A Matter of Oaths (20 page)

“Maybe he tried,” Joshim suggested. “Our news about the
raiders has pushed everything else into the background.”

Rafe passed Joshim his tunic. “Maybe,” he conceded. It was
true that Aramas station was humming with speculation and counter-speculation.
Everybody had a theory about who was behind the raids or about who was making
them and, in the absence of any more facts than the few
Bhattya
had discovered, everybody’s theory was equally viable and
equally enthusiastically proposed. Everybody’s theory except Rafe’s, because
Rafe did not have a theory. He
knew
.
He just could not remember what he knew.

“Stop it,” Joshim said firmly. “You’ll just make yourself
sick again.”

Rafe flopped back to lie the bed, scowling. “I swear you
read my mind,” he accused.

“No, just your body.” Joshim sat down next to Rafe to put
his boots on. “It’s not your fault you can’t remember. And whatever it is,
somebody else will know it. The whole Guild — in both Empires — will be looking
for the answer. You don’t need to feel guilty because you haven’t got it.”

“It’s not guilt. It’s frustration.”

“You’re as bad as Rallya.” Joshim wound one of Rafe’s short
curls around his finger and tugged playfully. “She thinks the universe ought to
revolve around
her
.”

“She told me it did.” Rafe pulled Joshim down for a quick
kiss, then reluctantly let him go. “You’d better not keep her waiting, or I’ll
get the blame.”

“Mmm. And I know how scared of her you are.”

Rafe tied his hair up on top of his head and watched
Churi slip a headband around his.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” Churi hesitated, then asked, “Can I try some
internal monitoring this time?”

“The schedule says signal practice.”

“I know, but the Webmaster said I could try monitoring as
well.”

Rafe gestured towards the doorway to the web. “Come and talk
me through the display on the central monitor,” he instructed.

The youngster described the basics competently enough, and
identified the essential monitoring functions without too much prompting.

“If there’s time at the end, you can try five minutes
passive monitoring,” Rafe conceded, adjusting the limits of the web to give
Churi a manageable size for his first attempt. “I’ll have a priority override
on you and I’ll probably need to use it. It isn’t as easy in practice as it
seems in theory. And remember: if I do override you, don’t panic, just
disengage normally. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rafe logged his name and Churi’s, and their purpose in the
web. “In you go then,” he told the youngster.

He watched Churi attach his quiescent web-contacts and sink
below the surface of the shub, then moved around the circle to the next
position. The web-contacts waiting for him were warm, active; as he attached
them, he could sense the shadowy web beyond, quiet and empty. Most of
Bhattya
’s sensors were inoperative in
dock; her drive was providing power for life support alone. The web was like a
sleeper, waiting to be woken.

Breathing slowly and steadily, Rafe slipped into the shub.
There was the inevitable twinge of otherness as he started breathing shub
instead of air. When it had passed, he let go of his body and entered the web,
exchanging the kiss of the circulating liquid against his skin and the familiar
citric tang on his lips for a deep-felt awareness of himself at the heart of
the silent ship.

He swept a trial signal through the empty circuits,
measuring the echoes and checking the limits that he had set, then tested his
override to be sure it was working. With that in place, the worst that could
happen if Churi mishandled the monitoring was a mild web-burn for them both. Satisfied
with his precautions, he activated Churi’s contacts.

The youngster did not allow his eagerness to try something
new to destroy his concentration on the routine of signal practice, Rafe noted
with approval. Or else Churi realized that, if his signalling did not meet Rafe’s
standards, he would not be allowed to try monitoring. And there would be no
arguing with Rafe’s decision when it was made; even if he dared to try, Churi
did not have the necessary inventiveness with signals. Not yet, Rafe corrected
himself, not for another year or so.

As Churi worked on, Rafe mentally reviewed the possibilities
for
Bhattya
’s next task, seeking to
identify the one for which Rallya was manoeuvring into position. There was no
real purpose to the attempt; it was just an enjoyable challenge, to be able to
predict her thinking. It would be even more fun to show her that he could; he
could imagine what her reaction to being predictable would be.

