Generation Warriors (3 page)

"Aha," said Sassinak. "Now we come to it. She's contacted you?"

"Well, no. Not recently. But she's always sending messages, complaining about her health, and begging someone to visit her. My father warned me years ago not to go near her; said she's like a black hole, just sucks you in and you're never seen alive again. He had been taken to meet her once. Apparently she cooed over him, rumpled his hair, hugged him to her ample bosom, and talked him out of the chocolates in his pocket, all in about twenty seconds. But what I was thinking was that I could visit her. She knows all the gossip, all the socialites, and yet she's not quite in the thick where they'd be watching her."

Sassinak thought about that. Wouldn't an efficient enemy know that Sassinak's Exec was related to an apparently harmless old rich lady? But she herself hadn't. They couldn't know everything.

"I'd planned to have you do the database searches at Sector HQ," she said slowly. "You're good at that, and less conspicuous than I am..."

Ford shook his head. "Not inconspicuous enough, not after this caper. But I know who can... either Lunzie here, or young Aygar."

"Aygar?"

Ford ticked off reasons on his fingers. "One, he's got the perfect reason to be running the bases: he's new to the culture, and needs to learn as much as he can as fast as he can. Two, no one's ever done a profile on him, so no one can say if any particular query is out of character. In that way, he's better than Lunzie; anyone looking for trouble would notice if she ran queries outside her field or the events of her own life. Three, even an attempt at a profile would cover exactly those fields we want him to be working on anyway."

"But is he trustworthy?" Lunzie asked it of Ford, as she had been about to ask it of Sassinak. Ford shrugged.

"What if he's not? He needs us to get access, and keep it; he's bright but he's not experienced, and you know how long it took any of us to learn to navigate through one of the big databases. And we can put a tag on him; it'll be natural that we do. We shouldn't seem to trust him."

Sassinak laughed. "I do like a second in command who thinks like I do. See, Lunzie? Two against one: both of us see why Aygar is ideal for that job."

"But he's expecting something more from us—from me, at least. If he doesn't get it..."

"Lunzie!" That was the command voice, the tone that made Sassinak no longer a distant relative but the captain of a Fleet cruiser on which Lunzie was merely a passenger. It softened slightly with the next words, but Lunzie could feel the steel underneath. "We aren't going to do anything to hurt Aygar. We know he's not involved in the plotting... of all the citizens of the Federation, he's one of the few who
couldn't
be involved. So he's not our enemy, not in any way whatever. Stopping the piracy will help everyone, including Aygar's friends and relatives back on Ireta. Including Aygar. We are on his side, in that way, and by my judgment—which I must remind you is ten years more experienced than yours—by my judgment that is enough. We can handle Aygar; we have dangerous enemies facing all of us."

Lunzie's gaze wavered, falling away from Sassinak's to see Ford as another of the same type. Calm, competent, certain of himself, and not about to change his mind a hairsbreadth for anything she said.

Chapter Two

Lunzie carried her small kit off the
Zaid-Dayan
, nodded to the parting salute of the officer on watch at the portside gangway, and did not look back as she crossed the line that marked ship's territory on the Station decking. It was so damnably hard to leave family again, even such distant family. She had liked Sassinak, and the ship, and... she did not look back.

Ahead were none of the barriers she'd have faced coming in on a civilian ship. She had Sassinak's personal authorization, giving her the temporary rank and access of a Fleet major, so exiting the Fleet segment required nothing but flashing the pass at the guard and walking on through. No questions to answer, no interviews with intrusive media.

Sassinak had made reservations for her on the first available shuttle to Liaka. Lunzie followed the directions she'd been given, in two rings and right one sector, and found herself in front of the ticketing office of Nilokis InLine. Lunzie's name and Sassinak's reservation together meant instant service. Before she realized it, Lunzie was settled in a quiet room with video-relay views of the Station and a mug of something hot and fragrant on the table beside her. A few meters away, another favored passenger barely glanced up from his portable computer before continuing his work. The padded chair curved around her like warm hands; her feet rested on deeply cushioned carpet.

