Linesman (5 page)

“They're ships. Machines. A piece of equipment went faulty.”

Ean bet the captain of the ill-fated
Davida
would have disagreed with her.

He
disagreed with her.

Lines had . . . “personality” was the only word Ean could think of to describe it. He remembered one level-two apprentice who had accompanied Kaelea on a job and fallen afoul of the ship's cook. Kaelea swore the apprentice had done nothing wrong, that the cook had attacked him unprovoked. Whatever the cause, after the incident, line two hadn't worked properly in that ship's galley. Since line two controlled heating and cooling, the galley had been unbearable for weeks. The chef had blamed the apprentice, but Ean thought the boy had been too traumatized and too inexperienced to do anything. After Rigel's ineffectual attempts to fix the problem—and even he had enough linesmen to fix level two—the cook had resigned. The ship had never had any problems with line two since.

Katida must have seen something in his face, for she said, “Crazy is only a term because no one has a real explanation for the technicalities.”

The man seated beside Tarkan Heyington—who was also a Tarkan, Tarkan Reynes, only more soberly dressed—put in
with a laugh. “You won't convince him, Admiral. He's a linesman. They believe all ships are alive. Same way they believe all ships are female.”

“Female ships are an old tradition,” Katida said. “Brought in two hundred years ago to appease Redmond. The lines alone know why. Look where it got us.”

Reynes laughed again. He had a comfortable laugh. “Why they wanted it, or why we wanted to appease Redmond?”

“Both. We spent two hundred years pandering to them, and they still kick us in the teeth by allying themselves with Gate Union.”

People at the main table stood then, which signaled a general rise.

Ean joined the movement up and followed his dinner companions, wishing he'd paid more attention to politics. The people here were seriously concerned about Gate Union and Redmond. Yes, Gate Union was powerful around the gate worlds, but Redmond wasn't even a threat, at least not on its own. It was just a group of old-world planets that had been powerful in the early days of the expansion but had since regressed to secondary worlds. Maybe it was just their alliance with Gate Union that made people talk about them as a threat now.

Reynes joined him then, and said quietly, “You heard of the fire at Chamberley?”

Who hadn't? The biggest lines factory had been wiped out. New lines were coming in late. Every linesman had heard of it.

“An earthquake destroyed Shaolin last week. That's not common news outside this ship yet.”

For a linesman, there was only one thing at either Shaolin or Chamberley. Line factories.

Ean had seen them on the vids. They were vast spaces, filled with massive vats, so large that workers used carts to drive around them. Over each of the vats was a grid full of tiny holes a millimeter wide, spaced at fifty-millimeter intervals. A thin layer of line compound was squirted onto a grid, which was then slowly raised. As the line material thinned, the nutrient in the vat created an energy flow between the two ends. A line.

Ean had just spent all night talking about political alliances. Chamberley was allied with Gate Union. Shaolin had been neutral. If the two sides went to war, all the lines coming out of Redmond now had to hurt the Alliance.

“So that leaves—” The old factories in the Redmond cluster as the only providers of lines for the foreseeable future. Plus the new one Redmond was building that everyone said was a total waste of money because Chamberley and Shaolin held the market. “An earthquake?”

“Apparently,” Reynes said. His face and voice were expressionless, but Ean could still see the cynicism behind them.

“Thank you.” For taking the time out to explain things to a total ignoramus.

Reynes smiled. “I'm sure you can repay the favor someday,” and moved on to talk to someone else.

That was what politics was about, Ean reminded himself. You give me something, I give you something back. Even sexual favors—as Admiral Katida came to take his arm and draw him much too close as she took him over to meet a circle of military guests.

“This isn't going to go anywhere you know,” he said, patting her hand.

She patted his hand back and didn't pretend to misunderstand him. “You're a ten,” she said. “I sleep with every ten I meet.”

Ean had heard about people who slept with linesmen—simply because they were linesmen—but Admiral Katida didn't strike him as a person who needed to do that. He couldn't stop a quick glance over to where Rebekah Grimes was surrounded by a dozen people. Surely not.

