Four days later, Tirqwin found Sabrina and Ford on Khediva's control deck, passing the time by playing chess. Ford was a novice, but he had a naturally quick and devious mind and was more than a fair match for Sabrina's experience.
"You fiend!" Sabrina exclaimed as Ford whisked her second rook off the board. "I thought you were aiming at my queen!"
Ford merely grinned at her in reply. Then Tirqwin cleared his throat, and they both looked up at him.
"Tirqwin, help me," Sabrina said. "I've created a chess monster!"
Tirqwin smiled. "I am glad you are amusing yourselves. Sabrina, I would like you in the lab tomorrow."
Sabrina's expression immediately closed. "Why?" she demanded.
"Scotty is making progress. We told him he has a sister. He wants to meet you."
"I don't see the point in that," Sabrina replied, but her voice shook a little.
"You can spare him his memories if you want, Sabrina, but you cannot spare him the present. He is searching for his identity in the only way you have allowed him," Tirqwin said. "You are an important part of that, memory or no."
Sabrina got to her feet, her mouth flattening into a thin, mulish line. "You can snipe at me all you want, Tirqwin; I know you disagree with my decision. But you can't change it. Going in there and talking to...him...won't change that. He's a new person now. I'll be happy to introduce myself, but I'm not suddenly going to go all mushy and change my mind."
"I am not asking you to. It is obvious to us all that you are determined to stand by your decision," Tirqwin retorted. "I think at this point, even if you changed your mind, you might let the decision stand out of sheer stubbornness."
"All right, you can disagree with me all you want, but don't call me an idiot!" Sabrina snapped. "How dare you judge me? You have no idea what this is like for me!"
"You have no idea what it is like for him. I think you should go find out, and stop thinking you are the only possible arbiter of his fate!"
Sabrina's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that you are not the only person with a moral and legal right to choose what happens to Scotty's memories."
Sabrina took two steps forward and glared at Tirqwin, as if trying to drill holes in him with her icy blue eyes. "Tirqwin, if you take this to Mara, so help me God I will never forgive you. Never."
"You do not have to worry about that, Sabrina," Tirqwin snapped. "I have no way of communicating with Mara right now that allows me to bring up the subject. I will not use a message relay to break her heart. You are not the only one who loves Scotty, and you had better remember that before you go back to Praxatillus expecting sympathy for what you have done here!"
He stalked off the control deck, leaving Sabrina to stand clenching her fists as a worried Ford looked on. At last Sabrina had control of herself again and sat down, as if to continue the chess match.
"It's useless now," Ford said. "You won't be able to concentrate."
"Let me decide that!" she snapped.
He shrugged. "I don't think you two should fight anymore. You know all too well how to hurt each other."
Sabrina picked up a pawn and hurled it across the control deck. It clattered off the main console pedestal and began rolling in a long circle on the deckplates. "Shut up," she hissed.
Ford got to his feet and headed for the living quarters. On the threshold, he turned back around. "Just one thing, Sabrina. We all know that if you were happy about or even confident in your decision, you wouldn't be acting this way. Maybe you ought to think about why you're not."
Fortunately, he was gone before the chess board hit the corner where he'd been standing.
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Sabrina spent a miserable hour in her quarters, weeping tears of anger and hurt and stewing over Tirqwin and Ford's refusal to agree with her decision. Khediva had remained diplomatically silent on the subject, but Sabrina knew she wanted to see the old Scotty live again, too. Why could none of them see that she wanted it as badly as they did? But it would be selfish to force those memories on an innocent, to erase the possibilities of that person's life without the memories. Scotty's memories would bind him to a life of service to Praxatillus, to a course laid out for him in a different time, under different circumstances. The memories would erase his right to choose. And she wanted him to have that right, because she loved him. And she wanted Scotty's memories to die with him, to remain unsullied—
Sabrina's head jerked up in shock. Unsullied? Where did that come from? Am I afraid he can't live up to them? Or that he'll live up to them too well? Or maybe he'd even reject them, choose to turn away from that life and do something else. The last possibility was the worst, she realized. She could not bear for someone to pass judgment on her brother's life and find it lacking.
