The warrior's apprentice (7 page)

“Elena,” he whispered fiercely, stilling her restlessness, “follow my lead, and say nothing.”

“Hm?” she murmured, startled.

“Ah, good, Miss Bothari, you’re here,” he said loudly, as if he had just arrived. He gathered her up and marched up to the group.

He knew he confused strangers as to his age. At first glance, his height led them to underestimate it. At second, his face, slightly dark from a tendency to heavy beard growth in spite of close shaving, and prematurely set from long intimacy with pain, led them to overestimate. He’d found he could tip the balance either way, at will, by a simple change of mannerisms. He summoned ten generations of warriors to his back, and produced his most austere smile.

“Good afternoon, ladies, gentlemen,” he hailed them. Four stares greeted him, variously nonplussed. His urbanity almost crumpled under the onslaught, but he held the line. “I was told one of you could tell me where to find Pilot Officer Arde Mayhew.”

“Who the devil are you?” growled the salvage operator, apparently voicing the thought of them all.

Miles bowed smoothly, barely restraining himself from swirling an imaginary cape. “Lord Miles Vorkosigan, of Barrayar, at your service. This is my associate, Miss Bothari. I couldn’t help overhearing—I believe I might be of assistance to you all, if you will permit me...” Beside him, Elena raised puzzled eyebrows at her new, if vague, official status.

“Look, kid,” began the shuttleport administrator. Miles glanced up from lowered brows, shooting her his best imitation General Count Piotr Vorkosigan military glare.

“—sir” she corrected herself. “Jush, uh—just what do you want with Pilot Officer Mayhew?”

Miles gave an upward jerk of his chin. “I have been commissioned to discharge a debt to him.” Self-commissioned, about ten seconds ago...

“Somebody owes money to Arde?” asked the salvage operator, amazed.

Miles drew himself up, looking offended. “Not money,” he growled, as though he never touched the sordid stuff. “It’s a debt of honor.”

The shuttleport administrator looked cautiously impressed; the pilot officer, pleased. The security woman looked dubious. The salvage operator looked extremely dubious. “How does that help me?” he asked bluntly.

“I can talk Pilot Officer Mayhew out of your ship,” said Miles, seeing his path opening before him, “if you’ll provide me with the means of meeting him face to face.” Elena gulped; he quelled her with a narrow, sideways flick of a glance.

The four Betans looked, one to another, as if responsibility could be shuffled off by eye contact. Finally the pilot officer said, “Well, what the hell. Does anybody have a better idea?”

In the control chair of the personnel shuttle the greyhaired senior pilot officer spoke—once again—into his comconsole. “Arde? Arde, this is Van. Answer me, please? I’ve brought up somebody to talk things over with you. He’s going to come on board. All right, Arde? You’re not going to do anything foolish now, are you?”

Silence was his sole reply. “Is he receiving you?” asked Miles.

“His comconsole is. Whether he’s got the volume turned up, or is there, or awake, or—or alive, is anybody’s guess.”

“I’m alive,” growled a thick voice suddenly from the speaker, making them both start. There was no video. “But you won’t be, Van, if you try to board my ship, you double-crossing son of a bitch.”

“I won’t try,” promised the senior pilot officer. “Just Mister, uh, Lord Vorkosigan, here.”

There was a moody silence, if the static-spattered hiss could be so described. “He doesn’t work for that bloodsucker Calhoun does he?” asked the speaker suspiciously.

“He doesn’t work for anybody,” Van soothed.

“Not for the Mental Health Board? Nobody’s going to get near me with a damn dart gun—I’ll blow us all to hell, first...”

“He’s not even Betan. He’s a Barrayaran. Says he’s been looking for you.”

Another silence. Then the voice, uncertain, querulous, “I don’t owe any Barrayarans—I don’t think... I don’t even know any Barrayarans.”

There was an odd feeling of pressure, and a gentle click from the exterior of the hull, as they came in contact with the old freighter. The pilot waved a finger by way of signal at Miles, and Miles made the hatch connections secure. “Ready,” he called.

“You sure you want to do this?” whispered the pilot officer.

Miles nodded. It had been a minor miracle, escaping the protection of Bothari. He licked his lips, and grinned, enjoying the exhilaration of weightlessness and fear. He trusted Elena would prevent any unnecessary alarm, planetside.

