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  “Send him, and his mate too,” she said, her smile widening into a grin. “There’s a new cookie in it for your if they remember to tell me who sent ’em.”

  “There’s a temptation,” he said, only half joking. “Name’s Clarence, which she ain’t likely to forget.”

  “Not me, neither, then. You come on back, yourself.”

  “Will do,” he promised, and shoved off, moving slowly across the court, relishing the gabble of voices, the variation of shapes, color and sizes of the people he passed. Not many people, really—maybe six, eight dozen here during what might be this hub’s off-hour—and at that a cornucopia for the eyes, as his youngest auntie usta say, though she was most usually talking about various of the male neighbors.

  There ahead of him, a sign in discreet black-on-white: Keenstart Klub. And just below, in cheery red, Pilots Guild Certified.

  He stared at that for a good, long minute, he did, as it slowly came to him that having a Guild presence right on-station had other benefits, too. It could be that what was ailing him was the wrong kind of not-alone. A little recreation might not, he thought, go amiss.

  Guild Certified didn’t guarantee safety, because nothing in this life did that. But it did guarantee certain safeguards. He stepped across to the door, and inside, angling for a match board. He didn’t have but a few, dwindling moments to do this, if he was prepared to jog back to the dock, which he found he was.

  He fingered the keys, entering his license number, certain quick parameters, including a meet here at the Klub, and the hour by which he expected to return.

  That done and sent, he turned right quick on his heel, and was moving for the door, thinking he was going to have to run or else Bechimo’d be worryin’ himself into a bellyache—

  Only to find his way blocked, and a voice behind saying strongly:

  “Well, well. If it ain’t Clarence O’Berin.”

  — • —

  Theo.

  If I’ve converted the transmission time correctly, I will have departed Delgado for my sabbatical before this message is delivered to you. It feels odd to be going out in the field at this stage of my career. Ella tells me that I ought to stay at my ease in the Wall and command such sources as I wish to interview into my presence, but I think this scheme of mine will serve better. Do you know, I don’t think I’ve traveled any distance from Delgado since you and I traveled with the certification committee? Everything changed for you during that journey, didn’t it? May I be as fortunate in this one.

  Since I’ll be traveling, I have a dropbox—the code is at the bottom of this letter. This will seem quite usual to you, of course.

  Daughter, I hope that you’re as happy in your work as I have been in mine. Back when I was an instructor, the well-wish we gave to each other was, “May you win tenure and a quiet room in which to study.”

  Not quite, “Good lift and safe landing,” is it?

  I love you, Theo.

  Kamele

  There followed the box code—a standard TravelMail account.

  Theo blinked, and reread the letter.

  And suddenly thought of Father as she had last seen him, standing beneath the branches of Korval’s enormous Tree. The juxtaposition of a person who took such things as a Tree that was also a biochemist, whose dead . . . lifemate lived inside his head and occasionally “borrowed” his body for such matters as speaking with a pilot she termed her “foster daughter”—what had such a person to do with Kamele Waitley of Delgado, amateur singer, and professor in the hardly exciting specialty of the history of education?

  Father had said he’d gone to the University of Delgado to . . . Balance his lifemate’s murder. And who but Father could think that the seeds planted by teaching cultural genetics—even at a catalyst school—would grow tall enough to Balance a life?

  And then Kamele, who must be so very different from Aelliana Caylon . . .

  “Is there something wrong, Pilot Theo?”

  She started, looking up—into Screen Six and Joyita’s face, looking rested, like he’d just come to the board from his sleep shift.

  “Nothing wrong,” she said slowly. “My mother’s on sabbatical; she sent me her box code.”

  . . . and continuing the question—what had she to do anymore with normal, rational, safe people, and the quiet contemplative life of the mind? Theo Waitley, who sat First Board to a self-aware ship older than the University? Who had with her own hands killed a ship, and the pilot who flew her? Theo Waitley, nexus of violence?

