Ship Who Searched Read online

  “I have to tell you the truth, Tia, I really enjoyed digging into all those toy shops,” he whispered. “A lot of that stuff is wasted on children. I found some logic puzzles you just wouldn’t believe and a set of magic tricks I couldn’t resist, and I’m afraid I spent far too much money on spaceship models.”

  She giggled. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” she replied, in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “Pota and Braddon are in the airlock,” Socrates interrupted. “Shall I order the kitchen to make lunch now?”

  “So why exactly are you here?” Tomas asked, after all the initial topics of conversation had been exhausted, and the subject turned, inevitably, to Pota and Braddon’s work. He gestured at the landscape beyond the viewport; spectacular mountains, many times taller than anything found on Terra or any other inhabited planet. This little ball of rock with a thin skin of dirt was much like the wilder parts of Mars before it had been terraformed, and had a sky so dark at midday that the sun shared the sky with the stars. “I wouldn’t expect to find much of anything out there for an archeologist—it’s the next thing to airless, after all. The scenery is amazing, but that’s no reason to stay here—”

  Braddon chuckled, the generous mouth in his lantern-jawed face widening in a smile, and Tia hid a grin. Whether or not Tomas knew it, he had just triggered her Dad’s lecture mechanism. Fortunately, Braddon had a gift for lecturing. He was always a popular speaker whenever he could be tempted to go to conferences.

  “No one expected to find anything on planets like this one, Tomas,” Braddon replied, leaning back against the supporting cushions of the sofa and tucking his hands behind his head. “That’s why the Salomon-Kildaire culture is so intriguing. James Salomon and Tory Kildaire discovered the first buildings on the fourth moon of Beta Orianis Three—and there have never been any verifiable artifacts uncovered in what you and I would call ‘normal’ conditions. Virtually every find has been on airless or near-airless bodies. Pota and I have excavated over a dozen sites, doing the Class One studies, and they’re all like this one.”

  Tomas glanced out the viewport again. “Surely that implies that they were—”

  “Space-going, yes,” Pota supplied, nodding her head so that her gray-brown curls vibrated. “I don’t think there’s any doubt of it. Although we’ve never found any trace of whatever it was they used to move them from colony to colony—but that isn’t the real mystery.”

  Braddon gestured agreement. “The real mystery is that they never seem to have set up anything permanent. They never seem to have spent more than a few decades in any one place. No one knows why they left, or why they came here in the first place.”

  Tomas laughed. “They seem to have hopped planets as often as you two,” he said. “Perhaps they were simply doing what you are doing—excavating an earlier culture and following it across the stars.”

  Braddon exclaimed in mock horror. “Please!” he said. “Don’t even think that!”

  Pota only laughed. “If they had been, we’d have found signs of that,” she told both of them, tapping Braddon’s knee in playful admonition. “After all, as bleak as these places are, they preserve things wonderfully. If the EsKays had been archeologists, we’d have found the standard tools of the trade. We break and wear out brushes and digging tools all the time, and just leave them in our discard piles. They would have done the same. No matter how you try to alter it, there are only so many ways you can make a brush or a trowel—”

  “There would be bad castings,” Tia piped up. “You throw out bad castings all the time, Mum; if they were archeologists, we’d find a pile of bad castings somewhere.”

  “Bless me, Tia’s right,” Braddon nodded. “There you are, Tomas; irrefutable proof.”

  “Good enough for me,” Tomas replied, good-naturedly.

  “And if that idea was true, there also ought to be signs of the earlier culture, shouldn’t there?” Moira asked. “And you’ve never found anything mixed in with the EsKay artifacts.”

  “Exactly so,” Pota replied, and smiled. “And so, Tomas, you see how easily an archeologist’s theories can be disposed of.”

  “Then I’m going to be thankful to be Moira’s partner,” Tomas said gracefully, “and leave all the theorizing to better heads than mine.”

