Starfire Saga, page 53
Jemeret drawled almost lazily, “I will accept the assignment.”
Jasin Lebec looked away from us, and I didn’t have to touch him to know that he was vastly amused.
Pel Nostro repeated, “Your team?” He glanced at the other people on his side of the table. “I’m afraid—”
I overrode him as swiftly and smoothly as I could. “Pel, you’re going to have to humor me. I’ve gone through a great deal since graduation, and I cannot allow you to cut me off from the people I need for support. You’ll have to trust me enough to think that I know what I’m doing.”
“I should think the beast would be more than enough,” Terrill Guthrie said in another whisper clearly meant to be overheard.
“Perhaps for you,” I shot back at him.
Jasin Lebec tapped his palm against the table several times. I realized he was indicating approval openly, not, as he could have, by projecting. I was grateful.
“Talent in teams?” Pel Nostro asked. “Jara, how do the MIs see that development?”
“Application,” Jara Deland said.
There was a click that we all clearly heard even though it originated in the background of the other conference room.
The click was the equivalent of the MIs clearing their throats. Jara Deland seemed to snap to attention in her chair.
“It is our analysis that chances of success without further undue waste of resources are improved 64.3 percent by allowing this team approach to the problem,” a disembodied voice said with the expressionless tonalities of every machine in the galaxy except Mortel John. “That is a significant enough margin so that we advise you to approve.”
“Well done!” Coney hissed under his breath.
I hadn’t expected the MIs to weigh in on my side, and I knew from the consternation Jemeret was projecting that he hadn’t expected it either.
Anok Luttrell shifted in his chair, a half smile on his face. “We’ll provide a Lumeship for you.” He lifted a transit tracker from the table surface in front of him and pressed several keys. “We’ll divert the Megalume, and it should reach you in forty-two hours, station time.” He set the tracker down and let the table surface reabsorb it.
Pel Nostro rose. “We hope to see you on Orokell at the completion of your assignment, Ronica McBride,” he said, adding as an afterthought, “And the rest of you.”
The vid contact broke, and abruptly the other side of the room was empty. None of us moved for a very long moment. Then Sandalari asked gently, “Am I wrong, or did the MIs just agree to our staying together?”
Jasin Lebec cleared his throat. “The MIs do not agree or disagree, child. They compute percentages and make suggestions.”
Jemeret made a sound of disbelief, and Jasin Lebec leaned forward to see his grandson around the three of us. “It’s true,” he said mildly. “If I’ve discovered only one thing in nearly a century of government service, it’s that the machines make no decisions we don’t ask them to make.”
I felt my lord’s anger, and I wanted to at least blunt it a little. “Jasin Lebec, why didn’t you take the Barbin 3 assignment?”
He looked down at his hands, which were just beginning to show the unavoidable slackening of age that even his abilities and the technology of the Com could combat only so far.
Jemeret’s anger ebbed; his voice was surprisingly gentle. “He’s beyond it now, love. He lost a lot of his strength in the years they tried to use him to heal you.”
I felt that keenly, tried to make it easier by accepting it as my due or seeing it as not truly my fault, but ended up pushing it aside. I got up and stepped over Tynnanna’s tail to walk around Coney and Sandalari to the old Class A, who rose automatically. “Jasin Lebec, will you permit me to probe you?” I asked seriously.
He started to refuse; I felt it in him. I said, “Don’t.”
He shrugged then, and I sensed his assent. Instantly I formed a probe and used it to begin to explore for the weaknesses in his system. Jemeret had taught me more about brain physiology and function than Mortel John ever had, and I wanted to use it.
It was a brain that had wielded power for a hundred years, and the connections to the sting—which I could now locate with ease—seemed only a little weak at the acting end, but tapered to almost nothing as I followed them back. Cell regeneration was not something I could do in any brain except my own. I withdrew.
Everyone was watching me, and Tynnanna had risen and was pacing, slowly but with meaning. I’d been gone longer than I thought. I looked inquiringly at Jemeret.
“Just over an hour,” he said, adding, to Coney, “Let the guard in now.”
Jasin Lebec caught my wrist. “Tell me what your perception is,” he ordered. “I find it somehow impossible to—” He broke off, unable to find the words he wanted.
I knew what he meant. I’d been unable to diagnose the absence of my own sting until Jemeret showed me where to find it. As under our own control as it was, there was something nonvolitional about Class A talent, something inherently unstable and unpredictable. Jemeret did not appear to find it so, but then it was not a topic he and I had ever really discussed.
I looked at the old man I’d spent most of my life determined to imitate. “It’s a question of reserves,” I said.
He frowned. “But my reserves are full.” He sounded a little bewildered. “I can feel that they are. I can use them for Class C functions and for pathfinding, so I know they’re as good as they ever were—all right, almost as good. I’ve lost some flexibility, but that’s all.”
I didn’t contradict him. “As nearly as I can assess, the connection between your reserves and your sting has been lost. I don’t know if that’s a normal effect of aging—and since it involves your sting, you’re the only one who could repair it.”
“That’s something of a problem,” he said. “I’d need the sting to rebuild the connection, but I can’t use the sting unless the connection is rebuilt.”
