Fool's War (45 page)

“Yes,” said Wheeler. “I am. Because if anybody finds out you broke exile you are never going to be allowed back on the Free Home. So don’t call back, all right? See you in two years.” The screen went blank.

Livid anger showed so plainly on Yerusha’s face that, for a moment, Dobbs thought she was going to launch a punch at the view screen. She didn’t though. She just sat there and Dobbs watched anger melt away into sadness.

Finally, Yerusha turned to face her. “I’m sorry,” she spread her hands. “Wheeler and I went through training together. He’s got his own foster. I thought if anybody’d listen, he would.”

Dobbs fought to keep her shoulders from sagging. “It’s all right. He was trying to protect you. He’s a good friend.”

“Yeah.” Yerusha glanced at the view screen. Then, she bowed her head. “Dobbs, I hate to say this, but,” she took a deep breath, “that was my one hope. If Wheeler won’t listen to me, no one will. If you want help…” she stopped. “If you want help I think you’re going to have to talk to Al Shei. She’s the only person on board this ship with any kind of influence outside her profession, and she’s the one who wants going to drag you into court.”

Dobbs felt her hands begin to tremble. She forced them to be still. “You’re right. I wish you weren’t, but you are.”

Yerusha got to her feet. “I’ll come with you.”

“No.” Dobbs held up one hand. “There’s going to be a storm, and I don’t want you in the middle of this.”

Yerusha drew herself up to her full height. “Too late. Intercom to Al Shei. I need to talk to you.”

After a heartbeat, the engineer’s voice came back. “All right. I’m in the conference room.”

“Thank you.” Yerusha opened the hatch and stood aside. “After you.”

Dobbs swallowed and walked past her. Uncertainty warred with gratitude inside her. Yerusha was willing to help as much as she could, but did she really understand what was going on? Could she really understand? She wanted to take comfort from Yerusha’s presence behind her, but she found she couldn’t quite do it.

Dobbs tried not to plan as she made her way down the stairway. Plans depended on being able to reasonably guess what someone’s reaction would be. Al Shei was in the middle of a disaster, but Al Shei was calm and rational at heart. Dobbs knew that. Al Shei’d seen disasters and handled them by herself before this. Al Shei would see what could be done, and what should be done next. She would understand why Dobbs couldn’t speak out in court. There were too many lives involved for her to speak. Al Shei would help Dobbs work out how to best contact Cohen and help Dobbs hang on until they could root out Curran and the corrupted Guild Masters.

Dobbs opened the hatchway to the conference room. Al Shei sat alone inside, bent over the active tabletop.

Al Shei looked up as Dobbs walked in and her eyebrows arched. Her gaze shifted towards Yerusha, but she didn’t say anything, she just waved them toward a pair of chairs. “I was going to call you down in just a few minutes,” she said to Dobbs. “We’ve got some decisions to make.”

Dobbs didn’t sit. She was too keyed up. She just rested her hands on the back of the nearest chair and tried to compose herself. “I’ve got some new news about the fraud charges.” Her words felt clumsy. She was used to knowing exactly what she was going to say, and how people were likely to react. Maybe that was the real reason she hadn’t wanted to come out of her cabin. She didn’t know how anyone was going to react toward her anymore.

Al Shei’s eyes were blank. For a split second, Dobbs hated the
hijab
that hid Al Shei’s expression from her. “What kind of news?” asked Al Shei.

Dobbs dropped her gaze to the seat of the chair in front of her. She began to speak and for the second time in less than an hour she broke the code of silence that had ruled her existence. She told Al Shei about Curran, about the Guild, about who and what she really was. Saying it was getting no easier with practice.

When Dobbs was finished, Al Shei was staring at her. Her eyes were nearly round. “
Allahumma inna nasta’inuka,
” she murmured. Oh Allah, we seek Your help, translated Dobbs after a moment.

Al Shei’s gaze darted around the room, as if she were looking for answers in the corners. “This cannot be. It cannot.”

“Would you believe me if I said I know how you feel?” inquired Yerusha softly.

Al Shei jumped like she’d been bit. “How long have you known about this?”

