Ford (Niavar, Prince of Bathir) by D. Denise Dianaty
Sabrina felt recklessly exhilarated as she and Ford emerged into the rain. "Well, I won't be getting any job references out of them!"
He grinned at her. "It was a very neatly executed escape, I thought."
"Thank you, Prince Niavar."
"No, keep calling me Ford, please. I really prefer it. My friends on Praxatillus call me Var, but Ford has a more exotic sound to it, don't you think?"
"Not if you're American," Sabrina replied. "Where's your ship?"
"In orbit. The transport capsule's just a block from here, in an alley. Will it take us long to collect your brother?"
"I don't know. I've never tried to 'collect' him before."
"You are suddenly in a good mood," he remarked curiously. "Don't you realize we're heading into a very bad situation?"
Sabrina laughed. "Of course we are!" she said. "But—I'm going home! Oh, I never realized how tied down I felt here. Or how much I miss them all! But I'm going to see them again now, and I don't care what I have to deal with to do it."
He looked at her even more curiously, then shook his head. "You are definitely not what I expected."
Sabrina laughed again. "Good," she said.
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The transport capsule, tucked away in a dim alley, was not what she expected. It was a plain white cabinet, about a meter square, with no distinguishing marks at all. She couldn't even tell where the entrance was until Ford laid his palm on the near wall. It swung outward, and she peered inside suspiciously. "This doesn't look like any transport capsule I've ever—"
"Miss Devon, do come along," Ford urged. "I haven't time to explain it to you. We mustn't be discovered. Besides, it will all make sense to you when you see my ship—or at least it should."
Sabrina's indignant reply was cut off as he pulled her into the capsule and laid his palm against the control panel set into the far wall. The door swung closed, a dim illumination became visible, and there was the almost-forgotten, nauseating moment of nonbeing that Sabrina was no longer used to. Then the door swung open again of its own accord, and Ford pushed past the transfixed Sabrina.
"This is—is this a Wayship?" Sabrina gasped as she stepped onto the control deck from the capsule. "Hello, Ship? Permission to come aboard?"
"No, it's not a Wayship," came the impatient reply. "But it's designed to emulate one, in the important respects. Without the inconveniences."
"Are you a Wayfarer, then? No, how could you be? Unless—no, Mara would never—" Sabrina said, confused. "But Homeworld wouldn't allow—"
"I am an exception to many rules," Ford informed her. "But we must get to business. I've been sent here by Prime Minister Rassir and Commander Mukryilla to request your assistance, and that of your brother."
"But why?" Sabrina said.
"An excellent question, I thought," Ford said. "That disk contains orders for you, and I also have them for your brother, if you can supply me with his coordinates?"
Sabrina thought about the situation for a moment. The idea of marching onto a military base and demanding to see her brother was a little daunting. "I have a better idea," she said. "Let's give him a call first. We can do it from my place, and I can pack up a few things while we're at it."
"Miss Devon, we are in a hurry," Ford reminded her.
"Not if you've come back in time for us," Sabrina said. "Besides, if we go looking for Scotty among the military, we'll make a stir. You don't want that, and I don't want that. We'll make it his problem to extricate himself, not ours. I'll call him and have him meet us somewhere we can pick him up without witnesses."
Ford rolled his eyes. "Very well. Give me the coordinates."
"Mm. Have you got a map of Alexandria, by any chance?"
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Ten minutes later, the transport capsule materialized in the living room of Sabrina's apartment in Alexandria's West End. Ford was drawn immediately to the view from the dining room, which offered a glimpse of Interstate 395 beyond a thin barrier of remaining trees. "Why does your society allocate so many of its limited resources to such a dead-end method of transport?" he asked.
Sabrina was flipping through the address book in the top drawer of her phone table. "I don't know. We don't all have a Great Crystal to blip us anywhere we want to go, you know."