Miles opened the hatch. There was a puff of air, as the pressure within the two ships equalized. He stared into a pitch-dark tunnel. “Got a hand light?”

“On the rack there,” the pilot officer pointed.

Provided, Miles floated cautiously into the tube. The darkness skulked ahead of him, hiding in corners and cross corridors, and crowding in behind him as he passed. He threaded his way toward the Navigation and Communications Room, where his quarry was presumed to be lurking. The distance was actually short—the crew’s quarters were small, most of the ship being given over to cargo space—but the absolute silence gave the journey a subjective stretch. Zero-gee was now having its usual effect on making him regret the last thing he’d eaten. Vanilla, he thought; I should have had vanilla.

There was a dim light ahead, spilling into the corridor from an open hatch. Miles cleared his throat, loudly, as he approached. It might be better not to startle the man, all things considered.

“Pilot Officer Mayhew?” he called softly, and pulled himself to the door. “My name is Miles Vorkosigan, and I’m looking for—looking for—” what the devil was he looking for? Oh, well. Wing it. “I’m looking for desperate men,” he finished in style.

Pilot Officer Mayhew sat strapped in his pilot’s chair in a mournful huddle. Clutched in his lap were his pilot’s headset, a half-full liter squeeze bottle of a gurgling liquid of a brilliant and poisonous green, and a box hastily connected by a spaghetti-mass of wiring to a half-gutted control panel and topped by a toggle switch. Quite as fascinating as the toggle box was a dark, slender, and by Betan law very illegal little needle gun. Mayhew blinked puffed and red-rimmed eyes at the apparition in his doorway, and rubbed a hand—still holding the lethal needier—over a three-day beard stubble. “Oh, yeah?” he replied vaguely.

Miles was temporarily distracted by the needier. “How did you ever get that through Betan customs?” he asked in a tone of genuine admiration. “I’ve never been able to carry so much as a sling-shot past ‘em.”

Mayhew stared at the needier in his hand as if he’d just discovered it, like a wart grown unnoticed. “Bought it at Jackson’s Whole once. I’ve never tried to take it off the ship. I suppose they’d take it away from me, if I tried. They take everything away from you, down there.” He sighed.

Miles eased into the room, and arranged himself crosslegged in midair, in what he hoped was a nice, nonthreatening sort of listening posture. “How did you ever get into this fix?” he asked, with a nod around that included the ship, the situation, and Mayhew’s lap-full of objects.

Mayhew shrugged. “Rotten luck. I’ve always had rotten luck. That accident with the RG 88—it was the moisture from those busted amphor tubes that soaked those dal bags that swelled and split the bulkhead and started the whole thing. The port cargo master didn’t even get a slap on the wrist. Damn it, what I did or didn’t have to drink wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference!” He sniffed, and drew a sleeve across his flushed face, looking alarmingly as if he were about to weep. It was a very disturbing thing to see in a man pushing, Miles estimated, forty years of age. Mayhew took a swig from his bottle instead, then with some dim remnant of courtesy offered it to Miles.

Miles smiled politely and took it. Should he grab this chance to dump it out, in the interests of sobering Mayhew up? There were drawbacks to the idea, in free fall. It would have to be dumped into something else, if he were not to spend his visit dodging flying blobs of whatever-it-was. Hard to make it look like an accident. While he mulled, he sampled it, in the interests of scientific inquiry.

He barely managed not to choke it into free fall, atomized. Thick, green herbal, sweet as syrup—he nearly gagged on the sweetness—perhaps 60% pure ethanol. But what was the rest of it? It burned down his esophagus, making him feel suddenly like an animated display of the digestive system, with all the different parts picked out in colored lights. Respectfully, he wiped the mouthpiece on his sleeve and handed the bottle to its owner, who tucked it back under his arm.

“Thanks,” Miles gasped. Mayhew nodded. “So how,” Miles aspirated, then cleared his throat to a more normal tone, “what are you planning to do next? What are you demanding?”

“Demanding?” said Mayhew. “Next? I don’t—I’m just not going to let that cannibal Calhoun murder my ship. There isn’t—there isn’t any text.” He rocked the box with the toggle switch on his lap, a miserable madonna. “Have you ever been red?” he asked suddenly.

