Ghost Ship (3 page)

“I’m ready,” she said.

* * *

The ’bot’s wheels were astonishingly quiet; in fact, Theo noticed, the whole thing was considerably better constructed than its unsophisticated chassis would suggest. There was no rattling or clanking, like you might get out of a cargo ’bot, nor did it appear too large for its surroundings.

“Were you built to work here?” she asked. “Inside the house, I mean.”

You didn’t talk to a cargo ’bot, except to give simple orders, but a deeply programmed entity like the Concierge, back on Delgado, could hold up its end of a complicated conversation so well you’d think you were talking with a real person.

“I was built by Master Val Con and Master Shan to serve as the butler at Trealla Fantrol,” Jeeves said. “As Trealla Fantrol will not be making the transfer, I have been reassigned to Jelaza Kazone.”

The music was louder now. Jeeves paused and gestured with one of its arms, showing Theo an open doorway.

“Please enter,” it said.

She stepped into a library, but a library improbably wrapped and ready for transport. The shelves were sealed with cargo film; the furniture anchored to temp-clamps adhered to the wooden floor, the rug rolled and secured to the wall beneath the open windows at the bottom of the room.

Nearer at hand was a pleasant grouping of three chairs around a low table supporting three glasses and a stoppered blue bottle, beaded with condensation. To the right of that grouping her . . . brother Val Con stood at a tied-down desk, playing a portable omnichora.

The tantalizingly familiar music peaked, paused, and ended with a glissade of notes like a warm spring rain. Val Con stood for a moment, fingers just a whisker above the keys, head bent as if he was listening to the echo of the music. He turned, smooth and easy, coming toward her with one hand extended, fingers flashing the pilot’s sign for
welcome
.

“Thank you for your patience,” he murmured. “I trust you put your time to good use.”

Theo considered him, teased again by the sense of his looking like someone—she would have said that of course he looked like Father—except he didn’t, precisely. Father’s hair was dark brown sharpened by grey, his eyes were black, and his face—Theo had once heard Kamele say that Father’s face was
interesting
.

Val Con, on the other hand, was . . .
pretty
, with his vivid green eyes, and his smooth, high-cheeked face. Where Father kept his hair cut neat to the point of severity, Val Con’s was positively shaggy, and had a tendency to tumble into his eyes.

On Delgado, Miri would’ve had to have been tenured
and
hold a named chair to have any hope of keeping so comely and biddable a man. Theo appreciated manners herself, but he didn’t seem to have much in the way of
spark
.

He raised a slim hand on which a heavy ring glittered, and stroked his hair off his forehead. Theo started, remembering that she had been asked a question—sort of.

“I had a nap,” she said, “with the grey cat. I’ve been flying hard, and the chance to rest was welcome.”

She hesitated before adding, “Thank you,” then quickly nodded at the ’chora. “That was nice, what you played. My mother—Kamele—is a singer.”

Val Con smiled faintly. “My foster-mother was a musician by avocation,” he said in his soft voice; “it was she who taught me to play. My mother’s passion is mathematics.” He moved a hand, showing her the grouped chairs.

“Please, sit and be comfortable. Miri is delayed for a few moments. When she arrives, Korval will hear you. In anticipation of that, I wonder if I may ask you a question.”

“All right,” Theo said, eying the arrangement: one chair with its back to the door; one facing the bookshelves; the third with the shelves behind it. She looked to Val Con.

“I don’t want to offend,” she said carefully. “Is there an . . . intent . . . in the grouping that I might not understand?”

He smiled.

“In fact, there is not. With only three present, it is not possible to divide the delm, and no necessity for either of us to be at the right or left hand of the other. Please, sit where you will.”

Sitting with her back to the door would show that she felt absolutely safe in his house, and might gain her some points. Theo thought about it, but the truth was that she
didn’t
feel absolutely safe—and she had a feeling that Val Con might’ve inherited Father’s sharp eye for a lie. She moved to the chair that backed on the larger room. It was a compromise position: she could see both the door and the window, but was still slightly exposed to the rear. In case there was, oh, a secret panel in the room’s opposite wall, or an assassin hiding under the omnichora.

Val Con bowed slightly as she settled. He took the chair facing the windows for himself, leaving the most protected spot for Miri.

