Saltation (36 page)

At the table to her right, a large woman was talking a little too loud, as if her coffee was boosted.

"Tell you true, I have this from clean source. Aelliana Caylon is back. They say she came busting in from Galaxy Nowhere with guns blazing and blew apart battleships with her little courier ship. These are great times we live in, friend, great times!"

One of her table mates was chuckling: "So when do we expect Bopper to show up, or the Second Terran Fleet?"

Theo touched the order board for the morning tea special, and leaned back. She could have read all this on
Primadonna
if she'd have known the comms were backed up.

"Punch up the register, sandfoot," the woman at the right-side table told her mate. "No? Then I will. I met the Caylon once myself, I did, her and her other.
Ride the Luck
. She was a pick-up pilot, you know—just like us. Never missed a delivery, too!"

"She's been dead a long time, Casey. No matter how pretty she was, she's dead."

That voice was sad, and Theo glanced over to the table, where the louder woman—in Jump leather—was crowing, and the sad person craning her neck to see—

"Hah! Lookithere.
Ride the Luck
, Solcintra, Liad, Aelliana Caylon Pilot and Captain, Dock Sixteen-A Binjali Repair, Solcintra. Not Accepting.

"Tell me you see it! Right there in the register. Register don't carry ghosts, Tervot. And just like a Liaden to keep a working ship working, ain't it? Here, let's look for the big one! See it, see it?
Dutiful Passage
, Solcintra, Liad, Priscilla Mendoza Pilot and Captain, Orbit Seventeen Liad, Not Accepting."

There was a stunned silence, spreading over several adjacent tables.

"Mendoza's captain?" someone asked, somberly. "Where's Shan?"

"That's right," the loud woman said, not so loud, now. "yos'Galan was master—for how many years? Damn! They had all that fighting. You don't think—?"

There was a rustle two tables away and a plump man lurched to his feet. "I gotta get me a message out . . ."

"Queue's long on that," the sad-voiced person said, but the guy was already gone. She pulled the screen to her and threw in her own request. "Now look, Vitale, here's the news archive for when the Caylon got killed—"

The third occupant of the table laughed. "Won't take true for an answer," he said, as the conversations around started to pick up again.

The large woman shook her head.

"Hey, that's Korval-kin you're talking about. Korval is the most Liaden you can get, and if the registry says Aelliana Caylon's parked her ship at Binjali's, well I believe it, cause that's where she always flew from. You know better'n to trust news archives, Tervot!"

Theo sighed. Maybe she should go back to
Primadonna
, if the comm lines were
that
long. Or she could ask Tranza to authorize use of ship's comm; she trusted him not to snoop in her private messages.

Unfortunately, she didn't precisely trust Mayko to do the same.

Thinking of Mayko brought to mind that list of destinations, Delgado among them. Maybe she could get some crew rest herself—visit Father and Kamele. Coyster—Coyster was an elder cat now, looking like dignity itself in the last pics from—

"Vitale, shut your face!" came a vehement whisper from the table on her right.

She looked up in time to see the large woman blush, then push purposefully to her feet.

She nodded to Theo, hands asking
permission to approach.

Theo granted it, warily sitting a little straighter though without resorting to dance.

The woman stepped closer, and attempted a bow.

"I'd like to let you know, Pilot, I wasn't talking personal. I'm just so glad to see the Caylon back that—well, I betcha most Liadens are glad that she's back, isn't that so? And if they managed to keep her hid so she
could
come back, why that's fine. I wasn't trying to, you know, impugn your
melant'i
or—"

Hold course hold course
Theo signed, aware that everyone at the woman's table was watching with trepidation.

"I'm not a Liaden, Pilot. Please relax. I'm fine."

"Pilot, your tea, and handwich." The advertised items landed on the table before Theo, and the waiter was gone that quickly. The big woman nodded, glancing particularly at the tea.

"Yah, First, I see," she said, almost whispering. "Lots of folks are traveling quiet. Look, I'm Casey Vitale. Fly with Chenowith and Gladder. Right now I've got
Aldershot
on a coldpad until they get me new orders."

