The Ship Who Won (3 page)

THE SHIP WHO WON 15

I

and given it shape and texture, becoming more than a game,

meaning more. He'd never tell this space-dry plodder about

the time five years back that he actually stood vigil

throughout a long, lonely night lit by a single candle to earn

his knighthood. I guess you just had to be there, he thought

"If that's all?" he asked, standing up quickly.

Darvi waved a stylus at him, already engrossed in the

files. Keff escaped before the man thought of something

else to ask and hurried down the curving hall to the nearest

lift.

Keff had learned about Myths and Legends in primary

school. A gang of his friends used to get together once a

week (more often when they dared and homework permitted) to play after class. Keff liked being able to live out

some of his heroic fantasies and, briefly, be a knight battling evil and bringing good to all the world. As he grew up

and learned that the galaxy was a billion times larger than

his one small colony planet, the compulsion to do good

grew, as did his private determination that he could make a

difference, no matter how minute. He managed not to

divulge this compulsion during his psychiatric interviews

on his admission to Brawn Training and kept his altruism

private. Nonetheless, as a knight of old, Keff performed his

assigned tasks with energy and devotion, vowing that no ill

or evil would ever be done by him. In a quiet way, he

applied the rules of the game to his own life.

As it happened, Carialle also loved M&L, but more for

the strategy and research that went into formulating the

quests than the adventuring. After they were paired, they

had simply fallen into playing the game to while away the

long days and months between stars: He could put no

finger on a particular moment when they began to make it

a lifestyle: Keff the eternal knight errant and Carialle his

lady fair. To Keff this was the natural extension of an

adolescent interest that had matured along with him.

As soon as he'd heard that the CX-963 was in need of a

brawn, his romantic nature required him to apply for the

position as Carialles brawn. He'd heard-who hadn't?-

about the devastating space storm and collision that had

cost Fanine Takajima-Morrows life and almost took Carialle's sanity.

She'd had to undergo a long recovery period when the

Mutant Minorities (MM) and Society for the Preservation

of the Rights of Intelligent Minorities (SPRIM) boffins

wondered if she'd ever be willing to go into space again.

They rejoiced when she announced that not only was she

ready to fly, but ready to interview brawns as well. Keffhad

wanted that assignment badly. Reading her file had given

him an intense need to protect Carialle. A ridiculous

notion, when he ruefully considered that she had the

resources of a brainship at her synapse ends, but her vul-nerability had been demonstrated during that storm. The

' protective aspect of his nature vibrated at the challenge to

keep her from any further harm.

Though she seldom talked about it, he suspected she

still had nightmares about her ordeal-in those random

hours when a brain might drop into dreamtime. She also

proved to be the best of partners and companions. He

liked her, her interests, her hobbies, didn't mind her faults

or her tendency to be right more often than he was. She

taught him patience. He taught her to swear in ninety languages as a creative means of dispelling tension. They

bolstered one another. The trust between them was as

deep as space and felt as ancient and as new at the same

time. The fourteen years of their partnership had flown by,

literally and figuratively. Within Keffs system of values, to

be paired with a brainship was the greatest honor a mere

human could be accorded, and he knew it.

The lift slowed to a creaky halt and the doors opened.

Keffhad been on SSS-900 often enough to turn to port as

THE SHIP WHO WON 17

he hit the corridor, in the direction of the spacer bar he

liked to patronize while on station.

Word had gotten around that he was back, probably the

helpful Simeons doing. A dark brown stout already separating from its creamy crown was waiting for him on the

polished steel bar. It was the first thing on which he

focused.

"Ah!" he cried, moving toward the beer with both hands

out. "Come to Keff."

A hand reached into his field of vision and smartly

slapped his wrist before he could touch the mug handle.

Keff tilted a reproachful eye upward.

"Hows your credit?" the bartender asked, then tipped

him a wicked wink. She was a woman of his own age with

nut-brown hair cut close to her head and the milk-fair skin

of the lifelong spacer of European descent. "Just kidding.

Drink up, Keff. This ones on the house. It's good to see

you."

"Blessings on you and on this establishment, Mariad,

and on your brewers, wherever they are," Keff said, and

put his nose into the foam and slowly tipped his head back

and the glass up. The mug was empty when he set it down.

"Ahhhh. Same again, please."

Cheers and applause erupted from the tables and Keff

waved in acknowledgment that his feat had been witnessed. A couple of people gave him thumbs up before

returning to their conversations and dart games.

"You can always tell a light-year spacer by the way he

refuels in port," said one man, coming forward to clasp

Keffs hand. His thin, melancholy face was contorted into

an odd smile.

Keff stood up and slapped him on the back. "Baran Larrimer! I didn't know you and Shelby were within a million

light years of here."

An old friend, Larrimer was half of a brain/brawn team

assigned to the Central Worlds defense fleet. Keff suddenly remembered Simeon s briefing about naval support.

Larrimer must have known exactly what Keff had been

told. The older brawn gave him a tired grimace and nodded at the questioning expression on his face.

"Got to keep our eyes open," he said simply.

"And you are not keeping yours open," said a voice. A

tiny arm slipped around Keffs waist and squeezed. He

glanced down into a small, heart-shaped face. "Good to see

you, Keff."

"Susa Gren!" Keff lifted the young woman clean off the

ground in a sweeping hug and set her down for a huge kiss,

which she returned with interest. "So you and Marliban

are here, too?"

