Forgotten Suns (12 page)

The schoolroom was ready, with the bot shut away in its
cabinet, and Jamal off doing whatever he wanted. Mother and Pater had trouble
leaving Aisha there. She had trouble letting them go. Lieutenant Zhao’s smile
drove them out, and he shut the door and sealed it behind them.

~~~

Lieutenant Zhao was still smiling when he turned back to
Aisha, but there was a strong tinge of sympathy in it now. “This won’t take too
terribly long,” he said, “and I promise it won’t hurt.”

She was so stiff inside she could hardly move. She sat where
he told her to sit, in the chair that Jamal usually sat in, and he sat facing
her. His expression was more serious now as he linked in to the house computer
and overrode the passwords.

She held her breath, but he didn’t go exploring in the
system. He just wanted to patch through to the shuttle and from there to the
worldsweb.

His eyes changed when he closed the connection. Someone else
was there, too: someone older, sterner, and closer to what Aisha had thought he
would be.

This other person didn’t introduce itself. It said, “Sera
Nasir. Relax, please, and focus here.” Lieutenant Zhao held up his hand. There
was something in it. It looked like a databead, but databeads were inert. This
had light in it, and colors swirling around and around.

The sun shone inside her. It was made all of light, with
coils and swirls of plasma, and a herd of spots that had come around from the
far side just this morning. She watched them follow one another across the face
of the sun.

On the other side of that, she could feel small pricks and
stabs and the occasional jolt, like a spark of electricity. It was like being
examined by a slightly out-of-sync medbot. It poked here, prodded there. It
tried to get a reaction in one place that she knew should have yowled back, but
the sun was so bright, nothing could touch it.

After what might have been a nanosecond or an hour, the
sequence of irritations stopped. Aisha looked through the sun at Lieutenant
Zhao’s face. The stranger was still there, just for a moment, staring hard at
Aisha as if it suspected something. But it went away, and he blinked and took a
deep breath and smiled with a touch of wistfulness. “There, Sera Nasir. That’s
it. You’re done.”

She needed to take a breath, too. “What happened? Did you
find anything?”

“Nothing significant,” he said. “I’m afraid you’re not a
candidate for Psycorps.”

She couldn’t collapse right there. She had to stay upright,
stay awake, and say something that didn’t sound too terribly elated.

She had to keep her barrier up, too. Nobody had to tell her
not to let her guard down for one instant as long as Psycorps was in this
system. She’d failed the obvious part of the test, but Psycorps hadn’t got
where it was by being easy to fool. Lieutenant Zhao would be keeping an eye on
her until he left.

Still. The worst part was over. All she had to do now was
keep her head down and not do anything stupid.

Khalida fully intended to stay out of Psycorps’ way. She
spent the day in the vault, labeling and inventorying artifacts.

Through the computer she knew when Aisha’s test results came
through. Minimal psi, barely enough to measure. Aisha would not be leaving
Nevermore with the agent.

Khalida was happy for her—surprised, but happy; she would
have sworn Aisha would test positive. She was happy for Rashid and Marina, too.
The last thing they needed to do was lose their daughter to the Corps.

There would be a real celebration tonight, now the elder of
the Brats was safe. Khalida saluted her with a cup that, according to its
label, dated from a century or so before the Disappearance.

As she lowered it, she looked up into a stranger’s face.

Level Three Psycorps, with lieutenant’s bars and the name
Zhao
above the pocket of his uniform. He
was one of the meet-and-greet unit: attractive well past the point of
prettiness, open-faced and honest and ferociously well-intentioned.

That did not mean he was any kind of idiot. It took more
than strong psi powers to make level three. It took brains, and a certain
talent for working the system.

She set the cup down on the sorting table. His glance asked
permission; she shrugged. He picked it up.

Testing for impressions. She hoped he got a mind-full. She
had been handling it with gloves; the last human touch the cup had had was some
five thousand years ago.

It must have worn off: Lieutenant Zhao put the cup down with
a faint sigh, as if disappointed. “It’s finely made,” he said. “Very beautiful.”

