Partnership (27 page)

"You don't have to come with us," Micaya told him.

"We can get another brawn assigned to this ship.

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You're due a real R & R tour after that undercover work at Summerlands — "

Forister lifted his head and gazed at her with flat gray eyes. "You took all the risks at Summerlands," he said in a voice so drained of feeling that it made Nancia distinctly nervous. She increased the magnification of her local sensors until she could see the pulse throbbing in Forister"s temple and hear the soft pounding of his heart. The man was under far too much strain.

"I WAS USELESS," his amplified voice crashed upon her, and Nancia hastily retreated to a normal sensor level, nerve endings twitching from the grating sounds. "Couldn't even find computer records to back you up. If anyone deserves a term of rest, Mic, it's you.

And if anyone must prove my nephew's dishonor," he finished wearily, "let it be me. We won't be able to keep it in the family—I know that—but I need to know exactly what he's done and how we can make reparation."

"It's not good to be personally involved in your cases," General Micaya Questar-Benn murmured.

"First rule of Academy."

Forister's spine straightened. "No. The first rule is... to serve. That's all I ask of you. A chance to serve, to make some reparation if any can be made. Besides,"

he added with just a trace of the old snap in his voice,

"you won't find another brawn this side of Bellatrix subspace."

"Oh, come now," Micaya said. "You people with brawn training always overrate yourself. I'll wager there are half a dozen qualified brawns in Vega subspace alone."

Forister straightened another infinitesimal fraction of an inch. "Not qualified for the new hyperchip-enhanced brainships. Our Nancia's got the

enhancements, haven't you, my dear?" As always, he turned his head towards the titanium column when PARTNERSHIP

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addressing her, just as if he were inviting another softshell — so&person, Nancia corrected herself— to join in the conversation.

"My lower deck sensors and port side nav controls have the hyperchips," she told him, "and I'm using them in some of the processing banks. I'm on a waiting list for the rest."

"There you are, then," Forister told Micaya. "You need me. And 1 — need to do this."

"You need this assignment like I need another prosthesis," Micaya muttered, but she sat down again with the air of one who'd given up argument. "And just how do you happen to be qualified for the new chipships, anyway? You've been CenDip for — "

"More years than either of us chooses to specify,"

Forister interrupted her. "And the term is brainships, Mic, not 'chipships.' Let's not offend our lady."

"It's all right," Nancia cut in. "I'm not offended. Really."

"But I am," said Forister. He took a deep breath and straightened. Nancia could almost see him pushing the pain he felt deep inside, replacing his diplomat's mask. When he turned his head to speak directly to her, he looked almost untroubled — if you didn't focus your sensors on the tiny lines of strain and worry around his eyes. "You are my lady now, Nancia, at least for the duration of this mission. And no one speaks casually of my brainship."

Micaya blew out her pursed lips with an ex-asperated sigh. "You never answered my question.

How come you're qualified for the newest models of brainships, when you've been out of the brawn service for... years?"

"I read a lot," Forister said with an airy wave of one hand. "Ancient guerrilla wars, new compunav systems, it's all grist to my mill. I'm a twentieth century man at heart," he told Micaya, referring to the Age of the First Information Explosion. "A man of many in-212

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terests and unguessed-at talents. And I like to keep current in my field—all my fields."

"A man of unguessed-at bullshit, anyway," Micaya retorted. "Okay. You're in. At least I'll have someone to beat at tri-chess on the way over to Angalia."

Forister snorted. "You mean someone to beat you.

Your ego has increased out of all proportion to your skill, General. Set 'em up!"

Nancia watched with curiosity as General Questar-Benn drew a palm-sized card from her pocket. Forister grinned. "Brought your portable game board, I see."

