Accepting the Lance, page 16
part #22 of Liaden Universe Series
She shook her head.
“There it is: if we are to survey properly, we cannot undertake rebuilds, and if we begin to rebuild, we may inadvertently stint the survey.”
“Now, that is a very Scout-like conundrum,” Win Ton said. “We must, of course, do the survey properly. Meantime, there is perfectly good equipment that requires only the most modest attention and care to make it functional again—but that work, too, must be done properly. Also—gods forfend!—there is paperwork.”
Kara stared at him, then slapped her hand on the chair arm as his meaning took root. “Salvage claims! How could I forget?”
“Indeed. Tell me, though, what ought these devices monitor once we have rebuilt them to better than spec?”
Perhaps he meant to trip her up but, in fact, Kara had given a good deal of thought to just that question.
“We will build in self-pairing and pair-crossing, then we will reseed the libration points, using the monitors in tandem for synced stereo searches along multiple wave lengths. Also, we might—”
“There!” Theo’s voice was sharp with excitement.
Kara spun back to her station. The dustball was displayed on three screens now, two of them showing multiple overlays of chemical notation, colors, temperatures—spectra overlays on top of density.
“Timonium in that for sure!” Clarence said, like he’d just been given a Name Day gift.
Kara frowned, misliking the way the dust rippled around its indistinct core.
“The center—” she began, but the sensors were already adjusting, seeking out that extra-dense core.
“We will maneuver around the object,” Bechimo stated. “We will remain outside of the cloud fringe. Shielding on low.”
The dust cloud grew larger on the screens—known metals and a strange isotopic agglomeration of ice, dust, grit, chunks of rock. The core grew more distinct, as the sensors relentlessly sought it out, revealing—
Yet another probe. By Kara’s estimation, this one was larger than those they had previously captured, the rolling shadows giving her to guess that it consisted perhaps of four of the Mark II Remco-Carresens, each with an ion drive packed on the near-invisible outer edge cloaked beneath the debris.
Four?
Kara brought up her work screen, fingers flying over the pad, accessing the records they had from port and the records from the Gilmour Agency—incomplete, as the Scout librarian in Surebleak City had admitted, but becoming more complete every day.
“Is there a record of a probe going missing in this zone?” she asked the bridge at large. “That—I think we are seeing one device, rather than a cluster of devices which lost their way.”
“Confirm one large device,” Bechimo said.
“Opening comm,” Joyita said.
“No mention of a probe lost in this zone in the records we have been given,” Win Ton said from his station. “We have been advised to look for an update shortly.”
“Shortly’s not here!” Kara snapped.
Seated, Win Ton bowed, ironically granting her point.
“Shortly’ll be here sooner’n you’re ready for it, lassie,” Clarence added, but Kara’s attention was back on her screens.
The dust cloud—and wasn’t it a very busy dust cloud, with energy levels spiking, swirling patterns outlining shifting magnetic flows, static across several frequencies, and that other signal, buried deep—was, she thought, what had prompted Joyita to open comm. But, surely, there was nothing rational in all of—
She felt a tug on her sleeve, bent absently, and brought Hevelin to her lap.
“Affinity reaction,” Kara said, her eyes still on the screens. “But there’s nothing else here! Just us and—that.”
The tendency of timonium to attract timonium was a well-known challenge in dealing with it in bulk. The dust cloud was, according to the shifting analyses on the screens, far denser than she would have assumed; the energy levels higher than mere dust would account for, even granting high concentrations of timonium…
Kara extended a hand to her pad, fingers tapping in equations.
“That isn’t just…some…timonium,” she said. “It must be nearly pure timonium. How—”
“Surebleak,” Bechimo said in what Kara privately thought of as his lecture voice, “has numerous major veins of timonium. That is what attracted the Gilmour Agency, whose intention was to mine it out. As Theo knows, I also carry certain amounts of timonium; the new Struven unit alone…”
He paused and, after a moment, Theo spoke, perhaps to explain the breach—
“There’s directionality to the energy flow, Kara. We’re concentrating.”