She tried to relax. She had not lost Sassinak forever, she told herself firmly. She was not going to have a disaster on every spaceflight for the rest of her life, and if she did she would just survive it, the way she'd survived everything else. Her steaming mug drew her attention, and she remembered choosing
erit
from the list of beverages. One sip, then another, quieted her nerves and settled her stomach. Four hours to departure and nothing to do. She thought of going back out into the Station but it was easier to sit here and relax. That's why she'd asked for
erit.
She closed her eyes, and let the steam clear her head. After all, if something happened this time, she'd know who'd come after her and with what vigor. Sassinak was not one to let someone muck about with her family, not now. Lunzie felt her mouth curving into a grin. Quite a girl, that Sassinak, even at her age.

She forced herself to concentrate, to think of the days she'd spent studying with Mayerd. With Sassinak's authority behind her, she'd been able to catch up a lot of the lost ground in her field. She knew which journals were current, what to read first, which areas would require formal instruction. (She was not about to try the new methods of altering brain chemistry from a cookbook—not until she had seen a demonstration, at least.) Her mind wandered to the time she had available for gathering information and she pulled out her calculator to check elapsed and Standard times. If Sassinak was right about the probable trial date, in the Winter Assizes (and
that
was an archaic term, she thought), then she had to complete her refresher course in Discipline, whatever medical refreshers were required for recertification, get to Diplo, and back to Sassinak (or the information back to Sassinak) in a mere eight months.

Another passenger came into the lounge, and then a pair, absorbed in each other. Lunzie finished her drink and eyed them benignly. They all looked normal, business and professional travelers (except the couple, who looked like two junior executives off on vacation). The shuttle flew a three-cornered route, to Liaka first and then Bearnaise and then back here; Lunzie tried to guess who was going where, and how many less favored passengers were waiting in the common lounge (orange plastic benches along the walls, and a single drinking fountain).

Even with the
erit,
and her own Discipline, Lunzie spent the short hop to Liaka in miserable anxiety. Every change in sound, every minute shift of the ship's gravity field, every new smell, brought her alert, ready for trouble. She slept lightly and woke unrested. On such short trips, less than five days, experienced passengers tended to keep to themselves. She was spared the need to pretend friendliness. She ate her standard packaged meals, nodded politely, and spent most of the time in her tiny cabin, claustrophobic as it was. Better that than the lounge, where the couple (definitely junior executives, and not likely to be promoted unless they grew up) displayed their affection as if it were a prizewinning performance, worth everyone's attention.

When the shuttle docked, Lunzie had been waiting, ready to leave, for hours. She took her place in the line of debarking passengers, checking out her guesses about which were going where (the lovers were going to Bearnaise, of course), and shifting her weight from foot to foot. Over the bobbing heads she could see the Main Concourse, and tried to remember the quickest route to the Mountain.

"Ah... Lunzie Mespil." The customs officer glanced at the screen in front of her, where Lunzie's picture, palm-print, and retinal scan should be displayed. "There's a message for you, ma'am. MedOps, Main Concourse, Blue Bay. Do you need a guide?"

"Not that far," said Lunzie, smiling, and swung her bag over her shoulder. MedOps had a message? Just how old was that message, she wondered.

Main Concourse split incoming traffic into many diverging streams. Blue was fourth on the right, after two black (to Lunzie) and one violet section. The blacks were ultraviolet, distinguishable by alien races who could see in those spectra, and led to services those might require. Blue Bay opened off the concourse, all medical training services of one sort or another; MedOps centered the bay.

"Ah... Lunzie." The tone was much the same, bemused discovery. Lunzie leaned on the counter and stared at the glossy-haired girl at the computer. "A message, ma'am. Will you take hardcopy, or would you prefer a P-booth?"

The girl's eyes, when she looked up, were brown and guileless. Lunzie thought a moment. The option of a P-booth meant the message had come in as a voice or video, not info-only.

"P-booth," she said, and the girl pointed to the row of cylinders along one side of the room. Lunzie went into the first, slid its translucent door shut, punched the controls for privacy, and then entered her ID codes. The screen blinked twice, lit, and displayed a face she knew and had not seen for over forty years.

"Welcome back, Adept Lunzie." His voice, as always, was low, controlled, compelling. His black eyes seemed to twinkle at her; his face, seamed with age when she first met him, had not changed. Was this a recording from the past? Or could he still be here, alive?

