Partnership (40 page)

"Oh." Nancia hadn't previously compared the pattern of Flix's jauntings from gig to gig with her father's diplomatic assignments. Now she made a hasty scan of her restored memory banks and found a surprising number of correspondences. That was something she'd have to ask Flix about. Just now she really didn't feel up to discussing it with Daddy.

"I don't suppose," she said carefully, "that was what you came to see me about? Flix's career, I mean?"

Her father sniffed. "I don't consider that a career. You have a career, Nancia my dear, and by all accounts you've done quite well Co date — a few errors in judgment, perhaps, but nothing that maturity and experience won't—"

This time Nancia knew what caused the flush of heat diat swamped her upper deck circuits and the red haze that trembled in her visual sensors. For a moment she didn't speak, fearing that she would be unable to control her voice; she could not look at Daddy without seeing Caleb and, shadowy in her imagination, Paul del Parmay Polo. Just another man, seeing in her nothing but a tool to serve his plans, coming to give her a rating on how well or ill she'd done for him. Were all men like that?

"Exactly what errors of judgment were you thinking of?" she inquired when she had her vocal circuits under control again. Not that she hadn't made plenty of mistakes for Daddy to pick at....

But what he complained of was the last thing she'd been worried about

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"At least, fortuitously, some other ship performed the service of transporting them back to Central,"

Daddy said. "But from what I've heard at the trial, you were quite prepared to perform that service yoursel£

You shouldn't lower yourself that way, Nancia. A Perez y de Gras shouldn't be used as a prison ship to transport common criminals."

"In case you've forgotten, Daddy," Nancia replied,

"those 'common criminals' are the very same people I transported to the Nyota system on my maiden voyage... and didn't you pull a few strings to arrange that assignment for me?"

Javier Perez y de Gras sat down heavily in one of the comfortably padded cabin chairs. "I did that," he said.

"I thought it would be nice for you to have some young company ... young people of your own class and background ... for your first voyage. An easy assignment, I thought."

"So did I," Nancia said. Some of the sadness she felt crept into her voice; whatever she'd done to her feedback loops, it seemed to work both ways. She could no longer maintain the perfectly controlled, emotionally uninflected vocal tones she had prided herself on producing before the hyperchip disaster. "So did I.

But it turned out... rather more complicated than that. And I didn't know what to do. Maybe I did make some 'errors in judgment.' I didn't have a lot of advice, if you recall. "Just a taped good-luck message from a man too busy and important to come to my graduation.

"I recall," her father said. "Call that my error, if you like. Once you'd made it through Lab Schools to graduation and commissioning, you seemed to be doing so well, and I was worried about Flix. Still am, for that matter." He sighed. "Anyway, there you were, off to the start of a glorious career, and my other two children had problems aplenty."

"Not Jinevra!" Nancia exclaimed. "I always thought PARTNERSHIP

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she was the perfect example of what you wanted us to become."

"I wanted you to become yourselves," her father said. "Apparently I didn't communicate that to you.

Jinevra's a paper-doll cutout of the ideal PTA administrator, and I don't know how to talk to her any more. And as for Flix — well, you know about Flix. I thought he needed attention more than you. Thought a few suggestions, maybe an entry-level position in some branch of Central where he could work himself up and someday amount to something ... of course he'd have to give up fooling around with the synthcom...." Javier Perez y de Gras sighed. "Flix never has straightened out. I don't know, perhaps he feels neglected on account of all those years when I took every free moment to visit you at Lab Schools. I didn't have that much time for him then. Even the day he was born, I was at Lab Schools, watching you be fitted for your first mobile shell. Seemed he needed me more than you.... I thought it was time to redress the balance."

Nancia absorbed the impact of this speech quietly.

For the first time, looking at her father's worn face, she began to comprehend how much time and effort he must have really given to his family over the years.

Since their mother had quietly retired to the haven of Blissto addiction in a hush-hush, genteel clinic, he had tried to be both father and mother to three obstreperous, brilliant, demanding High Families brats. Another man might have leaned too hard on his children for emotional comfort; another career diplomat might have shunted the children into exclusive boarding schools and forgotten about them.

