The Ship Who Won ккп-5 Read online

  «As for the Blatisants, there's no reason not to recommend further investigation to award them ISS status, since it's clear they are sentient and have an ongoing civilization, however primitive,» Keff said. «And that's what I'm going to tell the Central Committee in my report. Iricon III's got to go on the list.»

  «I wish I could be a mouse in the wall,» Simeon said, chuckling with mischievous glee, «when an evaluation team has to talk with your Beasts. The whole party's going to sound like a raft of untuned engines. I know CenCom's going to be happy to hear about another race of sentients.»

  «I know,» Keff said, a little sadly, «but it's not the race, you know.» To Keff and Carialle, the designation meant that most elusive of holy grails, an alien race culturally and technologically advanced enough to meet humanity on its own terms, having independently achieved computer science and space travel.

  «If anyone's going to find the race, it's likely to be you two,» Simeon said with open sincerity.

  Carialle closed the last kilometers to the docking bay and shut off her engines as the magnetic grapples pulled her close, and the vacuum seal snugged around the airlock.

  «Home again,» she sighed.

  The lights on the board started flashing as Simeon sent a burst requesting decontamination for the CK-963. Keff pushed back from the monitor panels and went back to his cabin to make certain everything personal was locked down before the decontam crew came on board.

  «We're empty on everything, Simeon,» Carialle said. «Protein vats are at the low ebb, my nutrients are redlining, fuel cells down. Fill 'er up.»

  «We're a bit short on some supplies at the moment,» Simeon said, «but I'll give you what I can.» There was a brief pause, and his voice returned. «I've checked for mail. Keff has two parcels. The manifests are for circuits, and for a 'Rotoflex.' What's that?»

  «Hah!» said Keff, pleased. «Exercise equipment. A Rotoflex helps build chest and back muscles without strain on the intercostals.» He flattened his hands over his ribs and breathed deeply to demonstrate.

  «All we need is more clang-and-bump deadware on my deck,» Carialle said with the noise that served her for a sigh.

  «Where's your shipment, Carialle?» Keff asked innocently. «I thought you were sending for a body from Moto-Prosthetics.»

  «Well, you thought wrong,» Carialle said, exasperated that he was bringing up their old argument. «I'm happy in my skin, thank you.»

  «You'd love being mobile, lady fair,» Keff said. «All the things you miss staying in one place! You can't imagine. Tell her, Simeon.»

  «She travels more than I do. Sir Galahad. Forget it.»

  «Anyone else have messages for us?» Carialle asked.

  «Not that I have on record, but I'll put out a query to show you're in dock.»

  Keff picked his sodden tunic off the console and stood up.

  «I'd better go and let the medicals have their poke at me,» he said. «Will you take care of the rest of the computer debriefing, my lady Cari, or do you want me to stay and make sure they don't poke in anywhere you don't want them?»

  «Nay, good sir knight,» Carialle responded, still playing the game. «You have coursed long and far, and deserve reward.»

  «The only rewards I want,» Keff said wistfully, «are a beer that hasn't been frozen for a year, and a little companionship—not that you aren't the perfect companion, lady fair"—he kissed his hand to the titanium column—"but as the prophet said, let there be spaces in your togetherness. If you'll excuse me?»

  «Well, don't space yourself too far,» Carialle said. Keff grinned. Carialle followed him on her internal cameras to his cabin, where, in deference to those spaces he mentioned, she stopped. She heard the sonic-shower turn on and off, and the hiss of his closet door. He came out of the cabin pulling on a new, dry tunic, his curly hair tousled.

  «Ta-ta,» Keff said. «I go to confess all and slay a beer or two.»

  Before the airlock sealed, Carialle had opened up her public memory banks to Simeon, transferring full copies of their datafiles on the Iricon mission. Xeno were on line in seconds, asking her for in-depth, eyewitness commentary on their exploration. Keff, in Medical, was probably answering some of the same questions. Xeno liked subjective accounts as well as mechanical recordings.