Am I being selfish now? Am I wrong?
She remembered an old argument with Mara: "You are all against me!" Mara cried, tears streaming down her face. She turned and ran through the inner door. "That should be telling you something!" Sabrina shouted after her.
Maybe this should be telling me something, Sabrina concluded. She felt suddenly weary at the prospect of going through the decision-making again. It had felt good, in a way, to have it over with, even if she hadn't been entirely happy with the decision.
I'll go see him tomorrow, she sighed to herself. I won't think about it until then.
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Unsurprisingly, she couldn't sleep. Khediva told her that Tirqwin was helping design an English-language education module for Scotty aboard the station and that Ford had been summoned to a Committee meeting. Sabrina got a steaming cup of Darjeeling tea from the provender, mentally cursed the station's lack of a "night," and sat down on the control deck to wait for one of them to come back. She couldn't concentrate on the history she was still trying to wade through, so she coaxed Khediva into telling her stories about the travels she and Tirqwin had experienced in the past ninety-two years. Sabrina was in a light doze, relaxed and reassured by Khediva's steady, familiar voice, when Ford came back aboard.
"How did it go?" she asked, blinking and sitting up. Her heart sank as she saw his expression. "Oh, no. Don't tell me they're going to destroy it! Oh, Ford, all your work...."
He sat down next to her and rested his elbows on his knees, his shoulders hunched in defeat. "It might be worse, I suppose. They're confiscating the ship, but they decided it would be 'a waste of resources' to destroy it. They're keeping it for further study, possibly for use in situations too dangerous to risk a Wayship. They say most failed Wayfarer candidates could manage to pilot it, so I suppose they'll just pick an expendable one next time something horrific comes up and send him off in my ship on a suicide mission."
Sabrina heard the real pain underneath the bitterness. Nothing she could say could possibly lessen it, she knew. After a moment's hesitation, she reached out and put her arm around his shoulders, drawing him close and using her other hand to guide his head to rest on her shoulder. They remained like that for a while before Ford put his arms around her and held on. She hoped he was drawing some comfort from the embrace; it was all she could give him.
A flash of memory startled her, and she remembered one of Scotty's early loves, which had ended with his girlfriend dumping him for someone else. He had taken it so hard, she remembered. It was one of the few times he had ever let her hold him and try to comfort him as their mother would have done if she were alive. Well, Scotty did not remember that pain now, at least, she thought. Or any of the others.
"Ford?" she said softly.
He let out a sigh and sat back. "Yes?"
"If you—if you'd lost your memory, and people told you it was full of bad things you wouldn't want to remember, would you want it back anyway?"
He thought for a moment. "Yes."
"But why?"
"Because," he said, "I couldn't bear for my mother's heart to break every time she looked at me."
"But if you didn't remember her, didn't know her—"
"I'd come to know her. Sabrina, do you really think you're ever going to be able to look at Scotty without that horrible lost expression in your eyes?"
"Eventually, yes. I'm just glad he's alive. That there's something left of him. It's like Mukryilla said. It's like he's Scotty's son."
"Except that he isn't. He's Scotty. And you won't be able to get over that, Sabrina, any more than you've ever gotten over your parents' deaths, or Rayland's. And I've seen how your eyes change when you talk about them. Scotty doesn't remember you, but he's not stupid. He'll know."
Sabrina was silent for a long time. "You can't know that for sure."
"I suppose not," Ford said, with an utter lack of conviction. He was quiet for a while, then added, "We'll find out tomorrow. You should get some sleep, Sabrina. It's not going to be easy, I'm afraid."
"I can't sleep," she sighed. "I can't...I don't even know what's right anymore, Ford. And I have to be right. I owe it to Scotty."
He slid his arm around her. "I know. The trouble is, you don't trust anyone else to be right either."
