Station Day 15
Administrative Tower
Ahab-Esais read the note he had left for himself in the computer.
Jen Sin sighed, and leaned back in his chair.
Ahab-Esais was the ship that had brought Mentor Inkirani Yo, now deceased, and Tocohl Lorlin, his cousin, to Tinsori Light.
One pilot dead and the other bound by duty, the ship languished at dock. Not an unusual situation on the face of it; ships were patient of the foibles of their pilots, and often waited unconscionably long between flights.
However, according to Mentor Jones, who was not, so far as Jen Sin could judge, given to unsubstantiated flights of paranoia, Ahab-Esais, like Inkirani Yo, held allegiance to the Lyre Institute for Exceptional Children. Mentor Jones represented this organization as being not merely in opposition to Korval, but an active threat, an assessment that the research Jen Sin had done among the delm’s background files suggested was accurate.
It was the opinion of Mentor Jones that the ship was reporting in to the Institute, the directors of whom would soon become tired of waiting, did they not see a change in ship’s location, or receive a report from Mentor Yo.
The latter being impossible, Mentor Jones argued for a change of ship’s location, hoping this would draw the directors’ attention away from Tinsori Light.
That suggestion had been forwarded to the delm in the first status report Jen Sin had sent. He had, cravenly, hoped for something like an order with regard to the ship, but none had come, while other requests and queries were answered with precision, either by the dea’Gauss, the delm, or his clever cousin, Nova.
Thus, Jen Sin thought wryly, he was taught what he already knew, and it fell to him to pass the lesson on to Mentor Jones.
It wanted some delicacy, was his first thought, though as light keeper he held the last word on who might and might not be privileged to dock at his station. But Mentor Jones had weighty concerns, and they ought not to be cast lightly aside.
He closed his eyes, but almost immediately opened them again as the comm chimed.
He touched the switch.
“yos’Phelium.”
“Light Keeper, it is Seignur Veeoni,” she said briskly. “I finished testing your memory beads, and have analyzed the results. I think you had better come to my lab.” She paused, and added, “At your earliest convenience.”
Almost, he said that he cared nothing for her analysis—but that was unworthy even of a yos’Phelium pilot-turned-administrator. Seignur Veeoni’s insights might well be useful to the clan.
He took a breath.
“I am at liberty now,” he said. “Is this convenient for you?”
“Yes,” she said, and cut the connection.
As he had hoped, he found Lorith in her workroom.
She looked up as he approached.
“Jen Sin?”
“I am called to Seignur Veeoni’s laboratory,” he said. “There are test results to be explained, so I might be some time. Tocohl will call you, should there be need.”
“Certainly,” she said, and tipped her head slightly to the left. “Is there likely to be need?”
“Bechimo may arrive,” he said. “We do expect her, though not with precision. Otherwise, you know as well as I how likely there is to be need.”
“Will the researcher finally return your beads?”
“It is possible,” he said. “I will of course know more, after I receive my explanations.”
Lorith pressed her lips together.
“I had been thinking, Jen Sin…The researcher is competent, I know, but the beads are so attuned, it would be very easy for her to…unintentionally alter, or break an important function. It came to me that it may be possible to extract a new set from the unit.”
He frowned.
“Has this been done?”
Lorith moved her hand. “It was something I thought of, as I considered the situation. I have not extracted beads from the unit. There was never need.”
“Well, then. We will hold that thought aside until we are better informed. In the meanwhile—”
Jen Sin turned his head, tracking a flicker of motion he had seen out of the edge of his eye. He looked up, toward the ceiling—girders here, and shadowed at the height—and waited, but the motion did not repeat.
“Is there a problem?” Lorith asked.
Jen Sin moved his shoulders.
“A trick of the shadows, perhaps. I thought I saw a bird.”
“Mentor,” Tocohl said. “There is a ship asking to dock. It gives no name or port, though it does state it was sent by Disian, to you, providing your ID in the forms of name, image, and voice-print. Will you speak with this ship?”
“Be pleased to. Visual and voice to my screen, please.”
“Yes.”
The screen flickered, and he was looking at—well.
It was a ship courtesy of the fact that it had apparently arrived under its own power, there being no tugs in sight. Past that—it was maybe a manufactory rig. Plenty of arms and grippers. Intake chutes, stacks, and holding bays. It was the size of a small station itself, and by rights ought to have been anchored at known coords, with a work crew living aboard, and ships orbiting.