Sandalari frowned. “Does that mean it can’t be fixed?”
I said, “Yes,” and after a moment Jasin Lebec nodded.
Tynnanna gave out a demanding roar which echoed off the walls of the conference room and startled all of us. I spun around.
“I think he needs to relieve himself,” Jemeret said dryly.
Coney had gone into the corridor and returned with the MF guard, who overheard the last remark and looked understandably uneasy as she blurted, “That creature isn’t going to fit into any of the eliminatories, and we don’t have a stock storage option, like the ships do!”
Jemeret was trying not to grin. “I suggest you let him back onto the dock area, and then clean up after him,” he said.
The guard’s jaw dropped. “Do what?”
Jasin Lebec said absently, “That sounds like a good idea.”
“Do what?” repeated the guard.
Tynnanna roared again, extended his claws and ripped up a square meter of carpeting, the klawit equivalent of bouncing up and down.
“Soon,” Jemeret advised mildly.
The guard flung open the conference room doors and Tynnanna bounded past her, almost knocking her flat.
“I’d better follow him,” I said to the others as the guard caught her balance.
“Meet us in the food dispensary,” Jemeret said, bending to pick up both nomidars. To Jasin Lebec, he added, “Any change in station command since I went planetside?”
I took the gaping guard by the arm and propelled her along the corridor in the wake of the klawit, who unerringly found his way back to the lander deck and availed himself of the space to create a mess that was no doubt a great relief to him.
“Gebbish!” the guard swore, wrinkling her nose.
“You wouldn’t smell any better to him,” I told her as haughtily as I could.
Tynnanna finished and stalked to the doors as if he bore no relation whatsoever to what he was leaving behind. The guard activated the automatic cleansing facilities. “With all respect intended,” she said to me as I watched her program the cleansers, “how long will you be staying on the station?”
“Just over forty hours.”
“Is he likely to do this again?”
The cleansers were, at least, efficient. Tynnanna watched them curiously as he washed his belly.
“If we feed him.” Before she could make any other comment, I went on quickly, “And if we don’t feed him, he’ll find his own meals.”
The cat raised his head and eyed the guard, giving her a full dose of his fiery stare.
“I’ll show you to the dispensary,” she said. “I’m sorry I ever thought of this as dull duty.”
I studied her as she walked around Tynnanna and into the corridor, then I asked curiously, “What’s your name and what are your stats?”
She looked surprised that I would take so much notice of her. “My name is Keli Idana. I’m a Merchant Fleet guard of the sixth rank, and a Com citizen. I was born on Veroun twenty-six standard years ago, and I was sent here when I was demoted from fourth rank.” She flushed a bright red as she said it, and I realized that she had hair almost the same shade as the blush. It peeped out of her helmet.
“Demoted for what reason?” I asked her softly as we walked side by side. It was clear she was embarrassed by the incident, but it made her more interesting to me.
“I disobeyed a direct order from my superior,” she said.
“Why?”
Her answer came almost defiantly, as if she were prepared to incur my contempt. “I’m a Macerate, and I considered myself to have been given an immoral order.”
I stopped walking, and she turned to face me, fists clenched at her sides. “Tell me what the order was,” I said.
She looked suspicious, but didn’t dare challenge me. “I was on a freighter picking up a consignment of telusite coils from the refinery on Nogdala 7 when the local citizens protested. It was something about the terms of the trade agreement. I don’t know the details, but they aren’t likely to tell anyone at my rank what’s going on. They armed us, and they told us to fire on the protesters if they didn’t disperse.”
“You refused to fire?”
She nodded. “They weren’t armed, the protesters. So I refused, and I ended up here.” She pointed to the iris at the end of a side corridor. “That’s the trough—pardon, the food dispensary.”
“You’re dismissed, MF Idana,” I said to her, and she braced in response, turned and walked away.
Tynnanna had to go through the iris one shoulder at a time, for it was half the size of the door at the dock. I followed him in and saw the dark blue jumpsuits at a long table near the dispensers. There were two other people in the room, both men, both in beige jumpsuits, and both trying to look as if a klawit were a perfectly normal, ordinary phenomenon.
Then I was distracted by the smell of coffee, and I instantly salivated. I hadn’t had coffee in months—years, really—and while shilfnin was good, it wasn’t as rich or as dark as the bean beverage. Sandalari rose and went to the dispensers as soon as she saw me. When the near dispenser began to produce a massive amount of meatlike protein, I knew she was getting Tynnanna’s meal. I went to join the three men at the table.
Jemeret shoved his cup of coffee over to me as I sat down, and I took it gratefully. “What started it, then?” he was asking Jasin Lebec. “There’s always a trigger.”
The old man was drinking some kind of liquor, and that surprised me, because I hadn’t thought he drank. “The trigger was a request from a pair of mine managers on Barbin 3 to renegotiate the terms of their contract with the Com.”
Jemeret smiled humorlessly, looking at me. “I suspect it always starts with a desire to renegotiate,” he said.
