacy for the consultation.”
Bry Sen bowed. “Trader.” He gathered up the portable screen and left, door sealing behind him.
“He is clever, that one,” Malu said, her rings now returned to her fingers.
“I think you’re right,” Jethri said, half-distracted.
He’d stopped in his quarters on his way back to the conference room, and had his lucky fractin in his pocket. It had been interested in the small crate of objects he’d been carrying, but now it was—excited. Very excited.
Jethri took a deep breath.
“That—necklace…” he began.
Malu drew herself up.
“Do you think this is for sale?”
“Yes,” Jethri said frankly. “I think you wore it here because you wanted to sell it.”
“I wore it because I was seeking a party!”
“Maybe you did. But you brought it here, to me, and it’s Old Tech.”
“It is not Old Tech!” she exclaimed. “Here—see it for yourself!”
She lifted her hand toward the plunging line of her blouse, touched something, and whirled, the necklet fluttering like silver wings before it winked out of sight.
Jethri straightened. His fractin was even more interested, if that was possible, but—
“Where?” he demanded.
Malu laughed and stepped closer.
“Hold out your hand, Kohno!”
He did so, palm up, and she brought her fisted hand close, opening the fingers one by one.
It poured into his palm, all but weightless, nearly liquid, taking his breath, and sending a rush of icy clarity into his head. The fractin in his pocket stood up and cheered, if he was any judge of the matter.
Malu stepped back.
“Kohno?” she said, her gaze intent.
He took a breath, looked down at the pooled silver in his palm, pinched it between thumb and forefinger, shaking it out, found edges, and spread his hands. The netting stretched, took on shape, until it became not a necklet, but a capelet, a fine metallic mesh into which the tiny gems were woven in a pattern he could almost recognize. He held it up, feeling that fizz along his nerves, tracing the path of the gems by eye.
The bulk of them went from the shoulders down to the waist, in a flared sweep of tantalizing color, leaving the inside border stone-free, except for a dozen matched pairs down the edge, that looked to be fastenings.
To test that theory, he brought his hands together until each stone found its partner with surprising strength.
“Each pair of the magnets is matched,” Malu said. “If you try to put the bottom one with the top, they repel each other.”
Jethri glanced at her, then back at the dainty garment, feeling his hands warming, and something else—a familiarity, a yearning…
“This is meant to do something,” he said, and turned to put the capelet on the table, spreading it so that its shape held no more secrets.
Or did it?
He motioned Malu closer, and touched the back of its neck with light fingertips. “This here, see? Is it a frill, or something else?” He pushed with his fingers and the extra fabric, if something so fine could be said to ever be extra, unrolled, just a fraction.
“You have good sight, Kohno. We did not see that, and we did examine it, very closely. Even Minsha said it was jewelry.”
Jethri listened with half an ear, tugging at the fabric a little more firmly.
“You did not tear it, did you?” Malu asked. “Such a lovely thing—it would be a shame.”
“No, I didn’t tear it. Look—it’s a hood.”
It was a hood, thickly woven with the small gems, and how it had remained invisible to hand and eye was something Jethri wasn’t certain he wanted to know.
He met Malu’s eyes.
“Not contemporary.”
“So you say, Kohno, and so I now believe, as well.” She sighed, then turned her hands palm up. “We had all agreed to sell it, when we thought it was jewelry. Now that it is revealed as an item in your area of interest—yes, it is for sale.”
She dropped her hands.
“But do not ask me to teach it to you, Kohno. In minutes, you know it better than I, who held it for months.”
He nodded, and turned, leaving the capelet on the table, though he felt a pang at putting it aside.
“Let’s talk about the things you do know something about. We’ll come back to that one when we’re done with those.”
“Yes,” she said. “That will be best. Remember, Kohno, that some of these items are risky. It’s often better to test them in private.”
“I agree. Old Tech is risky. This—” he gestured at the walls—“is as private as we can arrange. Do you have reason to believe any of the objects I have here are life threatening?”
She turned to the box, and removed each item, one by one, putting them on the table as far away from the capelet as was possible. When they were all lined up, she considered them, frowning slightly.
It was, Jethri thought, theater, and of a kind he could appreciate. The art of hesitation was one every trader practiced occasionally.
