Linesman (30 page)

“You help me get my ship, and I'll get you Lambert,” Wendell said.

Who cared? If Rossi never saw Lambert again, it would be too soon. But Orsaya was listening.

“How?”

“Through the media ships,” Wendell said. “Did Galenos really agree to service them?”

“Yes.” She showed him something on her comms. Presumably the Alliance–media contract that dealt with servicing. Rossi started to push past, but Wendell was about as immovable as Sale. He didn't want an undignified fight, so he moved back to lean against the wall. It would be nice to get back home, where he was treated as befitted his rank.

But he didn't want to go home. He wanted to go back to the
Eleven
.

The tiled wall was cold behind him as he finally accepted the truth. His whole life, everything he'd known about the lines, was nothing compared to the lines on the alien ship. He
had
to return to it.

Wendell scanned the contract. “Maybe this time they have been too clever. If anything goes wrong, they'll have to fix them quickly, or they'll be in breach of their contract. Galenos must have hated whoever's idea this was.”

“The Alliance has always manipulated the media,” Orsaya said. “It's been effective to date. They wouldn't change it now, not even for Galenos.”

“He wouldn't have wanted this, and he usually gets what he wants.” Wendell frowned at the screen. “What are we missing?”

“What has this to do with Lambert?”

“Could you get my people onto a media ship?”

Orsaya nodded. “But how is that—”

“Galenos is legally contracted to take those ships with him, so he'll want them ready to jump. Always. Suppose one of the higher lines is damaged. What will he do?” And before Orsaya could even speculate on what he would or wouldn't, “He'll send a linesman to fix it. And how many linesmen has he got who can do the job?”

One.

Wendell started pacing. The excess movement made his long and ungainly body oddly graceful. “Get me and my crew onto a media ship, and I'll get you Lambert.”

“How? You take him back to the
Wendell
, I suppose. What if they manage to control your ship like they did before?”

“I control my ship. No one else.”

Orsaya nodded.

Rossi couldn't move. His heart started to pound. Wendell could take him back to the
Eleven
. He would go with Wendell
to the media ship, and Rossi could make his own way from there.

“Take me with you,” he said.

“No,” said Orsaya.

“Yes,” from Wendell at the same time.

“I need him at the confluence,” Orsaya said. “If we can't get Lambert, he's the only one who has any experience with line eleven.”

Two short weeks ago, he'd have given anything to get back there.

“I am a linesman,” Rossi said. “I can do whatever I want.” He didn't need to wait for Wendell; it would just be convenient. As soon as this damned interrogation was over, he was going back to the
Eleven
any way he could.

Orsaya's smile was cold. “Linesman, you
don't
have any choice. Have you checked your contract lately?”

He stared her in the eyes and refused to give in to her bluff.

“Sometimes we learn from our enemies,” Orsaya said. “Although I'm sure you cost us a lot more than Lambert cost Lancia.” She pulled up another contract on her screen. This one had Jordan Rossi's name at the top.

Rickenback had sold him? Rossi felt dizzy, had to put a hand to the wall because the floor threatened to rise up to meet him. He hated that the weakness showed.

“Impossible.” You didn't sell contracts over line six. The cartels controlled the sevens and above.

“Sold,” Orsaya said. “For a lot of money and a chance for Rickenback to be Grand Master of the new body that is overseeing all the cartels.”

Rickenback would never agree to it.

“Otherwise, that honor would have gone to Sandhurst,” Orsaya said.

She was talking nonsense. “You yourself said you didn't want Sandhurst.” The military had no business poking into line business. The cartels wouldn't allow it.

“You knew that,” Orsaya said. “I knew that. Maybe Cartel Master Rickenback knew that. What a pity someone forgot to tell the other cartels. One can be too devious in politics sometimes, Rossi. I believe Rickenback was under a lot of
pressure to take the position.” She added, mock-consolingly, “Not to mention that you were effectively a prisoner of the Alliance and not expected to make it back to the cartels.”

“The cartels don't work that way,” Rossi said. “They're outside regular politics.” He would have been returned.

Wendell snorted. He sounded like a horned rickenback. “You're all playing politics.”

Not where the individual linesmen were concerned. That was what the cartels were for.

Orsaya flicked her fingers dismissively. “Not that it matters,” she said. “The new body won't have any real power. We—the military—will handpick every linesman we want. Now that we've seen how well it works.”

“In your dreams, Orsaya.” The linesmen would complain, but in a contract system where contracts were bought and sold, he could see how it would work. Especially in wartime, where Gate Union would apply pressure to ensure the linesmen worked only for their side. Some of the cartel houses would even do it willingly.

