Legroeder thought of Hyutu, captain of the L.A.
“I never thought it was very sporting, myself,” she added. “But some of the bosses love it so much they fight over whose turn it is—especially since Impris seems to hopscotch around a lot, for reasons I don’t personally understand.”
Legroeder stared at her, blood pulsing, wishing he could be standing in court on Faber Eridani right now, listening to Tracy-Ace repeat all of this under oath. He tried not to let his voice tremble. “Do you know anything about the ship itself? Her crew? Her passengers?”
Tracy-Ace gave her head a shake. “As far as I know, there’s never been any contact. It’s hard to imagine that anyone’s alive on her, though. After all these years?”
Hard to imagine, maybe. But they are alive. I heard their voices, crying out. It was no illusion. I know what I heard. Legroeder swallowed, then said hesitantly, “Would you mind if I—researched the subject a little, while I’m here? It’s a sort of… well, hobby, I guess you could call it.” A hobby? Christ.
As Tracy-Ace raised her eyebrows, Deutsch began to stir. Was he uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation, warning Legroeder to back off?
Deutsch pushed himself back from the table. “If you would excuse me—” a sharp glance in Legroeder’s direction seemed to confirm Legroeder’s fear “—I’m just about due for a meeting with my crew chief. Miss Alfa, thank you for bringing me here. Legroeder, it’s good to see you. If you need me, just use my name on the com system.”
Legroeder raised a hand in farewell as Deutsch floated away on his levitators. You’re on your own again. Be careful. If only he knew what being careful meant.
Tracy-Ace was also gazing after Deutsch. “We have to find a place for him. Not routine flights, not after what he’s been through. He did a remarkable job under the circumstances.”
“Yes, he did,” Legroeder said uncomfortably. He looked down and realized that the food in front of him was cold.
“Try the bread,” Tracy-Ace said, spreading some syrup on a piece of her own. “It’s pretty good.” She tucked it into her mouth and chewed quickly.
Legroeder toyed with the bread and nibbled a piece. It was tasteless. “Yah. Listen—um—” The discussion of Deutsch had wrenched another subject to mind, one he’d been avoiding. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you about. What are you—I mean, what’s going to happen to the Narseil crew?”
The augments lit up at the corners of Tracy-Ace’s eyes. “What do you think we should do with them?”
“Well, I don’t—I mean, I—”
Her eyes hardened momentarily. “It has been suggested that we put them out an airlock. They cost us heavily in that battle.”
Legroeder felt his face turn pale. He remembered the dream…
“I didn’t say I was taking the suggestion, though,” Tracy-Ace said. She looked away, stroking her cheek in thought, then glanced back at him. “I get the feeling that you got to be pretty good friends with some of the Narseil during your time together…” She raised her eyebrows.
Legroeder shrugged, but his throat tightened.
“It would be surprising if you hadn’t,” Tracy-Ace pointed out. “I was thinking, you might be able to smooth the way to getting some information from them.” Her eyes changed expression, but he still couldn’t tell what the expression was. “We would be foolish to waste all that knowledge and talent, after all. And whatever else my boss is, he isn’t foolish.”
Legroeder nodded uneasily. “Then, I take it… it’ll be your boss who makes the decision about the Narseil?”
Tracy-Ace cocked her head quizzically.
“You know, they were just—fighting for their ship—and their people,” Legroeder said, and instantly regretted blurting it out like that.
“That is true,” Tracy-Ace said. “It remains to be seen just what their fate will be—and how the decision will be made.” She frowned. “I think you just need to trust me on this.”
Trust her? Could he?
“Did you get the message I sent you last night? If you weren’t on the com in your sleep?”
“Uh—”
She glanced carefully around before continuing. “There are people who are interested in talking to the Narseil. Important people—who are interested in seeing some changes.”
His hands froze in midair. The underground? He struggled to act as if he had heard nothing of import.
Tracy-Ace had a smile at one corner of her mouth, her finger stroking her cheekbone. One eyebrow arched slightly. “Why don’t you finish eating, so I can show you around some more? My schedule is clear for the rest of the day.”
Legroeder felt such a sharp tingle in his nerves, he wondered for an instant if she had a hand on his arm again. But no; her hands were folded in front of her. Legroeder took a last bite of bread and nodded as he swallowed, and whispered silently, yes, I think I’d like to do that very much. I would.
One could do a lot of walking in Outpost Ivan. Maybe that was how everyone got their exercise—although it wouldn’t have surprised him to discover that he could absorb exercise impulses from the flicker-tubes, while riding like a salami from one place to another. For two hours now, they had walked—surely covering the length of the station several times over. Tracy-Ace pointed out this and that, giving him a sense of the general layout of the place. His implants were frantically integrating this new knowledge with the information they had gained during the night and in the flicker-tubes; it was probably just as well that they weren’t riding the flicker-tubes again, because he thought he’d absorbed about all he could handle at one time.
For the most part, the implants stayed out of his way and let him observe at his own pace. But he always had the feeling that somewhere in the back of his mind a structure was growing, a steady accretion of bricks and mortar and grains of sand—not just a gathering of factual knowledge about the Kyber and Outpost Ivan, but a basis for understanding how it all worked together. Maybe the implants weren’t such a bad thing, after all; without them, he would have spent weeks learning what he’d learned in the last twenty-four hours here.
Perhaps the strangest observation was that life here seemed considerably more like life in the Centrist Worlds than he had imagined. He caught glimpses of citizens performing the necessary work of keeping a world of eleven thousand people running: building and repairing infrastructure, growing food in culture-factories, packaging and transporting it and preparing it for consumption. At one point, they passed a troop of children being herded along by their monitors or teachers, though Tracy-Ace told him that for the most part the children were housed and educated in a different habitat.
There was one question that hadn’t been answered yet; it had started as a back-of-the-mind thorn, ignored at first, but steadily growing in his thoughts. Finally he voiced it, as he stood with Tracy-Ace at an overlook to a cargo hub, a kind of indoor railway yard where pallets of food and other goods were being unloaded and sorted. He had not yet seen any visibly oppressed workers. “Where,” he asked, framing his words with care, “are the… captive workers?” The slaves.
As he turned toward Tracy-Ace, he saw her expression darken. For a moment, she didn’t answer; and then her voice took on a distant quality as she said, “The… nonvoluntary workers are mostly out in the fleet preparation area.”