Speaking of art—Malu’s painted face, now that he really looked at it, was more art than artifice. Whatever she and the rest of Elsvair’s crew were about—and he didn’t doubt that some of it crossed the line from merely questionable into grey—it wasn’t a careless life, but practiced—and dangerous, if wrecked ships and side-salvage was a routine part of it.
Malu stirred.
“The pen, we know already—another of your discoveries, Kohno. This one, and this—I do not know, nor does Vally or Minsha.” She put three items back into the box.
“This one,” she touched the device Minsha had brought to him with a light fingertip. “I know very well what this one does. Let us begin here.”
The item from Minsha was, as he had begun to suspect, a general jamming device. It was, Malu told him, possible to turn it off, but somewhat less possible to keep it turned off.
“It is as if it is so eager to perform its function that it will turn itself back on, if it has been idle too long,” Malu told him, and shook her head at the device, as if it were a disappointing child. “We had it wrapped, but it was not enough. A stasis box generally is sufficient for such eager items, but we did not have one free.”
Jethri deliberately did not ask what was in those implied full boxes. He did call Kel Bin, and asked him to have someone deliver a small stasis box to the corridor outside the conference room.
“This one?” he asked, pointing to another device.
“For this one, we will need cameras and comm units. It is easier to show you what it does, and it is—less risky than that one.” She jerked her head toward the jamming device.
“All right,” Jethri said, and made another call, this time to have two stand-alone cameras and two comm units also brought to the corridor outside the conference room.
While they waited, Jethri poured them both a short mug of work tea, and leaned against the wall sipping his.
“Does Elsvair only do salvage work?” he asked, since he had developed some curiosity on that point.
Malu shrugged, deliberately provocative, or so he thought.
“Elsvair does work of many kinds, though it is true that we are not…officially Loopers.”
“Aren’t you?”
Another shrug, careless rather than suggestive.
“My people do much as Loopers do. We live on the ship if born there, but we also have other arrangements. Some of my cousins have lived on planets for years, while others work as side help on the lesser ships. We stay in touch, you understand—as you and your cousins stay in touch across ships. But, no. Your TerraTrade and your Combine, they permit us, but they do not prefer us, and the Liaden masters are much the same.”
The comm pinged. Jethri answered and received Kel Bin’s report that the stasis box and requested equipment had been delivered to the conference room door.
They practiced with the second device first in the conference room. Jethri noted the effect in the cameras. Instead of jamming the transmission, the device suggested to the cameras that they were seeing Jethri, even when he was standing behind them, with Malu directly in their sights.
“By doing this—” Malu demonstrated a setting change, “you may convince them not to see you at all, even if you stand before them.” She handed the device back to him and stepped away from cameras. “Try and see.”
It was as she said. He was invisible to the eyes of both cameras.
“Press the blue button, and you will also not be heard,” Malu continued. “The blue and the yellow together, and you may place your voice into a conversation a distance apart from your location.”
“How long a distance?”
“Kohno, I do not know precisely. It is not the sort of test one might make on port, without more risk than Minsha allows us.”
“Well, maybe we can get a range on it. You stay here, with this comm and the cameras. I’ll take the device and the other comm down to cargo and run through the varies.”
They’d established that the device could act across the length of Genchi’s interior, and Jethri was experimenting with combinations of settings. His comm pinged, and he heard Bry Sen’s voice.
“Trader?”
“Pilot?”
“I am here, as you know, on the bridge with our good captain, who points out to me that we have just seen what may be your image, faded and full of static, on three of our external video feeds. Do assure me that you are not spacewalking without a suit.”
Jethri blinked, then frowned at the device in his hand.
“I’m in the small hydroponics work room. Our guest is in the conference room speaking to me on the local comm video feed. Tell me about this image.”
“It is superimposed on our usual feed.”
Jethri switched comms.
“Malu, is it the red button and the bar to the right, to make the image disappear?”
“Yes, Kohno.”
He went back to Bry Sen. “My apologies, Pilot. Allow me to make an adjustment.”
Jethri, who had moved the bar to the left, slid it back slightly.
“Your image is fading,” Bry Sen said, not sounding comforted. “But we should not be seeing it at all!”
Jethri pushed the bar further.