What would the military do once the war was over? Sell the contracts back to the cartel masters? That was unlikely. Rossi could see a future with two castes of higher-level linesmen. Those who stayed with the cartel houses, those who contracted out to the military.

“Once in the void, you can't change the path.” It was an old proverb from the Yaolin worlds. Come to think of it, her accent had the tightness of Yaolin vowels as well. “Blame the Alliance for starting this. The linesmen will go to the military. The cartels will lose power.”

Not if Rossi could stop it.

“Check your contract, Linesman,” Orsaya said. “And be ready to move out tomorrow with me. Work with us, and I'll work with you to get you back where you want to be.”

She wasn't taking him where he wanted to go.

Rossi said, his voice choked with the need of having to say it aloud, choked with the need for having to beg. “The real confluence is with the
Eleven
. I need to go back to the ship.”

Orsaya stared at him for what seemed forever. He tried to keep his expression neutral although he could feel a muscle in his jaw twitch and knew she saw it.

Her voice was gentle, as she said, “Don't you understand? There's another ship—another
Eleven
—out at the confluence.”

She was certifiably crazy.

Although . . . there were some similarities. As similar as someone talking about the pleasure of a good Lancian wine compared to the actual pleasure of drinking it.

“We've had all our nines and tens out at the confluence for six months,” Rossi said. “Why haven't we worked this out ourselves by now?”

“You haven't had
all
of them,” Orsaya said.

He didn't dignify that with an answer.

•   •   •

IN
the end, Rossi got to go with Wendell anyway because, as Wendell pointed out, they needed a linesman to damage the lines.

“Use a disruptor,” Orsaya said.

“What would that achieve except to tell Galenos he's under attack?” Wendell demanded. “Destroy all the lines, and he knows we're there. He'll send in half an army. Destroy one line, and he won't be expecting trouble.”

“Galenos always expects trouble.”

Linesmen didn't damage lines, they fixed them, but Rossi didn't point that out. He was going back to the
Eleven
, and that was all that mattered.

If Orsaya was right about the confluence—and maybe she was—then it was a weak ship compared to the
Eleven
. Even if she got her crazy linesman to help her. That was fine by Rossi. Lambert could have the confluence; he'd take the
Eleven
.

Wendell was one of the few people who could stand up to Orsaya. Even Markan would have backed down by now. This time, it was Orsaya who conceded. “But only for the first part. I want him out of there before the fighting starts.”

EAN LAMBERT

THE FIRST VISITORS
Ean accompanied over to the
Eleven
were a select company comprised of Abram, Katida, Captain Helmo, Governor Jade from Aratoga, and Governor Shimson of Xanto. Ean didn't know Shimson—or Xanto—at all. He was an older man. Governor Jade didn't know him well, either, for they were making the kind of small talk that two strangers might make.

Ean smiled at them both impartially, then looked uneasily at Katida. “Do you think you should come? Line eleven can be strong.” He didn't want her to succumb to a heart attack.

Katida inclined her head toward the guards who escorted them. Sale and her team, and four other guards Ean knew by sight but not by name. The four new guards all carried medical cases and had paramedic badges on their pockets.

“Galenos assures me your people have training in emergencies like this.”

In the shuttle on the way over, two of the new guards seated themselves either side of Ean, the others either side of Katida.

Radko wasn't there. Ean felt uneasy without her. He
hoped nothing went wrong. “Keep these people safe,” he sang in a soft undertone to the lines.

The lines seemed amused at his protectiveness. “Of course we will. They are of our line,” and he got distinct sounds of Helmo and Abram.

Ean looked thoughtfully at Abram. Helmo was part of the fleet for he was the captain, and the ship recognized him as such. Did the lines recognize Abram because he was from Helmo's ship? After all, hadn't the
Lancastrian Princess
lines considered the guards Rebekah had murdered as their own?

Abram and Governor Jade were talking to Sale.

Sale shuddered. “It's like walking in blind and deaf. You know things are interacting around you, but you can't see them and you can't hear them. Until he does something”—she indicated Ean—“and the displays change.”

“So you don't see anything at all?” Governor Jade asked.

“Once you block out some of the blue, the screens look almost like a starfield. But as to how to use the boards.” Sale shrugged. “I have no idea.”

In the background, Craik counted off the distance.

“Engines off,” Ean said, when the
Eleven
ordered it.

“Exact same distance as before,” Craik said to Helmo, who nodded.

