TWELVE
On Board Spiral Dance
Departing Faldaiza
PILOT CANTRA’S AUTO-RUN leaving no room for vary, nor any way short of physical tampering to take the thing off-line and just fly the ship himself, Jela amused himself for a time by running Dulsey through a series of board drills, the while keeping an eye on the screens and the scans.
Dulsey completed every pattern he called for with competence, but without flair, her pale face displaying a tense seriousness that eventually brought to mind the fact that she had also suffered a long day.
He stretched in his chair, and waved a hand.
“You’ll do,” he said, striving for a tone of easy satisfaction. “Lean back and talk to me. Unless we get pirates on the screens, we’ve got nothing to do until transition.”
She leaned back, tension ebbing, leaving her serious and puzzled.
“What shall I talk about, Pilot?”
A Batch-grown question if ever he’d heard one. So perfectly Batch-grown, in fact, that he suspected Dulsey of having fun with him—unless he looked stupid. Which, he conceded, was probably the case.
“If it’s going to be up to me to choose the topic,” he said, still genial and easy. “Then I’ll ask you to retrace your logic for me.”
Her face tightened. “Which logic, Pilot?”
“The reasoning which brought you to assert to Pilot Cantra that the gentlefolk responsible for making the latter part of our evening so entertaining were working for off-world interests.”
Dulsey frowned. “I believe my reasoning is linear, Pilot.”
Outright irritation. Jela raised a hand and waggled peaceable fingers.
“Grant that I’m having trouble with it,” he said. “I can go along with you, to a point—the abduction of my original contact, the people following us to the bar, the guards on our rooms. But what I can’t figure is—why did they make the mess we found at The Alcoves? Local forces wouldn’t have a reason, or the initiative, to vary from orders—”
“Ah.” For a split-second, it seemed that Dulsey would actually laugh. She managed to restrain herself, however, and spun her chair so she faced him.
“It is sometimes true that unrelated events run in parallel,” she said. “It is also sometimes true that the parallel-running events may share some components which makes it tempting to theorize a connection which does not, in reality, exist. Such is the case with the events of the evening, and the pilot’s puzzlement may be lain to rest by understanding that what appears, from his perspective as a shared component, to be one mega-event, is in fact two unrelated occurrences.”
He considered her. “The business at The Alcoves had nothing to do with us, is what I’m hearing you say.”
“The pilot hears correctly,” Dulsey said. “The fact is that the—the master had long been an . . . afficionado . . . of data. The pilot will have noted that the several alcoves in which he dined were data-mined. That the harvesting devices did not operate during the pilot’s tenancies was a source of amusement for the master, who pronounced the pilot a very able fellow.”
He blinked. “I’m flattered.”
“The pilot displays appropriate respect for the master,” Dulsey said, and he could’ve sworn it was irony he heard in her bland voice. “Unfortunately, there were others who were not so respectful, among them her heir, who, though it is not the place of this humble person to say so, is not an able fellow. The master’s devices thereby harvested data which he would rather they had not, and she had begun the process to have him disbarred from inheriting. As his debts are high and his prospects otherwise limited, he took steps to insure that the master’s property passed to him intact.”
“With the exception of your Pod,” Jela commented. “I’d’ve thought you were valuable.”
Dulsey shrugged. “The master had allowed us much, and we knew him for what he was. Though we could not have initiated legal proceedings, nor even made a complaint to a constable, yet he would not have us. He knew the master armed some of us. He knew we had built the harvesting devices and—other—apparatus, that we assembled the records and were often required to listen to them. We were a danger to him, and best accounted for.”
Jela took a moment to consider the screens and the scans. Sighed.
“In that case, Dulsey, he can’t afford to let you be unaccounted for.”
There was a short silence. “Pilot, I believe you are correct. However, I also believe that there exists significant opportunity to escape him.”
“Not likely. All he has to do is let it out that the one missing from among the dead had a gun. Obviously, she’s the culprit—a Batcher gone bad. He could even get off with offering a mid-figure bounty with a story like that.”
Dulsey closed her eyes, opened them, and stood up out of her chair.
“Would the pilot care for a hot snack?” she asked distantly. He studied her face—closed—and her posture—tense; met her eyes and smiled.
“Sure, Dulsey. A hot snack would be fine.”
He spun his chair back to face the board, and pointed his eyes at the instruments, pilot-mind primed to shout out at the first sign of a problem. That left a good bit of mind left on its own, unfortunately, and he was tired, too. He took a breath, centering himself, and put the part of him that wasn’t watching into a doze.
“Pilot?”
He started, grabbed a look at the instruments, then spun his chair to face Dulsey, standing with a mug and a bowl in her hands.
She stepped closer, offering both, and he took them, slotting the mug into the chair-arm holder and snapping the bowl into the board-edge restraints. The bowl gave off a pleasantly spicy steam.
“Thank you,” he said, meaning it. “Feed yourself, too, right?”
“I’ve eaten,” she said, sounding irritated. “There is something that you must know.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Go.”
“We are locked in,” she said, even more irritated, to his ear. “The piloting room, and the hall beyond that door— “ she pointed at the interior hatch—”we are allowed. The second hatch, further down the hall, is locked, and another door, across from the galley, is also locked.”
“That bothers you, does it?”
Dulsey frowned. “Does it not bother you?”
He pulled the mug up and had a sip. Tea, hot and sweet, just what a tired pilot needed. He had another sip, somewhat deeper, before looking back to her.
“Not particularly,” he said. “Pilot Cantra didn’t exactly ask for our help, though she did realize she needed it. It only makes sense for her to lock us out of the places she doesn’t think we need to get into.” Another sip of tea—damn, that was good.
“Besides,” he said to Dulsey’s angry eyes, “I’d rather be locked in the pilot’s tower than out.”
“There is that,” she said after a moment, and went to the vacant chair. “I will watch, Pilot, while you eat.”