Foreigner - Explorer. Part 1

EXPLORER.

Carolyn J. Cherryh.

Chapter One.

STEAM WENT UP as the shower needled Bren's back-a moment of blissful content in a voyage neither that blissful nor content.

And considering the call he'd just gotten in the middle of his night, he stayed, head against the wall, longer than his habit, eyes shut, letting the steam make a warm, blind coc.o.o.n around him, letting the shower run on recycle for uncounted warm minutes. Complex input was suspended, output temporarily unnecessary.

But a brain habituated to adrenaline could stand tranquility only so long before worry tunneled its way back.

What's Jase want?-followed closely by-We're not that far from moving-and: This could be the big move. Natural, wouldn't it be, if that's what the navigators are doing up there, setting up the final move, that Jase would want to talk now?

It's my night. He knew he'd wake me up. Jase could come here.

Couldn't be any s.h.i.+p-problem, could it? Nothing mechanical. Mechanical problems surely couldn't be at issue.

That was it. Now he'd done it. He'd thought about the s.h.i.+p itself... about the frail bubble of metal and ceramics around his cabin, beyond the shower, beyond the diplomatic enclave of pa.s.sengers on five-deck.

Said s.h.i.+p had already endured, be it centuries ago, one spectacular and notorious navigational failure, stranding the original colonial mission in the great uncharted nowhere of the universe-after which everything else had happened: escaping a nearly lethal star, reaching an inhabited planet. The survivors had built Alpha Station, in orbit about that planet-and developed a bitter rift between those who wanted to stay in s.p.a.ce and serve the s.h.i.+p, and those who wanted to go down to the green planet, take their fortunes and their lives in their hands and cast their lot with the steam-age locals.

A whole world of things had happened after that. The Alpha colonists, taking that dive into atmosphere, forever changed themselves, their culture and and the native people in a direction no one had predicted. the native people in a direction no one had predicted.

Meanwhile that faction of humans who'd stayed in s.p.a.ce had taken the s.h.i.+p and gone searching for their misplaced homeworld. But the fervor for that mission had come aground a second time. They'd ended up building another station in a fuel-rich system. Reunion was its name. And things had gone not so badly for them-until a hundred-odd years into that station's existence, an unknown species had taken exception to their poking into other solar neighborhoods and attacked Reunion to make the point.

So the s.h.i.+p had come running frantically back to Alpha looking for fuel and help.

Which was at least the beginning of reasons why this s.h.i.+p now, with a sizeable delegation of concerned parties from the former Alpha colony and the indigenous government, was headed back out to that remote station-ten years late, because things at Alpha hadn't been quite in order to jump to the s.h.i.+p's commands. The captain who'd ordered the mission was dead, Alpha Station was in the hands of the atevi, the native, once steam-age species, who'd taken command of their own destiny-and the aiji, the atevi ruler, had sent his grandmother and his heir, among others, to see for themselves what sort of mess the s.h.i.+p-folk had made of their affairs at Reunion.

That was the quick version of s.h.i.+p history: a breakdown, a stranding, and local wars wherever they went. Given the s.h.i.+p's run of luck at important moments, and given a "see-me-in-my-office" from a friend who also happened to be one of the s.h.i.+p's two captains, well, yes, a dedicated planet-dweller, descendant of the Alpha colonists, could feel just a little bit of anxiety about this after-midnight summons.

Maybe he shouldn't have stopped to shower. Maybe he should have pulled on a pair of pants and a sweater and gotten straight up there.

But there'd been a sense of "when-you-can" when he'd gotten the summons. It was Jase's watch, so anything Jase wanted to say really was logically said in the middle of the night, granted the breakfast hour would have been far more convenient."Time to dress?" he'd asked. "Yes," Jase had said. So he'd blundered into the shower half-asleep.

And the black-skinned, pastel-clad figures that moved calmly about duties outside the steamed-over shower gla.s.s-they were fresh from their beds, too, his atevi staff, his protectors, getting his clothes ready. Hence the shower-a blast of warm water to elevate his fallen body temperature and call said brain online.

He toggled off recycle recycle. The shower circulation, formerly parked on endless loop, sucked up the damp from the air until what blew past was dry and warm as any desert. It stopped, preset, while his past-the-shoulder hair, that dignity of an atevi lord, still retained a residual, workable damp.