But Daddy was no Faul del Parma, to use and abuse and forget his children. He'd done the best he could for them ... within his limitations .,. snatching moments between meetings, suffering long tiring 318 AnneMcCaffrey

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rerourings between assignments to spend a day or two on their planets, juggling a diplomat's unforgiving schedule to work in graduations and school plays.

"An error of judgment, perhaps," Javier Perez y de Gras said when the silence had lasted too long, "but never... please believe me... an error of love. You're my daughter. I only wanted the best for you." And rising from his padded chair, he laid one hand briefly on the titanium column that enclosed and protected Nancia's shell.

"Requesting permission to come aboard!"

There was no identification this time, but Nancia recognized Forister's voice, even though there was something unfamiliar about the way he drew the words out She activated her external sensors and saw not only Forister but General Questar-Benn standing on the landing pad.

"Request permission to come aboard," Forister repeated. He was pronouncing his words very carefully. And Micaya Questar-Benn was standing very properly, stiff as if she were on a parade-ground. A suspicion began to grow in Nancia's mind.

She slid open the lower doors and waited. A moment later the airlock door opened and Micaya Questar-Benn stepped into the lounge. Very slowly and carefully.

Forister followed. He was holding an open botde in one hand.

"You are drunk," Nancia said severely.

Forister looked wounded. "Not yet. Wouldn't get drunk before I came back to share the news with you.

Just... happy. Very happy," he expatiated. "Very, very, very... where was 1?"

"Looking at the bottom of a bottle of Sparkling Heorot, I suspect," Nancia told him.

Forister's wounded expression intensified. "Please!

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Do you think I'd toast the best brainship on Central in that cheap stuff? It's only fit for, for..."

"Starving musicians?" Nancia suggested. Some day she would have to have a serious talk with Daddy about Flix; suggest that he stop finding Flix promising career openings and just let the boy be a synthocommer. But this latest visit of Daddy's hadn't seemed the right time to bring the subject up. And she couldn't beam him now; Forister had other things on his mind. What there was left ofhis mind, she corrected with a shade of envy.

"I'll have you know," Forister announced with a flourish, "this is genuine Old Earth wine! Badacsonyi Keknyelu, no less!"

Nancia's new language module included not only Latin and Greek but a sprinkling of less well-known Old Earth tongues. She skimmed the Hungarian dictionary.

"Blue-Tongue Lake Badacsony? Are you sure?"

"Believe him," Micaya Questar-Benn chimed in. Like Forister, she was taking great care with her consonants.

"If it's as good as the red stuff, it's worth every credit he paid for it What was the red stuff called, Forister?"

"Egri Bikaver."

"Bull's Blood from Eger," Nancia translated. "Oh, well. You know, sometimes I don't really mind not being able to share softshell pleasures. Er — what are we celebrating?"

"End of the trial! Don't you follow the newsbytes?"

"Not lately. They never have much to say," Nancia equivocated. And if there were any questions about my deposition, I don't want to hear them.

"Well, they do now." Forister pulled himself erect and stood in the center of the lounge swaying slightly.

"Sentencing was this morning. Alpha bint Hezra-Fong and Darnell Overton-Glaxely got twenty-five years each. They'll do community service on a newly colonized planet—under strict guard."

"Alpha may be some use to the colonists," Nancia 320

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commented, "but I don't know what a bunch of poor innocent colonists have done that they should be saddled with Darnell."

"Farming world," Forister said cheerfully. "They need a lot of stoop labor. As for the rest—" He sobered briefly. "Polyon's back to Shemali."

"What?"

"Working the hyperchip burnofflines," Forister said. "The new manager's worked out a failsafe way to disable the virus Polyon built into his hyperchip design. So the factories are to continue production...

under somewhat more responsible management I'm afraid the supply of hyperchips is going to dip for a while; you probably won't be able to replace the ones you burned out for some time, Nanda."