“Now, sister,” he said, briskly, “it is your turn to be gentle, should I inadvertently offend. Yes?”

She nodded, giving him her full attention.

“It is well,” he said. “I learn from our father that you were properly enculturated according to the customs of Delgado.”

Theo eyed him. “Father didn’t teach me Liaden custom, if that’s what you’re getting at. I did belong to the Culture Club at Anlingdin, and I’ve studied on my own since—since leaving school.”

“Ah. I must ask, then, if you are proficient in
melant’i
.”

Melant’i
was a kind of social scorecard based on who you were when. It was like relational math, only with people.

Theo shook her head.

“Not proficient,” she admitted. “What I know of the theory is that—” She chewed her lip. “If I promised you something as a pilot, I wouldn’t necessarily be responsible for honoring that promise if you called it in while I was being something other than a pilot—say, being Father’s daughter.”

Val Con’s left eyebrow twitched upward, which was all too familiar.

“I’ve got it completely wrong?” She’d been pretty sure that couldn’t be how it worked. A social system predicated on which bit of a person you were talking to
this time
would be chaos.

He shook his head. “In some measure, you have it precisely. Allow me, however, to agree that you are not proficient. Since speaking with the delm will involve what Miri terms ‘mental somersaults,’ I propose that you allow me to sort such
melant’i
as will come into play.” He gave her an earnest look. “I am accustomed to it, you see, and my interest as your brother is that you prosper.”

Theo thought about that.

“You’re going to stop being my—my brother when Miri gets here, and Delm Korval is in the room?”

“In essence, but you needn’t care about it, if it will distract you from a clear recital of your case. I will also mention that time is short; our transport will engage in just under six hours, local, by which time you ought certainly to be away.”

On the one hand, it
would
be easier to just tell her story, which was complex enough without having to pay attention to custom she didn’t fully understand, too. On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly advertant to let a man she’d only just met mind both sides of the negotiation, even if he was her . . . brother.

“And, you know,” Val Con said, “our father would strongly disapprove of any attempt I might make to cheat you.”

Well,
that
was so, Theo admitted. Father was a stickler; he’d expect them to deal—
in Balance
, as he’d say.

“All right,” she said, and smiled to show she appreciated his efforts on her behalf. “Thanks.”

She looked around the room, again noting the books bound tight into their shelves, and the furniture secured to the floor. Ready for transport, yes, but—

“What
kind
of transport?”

“The Clutch ship—it will have scanned as an asteroid in stable orbit when you came in. The Council of Clans named the day and the hour by which we were to depart Liad; anything we left behind to be forfeit to the Council. The delm wished to leave nothing to the Council, and my brother Edger, whom you met, was instrumental in negotiating with the Clutch Elders for the loan of a ship large enough to transport the Tree and this house.”

It was said so reasonably that it took a heartbeat for the sense of the words to hit Theo.

The Clutch asteroid ship in orbit was going to pick up the entire house, Jelaza Kazone, with the enormous tree growing out of the house’s center, and
transport them
?

Not possible
. She was opening her mouth—maybe to tell him so, when he cocked his head, as if he’d heard a sound so soft it had slipped past her own excellent ears.

“Miri will be with us very soon.”

“How do you know that?” Theo demanded, which might have been less rude than whatever she’d been going to say about his
transport
. Maybe.

Val Con gave her a bland look from bright green eyes.

“We are lifemates. We share thoughts, feelings and memories.”

Some of what she thought about
that
must’ve shown on her face because he smiled faintly.

“Yes,” he said, “but it does not seem so to us. In fact, nothing could be more natural. Now . . .” There was a slight pause. “Such bondings are not unusual in our clan.”

“Sorry to be late!” Miri swept into the room, dropped into the empty chair, and gave Theo a grin.

“You’re looking well rested, Pilot. Ready to tell out that complicated problem of yours?”

For all it was asked in easy Terran, Theo had a sense of—sharpening—as if the air in the room had suddenly taken on an edge. She looked at Val Con; he inclined his head, inviting her to start.

Theo took a breath.

“Actually,” she said, “it’s two problems.”

