Price of Ransom (17 page)

“I don’t know. From what I saw, they might have a certain—fascination. They’re so—so visceral.” He grinned.

Jenny shuddered. “You would consider—” She broke off. Yehoshua could not tell if she was disgusted or—was it too much to hope, so soon?—unconsciously jealous.

“They are handsome, in a completely extraordinary way.”

“In a completely
queer
way. Although I must say,” she gave Yehoshua a quick, conspiratorial grin, “Hawk had his own unique charm. I might have—ah—tried him myself if it wasn’t for Lily.”

For some reason this confession soured the entire conversation for Yehoshua. He managed to return her smile, but only because his urge to scowl would certainly cast him in an unfavorable light.

“Yehoshua.” To his relief, the captain had turned and was beckoning to him. He walked over to her. “What happened to the six patients we had in Medical who were still in coma? Dr. Bisayan says that Medical has only Akan casualties in it, and that Flower said she was completely free to help him.”

“Ah,” said Yehoshua, feeling uncomfortable under the scrutiny of the captain, the doctor, and the suspicious gaze of Deucalion, who had already made a bad impression on him by being overly officious. “I took the liberty of transferring those patients to Diomede’s hospital. Stationmaster—Diomede Coordinator Scallop assured me that they would be well cared for.”

“And we currently have no physician on board,” agreed Lily. She nodded. “Good. They’ll get better care there, and if any of them do recover, both Scallop and Thaelisha can explain their situation to them. At least they’re as close to Reft space as they can be.”

“And alive,” said Yehoshua.

Deucalion shook his head. “Medical care is that backward in this Reft space? I can see a full report at Concord will be necessary. There is no reason that a thorough educational program and exchange can’t be worked out to upgrade the current state of medicine there. People shouldn’t have to live that way.”

Dr. Bisayan was shaking his head and clicking his tongue in agreement.

Lily looked at Yehoshua and pursed her lips slightly, hiding a smile. Yehoshua kept his face carefully neutral. “Well, Deucalion,” said Lily heartily. “We’ll have to ask that you lead the expedition. I’d love to go myself, just to introduce you personally to the current head of the government.”

“You have a
single
person heading your government?” Deucalion asked, looking shocked.

“In any case, Dr. Bisayan,” said Lily, neatly sidestepping this outraged question by returning her attention to the physician, “there should be no problem with min Flower assisting you as much as you need.”

“Thank the Mother. No Center is staffed to handle a disaster of this magnitude. And we have to send
one
physician on each ship. As you know, most of the other people I have are volunteers who had little more than the usual first-aid training. If that physician hadn’t turned up fortuitously, not more than four hours after the main explosion—but he did. He pitched right in without even an invitation, and we were able to send him off with the first casualty ship to Turfan.”

“Yes, but you have such a fine medical system here,” said Yehoshua, unable to resist throwing this barb in Deucalion’s direction, “that surely it wouldn’t be
that
unlikely that a doctor might happen by, on a trip, or on a passing ship.”

“Of course not,” answered the doctor. “But one whose
specialty
is emergency medicine? Trained at
Columbia
, of all places.” He spoke the name with respect, even awe. “Yes, he was a little strange—his manner, and that old-fashioned style of dyeing the hair blue—and Iasi wasn’t sure we ought to put him in charge, but he was clearly competent at medicine whatever his other peculiarities, so what choice did we have?”

“
Blue hair
?” Lily demanded.

Bisayan shrugged apologetically. “It was really a Terran style that died a natural death. Those of us bred in the outer reaches, who see je’jiri more frequently, are less likely to think it a lark to imitate them.”

“A lark?” Yehoshua asked under his breath.

“But you say that he went on the first casualty ship sent to Turfan Link?” Lily asked, hounding this point tenaciously.

Bisayan nodded.

“How long ago did that ship leave? Before us, that is?”

Bisayan waved a hand, unsure. “You must understand that standing here talking to you is probably the longest break I’ve had since the explosion. I simply don’t know.”

“About a day and a half before us,” said Deucalion to Lily. “Why are you so interested, Captain?”

“And we’re halfway to Turfan now, is that right, Yehoshua?” she asked, ignoring Deucalion.

“Three windows out from Akan, three in to Turfan Link, by our charts.”