"Actually," Ford pointed out, "no one does, except Mother." He wandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and began examining the contents. "This is what you eat? Well, I see the tales of your courage aren't exaggerated."
Sabrina was busy dialing and didn't bother to reply. It was much earlier out West where Scotty was, so she tried his home number first. She got his answering machine.
"Scotty, hi, it's your sister," she began, her mind racing as she tried to compose a message that would sound innocent yet convey the real situation to him. "Call me when you get this message. We've got an emergency—Mara needs us. I'm at home—" She paused as she heard someone pick up the other end of the line.
"Rina?" Scotty's voice said, hoarse with a night's disuse but crisp and alert. "Did you say Mara?"
"Yes. I've got a cousin of ours here. He needs us to come with him."
"He?" Scotty paused to absorb this. "Do you need me to come out there, or—"
"We'll meet you someplace. Someplace off base."
"Yeah. Right, of course. Um....d'you remember when you were out here last time, that restaurant we went to, the Italian one?"
"Yes."
"I'll meet you there in an hour. Um...how long do you think we'll be gone?"
"I resigned."
"Oh. Okay. An hour."
"See you then," Sabrina replied, hanging up. It occurred to her that her guest had been abnormally quiet for the past few minutes. "Ford?"
There was no reply. She went into the kitchen; it was empty, so she went into the bedroom. There she found a tense stand-off in progress.
Ford was facing her armoire, staring at its top, where a blue-eyed, flame-point Himalayan cat was staring fiercely down at him. The two appeared mesmerized by each other.
"Tristan!" Sabrina said sternly.
With a contemptuous flick of his tail, the cat, never taking his gaze off the intruder, sat up and began licking his front paw.
"It looks quite vicious," Ford remarked curiously. "Is it a cat or a dog?"
"Cat," Sabrina said. "His name is Tristan. Tristan, this is Ford. Please don't bite his nose off, he's family. Oh, dear, what am I going to do about him? I'm assuming we're headed into serious trouble, so I don't want to haul him along. I guess I'd better give my petsitter a call. She can water the plants too, come to think. I must just remember to come back here before the next rent check is due. Oh, and the bills on my desk...." She wandered back out of the room, her mind whirling with the details of her interrupted life. A few minutes later she came back in, to find Ford and the cat having another stare-down. "Stop that, you two. I want to change clothes and pack a few things. Ford, go into the living room and watch TV or something."
"Ah, television, the centerpiece of your culture," he remarked. "This is turning into quite an educational trip."
He sauntered out the door, and the cat jumped down and stalked suspiciously after him. Sabrina hoped her overly possessive cat and intrepid guest wouldn't actually manage to shed blood as she closed the door after them and turned to her closet. A few minutes later she heard the television come on and identified the raucous audience noises as those of a daytime talk show. Not exactly the side of Earth that she wanted her off-planet family to know about, she reflected with a sigh.
She quickly changed into jeans and a T-shirt and packed a change of clothes and the very few mementos she had brought back to Earth with her, along with some photographs of her Aunt Euphrasia, her parents, and some of her friends. Then she went into the bathroom and threw the basic necessities together, as if she were packing for a business trip instead of headed off across space and time. It was easier to keep her focus limited.
When she emerged, ready to go, Ford had mastered the remote control and was flipping rapidly through the fifty-odd stations she received. Tristan sat on the other end of the sofa eyeing him warily. At Sabrina's entrance, the cat looked up, saw her duffel bag, and yowled plaintively.
"I know, sweetie," she said soothingly. "I'm sorry. I'll be back as soon as I can."
Tristan got up and pushed his nose against her hand, and she leaned down and picked him up, hugging him gently. "You be a good kitty for your sitter," she said. "She'll be here this evening to feed you and make sure you haven't ransacked the house. I'll come back for you just as soon as I can, okay?"
She laid her cheek against his head, and he squirmed restlessly to be free. She let him jump back onto the couch, suddenly sad and anxious. "Be a good kitty," she said again, helplessly.