“Gone,” Bry Sen said after a long pause. “External camera feed returns to normal.”
Jethri pressed the yellow button.
“We now have static on all external cameras. Are the pilots allowed to know if this is an effect of the trader’s ongoing business?”
“I was establishing a range,” Jethri said, as contritely as the Liaden comrade mode allowed. “Forgive me, Pilots. Testing is now suspended. Your input has been extremely useful.”
He switched comms again.
“I’m coming back to the conference room, Malu. Please choose another device.”
The quarter-shift was almost done, and there remained one last item.
Jethri sipped tea, having twice gently brushed aside Malu’s offer to consider the consulting over, if he’d like to have a quieter chat somewhere more comfortable.
“Tell me about this…garment,” he said finally. “Today was the first time you’d worn it? It hasn’t been off-ship or in public before?”
“It has not been off-ship since we found it. I put it on because it is so beautiful, and felt good to wear. A thing that a person might wear to a festivalia.”
Jethri nodded and put his mug aside. His fractin buzzed slightly as he ran his fingers down the fine material, finding the touch of the small gems enticing, sensual.
He picked the netting up, shook it lightly, and on impulse spun it around, feeling it settle across his shoulders—Malu was right, he noted, it did feel good to wear.
In what seemed a natural fall the hood came over his head. His hair stood on end briefly, then the frisson faded, and the hood settled closely, smoothly. He lifted a hand and ran a negligent finger down the line of paired magnets, sealing himself into the netting.
Malu hissed, said something sharp in the language he had heard her speak with Vally. He heard the words, almost understood them, stored them away to hear again.
He felt the small device in his pocket warm and settle, pleased.
Jethri smiled. Yes.
Yes, this was his to wear, his to own, his to merge with and learn from.
Again Malu hissed. She made a motion, rings glowing, and around her a nimbus formed, as if she had invoked protections. That was wise, though she was sadly a foolish girl. To dare the wearing of the hood? Well, her ignorance had protected her, and he would protect her now. After all, she had done him a very great service.
The hood—the hood lay close against his head, closer than his hair, embracing his skull, comforting and welcome, as the knowledge began to flow.
The rings—secoro rings; small disrupters. Effective protection from the mischief of such devices as they had been toying with earlier, but nothing that could prevent him from doing as he pleased. At the moment, it pleased him to do her no harm; he had more important matters to tend to.
He recalled the phrase she—Malu—had spoken just now, and he knew the words and their meaning as well as he knew his own name.
“Cieloghia, savu min de stulteco,” he said aloud. “This what you asked? That is—” He chose Terran because the Liaden translation would have given him—no, would have required him!—to make demands of her loyalty…“Celestials, save me from stupidity.”
Malu’s eyes widened, and she nodded, twisting the rings ’round her fingers.
The motion drew his eye, and he spoke again.
“You wear rings that hide your touch if you wish it, rings that hide your fingerprints and that can give you extra grasp. Rings tuned to you.”
She nodded again, her face wary.
“Which celestial would you have help you?” he asked. “They’ve been left behind, the celestials. We are in new space. New arrangements follow!”
If it was possible, he would have said her eyes widened more, for he had spoken in the language of her ship kin. According to their own myths the kin were bands of stragglers and opportunists brought together in the new space by the elder Uncle to insure that the strange places were fit to live in, that those living on planets did not fall into the habits of the old order.
She answered in the same language, admitting with an odd tilt of the head that was somehow also of that language, “I have no names, we were never permitted the names, since they are gone!”
“Then tell me which stupidity are you to be saved from—mine, for donning this, or yours, for bringing it to me when I could not ignore it?”
“Kohno, I meant no harm.” She spoke now in Terran, which made Jethri happier, this speaking in strange tongues made his head feel vaguely fuzzy, and not quite himself—no, that was wrong. As if he was more himself.
“Did any of you try this on?” he demanded.
“Only me that I know of; to me are given the little treasures we find while we wait for our heptad to form, since so many of the gadje buyers will deal high to make a woman smile at them. The rings were like this; it was only after I wore them for a time that we saw they had more effects than we knew. I have not tried to sell them. They are too plain, too clearly not marvelous, and so the dealers would not pay well for them.”
