Linesman (10 page)

A strong hand gripped the top of his right arm.

“Leave him there,” the medic said. “He'll only fall out again.”

“What about line six?” Abram's voice, close.

“It's fine,” Ean said.

He heard the beep of the comms, the captain answering,
and Abram's crisp voice. “Captain Helmo. What did Linesman Lambert do to line six?”

“It's the doing it without permission that's the problem.” Ean could still hear the anger.

Michelle cut in over Abram. “So what did he do?”

Ean heard the breath the captain drew in. “He fixed it.” A grudging admission that he hadn't done any real damage.

“Fixed it?” Abram's voice could have cut glass. It sounded as if he thought Ean had also caused the problem to start with. “Do you want Linesman Grimes to look at it?”

The explosive “No,” carried a strong subtext. No one touched his ship. What happened when the higher lines needed servicing? Did they never get serviced?

“The ship seems happy enough about it,” the captain said, still grudging. “But linesmen can't go around changing the lines just because they feel like it.”

Under different circumstances, Ean thought, he and Captain Helmo might get on fine.
The ship seems happy about it.
How many people put emotions to their ships?

Ean struggled to sit up. This time it was Michelle who helped him, he could tell by the clean fizz that got up his nose and made him sneeze. He managed to stay upright and even open his eyes. Abram was frowning at them both.

He didn't want Abram to think he had deliberately vandalized anything. “The ship.” Ean had to clear his throat before he could speak properly. What had he done that had used his voice? “Line six had a problem,” he said. “I fixed it. When I first came on board. I didn't ask the captain if I could.” He struggled to his feet. “I'm going to my own room.”

Michelle came with him. “Because otherwise you'll end up in the fresher again,” she said.

Right now, Ean could do with a hot shower. He felt dirty and soiled, and nothing he could do would ever make Michelle and Abram look on him as a real person. He'd had too many chances, and he'd blown every one of them. Maybe they'd put him on the first shuttle to the ship and hope he'd be vaporized. Then he wouldn't be a problem anymore.

Without Michelle's guidance, he would have taken a dozen wrong turns. Who knew where he might have ended up.

“How many more jumps do we have?” he asked when he had enough voice to talk.

“That was the last.” Michelle guided him into his cabin. Ean flopped onto the bed.

She sat down beside him, and said, “You can't keep making enemies like this.”

Ean bit his lip and nodded. This was another pep talk he deserved. Maybe the medic was right. Maybe he really was crazy. Maybe that was why Rigel had kept him sequestered and busy at the cartel house; because when he stopped to think about it, that was what Rigel had done. Maybe he'd had good reason to.

Michelle said, “You scare some people.” She patted Ean's cheek. “You don't scare me.”

Yet. How much crazy behavior could a person take? Not that Ean felt crazy. He felt normal. All crazy people felt normal, he supposed.

Michelle sighed, and stood up. “We get to the ship tomorrow.”

They might be dead tomorrow night. Ean raised himself on one elbow. “Michelle.”

Michelle paused in the doorway.

“Thanks.”

Michelle's genetically enhanced smile flashed suddenly, but she didn't say anything.

Ean flopped back onto the bed.

JORDAN ROSSI

ON THE VID,
Rossi watched the scientists swarm over the viewing center. They were like ants. You couldn't get rid of them once they'd arrived. Oh, you tried, but they always came back, hunting for the crumbs of truth that fitted their theories, twisting the little pieces of knowledge they gleaned about the lines to suit.

This much was fact. Line nine took a ship into the void. If you didn't have line nine, you never got anywhere. Your ship traveled at sublight speed. Subsublight speed really, because there were engines that could travel at .4c, while a Bose engine puttered along at a quarter of that speed. But only ships running a modified Bose engine controlled by line six ever made it out of the void. Scientists knew this. They had done experiments.

Rossi cynically wondered if any of those early pilots had known they were signing up for an instant death sentence.

