Fool's War (10 page)

They faced the proper corner and raised their hands. Al Shei took a deep breath and put the day behind her. This was not the time for her troubles. This was the time to go beyond them, to the infinite and the permanent.

“
Allahu Akbar
,” she and Resit chorused. God is great. They folded their hands below their chests. “Oh, Allah, glory and praise are for You and blessed is Your name and exalted is Your Majesty and there is no god but You. I seek shelter in Allah from the rejected Satan.”

As Al Shei went through the motions of the
salah
, she felt real calm returning to her. When the regular prayers were finished, she added the
sajdatus sahw
, for forgetfulness, since she’d been elbow deep in a maintenance hatch with a bundle of fresh wiring in her fists when afternoon prayer came around.

After she straightened up, she faced Resit and raised her right hand, Resit raised hers. Simultaneously, they each reached out and yanked off the other’s veil. Resit’s hair fell down around her shoulders in a black cloud. This was not part of the
salah
. It was done in memory of the time when prayer was dangerous and the women who had survived the Fast Burn sometimes had to stop in the middle and hide their veils because vigilantes or the police had broken in the door.

“Dining in peaceful solitude tonight, Cousin?” Resit nodded to the hot box as she settled her
kijab
back over her hair and pinned it under her chin.

“I felt I needed a little peace and quiet.” Al Shei folded her own
hijab
over her arm and opened up a drawer. “It’s actually been a pretty busy few days.” She laid the
hijab
inside.

“Hasn’t it just.” Resit picked up her carpet. “Are you going to perhaps tell me what’s going on with Schyler?”

“Not yet.” Al Shei bent to roll her own carpet. “I’ll know more tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh. Should I be worrying about my air supply, Katmer?”

Al Shei straightened up and stowed the carpet back in its own drawer. “It’s not that kind of problem, Zubedye.”

“Well, that’s something anyway.” Resit opened the bathroom door. “I will be talking to you in the morning, Katmer.”

“You will.” Al Shei held the door open for her. “I promise.”

Resit crossed the bathroom into her own cabin through the opposite door.

When she was gone, Al Shei sealed the door to the hallway and touched the key beside it to signal anyone who might be walking by that she was not to be disturbed. No matter what her door said, she was always on immediate call for engineering. The
Pasadena
itself could summon her if any of half a dozen emergency switches were tripped.

With her door sealed, she finally let the weight of the day pull her shoulders down. That brief conversation with her cousin had robbed her of most of the calm that prayer instilled. She ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing it out and letting the slight breeze from the ventilators dry the film of dampness near her scalp. Unlike Resit, she had no cloud of long hair to shake down. She’d kept hers cut to a bob that would not get in her way. She stripped off her work clothes and debated a moment before tossing them into the laundry drawer. She slid her forest green kaftan over her bare shoulders and sighed contentedly. The kaftan had been a gift from Asil. It was real Earth-grown cotton. Cotton was grown only by permit on Earth. Most textile fibers came from vat-bred clones.

As she smoothed the kaftan down, Al Shei studied her face in the mirror. It was a good face, all and all, she admitted. Her brow was wide and clear, even though the worry wrinkles were beginning to etch themselves in deeper every year. Her aquiline nose was not too big, and her chin was not too pointed. She had an expressive mouth with lines around it that spoke more of smiles than of sorrows. Resit teased her that the real reason she wore the
hijab
was not just to hide the fact she’d cut her hair, but to emphasize her wide, almond-shaped eyes. Asil sometimes said it was her eyes were that had bewitched his heart.

Vanity, vanity, she chided herself with a small laugh and turned away. What are you doing? Seeing if the news about Tully has added any new lines?

Al Shei folded her bed down from the wall and sat on the emerald faux silk coverlet, crossing her legs. She opened her hot box and detached the fork from the cover.

“Intercom, playback,” she said to the walls as she dug into the chicken curry and rice. “Asil Day Book, entry one.”