  At the same time Carialle carried on her conversation with Simeon, she oversaw the decontam crew and loading staff, and relaxed a little herself after what had been an arduous journey. A few days here, and she'd feel ready to go out and knit the galactic spiral into a sweater.

  ***

  Keff's medical examination, under the capable stethoscope of Dr. Chaundra, took less than fifteen minutes, but the interview with Xeno went on for hours. By the time he had recited from memory everything he thought or observed about the Beasts Blatisant he was wrung out and dry.

  «You know, Keff,» Darvi, the xenologist, said, shutting down his clipboard terminal on the Beast Blatisant file, «if I didn't know you personally, I'd have to think you were a little nuts, giving alien races silly names like that. Beasts Blatisant. Sea Nymphs. Losels—that was the last one I remember.»

  «Don't you ever play Myths and Legends, Darvi?» Keff asked, eyes innocent.

  «Not in years. It's a kid game, isn't it?»

  «No! Nothing wrong with my mind, nyuk-nyuk,» Keff said, rubbing knuckles on his own pate and pulling a face. The xenologist looked worried for a moment, then relaxed as he realized Keff was teasing him. «Seriously, its self-defense against boredom. After fourteen years of this job, one gets fardling tired of referring to a species as 'the indigenous race' or 'the inhabitants of Zoocon I.' I'm not an AI drone, and neither is Carialle.»

  «Well, the names are still silly.»

  «Humankind is a silly race,» Keff said lightly. «I'm just indulging in innocent fun.»

  He didn't want to get into what he and Carialle considered the serious aspects of the game, the points of honor, the satisfaction of laying successes at the feet of his lady fair. It wasn't as if he and Carialle couldn't tell the difference between play and reality. The game had permeated their life and given it shape and texture, becoming more than a game, meaning more. He'd never tell this space-dry plodder about the time five years back that he actually stood vigil throughout a long, lonely night lit by a single candle to earn his knighthood. I guess you just had to be there, he thought. «If that's all?» he asked, standing up quickly.

  Darvi waved a stylus at him, already engrossed in the files. Keff escaped before the man thought of something else to ask and hurried down the curving hall to the nearest lift.

  Keff had learned about Myths and Legends in primary school. A gang of his friends used to get together once a week (more often when they dared and homework permitted) to play after class. Keff liked being able to live out some of his heroic fantasies and, briefly, be a knight battling evil and bringing good to all the world. As he grew up and learned that the galaxy was a billion times larger than his one small colony planet, the compulsion to do good grew, as did his private determination that he could make a difference, no matter how minute. He managed not to divulge this compulsion during his psychiatric interviews on his admission to Brawn Training and kept his altruism private. Nonetheless, as a knight of old, Keff performed his assigned tasks with energy and devotion, vowing that no ill or evil would ever be done by him. In a quiet way, he applied the rules of the game to his own life.

  As it happened, Carialle also loved M&L, but more for the strategy and research that went into formulating the quests than the adventuring. After they were paired, they had simply fallen into playing the game to while away the long days and months between stars. He could put no finger on a particular moment when they began to make it a lifestyle: Keff the eternal knight errant and Carialle his lady fair. To Keff this was the natural extension of an adolescent interest that had matured along with him.

  As soon as he'd heard that the CX-963 was in need of a brawn, his romantic nature required him to apply for the positio
n as Carialle's brawn. He'd heard—who hadn't?—about the devastating space storm and collision that had cost Fanine Takajima-Morrow's life and almost took Carialle's sanity.

  She'd had to undergo a long recovery period when the Mutant Minorities (MM) and Society for the Preservation of the Rights of Intelligent Minorities (SPRIM) boffins wondered if she'd ever be willing to go into space again. They rejoiced when she announced that not only was she ready to fly, but ready to interview brawns as well. Keff had wanted that assignment badly. Reading her file had given him an intense need to protect Carialle. A ridiculous notion, when he ruefully considered that she had the resources of a brainship at her synapse ends, but her vulnerability had been demonstrated during that storm. The protective aspect of his nature vibrated at the challenge to keep her from any further harm.