Yerusha gave a small chuckle. “About fifteen minutes. Dobbs came to me first. I couldn’t help her, so I suggested she should come to you.”

Dobbs sat silently for a moment, watching Al Shei’s bewilderment. At last, the wrinkles in Al Shei’s forehead smoothed out, except for the one vertical line between her eyebrows. “Why are you bringing this out now?”

“Because its the only thing I can do,” she said. “It’s the only way you’ll understand what’s really going on around you and figure out what we can do next.”

Al She pressed her palms together and rested her forehead against her finger tips.

“All right. All right. Resit will need your statement about what you know, and…”

Dobbs shrank back. “Al Shei, I can’t make a public statement about this. I can’t expose the Guild.”

Al Shei stared at her, as if trying to understand what she’d just said. “You won’t speak in court?”

Dobbs spread her hands. “You can’t take the Guild into court. I’ve told you who, what we are. If you take us to court…it’ll be over. Everything. There are thousands of lives bound up in this.”

Al Shei’s breathing grew harsh and ragged. “My husband is under arrest, falsely accused by your…confederates. You know this. You will make a statement attesting to this fact.”

“Al Shei,” began Yerusha. The engineer shot her a look full of such venom that Yerusha shut her mouth without finishing.

Dobbs swallowed her fear. Al Shei hadn’t really heard anything she’d said yet. Her mind was totally focused on her husband’s arrest. Dobbs tried to keep her voice steady, to use her training, to remember everything she knew about this woman in front of her, but all her knowledge seemed to run away like water. “Your grief is not with the Fool’s Guild, Al Shei,” she said as firmly as she could. “Your real grief is with Theodore Curran. We need to try to find him. Let me try to find out where he’s based.”

“And then what?” demanded Al Shei. “You just told me it was the Guild who raised the false charges against Asil. When will they be brought to answer for it?”

 
Yerusha spread her hands. “He’ll be let go, Al Shei. They’ll have to. There’s nothing to the charges.”

“They’ll let him go with a fraud charge to his name.” Her eyes were thunderous. “He is an accountant. A fraud charge could ruin him, even if it is untrue. The source of the charge must be rooted out. It must be seen to be a conspiracy against my family.”

“Al Shei, I won’t speak against the Guild in court,” Dobbs said softly. “It’ll be the end of my family if I do.”

Al Shei leaned across the table. “Your family is responsible for the damage they have done to mine.” She stabbed the table top with her finger. “I could hold you. I could arrest you right this second on my captain’s authority and tell the whole of Settled Space what you are.”

Dobbs felt the blood in her body drain down to the soles of her feet. “You wouldn’t do that, Al Shei. You know what will happen. We’d be hunted down.”

Slowly, Al Shei sat back. “You talk as if you have told me a small thing, Dobbs. Like this is nothing at all.” She jabbed her finger toward the hatch. “There are two thousand people out there who are not people at all. You are an AI in a bio-vat body. One of thousands. You have presented yourselves to Settled Space under false guise. You have
lied
to us. To all of Settled Space for two hundred years!” She threw up her hands. “And now, you are asking me to trust you! You ask me to be like a Freer and blindly worship the product of Human technology.” Yerusha jerked herself forward, but Al Shei didn’t give her a chance to interrupt. “You, maybe, maybe, I could, but you are asking me to trust your Masters not to do anything else to me, to my family.” A cold light burned behind her eyes. “You say they did this because they were afraid of me. Well, if this does not slow me down or silence me enough, what will they do next, Dobbs? Can you tell me that?”

Dobbs’ head swam and she could not find an answer. What answer was there? Al Shei was right. There was no knowing what the Guild would do next. They’d been ready to kill her, and she was one of their own kind.

Dobbs stepped around the chair to the side of the table. “I want to try to stop this,” she said, pressing both hands flat against the table top. “I need time to find Curran and prove that some of the Guild Masters have become… corrupt.”

“Then what? You still are what you are. Your masters are still guilty of this act, and I still know what I know. What then, Dobbs?” Her eyes were wide, almost frightened now. “This much has already happened. My crew was endangered and my husband has been arrested. It is too much to ask me to believe that nothing like this will ever be done again. Your people have power Dobbs. They will use it. They have already used it.”

