Victory Conditions (4 page)

That much he understood. “I won’t, Ser Louarri,” he said formally.

“Excellent. Now tell me—I hear from Zori that you have not only good general intelligence, but outstanding ability in certain technical fields. I am aware of your cousin’s patent application, and the contracts to manufacture this miraculous new device that will free ships from reliance on the ISC…it has already had an influence on the market. Is it true that this was your invention?”

Something—he would never be quite sure what—tied Toby’s tongue for the merest instant, and Stella’s advice flashed into his mind. “Not really, Ser Louarri. I just noodled around a bit—it was more accidental than anything else, and others refined it.” At that moment, Toby remembered his security. But how—without extreme discourtesy—could he ask about that now?

“It would have been truly remarkable if a boy your age had invented it,” her father said, smiling. “Well…I think perhaps we should join the ladies now. Lunch should be on the point of service.” He reached out and ruffled Toby’s hair, as if Toby were still a child.

Then he gave a sudden quick nod, like someone who had just taken a skullphone call. “Toby, your cousin is most insistent that your escort attend you at once—I am sorry she did not let me know they were coming; we would have prepared food for them, of course. They are on their way now. But have you felt at all anxious here? Other than the natural anxiety of a boy meeting a girl’s parents for the first time?” His smile now as open and warm.

Toby smiled back. “No, ser, of course not. I thought Stella’s precautions were excessive, and I’m sure they were not from distrust of you, but to teach me more caution.”

“Your cousin is wise, Toby, and I have taken no offense. The young are often incautious. Had I known about your escort, I would have arranged for their entry, of course.”

Lunch, after that, was marred only by the presence of his security, two stolid men standing against the wall, refusing to eat while Zori and her parents and Toby consumed four delicious courses and made small talk. Zori’s mother had stories of her childhood on the planet—excursions into the country to boat or ride, parties and dances. Her face came alive as she told them. Zori’s father said little, but smiled fondly at Zori even when she tried to tease him into response.

After lunch, Toby hoped Zori would walk back with him, but she came only as far as the gate to The Cone. “I have to talk to them,” she said. “But you did very well, Toby. I know they liked you.”

“I was scared,” Toby said. “Until I thought of you. But I can’t—” He glanced around; the security men were there, as always. “Kzuret,” he said. “Kzuret adin.”

“Kzuret adin,” she said. “See you tomorrow in class.” Then she was gone, walking briskly back up the passage to her home, and he led his security back out into the public areas of the station.

When Toby got back to the Vatta offices, Stella called him in at once. “What did you mean, leaving your security behind?”

“I had to,” he said. “It would have been rude to be late; I was going to ask Zori’s father when I got there—”

“But you didn’t,” she said. “Did you?”

“I couldn’t figure out how to do it without being rude,” Toby said. “Besides, it was safe. I was in a private home, with friends—”

“Acquaintances,” Stella said. “Just because they’re respectable and rich doesn’t make them friends.”

Toby felt hot. “Zori—!” he said.

“Zori is
your
friend. Don’t bristle at me; I like her, too. But she’s not her parents. And it took her father a long time to unlock that gate for your security.”

“He said if you’d only told him beforehand…” Toby’s voice trailed away at Stella’s expression.

“I did,” she said. “Of course I did. He said it wasn’t necessary; I said it was our policy. Think about that, Toby. Would people we want as friends lie to you?”

Toby wanted to argue with her—it couldn’t be true, these were
Zori’s
parents—but Stella would not lie to him. That much he knew.

“He must’ve had a good reason,” he said, knowing it was a weak argument.

“I’m sure he did,” Stella said. “Did he try to talk to you about your research?”

The uneasy feeling he’d had in the study with Zori’s father returned. He couldn’t define it; he didn’t want it. “I need to work on my paper,” Toby said without answering directly.

“Do that,” Stella said. He could feel her gaze on his back as he went into the lab where he had left his schoolwork.

A couple of hours later, Stella called him. “Toby, do you have any linguistic analysis software that can make sense of this?” She held out an audio cube and a printout.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Ky sent it; it’s a recording and phonetic transcript of transmission by pirate ships. Nobody in her group can understand it, and she sent it to me. Nobody I’ve talked to so far has a clue; I’ll send a copy to some university language departments onplanet, but I don’t expect much. Cascadians are pretty much monolingual, and even on the other worlds of the Confederation, they don’t have much linguistic diversity.”

Toby took the cube and printout and glanced at the latter. “That’s odd,” he said.

“What?” Stella was already back at her own desk.

“This word—
prot
—it’s kind of slang.”

“Kid slang?” Stella said. “I don’t think the pirates would be using ordinary kid slang, and anyway others would recognize it.”

“Zori said it meant—something rude.” He was not about to tell Stella exactly what. She had laid down her rules about anatomical humor long before.

“Zori?” She turned to face him. “You learned that word from Zori?”

“I don’t know if it’s the same word, exactly. It sounds like it, but there could be words in different languages that sound the same and mean something different. Vatta code uses some that Standard—”

“I know that,” Stella said. “But do you see anything else you recognize?”

He and Zori just talked slang; they never wrote it down. Toby worked his way along the page, sounding out the words; the transcriber had used phonetic symbols he wasn’t entirely familiar with. “What’s this thing with a hook under it?”