Line nine could take you in and out of the void forever. Scientists had done experiments on that, too. To the onlooker, the ship disappeared momentarily. Less than a second, and it was only the machines that told them the ships had ever disappeared at all.

But line nine couldn't move you through the void. You needed line ten for that.

Not that anyone knew what the void was yet.

Oh, the scientists had lots of theories. Another dimension. Hyperspace. Even another state of matter. They had a dictionary of words to describe it, too. Havortian space, Havortian state, antispace. Jordan Rossi didn't care. He didn't have time for scientists. The void was the void. The lines were the lines. If the scientists wanted to know more about the lines, why didn't they use linesmen as scientists?

But, of course, no self-respecting linesman would want to be a scientist. Once you had the lines, that became your life.

At least, for Jordan Rossi it had, and he couldn't imagine anyone else's feeling any different. He'd felt the lines all his life, even before he knew they were lines. As a young boy, he'd spent every moment he could at the spaceport, where the majority of lines congregated. Much to the annoyance of his merchant mother, who held that the ports were dirty, filthy places inhabited by lowlifes.

He'd taken the line tests at age five and moved into the cartel house proper at age ten. He'd certified at seventeen, which was the earliest one could be tested.

Because he'd been so obvious a linesman at such an early age, the scientists had been particularly interested in him. Throughout his early years, life had been a series of tests along with his lessons, until twelve-year-old Rossi had issued his cartel master with an ultimatum. Get rid of the scientists, or Rossi found himself another house.

Rossi hadn't seen a scientist since. Not until now, when the cooperation between the houses and Gate Union dictated that they allowed Gate Union to send its soldiers and its scientists in, to share the discovery of the confluence.

As if any linesman would share line secrets.

It was an uneasy truce, the first in a long time, that threatened relations between the two groups. Gate Union didn't understand how important the confluence was to the linesmen. They didn't realize how sacred it was.

On the vid, Rossi watched Linesman Geraint Jones complain about the placement of a new experiment and smiled with satisfaction as Jones prevailed, and the tight-lipped
scientists started to dismantle their equipment. The confluence belonged to the linesmen.

Today, however, Jordan Rossi had something more to worry about other than the effects of the confluence on his psyche.

He flipped to a news channel, where he watched Emperor Yu stride down the passageway, ignoring the reporters crowding around him. Yu's face wore its usual inscrutable expression.

The reporter's voice-over continued. “Still no sign of Emperor Yu's daughter, Lady Lyan, who was due to be married here tonight in a private ceremony on Lady Lyan's yacht.”

Of course it would be on the yacht. No sense spending lots of money for a wedding that wasn't going to happen, was there. Except for the planetary representatives, there was no visible sign of a wedding. And Sattur Dow, striding along stone-faced behind his emperor, didn't look like a man whose bride had run off on their wedding night.

“As yet, there is still no information on the whereabouts of that yacht—the
Lancastrian Princess
—which departed two days ago, local time.” The picture changed to the
Lancastrian Princess
. Rossi had been on real yachts. This was merely a sleek, fast freighter, totally unsuited to the heir of the richest group of worlds in the Alliance and Union combined.

The reporter signed off. “We'll bring you events as they happen. Until then, this is Coral Zabi from Galactic News, keeping you informed.”

Rossi switched the vid off. “Sweetheart,” he said to the screen, “if you really were keeping us informed, you would know where she is by now.”

Two days, and still no sign of the Alliance ship here at the confluence. They could have been here in a quarter of that time.

Fergus looked up from his screen. “They didn't register a jump anywhere close.”

It wasn't going into the void that was dangerous, it was the coming out. No one cared where you started from, all they cared was that you didn't jump out in the same time and place as another ship. Most ships registered with the gate world closest to their starting point, but you didn't have to.
And while it was technically illegal, there were ways around using your own ship name.

Lyan's ship had jumped somewhere between 18:00 and 24:00 hours. Thousands of other ships had jumped during the same time. Fergus would have to check every record to find where Lady Lyan had gone.

