Ship Who Searched (12 page)

“Only a few,” she replied. “What is your favorite composer? Do you play chess?”

He answered her questions curtly, as if they were so completely irrelevant that he couldn’t believe she was asking them.

She obliged him by suggesting that he could leave after only a handful of questions; he took it with bad grace and left in a hurry, an aroma of scorched ego in his wake.

“Garrison Lebrel,” CenCom said, as Donning vacated the lift.

Well, Garrison was possible. Good academic marks, not as high as Donning’s but not bad. Interest in archeology . . . she perked up when she saw
what
he was interested in. Nonhumans, especially presumed extinct space-going races, including the EsKays!

Garrison let her bring him in and proved to be talkative, if not precisely congenial. He was
very
intense.

“We’ll be spending a lot of time in transit,” he said. “I wasn’t able to keep up with the current literature in archeology while I was in the Academy, and I planned to be doing a lot of reading.”

Not exactly sociable. “Do you play chess?” she asked hopefully. He shook his head. “But I do play sennet. That’s an ancient Egyptian game—I have a very interesting software version I could install; I doubt it would take you long to learn it, though it takes a lifetime to master.”

The last was said a bit smugly. And there had been no offer from him to learn
her
game. Still, she did have access to far more computing power than he did; it wouldn’t take her more than an hour to learn the game, if that.

“I see that your special interest is in extinct spacegoing races,” she ventured. “I have a very strong background in the Salomon-Kildaire Entities.”

He looked skeptical. “I think Doctor Russell Gaines-Barklen has probably dealt with them as fully as they need to be, although we’ll probably have some chances to catch things survey teams miss. That’s the benefit of being trained to look for specifics.”

She finally sent him back with mixed feelings. He was arrogant, no doubt about it. But he was also competent. He shared her interests, but his pet theories differed wildly from hers. He was possible, if there were no other choices, but he wasn’t what she was looking for.

“Chria Chance is up next,” CenCom said when she reported she was ready for the next. “But you won’t like her.”

“Why, because she’s got a name that’s obviously assumed?” Neither CenCom nor the Academy cared what you called yourself, provided they knew the identity you had been born with and the record that went with it. Every so often someone wanted to adopt a pseudonym. Often it was to cover a famous High Family name—either because the bearer was a black sheep, or because (rarely) he or she didn’t want special treatment. But sometimes a youngster got a notion into his or her head to take on a holostar-type name.

“No,” CenCom replied, not bothering to hide his amusement. “You won’t like her because—well, you’ll see.”

Chria’s records were good, about like Garrison’s—with one odd note in the personality profile.
Nonconformist
, it said.

Well, there was nothing wrong with that. Pota and Braddon were certainly not conformists in any sense.

But the moment that Chria stepped into the central room, Tia knew that CenCom was right.

She wore her Academy uniform, all right—but it was a specially tailored one. Made entirely of leather; real leather, not synthetic. And she wore it entirely too well for Tia to feel comfortable around her. For the rest, she was rapier-thin, with a face like a clever fox and hair cut aggressively short. Tia already felt intimidated, and she hadn’t even said anything yet!

Within a few minutes worth of questions, Chria shook her head. “You’re a nice person, Tia,” she said forthrightly, “and you and I would never partner well. I’d run right over you, and you’d sit there in your column, fuming and resentful, and you’d never say a word.” She grinned with feral cheer. “I’m a carnivore, a hunter. I need someone who’ll fight back! I enjoy a good fight!”

“You’d probably have us go chasing right after pirates,” Tia said, a little resentful already. “If there were any in the neighborhood, you’d want us to look for them!”

“You bet I would,” Chria responded without shame.

A few more minutes of exchange proved to Tia that Chria was right. It would never work. With a shade of regret, Tia bade her farewell. While she liked a good argument as well as the next person, she
didn’t
like for arguments to turn into shouting matches, which was precisely what Chria enjoyed. She claimed it purged tensions.

Well, maybe it did. And maybe that was why her favorite form of music—to the exclusion of everything else—was opera. She was a fanatic, to put it simply, And Tia—well—wasn’t.