"Tirqwin wants me to stop hurting. He won't even stop to think that it might not be best for Scotty. He can't. He can't choose. That's why I have to. I can."
Ford hugged her gently. "I don't think you can, Sabrina," he said, very softly. "You know perfectly well that Scotty would choose the risk, but you won't. You're afraid to, so you choose what hurts you, on the assumption that even if you're wrong, at least you won't have been selfish. But you know, occasionally what you want and what's right coincide."
Sabrina chuckled mistily. "You have an uncanny habit of repeating things Tassan once said to me."
"Did you listen to him?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. That time anyway."
"Well then," Ford said.
Sabrina sighed and leaned her head back. "It's not that easy, Ford."
"Why not?"
"It just isn't. I don't know." She gave him a rueful smile. "You want me to stop hurting, too, Ford. I can't trust you either."
"Of course you can. Sabrina, you're missing an important part of your logic. What's best for you, what will cause you the least pain, is for Scotty to be all right, with or without his memories. Don't you think Father and I can figure that out? To try to spare you pain by acting contrary to Scotty's ultimate welfare would be idiotic. Give us a bit of credit, hm?"
Sabrina sighed again, but she didn't argue.
"Besides," Ford continued after a moment, "you say Father can't choose, but then you say you don't trust him not to sacrifice Scotty for your sake. I think you're wrong about that, Sabrina. He's more demonstrative with you, I think, but that doesn't mean he loves you better than Scotty. Especially now. Scotty really is his son, in a way that my siblings and I can't be. A child who owes nothing of his makeup to Praxatillus, who isn't bound to a world Father can never really be part of."
"But he is, Ford. He is. Scotty would never abandon his oath of service."
"The old Scotty is. This one may or may not be. Don't you think it must be tempting for Father to have this blank slate to work with, someone to raise the way he thinks best, with no interference? Something to give back to his House, perhaps, to make up for all the trouble he's caused them?"
"House Yanklozhquar don't recognize Scotty, do they?" Sabrina asked in surprise.
"Not that I'm aware of, but I'm sure they could be persuaded to. There's no Miahn obstacle to overcome. Scotty could have—he could have the life Father wanted to give me, and couldn't," Ford said slowly.
Sabrina stared at him, astonished. She had never really thought about it before, just blindly assumed that Tirqwin's focus was on her. It was arrogant to assume she was the favorite, she knew, and wondered when that idea had taken hold of her.
"Does—does Tirqwin really think this?" she asked.
Ford shrugged. Khediva said, "Sabrina, both Tirqwin and I look on you and Scotty as ours, in a way that Niavar and his siblings cannot be. We love you both equally. But right now it is Scotty's wellbeing that concerns us. You are strong; we know you will survive whatever happens. We are determined to provide for Scotty no matter what is decided about his memories. But it is our belief that he will want them. We respect his right to decide for himself. You will not be allowed to override him."
Sabrina gaped at the ceiling, where she tended to look when conversing with Khediva. She was silent for so long that Ford asked, "Sabrina, are you all right?"
"Ford...I am so wrong about everybody," she said in slow surprise.
"Not everybody," he reassured her.
Khediva said, "Sabrina, you remember Tirqwin from a time when he was overprotective of you. You sacrificed a great deal for him and for Maratobia. But Scotty also risked a great deal. He just never needed us before."
Sabrina blinked. "The real reason Tirqwin didn't want me here," she said, realizing it, "is that he was afraid I'd interfere with what he was doing for Scotty and cause a lot of grief for no purpose. Which, from his point of view, is exactly what I've done."
"Dear child," Khediva said warmly, "we knew you would come around."
"I haven't," Sabrina said, her voice strong and confident again. "I'm going to see Scotty tomorrow, and if I think he's not capable of deciding whether to have his memories, and if I still think he shouldn't have them, I'll fight you tooth and nail."
"We expect nothing less," Khediva assured her.