  After a while, the talk turned to the doings of the Institute, and both professional and personal news of Pota and Braddon’s friends and rivals. Tia glanced at the clock again; it was long past time when her parents would have gone back to the dig—they must have decided to take the rest of the day off.

  But these weren’t subjects that interested her, especially not when the talk went into politics, both of the Institute and the Central Worlds government. She took her bear, politely excused herself, and went back to her room.

  She hadn’t had a chance to really look him over when Tomas gave him to her. The last time Moira had come to visit, she’d told Tia some stories about what going into the shellperson program had been like, for unlike most shellpersons, she hadn’t been popped into her shell until she’d been nearly four. Until that time, there had been some hope that there would have been a palliative for her particular congenital condition—premature aging that had caused her body to resemble a sixty-year-old woman at the age of three. But there was no cure, and at four, her family finally admitted it. Into the shell she went, and since there was nothing wrong with her very fine brain, she soon caught up and passed by many of her classmates that had been in their shells since birth.

  But one of the toys she’d had—her very favorite, in fact—had been a stuffed teddy bear. She’d made up adventures for Ivan the Bearable, sending him in a troika across the windswept steppes of Novi Gagarin, and she’d told Tia some of those stories. That, and the Zen of Pooh book Moira brought her, had solidified a longing she hadn’t anticipated.

  For Tia had been entranced by the tales and by Pooh—and had wanted a bear like Moira’s. A simple toy that did nothing, with no intel-chips; a toy that couldn’t talk, or teach, or walk. Something that was just there to be hugged and cuddled; something to listen when she didn’t want anything else to overhear. . . .

  Moira had promised. Moira didn’t forget.

  Tia closed the door to her room and paged the AI. “Socrates, would you open a link to Moira in here for me, please?” she asked. Moira would be perfectly capable of following the conversation in the other room and still talk to her in here, too.

  “Tia, do you really like your present?” Moira asked anxiously, as soon as the link had been established.

  “He’s wonderful,” Tia answered firmly. “I’ve even got a name for him. Theodore Edward Bear.”

  “Or Ted E. Bear for short?” Moira chuckled. “I like it. It fits him. He’s such a solemn-faced little fellow. One would think he was a software executive. He looks like a bear with a great deal on his mind.”

  Tia studied Ted carefully. Moira was right; he was a sober little bear, with a very studious expression, as if he was listening very hard to whatever was being said. His bright blue coloration in no way contradicted the seriousness of his face, nor did the frivolous little red shirt he was wearing with the blue and yellow Courier Service circle-and-lightning-bolt on the front.

  “Is there anything going on that I need to know, Moira?” she asked, giving over her careful examination of her new friend and hugging him to her chest instead.

  “The results of your last batch of tests seems to have satisfied all the Psych people out there that you’re a perfectly well-balanced and self-sufficient girl,” Moira replied, knowing without Tia prompting her just what was on her mind. “So there’s no more talk of making your parents send you to boarding school.”

  Tia sighed with relief; that had been a very real worry the last time Moira had been here. The ship had left with the results of a battery of tests and psych-profiles that had taken two days to complete.

  “I have to tell you that I added to that,” Moira said, slyly. “I told them what kind of a bir
thday present you had asked for from me.”

  “What did they say?” Tia asked, anxiously. Had they thought she was being immature—or worse yet, that it meant she harbored some kind of neurosis?

  “Oh, it was funny. They were questioning me on open com, as if I was some kind of AI that wouldn’t respond to anything that wasn’t a direct question, so of course I could hear everything they said. There was silence for a moment, and then the worst of the lot finally blurted out, ‘Good heavens, the child is normal,’ as if he’d expected you to ask for a Singularity simulator or something.” Moira chuckled.

  “I know who it was, too,” Tia said shrewdly. “It was Doctor Phelps-Pittman, wasn’t it?”

  “Dead on the target, wenchette,” Moira replied, still chuckling. “I still don’t think he’s forgiven you for beating him in Battle Chess. By the way, what is your secret?”