The ship grabbed the shuttle and jerked. “Forgot to warn you about that,” Sale said.

Craik did the same countdown she'd done the first time they'd come in. “Stationary,” she said finally, and Ean could feel it was so.

Ean sang a greeting to each of the lines on the
Eleven
as he waited for the all clear. The lines sang a welcoming chorus back. Katida clutched at her chest and looked as if she was going to choke. One of the crew members beside her reached for the oxygen tank and administered it.

“Gentle, gentle,” Ean sang. “Weak lines.”

“Fix,” the lines offered.

Ean knew instinctively that their fix would be too strong for Katida. “No, please. Human. Fragile containers.”

He wasn't sure they comprehended, but they didn't “fix” either.

They waited until Katida had recovered enough to stand. “Should we leave her here?” Abram asked.

“I am not coming out here just to stay on the shuttle,” Katida said.

“I'd recommend she stay, sir,” one of the paramedics said.

Abram turned to Ean. “Will it make any difference, here or on the ship?”

The shuttle was already on the ship. Ean shook his head.

They suited up. Ean was pleased to see that both governors required assistance, while he could suit himself now, for Radko had made him practice putting a space suit on. Lots of times. He was nowhere near as fast as Radko wanted him to be yet, but Craik checked his suit and didn't have to adjust anything.

They took two stretchers. The paramedics clipped their cases underneath them. Governor Jade looked dubiously at them. “Are we expecting trouble?”

Two stretchers for two linesmen. Ean wondered if Governor Jade knew that Katida was a linesman.

“It's best to be prepared,” Abram said.

“UV filters on,” Sale said. “We found last time that we missed a lot until we cut some of the blue spectrum.”

Radko had taught Ean how to do that, too.

“This ship needs repair,” Captain Helmo said.

How did he know that just by stepping onto the ship if he wasn't getting the information through the lines?

They stopped at the corridor where the first bodies were to let the visitors examine them—albeit at a distance.

Ean moved away and found he was singing the comfort song again. Sorry to the lines for their loss.

“But you're bringing more lines in,” line one said.

For a moment, Ean thought it meant dead bodies. From where? Then he realized the line song had a note of hope in it and thought he detected a hint of Katida there as well.

“Not yet,” he said hastily, and glanced over to where Katida, Abram, and Helmo were gathered over the aliens. Abram was not going to give Katida this ship. He wasn't either, actually. “But I'll get you lines, I promise.”

He kept making promises he hoped he could deliver on.

Every line song, from one to eleven, soared hopefully.
Lines needed lines, although by the way they said “lines,” Ean knew they didn't mean lines like them, they meant lines like him. People.

Katida leaned against the wall. “What was that for?”

Should he admit to it? He'd promised, hadn't he. “I think I just told them we'd get them a crew.”

Governor Jade looked over at Abram. She looked as if she was glad to look away from the bodies on the floor. “It would have to be an Alliance crew, not a Lancastrian crew. After all, this ship belongs to the whole of the Alliance.”

Shimson looked up, too, although he wasn't as squeamish. “Crewed from every world in the Alliance,” he suggested, as if the idea had just occurred to him. Ean could tell through the lines that it hadn't, that he'd been waiting for a chance to say it.

Abram considered it.

“The Alliance is so full of holes, we might as well give the ship to Gate Union now,” Katida muttered.

Yet she had suggested a combined Alliance crew to Ean yesterday morning at breakfast. Politics was strange.

“We'll need to move on,” Sale said. “We've limited time, and I'm sure you'd like to see the bridge.”

By the time they reached the huge common room, with its hundreds of dead, even Governor Jade had stopped shuddering at the bodies they passed. “We had to move some of these to get Lady Lyan's stretcher through,” Sale said, indicating the makeshift path.

The UV goggles made the markings much clearer. On one wall, a massive mural swirled and seemed to jut out. It reminded Ean of the starfields on the bridge, but when they moved closer, he could see it was something else altogether. “No lines,” he said.

“I haven't seen any lines yet,” Katida muttered.

There were lines everywhere, but Ean knew which ones she meant. “You will, Katida. Wait until we get to the bridge.”

Governor Jade stopped to study the mural. “It's impressive,” she said. “I wonder if it's supposed to represent something.”

Sale moved them on. “We've still a way to the bridge.”

The bridge itself was just as Ean remembered it.

Captain Helmo avoided the Captain's Chair—walked quite far around it, in fact—and made his way across to one of the screens. If you could call them screens. Displays, maybe.