Jasin Lebec nodded. “People want to join the Com, get the benefits it offers, and are grateful at first. Then their perceptions change, and they think they should receive more than the original agreement. When we’re on the rollship, I’ll set up a conference with the authorities on Barbin 3. They’ll be better able to tell you what the situation is at this moment.” He paused, then said, “I never thought I would live to see you accept a Class A assignment.”
Jemeret’s smile grew a little warmer. “I’ve been accepting assignments since the Com destroyed Zitten Talt. This is just the first one that hasn’t involved the need to heal talent, and the first I haven’t charged a price for.”
“Who was Zitten Talt?” I asked him, setting the empty cup down in the refill circle on the table, which drew it down, filled it with more hot coffee, and raised it again so I could take it back. “I know you healed Sandalari and me. Who else?”
Jasin Lebec looked away. Coney toyed with his own cup. Jemeret was quite serious now. “He was a young Resni. He had been rated Class B by the Com, but he couldn’t believe or accept the classification. He got hold of some drugs he thought would boost him to Class A, and despite the danger, he took them.”
“But—how old was he?” I was feeling stupid. I’d been seven when Jemeret must have been healing Sandalari, and the only talents I’d known were Coney, Kray, and Jasin Lebec until we were adolescents.
“He was almost twenty years older than you,” Jasin Lebec said, “older than Lage by a few years. He could never accept being—lesser.”
Kray had had the same problem, but turned it outward instead of inward. I thought I had caught the brunt of it.
“I couldn’t save him,” Jemeret said with real regret. “The drugs had melted his brain, and there was nothing there to rebuild with.”
“One failure isn’t so terrible,” Jasin Lebec said softly. “Not with the kind of assignments you take on.”
Jemeret lifted the cup out of my hand and drank off most of its contents. “What were your failures, na-sire?” he asked.
Jasin Lebec looked sad. “You know, you can be very cruel,” he said to my lord. “I used to think that streak didn’t run in our family. I met Kray going into Ronica’s room that morning—that last morning. I read him in passing, perfunctorily. I didn’t catch it. I might have. I blame myself.”
Half of me expected Jemeret to apologize; the other half wanted to tell Jasin Lebec what I couldn’t tell him—that if he had stopped Kray, I would never have begun growing, and I’d never have met Jemeret. Neither of us said anything.
Coney looked up, waiting to see if we would speak. Sandalari returned to the table, curious, but silent, sensing strain. At last Coney said, “We can’t be sure that there isn’t a pattern to things, a pattern we can’t see or grasp, but which figures into everything. It could be that even if you had caught it, you couldn’t have stopped it.”
“You always did have a spiritual bent,” Jasin Lebec said with a distracted smile. “Some of the Tribunal wanted to wash you out of training because of it.”
“Why didn’t they?” Coney asked, with more curiosity than hostility.
Jasin Lebec rolled his glass between his hands. “Mortel John recommended you be retained, and the MIs backed him up.”
I found it vastly surprising that he spoke of Mortel John separately from the MIs, when I had only recently begun trying to fuse them.
“The MIs again,” Sandalari said. “Strange. I hadn’t expected them to be on our side.”
“Side?” Jasin Lebec asked it with a sharpness much like his old self.
I knew I needed to change the subject. “Am I entitled to a staff?” I asked him. “I mean, does the government make any accommodation if I want to, say, take on a guard?”
Jasin Lebec did not try to mask his surprise, though I thought everyone else at the table masked theirs quite well. “You already have a team,” he said. “I suppose that’s a precedent of some kind. Do you expect an army as well?”
“Not an army. A guard.”
The door irised open and a man in a bronze jumpsuit came in. The two beige jumpsuits at the other table jumped to their feet and braced. The bronze waved them down and came to us. “It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Markover Station. Your quarters have been prepared for you.”
“How about the klawit?” Coney asked.
The station commander—for command here would be a bronze responsibility—looked over at Tynnanna, who had devoured all the meat and tried to eat the dish as well, and was now delicately washing his huge face and whiskers. “He can sleep wherever he wants to,” he said. “We’re not equipped to keep animals, let alone cater to them.”
“Will you join us for a meal, Commander?” Jasin Lebec asked.
The commander accepted.
In short order I realized that compared to planetside food, station food was perfectly dreadful. I almost asked the commander what he’d done to get sent here. As soon as I’d eaten, I became aware that I’d been gathering at a low level for the past hour because I was tired. I glanced at the others; only Sandalari was showing signs of weariness. I wanted to see the quarters, but there was something else I wanted first.
“Is there a planetview?” I asked the commander.
It was Jemeret who said, “I’ll take you there. Which quarters did you give us?”
“Level one, suite five for you and Ronica McBride,” the commander answered. “Suite seven for Class C Conewall and his husband.”
Jemeret got to his feet as the table absorbed the used dishes, and I rose, too.
On a ship or a station, day and night are matters of whim rather than matters of nature, and by station time it was well past midnight. We said good night, went to the nearest force-lev vertical, and let it raise us two levels. Because the verticals had to move fixtures as well as people, this one was big enough for Tynnanna. It was fairly clear to me by this time that the klawit was not too willing to let me out of his sight yet, and that was fine with me. If the starfire was to speak with me again, it would be through the cat, and I was eager for that to happen.
