Price of Ransom (21 page)

“I’m a practicing martial artist. I can’t resist sparring with my opponent.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

“Deucalion, considering how short a time we’ve known each other, there’s no need for you to come elder brother so strongly. I got enough of that growing up. This is
our
ship, after all. I’d like to know what gave you the right to authorize admitting three known hostiles aboard it?”

Deucalion stopped pacing. He settled into his most characteristic lecturing position: arms crossed on his chest, chin up, mouth turned down. It was, Lily reflected, almost a parody of his father’s gentle but stern teaching style. “They are not hostiles,” he began.

“Before you and Bach got here,” Lily interrupted, “I received a report from Paisley that the Ardakian who was admitted as a casualty was in fact faking it and has now barricaded himself and his cousin into our com-tac room, while Windsor sits up gloating on the bridge. I can’t even get my own personnel in to com to run the highroad—”

“You forget that we are already running out-system with one of the Ardakians on com and will reach the first window in one hour.”

“—or to find out if Windsor has actually damaged our operating system in some way.”

Deucalion uncrossed his arms to shake his hand at her. “Now let’s take these accusations one by one. First, they are not hostiles. They are citizens of League space.”

“Which I am not.”

“That’s not the point here. Second, they are not carrying weapons.”

“Hells, Deucalion, they don’t
need
to carry weapons. Those two Ardakians
are
weapons. They’re twice as strong”—she hesitated here, thinking of Yehoshua’s accidental blow with his artificial arm that had thrown Stanford across a small room—“as any human. It’s no wonder Windsor has kept them on as partners.”

“Did it ever occur to you that loyalty and a feeling of kinship might be a more powerful motivating force than expediency?” Deucalion asked primly.

Lily chose to ignore the comment. “What if I tell you now that I will go freely to Concord? As a free citizen of Reft space? But I’m
not
letting some bounty hunter bring me in. You have yet to explain to me how Concord Intelligence can have brought charges against a person who was
never
in League space until—what?—two months ago?”

“And third,” Deucalion went on, “there’s no guarantee that this ship belongs to you and your people in any case. That all has to be resolved at Concord.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

Deucalion looked uncomfortable. He glanced away from her, sweeping his gaze around the room as if its decoration suddenly interested him.

“You can’t tell me, can you?”

There was a long silence. He sighed abruptly and moved without asking permission to sit down on the bed. “I have no authority to countermand the bounty. I don’t work in that division.”

“Ah,” said Lily, sitting down next to him. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

The silence following this remark seemed almost companionable compared to the argument beforehand.

“It’s hard for me to believe he’s dead,” said Deucalion at random, but she knew he was speaking of his father. He smoothed out the bedcovers with one hand, as if the action soothed him, and then looked up at her, thoughtful. “How was it you met Hawk?”

“A League ship somehow got into Reft space. He was on board.”

“Supposedly rehabilitated. Isn’t that what you said? I don’t understand why a trip like that could have been kept secret, but it must have been, or I certainly would have heard about it.”

“Exactly what division
do
you work in?”

“Human Services. My specialty is Disaster Relief. I got a lot of practice in my youth. But Lily, did you meet anyone else from that expedition? Do you remember names?”

“Yes. A woman called Maria and a man, Anjahar.”

“Anjahar—that’s such a common name these days. Can you describe either of them?”

“He was tall, well-built, quite light in complexion though he flushed a lot. And he had blond hair, which is unusual in the Reft. She was more common looking: dark skin, black hair.” She paused, trying to picture that long-ago scene in her mind. “I know what I remember best about her. The clothing she wore. It was sort of a—” She could not find words for it and turned to Bach.
Bach,
she whistled.
Is there a term for it, do you remember?

Assuredly, patroness,
he sang, ecstatic to be of service.
The woman designated Maria wore the costume usually called a
sari
, which is the ancient indigenous dress of a people called Hindu, who in prespace times lived in a nation state designated as India in the common tongue.

“Thank you. I’m quite impressed, Bach-o.” And she smiled.

