Linesman (8 page)

Ean believed it. Gila Havortian would have been untrained. Maybe she “heard” the lines, too. Maybe she even sang to them. He could well believe they communicated back to her.

Havortian became a rich man. His ship traveled the known sectors, taking days where other ships took years. Unfortunately, he wasn't a good businessman. The massive Chamberley Co-Op—which was prepared to use semilawful means to get what it wanted—soon took over his ship. Chamberley Co-Op spent money and resources trying to reproduce line technology. They replicated the mighty Bose engine they found with the lines within ten years, but it was just an engine without lines to control it. It was also slow, traveling at 0.1c in normal space. By then there were faster sublight ships.

That's where it would have stayed if Gila Havortian hadn't been obsessed with the lines. Only scientists were allowed near the lines, so she became a scientist. Only people who had been born on Chamberley were allowed to work at the Co-Op, so she faked birth records. She was known to have blackmailed at least three people who found out who she was, and it was rumored she had murdered another, but that was only rumor.

Gila Havortian bribed or blackmailed her way to become head of the laboratory. When she was placed in charge, she sacked all the staff and brought in her own carefully chosen set of new people. Physicists, mathematicians, chemists, geneticists, and xenobiologists.

She told them she wanted something replicated. She didn't tell them what. She didn't tell them how.

While her scientists were working on the lines, Gila Havortian plotted the destruction of the Co-Op in revenge for what it had done to her father.

She was fifty-nine years old when her lab worked out how to reproduce the lines. Havortian then set in place the destruction she'd planned and took herself, her scientists, and the lines and jumped to Redmond, where they set up the first line factory.

It opened the way to the stars. Humans spread out across the galaxy in a massive population explosion that was still under way five hundred years later.

In all that time, they had never met another intelligent species. Or a functioning alien ship. This ship was the first.

“Imagine a defense system like that,” Admiral Katida said. “Can you outrun it?”

The captain seemed to be the technical expert. “Everyone has a jump ready. At one hundred kilometers, we have enough warning to enter the void if it triggers,” he said. “Outrun it with our own engines, no.”

Abram, whom Ean hadn't even noticed at the podium until then, said, “That is why this ship will remain one hundred kilometers away while our linesmen attempt to work out exactly what the lines are. After which, if we decide to approach the ship, it will be in a shuttle.”

They could be killed. Ean hoped Captain Helmo was right
when he said they'd have time to escape back into the void if the ship pulsed again. The way his luck was running lately, he'd probably be on a shuttle heading straight toward it at the time. Still, even if he died, at least he would have been involved in something different. Something big.

He caught the movement as Radko shifted slightly against the wall. Maybe.

But he was on the ship now. They couldn't send him back, and even if they thought his lines were strange, surely they wouldn't waste a ten. Maybe they'd even send him in first, in case the first shuttle got vaporized.

“Let's see it again,” Admiral Katida said. “And I want to see all ships' systems as well.”

Four extra screens came up, each displaying a series of numbers and telltales that Ean couldn't understand.

The civilians started a mass exit—apparently this was the end of the session—while the military started analyzing what each ship had done and when. Captain Helmo stayed at the podium to answer questions, but Abram and Michelle disappeared. Ean stayed where he was until Radko touched his shoulder. He got up to follow.

This time, she led him through the reception room where the civilians were now helping themselves to refreshments—even though he'd only recently eaten, the smell of the food made his mouth water—down another corridor and into a small meeting room. The room had two guards outside.

He was the first one there. Was it a type of prison?

He had five minutes to wonder what he could have changed about last night before Michelle and Abram came in together.

“Governor Jade is like a limpet,” Michelle said. “So hard to disentangle once she gets her suckers on.” She sat down, rested her head on the table, and closed her eyes. “My bones hurt.”

Abram clasped her shoulder in a quick gesture of encouragement.

Michelle looked tired and ill. The skin on the cheek facing Ean was white and waxy and very fine. She looked young and vulnerable and hardly old enough to leave home, let alone be running a ship full of VIPs on a mission where one misstep could turn into an interstellar war. Suddenly, Radko didn't seem as young anymore.

“Are you the youngest person on this ship?” Now that he thought about it, Ean could remember the princess's being proclaimed heir not long before he—Ean—had left to join Rigel's cartel. That proclamation would only have happened when she came of age.

Michelle opened her eyes and looked up at Ean. The dimple flashed out in a smile. “Not anymore,” she said, and sat up properly as Rebekah swept into the room.

Rebekah nodded at Michelle and Abram and ignored Ean. Ean nodded at her, as if she had greeted him, too.

Two orderlies followed, bringing welcome tea and sandwiches. Ean poured because he could see that despite his seeming calm, even Abram's hands were shaking slightly. Ean seemed to be recovering better than the other two. Maybe that was because he had rested and eaten while they'd had to work. Or maybe because he'd had more exposure to the lines.

Rebekah looked down her nose at him. He didn't have to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking, that he didn't even know it was the host's job to pour. He didn't care. He was just sorry he'd put the others through such a terrifying experience.

He pushed sandwiches toward Abram. “Eat,” he said, and made it an order. He held the plate almost up to Abram's face, so that he had to do something. Abram took a sandwich to avoid a scene.

Ean held the plate almost under Michelle's nose. “You, too.”

Michelle went whiter if that was possible.

“I'm the expert here,” Ean reminded them. “I know what to do.” He didn't, but food had helped him.

Michelle reluctantly took a sandwich.

“Expert,” said Rebekah. “You've spent your whole life mending second-rate lines and learning bad habits. I wouldn't call you an expert.”

Ean placed the plate between Abram and Michelle and watched Abram take another sandwich without prompting. He smiled. In this, at least, he was the expert.

