honor, the satisfaction of laying successes at the feet of his lady fair. It wasn't as if he and Carialle couldn't tell the difference between play and reality. The game had permeated their life and given it shape and texture, becoming more than a game, meaning more. He'd never tell this space-dry plodder about the time five years back that he actually stood vigil throughout a long, lonely night lit by a single candle to earn his knighthood. I guess you just had to be there, he thought. «If that's all?» he asked, standing up quickly.
Darvi waved a stylus at him, already engrossed in the files. Keff escaped before the man thought of something else to ask and hurried down the curving hall to the nearest lift.
Keff had learned about Myths and Legends in primary school. A gang of his friends used to get together once a week (more often when they dared and homework permitted) to play after class. Keff liked being able to live out some of his heroic fantasies and, briefly, be a knight battling evil and bringing good to all the world. As he grew up and learned that the galaxy was a billion times larger than his one small colony planet, the compulsion to do good grew, as did his private determination that he could make a difference, no matter how minute. He managed not to divulge this compulsion during his psychiatric interviews on his admission to Brawn Training and kept his altruism private. Nonetheless, as a knight of old, Keff performed his assigned tasks with energy and devotion, vowing that no ill or evil would ever be done by him. In a quiet way, he applied the rules of the game to his own life.
As it happened, Carialle also loved M&L, but more for the strategy and research that went into formulating the quests than the adventuring. After they were paired, they had simply fallen into playing the game to while away the long days and months between stars. He could put no finger on a particular moment when they began to make it a lifestyle: Keff the eternal knight errant and Carialle his lady fair. To Keff this was the natural extension of an adolescent interest that had matured along with him.
As soon as he'd heard that the CX-963 was in need of a brawn, his romantic nature required him to apply for the position as Carialle's brawn. He'd heard—who hadn't?—about the devastating space storm and collision that had cost Fanine Takajima-Morrow's life and almost took Carialle's sanity.
She'd had to undergo a long recovery period when the Mutant Minorities (MM) and Society for the Preservation of the Rights of Intelligent Minorities (SPRIM) boffins wondered if she'd ever be willing to go into space again. They rejoiced when she announced that not only was she ready to fly, but ready to interview brawns as well. Keff had wanted that assignment badly. Reading her file had given him an intense need to protect Carialle. A ridiculous notion, when he ruefully considered that she had the resources of a brainship at her synapse ends, but her vulnerability had been demonstrated during that storm. The protective aspect of his nature vibrated at the challenge to keep her from any further harm.
Though she seldom talked about it, he suspected she still had nightmares about her ordeal—in those random hours when a brain might drop into dreamtime. She also proved to be the best of partners and companions. He liked her, her interests, her hobbies, didn't mind her faults or her tendency to be right more often than he was. She taught him patience. He taught her to swear in ninety languages as a creative means of dispelling tension. They bolstered one another. The trust between them was as deep as space and felt as ancient and as new at the same time. The fourteen years of their partnership had flown by, literally and figuratively. Within Keff's system of values, to be paired with a brainship was the greatest honor a mere human could be accorded, and he knew it.
The lift slowed to a creaky halt and the doors opened. Keff had been on SSS-900 often enough to turn to port as he hit the corridor, in the direction of the spacer bar he liked to patronize while on station.
Word had gotten around that he was back, probably the helpful Simeon's doing. A dark brown stout already separating from its creamy crown was waiting for him on the polished steel bar. It was the first thing on which he focused.
«Ah!» he cried, moving toward the beer with both hands out. «Come to Keff.»
A hand reached into his field of vision and smartly slapped his wrist before he could touch the mug handle. Keff tilted a reproachful eye upward.
«How's your credit?» the bartender asked, then tipped him a wicked wink. She was a woman of his own age with nut-brown hair cut close to her head and the milk-fair skin of the lifelong spacer of European descent. «Just kidding. Drink up, Keff. This ones on the house. It's good to see you.»