  “You have concern for your mother’s safety?” Joyita asked.

  Theo started.

  “I do,” she said, realizing that it was so. “She—she doesn’t mention that she’s traveling with a party, and—she’s not a pilot, or much accustomed to . . .” she hesitated. To what? To looking out for herself? Kamele was an adult. She was a smart, capable woman. In her own context. Outside of her context . . .

  “We went outworld when I was a kid, and . . . she had some trouble believing that—out here in the wide galaxy, you know—people might try to rob her, or hurt her.”

  She shook herself, and gave Joyita a grin.

  “I think I might have a case of what Clarence calls the megrims,” she said. “Kamele’s specialty is the history of education. She’s probably just traveling to interview other experts and consult some original sources. Hard to imagine her getting into too much trouble with that.”

  In the screen, Joyita frowned and rubbed his nose with the forefinger of the hand with the three rings on it. He seemed about to speak, when Bechimo did, instead.

  “Less Pilot O’Berin returns.”

  — • —

  He had perhaps, Uncle acknowledged, made an error.

  Even a very great error.

  It was not to be thought that he had never before erred; one did not live as long or as actively as he had thus far lived, without producing error.

  Even great error.

  It was, however, a benefit of that same long life, that most errors could, very often and simply, be ignored until time rendered them meaningless.

  Great errors . . . and especially very great errors . . . those could not so easily be ignored, for they had the potential of significantly altering the future, even unto the destruction of a lifetime counted in tens of hundreds of Standard Years.

  Uncle sighed and leaned back in his chair, allowing his eyes to rest on the yellow blooms dangling from the basket hung from the ceiling over his desk. Exquisite. Yes.

  He had known it was risky to employ Theo Waitley as a courier pilot, but the risk had seemed acceptable, in light of the potential gain.

  Deliberately, he had sent her into harm’s way, dicing with her life in order to fully waken her drowsing potential. That one of Korval’s bloodline held the first of Bechimo’s precious piloting keys had . . . pleased him. Who better, in all the universe, to take up the care of such a ship?

  Yet, while he was risking Theo Waitley’s life, and Bechimo’s liberty, he had failed to give proper weight to the fact that by doing so he placed certain valued pieces and players of his own . . . into peril.

  And so the word just in, from Randoling, who had dropped to Gondola with a certain very particular something bound for the inventory of Mildred Bilinoda, trader in exotic items.

  Randoling reported that the shop when she entered had been . . . arranged differently than it had during her eight previous visits.

  More disturbingly, she reported that the person tending shop was not Mildred Bilinoda, but a man professing to be her sister-son. This unlikely person had not only denied Smalltrader Bilinoda to her, but had been forceful in his statements that he was perfectly able to help her, with anything. His mother-sister, he said, reposed complete confidence in him.

  Randoling was not only canny, she was extremely motivated for her own survival. Therefore, she speedily extricated herself, and returned to her ship, deeming it unwise to abandon it with such cargo in the hold.

  Feeling hersel
f to be compromised, Randoling had retired from the field of play. She was now rusticating in one of the safeplaces, from which sanctuary she sent her message, cunningly routed and rerouted before it even came into the peripheral network.

  Uncle frowned at the blameless flowers, and looked down to the message screen, still showing that same message.

  Randoling had not survived as long as she had because she was an hysteric.

  And Mildred Bilinoda had no nephews.

  Nor sisters, either.

  FOURTEEN

  Tradedesk

  “Well, there’s nothing to want at the GrabOne, since I know you’re not such a green ’un as you don’t have fresh and plentiful rations in your jacket. Taverna Classica, like it styles itself, I intend to give wide berth. Quiet enough when I was in, but I’d be very surprised to hear other than it gets ugly there, and often.”