“Except we’re going rather slower because you only have one pilot and one nav officer,” Deucalion pointed out, forcibly reentering himself in the discussion.

Lily regarded him for a long moment with a measuring frown.

“Captain,” said Bisayan tentatively. “If I may get back to my duties?”

“Of course.” She said it absently, but the doctor nodded and hurried off. “Deucalion.” She said his name as if she had just at that moment come to some conclusion about him. “As your half-sister, I feel I can trust to blood ties to ensure your support. You know what business our father was in.”

Deucalion looked torn between pride and shame. “Yes. He was one of the saboteurs.”

“Have you ever heard of a saboteur named Hawk?”

“
The
Hawk?” Deucalion’s eyes widened, giving him a surprisingly childlike look of wonder. “The one who saved Father’s life after they’d blown Ogasawara Crossroads? He operated on him with only a laser pistol, a Swiss army knife, and a—”

“—six-year-old Kapellan girl to help him. Yes. That Hawk.”

“Can’t be.” His eyes narrowed, considering new information. “He’s in Concord prison. He was arrested twenty, thirty years ago.”

“He’s not there anymore,” said Lily.

“How would you know?”

“He was traveling with us.”

Deucalion regarded her thoughtfully. “Oh, he was, was he? I’m going to tell you a little classified information. He wasn’t actually in Concord prison. He was in the maximum security psychiatric ward. What are you trying to tell me?”

“Void help us,” Yehoshua breathed. “The psychiatric ward.”

“That I think he may be the physician who showed up at Akan,” said Lily. “We need to find him and get him back on board this ship.”

“How did he get out?” Deucalion demanded.

“He took our recce boat at Diomede—”

“I mean, from Concord prison. There’s never been an escape from that prison. And it was built sixty years ago.”

“I don’t know.”

“I suggest you find out. I’ll have to check the records.
If
I am given permission to disembark at Turfan Link, Captain.”

“Oh, let’s not stand on ceremony, brother,” said Lily, not a little caustically. “Call me Lily. Adam does.”

For an instant Deucalion looked taken aback at this reference to his twin. “Lily,” he said. To Yehoshua’s amusement, the informality seemed to make him uncomfortable. “From what I remember—and I may be mistaken—”

“Surely not,” murmured Yehoshua under his breath.

“—and he may have been rehabilitated since he was institutionalized, but Hawk—
the
Hawk—was labeled dangerously unstable, and I believe that he had actually committed several murders when he was an adolescent. Some social psychiatrist got him off—they always do—and he was rather pushed into the saboteur network once his aptitude for medicine had shown up. They needed a certain kind of people, you understand.”

“You seem to know a lot about him.” Lily looked displeased, and not a little angry, but Deucalion clearly did not know her well enough to attempt to soothe her.

“Understandably, with my background,” said Deucalion primly, “and raised in the thick of it, as I’m afraid I must admit I was—neither Mother nor Father seeing anything wrong with such an irregular life for a child, and Adam certainly never minded it—I’ve had to arm myself with knowledge to protect myself from—” He halted, looking abashed. “I even slip into primitive military terms, as you see.” Recovering himself, he assumed a more comfortable stance; that of someone about to give a lecture. “Once the Akan relief is settled, you must let me handle this business. You don’t want someone like that aboard this ship.”

Lily sighed. “Deucalion, has anyone ever told you that you’re sanctimonious?”

He stiffened. “That’s unkind, Lily. That’s the same word Adam used to use. But I refuse to be labeled a hypocrite.”

Lily chuckled, laying a hand on his arm in a gesture meant to be sisterly. “I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re a hypocrite. But you have to trust me, Deucalion. Hawk belongs on this ship. When we reach Turfan Link, will you help me?”

“I can’t promise that unconditionally. You must understand that. I have certain duties as a member of the bureau. I’ll have to look into his records. And interview him. What was the charge on your bounty?”

She hesitated, but it would be impossible to hide the truth from him when he could discover it himself easily enough. “Aiding and abetting—”

“—a dangerous fugitive.” He shook his head. “I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn’t know what you were doing at the time.”

“Thank you.”

Deucalion was clearly oblivious to irony once he got going.

