Second interim, p.4
Second Interim, page 4
As her captor took another step, Coura ducked and ran past her on her armless side, across the blue mats and deeper into the studio.
Coleridge made no effort to prevent her flight, but called after her, “Remove your shoes on the mat!”
At the back wall, Coura found a wood door and pulled on its handle Also locked. She put her back to it and faced Coleridge, who started across the mats on her trail, in no hurry.
“Stay back!” Coura warned, with zero to back up the threat.
At the center of the mats, Coleridge stopped.
“Are you going to kill me?” Coura asked.
“I haven’t killed anyone since a place called Ona, where I did it at your father’s request in exchange for fueling rights for his ship. Like I said, he was a jerk. I don’t plan to start killing again today.”
“Then what do you want? Let me go.”
Coleridge raised her right arm, the only one she had, and a click sounded behind Coura. Through her back against the wood, she felt the vibration of the doorlock disengaging. Without taking her eyes off Coleridge, she twisted the knob in her hand.
Coleridge’s arm lowered, and the click sounded again. The door held fast.
Her arm rose, and the door unlocked. She lowered it—locked again. Coura twisted the handle but failed to time it right.
Now Coleridge didn’t move at all, but the door clicked rapidly as the bolt inside slid back and forth.
The studio lights came on.
Neurilace, Coura realized. Simon had it. Most ex-Interim did. Coleridge was controlling the environment with her ‘lace.
A sob built inside Coura. She kept it contained, barely. “What’s wrong with you?” she cried. “Leave me alone!”
The clicking stopped. Coura tested the door. As she thought: locked.
“You came to my house, Baby Kearn,” Coleridge said.
“I shouldn’t have. I want to leave. Please.”
“You want to know what’s wrong with me?” Coleridge said. “Social Engineering Service altered my brain to inhibit little things like empathy and remorse that might get in the way of my following their orders. The changes are undone, but that doesn’t take away my memories of blowing up kids just like the ones I teach. I won’t bore you further with my problems, but that’s what’s wrong with me. Now, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Just let me go, you freak!”
“Yes, I’m a freak. You knew that. If nothing was wrong, you wouldn’t have come to see me. Let me guess what’s wrong with you. You’re a child of spacers, one of them an accidental hero—or terrorist, depending on who you ask—but instead of running around on a new world every year of your life, you had to grow up picking fruit on Potataho. I know more than most that you can’t change the past. But you do get to choose where you go today. You chose me, Baby Kearn. Why?”
“I... I... I just want to leave.”
She didn’t hear a click, but Coleridge informed her, “The front door is unlocked. You’re free to go. Just please take off your shoes and carry them across the mat.”
Of course, the way to the front was not clear; Coleridge stood in Coura’s path.
“I don’t trust you.”
“You shouldn’t. When you got over here, I was going to put you flat on your ass. Or you can come over and let me teach you some things. You want to know how to kill a man?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Yes, a crazy bitch. So you said. No argument. Come here. It’s possible you’ll get hurt, but you’ll be in no danger from me. Ever. Kearn was a jerk, but given the class of people I’ve known, jerk is a compliment. He helped me. And since you’re his... I’ll help you.”
Unwilling to provoke, Coura slipped her shoes off and picked them up, but it turned out she wasn’t ready yet to venture forward.
“I don’t want to learn to kill,” she said with eyes downcast. “Please just let me pass.”
“How about if I just teach you to defend yourself from freaks like me? You put on the uniform, didn’t you? You were ready when you came here. So let’s start over. Do you believe me when I say I’ll never hurt you?”
“I don’t know,” Coura admitted. “If you let me reach the door, and it’s open, then I guess I believe you.”
Coleridge turned to one side and swept her arm in a clear indication of safe passage.
Coura crossed the mat on a path that hugged the wall so as to maintain the greatest possible distance from Coleridge, who watched without moving. Coura watched her right back, going so far as to walk backwards to allow it.
At the door, she paused to put her shoes back on then sent one arm behind her to push the handle. The door gave way, letting in a gust of cold air.
“If you change your mind, come back anytime, Baby Kearn,” Coleridge said.
Coura backed out and let the door swing shut. Outside, the gray light of dawn filled the gaps between the concrete structures of Spane. Finally free after having feared briefly for her life, Coura didn’t run but walked east until she was sure she could no longer be seen through the tinted glass of VC Martial Arts. There she stopped, put her back against a wall, and froze.
After that experience, was she really considering going back?
Before she could third—or fourth—guess herself, Coura retraced her steps. Knowing she was being watched through the glass, she strode with false confidence back to the studio door, yanked it open and stepped in.
Coleridge stood facing her on the mats, her location unchanged. She waited for Coura to speak first.
“I’ll take your offer, on at least two conditions,” Coura said.
“I’ll hear them.”
“One, we don’t talk. Except...”
“Except when you have questions and I have answers. Agreed. You master a skill, you get an answer.”
“Fine. Second, you call me Coura, not... you know.”
“Boring, but acceptable. Anything else?”
Don’t kill me, Coura thought. “That’s all for now,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll think of more.”