  “Less Pilot O’Berin has made an excellent analysis, Pilot,” Bechimo said. Screen Six was starting to fill with what looked to be log reports. “Taverna Classica has the worst statistical record of any extant public-service location on Tradedesk, across more than a dozen categories of infringement. GrabOne has had a series of incidents as well. Further, there is an ongoing level of violence and fraud at that corridor corner unmatched anywhere else on the station. Were I permitted, I would declare that area off limits. It disturbs me that the pilots are unlikely to stay aboard, or to take another route to the less risky areas.”

  “To take another route, we’d have to go outside and walk across the skin,” Theo pointed out.

  “Which is a lot less safe, in my opinion and experience, than walking wary and being ready to take appropriate action,” Clarence added.

  “Now,” he said, continuing his narrative before Bechimo could field another argument for safety and clean living, “past all the refraff, there’s a real nice hub, bright lit and with a number o’people about. There’s The Nook, which is fresh-made foods, and Theo, mind! If you stop in there, you tell the missus I sent you, by name. Got a cookie riding on that.”

  Theo laughed. “A cookie!”

  “New cookie!” Clarence asserted, and gave her a mock-grim stare. “You don’t forget, now, hear it? I take my cookies serious.

  “Cross the court from The Nook’s a Keenstart, all Guild cert and nice as you please. I did stop there, thinking to file a request for later, but my luck was in. There was a nice couple real happy to see me—Grafton and Rutland, as just inspected us. We filed up in the system, and made some arrangements. Looks like I’ll be out for the overnight, ’less the ship needs me.”

  He’d said it all so smooth and straight that it took her a heartbeat to translate it, and when she did it was with a twinge of what might be concern, or might be jealousy, which was just silly, both of them.

  Clarence was a grown-up; he’d taken his precautions, and he had leave coming. True, she’d be crew on-deck while he was having his party, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t slept alone aboard Primadonna when Rig’d found friends on port. Nothing to worry about there. As for being jealous . . . she had leave, too, and a reconnoiter walk coming up right now. She could have a date, too, if she wanted one.

  “Ship’s covered,” she told him, seeing by his posture that he was waiting for her to say so. “I’ll take my walk now. Hope you haven’t used up all the luck.”

  “Not much chance o’that,” said Clarence.

  — • —

  Miri woke alone.

  Again.

  She took a breath and concentrated on that certain place inside her head, where she could see, or sense, her lifemate’s soul, looking for where he’d gone, tonight.

  Sometimes, he went up to the nursery and sat with Lizzie—that was all, just sat, a shadow among shadows, so silent that he waked not their daughter, nor Anthora’s twins . . . and especially not their sharp-eared nurse, Mrs. pel’Esla.

  Other times, he went to the inner garden and sat with the Tree, though her sense of him then was more than simple sitting. It was as if he were . . . telling a story, or prepping for a test—intense, intricate, concentrating. She couldn’t see—or hear—what he was thinking, but the density of his thought—that came through.

  Exhausting, that was.

  Scary too.

  Tonight, though . . . Tonight, it wasn’t Lizzie or the Tree.

  Tonight, he was at the omnichora; music came through clear, most times, like it passed whole and complete down the threads that bound them. Mostly, that pleased her.

  Not tonight.

  In fact, she thought, taking a protesting breath against the hard knot in her chest, she wouldn’t be the least surprised if it had been the music that had snapped her out of sleep.

  Angry, frightened, grief-struck music, laced with horror like cheap kynak in ’toot. Her throat burned, and her heart struck an off beat, painful inside her tight chest.

  It was a wonder, she thought, that he didn’t rouse the house, the racket he was making.

  But everybody else was asleep. And she . . .

  Every other night she had woken alone, she had lain here in bed, thinking that the man deserved time alone. Which he did.

  But that wasn’t the reason she’d left him alone.

  She hadn’t wanted to face the anger, knowing it was deserved; that the Code saying that lifemates shared one will and one heart didn’t change the fact that she’d sent his parents out into clear and active danger.

  And they hadn’t come back.

  Miri gasped; her chest suddenly on fire.

  Right.

  She pitched the quilts back and slid out of bed, finding her robe and her slippers in the dark.

