<He is Cap’n. He will take it.>
“I have rights!”
<Not to keep a Personality. He will argue that a Personality should be liberated if it can be.>
He jerked angrily to his feet. “That’s not Family custom!”
<Your Family never had the technology before. With your species, where ability goes, custom follows.>
“Humanity must’ve had this, sometime ’way back, or else these people here wouldn’t have it. But our customs, they’re ancient—and they don’t say anything about bringing Personalities back.”
<This, then, is a measure of how far you have fallen.>
So simply put, the brutality of it was unanswerable. “Look, I still won’t give her up.”
<He will take her. He argues already that Shibo’s talents are needed, for the exploration of this place.>
“Exploration?” Toby could not get his mind off the prospect before him. And something more dried his mouth, tightened his throat—the strange currents running like searing rivulets when he thought of Shibo.
<For Abraham. And else, as well, I believe.>
“I need to think this over.” Toby got up unsteadily. Shibo herself was not causing this seethe inside him. It was something he felt, something about him and Shibo together, that he could not voice. Each time he tried, he felt a sickening churn, a whirlpool of coming nausea.
<I came to warn you. Killeen has ordered a search for you.>
“I won’t go back.”
“Oh yeasay—you will,” his father said.
Toby whirled. “No!”
Killeen and Cermo emerged from the nearby trees, fully suited. His father’s face was lined and drawn, as though he had gone sleepless all these days. “I knew Quath would be better at searching than we are,” he said with a tight smile. “You stepped-down your sensorium so much we couldn’t pick you up on the grid.”
“Dad, don’t do this.”
“I have to.”
“I’m carrying the chip, so Family law says I decide for the Personality.”
“Except when Family survival demands. That’s the law, too.”
Toby thought fast. He had never paid much attention to the endless wranglings of Family law and custom, the adults’ yack-yack and breezy bluster, and now regretted it. “We’re safe here. Nothing’s threatening our survival.”
“Not so. But look, son—I want Shibo back. I think you can understand why.”
“I don’t think it’s for the best,” Toby temporized.
“Nonsense. We’ll be together again, the three of us, a real family.”
Toby shook his head violently. “Not the same, not the same.”
“Sure it will. Shibo, in the flesh—just think of it.” For the first time Toby could remember Killeen’s face lit with joy.
“That’s not why we came here, Dad, and anyway—” He stopped. “No—this was why you came, wasn’t it?”
Wariness swallowed Killeen’s brief delight. “Not the main reason, no, but—sure, I guessed there was something like the Restorer here. The message in that Chandelier, remember? And other old sayings, myths. You should see the real thing, son! Magnificent, huge, flexible glass and metal you can see through, tech that can restore anybody, given enough data. You’ll be—”
“You don’t need her now, Dad. Later, maybe, when we’ve found Abraham, gone—”
“Abraham!” Killeen’s sunny elation returned. “I got his message. He sent coordinates of where he is. They’re not reliable, Andro says, but they’ll get us to the neighborhood. Abraham is alive—here! Somehow he got away from the Citadel. Said to bring you for sure and—”
“Shibo can come after that. She’s personal business, Dad. Abraham, all the rest—that’s Family Bishop business. First deal with that.”
“There’s more beyond to discover, I can smell it. I need Shibo. She was my, my core, son. You can’t understand that, I know, but . . .”
In Killeen’s face unease and uncertainty warred with his set-piece Cap’n’s hard-mouthed mask. Toby realized suddenly how much a shield that calm, resolute image had been, for years now.
“I need her. I want to have her back before we go searching for Abraham. It’s an emergency, so I’m setting aside the usual Family customs—”
“We’re safe! No mechs here, even. You can’t invoke some—”
“I already have.” Killeen’s mask had returned at Toby’s outburst, the window between them closing in an eye-blink. Killeen and Cermo stood together, tall and certain, Cermo chunky and giving away his apprehension with elbows cocked, knees loose. The crevices in Killeen’s face seemed deep, shadowed, hiding something. Yet the voice was mild, calming as he argued further. Toby had heard him use the same tones on a crewman who had stepped out of line and needed herding back in.
Toby took a deep breath, licked his lips. Using his Aspects, he dredged up legalistic lore, rattling jargon he only dimly understood. “Override our customs? How can you? I haven’t even been informed by Family Council of any of this.” He let his peripheral vision drift, sizing up opportunities. “First you have to—”
“I called a special Council. Since you had left Argo without permission of the watch officer, they allowed as how they could pass judgment without your being informed.”
Toby was aghast. He should have suspected when it was so easy to slip away. “You let me leave.”