  “He moves the Queen too often,” Tia said absently. “I think he likes to watch her hips wiggle when she walks. It’s probably something Freudian.”

  A splutter of static was all that followed that pronouncement, as Moira lost control of the circuit briefly. “My, my,” she replied, when she came back online. “You are a little terror. One might almost suspect you of having as much control as a shellperson!”

  Tia took that in the spirit it was meant, as a compliment.

  “I promise not to tell him your weakness,” the ship continued, teasingly.

  “What’s that?” Tia was surprised; she hadn’t known she had one.

  “You hate to see the pawns sacrificed. I think you feel sorry for the little guys.”

  Tia digested this in silence for a moment, then nodded reluctant agreement. “I think you’re right,” she admitted. “It seems as if everybody can beat them up, and it doesn’t seem fair.”

  “You don’t have the problem with an ordinary holoboard game,” Moira observed casually.

  “That’s because they’re just little blobby pieces on a holoboard game,” Tia explained. “In Battle Chess they’re little pikemen. And they’re cute.” She giggled. “I really love it when Pawn takes Knight and he hits the Knight with the butt of his pike right in the—”

  “And that’s why you frighten old Phelps-Pittman,” Moira said severely, though Tia could tell she didn’t mean it. “He keeps thinking you’re going to do the same to him.”

  “Well, I won’t have to see old sour-face for another year and a half,” she said comfortably. “Maybe I can figure out how to act like a normal girl by then.”

  “Maybe you can,” Moira replied. “I wouldn’t put even that past you. Now, how about a game of Battle Chess? Ted Bear can referee.”

  “Of course,” she agreed. “You can use the practice. I’ll even spot you a pawn.”

  “Oh come now! You haven’t gotten that much better since I saw you last.” At Tia’s continued silence, the ship asked, tentatively, “Have you?”

  Tia shrugged. “Check my record with Socrates,” she suggested.

  There was silence as Moira did just that. Then. “Oh, decom it,” she said in mock disgust. “You really are exasperating. I should demand that you spot me two pawns.”

  “Not a chance,” Tia replied, ordering the AI to set up the game, with a Battle Chess field in front of her. “You’re taking advantage enough of a child as it is.”

  “Taking advantage of a child? Ha!” Moira said ironically. “You’re not a child. I’m beginning to agree with Phelps-Pittman. You’re an eighty-year-old midget in a little-girl costume.”

  “Oh, all right,” Tia said, good-naturedly. “I won’t give you another pawn, but I will let you have white.”

  “Good.” Moira studied the analog of the board in her memory, as Tia studied the holoboard in front of her. “All right, unnatural child. Have at ye!”

  * * *

  Moira and Tomas couldn’t stay long; by dinner the ship had lifted, and the pad was empty—and the Cade family was back on schedule.

  Pota and Braddon spent the evening catching up with the message-packets Moira had brought them—mostly dispatches from friends at other digs, more scholarly papers in their various fields, and the latest in edicts from the Institute. Since Tia knew, thanks to Moira, that none of those edicts concerned her, she was free to watch one of the holos Moira had brought for her entertainment. All carefully screened by the teachers at the Institute, of course, who oversaw the education of every child that was on-site with its parents. But even the teachers didn’t see anything wrong with history holos, provided they were properly educational and accurate. The fact that most of these holos had been intended for adult viewing didn’t seem to bother them.

  Perhaps it was just as well that the Psychs had no idea what she was watching. They would probably have gone into strong hysterics.

  Moira had an uncanny ability to pick out the ones that had good scripts and actors—unlike whoever it was that picked out most of the holos for the Remote Educational Department.

  This one, a four-part series on Alexander the Great, looked especially good, since it covered only the early parts of his life, before he became a great leader. Tia felt a certain kinship for anyone who’d been labeled “precocious”; and although she already knew that Alexander’s childhood had been far from happy, she was looking forward to viewing this.

  Having Ted beside her to whisper comments to made it even more fun.