Bach acknowledged the compliment with a quiet but rather florid trill.

“Mother bless me,” breathed Deucalion, staring at this exchange. “You’ve bonded him. I just thought he was some old relic that you’d cobbled together to perform calculating functions on the bridge. Do you know how rare those are now? It’s a Bach, isn’t it?”

“Yes—”

“It has to be a Bach.” Deucalion continued to stare, rapt, at Bach’s gleaming surface. “They tried about six models on that AI program. The Meleps never achieved full function. The Mozarts all burned out quickly. The Beethovens proved too unstable to be reliable—they would always lose their input function but continue to output. The Annanas couldn’t interact with humans. Only the Hildegards and the Bachs had stability at all, and the Catholic Church eventually combined with the Church of Three Faiths to get a court order impounding what Hildegards were left for any but religious purposes. That ’bot is an invaluable relic.”

“Well,” replied Lily, a little overwhelmed by this recital, “I know he’s invaluable. Hindu. India. Sari. Do these words mean anything to you? She also had a red dot in the middle of her forehead. I remember that.”

For a moment Deucalion looked taken aback. “Red dot? Wait a minute. The woman Maria. There is a woman—Maria Rashmi Leung. I only know her in passing. By repute, she’s a bit of a reactionary. That’s why she adopted the old style native costume. I don’t know why
she
would have been on an expedition like that. But she is in Yevgeny’s division.”

“Who’s Yevgeny?”

“The man who signed your order.”

“What division is he in?”

Deucalion hesitated visibly before he answered. “He’s head of Rehabilitation. But he’s also on the council,” he added, as if that mitigated the other duty, “and he served a term in Parliament. But if Maria Leung was in Reft space, then you must have done something there—”

“Deucalion. As far as I could tell in the brief interview I had with her and her companions, the only crime I was being accused of was that of association. Which as far as I know has never been a crime in
Reft
space. First with our father. And then with Hawk, when he left them to come with us.”

“
Left
them? That must be it. Even if he had been rehabilitated, he would have been on some kind of parole. Which he then violated, and you abetted. Why did he go with you, anyway?”

Lily looked away from him, glad that the dim light hid her flush. “Did it ever occur to you that the League’s justice might not have seemed so merciful to someone like him? They had him in solitary confinement. In sensory deprivation.”

“Surely not—” He looked righteously shocked.

“Surely, yes. And to Hawk—”

“But Lily,” Deucalion said, angry now, “if it’s true that he’s—well, it was never spoken about aloud, but certainly I heard Mother mention it once—that he was one of those rare, rare fluke half-breeds—half je’jiri.” He halted, looking stricken. “But perhaps you didn’t know.”

“I knew,” she replied, grim.

“Well, then, it would have been not just cruel but inhuman to subject him to sensory deprivation. Not that it isn’t in any case, but with his peculiar melding of characteristics …” He shook his head. “Who could have ordered such a thing?” Subsiding into silence, he mulled over this question until a new thought came abruptly to him, altering his very posture. “Lily! Since you’ve now reviewed the obligations attendant on human-je’jiri relations, you must understand the complications inherent in dealing with someone of Hawk’s background. If we do find him—”

“
When
.”

“—when we do find him, you might want to reconsider keeping him on board this ship.”

Lily sighed. “It’s too late. Like Bach, he’s already bonded.”

“Already bonded! In Reft space, where no one had any inkling what they were dealing with?”

She nodded.

“With whom—” he halted. Read her posture and what he could make out of her expression. Jumped to his feet. “Why didn’t you
tell me
? This changes everything! Of course, there can be no question about separating him from you once he’s found.”

“Then help me get Windsor off this ship.”

“I can’t.”

“Let me rephrase the question. If I take steps to remove him and his companions without violence, will you attempt to stop me?”

Frowning, Deucalion paced to the far wall and back again before he answered. “It is my duty as a member of the Bureau—as a citizen of the League—to abide by the law.”

“Yes,” Lily interrupted, “but will you actively try to hinder me? I won’t have that man on this ship.”