On the screens, energy levels spiked, static growing…light flared, and the levels fell to nothing.
Kara frowned.
“That looked like a brown dwarf that fell short of the ignition limit.”
“Too small by a trillion,” Win Ton answered, “but, yes, a definite similarity.”
“Anomaly!” Theo said sharply.
“We have apparent energetic neutrino emissions but no obvious source,” Bechimo said, as a fourth screen blossomed with energy states and flow patterns.
“These readings are not from the object we have under observation. There are several possible explanations, including an aftereffect of the Clutch ship’s drive, the remnants of a star cluster explosion, or…”
“Or a cause for a new search pattern,” Theo said, nearly toneless, as if she were voicing a comment from an inner dialogue. “We’re receiving a cluster of signals, faint, but Bechimo believes he’s heard something like them…”
Kara shivered, sensing a subtle interplay between Bechimo and Theo in the pause that followed.
“We’re not transmitting images of our little dust storm live, are we, Joyita?” Clarence asked suddenly.
“No, Clarence, we’re not transmitting to the public, or to the port. We are sending to Jeeves, in deep encryption. We have some flexibility in what we report, and when, and there’s no apparent urgency in reporting this event. Why do you ask?”
“Because we don’t want every loose-end treasure hunter with an empty hold and cantra in their eyes trying to come in here and scoop this stuff up, claiming salvage. On the other hand, if the dust somehow works as a detector…we oughta know that. Soon, I’m guessing.”
“Excellent consideration,” Joyita said. “I’ve made a note, which I am certain that the captain will take up, after we Jump.”
“Everyone to stations, strap in,” Theo said then, sounding quite herself. “That includes Hevelin.”
“Where’re we going, Captain? If it can be told.”
“We have an urgent communication from Jeeves,” Joyita said. “We are urged to move as rapidly as possible to confront the source of ghost signals. Jeeves expresses—alarm.”
“That’s urgent, alright,” muttered Clarence, watching the boards go from static to live.
“Up shields,” Theo said, “targeting going live, please. Now!”
Kara checked her straps, made certain of Hevelin, and looked again to the screens.
On the bridge, the smell of butter wafted.
“Jumping now,” said Theo.
The screens went dark.
The Bedel
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
“You dream long.” The voice was soft, for all it was male, and serious.
Droi stirred out of the thinning trance and looked up into the gentle eyes of her brother Udari.
“I dream long,” she agreed. “I dream late and I dream early. What else have I to fill my time, after Maysl is bored with hearing of her father?”
“You might teach her the fleez,” Udari said, “and keep your fingers limber.”
“She refuses the fleez,” Droi said wryly, “though I keep my pact with the cards, Brother.”
She paused, chest squeezing, for there was no need of the fleez aboard the ship. So did the old dreams tell her, and so did she try to forget when she was waking.
“What brings you, Brother?” she asked quickly. “I thought you were in the world above until the madman’s harvest was in.”
“The harvest is nearly done,” Udari said, “and I will not be missed for one day. Or two.”
He tipped his head and asked courteously.
“May I share your hearth, Sister?”
She might have told him no; she remembered a time when she would have told him no. But she was weary from dreaming, filled with dread, and feeling the absence of Rys Dragonwing…very much.
So…“Sit,” she said, brusque.
Udari settled on the rug across from her, and reached inside his vest for pipe and pouch.
“If she wishes it, I will gladly tell Maysl how her father came to the kompani and how he found his hand and leg.”
Droi felt the stir of her daughter’s interest.
“She would be happy to hear these stories from Udari the brother of Rys.”
“Then I will tell them—but later. Now, Sister, I wish to speak with you.”
Maysl, denied her story, withdrew to sulk or sleep.
Udari filled his pipe from the pouch and pulled the string with his teeth.