He didn't want the other linesman sniping at him all the time, demeaning him. Maybe he deserved it. After last night, the Alliance probably wouldn't let him anywhere near the ship, but he was at least along for the ride. He hoped.

“Rebekah, let's agree on one thing. You are the ten they hired. You are the expert. I'm here by accident.” Two more sandwiches disappeared. “So let's now work together on it. Maybe I can help. This is too important to let anything get in the way.”

“Help,” said Rebekah. “You'll probably get us killed.”

He wondered if that was her real fear.

“You started late. You're untrained.”

He'd had ten years of training.

“You
sing
to the lines.”

Did everyone know that? Or had she done some research of her own last night, too?

“So you don't hear music?” Abram asked, taking another sandwich.

“There is no music,” Rebekah said. “He's crazy, untalented, and wild. If he'd been taught properly, he wouldn't hear any music. And those rumors you hear about the strength of his lines are just that. Rumors.” She leaned forward, as if by getting closer, she could convince them. “I know you think you have brought along the two best tens, but you haven't. He's a dud.”

Rumors? In the silence that followed, Ean realized the sandwich plate was empty. He stood up and went over to the door. He couldn't contribute to the conversation. It was about him, not at him, and Abram and Michelle would do what they would. But this was one thing he could do.

“Could we have some more sandwiches, please,” he asked one of the guards outside the door.

He went quietly back to his seat.

No one else had moved although they all watched him.

“Look at him,” Rebekah said. “He has no idea how to behave in real society; no idea what is proper.”

He supposed she meant the sandwiches. It wasn't proper, but it was necessary. Was she really complaining about his linesmanship or about his coming from the slums?

Abram finally blinked and took a mouthful of tea. “You seem remarkably well informed,” he said.

“I'm a linesman. I have to know what threatens us.”

“Threatens?” Ean couldn't stop the word.

“A wild talent with no control.” She spoke to the others, as if one of them had asked it. “He's not trained.”

He didn't want to start defending himself, but she kept on about that. “I did ten years' training.”

“With second-rate trainers who all said that you did your own thing, no matter what they taught you.”

Sometimes the way the trainers did things twisted the lines into the wrong shape.

“By the time you came into the cartels, you had already learned so many bad habits, no one could fix them. They should have been trained out from childhood.”

The sandwiches arrived then. Either they'd had them premade, or someone else's sandwiches had been diverted. He knew, subliminally through line one, it was the latter. This was a ship that looked after its boss first and everyone else second. It was also a ship that—collectively—knew the sandwiches were for Michelle and Abram even though Ean had asked for them. How did it know that?

“However I do what I do”—Ean wondered if he should just shut up—“I
am
a certified ten. If the Grand Master had been worried about my abilities, then surely he wouldn't have certified me.”

“He is only certified because Rigel chose a public certification.” She was still talking directly to Abram and Michelle, still acting as if they had made the comment. “He would never have passed a private ceremony.”

Ean remembered the ceremony. He'd been embarrassed and ashamed. Other tens were certified in a private audience with the Grand Master, but Rigel had refused to pay the extra cost. “You can go in with the lower grades. They'll find your level there just as well, and we'll save on the cost of the special ceremony.” Rigel could be funny about money. Sometimes he was lavish, sometimes miserly.

So Ean had endured the humiliation of being publicly tested for every level along with a hundred other linesmen. They'd had to send for special testers above level seven because they didn't have anyone suitable there.

“I'm beginning to think Rigel's cleverer than he acts,” Michelle murmured to Abram. “Let's take another look at that contract later.”

Abram grunted what might have been assent.

Ean thought it was time to get the conversation back on
track. “We're here to talk about the ship,” he reminded Rebekah. Not about how unfit he was for the task. They'd found that out last night.

“I'm finding this conversation particularly interesting,” Abram said. He poured them all more tea—except Rebekah, who hadn't touched hers. “It's important to know our tools.”

So Ean sat back and sipped tea while Rebekah and Abram discussed just how bad he was.

“The rumors about his strength. How do you think they started?”

“He's a con man and a charmer. Most of the tens are at the confluence.”

All of them were. Except him, and now Rebekah. And who was going to repair the higher lines now?

“He's done basic repairs on every ship for the last six months. Naturally people are grateful to him. They feel a sense of loyalty.”

“Surely that is the cartel's fault,” Michelle said. “If you leave only one person doing maintenance, people are bound to be grateful to him. Particularly if he does a good job.”

At least Michelle was defending him.

“But that's just it,” Rebekah said. “He appears to do good work, but it—”

“Falls apart and needs repairing again immediately,” Abram suggested.

“No,” said Ean, because one thing he did know was that his lines were clean.

“No one knows,” Rebekah said. “No one knows what damage he is doing, because no one can tell how he repairs the lines. He
sings
to them. As if that's going to do any good.” She leaned forward again. “Suppose a line fails while it's passing through the void.”

Abram nodded. “Can I get a list of ships he has repaired in the last six months? I might check what has happened to them.”

She nodded back.

Ean sipped more tea.

“So why didn't Ean go out to the confluence?” Abram asked. “Surely, if you didn't want him repairing the lines, the smartest thing to do would be to send him out there and leave other tens doing the repairs.”

“At the confluence?” Rebekah was shocked. “Think of the damage he could do.”

Ean had pleaded and bargained to get out there. Rigel had always refused. “We make more money doing repairs,” he'd said.

Ean realized he was biting his bottom lip and tried to stop. He took a sip of tea, but his breath caught at the wrong time, and he breathed in a mouthful of liquid. He missed the next bit they said while he was coughing tea everywhere and mopping it up, but he did hear Michelle say, “The cartels have to take some of the blame for what has happened. Leaving one person to make all the repairs, then blaming him for getting the kudos seems a little harsh.”