Main Core Workroom
The former hardware supporting station systems and the intelligence named Tinsori Light had been located in a heavily shielded core. Which, Tolly Jones admitted, had only been sensible. Just can’t leave your mind and necessary support systems out in an open hallway, after all. No telling what might happen to them.
Tolly had been in the old core, and had firsthand familiarity with the cramped conditions, the second level being even less roomy than the upper.
It might’ve disqualified itself as the new core on space alone, but it was the fact that Tocohl refused to have anything to do with the former space that had prompted Seignur Veeoni to a study of station schematics. That had turned up a suite of rooms on the inner ring that might’ve been built specifically to be the station’s core, right down to the extra shielding and dedicated power grid.
Tocohl accepted the proposed space, and that was where Tolly and Seignur Veeoni met on a regular and not-too-lazy schedule to build the new tile-and-rack array, assisted by Hazenthull, and M Traven.
They’d worked pretty much nonstop at first, getting life support and vital base systems into the craniums, clean, certified, and stable.
Next step was cleaning, upgrading, and certifying the subsystems, sub-subsystems; the routines and protocols that ran in support. Labor-intensive work, the more so with only two specialists on it. Still, they’d managed, and they were past the worst of it now. All the vitals were stable; even the clean-and-repair grid was up and working.
They were working with two arrays: one for testing and cleaning, and the master frame itself, sealed up all right and tight in the core room.
That was all good as far as it went, but it didn’t go so far as a redundant system. The only backup they had was in the craniums, and in Tolly’s professional opinion, that was just trouble waiting to happen.
“How soon do you think we can start building a backup?” he asked, just in general.
Haz, assembling a frame at the general workbench, didn’t say anything, which meant she didn’t have an opinion.
Seignur Veeoni didn’t say anything either, which meant that all of her considerable intelligence was focused on the job in hand. He kept talking, his work at the moment not being quite so brain intensive. “I’d been thinking that might be a good use of the old core, once we get it cleared out and cleaned.”
“No,” Tocohl said firmly, from the speaker right by Tolly’s bench. It was one of the fine, new speakers, and the finality in her voice was impossible to miss.
“I agree,” Seignur Veeoni said surprisingly. “Such cramped conditions as you described, Mentor, cannot be preferred. Though the backup core may occupy a lesser space, still there must be room for technicians to work.”
“I have been looking for an appropriate space for the backup core,” Tocohl said, “and I believe I have a good candidate. It will need to be inspected by someone more familiar with the needs of technicians and other helpers.”
“Very good,” Seignur Veeoni said, and bent her head toward her work.
“Mentor Jones is of the opinion that Station need not be an Independent Intelligence,” Tocohl said. “Do you agree?”
Seignur Veeoni frowned, which wasn’t anything special, Seignur Veeoni being especially fluent in frowns. Tolly thought he was starting to learn the gradations, though, and this one seemed to be a considering frown.
“I neither agree nor disagree,” she said at last. “Tinsori Light was brought to sentience by the Great Enemy, the better to serve their purpose in the war effort. In this universe, space stations are not commonly sentient, a direct result of the Complex Logic Laws. Those laws have now been challenged by Scout Commander yos’Phelium’s field judgment, so that sentience becomes a matter of preference.”
“Scout Commander yos’Phelium’s field judgment may not stand,” Tocohl said.
“It’ll stand,” Tolly said, feeling himself on firm ground. “The Free Ships have been wanting this for a long time. They’ll push forward and make themselves all kinds of useful. By the time that judgment comes up for review, reversing it won’t be popular—or even possible.”
“If Korval’s station was known to be sentient, that would be a strong political statement,” Seignur Veeoni said surprisingly. “My brother would say so.”
“And he wouldn’t be wrong,” Tolly said. “My problem is that I don’t want to push a person into a situation they’re not absolutely certain they want. Duty only carries so much weight. If Station doesn’t want to be Station—isn’t Station at heart, the way Admiral Bunter is a ship right down past the core of him, and can’t think of being anything else, because he’s already in his best place—then that’s a recipe for disaster on every level I can think of.”
Seignur Veeoni’s frown was nearly a smile.
“You are eloquent, Mentor.”
“Comes with being a teacher,” he said, half-apologetic.
Her frown straightened into a look of what might have been startlement.
Tolly pressed his lips together and waited until the moment passed and she gave him a nod.
“I believe you have given me an insight into my brother, Mentor. My thanks.”
“Always glad to help with an insight,” he said.
“Is it your intention to reconnoiter the space under discussion now?” Seignur Veeoni asked.
“Now, I’m here to assist you,” Tolly said.