Gadje. It came to him that Elsvair’s crew was not gadje, and everyone else was, it seemed, though he wasn’t quite sure what a heptad was, it carrying overtones of clan, crew, and family all at once.
“So this—device, the one I’m wearing. It translates, or knows words.” He smiled. Malu did not smile back. “I wonder what else it does.”
He stroked the clasps with the flat of his hand, thinking that they might do double-duty, thinking that the netting held secrets, like the weather machine he’d fumbled with at Tarnia’s vineyard—secrets, knowledge, danger—
The weather machine, he thought, recalling its feel in his hand, the dial, the symbols…
It was as if a training vid began to run inside his head. Here was the very device with which he had inadvertently created a wind twist. The vid continued, now overlaid with a stern voice explaining the system, and the meaning of the symbols. This was someone personally familiar with the device, explaining the meaning of the pictures that flashed through his head—the proper way to activate the device, though one must never do this— There! That had been his error! He’d set three controls to maximum while trying to make it do something. That was the very first error he was warned against!
He struggled briefly with his thoughts. The information on the weather machine was interesting, but not current. Trade was on the table, and he must know…
He must know, he thought deliberately, strongly, if this device—the device he was wearing—held operational files for itself. If so, how could he find and review them, quickly?
But there—in his head he heard a voice, vaguely familiar in tone and timbre, speaking on the self-storing smart-bead training assistant for humans and top-level Batchers, not to be copied or distributed.
“Batchers?” Another term that he ought to know, he thought, and another vid opened. He saw a line of seven people, or a line of the same person. A batch of clones, the voice instructed, and Jethri blinked. Who would make batches of clones? Who would need batches of clones?
Information—no! Memories!—flowed from somewhere then, somewhere not in his experience but as real as if he had himself stood in a sterile room, watching as a line of ceramic pods were opened, one by one, and people stepping out of each pod, naked and identical.
There were signs on the walls, information on the board above each pod. He’d never seen the language, knew neither alphabet nor words, yet—he knew their meaning, understood that this was a facility in which people were made in Batches, to order, and he suddenly knew that the ten identical people he was staring at were a mining team, belonging to—the name of the company rippled past his understanding, as if the memory had been deliberately smudged.
Jethri shook his head, trying to step away from the vid running in his head, the vid that was answering his question all too thoroughly. He’d heard of sleep learning modules and of the theory of that kind of learning, but this—this was something else. This, he reminded himself, was an Old Tech device in action, fully functional.
And Old Tech devices were so very risky.
Batchers were needed, the voice-over was instructing him, not only to fulfill the functions for which they were created, but their production was also necessary to shield a part of the resistance’s plan to defeat the sheriekas, the Great Enemy bent on the destruction of life. There was another level of Batchers being manufactured beneath the superficial production of cheap labor.
The resistance was creating super soldiers, stronger and better equipped to fight the Enemy—to defeat the Enemy.
The vid shifted, the image coming in close to the instruments and readouts screens, and there—there were frames with fractins slotted in, more frames where technicians were placing more fractins, willfully, in service of the resistance.
Jethri’s attention was divided as never before: while he clearly saw Malu standing by the table, face intent, fingers entwined, the images inside his head were compelling, insistent, and he knew, ancient, extragalactic and extra-universal, terrifying memories recorded by Old Tech before the Great Migration.
He sat straighter, reaching for the tea, or the ’mite, or whatever drink it was he had there, he forgot, repeating to himself that despite the absolute conviction, the assumed knowledge, of this sharing, there was no Great Enemy destroying system after system, no need for dozens, thousands, millions of manufactured soldiers and countless batches of other clones to support them.
It was tea. He tasted it, knew it to be a fine tea, recalled the name, found some other process going on inside his head—three—four! As if his dream states had been called to attention, as if, he thought, the device—the smart-beads—had assessed him as he was assessing it, and had realized how deficient he was in basic, necessary knowledge—
And it was trying to catch him up.
He made an effort, trying to disentangle himself from the various streams of information, but he was only one thread, and a young one, at that.
Data thundered through his head; somehow he was able to view all of the threads simultaneously, understand—assimilate—the information without the effort of learning it.