“You wouldn’t go with him on to Concord and trust myself and your crew to search for—No, I suppose not.”

“It’s not a matter of trust, although I certainly have no reason to trust Windsor. But I have to be there when we find Hawk.”

“I still don’t understand what happened to him. If he had mated you, he would never have left. They don’t do that.”

Now it was Lily’s silence that damped the exchange. The air itself, in the room, seemed expectant and hushed. “Sit down,” she said softly, at last. “Let me tell you.”

When she had finished her abbreviated recital, he regarded her not, to her surprise, with horror, but with compassion. “In other words, he thinks you’re dead and has suffered a mental breakdown as a result.”

She did not reply.

Finally, he rose. “I trust,” he said slowly, “that you understand that for the rest of the trip to Turfan Link I will be completely taken up with the casualties and the medical team. Doubtless I won’t see you at all until we reach there.”

“I understand,” she replied.

“Very well. Can you let me out?”

She palmed the com-console and asked Jenny to give her the all clear. Once given, she punched in her code and, the door slipping aside, Deucalion left. Lily caught a glimpse of Jenny and six Ridanis, all armed and stationed at strategic locations around the outer room. It was as dimly lit as the inner suite, fading the Ridani’s colorful tattoos to indiscriminate shades of gray. Then the door slipped shut again, leaving her alone.

She laid down flat on the bed, cradling her head in her cupped hands, her ankles crossed, and stared at the ceiling. It was almost lost in gloom. She brooded over the minute textures that gave shading to its contours, almost like a faint echo of a topographical map. The dimness of the room shadowed her thoughts. How long she lay, brooding, she did not know. Bach sang softly at the foot of her bed:

Zwar ist solche Herzensstube

Wohl kein schöner Fürstensall,

Sondern eine finstre Grube;

Doch, sobald dein Gnadenstrahl

In denselben nur wird blinken

Wird es voller Sonnen dünken.

“A heart’s chamber such as this

is certainly no finely appointed hall of princes

a dark pit, rather;

yet, no sooner shall Thy favor’s beam

but gleam within there,

than it will be seen to be filled with light.”

They went through.

She saw musical notation, weaving in and out on itself, now reversing itself, now symmetrical—quaerendo invenietis

And came out.

Bach was still singing, but it was music that she did not recognize. She continued to stare at the ceiling, but although no seeming time had elapsed the ceiling’s textures now seemed to have become a puzzle reflecting Bach’s music.

“Bach,” she said. “What is inside a window?”

He incorporated his answer into his music with extraordinary felicity, so that there was no lapse in its flow.
An infinite stream.

“But how do you get there?”

You will find it by seeking.

“You will find it by seeking,” she echoed, the rhythm of her words slipping unconsciously into the same cadence as Bach, and then she whistled it several times, careful to blend it with the robot’s music. She gave up when he began elaborating impossibly complex variations on the theme. But while he continued, she stood up and in the space between the bed and the wall—vast enough by the usual standards of cramped merchantmen in Reft space—did kata.

Started with the first one she had ever learned, “First Cause,” going through it again and again, meditating on each variation the slightest reangling of her fingers made in the form as an entirety. Went on to “Peaceful Mind” until she had exhausted it as well—except that there was an infinity of variations within each move, each gesture, that could never be exhausted.

After a while, she had to conserve her energy by going more slowly again, but this added a new element, an echoing whole-note counterpoint to the quicker and strong pace of full-speed. When she began to get tired, her fatigue added still another level of contrast. She stepped up the pace again, moving on to a higher kata, and a yet higher one. She had long since lost track of the time.

They went through.

The fortress. It is bounded on four sides, each side only as strong as your own strength, but always as weak as your own weakness.

She held to the image.

She twisted her left hand.

And came out.

The few centimeters she had shifted her left hand was virtually insignificant—unmeasurable—by objective standards, but for a long moment she simply stared at her hand, astonished. She was damp with sweat; a salty bead of liquid coalesced on her lips, so that she became aware that she was thirsty. But Bach was singing again, so she went on.