It was easy enough to guess that she would not willingly
accept escort duty again with the convoy gathering for Tarin’s Outpost. And
Noromi would not object too strenuously to her absence, Rafe added cynically.
Now that
Meremir
’s Commander had
learned how to organize a convoy effectively, he was eager to repeat his
success without sharing the credit.

The obvious choice was a return to the system where they had
found
Hadra
, to retrieve the drones
that had been left there and to search for the other lost ships. The covert
competition for that duty would be intense, with its opportunities to learn
more about the raiders and its high probability of an encounter with them. But
Rallya had insisted on replacing
Bhattya
’s
missing drones as soon as they docked at Aramas, suggesting that she did not
intend to collect the ones they had left behind. Nor did Rafe believe that she
would look so permanently smug if she was planning anything obvious.

The only other task in the zone which called for a
patrolship was the routine patrol of the border with Zfheer space, and that was
a ceremonial duty, necessary only because the diplomats had not yet agreed upon
the final details of the treaty that would bring the near-human Zfheer into the
Old Empire. Rallya would rather agree to convoy duty than undertake a patrol
whose highlights would be the rare meetings with their peaceable Zfheer
counterparts, Rafe decided with amusement. Unless she knew something about the
Zfheer that he had missed in his research…

An irregular pulse out of place on the edge of the web
caught his attention and held it. It was not Churi’s doing, he realized
immediately. Was it the echo that Khisa had reported in the monitor circuits,
the one they had not traced in spite of an exhaustive search? Whatever it was,
it was growing stronger, too quickly to take any risks with it. Safer to
examine it from outside the web.

[Immediate. Disengage.] He broke into Churi’s practice with
the order.

[Acknowledged. Disengaging,] Churi replied promptly. Rafe
sensed him begin to obey, then halt abruptly.

[Disengage,] Rafe repeated.

[Inability.] Worry made Churi’s signal less than perfect.

Rafe triggered the web-alarm by reflex, simultaneously sent
[Stand by for monitoring] to Churi.

[Standing by.] Still worried, but under control.

Rafe made a rapid survey of Churi’s linkage with the web,
found nothing to account for his difficulty in breaking it. The intrusive ghost
was still getting stronger, interfering with the signal circuits, threatening
to cut them off from each other before there was time to make a more thorough
examination. He had to get the youngster out now.

[Disengage. Will operate override,] he sent to Churi.

[Acknowledged. Disengaging.]

Rafe triggered the override as Churi tried again, using it
to forcibly eject the youngster from the web. For an instant, it worked. He
felt Churi disappear, felt him emerge into the dimly lit shub around him, felt
him become aware that — incredibly — Rafe was still with him, felt the flare of
panic as he dropped them both back into the ghost-ridden web, setting up a wild
oscillation that drove them sickeningly back and forth across the boundary
between body control and web control.

Rafe tried to damp down the feedback, but the ghost was
amplifying it, blocking his attempts to contain the situation. He swung
uncontrollably between the unstable web and the horrible awareness of sharing a
body with Churi, not sure which of their bodies he felt struggling for breath
in the shub, not even sure that it was the same body each time he occupied it.
There was nothing but overwhelming fear coming from Churi, the emotion
combining with the ghost to cloud Rafe’s control and destroying any chance of
coordinating their efforts to survive.

Close to panic himself, Rafe fought desperately to isolate
himself, from Churi, from the web, from the insane combination they had become.
He could feel his nerves being seared by the overload channelled through them,
not yet true pain but the promise of it. He prayed that he was feeling the flow
through Churi’s nerves as well. His nerves would never survive that apparent
volume of current… .

He realized that Churi’s terror was fading with his
consciousness. The result of over-breathing in the shub, or the effect of the
overload? If both of them passed out, both of them would die. One of them had
to maintain a core of body control. Unable to check the overload or to pull
free, Rafe gave up the losing battle, concentrated only on regulating their
breathing, keeping it down to a level that the shub could support. It had only
been seconds since he triggered the alarm; it would only be seconds before help
came. Churi was no longer fighting him, consciously or unconsciously, but Rafe
refused to think that he might be breathing for a dead body. He had no choice;
breathing for himself, he had to breathe for both of them, until they were torn
apart.