The general tapped the slight indentations on the surface of the card and it projected a hologram of a partitioned cube, shimmering with rainbow light at the edges. Another series of taps produced the translucent images of playing pieces aligned at two opposing edges of the cube. Nancia twiddled with her sensor magnification and focus until she could make out the details. Yes, those were the standard tri-chess pieces: she recognized the age-old triple ordering. Pawns in the first and lowest rank; above them, the King and Queen with their Bishops and Knights and Castles. Above them the highest rank was poised to swoop down over the gamecube, the Brainship and Brawn with their supporting pieces, the Scouts and Hovercraft and Satellites. The images were blurred and kept flickering in and out, giving Nancia a sensation of tight bands pulled across her sensor connections if she tried to look at them for any length of time.

"Pawn to Brain's Scout 4,2,w Forister grunted a standardized opening move.

Nothing happened.

"My portable set isn't equipped with voice recognition," Micaya apologized. "You'll have to tap in the code."

As she indicated the row of fingertip-sized indentations, Nancia hummed softly — her substitute for the rasps and hawks of "throat-clearing" with which softshells began an unscheduled interruption. Both players looked up, and after a startled moment Forister inclined his head to Nancia's titanium column.

"Yes, Nancia?"

"If you'll give me a moment to study the configuration," Nancia suggested, "I believe I can replicate your play-holo with a somewhat clearer display. And I, of course, can supply the voice recognition processing."

Even as she spoke, she assigned a virtual memory space and a graphics co-processor to the problem.

Before the sound of her voice had died away, a new and much clearer holographic projection shimmered beside the original one. Forister exclaimed in delight at the perfect detailing of the miniaturized pieces; Micaya put out her hand as if to touch a perfectly shaped litde Satellite with its three living and storage globes, complete with tiny access doors and linking spacetubes.

"Beautiful," Forister sighed in delight. "But won't this take too much processing capability, Nancia?"

"Not when we're just sitting dirtside," Nancia told him. "I don't even use that processor when we're doing regular navigation. Might have to shut down briefly when we're in Singularity, that does take some concentration, but— "

Forister closed his eyes briefly. "That's perfectly all right, Nancia. To tell you the truth, it never occurred to me to play tri-chess in Singularity anyway."

"Me either," said Micaya, looking slightly green at the very thought. "You don't want to think about spatial relationships at a moment like that"

"I do," said Nancia cheerfully.

Less than two Central Standard Hours later, Sev interrupted the first tri-chess game to deliver a subdued Darnell Glaxely-Overton for transport to Central. "He 214

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broke when I showed him the hedron of Hopkirk's evidence," he told the others after Darnell had been confined in a cabin. "Funny — almost as if he'd expected somebody to come after him one of these days.

Spent most of the flyer trip back telling all he knows about the other three. Here's the recording.''

"Four," Nancia corrected Sev as he slid a datacard into her reader.

"Three," Sev said again. "Fassa. Alpha. And . ..

Blaize." He carefully avoided looking at Forister as he pronounced the last name.

"Neither of them has said anything implicating Polyon de Gras-Waldheim?'' Nancia couldn't believe this.

Sev shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe there isn't anything to say. You never know, there could be one good apple in this barrel of rotten ones."

Not Polyon. But Nancia refrained from voicing her protest. After the conversations she'd heard on her maiden voyage, she was convinced that Polyon de Gras-Waldheim was completely amoral. But would it be ethical to reveal those conversations? Caleb had been so adamantly against anything that even suggested spying, she'd never even thought of telling him.

But that had been five years ago. She had changed; she now saw shades of gray instead of the neat black and white of CS rules. Even Caleb might have changed; after all, he'd consented to this undercover mission.

Under protest

He might feel doubly betrayed if she chose to violate his ethical code when he wasn't even here to censure her for it.

Perhaps she could put off the decision for a little longer "It might be worth going by Shemali anyway,"

Nancia suggested. "You never know. We might find some evidence linking de Gras-Waldheim with the rest I

of the crew." We'd have that evidence already, if they weren't

-}: oft terrified to say a ward against him.

"Possibly," Sev agreed. "Meet me there, after Angalia?"

"I thought you were coming with us!" Micaya Questar-Benn half rose from her seat, putting one hand right through Nancia's tri-chess hologram.

"I was," Sev agreed. "I am. I'll meet you on Shemali.

Something's come up."

