Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

“Why didn’t he just trash them?”

“Ah.” Lipinski raised one finger. “I expect that’s because they were still important. I expect that he was storing the binary data in those reconfigured boards I had to deal with back in port. Then, he transferred the data into one or more of the chips on these three stacks, probably where it’s most covered in carbon, and I expect he’s annoyed because I’ve got it and he doesn’t.”

“And I expect,” Al Shei straightened up, “that my oh-so-clever-and-honored Houston can find that data for me.”

Lipinski gave her the ghost of a smile. “If you give him enough time, ‘Dama Engine, I expect he can.”

“Then I expect he should get a torch burning under it.” She touched her fingers to her forehead in salute. Lipinski nodded and hunched over the board, completely absorbed in the problem before Schyler even had the hatch cycled open.

“This just keeps getting more and more interesting, doesn’t it?” he remarked at the hatch closed.

Al Shei didn’t say anything. She walked up about ten steps. She heard his footsteps following her, dull thuds bouncing off the near-by wall.

She turned to face him. “Have you made any progress at all in finding out where whatever is on those boards came from?”

Schyler shook his head tiredly. “I’ve been glued to the system logs and analyzing every comma and semi-colon for double meanings. Tully may have left stolen goods on board, but he didn’t leave any records to go with them.” He cycled the stair hatch open. “I’ll need some credit so I can made some fast-time calls as soon as we reach The Farther Kingdom. I’ve got some friends who might know something.”

Al Shei nodded. “I’ll dig it out for you.” Inwardly, she sighed. Guess what, Uncle Ahmet? I’m doing something for the family this trip after all.

Schyler met her eyes again. “There’s an additional possibility we need to consider.”

“Oh?” Al Shei laid her hand on the railing.

“We’ve been having an unholy lot of comm system trouble already this run,” he said. “Maybe what Lipinski is tracking isn’t entirely stored on those stacks.”

Al Shei sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I thought of that.” Confidential data, particularly military data, often had viruses built into its structure that were meant to get out and wreak whatever system had tried to steal it. “If he’s left a virus in here, I’m not just going to denounce him in front of my sister, I’m going to string him up by his thumbs.”

Schyler shrugged heavily. “Well, maybe Lipinski was right. Maybe it’s just that our new pilot is a saboteur.”

“I’m not sure which would be worse.”

A hatchway cycled closed beneath them. They both stiffened automatically. Light, quick footsteps raced up the stairs.

Al Shei and Schyler both pressed themselves against the wall as the Fool breezed past them. She stopped on the galley landing just above them and crouched on it. Al Shei looked up and down the stairway, trying to work out what she was running from.

In her hands, Dobbs held what looked like a fat spring. It must have been fairly loosely coiled, because she had no problem laying one end on the landing and one end on the next stair so that the spring made an arch from one to the other. Then, while Al Shei was still trying to sort out what was going on, Dobbs flipped the end on the landing up and over the end on the stair. The spring’s own momentum repeated the motion. With a soft “ching, ching,” noise, the spring began walking down the stairs.

All Al Shei could do was stare as the thing ching-chinged past her with the Fool practically on its heels.

Dobbs grinned at them. “Linear, isn’t it? Northern American toy from before the Fast Burn. I’ve got a bet on with Javerri that I can get it to walk all the way from the bridge to engineering.” She skipped down the next couple of stairs. “This is the dry run,” she explained, before turning her attention to the walking spring. “Come on! You can do it! Mary Mother of God, I don’t believe what I’m seeing! Come on! You’ve got to be able to do better than that!” She sounded amazingly like Lipinski, but hopping sideways down the stairs she looked like some manic circus clown.

Schyler tried to stifle his laughter but it came out as a snuffling wheeze. Al Shei allowed herself to smile.

“She’s got that thing rigged,” she remarked softly. “She must, or it’d be walking into the walls. Javerri’s taking a sucker bet.”

“And she’ll chase Dobbs twice around the berthing deck when she catches on, and I do believe, Mother, that our Fool will be sure she catches on.” He shook his head. He was still smiling. Al Shei realized he had no idea of what had just struck her.

“All right,” she said to him. “You’ve got an hour left on your shift. If you don’t get back on station, I’m going to have the Watch Commander review your record.”

He took a deep breath. “Right.” He ran his hand through his hair, which, Al Shei noticed with a start, was beginning to thin on top. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Right behind you.”

They climbed up the stairs, all the while hearing the Fool’s shouts of encouragement to her walking spring. When they reached the berthing deck, Al Shei left Schyler and opened the hatchway. In the corridor, she passed Javerri and Brand, the third-shift bridge watch, probably on their way to breakfast. She waved to them but passed them without another comment.

In her cabin, Al Shei sat in the desk chair. She’d left the day book recorder on the desktop.

She picked the palm-sized rectangle up and turned it over in her fingers. On its own, her mind drifted back to their last night together before she’d left on this run. They’d spent the day with the children on the monorail, looking out at the regrown wilderness beneath the last set of blast mountains. Then, with Muhammed and Vashti finally tucked into bed, and all of Bala house still and quiet around them, they’d gone into the tiled courtyard to sit beside the fountain and let the moon shine on them through the plexiglass ceiling.

“Has it lost its charm for you?” Asil asked, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

“What? Marriage?” She unwrapped her hijab and bared her face to him. “Only when Vashti pitched a fit over not being allowed a second ice cream.”

“I meant the Moon.” He nodded up at the silver crescent. “You’ve been up there so many times, seen how dead and dusty it is. Doesn’t that spoil nighttime for you?”

She followed his gaze and smiled. “No, actually, it makes the wonder greater. All that dead dust is silver light for us. All those suns,” she swept her hand out, “are life for their worlds, and beauty for us. It’s all alive and complex and beautiful beyond description.” She glanced at him and saw the grin that spread all across his face. “And you are laughing at an engineer’s attempt to wax eloquent.”

“I am not.” He dropped a serious expression into place that lasted all of two seconds before the smile crept back. “All right, maybe I am.” He brushed her bare cheek with his finger. “But I am also basking in the glow of my wife, who is so beautiful, she is like a second moon in the sky.”

He’d bent to kiss her then, and everything else faded away.

Name of God, Beloved, Al Shei thought toward Asil’s memory. I hope this has all worked out by the time you hear about it. She shut the recorder into the drawer.

“Intercom to Dobbs,” she said to the wall.

After a moment, the Fool’s voice came through. “Dobbs here, Boss.” Al Shei could still hear a faint “ching-ching” in the background.

“I’d like to see you in my cabin, ‘Dama Fool. Immediately.”