There wasn’t even a beep in response. Al Shei had taken them out for this command sequence. Instead, her husband’s, clean, deep voice filled the empty spaces between her in-flight possessions and her inmost heart.

“Good morning, Beloved. Not much to report from yesterday, Katmer. It’s a week before the rains are scheduled to begin and we had six hours of outside time left in the ration, so we had dinner on the terrace…”

Al Shei set the fork down, closed her eyes, and let her mind drift with the recorded voice. Her imagination was so trained for this that she could see every detail. The low wooden table on the clean white stone, surrounded by piles of blue and green cushions that would have been tossed into place by Muhammad and Vashti. The children would have taken the opportunity to inflict an impromptu pummeling on each other, halted by mock threats from Asil. He would have set down the broad dish of
imam baldi
and flat bread. Asil was a traditionalist as far as food was concerned. The children, their hair blowing in the gentle breeze scented with the smells of living trees and roasting garlic would scurry to the table and be told to calm down before helping themselves. They would, for about thirty seconds, then they’d begin digging each other in the ribs…

“…Vashti told me she wants to try out for the soccer team next semester. Muhammadis talking seriously about summer classes for his astronomy. Looks as though the banks are going to lose another one, Katmer…”

Al Shei smiled and let the voice wash over her. This was how they kept together. Everyday he made an entry in the verbal diary, just as she did. When she came home to stay, of course they talked. They told each other everything, delighting in conversation. But on the last day, before she left again, they would solemnly exchange diaries. At home, in his own room, come back from his prayers, Asil would be listening to her voice reeling off an account of the first day of her previous flight. Although she knew, by now, that Vashti had made the soccer team and that Muhammad had been accepted to an academic camp in Tel Aviv, the Asil in the recording did not. His voice made it all new again and gave her those days that were the other half of her life, as Asil would have hers.

They could have used video, of course. They could have even each carried a small camera with them, but Asil had preferred imagination from the beginning. After the first trial, Al Shei had to agree. She thought in pictures anyway. With the diaries she had a whole memory full of pictures of her growing children and her steadfast beloved.

“I live two lifetimes,” she’d told him once. “And both are full of what I love.”

When the entry faded into silence, Al Shei opened her eyes. She sneaked a look at the door and the intercom. Both were silent and blank.

I can indulge.
“Recall file,” she said, stirring her curry. “
Mirror of Fate
.”

In the next heart beat, a blue-line schematic for a packet ship flowed across the wall screen. This was the
Mirror of Fate
. It was almost twice the size of the Pasadena. Even without the crew, it had a Lennox rating of B. With a good crew, it would be A rated. She ordered the intercom to scroll through the diagram to the family quarters. The ship had room for Muhammad, Vashti and up to four other children, if any of her crew had families to bring along. In the
Mirror of Fate
, she and Asil would have one lifetime.

Next to the diagram the wall printed a tidy row of figures. Current savings, projected income from this trip, projected amount to be added to savings, remaining balance before they could have
Mirror of Fate
commissioned.

She had designed the ship. Asil had designed the payment scheme. With him, money was not just a commodity to be tracked and traded. He saw endless possibilities embedded in what to her were meaningless statistics. Maybe that was how she had known she loved him, when she saw that he found possibilities in accounts the way she saw them in a ship’s systems and that like her, he lived to realize the possibilities he saw in his mind.

Mirror of Fate
represented the grandest of all those possibilities. Freedom. Asil and the children and their possibilities in a home she had made and a ship that worked under her hands and eyes and inner vision. She’d dreamed this ship all the years she was learning her trade. When Asil entered her life, they dreamed it together and together, no matter how long the runs lasted, they still dreamed.