“That’s a
sk
sound,” Stella said. “I think Ky’s com officer just ran this through a computer transliteration—it’s all in formal linguistic symbols. Let’s see—that one there, that’s another consonant cluster,
kz.
” She looked up at him. “Do you recognize any of this?”

“I’m trying—wait—this one is like the word for ‘far’ or ‘farther.’ This one is like ‘profit,’ with the suffix for ‘no.’ And this is like ‘out of here,’ and there’s a ‘now’…” Suddenly he felt chilled. “It’s…it can’t be…just coincidence. Not this many words. Can it?”

Hope died with Stella’s expression. “You learned all these from Zori?”

“It’s…it’s her family’s private slang. Like our Vatta trade-talk. That’s how I know the word for ‘profit.’”

“That’s what she told you.”

“Yes. She said she learned it from her father, her mother doesn’t use it so much. He told her not to use it in public, that it was rude to talk in a language others didn’t understand, but sometimes in trade, in business, it was necessary. She wasn’t supposed to teach me, but—” He looked at the page again. More words made sense now. “Ship” and “ships,” a few numbers—he had learned the numbers up to twenty. “I’ll have to ask Zori—”

“No.” Stella’s tone brooked no argument. “You will not ask Zori. You will not tell Zori about this message. And you will find a way to separate yourself from Zori and her family, without fuss—”

“I can’t do that!” He felt panic and outrage together. “We just—her family gave permission; you said—”

“You must. Come on, Toby, you know what this means.”

“I don’t.” But he did, and did not want to.

“She speaks—her family speak—a language unknown to anyone else I’ve asked, which just happens to be the same language the pirates speak. That Gammis Turek speaks. What does that tell you?”

“It doesn’t tell me Zori’s a pirate,” Toby said, past the lump in his throat. Not Zori. Never Zori. “Maybe they—maybe somewhere back, somewhere along the way, like Osman, maybe one of their relatives went bad. Any family can have bad people in it—”

“Toby, I understand—”

“You
don’t
understand!” Anger drove out grief; he pinned his mind firmly on Zori, unfairly accused. “Zori is not bad! She loves me, and I love her, and nothing you can say will change that.” He could feel the heat in his face, hear the tremor in his voice. He could not stand it; he flung himself out of her office, grabbed his books from the lab, and bolted for the door, his security clumping along after.

Stella looked at the door Toby had tried to slam. There was something funny—or would be someday—about her, of all people, having this conversation with Toby. Did all young people use the exact same words to their parents and guardians when they were frantic about their first love?
Nothing you can say will stop me
…she remembered throwing that in her mother’s face, then her father’s…the father who was dead now, only he wasn’t her real father, the mother who hadn’t told her the truth. She pinched the bridge of her nose, hard, and called Toby’s escort on her skullphone.

“Don’t let him be alone with the Louarri girl,” she said. “No matter what. Tackle him, if you have to.”

“He’s upset,” one of them said.

“He’s angry and hurt and scared and convinced she’s the love of his life and I’m to blame for trying to separate them,” Stella said. “You were young once, I assume.”

“Yes,” the man answered. “I was. We’ll take care of him.”

Toby had dropped the cube and printout from Ky; Stella picked them up. Pirate jargon? She found the words Toby had mentioned. Was that enough to go on? She wrote those out, in standard script, not trusting the computer at this point, security or no. Ky had recorded transmissions in a combat situation…surely from even a few words, someone could devise a translation…“ship” or “ships,” “far” or “farther,” “now,” “profit,” “out of here.” No, “out of here now.”

Stella looked at the rest of the page. What was that rude word Toby had mentioned?
Prot
? She looked through the rest of the printout.
Prot
appeared often…it was probably a cussword. Probably, from Toby’s reaction, anatomical. That wasn’t going to be very helpful.

When she got back to the apartment, Toby’s security was outside. “He’s studying, he says. He hasn’t left the apartment; he hasn’t made any calls.”

“Thank you,” Stella said. She dreaded going in, starting the confrontation again, yet more than her comfort or Toby’s rested on his ability to translate the pirate jargon. Had her parents ever dreaded talking to her? She’d never considered that possibility then. For the first time, it sank in that if she’d had that child, she would be a mother in fact, and the mother of a youngster not that much younger than Toby. At least she’d have more experience…

The apartment was silent; Toby’s door was closed.

Stella moved into the kitchen and dialed a prepackaged meal. She had no doubt he would hear her moving around. As it heated, she tapped on his door. “Supper’s almost ready.”

“I’m not hungry.”

She knew better than that; Toby was always hungry. “Toby, I expect you to come to supper whether you eat it or not.”

A long moment, then he yanked the door open. His eyes were red, his hair disheveled. He looked down. “I won’t eat.”

“That’s fine. I know you’re working on a paper, Toby, but this translation thing is urgent. Ky needs it. Everyone needs it. Right now, no one can tell what the pirates are planning, even if they overhear them.”

“She’s not a pirate.” Only one possible
she.

“I didn’t say she was…but we need to know what they’re saying here, if you can figure it out.”

“Ky’s sure this was from pirates?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” He took the paper and cube. “You still want me at supper?”

“Yes.”

As Stella expected, Toby started eating when she served his plate, his eyes darting now and then to the paper beside him. “Do we have any way to get this into standard script? I don’t know all these symbols.”