Miles had a confused vision of ancient Earth political parties. “No, I’m Vor,” he said, not sure if that was the right response. But it seemed not to matter. Mayhew soliliquized on.

“Red. The color red. Pure light I was, once, on the jump to some little hole of a place called Hespari II. There’s no experience in life like a jump. If you’ve never ridden the lights in your brain—colors no man’s ever put a name to—there are no words for it. Better than dreams, or nightmares—better than a woman—better than food or drink or sleep or breath—and they pay us for it! Poor deluded suckers, with nothing under their skulls but protoplasm...” He peered blurrily at Miles. “Oh, sorry. Nothing personal. You’re just not a pilot. I never took a cargo to Hespari again.” He focused on Miles a little more clearly. “Say, you’re a mess, aren’t you?”

“Not as much of a mess as you are,” Miles replied frankly, nettled.

“Mm,” the pilot agreed. He passed his bottle back.

Curious stuff, thought Miles. Whatever was in it seemed to be counteracting the usual effect ethanol had on him of putting him to sleep. He felt warm and energetic, as if it flowed right down to his fingers and toes. It was probably how Mayhew had kept awake for three days, alone in this deserted can.

“So,” Miles went on scornfully, “you haven’t got a battle plan. You haven’t asked for a million Betan dollars in small unmarked slips, or threatened to drop the ship through the roof of the shuttleport, or taken hostages, or—or anything constructive at all. You’re just sitting up here, killing time and your bottle, and wasting your opportunities, for want of a little resolve, or imagination, or something.”

Mayhew blinked at this unexpected point of view. “By God, Van told the truth for once. You’re not from the Mental Health Board... I could take you hostage,” he offered placatingly, swinging the needier toward Miles.

“No, don’t do that,” said Miles hastily. “I can’t explain, but—they’d overreact, down there. It’s a bad idea.”

“Oh.” The needler’s aim drifted off. “But anyway, don’t you see,” he tapped his headset, attempting to explain, “what I want, they can’t give me? I want to ride the jumps. And I can’t, not any more.”

“Only in this ship, I gather.”

“This ship is going for scrap,” his despair was flat, unexpectedly rational, “just as soon as I can’t stay awake any more.”

“That’s a useless attitude,” scoffed Miles. “Apply a little logic to the problem, at least. I mean like this. You want to be a jump pilot. You can only be a jump pilot for an RG ship. This is the last RG ship. Ergo, what you need is this ship. So get it. Be a pilot-owner. Run your own cargos. Simple, see? May I have some more of that stuff, please?” One got used to the ghastly taste quite quickly, Miles found.

Mayhew shook his head, clutching his despair and his toggle box to him like a familiar, comforting child’s toy. “I tried. I’ve tried everything. I thought I had a loan. It folded, and anyway, Calhoun outbid me.”

“Oh.” Miles passed the bottle back, feeling deflated.

He gazed at the pilot, to whom he was now floating at right angles. “Well, all I know is, you can’t give up. Shur—surrender besmirches the honor of the Vor.” He began to hum a little, a snatch of some half-remembered childhood ballad; “The Seige of Silver Moon”. It had a Vor lord in it, he recalled, and a beautiful witch-woman who rode in a magic flying mortar; they had pounded their enemies’ bones in it, at the end. “Gimme another drink. I want to think. ‘If thou wilt swear thyself to me, thy leige lord true to thee I’ll be...’ “

“Huh?” said Mayhew.

Miles realized he’d been singing aloud, albeit softly. “Nothing, sorry.” He floated in silence a few minutes longer. “That’s the trouble with the Betan system,” he said after a time. “Nobody takes personal responsibility for anyone. It’s all these faceless fictional corporate entities—government by ghosts. What you need is a leige lord, to take sword in hand and slice through all the red tape. Just like Vorthalia the Bold and the Thicket of Thorns.”

“What I need is a drink,” said Mayhew glumly.

“Hm? Oh, sorry.” Miles handed the bottle back. An idea was forming up in the back of his mind, like a nebula just starting to contract. A little more mass, and it would start to glow, a pro to star... “I have it!” he cried, straightening out suddenly, and accidentally giving himself an unwanted spin.