It was a sweet dream and she savored it slowly, like fine coffee. She sipped it gently and let it roll across her senses and warm her from the inside. It would happen. Another two years’ work, three at the very outside.
Pasadena
’s upgraded rating would bring in…

“…so you
tell
the Ninja Woman I am
not
going to put up with…”

The strident voice jolted Al Shei out of her reverie. She started and dropped a forkful of curry onto her plate. “…this kind of crap from a bunch of bigoted…”

Yerusha. The stun bled away and Al Shei was able to identify the voice clanging through the intercom.

“And the thunder crashed in a mighty cacophony and all did tremble and shake at the oath that could make the stars ring!” There was a shuffling of cloth and silence. Dobbs. Whatever she had done had caught Yerusha so off-guard she wasn’t able to respond.

“Intercom to Yerusha,” said Al Shei. “Yerusha. The com’s on and I want to talk to you and whoever you’re yelling at with the Watch Commander.”

More silence. “Yes, Engineer,” came the answer finally.

“Intercom to Watch Command,” said Al Shei.

“It’s okay, Engineer,” came back Schyler’s voice. “I’m the one she was yelling at, myself and the Houston.”

“Obviously, there is a problem with the intercom,” said Al Shei dryly.

“Obviously,” cut in Chandra, “unless you really meant this conversation to hit the galley.”

“Walls are supposed to have ears, but tongues…” chipped in Dobbs. “Do you suppose they gossip about us during the night shift too?”

“All right, all right,” said Schyler. “Obviously we need a meeting, now.”

“Obviously,” agreed Al Shei. “Lipinski, who’s on comm watch? I want whatever’s wrong with the intercom routing fixed. I’ll meet all of you in the conference room. Intercom to Close.” She looked regretfully at the
Mirror of Fate
. “Store file.” She stuffed another forkful of curry into her mouth before she closed the box lid and popped it into a drawer. “Why do I have the feeling this is going to be one of my more interesting runs?”

She changed back into her working clothes and wrapped her
hijab
back around her face.

By the time she reached the conference room, Schyler, Lipinski and Yerusha were already there. So was Dobbs, Al Shei noticed as the hatch cycled closed. The Fool, disdaining any of the available chairs, sat cross-legged in the corner, resting her elbows on her knees. Al Shei suppressed a sigh. According to contract, the Fool could not be excluded from any crew meeting, including disciplinary hearings, but Al Shei really could have done without her presence.

Yerusha sat with her arms folded and a look of studied blandness on her face. Lipinski was frowning at the pilot and giving her a look that could peel paint. Schyler had one hand laid on the table-top and was dividing his attention between the two recalcitrant crewmembers.

“All right, Watch.” Al Shei leaned rested her hands on the back of one of the chairs. “What happened?”

Schyler turned towards her. There was an odd light in his eye that Al Shei couldn’t quite interpret. “Pilot Yerusha was found to be working with an unregistered hardware/software interface using the ship’s systems…”

Yerusha sat up straighter in her chair and unfolded her arms. “I was testing a wafer stack to make sure it was intact,” she countered. “In my own cabin, on a secured, internal…”

“You were letting an AI loose in my system!” thundered Lipinski.

Yerusha started to her feet. “You have no right to spy on a secured…”

“It’s my job to make sure there’s nothing here that’s not registered…”

“So what made you decide to keep a special eye on my line, you ground hugging…”

“Enough!” Schyler slammed his hand against the table. The pair subsided.

“Thank you, Watch,” said Al Shei. She turned a little so she could face Yerusha but still keep her eye on Lipinski. “Have you got an artificial intelligence rated wafer stack with you?”

Yerusha bridled. “You do not have the right to question me about legal possessions.”

Al Shei inclined her head. “You’re right, of course.” She turned towards Schyler. “Has she got an AI wafer stack?”

“I saw her carrying something that could have been an AI. From the stats Houston showed me, it’s very probable she had it cabled into the system.” Schyler answered blandly.

Al Shei nodded and faced Yerusha again. The woman’s cheeks were starting to pale and her hand clenched into a fist at her side. “Is it your foster?” Al Shei asked.