“This is Tolly Jones,” he said. “Who am I speaking to?”
Silence greeted this, maybe lag, maybe—
“Ren Stryker, I am named,” the voice was high and clear, the intonation musical.
“Pleased to meet you,” Tolly said, smiling easily into the screen. “What can I do for you?”
Another pause, just that tiny bit longer than lag would account for.
“It is Ren Stryker who will do for Tolly Jones. The old station requires repair, says Disian. Ren Stryker is a fabricating unit. Ren Stryker will fabricate to order.”
Tolly blinked.
“That’s going to be very helpful, thank you,” Tolly said. “Tell me, are you able to render complex systems into materiel?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Tolly said, turning to grin up at Haz. “I’ve got a spaceship that needs to disappear, or at least to stop being a spaceship.”
“Bring me this ship,” Ren Stryker said. “I will reduce it to useful components.”
“I want to do that,” Tolly said, “but I have to put the project before the light keeper—the boss—and get his approval. My word’s not final here on the station.”
The answer this time was a shade quicker.
“You only work there,” Ren Stryker suggested.
Tolly laughed.
“That’s it! You sit right where you are while I check in with the boss. He’s a busy man, so it might be a couple Standard Hours before you get a follow-up. Is there anything you need to make you comfortable while you wait?”
“I am comfortable,” Ren Stryker said. “I have content to review.”
“Good. Expect a ping in a couple hours. Tolly Jones out.”
“I have prepared a comparison,” Seignur Veeoni said as she guided him through her private workroom. It was a large space, with a number of worktables spotted throughout, each, so he supposed, dedicated to its own project.
The table dedicated to the project of the memory beads he had lately been wearing was toward the back of the room, and somewhat…further apart from the others.
“Please observe the screen,” Seignur Veeoni said, tapping it on. An image formed: revealing a pale crystalline structure methodically pierced by smaller needles of darker crystal.
“This is a fully functional memory bead. The enclosing medium is sterile crystal, grown to stringent scientific specifications, and seeded with acicular crystals. An unused memory bead will be entirely transparent. Once a bead is strung on the filaments—these are perhaps known to you as ‘smart strands’—and establishes its place in the network, the seed-crystals become active. Each rutile you see here holds data; the pattern formed by the acicular crystals is created by the data. That is to say, a bead from my network will show a different pattern than a bead taken from my brother’s network. I use my brother in this example because, though we are very similar, we are not exact, a fact that the storage pattern illustrates.”
She paused, and glanced at him, perhaps trying to gauge his level of confusion.
Jen Sin inclined his head. “I understand.”
“The acicular crystals continue to grow until a particular bead is full. When that occurs, another bead in the network activates, data flows in, and the crystals begin to grow.”
It was, Jen Sin thought, a rather attractive image. The needlelike crystals shading from palest red to deep amber, their pattern…soothing, in the way that precisely ordered things were often soothing.
“How is the data retrieved?” he asked.
Seignur Veeoni frowned.
“In the usual way of things, the data is retrieved as an auxiliary memory function by a mind that has been especially trained to integrate with smart strands. I might, for an instance, and assuming you had received the appropriate training, give you my beads to wear. You would be able to access any of the data stored in the network.”
She paused, her eyes seeking the screen once more.
“What you would not be able to access,” she said to the screen, “would be my personality, the integration of thought process, emotion, and the numerous other factors which allow me to be me, and not, let us say, my brother.”
“Yes, of course—” he began, and stopped.
Seignur Veeoni turned her gaze on him.
“The beads I…wore,” he said slowly, “downloaded—me—into a new-made brain.”
“Nothing so simple, I fear.”
She reached to the screen and tapped up another image.
The structure again was crystalline. Possibly its color was slightly less pure, though his was not an artist’s eye, trained to such nuance. The needlelike crystals tended to pale amber and smudged brown, with an occasional wavering thread of green.
What was most striking, however, was the line of inky darkness, like sediment, at the bottom of the image.
He ran a finger under it.
“Is this an artifact of having taken the image?”
Seignur Veeoni’s frown was particularly fierce.
“Light Keeper, you know that it is not.”
She turned back to the screen.
“Analysis indicates that the black substance is active, that is to say, it does something. Every bead I examined in your memory network is precisely like this—a normal crystal formation coexisting with this other thing that is not normal.”
“Do you know what it does?”
“I do not. In order to define the nonstandard material, I would need to employ protocols that would risk the loss of legitimate data. I note that the entire network is at the moment quiescent.”