"Venerable Master." She took a long, controlling breath, and bent her head in formal greeting.

"You age well," he said. The twinkle was definite now, and the slight curve to his mouth. His humor was rare and precious as the millennia-old porcelain from which he sipped tea. It was not a recording. It could not be a recording, if he noticed she had not aged. She took another deliberate breath, slowing her racing heart, and wondering what he had heard, what he knew.

"Venerable Master, it is necessary..."

"For you to renew your training," he said.

Interruptions were as rare as humor; part of Discipline was courtesy, learning to wait for others without hurrying them, or feeling the strain. Had that changed, along with the rest of her world?
Never hurry; never wait
had been one of the first things she'd memorized. It had always seemed odd, since doctors faced so many situations when they must hurry to save a life, or wait to see what happened. His face was grave, now, remote as a stone that neither waits nor hurries but simply exists where it is.

"The moment arrives," he said. Part of another saying, which she had no time to recite, for he went on. "Fourth level, begin with the Cleansing of the Stone."

And the screen blanked, leaving her confused but oddly reassured. Back to the MedOps desk, to see if Liaka's corridor plans had changed in the intervening years.

They had; she received a mapbug which chirped at her when she came to turns and crossings, and guided her into and out of droptubes. A few things looked familiar: the cool green doors that led to SurgOps, the red stripe that meant Quarantine. White-coated or green-gowned doctors still roamed the corridors in little groups, talking shop. She glanced after them, wondering if she'd ever feel at home with her colleagues again. Terminals for access to the medical databases filled niches along every wall. She thought of stopping to see if all the clone colony data had really been excised, then thought better of it. Later, when she felt calmer, would be soon enough.

Fourth level. She came out of the last droptube a little breathless, as always, facing a simple wood door, broad apricot-colored planks pegged together with a lighter wood. The wood glowed, as unmistakably real as Sassinak's desk. Lunzie took a deep breath, letting herself settle into herself, feeling that settling. She bowed to the door, and it swung open across a snowy white stone sill. A novice in brown bowed to her, stepped back to let her pass, and swung the door shut behind her. Then, bowing again, the novice took Lunzie's bag, and moved silently along the path toward the sleeping huts.

Here was a place unlike any other in this Station, or any Station. Ahead, on the left, a waist-high stone like a miniature mountain reared from a path artfully designed to lead the eye toward a pavilion. Lunzie stood where she was, looking at that stone, and the small, irregular pool behind it.

"Cleansing the stone" was an elementary exercise, but the foundation on which more striking ones were built. Empty the mind of all concerns, see the stone as it is... cleansed of associations, wishes, dreams, fantasies, fears. The word
stone
resonated in her mind, became all the hard things that had hurt her, became the mysterious Thek who confounded everyone's attempt to understand them. She stood quietly, relaxed, letting all these thoughts spill out, and then wiped them away. Again they came, and again, and once more she cleared them away from the stone before her. It had a certain beauty of its own, a history, a future, a
now.
She let her eyes wander over that irregular surface, not bothering to remember the glitter of mica, the glint of quartz... she did not need to remember, the stone was here and now, as solid as she, and as worthy of knowing.

When she had looked, she let her hand touch it, lightly, delicately, learning again (but not remembering) its irregular lumpy shape. She bent slowly to smell it, the curious and indescribable scent of stone, with behind it the smell of the water, and other stones. Something more sweet also scented the air, now that she was attending to smell, but she rested her attention on the stone.

When she was quite still, unhurried and unaware of waiting, he was there, in the pavilion. Venerable Master Adept, who had a name that no one spoke in this place, where names meant nothing and essence was all. When she became consciously aware of him, she realized he had been there for a time. What time she did not know, and it did not matter. What mattered was her mind's control of itself, its ability to engage or withdraw at her will. He would be ready when she was ready; she would be ready when he was ready. She heard a drop of water fall, and realized that the fountain was on. She bowed to the rock, her mind completely easy for the first time in too many years (for even in coldsleep she had been willing to worry, if not capable of it), and moved slowly along the path. Thoughts moved in her mind, like the carp in the pool. She let them move, let some rise almost to the surface, their sealed beauty clear, while others hung motionless, mere shapes below the surface.