Coura shed her coat, draped it on the benches then approached the mat’s edge, where she stepped out of her shoes and into the start of her training with a currently sociopathic ex-Social Engineer.
Chapter Four
Roughly every other day after that, Coura trained alone with Coleridge. She took to it quickly, though her body ached almost constantly for the first month or more. In the early days, she occasionally arrived late for her lesson, but Coleridge’s penalty exercises proved effective at ending that habit.
She mastered, to her teacher’s satisfaction, a few basic skills that were largely to do with escaping potential attackers who tried to grab or otherwise restrain her. It was a little strange having an instructor missing one of the limbs she was teaching Coura to use, but it proved no real impediment. And really, since nothing else was typical about the woman, why should that be?
As her reward for progress, Coleridge answered questions that Coura, by the nature of the arrangement, had plenty of time to formulate. Her first was simple: Was Coleridge wealthy enough, as she’d implied, to buy a slot on a starship?
The honest answer to that was no, not even close. In fact, no amount of wealth was enough to be certain of obtaining one of the rare spots in hibe on a departing starship. First, the ships themselves were rare. Only one was known to be inbound to Houdos at present, and it was more than a year away. And second, the system for buying passage was a complicated mix of bidding and lottery. Being ultra-rich tilted the odds heavily in one’s favor, but even the elites needed a little luck.
That topic led Coura to ask at a later date what use spacers had for the money anyway, considering they tended not to stay long at any one world.
“They keep accounts in systems they visit,” Coleridge explained.
“For when they return?”
“Yes and no. The accounts are mostly collective. Other spacer crews who come later can access the funds and contribute to them. I don’t know the details. They use the accounts to refit their ships, replenish supplies, live groundside during their stay, and whatever else. Your mother would know more than I do.”
“We don’t really talk about that sort of thing.”
“I imagine she doesn’t want you getting ideas.”
Days later, another skill, another question for Coleridge: “Could I get ‘laced?”
“There’s one facility I know of on Houdos where it’s possible. It’s in Spane, but it’s not open to the general public. That wouldn’t be insurmountable for me, but what probably is insurmountable is the cost.”
“As much as getting off-world?”
“No, but more than you could ever come up with unless your mother is keeping financial secrets. Last I knew, she wanted to make her own way, not have Kearn set her up for life. Hence fruit, and hence life as you’ve known it.”
A new trimester at the Academy came, and with it new courses that Coura picked without regard for making her parents happy. When she traveled home for a visit, she showed them a different list. It’s possible Ren wouldn’t have been upset by the truth, but better not to find out.
She got high marks in all her courses, but in her spare time she started getting ideas, in Coleridge’s words. Not the ideas that would have sent her mother spiraling into despair, but ones better not mentioned to her, or even to Simon, who could no longer be trusted to keep any secrets. No, not since the time her parents had come to Spane for a ‘surprise’ visit—the real surprise of which was the news that the two were back together.
Coura was happy for them. It lessened the guilt that came from not missing home and of imagining Ren crying alone in her daughter’s empty bed.
One morning after training, Coura’s ideas took her to a bank she knew to house spacer accounts. Within minutes of her entrance into the spacious lobby, a sharply-dressed employee not much older than Coura took notice of her staring up at the vaulted ceiling, surely looking like she didn’t belong. Which she didn’t exactly.
“What can I help you with today, miss?” he asked.
“I... have some questions about spacer accounts,” Coura said.
“Oh, are you a spacer?” the man asked politely. Coura nodded. He smiled and pointed. “If you’ll just have a seat on that couch, Mr. Poht will be with you shortly.
Indeed, Poht was shortly with her. An older man with a broad smile, Mr. Poht ushered Coura into his office, seated her opposite him at his glossy white desk and asked how he could help her.
“I have an unusual situation,” she explained. “I arrived on Houdos on a starship in 562 and was left behind against my will. Now that I’m an adult, obviously, I wondered if, being a spacer, technically, I might be able to access some funds.”
“Hmm,” Mr. Poht intoned, his brow furrowing slightly. “Well, you’re right to say this is unusual. It’s a situation I haven’t personally dealt with in my considerable time here. Unfortunately, under the terms of these accounts, after six Houdan years spent ‘groundside,’ as they say, a spacer is no longer considered to be entitled to continuing access.” He frowned, looking genuinely sad to disappoint her. “Given that your stay is well beyond that limit, I’m not sure what I’d be able to do for you.”
Coura sighed, frustrated but not quite defeated. “Let’s try it this way. My father left on the ship that I came on.” Poht’s face made an unwanted show of sympathy. “Is it possible that he had accounts of his own I might be able to use?”
After a moment’s thought, Poht raised a brow, followed by a finger. “Now that’s another story. Another bank, well before my time, was involved in a long legal fight with the offspring of a spacer, and in the end, a large disbursement was made from spacer common accounts to the child. Rightly so, in my opinion. The main difference between that case and yours, I believe, is that the other child was born on Houdos. Likewise most others since, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not sure if the precedent would apply given that you were...” He swallowed uncomfortably. “...left behind, as such.”