“Because the beads are not being worn?” Jen Sin murmured.
“That is in keeping with my understanding of how memory beads in general function. They rest when they are not in interaction.”
“So, then, we are led to believe that the nonstandard data also interacts with…me, when the beads are being worn.”
“That falls perilously close to a guess,” Seignur Veeoni said. “To substantiate it, we would have to look at your brain.”
“Can that be done?” he asked, honestly curious.
She sighed.
“Yes, but given that we deal with the work of the Great Enemy, we must assume there is commensurate risk involved.”
She turned her head, meeting his eye. “Forgive me if I do not care to risk legitimate data.”
That stood very near to kindness. Truly, he was touched.
“I thank you for your care,” he murmured. “Nor do I wish to risk the loss of useful onboard data. The beads, however…”
He paused, thinking.
“I appreciate that you do not wish to risk the data contained in the beads. How if I guarantee that data is of no use to me? Does that answer your objections to further testing?”
“With all respect, Light Keeper, you cannot know that. Light Keeper Lorith is under the impression that, without the beads, you lack essential data. Lack of essential data can be dangerous.”
“So it can,” he murmured. “Are you able to clean the beads, as you spoke of doing?”
“I was perhaps arrogant,” Seignur Veeoni said, staring at the screen. “Unless I understand the nonstandard inclusions…”
“You risk the data. I understand.”
He paused, considering.
“How, if it were possible to extract another set of beads, from the unit that…produces Jen Sin yos’Pheliums?”
She turned to face him fully.
“Can that be done?”
“Lorith suggested it as a possibility, when I stopped to speak with her on my way to you.”
Seignur Veeoni was looking over his left shoulder, now, her eyes narrowed.
“That is a very interesting thought,” she said. “I will explore that line of research. If we were to have a second set—yes. A second set alters everything.”
She looked back to his face.
“I will keep you apprised of progress.”
“Thank you.” He took a breath.
“In the meanwhile, I ask if you will hold the…first set…safe for me. While it is possible that they may contain data I would find useful, there exists the risk of damage to the data I presently access. I do not hold my duty to maintain this station lightly, and must therefore decline that risk, now that it has been identified.”
“That is, if I may say so, Light Keeper, prudent. I will move as quickly as possible.”
“Do not stint the station,” he told her. “That is your priority.”
“Yes, of course.” She reached to the screen and tapped it off.
“I will keep you apprised,” she said again, which he took for his dismissal.
He bowed and left her.
Lorith was in the tower when he returned, having taken the long tour in order to settle his thoughts.
“So,” he said. “Was there need, after all?”
She looked ’round from the screen.
“A person calling himself Ren Stryker has come to the station in order to assist Mentor Jones. The mentor asked that this person be given a mooring, rather than attempting to dock at station. I have identified a location, and Ren Stryker is situating himself now.”
Jen Sin looked past her to the screen, where a very large—
“That is not a ship, surely?”
“A manufactory,” she said, following his gaze to the screen. “He is a pleasant and polite person.”
“Excellent. We wish to hold the tone, after all.”
Lorith looked at him doubtfully, and he moved his shoulders.
“Does Ren Stryker allow us to know how long he plans to visit with Mentor Jones?”
“Mentor Jones wants to discuss that with you,” Lorith said. “He asks that you contact him as soon as your schedule allows.”
A meeting with the mentor regarding Ren Stryker would, so Jen Sin suspected, segue into a discussion of Ahab-Esais. He strongly suspected that his store of patience was not equal to either of those topics, much less both.
“I believe my schedule may allow the mentor some time from my next on-shift,” he told Lorith. “Please tell him so. I am going off-shift.”
She turned to face him fully.
“The researcher did not give your beads back.”
“She did not,” he admitted. “The session was informational. There is yet work to be done, in order to render the beads as useful as they may be.”
“They were useful as they were!” Lorith said sharply.
“Gently. There are matters that concern her, and I am minded to allow her room to work.”
He waved a hand at the screen.
“Are you settled?”
She sighed.
“Yes, I am. Go, rest. You have been looking weary, Jen Sin.”
“As to that, my sleep has been interrupted lately. The weight of my duties, doubtless.”
The comm sizzled, and a pleasantly musical voice flowed out of the grid.
“Ren Stryker to Lorith Light Keeper.”
Lorith turned to the board, and Jen Sin left her.