  Though she seldom talked about it, he suspected she still had nightmares about her ordeal—in those random hours when a brain might drop into dreamtime. She also proved to be the best of partners and companions. He liked her, her interests, her hobbies, didn't mind her faults or her tendency to be right more often than he was. She taught him patience. He taught her to swear in ninety languages as a creative means of dispelling tension. They bolstered one another. The trust between them was as deep as space and felt as ancient and as new at the same time. The fourteen years of their partnership had flown by, literally and figuratively. Within Keff's system of values, to be paired with a brainship was the greatest honor a mere human could be accorded, and he knew it.

  The lift slowed to a creaky halt and the doors opened. Keff had been on SSS-900 often enough to turn to port as he hit the corridor, in the direction of the spacer bar he liked to patronize while on station.

  Word had gotten around that he was back, probably the helpful Simeon's doing. A dark brown stout already separating from its creamy crown was waiting for him on the polished steel bar. It was the first thing on which he focused.

  «Ah!» he cried, moving toward the beer with both hands out. «Come to Keff.»

  A hand reached into his field of vision and smartly slapped his wrist before he could touch the mug handle. Keff tilted a reproachful eye upward.

  «How's your credit?» the bartender asked, then tipped him a wicked wink. She was a woman of his own age with nut-brown hair cut close to her head and the milk-fair skin of the lifelong spacer of European descent. «Just kidding. Drink up, Keff. This ones on the house. It's good to see you.»

  «Blessings on you and on this establishment, Mariad, and on your brewers, wherever they are,» Keff said, and put his nose into the foam and slowly tipped his head back and the glass up. The mug was empty when he set it down. «Ahhhh. Same again, please.»

  Cheers and applause erupted from the tables and Keff waved in acknowledgment that his feat had been witnessed. A couple of people gave him thumbs up before returning to their conversations and dart games.

  «You can always tell a light-year spacer by the way he refuels in port,» said one man, coming forward to clasp Keff's hand. His thin, melancholy face was contorted into an odd smile.

  Keff stood up and slapped him on the back. «Baran Larrimer! I didn't know you and Shelby were within a million light years of here.»

  An old friend, Larrimer was half of a brain/brawn team assigned to the Central Worlds defense fleet. Keff suddenly remembered Simeon's briefing about naval support. Larrimer must have known exactly what Keff had been told. The older brawn gave him a tired grimace and nodded at the questioning expression on his face.

  «Got to keep our eyes open,» he said simply.

  «And you are not keeping yours open,» said a voice. A tiny arm slipped around Keff's waist and squeezed. He glanced down into a small, heart-shaped face. «Good to see you, Keff.»

  «Susa Gren!» Keff lifted the young woman clean off the ground in a sweeping hug and set her down for a huge kiss, which she returned with interest. «So you and Marliban are here, too?»

  «Courier duty for a trading contingent,» Susa said in a low voice, her dark eyes crinkling wryly at the corners. She tilted her head toward a group of hooded aliens sitting isolated around a table in the corner. «Hoping to sell Simeon a load of protector/detectors. They plain forgot that Marls a brain and could hear every word. The things they said in front of him! Which he quite rightly passed straight on to Simeon, so, dear me, didn't they have a hard time bargaining their wares. I'd half a mind to tell CenCom that those idiots can find their own way home if they won't show a brainship more respect. But,» she sighed, «it's paying work.»

  Marl had only been in service for two—no, it was three years now—and was still too far down in debt to Central Worlds for his shell and education to refuse assignments, especially ones that paid as well as first-class courier work. Susa owed megacredits, too. She had made herself responsible for the debts of her parents, who had borrowed heavily to make an independent go of it on a mining world, and had failed. Fortunately not fatally, but the disaster had left them with only a subsistence allowance. Keff liked the spunky young woman, admired her drive and wit, her springy step and dainty, attractive figure. The two of them had always had an affinity which Carialle had duly noted, commenting a trifle bluntly that the ideal playmate for a brawn was another brawn. Few others could understand the dedication a brawn had for his brainship nor match the lifelong relationship.

  «Susa,» he said suddenly. «Do you have some time? Can you sit and talk for a while?»

