And Acacia was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“SORRY,” I APOLOGIZED AS Joaquim wiped the grits off his shirt. I’d let go of my tray during the warp, which was another newbie mistake. It had slid right across the table, only to be stopped by Joaquim. Now he looked like someone had tried to make an abstract painting out of breakfast on him.
“No problem,” he said easily. “I’m just glad I didn’t throw up. That was nuts.”
“Always is,” I said, looking around. “Did you see where Acacia went?” It was kind of absurd, but I was fervently hoping she’d somehow just slipped off to the bathroom when the lights were out, or something.
&nbs
p; Jerzy and Joaquim shook their heads, and Jerzy gave me a surprisingly serious look, for him. “No, but you should go report it. She couldn’t have gotten far in the time it took the lights to come on.”
He was right and I knew it. Still, worried as I was about Acacia, I didn’t particularly want to go tell the Old Man I’d lost the unknown I was supposed to be escorting. Sure, it probably wasn’t that big a deal, but…“You need any help?” I asked Joaquim, who was still cleaning breakfast off his shirt. He glanced at Jerzy, who gave me a look that said he knew I was trying to stall and he wasn’t going to let me. I stuck my tongue out at him. “You’re not an officer yet,” I teased.
It didn’t take long to get to the Old Man’s office; I deemed it imperative enough that I hopped on a few conveyers to get me there. Sooner than I’d have liked, I was standing in front of his desk, watching him shuffle through papers like he had far more important things to concern himself with.
“Sir?” I wasn’t sure he’d heard me the first time. He glanced up at me, his bionic eye spearing me like a proverbial deer in the headlights. I gathered my nerve, then spoke again. “Acacia Jones disappeared after the punch. She seemed to be in some distress, sir.”
“I heard you, and I nodded. The nod meant ‘I heard you.’ Is there anything else?”
I took a breath. “I…shouldn’t we be…concerned? Sir?”
He set down the stack of papers on his desk with enough force that my hair shifted slightly from the wind. “No, Harker, we should not. Do you recall when your mudluff companion went AWOL after appearing in the Hazard Zone?” I nodded. “Some things are not compatible with other things. That’s all there is to it.” He waited a moment to see if I was stupid enough to say something else. I almost was, but he continued before my brain got quite that far. “I suggest you go take some leisure time. There will be a training exercise later.”
I was still almost stupid enough to press the point, but the Old Man’s intercom blipped and his assistant’s voice filled the room. “Jayarre to see you, Captain.”
“Send him in.” The Old Man didn’t take his eyes off me. I swallowed what I’d wanted to say, stepping out of his office. I passed Jayarre—who gave me a tip of his top hat on his way in—and Josetta, who was still listening to the Old Man through the com. “—Joryn, Jirathe, Jyelda, Jeric, and J’emi,” he was saying, while Josetta took notes. All officers. “And get me Jaroux,” I heard as I stepped into the hallway, which gave me pause. He was gathering up a bunch of officers—but why the librarian?
There was one whole sector of the ship devoted to nondigital information—books in all shapes and sizes, dictionaries, encyclopedias, magazines, newspapers, printed and bound pages from Wikipedia-esque websites on various worlds—the list went on. The library sector was where we got our study books for various classes, though Jaroux was the strictest librarian I’d ever met. He had a quirky sense of humor and would happily chat for hours on any subject, but no excuse on any ten worlds would help you if you returned a book late—or worse, damaged.
A plan was forming in my head. I had the next few hours off, and had been encouraged to take some leisure time. The library sector was a great place to do just that—and I was perfectly aware that in addition to an extensive cross-referencing system, the library had a full set of census reports from nearly every world we had access to for the past hundred years, some of them organized by person.
It was a start.
Soon after Jaroux had whistled his cheerful way down the hall toward the Old Man’s office, I slipped around and through the doors. I didn’t have to sneak, really; we had access to the library at all times, even if Jaroux was out. “Knowledge is free,” he’d said more than once, “and should always be available even if I’m not.” He was also quick to remind us that he knew every single item in there personally, and would know if something went missing. Most of us suspected it was just because each book had a tracer in it.
I didn’t plan on checking out a book, but I didn’t have to worry about explaining why I was suddenly interested in a century’s worth of census reports.
Truth to tell, I wasn’t all that sure why. I just knew I wasn’t being told the whole story, or anything close to it, about the mysterious Ms. Jones. After all, trying to get a straight answer from her was like pulling shark’s teeth. Which I didn’t mind, really; in fact, I kind of respected it. Despite her “grandma’s steamer trunk” fashion sense, it seemed obvious to me that she was in some form of military or paramilitary organization. The swift and smooth way that she’d extracted us from our initial fracas on F?986 would be proof enough of that; plus there was the grudging but unmistakable respect that the Old Man accorded her. Add to that the mysterious lack of concern he’d shown when I told him she’d vanished during the punch, and there was more than met the sensory organs here.
And even aside from all that, I’d seen her expression pretty clearly right before she’d vanished. She’d been more than disoriented, she’d been afraid.
“Search people, name: Acacia Jones,” I told the catalog, which immediately brightened and made a faint whirring noise.
“Search complete. Four trillion, seven billion, thirty-six million, nine thousand, seven hundred, and fifty-eight matches.”
I stared at it, dumbfounded. Was that normal? I’d never done a name search before.
“Search people, name: Joseph Harker,” I said, just to be sure.
“Search complete. Three thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-three matches.”
That was a slightly more manageable number, considering that “Joseph Harker” was a fairly common name, I knew there were several different versions of me with the same name spread throughout the Altiverse, and I was searching census records for the last hundred years.
I stared at the machine for a moment longer. “Search people, name: Acacia Jones. Parameters: age fourteen to sixteen, hair color black, eye color violet.”
The whirring noise again, then: “Search complete. Four trillion, seven billion, thirty-six million, six thousand, seven hundred, and three matches.”