One thread was trying to…to annotate what was wrong with the vision of the frames and clones, to correct the history, or amend it to include what was a new—a newer—history, that there had been a strong but ultimately hopeless resistance, followed by an escape, a Great Migration.
Another thread was doing its best to include him into the fabric of the device, to pull his experience, examine it, and record it for whoever came along next.
In the meanwhile, his idle wondering thought about tea had become an ever-widening search, expanding into general beverages, branching into beer and wine, which was a known heading somehow, and others to variations on yeast-based hot drinks and others to coffee, and then his particular knowledge of teas Liaden, and wines Liaden, and simply Liaden, because things Liaden was a new heading, the fact of Liad was interesting, the fact of tradeships doubly so…
If his eyes were not closed, it was because he was too busy to concentrate on that action while he analyzed the tea in hand, recalling bulk prices on ports he hadn’t seen in two Standards, recalling the failings of it as listed by competing tea masters, and the rebuttals of dockside sellers and happy buyers, all these appearing as overlays in his mind’s eye, like extra screens at the piloting board.
Malu was beside him, eyes very wide. He knew that because she’d touched his hand, the shields her rings gave her proof against this device’s demands. Her approach had sparked another thread, and now he’d somehow started a file on Elsvair and Malu, recalled that she’d been hoping for some wine and times…
“Kohno? Kohno!”
She said something in her own language, demanding that he return her property, foolish child.
But there, while the information about tea was being compiled, there was wine!
Wine, yes, wine was a good topic. Universal. Extra-universal.
Did he know anything about Tarnia’s wines? He did! He knew the feel of the leaf and vine, the smell of the grapes, the—
Yet another file opened, collating the manner of transporting and sharing wine, which led to general trade routes, styles of trading, what history he had of Looper trade, the names of his—
Malu touched his hand again, pinching the web between thumb and forefinger. It hurt; the sensation was filed, and her voice, calling for Jethri Gobelyn ven’Deelin, and there was a edge to her voice that was fear, yes, surely fear. That was…not good. Who knew what the child might do if she was frightened?
Truly, he should answer her, send her away, so that he could concentrate without these minor interruptions, but he had time to organize this new file before he spoke. It was important that he thought right now about being named Jethri Gobelyn, knowing the while that he was line kin of the Uncle, Arin’s scatter.
Malu patted his hand, softly, and through the datastorms he understood her to have moved away. In a moment, he heard her speaking loudly in Terran.
“Emergency! The trader requires assistance, now!”
Well, an emergency, that was interesting. He wondered about the trader and what assistance might be required, and why Malu couldn’t provide it. She had offered assistance, he remembered that, offered a sharing, in fact, though slyly, which could also have been interesting, though she was not someone Arin had ever seen…and he needed to concentrate—so much was clear, answers to questions he’d never known he had…but wait, here was another line of inquiry on Arin and Grig, with sidelines to Dulsey, all neatly being plucked, considered, sorted, stored, with the Envidaria coming complete and unabridged to his instant recall. He remembered the game he’d played and won as a child, a game that inspired Arin to—
“Jeth?”
Only a few people called him that, Loopers and family; the list of the people who’d called him “Jeth” was collected into a dataset, one with friends and lovers—it had been hard to get Liadens to unbend to Terran diminutives, even when one’s hands were molding…
“Jeth?”
So yes, this one was not Malu. This one had nibbled his ear and stood beside him staunching his bleeding. Malu, Malu called him Kohno. No, this one was Freza DeNobli, she from a line of the DeNobli and Carresens alliance, Looper bred. All of what he thought about her and knew about her filtered into data, information, relationship and genealogy charts along with the secret knowledge of touches that gave her pause, the ones that made her tremble for him.
“Jeth! Look at me! Talk to me! Tell me my name! Jethri!”
Perhaps it was the touch of her hand, and her imperative squeeze, or the volume of her voice or even the sounds of shushing as Bry Sen discreetly ushered Malu out of the room, and he heard the murmured words, “I will see you to your ship, Consultant. The captain is even now calling to inform them of your quick arrival.”
“Jeth,” Freza said again. “Listen, right? That consultant, she says she doesn’t think taking this hood off will hurt you, because you have an affinity, and there’s an accord between you, whatever that might mean to you. What it means to me is that we’re going to get this thing off your head, so if there’s any withdrawing you can do, do it now. Tell me yeah.”