  Her eyes twinkled as if she had read his mind. «I've nothing to do and nowhere to go. Marl and I have liberty until those drones want to go home. Buy me a drink?»

  Larrimer stood up, tactfully ignoring the increasing aura of intimacy between the other two brawns. He slapped his credit chit down on the bar and beckoned to Mariad.

  «Come by if you have a moment, Keff,» he said. «Shelby would be glad to see you.»

  «I will,» Keff said, absently swatting a palm toward Larrimer's hand, which caught his in a firm clasp. «Safe going.»

  He and Susa sat down together in a booth. Mariad delivered a pair of Guinnesses and, with a motherly cluck, sashayed away.

  «You're looking well,» Susa said, scanning his face with a more than friendly concern. «You have a tan!»

  «I got it on our last planetfall,» Keff said. «Hasn't had time to fade yet.»

  «Well, I think you look good with a little color in your face,» she declared. Her mouth crooked into a one-sided grin. «How far down does it go?»

  Keff waggled his eyebrows at her. «Maybe in awhile I'll let you see.»

  ***

  «Any of those deep scratches dangerous?» Carialle asked, swiveling an optical pickup out on a stalk to oversee the techs checking her outsides. The ship lay horizontally to the «dry dock» pier, giving the technicians the maximum expanse of hull to examine.

  «Most of 'em are no problem. I'm putting setpatch in the one nearest your fuel lines,» the coveralled man said, spreading a gray goo over the place. It hardened slowly, acquiring a silver sheen that blended with the rest of the hull plates. «Don't think it'll split in temperature extremes, ma'am, but its thinner there, of course. This'll protect you more.

  «Many thanks,» Carialle said. When the patching compound dried, she tested her new skin for resonance and found its density matched well. In no time she'd forget she had a wrinkle under the dressing. Her audit program also found that the fee for materials was comfortingly low, compared to having the plate removed and hammered, or replaced entirely.

  Overhead, a spider-armed crane swung its burden over her bow, dropping snakelike hoses toward her open cargo hull. The crates of xeno material had already been taken away in a specially sealed container. A suited and hooded worker had already cleaned the nooks and niches, making sure no stray native spores had hooked a ride to the Central Worlds. The cranes operator directed the various flexible tubes to the appropriate valves. Fuel was first, and Carialle flipped open her fuel toggle as the stout hose reached it. The narrow tube which fed her protein vats had
a numbered filter at its spigot end. Carialle recorded that number in her files in case there were any impurities in the final product. Thankfully, the conduit that fed the carbo-protein sludge to Keff's food synthesizer was opaque. The peristaltic pulse of the thick stuff always made Cari think of quicksand, of sand-colored octopi creeping along an ocean floor, of week-old oatmeal. Her attention diverted momentarily to the dock, where a front-end loader was rolling toward her with a couple of containers, one large and one small, with bar-code tags addressed to Keff. She signaled her okay to the driver to load them in her cargo bay.

  Another tech, a short, stout woman wearing thick-soled magnetic boots, approached her airlock and held up a small item. «This is for you from the station-master, Carialle. Permission to come aboard?»

  Carialle focused on the datahedron in her fingers and felt a twitch of curiosity.

  «Permission granted,» she said. The tech clanked her way into the airlock and turned sideways to match the up/down orientation of Carialle's decks, then marched carefully toward the main cabin. «Did he say what it was?»

  «No, ma'am. It's a surprise.»

  ***

  «Oh, Simeon!» Carialle exclaimed over the stationmaster's private channel. «Cats! Thank you!» She scanned the contents of the hedron back and forth. «Almost a realtime week of video footage. Wherever did you get it?»

  «From a biologist who breeds domestic felines. He was out here two months ago. The hedron contains compressed videos of his cats and kittens, and he threw in some videos of wild felines he took on a couple of the colony worlds. Thought you'd like it.»

  «Simeon, it's wonderful. What can I swap you for it?»

  The station-masters voice was sheepish. «You don't need to swap, Cari, but if you happened to have a spare painting? And I'm quite willing to sweeten the swap.»