Forgotten Suns (17 page)

Aisha must have spent time training with the Blackroot
warriors. She was good, though not perfect: sometimes she had to stop and redo
a step.

So did everyone but Rama. He was teaching children. He was
not patronizing and he certainly did not insult their clear and visible
talents, but Khalida knew the difference.

He reached the end of the sequence, turned and bowed. The
line of students bowed back. There were a good dozen besides Aisha. They were
breathless and sweat-streaked, and some were grinning.

He grinned back with a sudden, wild edge, and whirled into
motion.

Then they saw what this art was supposed to be. He was a
blur of darkness struck through with the flash of steel. With each leap he
sprang higher, until he was spinning in the air, striking with fist, feet,
blade.

Tomiko had told the truth. In the half-gravity, he flew.

After the first startled instant, Khalida got the measure of
the dance and the speed. Some of it was still too fast to follow, but most she
could. She could use her full-G strength in the half-G, let it balance and
speed up the spins, keeping her eye on the imaginary target, striking to wound,
disable, kill.

Especially kill.

It had been much too long since she did anything more
physical than shift an artifact from a shelf to a table. She pushed through the
pain. She ignored the exhaustion. She could not match him—quite. But she did
not embarrass herself, either.

He wound down gradually. She followed a fraction of a step
behind.

She was going to pay for this. She was wringing wet,
shaking, sobbing for breath. But she stayed on her feet. She bowed when he
bowed, and was gratified to see him sweating, too. Then he really did look like
obsidian, black glass born of volcanic fire.

For an instant in his eyes she saw what he was. It shook her
in ways that she was not ready to define, and steadied her in others that she
was even less ready for.

Then he had drawn the veil across them again. They were only
eyes, dark in a dark face, and rather more human than not.

She walked away on her own feet. People were applauding—giving
him his due.

“Yours, too,” he said.

He was beside her, not touching her, but his presence was
holding her up.

“Stop that,” she said. She had just enough breath to say it.

He ignored her. When they were in the lift, and full gravity
weighed them both down, he caught her before she fell over.

His breath was still coming faster than usual, but most of
his strength was back already. She glowered at him. “What are you feeding on?
Blood?”

He shook his head. His smile was wide and sweet and a little
crazy. “This ship has a core like a sun.”

She sagged in his arms; then she struggled until he set her
on her feet. “The fusion reactor. Of course.”

“Yes,” he said. “I was afraid, I admit it. Away from the
sun, what might happen to me? But the ship is here, and it sustains me. I’m
free of all the stars.”

“God help us,” she said.

The lift stopped. The door opened. The handful of
crewmembers who stood there got an eyeful of Khalida wringing wet and clinging
to a half-naked man.

Too bad Tomiko would never believe it. Khalida was not
feeling charitable toward her at all.

Rama went with her down the corridor, though the way to his
own cabin was three levels farther up. At her door she turned on him. “That’s
far enough,” she said.

He bent his head in the way he had. It must be a habit from
when he was a king. Without a word he turned and walked away.

She surprised herself with disappointment. A fight would
have felt good then—since Tomiko was not there to get what she deserved.

No one could give Khalida what she deserved. Not Tomiko, not
Rama, not anyone. She punched the lock and let herself fall through the door as
it opened, not caring where she landed or what happened when she did.

Aisha was worried about Aunt Khalida. Not because Aisha
was in unbelievable amounts of trouble, though she was, but because Aunt
Khalida looked awful. When she came to the cargo bay and matched Rama in his
katas, that was impressive, but it was crazy. It felt all wrong.

Rama made sure she got safely to her room, but that was as
far as he went. When Aisha yelled at him for it, he said, “She didn’t want me
there.”

“Should that even matter?”

“With her it does,” he said.

Aisha had to think about that. When she was done thinking,
she went to someone who could actually do something, though she might be as
stubborn about it as Rama.

