The Duke Of Uranium (15 page)

On the other hand, his heart was leaping up for pure happiness. What could that mean?

“Well,” Piaro said, “the last I knew you were planning on joining the Hive Army—assuming that for the next few years your occupation isn’t ‘prisoner’ or ‘hostage’— but as far as I know nobody prefers the Army to the Spatial if they can get into the Spatial, masen? So you don’t have one of the aps. Well, did you know that if you earn United Association of Spacecrew points, that gives you a leg up for joining the Spatial?”

“Yeah, but the UAS is even harder to get into than the Spatial. It’s considerably harder to get into than the Hive’s PSA, which I didn’t get into, which is where all the trouble started in the first place.”

“It’s harder to get into if you walk into the UAS office in the Hive, or connect via net, and apply. But UAS wants everyone who works in space to have a union card. And on every union ship, if anyone wants to work, there’s always work, and there’s always training available. So if you applied to work on general labor for the Spirit of Singing Port, you’d be able to get both work and training—about as much of both as you wanted— and work is good for UAS points and training is good for lots of UAS points. You’d need about six voyages before you could join as a full-ranked voting member, but any points at all count very strongly toward your application to the Spatial, and if you worked this voyage and the one back to the Hive, especially if that’s a long one, my guess is you’d be pretty nearly certain of getting into the Spatial.

Or if you didn’t want to do that but you found out you liked sunsailing, well, with a provo membership and that many points, you could probably ship out from the Hive within a year or so—they give some extra consideration to anyone trying to earn his permanent card.”

“Toktru? To tell you the truth, even with all you toves being so nice and inviting me for all the rec and games stuff, I’m pretty bored, and it would be great to have more to do.”

“Don’t mention that around the ship’s shrink when you interview with him—they don’t let insane people work. But I suppose in the abstract I can kind of understand how you might feel that way.” Piaro drank again, stretched, and said, “I assume you see that besides maybe helping you get into the Spatial, there’s the other advantage, which applies right now. It gets you and Phrysaba out of all kinds of trouble.

Anything between a passenger and a crewie is frowned on, even just a social friendship. But if it looked like you intended to be a crewie someday

then you and Phrysaba could spend time together, and I don’t speck people would disapprove. Better for my family, better for you, even better for my sister.”

“But if she’s already, urn, infatuated, and especially if you think it’s not going to work out—”

“I have faith in both of you, Jak. You’re about the most unromantic heet I’ve ever seen, and she’s about as romantic as they make’em. Two weeks of being mekko and demmy and the two of you won’t be able to stand the sight of each other. Just be nice about it if you decide to dump her; I know she’ll be kind if she dumps you. Want to towel off and drift toward mess?”

After dinner, Jak was at loose ends; all the crew his own age happened to be working that shift. He wasn’t going to make a complex situation worse by trying to contact Phrysaba. After admitting to himself that there wasn’t much that was fun to do, just now, he went back to his stateroom, got into his pajamas, and rummaged around in his bag. He found his purse wadded up in the bottom, where he’d tossed it the first chance he got, and pulled it on to his left hand, making sure his fingers moved freely and that it felt comfortable on his palm, fastening the straps around his wrist, flexing to wake it up. He darkened the room, and said, “Bring up news access.”

“Now you tell me,” the purse said. “You haven’t wanted that in years. I’ll have to get all kinds of modules

that I deleted years ago, and reorganize memory. This is going to take a full minute and you’ll probably reprimand me for it. Great.”

Jak fingered the pain button, just above his wrist, significantly.

“All right, all right, all right. I’m getting it. I was just telling you it would take some time,” the purse said.

“You’re just very hard to predict. I’ve almost got it. And will you want it all projected on the wall?”

“Yeah.”

“And will you need this more in the near future?”

“Toktru.”

“All right. Then I have to do a couple more things with memory before I can get started. Please don’t zap me. I’ll get it as fast as I can.”

“Do it.” Jak wondered idly if a purse that liked you, like Dujuv’s, was better than this, or even worse for chattering.