His servants would have heard the shower enter final cycle. He stepped out into comparatively cold air, and immediately Bindanda-to whose stature he was about the size of a ten-year-old-flung an appropriately child-sized robe about him. Bindanda, broad as well as tall, black-skinned, golden-eyed-atevi, in short, and a somewhat plump fellow, very fond of food-lapped the belt about him with hands that could break human arms and tied it with a delicacy that required no adjustment.

Perfect. The dressing-bench awaited. Bren sat down and let Asicho, the sole female among the servant staff, comb and braid his hair in its requisite pigtail.

Lord of the province of the heavens, Tabini-aiji had named him, sending him up from the planet to manage the s.p.a.ce program-oh so casually claiming in that action all the power that a newly named lord of the heavens could possibly lay at the aiji's feet, a small fact which Bren wasn't sure any of the s.h.i.+p's captains had ever quite grasped. It had taken him him a little time to figure it-and he'd been Tabini's chief translator. a little time to figure it-and he'd been Tabini's chief translator.

But it was perfectly reasonable, in the atevi view of things, to believe that where the aiji's representative went, so went the aiji's sphere of influence. Therefore sending the lord of the heavens to the limits of explored s.p.a.ce expanded the aiji's claim of power, absent some strongly dissenting power in his path. There was a s.p.a.ce station. So of course course there was now a province of the heavens. Had not the aiji sent him there and appointed a lord to rule it? Second point-had anyone contested that appointment? Had anyone else attempted to exert authority over the station? The Mospheirans, that island nation of former human colonists, couldn't make up their minds without a committee decision and the s.h.i.+p-folk certainly weren't interested in administering an orbiting province. The s.h.i.+p-folk as well as the Mospheirans had actually seemed glad to have some competent individual, atevi or human, handle it and see that the vending machines stayed full and the air stayed pure. there was now a province of the heavens. Had not the aiji sent him there and appointed a lord to rule it? Second point-had anyone contested that appointment? Had anyone else attempted to exert authority over the station? The Mospheirans, that island nation of former human colonists, couldn't make up their minds without a committee decision and the s.h.i.+p-folk certainly weren't interested in administering an orbiting province. The s.h.i.+p-folk as well as the Mospheirans had actually seemed glad to have some competent individual, atevi or human, handle it and see that the vending machines stayed full and the air stayed pure.

So that claim stuck. There was was a province of the heavens. a province of the heavens.

And now that the s.h.i.+p-folk took their stars.h.i.+p back to Reunion to deal with matters the s.h.i.+p had left unfinished-dangerous ones at that-the aiji in Shejidan sent out his emissaries to deal with deep s.p.a.ce. Tabini-aiji sent his own grandmother, the aiji-dowager, and he sent his heir-a minor child-both const.i.tuting representation of the aiji's house itself, to show the flag, so to speak-but to make that claim of a more permanent nature, he sent out his lord of the heavens to claim whatever territory seemed available. A man who'd originally hoped to add a few words to the atevi-human lexicon as the sole monument to his life, Bren Cameron had certainly gotten farther than he intended.

By various small steps accelerating to a headlong downhill rush, his life hadn't gone as planned. Bren found himself here, wherever here was. He found himself a.s.signed to a.s.sert a claim the aiji-dowager would... well, witness witness or or bless bless or otherwise legitimize... establis.h.i.+ng an atevi claim to presence in the universe at large. Most pointedly, he would a.s.sert the atevi right to have a major say in the diplomatic outcome of whatever they met, and the dowager would look it all over and nod politely. And he wasn't sure the s.h.i.+p-folk, except Jase, remotely understood he was doing here. or otherwise legitimize... establis.h.i.+ng an atevi claim to presence in the universe at large. Most pointedly, he would a.s.sert the atevi right to have a major say in the diplomatic outcome of whatever they met, and the dowager would look it all over and nod politely. And he wasn't sure the s.h.i.+p-folk, except Jase, remotely understood he was doing here.

Maybe, Bren said to himself, he ought to be honest about his mission-not go on wearing the white ribbon of the neutral paidhiin, the translators. Maybe he should adopt a plain one, black, for a province of empty s.p.a.ce- Black, for the a.s.sa.s.sins who watched over him. Black, for the lawyers of atevi society, the mediators of last resort. White of the paidhiin was, well, what he hoped to go on doing: translate, mediate, straighten out messes. Lord's t.i.tle and a.s.signment to the heavens be d.a.m.ned, he planned to come home and ask for his old job back: more extravagantly, someday next year or so he hoped, at lordly leisure, to sit on his porch and watch the sea for three days straight... granted Jase wasn't calling him up there at the moment to give him advance warning that the s.h.i.+p had broken down and stranded the lot of them forever in deep s.p.a.ce.

