Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [43]
Her thoughts milled about for a moment. This was very strange. Very strange indeed.
"I assume that part of our time Out would be spent checking things out at the EsKay sites?" he said, his eyes warming. "Looking for things the archeologists may not find? Looking for more potential sites?"
"Something like that," she told him. "That's why I need your cooperation. Sometimes I'm going to need a mobile partner on this one."
He nodded, knowingly. "Lovely lady, you are looking at him," he replied. "And only too happy to. If there's one thing I'm a sucker for, it's a quest. And this is even better, a quest at the service of a lady!"
"A quest?" she chuckled a little. "What, do you want us to swear to find the Holy Grail now?"
"Why not?" he said lightly. "Here—I'll start." He stood up, faced not her column but Ted E. Bear in his illuminated case, and held his hand as if he were taking the Space Service Oath. "I, Alexander Joli-Chanteu, do solemnly swear that I shall join brainship Hypatia One-Oh-Three-Three in a continuing and ongoing search for the homeworld of the Salomon-Kildaire Entities. I swear that this will be a joint project for as long as we have a joint career. And I swear that I shall give her all the support and friendship she needs in this search, so help me. So let it be witnessed and sealed by yon bear."
Tia would have giggled, except that he looked so very solemn.
"All right," he said, when he sat down again. "What about you?"
What about her? She had virtually accepted him as her brawn, hadn't she? And hadn't he sworn himself into her service, like some kind of medieval knight?
"All right," she replied. "I, Hypatia One-Oh-Three-Three, do solemnly swear to take Alexander Joli-Chanteu into my service, to share with him my search for the EsKay homeworld, and to share with him those rewards both material and immaterial that come our way in this search. I pledge to keep him as my brawn unless we both agree mutually to sever the contract. I swear it by—by Theodore Edward Bear."
He grinned, so wide and infectiously, that she wished she could return it. "I guess we're a team, then," she said.
"Then here—" he lifted an invisible glass "—is to our joint career. May it be as long and fruitful as the Cades'."
He pretended to drink, then to smash the invisible glass in an invisible fireplace, little guessing that Tia's silence was due entirely to frozen shock.
The Cades? How could he—
But before she vocalized anything, she suddenly realized that he could not possibly have known who and what she really was.
The literature on the Cades would never have mentioned their paralyzed daughter, nor the tragedy that caused her paralysis. That simply wasn't done in academic circles, a world in which only facts and speculations existed, and not sordid details of private lives. The Cades weren't stellar personalities, the kind people made docudramas out of. There was no way he could have known about Hypatia Cade.
And once someone went into the shellperson program, their last name was buried in a web of eyes-only and fail-safes, to ensure that their background remained private. It was better that way, easier to adjust to being shelled. The unscrupulous supervisor could take advantage of a shellperson's background for manipulation, and there were other problems as well. Brainships were, as Professor Brogen had pointed out, valuable commodities. So were their cargoes. The ugly possibilities of using familial hostages or family pressures against a brainship were very real. Or using family ties to lure a ship into ambush. . . .
But there was always the option for the shellperson to tell trusted friends about who they were. Trusted friends—and brawns.
She hesitated for a moment, as he saluted Ted. Should she tell him about herself and avoid a painful gaffe in the future?
No. No, I have to learn to live with it, if I'm going to keep chasing the EsKays. If he doesn't say anything, someone else will. Mum and Dad may have soured on the EsKay project because of me, but their names are still linked with it. And