She handed over a card, and bowed again. "At your service. I get a little het up sometimes when I'm grounded, and right now, what with all the sudden traffic through here, I'm waiting for a beam."

Theo inclined her head, which was the proper answer to the bow—and exactly what a Liaden would have done. She sighed, reached into her pocket and returned the favor.

"Theo Waitley," she said.

Her card simply said: Primadonna
, Theo Waitley, Hugglelans Galactica.

Casey Vitale grinned. "Hey, that's a good outfit. Good outfit. I—"

"Scouts!" came the call from somewhere near the door. "Crew of 'em! Weapons on display!"

That was enough to startle Theo, who looked away from Casey Vitale, trying to imagine a crew of Scouts so bold as to . . . 

There
was
a crew of them, uniformed, and weapons in plain sight on their belts, a taller one in front pointing toward the single free table in the back corner, one with a view of the exit.

Hands fluttered all around, and nods, and murmurs as the café patrons took in the sight, and the silent march of the Scouts, as one wearing a half-plex goggle over his eyes and upper face made a large, shapeless motion with his hand. His wrists were encumbered with wraparound healing bracelets or supports, and his face mottled with fresh-grown skin still not toned. His signal, sloppy as it had been, halted the rest in mid-march.

The goggled one said something deep and quiet in Liaden, and threaded carefully through the close-set tables. Her attention on the approaching Scout, Theo felt, rather than saw, Casey Vitale step back to her own table.

He paused at her table, removed the goggle and bowed, deep and wondrously slow, almost, Theo thought, as if it pained him to move.

"Pilot Waitley," he said in a hoarse, strained voice. He bowed again, not as deep, and corrected himself: "First Class Jump Pilot Waitley. Sweet Mystery. Words fail."

His eyes were brown, and strained, with wrinkles that stopped abruptly at the new skin; his upper lip had strange color where it, too, had been resurfaced. She searched his face and found him, behind the strain, and the patchwork.

Rising, she resisted the urge to throw herself on him, to touch him.

"Win Ton! Win Ton, what has happened?"

His grin was fleeting, and his voice even more of a croak.

"What has not happened?" he replied, and for that instant, he was Win Ton as she had first met him. Then he bowed, for yet a third time.

"Theo, I overstepped."

He glanced down at his wrists, and added, seriously. "I took damage. May I sit?"

Without waiting for permission—in fact, as if he
must
sit—he nearly fell into the chair beside her. She sank into her own chair, and put her hand over his, where it lay on the table.

He leaned toward her conspiratorially, his voice weaker even than his grin.

"We need to talk, pilot and friend. We need to talk."

"
Primadonna
isn't exactly neutral territory," Win Ton allowed. "Nor would our Scout rooms be, I gather," he said cautiously, glancing down-room to the table his companions had commandeered. "Certainly it is too public, here."

There was a dance or a game going on, beneath his words. Theo sensed it without understanding the rules. She agreed, though, that if she was going to be with him for the first time in, well, years, she'd rather it be somewhere other than a crowded café.

"Are we in competition?" she asked blandly, taking her hand off of his.

Win Ton, this apparition of a Win Ton, sighed lightly, eye wrinkles tightening as he leaned toward her, speaking as low as might be heard in the cramped room.

"We are not in competition." His shoulders moved in what might be a shrug as he weighed his words with care. "We are, however, working on multiple balances and necessities, which might put us at odds, and so should not be dealt with in a place as distracting as this one, nor in a place—"

"
First
, you said you wanted some place quieter."

He didn't argue, his left hand making an exaggerated and unformed attempt at
acknowledged
.

"We can use a comm booth then, or a conference room." The thought that had been niggling at her back brain surfaced and spoke itself: "What are you
doing
here, anyway?"

"Speaking with one of my favorite people."

Theo frowned.

"This is complex." He pursed his lips. "I am willing to have you choose a location, Theo, but really, no more, here, if I may be so bold. I'll order another tray of tea and—"

Theo motioned, not at Win Ton but at the waiter.