She nodded. The silence stretched to the awkward stage.

That was an old game, and MI played it as well as Psycorps.
Khalida reached for the next artifact in the series, a bronze dagger with an
inlaid ivory hilt, and recorded its image and the label attached, with keyword
strings and cross-references.

Lieutenant Zhao broke first. He retrieved something from his
pocket and slid it across the table.

Her mind took a while to put it in context. It was a set of
captain’s bars. “Don’t tell me they promoted me.”

“They did,” he said, “Captain Nasir. You have orders also,
which I’m to see you download and acknowledge.”

“MI is using Psycorps to do its dirty work? When did that
start?”

Lieutenant Zhao’s smile was wry. “Shocking, isn’t it? They’ve
tried every possible permutation of computerized message. Rather than send a
hardcopy letter to be further ignored, they happened to discover that I would
be passing through at this convenient time. I’m to observe and record your
receipt of the orders, and then accompany you to the transport. MI will direct
you from there.”

“What if I refuse? I’m on leave.”

“Your leave ended six Earthdays ago,” Lieutenant Zhao said, “and
you failed to apply for an extension. Technically you’re AWOL, but your
superior officer in this system chooses to be lenient. She has to dock your
pay, that’s regulations, but she won’t put you on report.”

That was better than Khalida deserved. She studied her
hands, which had closed tightly around the dagger. Its blade was sharp: she
felt the sting of the cuts.

She really did feel it. Amazing. She was barely tempted to
experiment, to cut deeper and see what happened.

It seemed she was starting to heal after all.

Lieutenant Zhao was waiting. This time he won: there was no
point in fighting it any more. Khalida opened the file that was strobing and
screaming at her through the house link.

It was official. She was Captain Nasir.

She had not asked to be promoted. She certainly had not
wanted it. But there it was.

The orders were short, blunt, and to the point. Report
soonest to Spaceforce vessel Leda. Await further orders.

When orders came in stages, that was never good news.
Without explanation or apology, Khalida ran back through the file of unread
messages. The first third were all about the commendation, the second third
informed her that she had been promoted, and the last third all said the same
thing: Report somewhere and wait.

That meant it was really bad. But not, she noted, absolutely
or desperately urgent, if it had taken this long for them to send someone to
fetch her.

She clicked on another file, one that she had been thinking
about sending, but had never quite brought herself to do it. There it was, her
resignation, signed and sealed but not, yet, dated.

She called up today’s date, tipped it in, but when the Send
key blinked at her, she sent it back into storage instead.

“Give me time to think about it,” she said to Lieutenant
Zhao.

“I can give you forty-eight Earth hours,” he said. “After
that, I’m afraid I’ll have to arrest you.”

“Not if I resign,” she said.

“They won’t accept your resignation.”

“They have to.”

“Not since you’ve gone AWOL,” said Lieutenant Zhao. He
honestly seemed to sympathize. “Do take the time. I’ve always wanted to visit
the mysterious Nevermore. But in forty-eight hours, I have to bring you in. Willingly
or otherwise.”

He saluted her crisply, softened it with a smile, and left
her there with her captain’s bars and her orders and her hopeless state of
confusion.

It was her own damned fault for avoiding what she knew would
have to happen. MI was spread thin. Any operative who was even close to
functional was expected and required to function.

Which left open the question: Was she functional?
Regulations forbade her to make that determination. Command would decide—and
Command well might decree that she was.

She finished what she was doing. She cleared the table, got
everything inventoried, and backed up and saved the files. Her chrono said it
was still daylight. She was expected at dinner, to help Aisha celebrate her
reprieve and her new, untrammeled future.

Khalida could do that. Someone ought to be happy. Why not
Aisha?

She was maudlin already, and there was not a drop of wine or
liquor on this side of the planet. Rashid was traditional that way.

Now there was a reason to head back into space. Khalida
opened a file for it, labeled and saved and stored it. There was already a file
for reasons to stay, which had swelled past a hundred a long time ago.