He went on, “Another consideration in such cases is that the spacer parent must be confirmed to have contributed to the account in question. Any amount released would be calculated based on those contributions.”
Mr. Poht put fingers to keyboard. “I’ll have to look into it, but first of all, let me get your information. Name?”
“Coura Martijn.”
Poht chuckled while he typed. “Forgive me. I’m slow inputting Galactic characters, but it’s best if I get everything in that language as well as Dyaans. Could you spell everything both ways for me, if possible?”
Coura happily obliged, grateful to be taken seriously. She hadn’t taken that for granted.
“Ship you arrived on?” Poht asked next. “If you know it—I understand you couldn’t have been very old at the time.”
“Lady of Chaos.” Coura spelled it out twice.
“Your spacer father’s name?”
“Mayweather Kearn.”
Poht went on to take other, more general information. At the end of it, Coura asked if there’d be any need to get her mother involved. Poht, who seemed a kindly man, might have been taken aback by the inquiry but took it in stride.
“As long as we verify that you’re of age, then if you prefer discretion, certainly it will be given. Of course, that works both ways, in that until we can verify your identity, or rather your connection to a valid account user, I can’t divulge to you any dealings this bank may have had with—” He glanced at his screen. “—Mayweather Kearn.”
“I am,” Coura said. “I mean, I am his daughter. How do I prove that?”
“For the last two hundred years, give or take, spacer visitors’ DNA has been sampled and archived as a requirement for use of financial resources, among other things. You would simply provide a sample to be matched against his record, assuming one exists.”
“It does,” Coura said, hiding a growing excitement. “I’m happy to provide whatever you need right now.”
Poht smiled and raised a palm. “Not quite yet. I’m afraid we don’t move that fast. If it’s determined that your claim can go forward, I’ll contact you about the next steps. Rather, I’ll be in touch either way, but we’ll only need a sample if there’s reason to take one.”
He studied his screen one last time and smiled at her. “I think I have all I need for now. It was very nice meeting you, Ms. Martijn, and I hope we can help you.”
After thanking the banker profusely, Coura made her exit through the vaulted lobby and left the building grinning ear-to-ear.
Three days later, Poht called her back to inform her that Mayweather Kearn had no dealings on record with his bank. Wishing her well personally, he gave her the names of three more institutions—already on her self-made list—that she should investigate.
Over the next several days, Coura visited all of them and had encounters similar to the one with Mr. Poht—who remained her favorite, despite his bank having been a dead end. All finished the same, with her information taken and a promise to get back to her with the results.
At her morning session with Coleridge after her bank visits, and while she awaited their replies, she earned a question. She asked it reluctantly, as Coleridge knew nothing of her adventures in the world of finance. But there was no way around it.
“If I came up with the funds to get ‘laced, would you be able to use your influence or connections, or whatever... to make it happen?”
Coleridge gave the initial reaction Coura had expected, and didn’t want: silence and an intense stare.
“Where would these funds come from?” Coleridge asked.
“I don’t think you’re allowed to answer me with a question.”
Coura knew that excuse wouldn’t fly, but she tried anyway. Coleridge just stared her into submission.
“I’m a spacer by blood,” Coura said. “My father’s still out there. I’m legally entitled to spacer money. I think. It’s legit!”
“You’ve been contacting banks?”
“Yes.”
“And giving them the name Mayweather Kearn?”
“Yes. Why?” Coura didn’t much like the particular shade of expressionlessness that Coleridge had adopted.
“I told you that some consider him a terrorist.”
“But that’s just a lie. Right?”
“It isn’t a lie to the tens of thousands of Fleet and Interim personnel who were stranded all over space when translight cores died. There are plenty of them here, and their influence runs deep. I told you that, too.”
“What, you mean I might be in danger?” Coura scoffed. “No!” Coleridge had loads of psych problems. Surely paranoia was on the list.
“They used you against him twice before you were even born,” Coleridge pointed out. “Then again, maybe if they wanted you, they’d already have you, considering you attend a school created by Interim Research & Guidance—”
“What?”
“—but still, don’t be stupid, Coura. Watch out for yourself.”
“I will,” Coura said. “But you never answered my question. Could you set it up?”
“If I wanted to, probably. But I don’t think I want you dealing with the people you’d have to deal with. There are costs beyond the financial. Potataho is not the Commonwealth. You could die in surgery.”
“It’s my choice.”
“Technically, but you can’t do it without me. And even though you’re an adult—allegedly—I won’t help you do anything your parents don’t know about.”
“They don’t even know I’m training with you!”
“Other than that,” Coleridge rationalized. “Let it rest, and stop dropping Kearn’s name all over Spane.”
Coura deflated. All that work, only to hit a one-armed wall.
“Please, VC,” she said in one last, earnest attempt. “Just think about it. Maybe you’ll change your mind. No rush.”
The session was over, so Coura put her shoes on and moved to the door. Before she picked up her coat, Coleridge asked her from the mats, “Why are none of your questions about him?”
Coura paused but didn’t answer.
