Dobbs was silent for a long moment. Lipinski would probably go stark raving mad and try to kill us all, maybe in that order, maybe not.
No. Dobbs clenched herself. It wouldn’t happen. They wouldn’t find out the Guild’s real secret. How could they? It was ridiculous and impossible for any of the Fools as they truly were to exist. Who would imagine it?
Other than a Freer pilot and a paranoid Houston who saw rogue AIs everywhere.
“The crew of the Pasadena needs help,” she said doggedly. “It is our job to help.”
“Yes,” Havelock touched her heavily. “But it is also my job to make sure the Guild stays here to help our own. Get a distress signal out, Master Dobbs. Get the Pasadena to a Human colony. Help your employer cope with the loss of her ship if it comes to that. Keep out of the network for at least forty-eight hours and get your strength back.”
Dobbs wanted to protest. She wanted to scream and shove past Havelock’s outer surface and throw her memories of all the tension, all the struggle and fear this run had brought down on the crew she was contracted to take care of.
She didn’t. She held herself still and said, “Yes, Guild Master.”
“Good.” Havelock pulled back. “Do your best for them, Master Dobbs. We will find Flemming. It is no longer your responsibility.”
And whose responsibility is the AI that took him out of here? “Yes, Guild Master.”
Dobbs did not resist as the recall signal dragged her back to her body.
A soft sound grated against her ears. She opened her eyes. Al Shei sat in the desk chair, leaning her elbows on her knees and rolling the hypo back and forth in her strong, calloused hands. Her head was bent down and Dobbs couldn’t even see her eyes because of the folds of her veil.
Dobbs bit back a groan. She did not want Al Shei to see her like this. The engineer turned.
Too late. Dobbs concentrated and forced her mouth into a small smile.
“I’ll be all the way back in a minute,” she croaked.
“Take your time.” Al Shei waved one hand at her. There was a weariness in her voice that sparked fear inside Dobbs. She found her hands and made them unhook the transceiver and enclose it in the bedside drawer.
“What’s happened?” Dobbs fumbled with the strap across her chest. It came loose and the free end lifted into the air. She managed, just barely, to force herself into a sitting position. The room spun badly and settled into a blur of double images. Being in free fall made everything worse. Part of her wanted nothing more than to crawl away and be violently sick.
Her right leg was gone again. There was a cut-off leg in her bunk again.
Dobbs forced down a scream. She willed her eyes to focus on her employer. The blur of Al Shei shifted and Dobbs decided she was looking right at her. Dobbs made her eyelids blink hard and she was able to separate Al Shei’s eyes from the shadows of her face.
“Yerusha and Schyler are narrowing down our location,” said Al Shei. Her voice was still heavy, but now there was a danger in it. “It’s looking very bad. We’re a long way from anywhere and we’ve got next to no fuel or reaction mass.” She wrapped her fingers around the hypo as if she wanted to squeeze it in two. “I need you to tell me that that thing we brought on board had nothing to do with this.”
Dobbs swallowed. Her stomach rolled and pitched inside her and a steady, buzzing ache started in the back of her head. Her leg was gone.
What do I tell you? That it’s not even here anymore? That it’s loose in the bank network?
As her silence dragged on, Al Shei very carefully wedged the hypo into a holder on the desk made for storing spare wafers. “Did it do this?”
Dobbs rubbed her temple. “No,” she said as firmly as she could manage. “This was subtle and planned and controlled. Flemming couldn’t have managed it.”
“Flemming?” Al Shei’s eyebrows arched until they reached the hem of her veil.
Dobbs shrugged. “Resit named her law firm Incili. I named our passenger Flemming. It’s too young for any precise destructive effort like this. Newborn AIs are like tornados. They’re powerful and they’re fast, but they’re also uncontrolled.”
Al Shei stared at her for a long time. Dobbs watched belief come slowly into her eyes.
“Well, that’s something anyway.” Al Shei looked down at her hands. “All right. Get out there as soon as you can to help keep the crew together. I don’t need a panic right now.”
Dobbs licked her lips and made a decision.
“There’s an option for us.”
Al Shei jerked her head up. “What?”
Dobbs sucked in a breath and tried to speak without thinking. “Guild Hall Station is five hours away. It’s the Fool’s Guild headquarters. I’ve got a fix on our position from the networks. I can give the coordinates and timing to Yerusha. If the clocks are recalibrated, we should have enough fuel and mass left to get us there.”
“And when we get there?” Al Shei sounded like she didn’t quite want to believe there was a way out.
I get demoted to under-cadet. “There’s refueling facilities at the Port. Guild Master Havelock will be able to negotiate terms with you.” He’ll have to get you away from there before the Guild security is really jeopardized. “After all, our job is to keep our crews healthy, whole and together.” She mustered some real warmth for her smile. “If I let you all go floating off into the middle of nowhere, it’s not going to look good on my record.”
The corners of Al Shei’s eyes stayed turned down. She was not smiling under her hijab.
“Dobbs.” She tugged at her tunic sleeve. “I should be glad to hear this. I should be ecstatic. You’ve just offered to save my crew and my ship. Can you tell me why I’m not?”
Dobbs felt her throat seize up. She swallowed again. “Because you don’t trust me. You haven’t since you found out about…” She waved towards the hypo.
Al Shei nodded. “Yes. I suppose that’s it.” She climbed to her feet. “I’ll alert Yerusha. Lipinski’s people should have the clocks ready in six hours.”
She left the cabin without looking back. Dobbs sat where she was, wishing that none of this had ever happened. She hooked her fingers around her necklace and stared at the toes of both boots, the one that belonged to her and the one that refused to.
What is going on? Where the hell is Flemming and who was that with him and why won’t Havelock talk about it?
She ran her hand through her hair and looked toward the closed hatch.
I shouldn’t have done this. I should have sent the distress signal. The Guild Master was right. I may have just blown apart two hundred years of work…
But Flemming was still gone. Havelock still had not told her anything, and the Pasadena was still lost.
What else can I do? She let go of her necklace and rested her hands in her lap. I have to help them. It’s my job, damn it! It’s my job!
She undid the remaining free fall strap and let herself float into the air with it. Her right leg dangled uselessly at a bad angle. She’d have to explain that somehow, make some kind of joke about it. She’d think of something.
She rolled her body around so her stomach was toward the floor and kicked off the bunk with her left foot so she drifted to the hatch.
For the first time in twenty-five years, her body felt too small for her.
In the end, it took over eight hours to re-calibrate the clocks. Dobbs was not sure how much of that time was spent in actual work, and how much was spent re-testing the results. Finally, Lipinski announced the systems were ready to make an accurate jump.