“Every single one of them,” Katida said. “Except you, and the twins coming up at Laito Cartel.”

At least she had some standards. The twins had just turned seventeen, or so Ean had heard. “Because they're so young?”

“Because no one's sure yet whether they are tens or just talented nines. Admiral Varrn,” to the man she had been pulling him toward. “Have you met the Lancastrian ten yet?”

Ean followed numbly.

Varrn was a Caelum, with the genetically enhanced incisors made for survival on the Aquacaelum worlds. He bared his teeth in a frightening smile. “Naturally you would monopolize him first, Katida. Has she slept with you yet?”

What could he say to that?

“We were just talking about it,” Katida said.

Varrn's neck seemed to fold into the muscle of his wide shoulders and into his chin. He shrugged and showed his teeth again. He looked like a shark wearing a dinner suit. “So what do you think of the alien ship, Linesman?”

Ean fell back on his stock answer. “I don't know enough yet to have an opinion. I want to see it.”

“If we can get close enough without its killing us first. That'll be your job.” Varrn turned away from him then. “An earthquake at Shaolin, Katida. Aren't many who could do that. Your people could.”

Katida sighed and flagged down a passing orderly with drinks. “Not of that magnitude, and not without leaving a trace.”

They all took drinks although Ean wasn't sure he wanted one. He'd drunk more in this one evening than he had in six months, and he wasn't used to alcohol right now.

Katida scowled down at her glass. “Not a trace,” she repeated. “It could almost have been a natural disaster. I wish I knew how they did it.”

Varrn laughed a wheezing, shark laugh. “I am sure that by the end of this year, you will know, and you'll be using it on the Outlier worlds.” He then admitted, “Wouldn't mind the technology myself. Untraceable natural disaster. Be worth something.”

Ean had a vision of sudden catastrophic earthquakes happening all along the Alliance problem worlds. He almost missed the tiny inclination of Katida's head. A deal had been struck.

These people dealt in big deals.

The rest of the night passed similarly. The initial polite conversation as two or more people came together was mostly about the ship. If Ean was there, they'd ask him what he thought, and he'd trot out his standard answer. Then the conversation would shift. To weapons or warfare or worlds;
and often ended with a nod or a handshake after some agreement Ean only partly understood.

Ean stayed with the uniforms. Rebekah stayed with the civilians. He did wander over to talk to her once, but she moved away before he got there. Which could have been accidental because he was sure she hadn't been watching him, but the timing was about as coincidental as the earthquake on Shaolin.

He was disappointed about that. It would be good to talk with another ten.

Admiral Katida rejoined him. “I expect she's not liking the competition.”

Did they notice everything?

“I've a thick skin.” He'd endured worse, a slum kid coming up through what was basically a middle-to-high-class caste system. Not that Rigel had been as bad as the others, but he'd still trained the slum out of him.

She patted his arm. “You have started making a reputation for yourself.”

Any reputation he made was simply because the other cartel masters had sent all their tens out on a treasure hunt and none of the tens—or the nines—had returned from the confluence yet. This left no one except Ean to do regular high-level line jobs. Rigel had been smart keeping him back. Come to think of it, some of these admirals reminded him of Rigel. Ean wondered suddenly if he had underestimated the cartel master. Surely not. Rigel was a class-conscious snob and a bad businessman who cheated his customers when he could.

“Our princess has finally left. Shall we do it?” Katida asked, and added, when he looked at her blankly, “Lady Lyan has left the room. Let's do likewise. I'll show you my cabin.”

He disengaged his hand again. “Not tonight. But I would like to go to bed. It's been a long day.” A lot of other people seemed to think the same thing, for people were moving out even as he watched.

Tarkan Heyington was one of the few who appeared to have settled in for the night. He winked at Ean as they went past. Ean didn't know why he went pink.

