"This is good pay."
"A good pilot is worth good pay."
"What about Win Ton?"
He raised both hands as if weighing an invisible cat.
"Yes, you see, these things are all run together. Win Ton has saved the Scouts, and myself, some difficulty by acting with haste. His actions have brought to him the problems he discussed with you—but see, I tell you that he is not giving away confidences, but rather was subject to an interview after he was given a drug to relax him into the device in which he now sleeps. It is not a mere med unit like the best ships and hospitals have, it is a med unit of the type the Scouts have long abjured and fought against, in that it uses forbidden, even secret, technology."
He paused, seeing her concentrate, spun the comment query off of his fingers in that clipped accent of his.
"How can you forbid technology?" Theo asked. "How can you keep it secret? If someone can make something, so can someone else, eventually."
Uncle nodded slightly.
"That would be my understanding, as well, Theo Waitley. The med unit operating on your Win Ton is something more than a standard autodoc unit in that, if required, it can replace tissue to the point of . . . let us say near to the point of creating a clone. Our med unit onboard, as it stands, is Win Ton's best chance to survive the next two Standards or so."
Theo eyes widen, hope quickening. "It will cure him?"
"It will not cure him!"
At this Uncle rose, and began to pace, hands making rhythmic motions as if he posted to a keyboard, or struck a small drum set.
"If I had been permitted to work with and collect this technology several hundred years ago when I wished to, we might again be at that point. But I was not and in any case—at hand what we have is a machine which is far more powerful than the Scout catastrophe units; if you have a brain to hand, almost any other injury you might name can be healed over time; if you have time, even aging can be reduced considerably. But to do that, we need a very complete sample, a very secure sample."
He paced, and Theo's hands won the race with her mouth, confirm data several hundred years outpacing her spoken, "Sample?"
He pause, and smiled slowly.
"In fact, a secure sample: what we have now of your Win Ton is contaminated; his blood and his cells carry within them the very things of which we need to cure him. The Win Ton you saw in the viewport of the machine, that Win Ton, the biologic system, has been altered to hide what is new among what is old, to make all of him somewhat other than the Win Ton you knew previously."
Theo shuddered, wondering, saw data confirmed go past as she considered—
"Clones, people clones, aren't legal, are they?"
He waved his hand with no meaning other than frustration, walking a few steps away and back as he thought.
"Fashion," he said finally. "It is a matter of fashion to make these rules. Cloning has been legal, it has been illegal. Good people have died a final death because they might not be cloned, my relatives among them—and for that matter, yours. Progress has been held back until the point that these Liaden fools Win Ton has been tangled with can threaten everything out of ignorance!"
"The Scouts?"
He sat suddenly, anger leached into an earnest and almost beseeching tone.
"The dissidents, the Department of the Interior. The fools who have collected good and bad Old Tech without discrimination and use it without understanding. The Scouts, the old Scouts, made it easy for them by putting these devices in safe places where they thought no one would find them, not knowing that technology cannot be suppressed over time. Banned, perhaps, outlawed certainly, but that's a passing thing waiting for the right person or group to write new rules.
"What may cure your Win Ton is what the Scouts are afraid of. Bechimo has a med unit that far surpasses even the unit on this ship, upon which both Dulsey and I depend. More! Bechimo certified Win Ton yo'Vala as copilot. It holds a sample—a secure sample—enough to rebuild him completely, properly, and without contamination."
Theo took a breath.
"You believe in this Bechimo then? It isn't just a coping—an artifact of his wanting to survive?"
Uncle leaned forward, his old-young face earnest.
"Please, listen and hear, Theo Waitley. The keys, both of them together, are Old Technology, good technology, and they speak to some of the devices in this ship which are also Old Technology. Bechimo is the next step; it was a hybrid built of the Old Tech that was fading of age and very advanced current tech of its time. And that is its danger to the Scouts, and to these dissidents, that what we built really was, and is, better than what they have and treasure."
Uncle's hands tussled with words or ideas she couldn't read.
"We?" she ventured, at last.
He sighed, gently.
"Call it we, if you like, Pilot. I believe in the Bechimo because I stood on her deck as she was being finished, so I know she exists. We can discuss the philosophy of these things called existence and self over a drink sometime, or a pot of tea, if you like. In the meantime, there is an issue of time, on several accounts.
"Win Ton yo'Vala's prognosis if I turn him back to the Scouts is not good: perhaps two hundred or three hundred Standard days, maybe four hundred if they are content to allow him to stay in the machine until he dies, useless and helpless, inside a cocoon. My machine—well, the machine calculates that at the current rate Win Ton will have a series of dozens of good days, and then of tens, and then of fours or threes, all interspersed with more and longer time within the med unit. With good food, diet, exercise, care, he may well have a thousand days or more of interrupted, painful survival.
"If we can get him to Bechimo, the ship should be able to restore him. It may well improve him. Then he may have centuries, as you should."
Theo bit her lip.
"Win Ton said Bechimo was looking for me."
"Yes, that's true. And with both of you together here it may well find you—and quickly! Which we can by no means allow!"
"Whyever not? If Win Ton needs the ship, then let it come here. I'll open it, we'll get him into this super-rated autodoc, and—"
"Think, Pilot. What happens here or anywhere public when a self-controlled ship comes to port demanding a space, or just taking a space? If someone warns it away, and it assumes you, or Win Ton, is in danger, it may attack—surely if someone tries to board it without your permission, it will repel boarders again!" He tapped the table for emphasis. "If you do not know this, know it now. Bechimo is self-aware. It is also ignorant, having been reft of an association which would have taught manners and something of human interaction."
"Win Ton said it was an AI," she admitted, and sighed. Uncle was right. Better to let the ship find her in . . . less crowded conditions.
"How will I know it?" she asked. "Bechimo."
"We can provide a matching program," Uncle said, and reached further, to tap the contract at her elbow.
"What I want you to do, Theo Waitley, is to accept my contract. There is a ship in orbit, an old ship but serviceable and proud. The port records are open to you ahead of time and you may check it thoroughly. It is built on an old Terran commissioner's ship plan, and is mostly standard, aside it has had several power upgrades. Accept the contract, and go. Bechimo will find you, I make no doubt. Be canny and choose your time and location. Once you have it in hand, then the choice of what you will do is, as every choice a pilot makes, your own."
He paused, regarded his hand a moment, then looked at Theo with no sign of anything but seriousness.