He was gone before any of them could question him, taking the stairs three at a time and whistling as he went. Nancia briefly considered slamming her lower doors on him and holding him until he explained exacdy what he was up to.

She wouldn't do that, of course. It would be an unethical and unconscionable abuse of her abilities, the sort ofbullying she'd been warned against in the ethics classes that were pan of every shellperson's training.

But it was a sore temptation.

"Something," Micaya said thoughtfully, "has made that young man extremely happy. I wonder what it was. Nancia, is there anything earth-shaking in that datacard of Darnell Overton-Glaxer/s testimony?"

Nancia had started scanning just before Micaya spoke. "There isn't even anything interesting," she said, "unless a sordid record of petty bribes and corruption and bullying fascinates you."

"Ah. Overton-Glaxely did strike me as the cheap sort"

"You might want to examine his statement yourself," Nancia suggested. "You may see something I've overlooked."

Micaya nodded. "I'll do that. But I doubt I'll find anything. Bryley said there wasn't any evidence against de Gras-Waldheim, so whatever is taking him to Shemali, it can't be our business. Damn that boy!

Oh, well, I suppose we'll find out when we reach Shemali."

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"But first," Forister said, "we have a task to complete at Angalia." His face was gray and still again; the momentary animation brought on by the tri-chess game had vanished. He looks like a man with a deadly dis~

ease. Is family honor so important to him ? Nancia wondered how she'd feel if her sister Jinevra were found to have corrupted her branch of PTA and embezzled the department's funds.

Impossible even to imagine such a thing. Well, then, what if Flix — she couldn't think what Flix might do, either, but what if he had got in with the wrong crowd

— like Blaize — and had done something that would force her to hunt him down, arrest him, send him to Central for years of prison without his beloved musk?

The pain of that thought shook Nancia so deeply that for a moment the even hum of the air stabilizers was broken and the co-processor handling the tri-chess hologram faltered. The gamecube image shivered, broke apart in rainbow fractures, then solidified again as Nancia gained control of herself and her systems.

If even imagining Flix in trouble hurt her so deeply, how could Forister face the reality of Blaize's crime?

He couldn't, she decided, and it was up to her and Micaya to distract him whenever possible.

"General Questar-Benn, it's your move," she said.

"What? Oh—Scout to Queen's Bishop 3,3," Micaya said. The move took one of Forister's Satellites and left a probability path to his Brains hip. Nancia calculated the possible moves without conscious effort.

"You have only two moves that will not put your Brainship in check within the next five-move sequence," she warned Forister.

"Two?" Forister's eyebrows shot up and he bent over the gamecube. "I saw only one."

"Foul!" Micaya complained. "I challenged the brawn, not the brain. **

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"We work as a team," Nancia told her.

She certainly hoped that was true. For Forister's sake — for both their sakes. He didn't need to get through this grief alone; she was there to steady him.

"Ah. I see what you mean." Forister bent over the board and surprised Nancia with a third move, one so apparently disastrous that she had not even considered it in her initial calculations.

With a subdued whoop of glee, Micaya Questar-Benn took Forister's second Satellite — and watched dumbfounded as he proceeded to shift an unconsidered knight from the second rank and place her Brainship in check.

"Thank you for the hint, Nancia," Forister said.

"Until you forced me to consider the alternative move, I hadn't even thought of using the Jigo Kanaka advance in this situation."

"I ... ah ... you're quite welcome," Nancia managed to tell him between the three subsequent moves that brought the game to its slashing conclusion, with Micaya's forces immobilized, her Brawn taken and her Brainship checkmated.

Perhaps Forister didn't need quite so much help as she'd anticipated.

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• CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Nancia's landing on Angalia was one of the worst she'd ever executed. The planet took her completely by surprise.

Initial navigation maneuvers went normally. It wasn't until she was in visual range of the landing field that she became confused. The green terraced cliffs behind the mesa and the grassy basin surrounding it looked nothing at all like her memories of the landing five years ago. Could she possibly have miscalculated, come down in some hitherto unknown section of the planet?