The lift was crowded. No one else was going to his floor. Katida watched him touch the level. “You are honored.
Maybe I should go to your room. I bet your competition is placed with the other civilians.”

If by competition she meant Rebekah, then she probably had the room they'd set aside for the ten, and they wouldn't have had anywhere to put him. The ship must be filled to capacity. They'd probably had a mad scramble to find him a room.

Varrn was in the same lift, and a dozen others Ean had talked to that evening. “Katida. You wouldn't get out the door on that floor.” But Varrn and the others looked at Ean with more interest. Reassessing him.

Katida got out at the third stop. She looked at him. Ean shook his head and smiled. She smiled back and stepped into a good-natured—at least Ean hoped it was good-natured—wave of jeers and ribbing about being turned down by the ten.

The fifth floor was his alone. He stepped out into the quiet luxury and was suddenly exhausted.

Michelle and Abram were sitting on the couches in the central sitting-cum-workroom, drinking tea and talking. They both looked up at him.

“Katida was fast,” Michelle said.

Abram laughed. “More likely disappointed. You turned her down?”

“Does everyone know she sleeps with tens?”

“It's a hobby of hers.”

“There are few secrets this high on the tree,” Michelle said. “Drink?” She indicated the pot.

Ean would have said no, but Abram waved him to the third couch and he wasn't sure if it was an offer or an order, so he sat and took a glass of tea with thanks. The warm liquid soothed his sore throat.

“We were discussing your contract,” Abram said. So it had been an order. “It's unusually long.”

Ean sipped tea and thought about how honest he should be. He'd just spent the evening talking with security from a dozen worlds. Half of them already knew who he was, and he'd bet Abram had spent some of the time between meeting him and dinner finding things out as well. In fact, now he came to think about it, they were speaking Lancastrian while he was speaking Standard. He switched to the language he'd
been born to. Rigel hadn't tried to smooth the gutter out of it—Standard was all he cared about—but Ean had tried, and he had a good ear although sometimes it still slipped.

“Not really. Not for someone like me. I'm from the slums. My chance of getting into a cartel—” He shrugged. They probably had no idea just how difficult that was. They would have been automatically tested if they showed any promise. “I'd always been able to hear the lines.”

“Hear?” Abram asked.

Ean hadn't meant that to slip out. He'd read all he could about how other linesmen interacted with the lines. Most of them described it as a pressure—some said against their body, some said in their mind—although one old-time linesman had compared it to a religious experience. None of them had ever said it was music.

“Feel,” he amended, but he could see Abram knew that for the lie it was. “I wasn't trained. To me it was noise. You know how, when you don't have any parameters you make things up and by the time I was old enough—”

“So it's true that you sing to the lines?”

His untrained methods were the despair of Rigel's trainers. He tried desperately to bring the conversation back under control, and quickly. “I knew I was good, and Rigel's very aware of appearances. I knew he wouldn't just train me in the lines, he'd train me in other things as well.” How to read and write and how to talk to a roomful of dignitaries, and how where you were placed in the seating arrangements defined your status. “If he trains you like that, he demands a long contract.” Ean hadn't been aware of Rigel's standing with the other cartels back then, but he still wouldn't have changed anything. Rigel had helped him escape the misery of his childhood by giving him a job he loved.

“Rigel's from Dante,” Michelle said.

Ean hadn't known that. Dante was the rubbish heap of the galaxy. Someone from Dante started even lower in the pecking order than someone from the slums of Lancia. No wonder he was so obsessed with status.

Even so, it still didn't excuse some of Rigel's questionable business practices.

He hadn't diverted Abram at all.

“If you sing to the lines, does that mean you are effectively out of commission until you get your voice back?”

“Not totally, no.” He'd sung line six back on this ship, then had to admit that this was a well-tuned ship to start with. “Maybe some things.”

Did that mean they would on-sell his contract before he even heard the new ship?

Michelle laughed, stretched, and stood up to take off her formal blue jacket. “The evening seems to have gone well,” she said. She stretched again, almost catlike.