But there was certainly a lot of emotion-purging and carrying on in those old operas. She had the feeling that Chria fancied herself as a kind of latter-day Valkyrie.

Hoy-yo to-ho.

She reported her rejection to CenCom, with the recommendation that
she
thought Chria Chance had the proper mental equipment to partner a ship in the Military Courier Service. “Between you, me, and the airwaves,” CenCom replied, “that’s my opinion, too. Bloodthirsty wench. Well, she’ll get her chance. Military got your classmate Pol, and he’s just as bloody-minded as she is. I’ll see the recommendation goes in; meanwhile, next up is Harkonen Carl-Ulbright.”

Carl was a disappointment. Average grades, and while he was congenial, Tia knew that
she
would run right over the top of
him
. He was shy, hardly ever ventured an opinion, and when he did, he could be induced to change it in an eye-blink. However—“Carl,” she said, just before he went to the lift, making no effort to hide his discouragement. “My classmate Raul is the XR One-Oh-Two-Nine. I think you two would get along splendidly. I’m going to ask CenCom to set up your very next interview with him—he was just installed today and I
know
he hasn’t got a brawn yet. Tell him I sent you.”

That cheered up the young man considerably. He would be even more cheered when he learned that Raul had a Singularity Drive ship. And Tia would bet that his personality profile and Raul’s matched to a hair. They’d make a great team, especially when their job included carrying VIP passengers. Neither of them would get in the way or resent it if the VIPs ignored them.

“I got all that, Tia,” CenCom said as soon as the boy was gone. “Consider it logged. They ought to make you a Psych; a Counselor, at least. It was good of you to think of Raul; none of us could come up with a match for him, but we were trying to match him with females.”

If she’d had hands, she would have thrown them up. “Become a Psych? Saints and agents of grace defend us!” she quipped. “I think
not
! Who’s next?”

“Andrea Polo y de Gras,” CenCom said. “You won’t like her, either. She doesn’t want you.”

“With the Polo y de Gras name, I’m not surprised,” Tia sighed. “Wants something with a little more zing to it than A and E, hmm? Would she be offended if I agreed with her before she bothered to come out here?”

“I doubt it,” CenCom replied, “but let me check.” A pause, and then he came back. “She’s very pleased, actually. I think that she has something cooking with the Family, and the strings haven’t had time to get pulled yet. Piff. High Families. I don’t know
why
they send their children to Space Academy in the first place.”

Tia felt moved to contradict him. “Because some of them do very well and become a credit to the Services,” she replied, with just a hint of reproach.

“True, and I stand corrected. Well, your last brawn-candidate is the late Alexander Joli-Chanteu.” The cheer in his voice told her that he was making a bad joke out of the situation.

“Late, hmm? That isn’t going to earn
him
any gold stars in his Good-Bee Book,” Tia said, a bit acidly. Her parents’ fetish for punctuality had set a standard she expected those around her to match.
Especially
brawn-candidates.

Well, I can at least go over his records.
She scanned them quickly and came up—confused. When Alexander was good, he was very, very, good. And when he was bad, he was abysmal. Often in the same subject. He would begin a class with the lowest marks possible, then suddenly catch fire, turn around, and pull a miraculous save at the end of the semester.
Erratic performances,
said his personality profile. Tia not only agreed, she thought that the evaluator was understating the case.

CenCom interrupted her confusion. “Whoop! He got right by me! Here he comes, Tia, ready or not!”

Alexander didn’t bother with the lift, he ran up the stairs, arriving out of breath, with longish hair mussed and uniform rumpled.

That didn’t earn him any points either, although it was better than Chria’s leather.

He took a quick look around to orient himself, then turned immediately to face the central column where she was housed, a nicety that only Carl and Chria had observed. It didn’t matter, really, and a lot of shellpersons didn’t care, so long as the softpersons faced one set of “eyes” at least—but Tia felt, as Moira did, that it was more considerate of a brawn to face where you
were
, rather than empty cabin.

“Hypatia, dear lady, I am most humbly sorry to be late for this interview,” he said, slowly catching his breath. “My
sensei
engaged me in a game of Go, and I completely lost all track of time.”