Aisha could have worn normal clothes for that, since she
wasn’t really invisible any more, but if she did that, she might have to
explain to Rama what she was doing. Then he would try to stop her. She stayed
the way she was, then, and hoped it would keep people from getting in her way.

~~~

She went the back way, through the access ducts. It was
faster, and she was less likely to meet anybody. The ship had surveillance in
there after all—she couldn’t believe how wrong she’d been before—but it didn’t
seem to care what she did as long as it could keep an eye on her.

The captain had an office she worked in when she wasn’t on
the bridge. Aisha would stake out the office and wait, and eventually the
captain would come in.

It was a foolproof plan, especially the part where she
convinced the door to let her in. She didn’t hack it so much as persuade it.
Jamal wasn’t the only one in the family who could make a computer do things
people insisted it couldn’t do.

She made herself comfortable in a hoverchair, after she
discovered and used the lavatory. There was a bowl of nuts to nibble on—real
nuts from a tree on a planet—and water from a dispenser. She could stay for
hours if she had to.

It was not even an hour before she heard people in the outer
room. One was the captain: Aisha could feel as well as hear her. The other one
made her shrink down in the chair.

Lieutenant Zhao was talking fast. Aisha had to strain to
understand the words. “Please, you must understand. This is urgent. No one else
can do it.”

“Why not?” the captain shot back. “Rinaldi is barking mad.
As soon as he gets his hands on her, he’ll rip her to pieces.”

“No!” The word came out as a yelp. “He’s not like that. He’s
insane, yes, most of the nines are, but he sincerely believes that there is no
other choice. What she did won his respect. He hates her, fears her, but he trusts
her judgment. He knows she’ll judge fairly.”

“Will she?” said the captain. “He manipulated her into
nuking Ostia. Do you have any idea how much that damaged her?”

“She’s been repaired,” Lieutenant Zhao said. “Whatever
residual damage there may be, we can take care of on the way there. She will be
fit for duty when she gets to Araceli.”

“What if she isn’t? What if I’m right and you’re wrong, and
she’s still broken and Rinaldi wants to gnaw her liver? Will you take
responsibility for what happens then?”

Lieutenant Zhao sputtered. “I’m not—I don’t have—”

“I didn’t think so,” the captain said. She sounded tired and
disgusted. “Go away. Leave me alone. Above all, leave her alone. I’ll get her
evaluated. If Psych says she’s not fit, she’s not fit. Do you understand me?”

“I understand,” Lieutenant Zhao said, “that the need is
strong enough to bypass a Psych hold. She won’t get out of this, and you won’t
get her out.”

“We’ll see,” the captain said grimly.

~~~

Aisha would have run away if she could, but the only way
out was past Lieutenant Zhao. She stayed in the captain’s office. When the
captain came in, she was still there, sitting stiffly upright in the
hoverchair.

The captain stopped. She wasn’t even as tall as Aisha; she
looked like a flower carved in ivory. But Aisha knew how strong she was.

She loved Aunt Khalida, and Aunt Khalida loved her. That was
one of the things the parents didn’t talk about: that Aunt Khalida was never
going to marry a man. If she married a woman, the family back on Earth would
pitch a fit, but Mother and Pater would still speak to her. Probably more than
they would to Aisha by the time she finished doing what she had to do.

Knowing all that made it easier to keep her chin up and say,
“You can’t let him do that to her.”

The captain’s brows went up. “You heard that?” Then she
answered herself. “Of course you did. Did you understand even half of it?”

“Don’t talk down to me,” Aisha said. “Maybe I don’t know all
the whos and whys, but I can tell when my aunt is in trouble. Whatever Psych did
to her didn’t fix her. It made her worse.”

“Did it? And you know this how?”

“I lived with her on Nevermore for almost a T-year. She’s
not repaired, Captain. At all.”

The captain dropped down into the chair behind the desk and
rubbed her forehead as if it wouldn’t stop hurting. “That’s not supposed to
happen.”

“You know it has,” Aisha said. “You can see.”

Captain Hashimoto kept talking as if Aisha hadn’t said a
word. “Traumatic-stress repair is as effective as any therapy we have. Results
are guaranteed. They
can’t
fail.”

