Sharon Lee: - Prologue

Jen Sar has disappeared in midsemester, without notice to me or to the Administration, on his off day before mid-tests. The only clue I can gather is of a small and dilapidated spaceship long unflown, departing Delgado the same day, from an airfield within easy drive, flown by one of his description. His car, keys on seat, fishing gear in place, sat in an assigned spot there. The spaceship, so station informs me, is not in Delgado space.

Within a day of his departure, I discovered that the house on Leafydale Place, all possessions, and especially the cats, are gifts to me. I continue the tea run, with fading hopes. I felt that you must be told, and can only hope your connections with your father are not as fully disrupted as my own.

Kamele

Theo banged the pad on the table as if the message might be shaken into something other, and then grabbed it up again and reread it, the sense of it the same, the whole of it senseless. Father wouldn't just leave !

"Theo?"

Win Ton was standing quite near; she'd been so concentrated on Kamele's letter that she hadn't heard him move. He was doing his best not to look at the memo screen, so much so that she struggled against a laugh and lost to a resulting snarfing giggle.

"Theo, is there . . . a problem?"

He stood with a steadying hand on table, and she managed to strangle the giggle into words.

"Win Ton, my father's gone."

His mottled face showed a change from intent interest to blandness back to some emotion she couldn't name, as if his illness betrayed his training.

Hand still braced against the table, he bowed a special bow, indicating respect for the elders, and said something in Liaden which she understood part of, and something else in Liaden, which got by her ear entirely. Within a heartbeat, he bowed again, murmuring in Terran, what must have been the translation: "May you have all joy in the memory of your loved one."

"No," she burst out. "He's not dead! He's gone . Missing! Run away from his classes in a beat-up spaceship and— his classes! "

Win Ton went through another set of changes, relief perhaps coming into his shoulders, while his eyebrows drew painfully together.

"And has he never before—"

"No, not ever not ever!"

Theo realized that she'd banged the memo pad onto the table again.

"Sorry," she said, very low, and then took it to Liaden, with proper gravity, "Forgive me if I offend in this moment of uncertainty."

"No offense," he murmured, inclining his head.

Theo closed her eyes momentarily. Inner calm , she told herself, deliberately relaxing tight muscles. She opened her eyes. Win Ton was still standing, braced against the table, his arm trembling with strain.

"Please," she said, alarmed, "sit. This—this is not your problem. I'm not sure it's my problem, except—"

Win Ton stood away from the table carefully, a soothing hand barely touching hers before he moved back to his chair.

"Your father, this is the Jen Sar Kiladi you spoke of?"

Theo nodded, staring again at the screen and Kamele's last, accusatory sentence. I felt that you must be told, and can only hope your connections with your father are not as fully disrupted as my own.

"Kamele thinks I must have known," she said. "He had a spaceship on world, and he never mentioned it."

Win Ton's hands now soothed her from a distance, his fingers moved, maybe trying to form words. After a moment, he folded them together on the table.

She looked down at the pad again, trying to think clearly. What could she do, after all? Go to Delgado and stare at a car full of fishing poles? Witness an empty spot in a ship park she'd never known of?

"I repeat, Sweet Mystery." The irony in his hoarse voice penetrated and brought her eyes to Win Ton's face.

"By all understanding your father is Liaden, whether he properly wears a clan name out of history, or not. It is obvious that his clan has called him home. The delm has the right to demand, and the clan member has the duty to return."

"No," she said. "He wouldn't—"

She stopped, hearing Kara's voice, speaking very seriously, warning her—warning her about Liadens.

Everything—promises, partnerships and plans—must be set aside, should the clan call one to duty. Remember that, about Liadens, Theo. It's just—it might help. Later.

She closed her eyes, trying to accommodate a universe in which Father could be commanded—compelled. Father had always been a force unto himself—like a law of nature, Kamele used to say.

"Theo?"

Her hand moved of itself, fingers forming pause .

Contract, she thought. Win Ton. Father. Bechimo . Four problems, pulling in different directions, and no clear solution to any of them. She needed—

She needed time. Focus.

Theo rose, memo pad in hand, sparing Win Ton a nod that was far more curt than she intended.

"And by this you mean?" he asked with some perspicacity.

She took a breath.

"I mean that I need time to think. I'm missing a father. There's a ghost ship looking for me. I have a friend who is dying. I have a contract to read and a future to decide. Right?"

She stared at the cuff of Rig's jacket— her jacket—and looked back at him.

He rose, shaky, but determined.

"Be as well as you can, my friend," she said, softly. "We will sit board together again. I wan t that. If there's anything I can do to make that happen, be sure I'll do it."

He bowed then, perhaps with a bit of energy.

"You have my direction, Theo. I will contact you as soon as I may, if you cannot contact me."

Theo sighed, and gave him the pilot's salute she'd learned on Melchiza.

"I'm due back on Primadonna ," she said. Chaos! Tranza would think she'd been taken by slavers!

"If you do not return or reply, Sweet Mystery, what shall I assume? That you have decided that my plight is beyond your care?"

She took the question, looked at it advertently, felt the terrors around the edge of it. Carefully, she extended her hand, and took his cold, weak one. He did not withdraw.

"Win Ton. Pilot yo'Vala. Friend. I will reply as soon as I may. If I do not reply it is because the solution is one beyond me, and I've gone—gone for help. Is that acceptable?"

His eyes widened very briefly, and he bowed a stately bow on unsteady legs.

"Pilot's choice, Theo. As I sit your second, it must be acceptable."

Thirty-Nine

Primadonna

Volmer

"Right."

Rig stood with arms crossing his chest, noting the board feed Theo was taking from Volmer's orbiting station. She could see him reflected in the screens—a not-unusual thing for her this past year.

"It makes sense to see what they're looking for there, but, Theo, the real action's right there in the bar, right? They got the same feed you got from station and they got bidders and askers looking for work right now. The usual applies, of course—makes sense to get a checkup on the ship if you can, and know the crew if there is one—but here you can find something you can check before lunch and sign before dinner if you need to, and you don't have to pay a fare or pull a favor to get there, and you're not paying for your own air while you wait. Right. Station-waiting can be a big drain on the accounts!"

That made good pilot sense, even if her mood now was to get off-planet as soon as she could. With no need to go to Delgado, no real need to be anywhere except at the board of a ship . . . and coming up with a plan to find her father, of course. And figure out a way to help Win Ton, and Bechimo , if it existed, and for which, she had realized on her ride back to Primadonna , she only had the word of a very ill and perhaps unstable man.