But they knew where she was coming, so why wasn't she here yet? And why hadn't Rebekah sent them a message?

Fergus was back working on his screen. “The representative from Gate Union wants an update. And the Sandhurst seven has been hanging around, looking hopeful.”

“Let her hang.” For the first time in a long while, Rossi had something more to think about than the confluence and his body. This could be the opening salvo in the war everyone was expecting. “Organize a meeting with Gate Union in three hours,” which would give bitch Rebekah three hours more to get a message to them. “I'm going out to see what the confluence has for us today.”

EAN LAMBERT

ONE HUNDRED KILOMETERS,
and they might have been a million miles away. The ship was a tiny speck on their radar.

The military and the civilians had gathered in the foyer to watch it on the screen. Ean had gone there, too. He'd made an effort this morning, dressing carefully, smart enough that even Rigel would have nodded approvingly. He'd even thought about depilating, but that was probably carrying it too far. If he was to die today, it wasn't worth the hour it would take.

“Doesn't look like much,” Katida said.

Even as she spoke, the image zoomed in, larger and larger, until the sphere filled the whole screen. Why was it, Ean wondered, that as far back as humankind had existed, they had always imagined alien ships as spheres but had never been able to build their own that way. It wasn't even practical. All that wasted space inside the curve.

It looked dead. It felt dead. If there were lines on the ship, Ean couldn't feel them. The Haladean ship had been ten kilometers out, but Captain Helmo had said the Alliance linesmen sent in by the other five ships—which had all arrived days before Michelle's—had corroborated that. Surely they hadn't gone as close.

Spacer Radko coughed discreetly behind him and inclined her head. She seemed to have been designated his messenger. Or maybe she was Abram's personal assistant.

“Excuse me.” Ean bowed to Katida and left. He held his head high as he followed Radko. If he was going to die or be dumped here, he would do it with dignity. Less than a third of the people he'd known as a boy had survived to adulthood. Many of their deaths had been ugly or messy. He wanted a cleaner end.

Rebekah was already in the small meeting room. Maybe he should have come here first. Abram arrived not long after. Michelle didn't, and from the way Abram started speaking immediately, Ean didn't think she was coming, either. He felt as if he'd lost his only support, then laughed at himself for the notion. He was dreaming if he thought the heir to Lancia would in any way support him. She was just friendlier than Ean had expected. It was probably part of her training. Make people comfortable, make people trust you.

“Anything?” Abram asked.

Both linesmen shook their head.

“Captain Helmo said his linesmen felt it, too,” Ean said. “How close were they?”

“It wasn't this ship specifically,” Abram said. “We sent two others in first.” Of course they would have. No one would take this particular ship of dignitaries and militia without first ensuring they would be safe. “They're still here.”

“A hundred kilometers out?”

Abram nodded and pulled up some data. “Linesman grade six,” he said. “I believe they went in as close as fifty kilometers.”

“Can she feel the lines now?” Ean knew it was a she although he didn't know how.

Abram keyed some more commands. “Captain Rab,” he said to the face that came up on the wall screen. “Your linesman. Can she feel the lines now?”

“No, sir.” A commodore must outrank a captain. “Hasn't been able to feel it since we got back.”

“Is it distance, does she think?” Ean asked. “Or something else?”

The captain's gaze turned to him. “It's not clear,
Linesman.” Either he had good video pickup or he knew who Abram was with. “She didn't feel any lines at all initially, and never on the shuttle. Only after we sent a droid to see when it would trigger the defense mechanism. I couldn't give you an exact distance, but she started to feel it beforehand. We jumped out. When we jumped back, at one hundred kilometers, she couldn't feel it anymore.

“So,” said Rebekah after he'd clicked off. “We can get in half as far again with no danger.”

“We believe so,” Abram said. “Obviously, we won't be doing it in this ship.”

“I wonder what the admirals would say if they knew we could go closer,” Ean said.