"Courier duty for a trading contingent," Susa said in a

low voice, her dark eyes crinkling wryly at the corners. She

tilted her head toward a group of hooded aliens sitting isolated around a table in the comer. "Hoping to sell Simeon

a load of protector/detectors. They plain forgot that Marls

a brain and could hear every word. The things they said in

front of him! Which he quite rightly passed straight on to

Simeon, so, dear me, didn't they have a hard time bargain—

ing their wares. I'd half a mind to tell CenCom that those

idiots can find their own way home if they won't show a

brainship more respect. But," she sighed, "it's paying

work."

Marl had only been in service for two-no, it was three

years now-and was still too far down in debt to Central

Worlds for his shell and education to refuse assignments,

especially ones that paid as well as first-class courier work.

Susa owed megacredits, too. She had made herself responsible for the debts of her parents, who had borrowed

heavily to make an independent go of it on a mining world,

and had failed. Fortunately not fatally, but the disaster had

left them with only a subsistence allowance. Keff liked the

spunky young woman, admired her drive and wit, her

springy step and dainty, attractive figure. The two of them

had always had an affinity which Carialle had duly noted,

commenting a trifle bluntly that the ideal playmate for a

brawn was another brawn. Few others could understand

the dedication a brawn had for his brainship nor match the

lifelong relationship.

"Susa," he said suddenly. "Do you have some time? Can

you sit and talk for a while?"

Her eyes twinkled as if she had read his mind. "I've

nothing to do and nowhere to go. Marl and I have liberty

until those drones want to go home. Buy me a drink?"

Larrimer stood up, tactfully ignoring the increasing aura

of intimacy between the other two brawns. He slapped his

credit chit down on the bar and beckoned to Mariad.

"Come by if you have a moment, Keff," he said. "Shelby

would be glad to see you."

"I will," Keff said, absently swatting a palm toward

Larrimers hand, which caught his in a firm clasp. "Safe

going."

He and Susa sat down together in a booth. Mariad

delivered a pair of Guinnesses and, with a motherly cluck,

sashayed away.

"You're looking well," Susa said, scanning his face with a

more than friendly concern. "You have a tan!"

"I got it on our last planetfall," Keff said. "Hasn't had

time to fade yet."

"Well, I think you look good with a litde color in your

face," she declared. Her mouth crooked into a one-sided

grin. "How far down does it go?"

Keff waggled his eyebrows at her. "Maybe in awhile I'll

let you see."

"Any of those deep scratches dangerous?" Carialle

asked, swiveling an optical pickup out on a stalk to oversee

the techs checking her outsides. The ship lay horizontally

to the "dry dock" pier, giving the technicians the maximum

expanse of hull to examine.

"Most of 'em are no problem. I'm putting setpatch in

the one nearest your fuel lines," the coveralled man said,

spreading a gray goo over the place. It hardened slowly,

acquiring a silver sheen that blended with the rest of the

hull plates. "Don't think it'll split in temperature extremes,

ma'am, but its thinner there, of course. This'U protect you

more.

"Many thanks," Carialle said. When the patching compound dried, she tested her new skin for resonance and

found its density matched well. In no time she'd forget she

had a wrinkle under the dressing. Her audit program also

found that the fee for materials was comfortingly low, compared to having the plate removed and hammered, or

replaced entirely.

Overhead, a spider-armed crane swung its burden over

her bow, dropping snakelike hoses toward her open cargo

huU. The crates of xeno material had already been taken

away in a specially sealed container. A suited and hooded

worker had already cleaned the nooks and niches, making

sure no stray native spores had hooked a ride to the

Central Worlds. The cranes operator directed the various

flexible tubes to the appropriate valves. Fuel was first, and

Carialle flipped open her fuel toggle as the stout hose

reached it. The narrow tube which fed her protein vats

had a numbered filter at its spigot end. Carialle recorded

that number in her files in case there were any impurities

in the final product. Thankfully, the conduit that fed the

carbo-protein sludge to Keffs food synthesizer was

opaque. The peristaltic pulse of the thick stuff always

made Cari think of quicksand, of sand-colored octopi

creeping along an ocean floor, of week-old oatmeal. Her

attention diverted momentarily to the dock, where a

# AAV^ T " \^# 1

front-end loader was rolling toward her with a couple of

containers, one large and one small, with bar-code tags

addressed to Keff. She signaled her okay to the driver to

load them in her cargo bay.

Another tech, a short, stout woman wearing thick-soled

magnetic boots, approached her airlock and held up a

small item. 'This is for you from the stationmaster, Carialle. Permission to come aboard?"

Carialle focused on the datahedron in her fingers and

felt a twitch of curiosity.

"Permission granted," she said. The tech clanked her

way into the airlock and turned sideways to match the

up/down orientation of Carialle's decks, then marched

carefully toward the main cabin. "Did he say what it was?"

"No, ma'am. It's a surprise."

"Oh, Simeon!" Carialle exclaimed over the stationmaster's private channel. "Cats! Thank you!" She scanned the

contents of the hedron back and forth. "Almost a realtime

week of video footage. Wherever did you get it?"

"From a biologist who breeds domestic felines. He was

out here two months ago. The hedron contains compressed videos of his cats and kittens, and he threw in

some videos of wild felines he took on a couple of the colony worlds. Thought you'd like it."

"Simeon, it's wonderful. What can I swap you for it?"

The stationmasters voice was sheepish. "You don't need

to swap, Cari, but if you happened to have a spare painting? And I'm quite willing to sweeten the swap."

"Oh, no. I'd be cheating you. It isn't as if they're music.

They're nothing."

'That isn't true, and you know it. You're a brain's artist."

With little reluctance, Carialle let Simeon tap into her

video systems and directed him to the comer of the main