"Guild conference room? Is one available?"

The waiter looked at Win Ton, in uniform, and at the other Scouts, again at Theo in her leather, and hitched his neck in an odd motion, using his head to point.

"Upper left quad of the display. Looks like there's two available—the blue lights. One's clear until next shift, the other's got . . . a while, that's the numbers on the right column. Other four are solid. Show your card at the desk."

"So, yes, it is complex. I am at fault in some things, for which I will plead necessity and also admit that I have overstepped, and offer to hear your balance on the issues as time permits."

They were seated, just the two of them, across the table of the conference room. There'd been an awkward moment when the door closed, leaving the Scouts with their weapons and awareness behind, and Theo'd wanted to fling herself into his arms, a moment made more awkward by his apparent realization and careful half turn offering her the choice of seats, and the fact that she carried the tray with the tea and snacks.

"I, who, why . . ." she began, and sputtered out; the look of intense concentration on Win Ton's patched face silencing her.

"I honor you, Theo Waitley, I honor you immensely. You quite properly have many questions, and I will attempt to answer them as quickly as I may, in as clear a fashion as I may. I request your patience. Please believe me in all ways eager to explain a situation that is as complex as it is nearly inexplicable."

Theo danced in her mind, calling on the routine she called
inner calm
. She hadn't realized before how many cues about Win Ton she took from his hands and shoulders. Now, with his hands—not fully operational . . . 

There on the chair, she centered herself, and looked to his face, with patience.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked.

He inclined his head. "I would very much like some tea. Thank you."

She poured for both of them, and sat back, cup held in one hand.

"I'm ready when you are," she said.

He smiled weakly, though to Theo's eye, with honest intent, and sipped his tea, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders.

"The easiest questions may be your most recent. The Scouts I travel with are, as a unit, security and support. One is a med tech, each is a specialist. Consider them for argument sake, if you will permit yourself a moment of absurdity, my bodyguards."

Theo thought about that; sighed and acknowledged,
accept
.

"Excellent. I am here, we are here, because it was likely that in fact
you
would be here or within hailing distance, and because the task I am set to by the Scouts has a thread which runs through Volmer. As a haven for Juntavas in the past it has been a place where Scouts and the even less reputable might from time to time have discourse on many subjects.

"So, that is the immediate why of here and who."

He paused, and surprised her by reaching inside the collar of his shirt and pulling out a necklace matching her own. Made clumsy by the wrist shields, he pulled the chain over his head and placed it on the table between them, one finger on the pendant cylinder. He looked into her eyes.

"This, my friend, and the one you wear, are the start of all of it, as well as I can manage the story. I will tell it to you, requesting you share the information only on a true need-to-know basis."

She nodded, but he was already moving on, seeming to look at her and through her at the same time.

"In my travels immediately after my contract wedding, I was started as a courier to deliver a ship, before my long-term assignment was to begin. I had cause to visit a—let me call it a site—requiring periodic maintenance of various reporting equipment. This site is one where, in the distant past, various objects and devices of doubtful source and design were sequestered from polite commerce, and in that distant past the planetary site was manned. My duties were simple: to be assured that the airlocks still functioned, that the holds still held, and that the sovereignty of our organization over it was not in doubt. This particular assignment was one of what they call the 'garbage runs' that Scouts must make from time to time, personal observations being important, and besides, Scouts need to be kept busy and in training, even between long-term assignments."

Theo tried to concentrate on Win Ton's words and not on his face. There was something there she wasn't used to seeing in him, a reserve beyond simple attention to his own story, or a distraction.

Impulsively she asked, "Are you in pain?"

Win Ton bowed slightly to her.

"Another question we shall arrive at in good time. Suffice it to say that at the moment I feel no pain. And that so, we continue."

Theo felt the hair on the back of her neck tingle and involuntarily looked behind her, perhaps to the very spot Win Ton looked, for again he was not looking directly at her. If there was anything there, it was invisible to her eyes, and she returned her attention to his face.