Ford had stood up and was looking strangely at her. "Does he understand you?"
"Sometimes. I don't know. But it makes me feel a little better. I hate to think I'm abandoning him." She bit her lip.
"You'll be back," he said.
Sabrina looked around her, one last time, at the home she had made for herself. She had always known it would only be temporary, but somehow it was still hard to leave. "I hope so," she said.
"I'll bring you myself, if you like, when we've sorted out this mess."
Sabrina laughed suddenly. "That's what Tirqwin said, and it took two whole years! Oh, I can't wait to see him again. Well, come on. Let's go get Scotty. I'll be glad to see him again too."
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It was still early morning in the small desert town near the Air Force Base where Scotty was stationed. No one was out and about yet, making it easy for Sabrina and Ford to land the capsule unseen behind an abandoned building on the dusty main street. They emerged into the dry air, already warm with the promise of intense heat later.
Ford looked around, his interest quickly fading. He had evidently stretched his patience beyond its usual bounds, Sabrina thought, while she had tried to come up with coordinates for the town, the name of which she had remembered inaccurately. Ford's electronic maps of Earth, obtained nearly a century from now, claimed to be accurate representations of this era, but they turned out to be missing certain important landmarks, which didn't help. Now, she realized, she couldn't remember the name of the restaurant Scotty had mentioned, though she was sure she'd know it if she saw it. Fortunately the town was tiny. She deduced from the future maps that it was destined to sink back into the desert in a few years. Probably the base had been closed, depriving the town of a reason to exist.
"Well?" Ford said. "Which way?"
Sabrina looked around, hoping something would strike a chord of memory. She'd been here nearly two years ago, right after Scotty's posting here. She tried to remember the drive from the base, but it had been at night, and Scotty's method of driving wasn't conducive to sightseeing. She remembered one of his fellow pilots joking that you were safe as in your mother's arms with Scotty in the cockpit, but with him behind the wheel you'd be safer riding a missile.
"Would you like to wait and keep an eye on the capsule while I go get him?" she asked hopefully.
"No," he replied. "Nothing on this planet is likely to hurt the capsule. Besides," he added, his humor returning, "after all the tales I've heard of the intrepid Captain Devon, I am all agog to meet him for myself."
"What did they tell you about him?" Sabrina asked, setting off in the direction she hoped was the right one.
"Well," Ford said, after a moment's thought, "I remember once, when I was in disgrace over something or other, Mother and Father were arguing about what to do with me. Father was rather more put out about it than Mother was, I believe. And Mother said I wasn't any worse than she had been, or Scotty. And Father frowned and said, oh yes, I was. And Mother laughed and said the only difference was that I hadn't had you to take me in hand. That made Father smile, and he said, 'In that case, I am going for Sabrina immediately.' And Mother looked sad and said that it wasn't time yet. Father was rather irritated, I seem to recall, but he only said, 'Well, I am a poor substitute for Sabrina, but I will take him in hand.' And he did. I lived aboard Khediva with him for about a year while he tried to undo all the spoiling my nursery attendants had done, and believe me, in that time I constantly heard stories about the two of you from him and from Khediva."
"How old were you?" Sabrina asked. They were reaching the end of the main street, and she realized they had gone the wrong way.
"Eight or so."
Sabrina tried to picture him as a little boy. Miahns reached adulthood at around age 30, so at eight he would have been the equivalent of an Earth kindergartner. She could imagine he must have been a charming, handsome boy, thoroughly spoiled—she could still detect it in his impatience and occasional sulkiness. And probably he was terrifyingly clever. She couldn't imagine Tirqwin taking him on for a year unless he detected an intelligence that demanded careful shaping.
"We seem to have run out of town," Ford remarked. "Does this restaurant of yours have a cloak of invisibility?"
"Well, they do experiment with all kinds of interesting things out here," Sabrina replied. "A stealth restaurant isn't completely beyond probability, though it would be just a tiny bit more ridiculous than usual for our government."