«Blessings on you and on this establishment, Mariad, and on your brewers, wherever they are,» Keff said, and put his nose into the foam and slowly tipped his head back and the glass up. The mug was empty when he set it down. «Ahhhh. Same again, please.»
Cheers and applause erupted from the tables and Keff waved in acknowledgment that his feat had been witnessed. A couple of people gave him thumbs up before returning to their conversations and dart games.
«You can always tell a light-year spacer by the way he refuels in port,» said one man, coming forward to clasp Keff's hand. His thin, melancholy face was contorted into an odd smile.
Keff stood up and slapped him on the back. «Baran Larrimer! I didn't know you and Shelby were within a million light years of here.»
An old friend, Larrimer was half of a brain/brawn team assigned to the Central Worlds defense fleet. Keff suddenly remembered Simeon's briefing about naval support. Larrimer must have known exactly what Keff had been told. The older brawn gave him a tired grimace and nodded at the questioning expression on his face.
«Got to keep our eyes open,» he said simply.
«And you are not keeping yours open,» said a voice. A tiny arm slipped around Keff's waist and squeezed. He glanced down into a small, heart-shaped face. «Good to see you, Keff.»
«Susa Gren!» Keff lifted the young woman clean off the ground in a sweeping hug and set her down for a huge kiss, which she returned with interest. «So you and Marliban are here, too?»
«Courier duty for a trading contingent,» Susa said in a low voice, her dark eyes crinkling wryly at the corners. She tilted her head toward a group of hooded aliens sitting isolated around a table in the corner. «Hoping to sell Simeon a load of protector/detectors. They plain forgot that Marls a brain and could hear every word. The things they said in front of him! Which he quite rightly passed straight on to Simeon, so, dear me, didn't they have a hard time bargaining their wares. I'd half a mind to tell CenCom that those idiots can find their own way home if they won't show a brainship more respect. But,» she sighed, «it's paying work.»
Marl had only been in service for two—no, it was three years now—and was still too far down in debt to Central Worlds for his shell and education to refuse assignments, especially ones that paid as well as first-class courier work. Susa owed megacredits, too. She had made herself responsible for the debts of her parents, who had borrowed heavily to make an independent go of it on a mining world, and had failed. Fortunately not fatally, but the disaster had left them with only a subsistence allowance. Keff liked the spunky young woman, admired her drive and wit, her springy step and dainty, attractive figure. The two of them had always had an affinity which Carialle had duly noted, commenting a trifle bluntly that the ideal playmate for a brawn was another brawn. Few others could understand the dedication a brawn had for his brainship nor match the lifelong relationship.
«Susa,» he said suddenly. «Do you have some time? Can you sit and talk for a while?»
Her eyes twinkled as if she had read his mind. «I've nothing to do and nowhere to go. Marl and I have liberty until those drones want to go home. Buy me a drink?»
Larrimer stood up, tactfully ignoring the increasing aura of intimacy between the other two brawns. He slapped his credit chit down on the bar and beckoned to Mariad.
«Come by if you have a moment, Keff,» he said. «Shelby would be glad to see you.»
«I will,» Keff said, absently swatting a palm toward Larrimer's hand, which caught his in a firm clasp. «Safe going.»
He and Susa sat down together in a booth. Mariad delivered a pair of Guinnesses and, with a motherly cluck, sashayed away.
«You're looking well,» Susa said, scanning his face with a more than friendly concern. «You have a tan!»
«I got it on our last planetfall,» Keff said. «Hasn't had time to fade yet.»
«Well, I think you look good with a little color in your face,» she declared. Her mouth crooked into a one- sided grin. «How far down does it go?»
Keff waggled his eyebrows at her. «Maybe in awhile I'll let you see.»
«Any of those deep scratches dangerous?» Carialle asked, swiveling an optical pickup out on a stalk to oversee the techs checking her outsides. The ship lay horizontally to the «dry dock» pier, giving the technicians the
