“Aren’t the Worlds of the Lesser Gods enemies with Redmond now?”
“Supposedly,” Vega said. “Which makes you wonder why the Factor is running around with a Redmond-based linesman on his staff.”
Ean sighed, and Confluence Station sighed with him. And speaking of which, Confluence Station was still too chirpy for a station whose equivalent of its captain was in intensive care.
“Are you still there?” Vega asked. “Because I’ve nothing else to say. I’ll keep you informed.” She clicked off.
Ean stared thoughtfully at the comms. The ships were quiet. The Lancastrian Princess was the most uneasy. Helmo—and Michelle’s—worry about what would happen now permeated the whole ship. On the Wendell, Wendell was dyeing his hair, and everyone on the ship exuded satisfaction about that. What was the story there?
The Gruen was content. Hilda Gruen was pacing her ship, pulling the occasional trainee into line. “I don’t care if you’re a level twenty. On my ship, you do as I command.”
Ean had always thought linesmen were treated as special. It didn’t seem to be the case on fleet ships. Or maybe it was because Gruen didn’t have any crew but the trainees.
“We’ve got crew,” the Gruen lines told Ean, and showed him. The two original Aratogan teams who’d been assigned to the ship. Along with Esfir Chantsmith.
The Blue Sky Media ship’s captain was drunk again. He always drank.
The Galactic News ship buzzed with enthusiasm. Christian, the engineer, was talking to Cooper, the producer, about something.
And Confluence Station was going along as if everything was normal.
Maybe, for the station, it was.
“Where is Ship?” Ean asked, and used the tune that denoted the station. Had he upset the station by asking the obvious, when the station commander was still unconscious in hospital?
Confluence Station obligingly showed him a dimly lit passage where the tired, older man Ean recognized from Patten’s heart attack was talking to a mechanic.
That was Ship?
Ean could sense, roughly, where on the station it was. “I need to talk to him.”
Line five obediently opened a line.
“It’s okay,” Ean sang. “I’ll do it face-to-face.”
“Face-to-face?”
“Human to human,” and Ean tried to convey the idea of two physical beings talking together. He wasn’t sure he succeeded.
“Why, when you have the lines?”
“Because.” Why? “Because Ship doesn’t have lines like we do. Not the same.”
He got brown confusion and the scent of eucalyptus.
He looked around for Radko, remembered she wasn’t there. “I’m going for a walk,” he told Bhaksir.
“Do you need to?”
Did he? He was doing his job, finding out more about the lines. “Yes.”
“Where, and for how long?”
“I need to talk to the man who was in Patten’s office when he had the heart attack.”
“Can’t you use the comms?”
“You sound like the station.”
Bhaksir gave him a look that showed she didn’t understand what he said. “It would be safer.”
“I’ve a station of lines to protect me.”
“That doesn’t stop you getting into trouble,” Ru Li said. He snapped to attention as Bhaksir glared at him. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“For that, you’re on bodyguard duty,” Bhaksir said. “You and Gossamer. Keep your comms open, and I want to hear from you every five minutes.”
“Five minutes is a little excessive, ma’am.”
“Why don’t I show you my route, so you can see us all the time.” Ean sang it up on screen for her. “And hear us.”
“Did you just volunteer for bodyguard duty?” Gossamer asked Ru Li, as the three of them left. “You knew she would pick you because of what you said.”
“It’s more fun than being stuck in a boring control room,” Ru Li said.
Should Ean remind them that Bhaksir could hear everything they said?
Confluence Station Ship had moved on to the engine room by the time Ean caught up to him.
Bose engines were reputedly quiet, but they still made a lot of noise up close.
A station didn’t need a Bose engine for everyday running, but it needed one for the initial jump through the void to position the station, and since the biggest cost was the engine itself, the Bose also powered the station.
Ean looked at the line chassis. Where did it end if they didn’t have a bridge?
Up close, the man the station had identified as Ship looked more tired than he had the other night, if that was possible. The name on his shirt was Ryley.
“Nonstation personnel aren’t allowed in this area,” Ryley said.
“We’re part of the fleet,” Ean said. Did Ryley know that he meant Eleven’s fleet?
“Even fleet personnel need clearance.” Ryley turned and led the way back. “I don’t know how you even got through the doors.”
“I do,” Ru Li murmured, as they turned to follow.
Ean hurried to walk abreast of Ryley. “How long have you been on this station?”
“Is that any of your business?”
“Twenty years,” the Station sang in his mind, and Ean smelled eucalyptus again, only this time it was younger eucalyptus.
Ean blinked. Twenty years. These were human-built lines, cloned from the Havortian and from the Havortian’s descendants. They’d had five hundred years of human conditioning. Unlike alien lines, they understood the concept of years.
“I didn’t know you were that old.”
Ryley looked at him.
“Older,” the lines said.
Ean got a black sense of a long period of time. Alien, yet familiar, intermixed with human years. That, and something he’d experienced not all that long ago, a time when he’d been talking to Katida. He frowned, trying to place it. And got it. The fresh, new-cloned feeling of the station Governor Jade had co-opted for Aratogan use before the fleet had moved to Haladea III.
“You can remember what you were before? The Havortian?” All human line ships had been cloned from the Havortian.
“Havortian?”
Ean sang the tune that had recognizably been the freshly cloned station he remembered from months earlier. He was unsuccessful, for all he got was lime-green uncertainty in return.
“How old is the station?” Ean asked Ryley.
Ryley looked at him again. “Thirty-six years.”
“And you’ve been on it for twenty?”
A strong, purple unease flooded the lines. This man was Ship all right.
So Ship didn’t have to be the captain. Which meant Sale might still be able to be Ship on the Confluence, if she wanted to be.
“If you knew that already, why did you ask me earlier?”
“I didn’t know before. The station told me.”
The purple unease grew.
Ryley stopped at a door. “Here’s the no-go zone.” He tapped the yellow warning sign. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. “See that. It means you.”