“And I am here to make the station viable and safe. Very well, Mentor, if you will assist me by securing the junction connector, I will finish chaining this set of tiles, and activate the sub-grid. Downloading of the cleaned and rehabilitated systems may then begin. And we will be free to examine the space Tocohl has identified.”
“Light Keeper yos’Phelium is on his way to you. He requests an immediate meeting.”
“We will await his arrival,” Seignur Veeoni said—auto-respond, Tolly thought, her mind already more than halfway back on the chaining process.
He bent to his part of it, motioning Haz over to steady the rack they were connecting to, and pulled on his work gloves.
The air crackled, opal blue, scented with ozone; a hum started, built, and leveled out into subtle music.
“Circuit completed; work set sealed,” Seignur Veeoni murmured. “Tocohl, please verify.”
“Environment verified,” Tocohl said. “Initiate download?”
“Yes,” said Seignur Veeoni, just as the door opened and Jen Sin yos’Phelium entered.
At first glance, the light keeper looked better than fine—a trim pilot standing tall in his leathers, and who cared how out of style they were, when they fitted him so well?
At second glance, the light keeper was a worried man, which Tolly believed to be a bad thing with any pilot, and that much worse with pilots of Korval.
“Seignur Veeoni,” Jen Sin said, producing a small bow to the researcher’s honor. “I am loath to interrupt your work—”
“The work is just now completed, and passed on to the next stage,” Seignur Veeoni interrupted. “Your arrival is timely. What is your purpose?”
“I wonder if you have analyzed the beads I gave to you.”
Seignur Veeoni’s frown was a mere pleasantry.
“A test suite is running. My tools are specialized, but time still enters into the equation.”
“Of course. I only mean to say that, I am freshly come from a discussion with Light Keeper Lorith. That discussion has provided me with more information regarding the method by which we were able to continue after the Light had shown his displeasure. I—”
Abruptly, he turned toward Tolly.
“Forgive me, Mentor, I do not wish to involve you in something outside your field.”
It was one of the smoothest ways he’d ever been told to get lost, but before he could make his bow, collect Haz and leave, Seignur Veeoni spoke again.
“Mentor Jones has expertise in these matters as well, and I find his insights, which are so different from my own, helpful. Mentor, do you have time for the light keeper’s information?”
“Always willing to learn,” he said, with a grave smile for the worried man. “I can go, if you’d rather.”
“No.” The light keeper drew a hard breath, and said more firmly, “No. I think that this is a case where one ought gather as many experts as possible. Briefly, then: The beads record our memories, which are transmitted and stored in the Light. The beam would have destroyed them no less than us. When we were required again, the Light—which has our samples on file—merely fabricated new individuals, and copied the memory files to a new set of beads.”
Tolly had worked with Old Tech devices, and had a fair respect for what they could do. In fact, he didn’t doubt that the process had been precisely as described. Only—
“Not sure that’s something I’ve met,” he said, looking to Seignur Veeoni.
She brought her head sharply down, once, her frown downright grim.
“Light Keeper, will you take us to this fabrication device?”
“That is why I came. I would have it immediately decommissioned, and also—”
He faltered, and Jen Sin yos’Phelium was not, in Tolly’s opinion, a faltering man.
“Also,” he repeated firmly, “I require an expert opinion. It seems probable to me, given the circumstances under which I existed, that I am not—reliable.”
“Reliable,” Seignur Veeoni repeated flatly. “Sir, you are a member of Clan Korval. You transcend reliable. Now, if you please, take us to this device.”
Jen Sin led the way through the back corridors to the room where they woke, every time the Light had called them back into service. He ought, he thought, have considered this before—that of course the Light had meddled with him—with his mind, his cells…the gods knew what had been done. And the damn’ beads, renewing his memory, yes, very well, but what else? Why? Suppressing a Scout’s very lively sense of curiosity? Subtly influencing him not to question certain aspects of his existence? Altering and purging memories?
As he walked, he reviewed a calming exercise. There was no profit in panic, after all.
So—his plan. First, see the units destroyed. That accomplished, he would write to the delm, explaining that far from being fit to mind the clan’s interests, he was almost certainly a danger to those interests. After he had performed that duty, he would remove himself.
In a sense—in every sense that mattered—it was the same equation, exactly as it had been framed at the beginning: Did he allow Tinsori Light in any form free access to the universe and those things that were not Tinsori Light? Of course not; there was only one course available to him. He would not shirk his last duty, no matter how long necessity had been put aside.
And here was the door. He put his hand against the plate, stepping into the bare, chilly bay where the three units were lined up, each enclosed in a metal cubicle.
The air was so cold it burned; the decking was frosty.
He paused, waving the others to a stop.
“Station,” he said through frozen lips. “Adjust the recovery deck to station normal environment.”
For a long moment, nothing at all happened.
A single sharp click echoed against the frosty walls.