Abram leaned over for a closer look at the flickering bars of light. “I can't understand a thing.”

Governor Shimson put out a hand, almost as if he wanted to touch one of the lights. “Amazing,” he said. “You can hear and feel it, too.”

Ean glanced at him sharply. “Are you a linesman, Governor?” Only a linesman should be able to recognize that.

“Me.” Shimson laughed. “I'm afraid not. I had dreams of it once. When I was a lad. I tested high on the Havortian tests, you see.”

“But you failed certification.” It was more of a statement than a question. It was obvious now why he had been invited on this trip. Fergus Burns had been a failed linesman, too. The Alliance wanted to know if it was just Fergus who'd been able to see and feel the lines or other failed linesmen.

That could be interesting. It would mean that it wasn't just linesmen who could work on the
Eleven
but people who'd failed line certification as well.

Shimson laughed again. “At the time, I was devastated, of course, so I decided to kill myself. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Killing yourself?” He obviously hadn't succeeded, for he looked alive to Ean. Even the lines counted him as a warm body in that part of himself that recognized the lines recognizing warm bodies.

“On Xanto, we have a suicide bridge,” Shimson said. He stopped, looked at Ean. “Have you ever been to Xanto?”

Ean shook his head. Until recently, his whole life experience had been Lancia, then Ashery.

“You should go. It's a beautiful place. It's a wild world, with natural stone arches—imagine stone bridges, if you like—only they're a thousand meters high. There's one they call End-It-All. It's four thousand meters. It's a popular suicide spot. There's this perfect launching platform at the top. It takes a week to climb, so you have to be serious about ending it. And thirty seconds to get down. Some people say that's the best part. Going down.”

Who would know? If you fell four thousand meters, you wouldn't live to say whether it was fun or not. Ean thought it might be a long thirty seconds. Rather like when he went into the void, but at least he knew he'd come out of the void eventually.

“Most people start off alone, but sometimes you meet up with others on the track. That's where I met Minerva.”

“Your wife?” Governor Jade asked, and Ean thought from the way she said it that Shimson's wife was more famous than he was.

“Yes.” Shimson's smile showed he was still fond of his wife. “We had a stand-up fight the day we met, and we've been fighting ever since.”

“When did you decide to turn back?” Ean asked.

“Oh, we got to the top. It's the most beautiful place you can imagine.” He smiled again. “We argued about whether we were going to jump or not, then we turned around and came down again.”

“I'm glad you came down again,” Ean said.

“So am I, Linesman, so am I.” Shimson looked at the panels again. “Anyway, that was my brush with the lines.”

Maybe. Maybe not. Ean looked at Abram and Katida but didn't say anything. They must have known; otherwise, they wouldn't have invited him. He took a deep breath and started to explain some of the line functionality as he knew it.

“Everything's based on the lines. See, here, the strength of the lines denote the strength of the ship. That's the
Lancastrian Princess
,” waxing strong. “The media ships,” not quite as weak as they had been in the lower lines, for Helmo had sent his engineers out to them. “And the
Gruen
and the
Wendell
.” Both of them sad, lonely sets of lines right now. Ean looked away, feeling guilty. The lines were still strong, especially the
Wendell
, but there was no mistaking they were missing something. Their crew.

There were other ships on the display. The hundreds of sightseers, getting as close as Abram would allow them. He pointed out the
Gruen
and a nonfleet ship to Abram. “Can you see any difference between those two?”

“Not at all,” Abram said. “Can you?”

“That's the
Gruen
.” Ean could tell from the way line
eleven claimed it as its own. As for the other one, he didn't even know how to find out. He could identify its song—tired and old and wanting to retire—which he thought came from the captain rather than the ship itself. The lines were in reasonable condition although maybe someone should look at the higher-level lines. The higher-level lines on a lot of ships needed work.

Radko would have been handy, to tell him how he might have identified it. She always knew how to point him the right way.

He looked at the points on the display and had no idea how to identify any of the non-
Eleven
ships.

“It looks like a regular starfield,” Abram said. “Sort of.” He took out his comms and brought up his own miniversion of it. “Depth is not displayed as we understand it, I think.” He showed his comms to Katida and Helmo. “I wonder if they're displaying their third dimension another way.”

“Or if they're displaying it in more than three dimensions,” Helmo said.

There were five dimensions. Length, width, depth, time, and the void. “Like in the void?” Ean asked.

Katida put out a hand to the display. “You can hear it. You can feel it. Maybe they're displaying depth through another sense. Like sound.”