“Before he left us, Rys would Dream,” he said slowly. “Sometimes—no, often—the Dreams would trouble him. When that was so, we would rise and seek the hearth together, to smoke and talk.”
He reached out to pick up a bit of firestone, used it to light his pipe.
“What did he Dream,” Droi asked, “that troubled him so?”
Udari drew on the pipe, making the bowl glow, and sighed, releasing a fragrant cloud of smoke. He paused, the pipe held a little away from his mouth, his eyes contemplating something in the World Unseen, or some past hearth shared late at night with a beloved brother.
Droi waited. Neither Seeings nor memories ought to be disturbed; at last Udari sighed again and gave her a faint smile.
“Silain the luthia had given him to Dream the Dreams of past headmen,” he said, meeting her eyes.
Only those who were to become headmen Dreamed the lives of those who had walked before them. The kompani would be reduced to children, Rys the last adult, before he would stand as headman. And, yet, Silain did nothing without a reason; she had been luthia for many years and knew the kompani’s heart. It might be said that she was the kompani’s heart, as Alosha the headman was the kompani’s head.
“Why did the luthia set Rys to this study?” Droi asked Udari.
He shrugged.
“Who can know the luthia’s reasons, save herself and the wind between the stars?”
So said the Bedel, with a certain amount of pride in the inscrutable ways of the kompani’s heart. Droi folded her hands.
“Who indeed?” she said, which was the given answer.
Udari drew on his pipe, sighed out a small storm cloud of smoke.
“When Rys understood what he had been given to Dream, he went angry to the luthia and demanded to know her reasons.”
Went angry to the luthia, Droi thought. That was both like and unlike him. On the one hand, Rys was as calm as Rafin was stormy. While the blacksmith existed in a constant state of ill temper, she, Black Droi, shivered, only to wonder what might move Rys to anger.
On the other hand—how like Rys to demand an accounting from the luthia. He must be deep in Silain’s heart, son returned or wander-soul found, that she had not rendered him mute, or impotent, for such temerity.
“What,” she asked Udari, “did the luthia answer?”
“She told him that these Dreams were to prepare him for his brother-task.”
His brother-task. Droi nearly spat. His brother-task, which no true brother would have put upon him. Truly she wished for bad luck to tangle the feet of Rys’s Brother Undertree, though, for love of Rys, she stopped short of ill-wishing him in truth.
Instead, she said to Udari, “That may be so. We do not send our brothers and sisters forth unarmed.” She drew a breath. “Even those who will never return to us.”
Udari was dismayed; she saw it in his face before he leaned forward and, very gently, put the tips of his fingers against the back of her hand.
“Rys is gone from us,” he said gently, “but he is not gone beyond us.”
And that…was the truth, as the Bedel knew truth. Rys had given himself, heart and soul, before the fire, to the kompani. Whatever he had been before that rebirth, now he was Bedel, and while he might go elsewhere, he would never again be apart from them. In time, he would return in what manner he might. If he were held away against the yearning of his heart, his will overpowered, his soul beset—then would his brothers and his sisters fulfill their promise never to leave him alone among strangers.
That was the truth that Udari knew.
But Udari did not know all of the truth.
“Rys himself did not expect to survive this task his Brother Undertree set upon him,” Droi said carefully. “The luthia therefore had him Dream his Soul-Dream.”
She raised a hand, fingering one of the several silver chains around her neck. From her bodice rose a creamy rectangle of tiles, joined and bordered with silver.
Udari’s eyes widened to see it, and he bent his head, as one might to a luthia.
“It does my heart good,” he said gravely, “to see my brother’s soul so well protected.”
Tears stung her eyes, which in turn made her angry. Udari was a gentle brother: kind and, with her, only as wary as a wise man should be. She was fond of Udari in her own heart—and fond again, because Rys loved him.
Still, she did not bear the burden of Rys’s soul to forge Udari’s peace, nor to gain his approval.