Dobbs felt her own eyes begin to widen. Al Shei wasn’t listening. She wouldn’t see. She was going to…going to…Dobbs throat clenched. She had no idea what Al Shei was going to do, and that filled her with fear.

Al Shei looked away. “I am right now remembering you saved the Farther Kingdom, and that you saved my crew when your masters told you not to. But I may not remember this for long.” Her fists clenched and unclenched. “Especially if I cannot find other proof to clear Asil’s reputation. If you cannot help me, help my family, I cannot protect you. You had better get off my ship.”

Dobbs took a step back. She didn’t mean it. She couldn’t mean it. Al Shei’s eyes had turned as hard as granite and she stayed stock still where she was.

Dobbs turned around and ran. She ran down the corridor. She pushed past Odel and nearly careened into Javerri in the airlock. Javerri exclaimed something that Dobbs couldn’t understand and she bolted out into the station, through another hatchway was another set of stairs. Dobbs ran down them as fast as she could place her feet.

Al Shei watched Dobbs retreat from the conference room. Yerusha turned on her heel and followed the Fool a split second later. Al Shei’s heart sank inside her. She wanted to call Dobbs back, but she knew she couldn’t. Dobbs wouldn’t help. Dobbs wouldn’t do anything. Then, out of this was the only safe place for Dobbs to be, before Al Shei’s trust was stretched any thinner, before the Guild was blasted wide open. If Yerusha wanted to get involved, that was her decision. A rental pilot could get the Pasadena back to Earth if she didn’t come back

What, she thought wearily, am I going to tell Lipinski about Dobbs?

She shoved that thought to the background. Lipinski’s reactions would have to take care of themselves. She had other things to worry about of right now.

Using the table top boards, Al Shei opened a line to Port Oberon’s flight schedulers. She requested to speak to Geraldo Taylor.

The view screen beside the intercom lit up to show Taylor’s genial, heavily-moustached face.

“Hello, Al Shei! How are you doing,
mi capitan
?”

“Not so well, Taylor,” she admitted. “I’ve got bad news from home, and I’ve got to get back to Earth, fast.”

The smile faded from Taylor’s face. “Al Shei, you know how tight we have to run things here, especially on the Earthbound flights.”

Al Shei leaned forward. “Please, Taylor. My husband is in trouble, and I have got to get home.” She had sent three separate fast-time calls to Bala house in the past five days, all her accounts could stand. Each time she’d gotten Uncle Ahmet. She’d spoken with him and her children, her sister and her grandmother, but never with Asil. Not once. He wasn’t home was all anyone would say to her. There had been no messages from him. None. Why hadn’t there been any messages? Her fear painted him in a Management Union security chamber being questioned again and again about things he knew nothing about.

Taylor ran one finger along his moustache and looked down at his boards. “Let me see if I’ve got any empty Earthbound slots at all…” His shoulders bobbed as he worked his boards. Then, he froze. When he looked up at Al Shei, his face was uneasy.

Al Shei felt her heart plummet. “What is it?”

“It’s major, Al Shei. We’ve got a red flag on your ship.” He glanced down again and read the directive off the screen. “Hold at port until Management Union escort arrives.”

Very aware that Taylor was watching her, Al Shei kept her hands still and her head up. “Does it say what the flag is for?”

Taylor scanned his boards. “Somebody thinks Marcus Tully left some contraband aboard.”

Oh, Merciful Allah! Why is this hitting now? Al Shei set her jaw. “Taylor…”

He held up both hands and shied back. “Do not even start to ask me, Al Shei. You’ve been impounded. I haven’t got the authority to do anything about it, even if I wanted to.”

Al Shei’s resolve gave out. She rested her forehead against her hand.

“Look, Al Shei, nobody’s accusing you of anything.” There was a note of desperate consolation in Taylor’s voice. “I’m sure as hell not. The M.U. ship is only two days out. They’ll come in, pick up Tully and take you back home.”