Abram's voice was dry. “Believe me, Linesman, they all know. They wouldn't be where they are if their information-gathering skills were that poor.”

“But you—” Ean closed his mouth on what he'd been going to say. He thought Abram's security would be good enough to keep this a secret.

Abram sighed. “The Alliance is a lumbering beast, four hundred years old now. It's had plenty of time to develop holes.”

Almost as if in agreement with that, a new note sounded on Abram's communicator, and Captain Helmo's face appeared on-screen.

“Incoming ships,” he said tersely, and his face disappeared, replaced by two small ships.

“More holes than even I thought,” Abram muttered as he zoomed in on the first ship. It was a small cruiser; fast, luxurious, and large enough to hold twenty people in comfort. The logo emblazoned full-length down the side was the familiar red and gold of Galactic News.

The second ship was media as well. It looked to be a similar model, except that the logo on this one was Blue Sky Media.

Michelle's face appeared in the bottom, right-hand corner of the screen. “I suppose we should be grateful the media's intelligence is still better than Gate Union and Redmond's combined,” she said. She was sort of smiling, but the smile turned down, and her dimple didn't show. “What do you want me to do?”

“I'll get Helmo to talk to them first,” Abram said. “We'll
bring you in later if we need you. At least they came in farther out, rather than closer. I can imagine what would happen if they vaporized themselves. The whole galaxy would know.” He keyed up Helmo again. “Captain, warn them that they are in the middle of a military zone and that they must abide by your commands.” He keyed off, and muttered under his breath. “And tell them you'll shoot them if they get in the way.”

He looked at Ean and Rebekah staring at him. “I mean it. If they do anything to trigger that ship—” He pressed his lips together.

The media didn't believe that rules for others applied to them. If they wanted to go close to the ship, they would. They'd go right up to it if they could. Ean was surprised at how annoyed he was about that. They had no right to meddle with things they didn't understand. Besides, the Alliance had gotten here first. It was their find, not the media's.

“So let's get in there,” Rebekah said. “Before they do.”

Abram nodded. He looked at them both, looked at Ean, then at his comms. He clicked the comm unit on again. “Captain. Tell them that if they stay where they are for the moment, Lady Lyan will come out to their ships personally to give them an interview and explain what is happening.”

“Personally?” Captain Helmo said. “Is that—?” He cut off what he'd been going to say, but he didn't like it.

“Personally,” agreed Abram. “But they must stay where they are.”

“Understood. Sir.” Captain Helmo clicked off this time. Line five vibrated with the snap of it.

Abram turned back to Ean and Rebekah. “I don't want both of you going out together. Not initially.”

“As senior linesman, I should go then,” Rebekah said. She was almost quivering with expectation.

Abram nodded.

“I thought—” Ean said. Wasn't he the expendable one? The crazy one who was supposed to kill himself.

Abram's quelling gaze told him he thought too much. “We have a shuttle prepared,” he told Rebekah. “I'll take you down.” He looked at Ean. “Wait here,” and left, giving last-minute instructions to Rebekah as he went.

Ean flung himself into a chair with more force than necessary. So they didn't trust him even to be the guinea pig and get himself killed. He was useless here, and they wouldn't let him do a thing. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the music of the lines. Line six was still strong. Line one held an undercurrent of worry. It was the ship's job to protect Michelle. She could have done the interviews equally well through line five—the communications line—without having to leave the ship.

You couldn't sing something like that better. It wasn't a problem you could fix except have Michelle back safe. It showed that ships really did have soul although most linesmen would have said Ean imagined it. Maybe it was just Captain Helmo's worry leaking through.

A higher-than-average number of ship captains died of brain tumors that began in the right auditory cortex. Common theory was that because the lines were pure energy and ended on the bridge at the Captain's Chair, the line energy irradiated the brain. If the lines could leak into a captain's head, then why couldn't the captain's thoughts leak into the lines? Helmo was close to his ship.