Everything wanted to happen at once. Instead of leaving on
the same day like a polite and sensible Psycorps agent, Lieutenant Zhao stayed.
He stayed in the shuttle and not in the house, but the shuttle was still on
Nevermore. Aisha was getting very tired of keeping her barriers up.

He stayed because of Aunt Khalida. MI had called her back,
and he was supposed to make sure she got there.

That meant she was leaving. And so was Rama.

“Did you know he’s rich?” Jamal asked that afternoon.

Aisha was supposed to be resting. She had a bit of a
headache, but she’d started to think about going out to ride Jinni. A long
ride, as far away from everything as possible.

Jamal showed up in her room before she could get her riding
clothes on, and perched on the hoverchair that she mostly kept tethered in the
corner. She didn’t know why she let him stay. It was obvious he’d come to annoy
her.

A buzzing began in her back teeth and worked its way around
to the top of her head. That was the firewall going up, and the parental
controls turning off. No one outside could listen in.

“All that gold Rama had on him,” Jamal said. “It’s worth
more than you would believe. He could buy most of a small planet, if he had any
use for one.”

She frowned at him. “How did you find that out?”

Janal shrugged the way he did when he was determined not to
feel guilty. “I caught him while you were having your test, forging travel
papers. He’s good. Not as good as I am, but good.”

“You didn’t.”

“I had to,” Jamal said. “If he’d messed up, it would have
traced back to us.”

“So you helped him.” Aisha sighed. “You know those artifacts
belong to the Department of Antiquities.”

“Not if he can claim them under the aboriginal property
laws.”

He actually said that as if he knew what it meant. Aisha
only did because she ran a search on the term. “You know about him?”

“It’s kind of hard not to,” he said. “He’s nowhere in any
database. Considering where we found him and what he was wearing, I had to
conclude, logically—”

“Stop talking like a schoolbot,” Aisha said irritably.

Jamal stuck out his tongue at her. “I set up an account for
him, and showed him how to build an identity. He’d already figured out most of
it. He learns fast.”

“You know what you’re unleashing on the spaceways,” Aisha
said. “The Dread Pirate Gallifrey was nothing to what he’ll be.”

“I know,” Jamal said. “It will be beautiful.”

“I think you lack a moral compass,” Aisha said.

“Now
you’re
talking like a bot.”

Aisha was past ready to get out of there, but she knew her
brother. “All right. What are we really doing here?”

He bounced in the hoverchair, up and down and up and down,
the way he used to when he was five years old. She kicked him to make him stop.

Finally he came out with it. “It’s over. The message came on
the shuttle. The expedition has to shut down. We get to finish the season, but
then we’re done.”

Aisha wheezed. His words had punched all the air out of her.
“What—they can’t—”

“The statue did it,” Jamal said. “That was their excuse.
Significant archaeological discovery,
they said.
For the protection and
preservation of the artifact and the site.
They’re taking it away from
Mother and Pater. Someone else will come in. I looked her up. She’s a Department
drone. They send her when they think they can make money off whatever’s been
found.”

Finally Aisha had her voice back. “How can they do that? All
these years and all that work and now we finally found something spectacular,
they just take it away?”

“I don’t know,” Jamal said. “I just know it’s happening.”

“Mother will fix it,” Aisha said. She wasn’t as confident as
she wanted to sound. “Mother can talk sense into them. They have to see how
important it is that we stay. They have to understand—”

But they wouldn’t. She knew it even while she said it. All
her life she’d heard the parents snarling about idiots and bureaucrats. Once
the idiots got their claws in something, they never let it go. Especially when
there was money in it.

She didn’t ride Jinni after all. Jamal had to go: he was
supposed to help cook her actually-on-her-birthday dinner. Aisha stayed in her
room. Thinking. Making up her mind.

By the time dinner was over, with everybody pretending to be
happy and nobody talking about the cliff they were all going to fall over, she
knew what she had to do. It was the hardest decision she had ever made, but she
couldn’t see any other way.