“Who says that?” Aisha asked. She really wanted to know.

Captain Hashimoto frowned at her. “Everyone. All the
literature. Psych. Those protocols always work. No matter who or what they work
on.”

“Nothing
always
works,” Aisha said. “You know what I think? I think people need it to work, so
they make a lie and tell it so often they believe it’s the truth.”

The frown turned into a narrow-eyed stare. “How old did you
say you were again?” Before Aisha could answer, the captain said, “I’ll fight this.
I will. But if they’re determined to send her back into the unholy mess that
broke her in the first place, they will do it. Nothing I can do will stop them.”

“I don’t believe that,” Aisha said.

“
Now
you’re acting
your age,” the captain said. “I hear you. I believe you. I’ll do my best. That’s
all I can promise.”

“I would rather be my age than yours,” Aisha said. She
shaped each word carefully. “Thank you for listening to me. I won’t bother you
again.”

She stood up. Before she turned to go, the captain said, “Think
before you do anything. Think long and hard. Promise.”

“I won’t do anything without thinking about it first,” Aisha
said. The captain wasn’t happy, but neither was Aisha. They both had all they
were going to get.

~~~

Every shipday, Rama spent hours on the observation deck.
There was nothing to see—really nothing; subspace was completely blank. Most
people found it disturbing. He seemed to like it.

When Aisha sat near him, he lifted his head. His eyes moved
as if he watched something above him.

Something big, swimming huge and slow, trailing fins as long
as the ship, and thrusting itself through subspace with a tail so wide even
Rama couldn’t see its edges. It was singing, a song too deep and at the same
time too high for human ears.

It was easier if she closed her eyes. Then she could feel
and see and hear.

He was singing back to it. He couldn’t use his voice; it
didn’t have the range. The power in him, the psi that was ’way, ’way above a
nine, could make the fabric of subspace thrum and ring.

The huge creature swam on past. There were others around the
ship, but none so big and none so close. Aisha opened her eyes.

Rama lay back on the padded bench with one knee drawn up. He
looked as if he was asleep.

“What were you singing?” Aisha asked him.

He answered without moving. “It asked me who I was and what
I was and where I was going. I answered it.”

“What did you say?”

“That I swim through the other world, the one so barren of
song; that I was born to both worlds; that I was going to find what I had lost.”

“Your world? Your time?”

“Nothing can reclaim time,” he said.

“But—”

“There are things that can travel as freely in time as in
space. I am not one of them.”

“Really?”

He didn’t answer that.

“I think you don’t want to. There would be no place for you
there. You’d tear yourself to pieces.”

“And everyone and everything around me.”

Rama sounded most cool and distant when he was hurting the
worst. It had taken Aisha a while to figure that out. “You’re not a bad person,”
she said.

“I don’t need to be bad to be too dangerous to live.”

“Do you have to be dangerous? Why is it so awful to have as
much psi as you’ve got?”

“You know what they say about absolute power.”

“You had it,” Aisha said. “I don’t think it corrupted you. I
think you got set on a particular way of doing things, and it turned out not to
be the right one. People do that all the time. Now you have a chance to make up
for it.”

“People aren’t all like me,” he said.

“You might be surprised.”

He turned his head to look at her. His eyes got very wide
and very sharp. He came up in one motion, so smooth it didn’t look human, and
knelt in front of her.

He took her chin in his hand. She didn’t pull away. She wasn’t
afraid, either, though he had gone completely strange. He turned her face from
side to side, and then looked into her eyes, so deep she felt him walking on
the bottom of her skull.

“No,” he said, all the way down there. “Oh, no, you aren’t.
That is just too—no.”

He wasn’t speaking PanTerran, or Old Language, either. She
didn’t know what language it was. It didn’t matter; where he was, all languages
were the same.

“You turned against me,” he said. “Even you. Most of all
you. How many eons do you think it will take me to forgive?”

Aisha didn’t want to understand that. That he saw something
so deep inside her that she hadn’t even known it was there. That he recognized
it. And that she could—if she wanted; if she tried—let it speak through her.