She looked away, tucking the tiles back into her bodice.
“Why are you here, Udari of the Bedel?”
“Well.” Udari leaned forward and knocked the dottle out of his pipe before placing it on the edge of the hearth.
When he straightened, he looked her fully in the face, his own showing weariness and excitement. And fear.
“I am troubled in my mind, Sister, and I am troubled in my heart. I would speak of these matters to you, if you will hear me.”
Droi blinked, and made a show of scrutinizing him. Udari was a dreamer, a devout man who loved quickly, and deeply. “A man of heart,” so said the Bedel, without any suggestion that the heart was weak. Men of heart persevered, though they felt each wound and loss keenly.
“I will listen,” she said to Udari, whose smile reached all the way to his tired eyes.
“I will make tea,” he said.
* * *
“So,” Udari said, when he had poured the tea and settled once more to the rug. “I have heard that the ship is coming.”
“Eventually,” Droi said. “Pulka received an automated message, questing along the correct channels. An answer from us would bring the ship’s headman into it, and Alosha had Pulka reply. We now await the captain’s notice.”
Udari nodded.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “if it will be a good thing for our kompani—the coming of the ship.”
Udari wondered this? Droi lowered her mug and stared at him. He met her eyes and waited.
Droi cleared her throat and considered carefully.
Udari was devout; Udari was a man of heart.
Udari came to her, Black Droi, with this thing lying upon him, rather than to Silain the luthia.
Why?
Because, she reminded herself, Black Droi had been trained as a luthia—by Silain herself—and because Black Droi also loved Rys Dragonwing.
“Why would it be otherwise?” she asked. “Surely the kompani was set down here, the numbers fixed and a return agreed upon. This kompani has always meant to return to the ship. That does not change because the ship is late.”
“No.”
Udari leaned forward, tea mug held tight between his palms.
“That kompani, who had been born to the ship, they had meant to return. But this kompani—is not that one. The numbers are the same, but the individuals are not. This kompani—we form a different soul.”
He paused and sent a hard glance into the glowing hearth, then met her eyes once more.
“For myself…I do not think that I would like to be confined by the ship. I was born on this world; I like the way the snow kisses my face, as if we are old and comfortable lovers. I like the single star in the day sky, and the two moons in the night sky. I like the madman at the end of the road, and I like working among the growing things.”
He seemed to recall his tea then, lifted the mug and swallowed.
“If Pulka were this moment to receive a message from the ship naming the day and hour of its return, I would go to the luthia, and I would Dream myself into the tiles, so that I will not be lost to future kompanis. I would help my brothers and my sisters to make ready. But when it came time to board—I would not be among that kompani.”
At the fire, she had seen her brothers and sisters…dismayed by the sudden intrusion of the ship into their lives. She had seen them distressed that their right, to argue among themselves until a consensus, was denied them, by the actions of that…first kompani.
But this! And from Udari. She had thought herself alone…
She drew a breath and looked again to the gentlest of her brothers, seeing the determination in his heart.
“You would be left alone among those who are not Bedel,” she said, which was a prospect that had frightened even her.
But Udari was not frightened. Udari smiled, bright and wide.
“Would I? Rafin’s father was a man from the City Above, and Rafin was born here. What use, inside the belly of the ship, for a blacksmith or an artificer? He has more than once said to me that, should the ship at last find us—which he doubted it would do—he would not board, but rather go into the City Above and make himself a place there.”
Well for Rafin, thought Droi, wild and fierce as he was. He would make a place with his fists at first, then with his skill, and at last with his heart, as men of action always did.
“Memit,” Udari continued. “Memit used to speak of a garden out under the sun, in the free air. We know that the ship has gardens, and she might have been pleased enough with them—but now she has found the extent of what Mad Yulie tends. I spoke with her before I left last night, and she said to me that she was content there for life, and if the ship had called, she was of no mind to answer.”