Now they were being pulled out of the shub, laid on their
backs on the floor. Rafe had a confusing vision of Jualla and Lilimya bending
over him, one superimposed on the other, their separate voices coming from the
same pair of lips. The web-contacts were wrenched away from Churi’s neck and
wrists an instant before his own were torn off. He sank into the haven of one
controllable body, seeing Jualla’s frantic face through a blessedly single pair
of eyes. Then his brain reregistered the damage his nerves had suffered. He
screamed and thankfully gave in to unconsciousness.

* * *

 
“Attention,
Bhattya
’s Three. Attention,
Bhattya
’s Three. You have a Class One
web-alarm. Repeat, you have a Class One web-alarm.”

Joshim was moving before the repeat, leaving Vidar or Rallya
to silence the broadcast. Class One was serious injury or death! He pushed
through the packed corridor towards the docks, the webbers there making way as
they saw his insignia and made the connection with the continuing broadcast.
Gods, if they had still been in the observation gallery, instead of on their
way back…

“Attention, all Webmasters. Attention, all Webmasters.
Bhattya
urgently requires assistance.
Repeat,
Bhattya
urgently requires
assistance.”

“We’re
Bhattya
! We’ll
handle it!” Rallya yelled from behind him as somebody else started to run.

Joshim ignored them all, concentrated on the end of the
corridor ahead and the curve of the docking ring beyond. He swerved left as he
got there, heading around the ring towards
Bhattya
’s
open hatch. Hitting the ramp at a run, he bounced off the safety rail into the
riser and triggered the speed override so that his stomach reached the top a
second after he did.

The web-room was a blur of anxious faces, the web monitor a
blaze of chaos that yielded no useful information.

“I’ll get it.” Rallya again, diving for the rest-room and
the R-K-D as Joshim entered the riser to the web without breaking stride.

As he emerged at the top, his first glance confirmed that
the casualties were Rafe and Churi. He had calculated that it would be so,
prayed that it was not. He dropped to his knees beside Lilimya, who was
stubbornly breathing air into Churi’s lungs as Peri and Caruya set up the
respirator.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Anybody.”

“Full wave compound feedback,” Jualla said, looking up from
Rafe. “And — we think — transference. Rafe’s breathing for himself,” she added,
the simplicity of the statement underlining the harsh fact that it was the only
good news she had to report.

“How long since you got them out?”

“Five minutes. Six since the alarm sounded.”

Joshim had not even noticed the banshee wail of the
web-alarm filling the ship.

“Turn it off, somebody,” he called. “Lilimya, you’re tired.
Let Caruya take over.”

If Rafe was breathing, he was in better condition than
Churi. That made the junior Joshim’s first priority.

“Churi was breathing when he came out of the shub,” Lilimya
reported, relinquishing her task. “He only stopped when we disconnected his
web-contacts.”

Joshim grimaced. “Was he breathing in time with Rafe?” he
asked.

“Yes.” Lilimya looked down at her hands in her lap, biting
her lip. “That’s why we suspect transference. And we haven’t been able to start
a pulse. Or get a brain trace.” She gestured at the electrodes lying on the
floor beside them, and the flat traces on the physio-monitor that they had
already hooked up to the youngster.

Joshim took Churi’s flaccid wrist, looked at the burned
contact, the blue nails. Hypoxia, or the shock of third degree web-burn, either
would have been enough to kill him. If there was no brain trace and they had
not started a pulse already…

“Here.” Rallya thrust a vial of R-K-D into his hand. “How
bad?”

“Bad,” Joshim said baldly, rising to his feet. “Get Churi
onto the respirator. Lilimya, keep trying for a pulse.” They had to go through
the motions.

“Rafe?” Rallya asked anxiously.