He gathered himself.
“Yeah.”
There was a split second of hesitation, a blankness that would have been terrifying if it had lasted any longer, and then—
The threads rolled up, the files in process, and those being reviewed closed, the speculations, edits, and additions folded in on themselves and vanished, each into its own bead, or cluster of beads. He knew that was what happened, though he didn’t see it. The information would be waiting for their next session. Truly, he should rest now. It had been, said the shadow of the teaching voice, a vigorous and informative session.
“With me, Jeth?”
“Yeah,” he said again, and opened his eyes, surprised to find that they’d been closed, after all.
Freza’s face was inches from his. She smiled at him, but the corners of her eyes were tight.
“That’s good,” she said. “You wanna take this pretty the rest of the way off? I’d do it, but I’m not clear on how to unseal it proper, and I gather it’s something you’d rather not seen torn.”
There was no power that Freza could bring to bear that would tear the capelet, that Jethri knew without any doubt. He did feel some concern though, for her, and what the thing might do, if she touched it.
“I’ll take it off,” he said.
“Do that,” she said. “I’ve got Kel Bin here with a stasis box, open and ready to receive.”
He raised his hands to where the hood lay ’round his neck, fought an intense, but brief battle with the urge to draw it back up, and instead folded it back and back again, his fingers tingling as it withdrew into its secret pocket. Bringing his hands to the closures, he felt a stirring, and waited as a blurry pattern formed laboriously inside his head. Ah, there was a correct order to touch the magnets, if he wished to save his recordings, and his places in the files. He touched the magnets in the order shown, the capelet fell open, and he slipped it off, holding it in one hand as it folded in on itself again, and again, becoming a slender silver necklet, adorned with small gemstones.
“Box,” he said, and there was Kel Bin, box in hand, opening tipped slightly toward Jethri. He placed the netting carefully inside, feeling a pang as it slipped away from his fingers, and withdrew his hand.
“Seal it, pray, and take it to my private hold.”
“Trader.” Kel Bin slid the lid into place, triggered the lock and the field, bowed and left.
Jethri closed his eyes and sighed. The inside of his head felt—empty. Peaceful.
He felt cool fingers against his cheek and opened his eyes again.
“Freza.”
“Still,” she agreed, her smile easier this time.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No problem,” she said. “Feeling yourself? Nothing too wrong or too good?”
“Tired,” he said, realizing that he was, absolutely. “Thirsty.”
“Thirsty, we got covered.”
She turned, reached, and offered him a glass, chips of ice floating in the water.
He drank thirstily, and when the glass was empty, she took it back.
“’Nother one?”
“Not just yet. Malu’s gone back to her ship?”
“Bry Sen’s escorting her. There was something about a consulting fee that he’d be transferring just so soon as you signed off on the time.”
“I’ll do that…in a minute. Or two. How’d you get here?”
“Malu figured out something was wrong, yelled emergency, got Bry Sen, who sent for me on the run. Brought my medkit.”
She was half-sitting on the table in front of him, their knees touching.
“So, how you feeling? Pretty much yourself? Got a headache or anything else you’d like to tell me about?”
“Tired,” he said again, and paused to do an inventory. “No headache, not dizzy. Been a long day-or-month.”
Her mouth twitched. “Has, hasn’t it? And tomorrow’ll only be longer. So how ’bout I check you over with the kit, and we’ll get you to bed so you can do a little something about that tired?”
He sighed, but she was right. He didn’t think the smart-beads had hurt him; Malu’s argument for affinity made a certain kind of sense, but—
“Best to be sure.”
“That’s how I like a man to talk.” She reached behind her and brought the medkit forward, pulled out the scanner.
“This’ll take a minute. If nothing turns up but tired, then you get yourself to bed.”
“Come with me?” he asked.
“Tempting, but I’ve still got a year’s worth of work to do before I go to bed this month. Good idea, by the way, to have the mail from your various cousins sent over to us. Got one of the youngers researching lines—good practice for her, and she feels like she’s in the thick. So far, no kin-hits, though we’re all cousins on the Loops.”
Jethri grinned. The scanner beeped.
There was a short silence while Freza read the results, then she turned and slipped the scanner back into the kit.