He ran his blunt-fingered hand through his unruly dark hair and grinned ruefully, little smile-crinkles forming around his brown eyes. “And here I had a perfectly
wonderful
speech all memorized, about how fitting it is that the lady named for the last librarian at Alexandria and the brawn named for Alexander should become partners—and the run knocked it right out of my head!”

Well! He knows where my name came from! Or at least he had the courtesy and foresight to look it up. Hmm.
She considered that for a moment, then put it in the “plus” column. He was not handsome, but he had a pleasant, blocky sort of face. He was short—well, so was the original Alexander, by both modern standards and those of his own time. She decided to put his general looks in the “plus” column too, along with his politeness. While she certainly wasn’t going to choose her brawns on the basis of looks, it would be nice to have someone who provided a nice bit of landscape.

“Minus,” of course, were for being late and very untidy when he finally did arrive.

“I think I can bring myself to forgive you,” she said dryly. “Although I’m not certain just what exactly detained you.”

“Ah—besides a hobby of ancient history, Terran history, that is, especially military history and strategy, I, ah—I cultivate certain kinds of martial arts.” He ran his hand through his hair again, in what was plainly a nervous gesture. “Oriental martial arts. One soft form and one hard form. Tai Chi and Karate. I know most people don’t think that’s at all necessary, but, well, A and E Couriers
are
unarmed, and I don’t like to think of myself as helpless. Anyway, my
sensei
—that’s a martial arts Master—got me involved in a game of Go, and when you’re playing against a Master there is
nothing
simple about
Go.
” He bowed his head a moment and looked sheepish. “I lost all track of time, and they had to page me. I really am sorry about making you wait.”

Tia wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. “Sit down, will you?” she said absently, wondering why, with this fascination with things martial and military, he hadn’t shown any interest in the Military Services. “Do you play chess as well?”

He nodded. “Chess, and Othello, and several computer games. And if you have any favorites that I don’t know, I would be happy to learn them.” He sat quietly, calmly, without any of Garrison’s fidgeting. In fact, it was that very contrast with Garrison that made her decide resolutely
against
that young man. A few months of fidgeting, and she would be ready to trank him to keep him quiet.

“Why Terran history?” she asked, curiously. “That isn’t the kind of fascination I’d expect to find in a—a space-jockey.”

He grinned. It was a very engaging, lopsided grin. “What, haven’t you interviewed my classmate Chria yet? Now there is someone with odd fascinations!” Behind the banter, Tia sensed a kind of affection, even though the tips of his ears went lightly red. “I started reading history because I was curious about
my
name, and got fascinated by Alexander’s time period. One thing led to another, and the next thing
I
knew, every present I was getting was either a historical holotape or a bookdisk about history, and I was actually quite happy about the situation.”

So he
did
know the origin of her name. “Then why military strategy?”

“Because all challenging games are games of strategy,” he said. “I, ah—have a friend who’s really a big games buff, my best friend when I was growing up, and I had to have some kind of edge on him. So I started studying strategy.
That
got me into
The Art of War
and that got me into Zen which got me into martial arts.” He shrugged. “There you have it. One neat package. I think you’d really like Tai Chi, it’s all about stress and energy flow and patterns, and it’s a lot like Singularity mechanics and—”

“I’m sure,” she interrupted, hauling him verbally back by the scruff of his neck. “But why didn’t you opt for Military Service?”

“The same reason I studied martial arts—I don’t like being helpless, but I don’t want to
hurt
anyone,” he replied, looking oddly distressed. “Both Tai Chi and Karate are about never using a bit more force than you need to, but Tai Chi is the essence of using greater force against itself, just like in
The Art of War
, and—”

Once again she had to haul him back to the question. He tended to go off on verbal tangents, she noticed. She continued to ask him questions, long after the time she had finished with the other brawns, and when she finally let him go, it was with a sense of dissatisfaction. He was the best choice so
far
, but although he was plainly both sensitive and intelligent, he showed no signs at all of any interest in
her
field. In fact, she had seen and heard nothing that would make her think he would be ready to help her in any way with her private quest.