Asicho finished the ribbon-arranging. He stood up from the bench. Narani, his white-haired and grandfatherly head of staff, had already laid out the appropriate clothing on the bed, and Jeladi, the man of all work, a.s.sistant to everyone on staff, waited quietly to help him on with the starched, lace-cuffed s.h.i.+rt. The stockings and the trousers, he managed for himself. And the glove-leather, knee-high boots.

"Nadi," he said then to Jeladi, inviting the a.s.sistance. Narani had pressed the lace to knife-edged perfection, and Jeladi moved carefully, so the all-grasping lace failed to snag his pigtail. Asicho, in turn, helped him on with his knee-length day-coat while Jeladi held the pigtail safely aside from its high collar, and Bindanda helped arrange the s.h.i.+rttail.

Not so much froth on the s.h.i.+rt sleeves as to make it necessary to put both coat and s.h.i.+rt on together-but not quite a one-person operation, as styles had gotten to be. His increased rank had increased the amount of lace-which had turned up in baggage: trust Narani. The lord of this household would go out the door, onto executive levels, as if he walked the halls of the Bu-javid in Shejidan.

The s.h.i.+rttail went in immaculately. The pigtail survived the collar. His two servants gently tugged the starched lace from under the cuffs, adjusted the p.r.i.c.kly fichu, and p.r.o.nounced him fit to face outsiders.

In no sense was a man of rank alone... not for a breath, not an instant. The servants, including Narani, including Bindanda, lined his doorway. The sort of subterranean signals that had permeated the traditional arrangements of his onworld apartments, that they had translated to the s.p.a.ce station, had likewise established themselves very efficiently on the s.h.i.+p, in human-built rooms, rooms with a linear arrangement in-that abomination to atevi sensibilities-pairs. In their section of five-deck, in loose combination with the aiji-dowager's staff in the rooms considerably down the hall, the staff still managed to pa.s.s their signals and work their domestic miracles outside the s.h.i.+p's communications and outside his own understanding.

So it was no surprise to him at all that Banichi and Jago likewise turned up ready to go with him, his security, uniformed in black leather and silver metal, and carrying a fairly discreet array of electronics and armament for this peaceful occasion: a lord didn't leave his quarters without his bodyguards, not on earth, not on the station, and not here in the sealed steel world of the s.h.i.+p, and his bodyguards never gave up their weapons, not even at their lord's table or in his bedroom.

"Asicho will take the security station," Jago said, pro forma. Jago and Banichi were now off that station. Of course Asicho would. In this place with only a handful of staff, they all did double and triple duty, and even Asicho managed, somehow, despite the language barrier, to know a great deal that went on in s.h.i.+p's business.

But not everything. Not middle-of-the-night summonses from the second captain.

Guards they pa.s.sed in the corridor marked Ilisidi's residency-her security office, her kitchen, her personal rooms. No more than polite acknowledgment from that quarter attended their pa.s.sage: but that they were awake and about, the dowager's staff now knew. Ilisidi's security, perhaps Cenedi himself, given the unusual nature of this call, would be in constant touch with Asicho-not the dowager's idle curiosity. It was Cenedi's job, at whatever hour.

Two more of Ilisidi's young men guarded the section door. Beyond that, at a three-way intersection of the curving corridors, on the Mospheirans' collective doorstep (meaning Ginny Kroger and her aides and technicians, their robotics and refueling operations specialists) was the short alcove of the so-named personnel lift. They walked in and Banichi immediately pushed the requisite b.u.t.tons.

The lift this time lifted fairly well straight up, where it stopped and opened its doors onto the bridge with a pressurized wheeze. They exited in that short transverse walkway at the aft end of the bridge. Beyond it, banks of consoles and near a hundred techs and seniors stayed at work by s.h.i.+fts-half a hundred tightly arranged consoles, the real running of the s.h.i.+p. The walkway aimed at the short corridor on the far side of the bridge, where the executive offices, as well as the captains' private cabins-and Jase's security guards on duty in that corridor-were found.

If those two were there, Jase was there. On Jase's watch, the senior captain, Sabin, was likely snug abed at the moment-a favorable circ.u.mstance, since Sabin had a curious, suspicious nature and wasn't wholly reconciled to atevi wandering through her operations. She was bound to have an opinion on the matter-but at the moment it was all Jase's show.

