Toby whirled. “No!”
Killeen and Cermo emerged from the nearby trees, fully suited. His father’s face was lined and drawn, as though he had gone sleepless all these days. “I knew Quath would be better at searching than we are,” he said with a tight smile. “You stepped-down your sensorium so much we couldn’t pick you up on the grid.”
“Dad, don’t do this.”
“I have to.”
“I’m carrying the chip, so Family law says I decide for the Personality.”
“Except when Family survival demands. That’s the law, too.”
Toby thought fast. He had never paid much attention to the endless wranglings of Family law and custom, the adults’ yack-yack and breezy bluster, and now regretted it. “We’re safe here. Nothing’s threatening our survival.”
“Not so. But look, son—I want Shibo back. I think you can understand why.”
“I don’t think it’s for the best,” Toby temporized.
“Nonsense. We’ll be together again, the three of us, a real family.”
Toby shook his head violently. “Not the same, not the same.”
“Sure it will. Shibo, in the flesh—just think of it.” For the first time Toby could remember Killeen’s face lit with joy.
“That’s not why we came here, Dad, and anyway—” He stopped. “No—this was why you came, wasn’t it?”
Wariness swallowed Killeen’s brief delight. “Not the main reason, no, but—sure, I guessed there was something like the Restorer here. The message in that Chandelier, remember? And other old sayings, myths. You should see the real thing, son! Magnificent, huge, flexible glass and metal you can see through, tech that can restore anybody, given enough data. You’ll be—”
“You don’t need her now, Dad. Later, maybe, when we’ve found Abraham, gone—”
“Abraham!” Killeen’s sunny elation returned. “I got his message. He sent coordinates of where he is. They’re not reliable, Andro says, but they’ll get us to the neighborhood. Abraham is alive—here! Somehow he got away from the Citadel. Said to bring you for sure and—”
“Shibo can come after that. She’s personal business, Dad. Abraham, all the rest—that’s Family Bishop business. First deal with that.”
“There’s more beyond to discover, I can smell it. I need Shibo. She was my, my core, son. You can’t understand that, I know, but . . .”
In Killeen’s face unease and uncertainty warred with his set-piece Cap’n’s hard-mouthed mask. Toby realized suddenly how much a shield that calm, resolute image had been, for years now.
“I need her. I want to have her back before we go searching for Abraham. It’s an emergency, so I’m setting aside the usual Family customs—”
“We’re safe! No mechs here, even. You can’t invoke some—”
“I already have.” Killeen’s mask had returned at Toby’s outburst, the window between them closing in an eye-blink. Killeen and Cermo stood together, tall and certain, Cermo chunky and giving away his apprehension with elbows cocked, knees loose. The crevices in Killeen’s face seemed deep, shadowed, hiding something. Yet the voice was mild, calming as he argued further. Toby had heard him use the same tones on a crewman who had stepped out of line and needed herding back in.
Toby took a deep breath, licked his lips. Using his Aspects, he dredged up legalistic lore, rattling jargon he only dimly understood. “Override our customs? How can you? I haven’t even been informed by Family Council of any of this.” He let his peripheral vision drift, sizing up opportunities. “First you have to—”
“I called a special Council. Since you had left Argo without permission of the watch officer, they allowed as how they could pass judgment without your being informed.”
Toby was aghast. He should have suspected when it was so easy to slip away. “You let me leave.”
“I gave orders that you were confined to the ship.”
“Sure, knowing you could turn it this way, and then—”
“The Family demands this.”
“Family? Ha! It’s you who want it.”
“I stood aside during their deliberations.”
“Huh!” Toby spat back, edging to his left. Of course—his father knew how days in that tiny cell would affect him, make him jump ship. So the Cap’n prepared arguments, finished the dealings, then waited for Toby to skip. The shock of seeing how he could be so easily used, his impulses calculated, seethed through Toby like a chilly, clarifying dash of water.
He got control of his voice and said slowly, as mildly as he could, “Dad, Shibo doesn’t want to be ‘restored.’”
Killeen laughed dryly. “Nonsense. An Aspect always wants out.”
“She’s a Personality—bigger, more ample . . .” Toby struggled to say what he felt. “You don’t carry one, you can’t know what it’s like. They’re above all this, the surge of anger and want and fear that we feel—all of it. She likes herself the way she is.”
Killeen was still smiling, shaking his head. “You can’t expect anybody to believe that.”
“I certainly do! No Personality carried in this Family ever had a choice of coming out again. Nobody ever asked the question.”
“Well, we can,” Cermo said carefully. “Just manifest her before the Council.”
“No,” Killeen said abruptly, clenching his fist. “I’ll settle this. Manifest her now, right here.”
“What?” Toby made himself take a deep breath. His mind reeled with harsh, violent imagery. Nausea burned his throat.
“Come on, let her speak.”
“No!”
—fevered skin softly resistant, a cupped rosy breast—
“You’d have to anyway, before the Council,” Cermo said reasonably.
“Any objection she has, I can talk her out of it,” Killeen said affably. “Come on, son.”
—tongue flicking in damp hollows, secret crevices—
“No!”
Killeen’s smile hardened. “Yeasay. Now.”
Shibo said,
If it causes this, I’ll think again. I don’t want to see you two—
No! Toby sent to her in the confines of her imprisonment. No.
Killeen’s mouth hardened. “Now. And I mean it.”
Toby broke to his left. He didn’t have much hope but he dug in, revving his knee-servos to max, feeling their surging whine beneath his skin.
Shouts behind him. They probably could run him down but he would give them a chase anyway. He leaned into it, puffing hard.
Then the shouts became hoarse, shrill. He snapped his head around. Quath was blocking Cermo and Killeen, moving with surprising speed. She shot out a telescoping leg and hooked Cermo’s foot, tripping him. Killeen she stopped with a rude bump, sending him sprawling.
Toby was astounded, but he didn’t let it slow his pounding boots. He got out of the park and plunged into the busy streets beyond.
Escape has two steps: first, separating from the pursuer. Then, distancing yourself from the incident, so nobody suspects the distant hubbub has you as its prey.
Toby cut down alleys where he could, leaped clean over a stubby building—his servos cutting in hard—and dodged his way through three streets, faster than he could think through a plan. People chuckled and shouted at him but they seemed to assume he was a mere oddity, not a thief escaping from a job. He relaxed slightly and had the presence of mind to wave at the curious, smiling broadly, as though this was some stunt. Pretty soon he slowed to a fast walk and nobody seemed much interested in him.
He angled through an open-air market without attracting more than the usual attention paid his size. He made his breathing slow. His antic, popping anxiety faded.
Without thinking he found that he had circled around, always turning right when he could. Ingrained Family training. Coming around on your pursuer let you know where he was, since he was following your trail. You could decide whether to take him by surprise, but you had to do it before the tracker realized what you were doing. Or else you took off in a totally different direction, taking time to cover your tracks.