* * *

They were good listeners, the Delm of Korval, and in less time than Theo would have thought possible, she had laid the whole mess before them, from Win Ton’s unintentional, if not exactly accidental, waking of the ship
Bechimo
; his sending the second key—the Captain’s key, by chance—to her, without telling her what it was; his subsequent capture, torture and escape; their meeting on Volmer; the realization that
Bechimo
—which Win Ton, and the Uncle, too, considered an aware and emancipated AI—was looking
for her
. And her last, terrible sight of Win Ton, unconscious inside the autodoc on the Uncle’s ship; his prognosis certain death, unless
Bechimo
, with the last uncontaminated record of Win Ton’s DNA in her archives, found Theo, and accepted her as Captain.

“Scouts have a bias against Old Tech,” Val Con murmured, when finally she came to an end of it and slumped in her chair, exhausted with the telling. “An emancipated AI—one who has killed to protect her integrity, as might any other person.” He smiled, wryly, to Theo’s eye. “Yes, it is complicated, Theo Waitley. Congratulations. Truly, you are of the Line.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“His idea of a joke,” Miri said. Leaning forward, she poured pale yellow liquid from the blue bottle into a glass. “Don’t dignify it.”

Theo nodded, took the glass offered, and cautiously sampled the contents. Lemon water.

“It seems to me that we are best served in the short term by doing nothing,” Val Con continued, accepting a glass from Miri in his turn.

The red-haired woman nodded, poured for herself, and leaned back in her chair.

As if in counterpoint, Theo leaned forward.

“Wait—nothing? Win Ton’s
dying
! And what if
Bechimo
does find me? What am I supposed to do with a ship the Scouts want to kill? Hide it under my pillow?”

Miri laughed. Val Con shook his head.

“Your friend is well enough for the short term,” he said, sounding startlingly like Father when he thought you were being exceptionally stupid. “Your employer’s healing units are everything he told you, and possibly more. There is nothing Korval can do at this moment that is not already being done by an expert who appears to believe he has a stake in the game.” He raised a slim hand as if to forestall her, but Theo hadn’t been going to say anything. “I grant that to be disturbing of itself, but it, too, can wait upon closer examination.

“What does merit our immediate attention . . .” He glanced toward the ceiling. “Jeeves? Have you a moment to consult with us?”

“I am on my way, Master Val Con,” the rich voice said—not, Theo thought, from the ceiling, but from the bookshelf to the left and slightly above Miri’s head.

In fact, the ’bot was with them so quickly that Theo thought it must have been lurking in the hallway.

“Excellent,” said Val Con as it rolled to a stop on the fourth side of the table, its “back” toward the window. “You will of course have heard Theo’s story. If not, please access it now.” He glanced to Theo. “You understand, Jeeves is his own person. As such, he has his own methods and resources.”

Theo nodded slowly. An emancipated AI, constructed as a butler for a single house? That couldn’t be right, could it? The Concierge had the whole Wall to take care of, and it hadn’t been sentient. She’d studied machine history; it had been a core course. And history had shown that sentient machines were dangerous. The last deliberate use had been military; the Terran Fleet had constructed three Admirals—tactical AIs, each in charge of a battle squadron, but that had been . . . seven hundred years ago, or more . . .

“I have reviewed Pilot Waitley’s narrative,” Jeeves said.

“Very good,” Val Con answered. “I do not ask you to break a confidence, but I wonder if perhaps you are acquainted, or have been in communication, with
Bechimo
.”

There was for a long moment no answer, though the orange head-ball flickered like a tiny thunderstorm was going on inside of it.

Theo thought of the ship’s key, hung safe ’round her neck, and left it where it was. It had imprinted on her, by some action she didn’t understand, but which Win Ton insisted upon. Until she understood the process, it was probably not a good idea to be handing it around to strangers.

“I cannot with certainty state that I have spoken with
Bechimo
,” Jeeves said. “However, based on Pilot Waitley’s report of Scout yo’Vala’s actions and the fate of the boarding party that attempted to force entrance—I am concerned for
Bechimo
’s state of mind. This is an unsocialized person, with a justified distrust of humans, who is compelled, nonetheless, to find and be joined with her pilots. It would be well if Pilot Waitley contrived to be found as soon as is prudently possible, in a quiet location.”