“That will give you some immunity. Once I’ve seen Hawk, if at that time I can make a case for it, and I promise to review the data with as much impartiality as I’m capable of, then I’ll plead your side once we reach Concord.”

“Once
we
reach Concord?”

“Of course.” Deucalion looked surprised. “As soon as Akan is past critical disaster response, we must get your news of Reft space, and the recovery of this vessel—as amazing as that is—to Concord. Didn’t you tell me that is where you were headed in any case?”

“Deucalion, why would you plead my case if you believe Hawk to be dangerously unstable?”

He blinked, looking surprised. “Because you’re my sister.” The “of course,” although unspoken, was too loud to be unheard.

“I should tell you, then, that it was Yehoshua, not me, who said we were headed to Concord. To settle salvage rights for this ship. If it’s Concord that put the bounty hunter after me, I’m not sure I
want
, or ought, to go there.”

“But where else will you go?”

“How about The Pale?”

“I wouldn’t advise it. Not with a ship whose frame is good but whose software is one hundred years out of date. You can’t afford that kind of disadvantage there.”

“That is a good point.” Lily paused. It was amazing how much like Adam he looked. Only when he spoke did he betray himself. “We’ll see,” she temporized finally, to satisfy him. “But whatever happens, I’m—glad to have your company. I never had much chance to get to know Adam.”

“Adam was a rather wild youth, I’m afraid,” replied Deucalion, but a smile tugged up his lips as he said it, and a certain gleam of nostalgia lit his eye.

“He took after Father, I suppose,” said Lily, but before Deucalion could agree she realized with a sudden weight of dread that he did not know about Heredes’s—Taliesin’s—death.

“What’s wrong?” Deucalion asked.

“Nothing,” said Lily. “Let’s finish the tour and then we’ll have something to drink in my cabin.”

Deucalion looked at Yehoshua, as if asking him to explain her sudden change of tone. But Yehoshua only shrugged.

It took them over an hour to walk through the makeshift wards, but Deucalion seemed satisfied with the disposition of the casualties, and Dr. Bisayan, seen again briefly, was quite pleased with the addition of Flower to his severely shorthanded staff. Afterward, Lily suggested that they break at the captain’s cabin. Jenny offered to fetch drinks. While she was gone, Lily checked in with Bach, on the bridge, about their countdown to the next window.

“We have over two hours,” Lily said as Jenny returned with a tray of drinks and set them down on the small table by the couch.

Deucalion sighed and slid gratefully into the one chair. “They made these exploratory ships to be both utilitarian and yet luxurious enough so that the crew wouldn’t go crazy on the long trips out. Those were the days. How did you get a hold of her?”

“We found her.” Lily picked up a cup, but turned it round and round in her hands rather than drinking. “Quite by accident. The
Forlorn Hope
was the ghost ship of Reft space for generations: other ships would pick up her distress beacon and then lose it. We stumbled across her. We still don’t know how she got where we found her.”

“Her original crew?”

“Gone. Without a trace. As if they’d all simply vanished.”

“But there must have been some record on her log.”

“It was gone as well.”

Deucalion smiled. “It makes a good mystery. Most of that first major exploratory fleet never returned. The return of the
Forlorn Hope
will just add to the hard-luck fleet’s legend.”

“Deucalion,” Lily began, determined to break the news of his father’s death to him before she lost her resolve.

“Which reminds me,” he replied, as if she had just said something else. “Based on what little I’ve had a chance to look at, your records and log confirm that you have indeed come from Reft space. Therefore, I have to assume you are unfamiliar with League covenants. This matter of your bringing a je’jiri family on board, for instance. Besides the usual respect for foreign cultures and habits and needs, there is a very serious aspect of je’jiri human relations that you aren’t aware of.
Very
serious. Which is why I recommend that you
not
take them on.”

Lily set down her drink. “I already gave my word. And I know what the prohibition is.” She had no trouble recalling La Belle’s words. It was impossible to forget that scene, the terrified man begging for mercy at her feet—mercy that was so utterly denied him. “‘No human will mate or have intercourse in any sexual or sensual fashion with je’jiri,’” Lily quoted. Deucalion’s obvious surprise at her knowledge did not gratify her at all: it was too hard won. “I intend to keep them isolated, and to warn my crew of the full consequences of such—relations with them.”