So they walked straight through, keeping to that designated pa.s.sage-zone where they weren't in the way of the techs-not even a couple of towering dark atevi or a human in atevi court dress rated notice from navigators trying to figure where they were. Business proceeded. And the two men, Kaplan and Polano, on a let-down bench at Jase's office door, stood up calmly, men as wired-in as Jago and Banichi. No question Jase had known the moment the lift moved. No question Jase, like his bodyguards, was waiting for him. No question Jase had expected Banichi and Jago to come up here with him when he called, and no question Jase knew they'd be armed and wired.

"Sir." Kaplan opened the office door for him.

Jase looked up from his desk and waved him toward a seat, there being no formality between them. And since it was a meeting of intimates, Banichi and Jago automatically lagged to talk to Kaplan and Polano outside, such as they could. Atevi security regularly socialized during their lords' personal meetings, if they were of compatible allegiances-as Kaplan and Polano indisputably were; so Bren discreetly touched the on-b.u.t.ton of his pocket com as he went in, being sure by that means that Asicho, on five-deck, would have a record for staff review.

The door shut. Bren dragged one of the interview chairs around on its track. Sat.

Unlike Sabin's office, which had a lifetime acc.u.mulation of storage cabinets, Jase's office was new and barren: a desk, two interview chairs-no books, in all those bookcases and cabinets-and only one framed photo, a slightly tilted picture of Jase holding up a spiny, striped fish. It was his most predatory moment on the planet.

What would you do with it? s.h.i.+pmates might ask; and if Jase wanted to unsettle them, he might say, truthfully, horrifying most of them, that they had had it for supper that night-a rather fine supper, too.

They shared that memory. They shared a great many things, not least of which was joint experience in the aiji's court, with all that entailed, before Jase had gotten an unwanted captaincy.

"Good you came," Jase said. "Sorry about the midnight hour. But I've got something for you."

"Got something." He had niggling second thoughts about the pocket-com, and confessed it. "I'm wired."

"I'm always sure you are." Jase two-sided the console at a keystroke and gave him a confusing semi-transparent view of a split screen.

Bren leaned forward in the chair, arm on the desk edge. With a better light angle, he figured it out for a view through a helmet-cam on one side and, on the other, a diagram of the walking route among rooms and corridors.

His heart went thump. He knew what it was, then. And he'd expected this revelation eight moves and eleven months ago.

Now they had it? Close to the end of their journey, this showed up? they had it? Close to the end of their journey, this showed up?

"Sabin knows?" he asked, regarding the extraction of this particular segment out of the log records.

"Not exactly," Jase said.

There was the timing. There was the non-cooperation of the senior captain. That Jase called him up here to see it, instead of bringing it down to five-deck... he wasn't sure what that meant. Relations between the two on-board captains had been uneasily cordial since-well, since the unfortunate incident at undock, Sabin having insulted the dowager within the first few hours and the dowager having poisoned the captain in retaliation. The two women had gotten along since, wary as fighting fish in a tank. The two captains had gotten along because they had to: the s.h.i.+p regularly had four, and ran now on part of its crew, part of its population, and two of the three surviving captains.

And despite his conviction this tape existed and despite the dowager's demands and Jase's requests for the senior captain to locate it in log and produce it-Sabin hadn't acknowledged it existed, hadn't cooperated, hadn't acknowledged the situation they suspected lay behind the tape. In short, no, Sabin hadn't helped find it in the last number of months, and now that it had turned up, didn't know Jase had it. And what was the object of their long search? The mission-tape from the s.h.i.+p's last visit, the record none of the crew had seen, the record that Ramirez, the late senior captain, had deliberately held secret from the crew. A man named Jenrette, chief of Ramirez's personal bodyguard, had entered that station and met survivors-and those survivors had allegedly refused to be taken off the station.

Those survivors included, one suspected, the hierarchy of the old Pilots' Guild, an organization whose management had caused the original schism between colonists and crew-and managed the contact with aliens who'd already taken offense and launched an attack. Not a sterling record. Not a record that inspired confidence. Or love.

Captain Ramirez, during that strange port-call, had told his own crew that Reunion was dead... destroyed by the alien attack. He'd refueled off the supposedly dead station, and run back to Alpha, where that lie about Reunion's condition had held firm and credible for nearly a decade-until Ramirez' deathbed confession had blown matters wide.