“So that’s five percent of your mass gone since last time we did this,” she said conversationally. “Call your cook in here, why not?”
She turned and he heard the noises associated with pouring water into a glass. More water would be good, he thought, and raised his voice sufficiently to be heard over the all-ship.
“Kel Bin, attend me in the conference room, of your goodness.”
The man must’ve been standing outside the door, because he was there before Jethri had taken his first drink from the refilled glass.
“Trader?”
Jethri inclined his head, and spoke in Trade. “The medic wished to consult with you, I believe.”
“Indeed,” Kel Bin turn to Freza and bowed as one ready to serve. “Medic. How may I assist?”
“The trader requires a restorative diet,” Freza said, her Trade crisp and cool. “He has lost significant weight, suddenly, and he has demanding days before him. I don’t want to overburden your kitchen—”
Kel Bin raised a hand. “Keeping the trader well-fed and healthy is the kitchen’s happy burden,” he said. “I have recipes; further, I am back-up medic, with a specialty in foods that heal and restore.”
Freza grinned. “You’ve taken a big burden off of me, then, Medic. Will you provide a high-calorie, restorative meal for the trader, who will—” She fixed Jethri in her eye—“who will eat, and then retire?”
“It will be my great pleasure as well as my duty,” Kel Bin assured her. He turned to Jethri. “I will bring this meal to your quarters, Trader, so that you may eat undisturbed before you seek your rest.”
Jethri inclined his head.
“My thanks, Medic,” he said meekly.
Kel Bin bowed once more to the room in general, and left at speed.
Jethri put his empty glass down, and looked around the conference room.
“I’m going to have get these things into stasis boxes before—”
“You tell Bry Sen to get it done,” Freza said, and sighed gustily. “Jeth, you can’t be scaring me like this. You scared all of us, including your Malu!”
He tried to disown Malu with a shake of his head. “She’s not my Malu. I haven’t—”
“Didn’t ask,” Freza interrupted. “Point is, she was scared for you, and not just because she brought an accident down on your head. How she got to feeling that way isn’t my bidness, but she’s stuck on you, or the idea of you, pretty hard. Trust me, Jeth. Even if she never sees you again, she’s gonna remember you.
“Point is, you had all of us scared, and I don’t think Bry Sen dresses up to lure you to his side, either.”
She bent close and kissed his forehead. He slipped a kiss onto the edge of her ear, and sighed when she sat back.
“All right, now here’s your orders, Trader. Go to quarters, eat your meal, and go to sleep. You gotta be up and alert and talking to people.”
Jethri frowned, half-inclined to argue with this high-handedness—and didn’t. He was tired—physically tired, just like he’d been at the board two shifts back-to-back, and both of them nothing but in-close maneuvering.
His mind, though, seemed—hyperalert. Freza’s scanner—well, but mental acuity wasn’t something that could be measured by a scanner. But he felt like he was thinking harder, or deeper, his attention focused just slightly somewhere else, like he was trying to be in the moment, analyze and file it at the same time.
Maybe if he got some good sleep, his brain would settle.
“All right, Medic,” he said, trying to be light, “orders received.”
“Good.”
Freza came to her feet and held a hand down to him.
“Come on, now. I’ll walk you to your quarters.”
They met Bry Sen in the corridor, and Jethri paused to give orders about placing all of the equipment in the conference room into stasis boxes.
“Each in their own, absolutely, Pilot. If we lack a sufficiency—”
“Worry not, Trader. Each item in its own box is your word. It is now my task to perform.” He held up a common courier envelope.
“These, too, I will place in their own box. The consultant sends her rings, with the hope that they may be returned to her, after the trader has studied them. She also wishes to assure you that you will receive an invoice from Elsvair for the silver cape.”
“Good,” Jethri said, and hesitated. There were other things, surely, to put in train? “A moment,” he murmured, but Bry Sen raised a hand.
“All for the morrow, Trader. Your ship and your crew will shield you tonight. You have nothing to do but heal from your latest adventure.”
Jethri felt tears rise, hot and unexpected.
“Thank you, Bry Sen.”
“It is a pleasure to serve, Trader.”
“C’mon, Jeth,” Freza said, tugging gently on his arm. “Let’s get you settled down.”