  Time to face the music.

  — • —

  The tube annoyed Theo, reminding her of the last time she’d been in a tube—to snatch Win Ton to safety, scared at how light he was in her arms, and—

  But that tube had been well-lit and well-maintained, which is what she had come to expect of Uncle’s equipment. Old, it might well be. Shabby? Never.

  The gangway under her feet was worn, metal showing through the grippy tread in spots. The seal, though—that was solid and apparently dependable. She supposed that once Bechimo had a record here, and wasn’t just some new-in ship carrying dingy transit pods, and listing no preset business, they’d get better. Certainly Hugglelans ships had gotten better, every time.

  That Tree-and-Dragon hadn’t gotten them better . . . Theo frowned, the slidekey poised over the lock. I really hope, she thought, sliding the key with perhaps more force than was necessary, that there isn’t going to be politics here.

  Once outside the tube, the corridor itself was lit well enough, and if the gravity was more than a trace light, that was to be expected out here. Clarence’s directions were good; it turned out that the “corner” the Taverna occupied had multiple gravplates, and gravity on the long-side was higher. There was vague speech-noise emanating from the place, and neither the handprint smeared door nor the scruffy, scratched welcome logo painted in front of it looked to have been cleaned within the Standard.

  There came the sound of a door slide working behind her, and the sudden change in volume from distant talk to a scattering of off-pattern voices and the swish-smack of hardboots on decking.

  “Well, lookit the smoothie!”

  It was impossible for her not to look; she slowed and her glance swiveled, for all that the words were stretched by the local accents, and maybe by a drink or two as well.

  “Sure is!”

  There were two men stopped just outside the door—they’d seen her move through the gravity intersection and were watching her as if she was the height of interest, which might also have spoken to the clientele in the Taverna . . .

  “Hey, she’s up from the new ship—the one that’s in our spot!”

  She turned away, having cataloged the type, down to the wearing of planetside boots and show-off long-socks with ship shorts and no-name crew jackets.

  One of them was a pilot, or pilot g
rade; the other had sloppy eyes and no grace—he’d been the second speaker.

  “No doubt, no doubt,” said the proto-pilot, then called out, “Ship-girl, hold up!”

  Ship-girl? It echoed down the corridor, and the volume changed within the Taverna.

  Theo turned and the first speaker might have caught the error of his ways.

  “Pilot? Or’s that your dad’s jacket?”

  “Hey look,” the second one put in, “we got party time right here. Come in, tell us ’bout your ship, let us know who to talk jobs to, we can show you lottsa fun, two or one.”

  The second man was older, taller, bigger, and dumber, Theo cataloged quickly. She could lose sight of him in a second and the universe would be a better place. He, on the other hand, seemed to find the view of her shirt front riveting.

  She looked to the possible pilot, yanked the hem of her open jacket, and looked him in the eye. To his credit, he didn’t flinch, and his posture went to alert as she did a quick hand motion signifying sitting pilot.

  “Gentles,” she said, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

  The second, older guy stepped closer, apparently having missed her sign.

  “We’re needing crew spots, miss, and we thought that was our ship coming in. If you’re not it, that’s how the universe flies, but if you got the time we’d like to talk at you and see what the ship can use and if you got time off and all . . .”

  The other one was watching not her chest, but her hands and face; he tugged on his friend’s sleeve to hold him back.

  “She’s a pilot, Rickrix. We oughta apologize for bothering her and ask if she’ll take our cards to the Exec there on . . .” He looked at Theo, eyes wide. “Beckima, was it, Pilot?”

  “Bechimo,” she corrected promptly. “Thank you.”

  “’Kima, Chimo. Ship! All’s we want to do is talk!”

  Rickrix had apparently had enough anesthetics to dazzle himself with his wit and insight.

  “What’s with it, Tut? Girl’s wearing a jacket older ’n her and you think it belongs? Bet just cold out here for her and she barrud it and . . .”