But secrecy hadn't ended with one deathbed revelation. His suspicion of other facts withheld had made this particular tape an item of contention between Sabin, who'd been one of the captains nine years ago, and Jase, Ramirez's appointee, whose a.s.signment to a captaincy had nothing to do with knowledge of s.h.i.+p's operations. Jase had been aboard that day they'd found Reunion in ruins, but he hadn't been on the bridge-he'd been twenty-odd, junior, and not consulted, far from it. Sabin Couldn't talk about that time at dock; no member of the bridge crews had talked to anyone they could access. Every member of Ramirez' personal security team except Jenrette was dead-killed in a mutiny against Ramirez-and Sabin had s.n.a.t.c.hed Jenrette into her security team immediately after Ramirez' death, the very day, in fact, that Jase had wanted to ask him questions about this tape.

That was the state of relations between the s.h.i.+p's captains-Sabin, very senior, and Jase, appointed by the late senior captain, very junior-and a lot of data not shared between them. was the state of relations between the s.h.i.+p's captains-Sabin, very senior, and Jase, appointed by the late senior captain, very junior-and a lot of data not shared between them.

"Anything entirely astonis.h.i.+ng about the tape?" Bren asked. "I trust you've reviewed it to the end."

"The match-up with station plans is my work," Jase muttered, keying while the tape proceeded. The screen afforded them a helmet-cam view of airless, ravaged halls picked out in portable lights as Jase skipped through the venues, freezing key scenes. "For a long stretch, things go pretty much as you'd expect to see. Fire damage. Explosion damage. Outwardly, the kind of thing you'd expect of a station in ruins. But the boarding team doesn't wander around much. No exploring. Straight on."

"As if they knew where they were going?"

"Exactly." Jase skipped ahead through the record, and now, in motion, the exploration reached a section that looked far less ravaged. "Their entry into the station, which is a long, tedious sequence, was through the hole in the mast; but after they got in, the lift worked on emergency power, which saved them quite a bit of effort. Piece of luck, eh? Emergency generators back up a lot of functions. Fuel port. Critical accesses. No questions there. Now we're in the C corridor, section... about 10. Notice anything really odd here?"

The matching map had the numbers. If one could a.s.sume the station architecture as similar to the atevi earth station's structure, the investigating crew was on second level near the cargo offices at the moment. Lights were out. Power was down. Helmet lights still picked out walls and closed doors. Intact doors.

"It's not that badly damaged here," Bren observed.

"No, it's not." A small pause. "But we did see part of the station survived. What else do you notice? For G.o.d's sake, Bren..."

He was entirely puzzled. After a silence, Jase had to prompt him: "They're walking walking."

G.o.d. G.o.d G.o.d. Of course. They were walking. Walking was so ordinary. But he'd helped revive a s.p.a.ce station. He knew better. Walking, in s.p.a.ce, was a carefully managed miracle... and on a station with an altered center of ma.s.s? Not easy, was it?

He felt like a fool. "The station's rotating."

"As good as put out a neon sign," Jase said. "To anyone born in s.p.a.ce."

A sign to tell more than the investigating s.h.i.+p. A sign to advise any alien enemies that this station wasn't utterly destroyed. That much beyond any small pocket of light or heat where a handful of surviving tenants might cling to life, as they'd a.s.sumed all through this voyage was the case-this huge structure was rotating and managing its damage in ways very suggestive of life, intact systems, and sufficient internal energy to hold itself in trim.

"Computer couldn't manage this on auto," he said to Jase, "could it?"

"Less than likely. A dumb system-possible, I suppose, but I don't believe it. I don't think crew will."

"But you can see rotation from outside," Bren said, confused. "The s.h.i.+p docked, didn't they? How can crew not have seen it?"

Jase gave him a dark look. "We've never left home. We're still sitting at dock at Alpha. The atevi world's below us. Can you prove differently? Can you prove we've ever traveled at all?"

Once he thought of it, no, he couldn't. There was no view of outside... except what the cameras provided the viewing screens. They underwent periods of inconvenience and strangeness that made it credible they moved, but there was no visual proof that didn't come through the cameras.

And had Ramirez somehow ordered a lie fed to those cameras? A simple still image, that crew would take for the station's lifeless hulk, when the truth was moving, lively, self-adjusting?

From when? G.o.d, from how early in the s.h.i.+p's approach had Ramirez faked that output?