The news access brought a shock. Uncle Sib had told him not to expect to find much, because after all Sesh was being held in secret and probably word would not leak out for a long time, if ever. But to his surprise, he found ninety-two stories immediately, most of them referencing an initial story by Mreek Sinda, who had been at Centrifuge, working on a fashion-and-art piece about Y4UB, when her cameras and microphones had picked up Sesh’s kidnapping. Across the following weeks, she’d done a commendable job of digging up the rest of the story—that Princess Shyf had been living as Sesh Kiroping, who the friends who tried to rescue her were, and so forth. And now half a dozen rivals of Mreek Sinda were also doing followups.

Jak sat scratching his head. It was funny how news reporting could change what everything meant, even when it did get the facts singingon. If he hadn’t known it was himself and Duj, he’d have thought they were a couple of heroic toves, toktru. On the other hand, he winced when he saw the malphs hold himself and Duj, unconscious and spread-eagled, and swiftly and efficiently do the damage that had put him into a regeneration ward. There are many good things to be said for style and mastery of craft, but they don’t apply to all crafts.

Furthermore, Mreek Sinda had eventually established that he was on his way to Earth and that he was probably carrying a secret back-channel message from Greenworld to Uranium. So she had managed to penetrate to several different places where Uncle Sib had planted the primary cover.

Her most recent stories, and those of her competitors, focused on the reaction in Greenworld—Jak noted that Sesh really did resemble King Scaboron. Mostly the news from Greenworld consisted of diplomats

saying that the situation was grave, that Uranium had behaved badly or at the least that one of its ducal house had, that the whole situation had to be watched carefully and that this was the most serious kind of matter in diplomacy, and that simultaneously there was nothing to worry about, everything was being taken care of, it would all turn out fine, and any speculation about a diplomatic rupture, let alone a military intervention, most especially let alone a war, would be completely irresponsible and had no basis in reality.

Well, at least this explained some of the hero-worship he was getting from Phrysaba; if he’d tried to look her up and found something like this, he’d have been impressed too.

It didn’t seem to him that it would affect his mission much; after all, when he arrived at Fermi, he was supposed to try to contact Psim Cofinalez’s household, as well as the public affairs office of the Palace of Uranium, and proceed as if he really were mainly concerned with delivering his message. And it was kind of flattering as long as he remembered not to believe it—Mreek Sinda’s reporting made him sound like someone interesting.

Of course, with tens of thousands of news sources and millions of different-interest readers, most people would never know about him, but a few tens of thousands of people around the solar system might be impressed, and you never knew, one of them might be able to do him some good.

He decided to give Uncle Sib a call and see what he thought of the idea of applying to work on the Spirit of Singing Port. It would beat being continually bored, but maybe there was some aspect Jak was overlooking.

Sib’s reaction was straightforward. “Old pizo, you are being had. But it’s really good for you and I think you should go along with it.”

“What do you mean, had?” No such thought had occurred to Jak; he drummed his fingers impatiently on the communications desk while he waited for Uncle Sib’s image to go from a still picture to motion again.

“—ship’s crews always have gender balance problems,” Sib said, after the radio lag. The detector that took it back to motion when you spoke never seemed to work quite perfectly, so half of the initial “sh”

had been cut off. “It’s an effect of having a small population. They don’t want to lose ship-raised people, who are far too valuable, so they have to find potential mates for them who might want to move shipboard. And they very often recruit passengers. They’re going to offer you a position as a cupvy, and I strongly suggest that you take it. First of all, your friend is telling you the truth—it’s your way into the Spatial, which is worlds better than being stuck in the Army. The Hive Spatial is just about eighty percent union anyway, so you can even get more union points during your hitch. You could end up as a crewie, which, as you’ve noticed, is not a bad life, and besides it might be a good place to be if you decide to join that so-rial club your aunt and I belong to. And you did want to travel. Okay, now you ask questions.” An instant later his face froze into a still photo.