"I can deal with that," Nancia said dryly. It would be a long time indeed before she let any chip designed by Polyon de Gras-Waldheim within connecting distance of her motherboards!

Forister still hadn't mentioned the two people whose fete concerned her most "And Blaize?" It couldn't be too bad, or Forister wouldn't be celebrating like that

"Five years' community service," Forister told her.

"Could be worse. They've dug up a planet in Deneb subspace — son of like Angalia, only worse, and the only sentient life form resembles giant spiders, and nobody's ever been able to communicate with them. Blaize was moaning and groaning, but I suspect he can't wait to start teaching the spiders ASL. We'll have to drop by after the next assignment and see how he's doing."

"Next assignment?"

"Here's the datacording." Forister dropped a hedron into Nancia's reader slot. She scanned the instructions while he and Micaya broke open the bottle of Badacsonyi Keknyelu. The three of them had been assigned as a team to Theta Szentmari... a very, very long way from Central, through three separate Sin-PARTNERSHIP

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gularity points. One Singularity transition brought them briefly into Deneb subspace.

"And what," she inquired, "do we do when we get there?" Assuming they still uxxnt me as a bmmship... I suppose they do. But tufty hasn't anybody said a word about fiissa ?

"Sealed orders." Forister tossed a second hedron into the reader; Nancia found to her chagrin that she

; could not decrypt the information on this one. "Sup-posed to be self-decrypting when we pass through the third Singularity," Forister explained. "Apparently

^whatever's going on there is too hot to explain on central... they're that worried about leaks. They've

»een discussing the possibility of making the three of is a permanent investigative team for hot little scan-

' Is like whatever is wrong on Theta Szentmari."

"And what," Nancia asked carefully, "do the two of you think about that? Now that the trial's over?

id... you never did tell me about Fassa."

"Ah, yes, Fassa." Forister's merry twinkle diminished

-Jightiy. "Sev's going out to Rigel IV with her, did you

[know that? He says hell try to pick up El. or security work there, wait out her term."

"Twenty-five years?"

"Ten. They recommended clemency in view of her apparent rehabilitation ... helping us trap Polyon, and that very moving attempt to defend me when Polyon was holding us all hostage inside Singularity.

Most of which came through brilliantly in your image datacordings, Nancia." Forister smiled benignly.

"There were a few gaps, though."

Here it comes. She'd been trying not to think about that aspect of the trial. "I did tell you I'd suffered some memory loss," Nancia reminded him.

"So you did, so you did.... Anyway. The court wasn't sure what to make of all that; she'd already been arrested, after all, and she could just have been trying to put herself in the best possible light for the trial. But there was one 322

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thing from earlier, well before she was arrested, that convinced them she wasn't quite as seltcenteredly fraudulent as her partners in crime." Forister twinkled. "Itseemsthat when a factory she built on Shemali collapsed, she put up the new building free of charge. Sev Bryley brought that into evidence. Now, it seems to me that J heard Polyon saying he'd terrorized her into that replacement But Polyoris trial was over before Sev brought out the story of the Shemali buildings, so he couldn't be recalled for cross-examination. And one of those little blips in your datacording happened just at the moment when Polyon was explaining that little matter to us."

Nancia felt a glowing heat from all her upper-deck circuits. "I did tell you I'd suffered some memory loss,"

she repeated.

"Very conveniently arranged, though."

"All right. I canceled that part of the datacording. I

— Fassa's had problems to deal with worse than anything you or I ever faced," Nancia said. "From what I overheard, keeping watch on her and Sev — you don't know what her father did to her."

"I can guess," Forister said.

"Well, then. It doesn't excuse what she did, I know that. And it would kill her to have all that brought out in court. But — she hasn't had many breaks," Nancia said. "She never knew what it was to have a loving family behind her." Fve been so much luckier — even if I didn't know it for a little while. "I thought she deserved that much of a second chance."

Silence followed this statement.

"I — it was dishonest," Nancia admitted. "And I know that. And if you two don't want to be partnered with me any more..."