"If Ramirez faked the camera images," he asked Jase, "how early did he? Did he come into Reunion system expecting disaster in the first place?"

"I'll tell you that niggling suspicion did occur to me. But long-range optics might have seen there was a problem, way far off. Down below, I a.s.sure you, we didn't get an image... we don't, routinely until bridge has time to key it to belowdecks. It's not often important. It's protocols. And if bridge is busy, if a captain's too busy, or off-s.h.i.+ft, or in a meeting, we sometimes don't get image for a while. For a long while, in this case. We saw the still image. We saw the team entering the mast."

"Where it's always null-gee."

"No feed from helmet cam beyond that. This section went straight into the log's black box and n.o.body belowdecks ever ever saw it." saw it."

Anger. No wonder wonder this particular tape had stayed buried for nine years. No wonder the current senior captain had silenced the last living member of the group that had made that tape and challenged the technically untrained junior captain to find the log record-if he could. this particular tape had stayed buried for nine years. No wonder the current senior captain had silenced the last living member of the group that had made that tape and challenged the technically untrained junior captain to find the log record-if he could.

"But the captains all knew," Bren surmised. "Sabin was there. She had to know the station wasn't dead. Anybody on the bridge, any of the techs, they had to know, all along, didn't they?" That That had been a question before they launched on this mission. It loomed darker and darker now, d.a.m.ning all chance of honesty between executive and crew. had been a question before they launched on this mission. It loomed darker and darker now, d.a.m.ning all chance of honesty between executive and crew.

"It's all numbers readout on those screens," Jase said. "You get what the station transmits. Or doesn't transmit. Or if it it feeds you a lie-you'd have that on your screen, wouldn't you? I'm not sure that all the ops techs on the bridge knew. Some had to. But it's possible some didn't." feeds you a lie-you'd have that on your screen, wouldn't you? I'm not sure that all the ops techs on the bridge knew. Some had to. But it's possible some didn't."

More and more sinister, Bren thought, wis.h.i.+ng that at some time, at any convenient time, the late captain Ramirez had leveled with his atevi allies... and his own crew.

"I'll imagine, too," Jase went on, "that the minute we got into the solar system and got any initial visual inkling there was trouble, bridge showed a succession of still images from then on out-in s.p.a.ce, you can't always tell live from still. I'll imagine, for charity's sake, that Ramirez ran the whole thing off some archive tape and a still shot and n.o.body else knew. He might have been the only captain on the bridge during the investigation: you just don't budge from quarters until you get the all-clear, and it didn't come for us belowdecks for hours. Maybe he didn't tell anybody but his own techs. Maybe the other captains got his still image and they they didn't leave their executive meeting to find out. I can construct a dozen scenarios that might have applied. But I'll tell you I'm not happy with anything I can imagine. The more I think about it, I'm sure Sabin had to know." didn't leave their executive meeting to find out. I can construct a dozen scenarios that might have applied. But I'll tell you I'm not happy with anything I can imagine. The more I think about it, I'm sure Sabin had to know."

"You docked at the station, for G.o.d's sake."

"Tethered. Simple guides for fueling. We're not the s.p.a.ce shuttle."

Not the s.p.a.ce shuttle. Not providing pa.s.senger video on the approach. Not providing a cushy pressurized and heated tube link.

Entry through the null-g mast, where even a trained eye couldn't easily detect a lie.

"There's another tape," Bren said, on that surmise. "There's got to be some log record where the station contacted Phoenix Phoenix and gave Ramirez the order not to let the crew know there was anybody alive." and gave Ramirez the order not to let the crew know there was anybody alive."

"You know, I'd like to think that was where the orders originated," Jase said calmly. "And I earnestly tried to find a record to prove that theory. But I couldn't. My level of skill, I'm afraid. Took me eleven months to break this much out. I know a lot more now than I did about the data system. But you get into specific records by having keys. I've cracked a few of them. Not all. Not the policy level. Not the level where Guild orders might be stored. And the senior captain isn't about to give them up and I'm not about to ask."

"You can't erase erase a log entry, can you?" a log entry, can you?"

"You'd think. But at this point-we've rebuilt a lot of the s.h.i.+p's original systems, over the centuries, and I'm not sure that's the truth any longer. At my level of expertise, no. Not possible. If there's a key that allows that-it rests higher than I can reach. Maybe it sits in some file back on old Earth, that launched us. Maybe Sabin has it. I don't."