That made him smile. "I'll take that as an admission that you simply don't know where it is."
"Yes, I do! At least generally. I mean, this is a tiny town, and I know it's here somewhere." She looked around. "Let's try down that first cross street, there."
Ford gave an exaggerated sigh and followed her. "You're the first planetary heroine I've ever met who can get lost in an area smaller than most of the courtyards at Palace Royal."
"And how many planetary heroines have you met?" she retorted. "Anyway, I keep telling you, I'm not lost."
"I've met several planetary heroines, all of whom had quite striking personalities. But none of them had your quaint insistence on denying simple facts."
"The facts," Sabrina quoted, "though interesting, are irrelevant."
"Ah. Is this a sample of the Earth humor I was warned about?"
"Hey, don't laugh. If I'd paid too much attention to the facts, do you think I could ever have set out to push through a peace treaty between Praxatillus and Homeworld?"
"Well, I only hope your fortuitous insanity serves us as well in this crisis."
Sabrina heard the distinct roar of an engine, growing rapidly closer. She stopped to look up and down the deserted street. Soon she caught a glimmer of sunlight on metal. "I think our problem is solved."
Ford turned to follow her gaze, watching interestedly as the indistinct, hazy form resolved into a silver sports car. It was traveling much too fast, Sabrina noted with resignation as it flew past them. A second later she was looking over her shoulder in alarm as the car skidded into a tight arc and leaped back toward them. Ford was just grabbing Sabrina out of the way when the car came to an abrupt halt, neatly tucked into the dimly marked parking space.
"You think I'm insane?" Sabrina murmured as Ford let go of her.
The car door was kicked open, and a moment later Scotty Devon was unfolding his long, lean form and grinning at them. "Rina!"
"Scotty, honestly, why you haven't died a fiery death before now is more than I can understand!" she replied.
He only laughed, folding her into a bear hug and lifting her off her feet. "Nice to see you too, sis! Oof, you've gained weight!"
"Gee, thanks!" she retorted as he released her. He looked curiously at Ford. "When you said cousin, I thought you meant Tirq, but this isn't him."
"No," Sabrina said, forestalling Ford's comment. She grinned in anticipation. "Brace yourself, Scotty. This is Tirqwin and Mara's son."
"Son!" Scotty looked Ford up and down in astonishment, then began to laugh. "You mean those two raised a kid all by themselves, without yelling for you? Hoo boy!"
Ford's expression was darkening, Sabrina noted through her own amusement. She hurried to intervene. "They were probably afraid I'd bring you along and make things worse," she retorted. "Your highness, this is my brother, Captain Scott Devon. Scotty, say hello to your first cousin once removed, Niavar ya Yanklozhquar nar Tassan, Prince of Bathir."
"Ford," Ford corrected her testily as Scotty composed himself enough to stick out his hand.
"Nice to meet you," Scotty said, trying not to snicker.
"Captain Devon," Ford said wearily, "as I keep trying to impress upon your remarkably oblivious sister, I'm here on a mission of the utmost urgency and importance."
"Yeah, well, nothin' new there," Scotty shrugged. "But we better be going. I'm AWOL; I didn't think I had time to wait for emergency leave to come through." He turned and pulled a duffel bag out of his car, then stood for a moment, gazing at the vehicle with fond regret. "I'm gonna miss this."
"C'mon, Scotty," Sabrina said, her tone gentling as she realized he was going through the same wrench she had endured earlier. "After all, even if we don't come back, you'll have plenty of dangerous vehicles to play with on Praxatillus."
"That's true," Scotty said, brightening as he turned away. "Hey, Ford, is Treva nar Mukryilla still Commander in Chief?"
"Yes. It was her idea to send for you."
Scotty chuckled. "Oh boy! This must be pretty bad. Well, come on, let's go see what they expect us to pull off now, eh, Rina?"