  At the end of the first part, even though she was fascinated, she virtuously told Socrates to shut everything down and went into the main room to say good-night to her Mum and Dad. The next courier wasn’t due for a while, and she wanted to make her treats last as long as possible.

  Both of them were so deep in their readers that she had to shake their elbows to get them to realize she was there, but once they came out of their preoccupied daze, they gave her big hugs and kisses, with no sign of annoyance at being interrupted.

  “I have a really good Mum and Dad,” she told Ted before drifting off to sleep. “I really, really do. Not like Alexander. . . .”

  * * *

  The next day, it was back to the usual schedule. Socrates woke her, and she got herself cleaned up and dressed, leaving Ted to reside on the carefully made bed until she returned. When she entered the main room, Pota and Braddon were already there, blinking sleepily over steaming cups of coffee.

  “Hello, darling,” Pota greeted her as she fetched her milk and cereal from the kitchen. “Did you enjoy Alexander?”

  “We-ell, it was interesting,” Tia said truthfully. “And I liked the actors and the story. The costumes and the horses were really stellar! But his mother and father were kind of—odd—weren’t they?”

  Braddon looked up from his coffee with his curly dark hair over one brown eye, and gave his daughter a wry grin. “They were certifiable crazy-cases by our standards, pumpkin,” he replied. “But after all, there wasn’t anyone around to apply those standards back then.”

  “And no Board of Mental Health to enforce them,” Pota added, her thin, delicate face creasing with a puckish smile. “Remember, oh curious little chick, they were not the ones that had the most influence on Alexander. That was left to his tutors—Aristotle, of course, being the main one—and nurses. I think he succeeded in spite of his parents, personally, and not because of them.”

  Tia nodded sagely. “Can I come help at the dig today?” she asked eagerly. This was one of the best things about the fact that her parents had picked the EsKays to specialize in. With next to no atmosphere, there were no indigenous life-forms to worry about. By the time Tia was five, she had pressure-suit protocol down pat, and there was no reason why she couldn’t come to the digs, or even wander about within specified limits on her own. “The biggest sandbox in the universe,” Braddon called it; so long as she stayed within eye- and earshot, neither of them minded having her about outside.

  “Not today, dearest,” Pota said apologetically. “We’ve found some glassware, and we’re making holos. As soon as we’re done with that, we’ll make the cas
tings, and after that you can come run errands for us.” In the thin atmosphere and chill of the site, castings were tricky to make; one reason why Pota discarded so many. But no artifact could be moved without first making a good casting of it, as well as holos from all possible angles—too many times the artifacts crumbled to nothing, despite the most careful handling, once they were moved.

  She sighed; holos and castings meant she couldn’t even come near the site, lest the vibrations she made walking interfere. “All right,” she agreed. “Can I go outside, though? As long as I stay close to the airlock?”

  “Stay close to the lock and keep the emergency cart nearby, and I don’t see any reason why you can’t play outside,” Pota said after a moment. Then she smiled. “And how is your dig coming?”

  “You mean really, or for pretend?” she asked.

  “Pretend, of course,” said Braddon. “Pretend is always more fun than really. That’s why we became archeologists in the first place—because we get to play pretend for months at a time until we have to be serious and write papers!”

  He gave her a conspiratorial grin, and she giggled.

  “We-ell,” she said, and drew her face down into a frown just like Doctor Heinz Marius-Llewellyn, when he was about to put everyone to sleep. “I’ve found the village site of a race of flint-using primitives who were used as slave labor by the EsKays at your site.”

  “Have you!” Pota fell right in with the pretense, as Braddon nodded seriously. “Well that certainly explains why we haven’t found any servos. They must have used slaves to do all their manual labor!”

  “Yes. And the Flint People worshipped them as gods from the sky,” Tia continued. “That was why they didn’t revolt; all the slave labor was a form of worship. They’d go back to their village and then they’d try to make flint tools just like the things that the sky-gods used. They probably made pottery things, too, but I haven’t found anything but shards.”