Fine. Easier for me to drag you back.
She surrounded him. Not the way Cohen had surrounded her. She curled into an armored ball and caught him tight inside her.
Ashes, ashes, he’s big! Tight as he was, she could barely grapple all of him.
He jerked forward. Dobbs held. He pummeled her from inside, scrabbling at her defences in all directions at once. Her seams weren’t sealed yet and he found them. She tried to clamp down but he pried her open and shot free into the network.
Dobbs launched herself after him. She could follow the riotous wake he left. She could sense the very edge of him. Dobbs snatched at a packet as she flew by. She could make a line, she could still catch him. He was right there, reaching for a side-path, speeding toward the transmitter.
PING!
No! She howled, but her momentum had already faltered. She focused tightly on the pathway ahead of her, but Curran was gone and his wake was settling. He’d probably already jumped out through the transmitter. If he was bright, and he obviously was, he’d have left a scramble command to erase his destination coordinates. Soon a diagnostic would come blundering up the path to try to find out what had happened to the packet she had mutilated and delayed.
Dobbs dropped the mangled packet. Anger faded into a kind of bleak acceptance. There was nothing else to do. Curran was gone and she had to go back and find out what had happened to her.
Maybe her body had been stowed aboard the Pasadena, maybe it hadn’t.
Dobbs let herself fall back down towards her transceiver. Either Cohen’s plan for her escape had worked or it hadn’t. Everything was already over or it was just getting started.
Her body enclosed her, reattaching its own senses and muffling her naked awareness. As soon as she could find them, Dobbs forced her eyelids open.
Light panels glowed overhead. She could hear the hum of machinery. The walls around her were white. She was stretched out on a table. There were straps around her waist and her wrists.
“So, you’re back with us, Master Dobbs.”
Dobbs closed her eyes again, and felt Chandra Sundar undo the restraining straps.
“Intercom to Al Shei,” said Chandra’s voice. “Dobbs is awake and doing fine.”
“Thank you, Chandra.” Al Shei got up off of Resit’s bunk. “I’ll be right down.”
“Well, you can tell her she’s safe as long as she’s with us, at least.” Resit swivelled her chair around so she was facing Al Shei. “According to the laws in all the systems we’re heading for, you can give her a berth, or throw her out the airlock, as you please.”
“At least we’ve got a choice this time.” They exchanged small smiles, and Al Shei cycled back the hatch.
When she reached the sickbay, Dobbs was sitting up on the bunk, chewing at the end of a ration bar and holding a bulb of water in the other. Chandra was tucking her medical kit back in its drawer. Dobbs waved at Al Shei and Chandra just turned around and gave her a sour eye.
“I do not approve of whatever this garbage is that her so-called friends pumped into her,” said the old woman tartly. “But she seems to be fit for active duty, if only because she’d drive me crazy if I kept her here.”
“Thank you, Chandra.” Al Shei let the hatch cycle close behind her. “I think,” she said, looking at Dobbs, “we’re going to have to discuss what that “active duty” is going to be.”
Chandra took the hint and vanished through the open hatchway.
When the hatch had cycled shut again, Al Shei unfolded a bench seat from the wall and sat on it. Dobbs stayed perched on the edge of the bunk, letting her legs swing back and forth. Physically, she didn’t look much more than twelve. Behind her eyes, though, she looked a hundred years old.
Finally, Dobbs broke the silence. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do this.”
“You’re welcome.” Al Shei inclined her head. “Maybe I didn’t, but I also didn’t feel I could leave you to be punished for helping us out.”
Dobbs stared into the dregs of her bulb and didn’t say anything.
“We’ve had some more…I guess you’d call it news.” Al Shei tugged at her tunic sleeve. “I wanted to find out if, considering your specialized viewpoint, you might know anything that could help clear this mess up.”
Dobbs looked away. Al Shei felt a kind of sorrow spread through her. This was not the cheerful, stable woman she’d flown out of Port Oberon with. This was a lost soul who didn’t know what to do next, and there was very little she could do about it.
Dobbs faced her again. She gripped the water bulb in both hands. Al Shei could see her knuckles turning white. “I’ll do what I can.”
Al Shei outlined what she had heard from Earth; that Dane had died before he was supposed to have met Resit and yet someone who could pass for Dane had shown up with a packet for them.
Dobbs swallowed visibly. “I know who it was.”
Al Shei waited for her to speak again, even though part of her wanted to grab Dobbs by the shoulders and shake her. She had to be patient. Like Schyler when he had first told her about Tully’s smuggling, Dobbs was breaking long years of personal habit.
“It was a Fool named Theodore Curran,” she went on. “Lipinski and I broke into the Guild database and found out about him.”
Al Shei nodded calmly. “I knew there was something our Houston wasn’t telling me. He’s been staring at the walls rather than shouting at them since we left Guild Hall.” She paused. “Can you prove what you’re telling me? Could you identify this Curran?”
Dobbs put the bulb down and slipped off the table. She padded to the corner where her boots had been placed. She picked them up and turned around. “No,” she said. “The only proof I’ve got is that Theodore Curran doesn’t have an activity code in the Guild data base, and I don’t even really have that. They’ll have erased the file by now, and so has Lipinski.”
“I see.” Now it was Al Shei’s turn to look away. She didn’t want Dobbs to see the anger that was building in her eyes.
She did her best. She did her best.
When she had control again, Al Shei faced Dobbs. Dobbs was twisting her boots in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I tried to haul him in, but he got away from me.”
“I believe you.” Al Shei rested her elbows on her thighs. “The question is, what do we do now?”
Dobbs set her boots back down and smoothed down her tunic. “There’s more to it. Curran’s got the AI from the Farther Kingdom.”
Al Shei’s head jerked up involuntarily. “I should have guessed.” She settled back. “Do you have any idea what he’s going to do with it?”
Dobbs, still staring at her boots, shook her head.
Al Shei tried to catch her eye, but Dobbs kept her gaze fixed on the floor. I believe you, and I don’t believe you, Evelyn Dobbs. What aren’t you saying? She sighed. She wanted to badger Dobbs, to remind her that she owed Al Shei for the grief the Guild and this Curran person had caused her this run. But although her insides were boiling with the need to find her way out of this mess, she knew that wasn’t entirely true, nor would bringing it up be fair. Dobbs was deflated, tired, and obviously lost. She needed a rest and a chance to gather herself together.
“All right.” Al Shei stood and folded the seat back. “We’ve got a week to sort this all out. You get some rest and we’ll talk again.”
That got Dobbs to look up. “A week? The Vicarage is only five days from Guild Hall.”
“We’re not going to the Vicarage.” Al Shei searched Dobbs’ face, trying to understand why there was fear in her eyes now. “With everything that’s happened, Resit and I decided the best thing to do would be to head back to the Solar System and get this mess sorted out for good and all.”