If you took that further, could the lines have been trying to talk to him yesterday while he was in the void?

•   •   •

EAN
felt—through line five again—when the shuttle left. Abram didn't come back immediately.

Radko arrived first, bearing the ubiquitous pot of tea and three glasses. After she left, Ean poured himself a glass and was halfway through it before Abram arrived back with Michelle. He tossed a uniform shirt to Ean. It was plain, with nothing on the pocket at all. The name stenciled above the pocket was
WHITE
.

“I want to see that contract again,” Abram said to Michelle.

Michelle brought it up.

Ean silently poured them both tea—Rebekah wasn't here to sneer at his uncouthness—while Abram read the whole contract, frowning. “This contract says that you now work for us—the Empire of Lancia—and that you will carry out whatever work we ask you to do on the lines,” he said.

It was a standard contract except for the length. And the agreement that extra training would be provided and that Ean paid some of those costs, but Ean wasn't going to bring that up now.

“What happens if we ask you to do something you don't want to do?” Abram asked abruptly.

What could you do to the lines except fix them?

“Something a regular linesman wouldn't do.”

“Well,” said Ean, not really sure what he meant. “There's the code of conduct. All the cartels abide by that.”

“And if something is against the code of conduct?”

“The cartel master takes responsibility for disciplining any linesman who breaks the code.” A heavy weight seemed to settle on Ean's stomach, bringing acid and bile. “What exactly is it you want me to do?”

“What happens to the linesman?”

“It depends how bad it is. The cartel master gets rid of him. If he's lucky, he goes to a lower cartel house. If he's unlucky.” Ean shrugged. He ended up working for what scraps he could get or getting out of the lines altogether. Not that Ean planned to stop working with the lines. Ever. He'd find a way. Somehow.

He poured himself another tea with hands that shook. The tea was sour in his mouth. He forced himself to face the truth he should have faced a day ago. “It won't make any difference to me.” His voice was steady if a little hoarse. “You heard Rebekah. Everyone thinks I'm crazy.”

Whether he did or whether he didn't do what Abram asked, no one would ever buy his contract. Except perhaps Rigel, but even he couldn't buy it back if Ean had violated the code of conduct.

Two days ago, he'd been a ten, stupid enough to think that someone would buy his contract because of that. Maybe not the higher cartels, but definitely some of the secondary ones. Rebekah had proven what a dream that was. He gripped the glass hard. There was nowhere to go from here. Except back to the slums, and he wasn't going back there. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“You seem to have an affinity for line six.” Abram's gaze could have been compassionate if Ean wanted to interpret it
that way. He didn't. “I want you to break line six on those two ships.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Michelle put up a hand to cover her mouth, but his end-of-line employer didn't say anything.

“I don't break lines. I fix them.”

Abram pointed to the uniform shirt he'd tossed Ean earlier. “Do whatever you have to do to stop them coming any closer than they are now. Michelle will get you onto the ships.”

Ean gripped the shirt so tight it creased. “And Lady Lyan will, presumably, explain why I have to sing while she's being interviewed.”

“She will do whatever she needs to as well.”

Ean stood up, clutching the shirt to him, and walked out without another word.

He'd liked Abram and Michelle, had even started to think that maybe not everything from Lancia was bad. He should have known better.

Yes, he went straight to the fresher and scrubbed until the water ran out. Michelle and Abram would no doubt think it typical of him, part of his general craziness. They hadn't cut off his water supply yet. Captain Helmo would do that soon, he was sure. He wiped his eyes, still wet long after the water had run out and tried to work out what to do now.

Technically, they owned the contract and could ask anything line-related of him. It was only the code of conduct that had stopped the sabotages of the Great War, and that was why the code was enforced so strictly in the cartels. But these people weren't cartel. The cartels couldn't touch them—except perhaps refuse to service their lines, and how likely was that, given that Lancia was one of the richest empires in the galaxy. Someone would do it, and it would soon be forgotten.