Jak had the odd thought that Uncle Sib might be doing anything right now during the radio lag, but after all, just nine days into the voyage, the lag was still less than a minute. Probably Sib was only scratching or sipping his coffee.

Jak shook himself out of his reverie and asked, “What’s a cupvy? And if it’s such a good deal, why are they trying to trick me into it?”

About ten long seconds later, the time for the radio message to get back and forth, Uncle Sib’s face moved again. “—C-U-P-V, Crew, Unpaid, Passenger, Volunteer. They’ll tease you about it and there are dozens of CUPV jokes you’ll hear, but half the space crew families on the sunclippers started out that way, and you’ll be fine if you just take it in a good spirit. It’s basically affectionate; crewies think theirs is the best life in the solar system (they do have a case) and they only invite people they like into it.

“And that’s the answer to your other question. They weren’t trying to trick you, exactly. They’re just aware that because they lead highly regulated lives, and most people who can afford to travel in space as passengers don’t lead highly regulated lives, their way of life might seem very strange and unpleasant to you. So they try to give you the chance to see what you might like about it, but they’re nervous about the subject because they know that so many noncrewie people have neither the sense of responsibility nor the dedication to really learn the lifestyle, you see? But you might. You haven’t been raised as a spoiled brat, like most people with your advantages. I’ve tried to make sure that you know about doing what needs doing when it needs to be done. So you should have more than enough self-discipline to fit into their culture, if that’s what you want.” Sib looked down and licked his upper lip; for a moment Jak thought he was about to ask for more questions, but then he realized it was the way Sib always looked when he was about to ask something awkward. “Uh, just to check here

I suppose I’m just kind of wondering if things have changed at all

by any chance is there a really lovely, intelligent, charming young woman involved in this process?” His image froze; Jak’s turn to talk.

Jak couldn’t help laughing, and immediately told Sib all about Phrysaba. “So she’s just bait for acquiring new crewies? She and her brother seemed like such toktru toves!” Jak said to the motionless image of his uncle’s face.

After the long lag, Sib looked precessed. “Not at all! As I said, it’s not a trick! They wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t really like you and want to share their way of life with you. You really should feel flattered, honored, and welcome, and it’s absolutely a friendly thing they’re doing—you’re not being shanghaied or press-ganged, honestly!

“I was about to point out one more advantage, was all. After all, once you get Princess Shyf out of her predicament, you must realize that she can hardly come back to the Hive for a while—her cover here is blown, and anyway agents of Uranium might well try another kidnapping. So she’s going to have to spend at least a long time, until things cool down or agreements are worked out, back at the family palace in Greenworld. It was kind of time for that anyway—she needed to get much more acquainted with her family, and the politics, and the court traditions. And I do know how fond of her you really are and that no matter what, even if she were to decide she wanted you as one of her consorts and you were to accept,

it’s going to be a few years. So I was sort of hoping that

well, you’re a healthy young man, and you know, pizo, there’s one thing that always helps a broken heart recover—”

Jak grinned. “Uncle Sib,” he said, “you’ve sold me on the advantages, toktru, but having you worry about my love life is far too weird. All right, I speck you’ve told me everything I needed to know.” They chatted for a few minutes; Sib gave him the gossip from home, and Jak talked about the strangeness of being a minor star of the news.

When they disconnected, Jak immediately called up the appropriate screens and signed on as a CUPV.

Before he went to sleep that night, he had already been issued two old coveralls that didn’t quite fit right, each with “CUPV” printed on the chest and back, in the large block letters that Jak associated with convicts, plus a UAS Points Log to clip to the breast pocket, and a schedule of shifts. The next morning, when he rose to go to his first shift, he found that he had a message from Phrysaba, inviting him for coffee that night. It felt like the world was falling into place.

Within an hour of reporting for work, Jak was bounding down an auxiliary propulsion tube about three meters across, pulling out panels that had detectable rough spots and replacing them with new, smooth panels. The interesting technical part of it was that you were only supposed to touch the sides on panels that had been identified as rough and were about to be replaced.