Part 21 (1/2)
”Yes, Mr. w.a.n.g. I did.”
”Thank you, sar. Now, if you'll excuse me, sar? I need to see a woman about a pooka.”
”Dismissed, Mr. w.a.n.g,” he said formally. Then he smiled and held out his hand. ”Congratulations, Ishmael, and happy birthday.”
”Thanks,” I said, and shook his hand.
Rigging the extra speakers did not take long with Francis and I working together. I showed Brill where and how to trigger the audio. I had created three programs for her to use. The first was a few seconds of Sarah's quiet sobbing in various permutations. The crying faded in and out over the course of a full stan and I rigged they playback so that it would run on a random cycle. The second was a collection of please-stop-you-are-hurting-mes again, in various permutations from very faint to a bit louder, but none were very loud. The last was a mix of the sobs with the please-stops interspersed. The volume range on this third one was medium to loud. I had her play a few snippets of each to test them out and both Diane and Francis looked a little shaken by the experience.
”My G.o.ds, Ishmael,” Diane said. ”That's positively frightful. Are you trying to scare him to death?”
I shook my head. ”Just trying to put the fear of Lois in him. I was going to add some threats, but I thought the pitiful sobbing would work just as well, especially as it gets louder.”
By then it was time for me to hit the track and get my sauna in before the evening watch. Mr. Colby would be meeting the pooka at the best possible time to make a lasting impression: mid-watch in the Deep Dark.
The plan had been to let the sobbing run for about a week, just to soften him up. Then start the second tier with the please-stops. We hadn't counted on the effectiveness of Sarah's voice. After a couple of days with the sobbing fading in and out during his watch standing hours, CC started to look a little less sure of himself when he showed up on the mess deck. I don't know exactly when it started, but after about four days, I noticed Sarah would lean over to CC and say something to him whenever he was in the mess line. Pip, who stood beside her, grinned. Whatever it was, it spooked CC even more. I made a mental note to ask Pip what Sarah had said.
While the environmental haunting went on, I went back to trying to find the problem that had crashed the s.h.i.+pNet and almost killed us.
What I needed was more information because what I had from the logs wasn't much help. A week and a half out of Niol, I went to find Rebecca Saltzman in engineering berthing.
Mitch grinned and Rebecca smiled when I stuck my head into my old quad. ”You lost?” Mitch asked.
”Well yeah, in a way,” I told them. ”I'm working on the system failure. Can you two look at something and tell me what I'm missing?”
They both shrugged. ”I'll look at anything you wanna show me, big fella,” Rebecca said in that heavy-G growl of hers. She had a big grin on her face because she knew what that voice did to me.
”Behave!” I told her with a laugh. ”I'm trying to work here.”
”Sorry,” she said, but she didn't look that way.
Mitch just sighed and shook his head.
I played them the delayed graphic on my tablet a couple of times.
Rebecca watched intently and said, ”I've seen this. Mr. Kelley watches it over and over.”
”Him and every other officer on the s.h.i.+p. We're missing something obvious.”
”Why obvious?” she asked.
”Because as devious as the officers of the Lois are, they'd have spotted something tricky by now.”
”What is it supposed to be showing?” Mitch asked.
”Those are all the component failures from five ticks before we went through the EMP,” I said. ”I plotted them by location and time. I expanded the time scale so every tenth of a second real time is one second on the display.”
”That's why it seems so slow,” he said, nodding to himself.
Rebecca and I looked at each other. Rebecca shrugged.
”Yes, Mitch, that's right,” I said. ”That's why it seems so slow.”
”Play it again?” he asked.
I shrugged and keyed it.
”So this is what broke?” he asked after it had run its cycle again.
”Yup. Do you see anything?”
He shook his head. ”Nope.” He laid back down on his bunk.
Rebecca shook her head helplessly. ”I don't know what to tell you, Ish. I didn't spot anything either.”
”Thanks, guys. I appreciate your time.”
Mitch grinned at me. ”No problem, Ish. You sure you won't move back?” He nodded at Rebecca. ”She's been moping around since you left and asking me if I have any blue jeans. What's that about?”
Rebecca threw her pillow at him, blus.h.i.+ng and giggling. For his part, Mitch had a mischievous look and tucked her pillow behind his head.
We all had a good chuckle, even Rebecca. ”Any time you want to move back, Ish. You can sleep on top of me!” she said and stuck her tongue out at Mitch.
”Rebecca!” Mitch snorted.
”What?” She pointed to the unclaimed upper bunk above her. ” Up there! You've got a dirty mind, Mitch Fitzroy.”
Jennifer Agotto, one of the machinists from the power section, spoke from the other side of the part.i.tion, ”Well, he didn't have one when he moved in here, ya hussy. You're the one that got it all dirty!”
We all had another laugh. I think Rebecca laughed hardest of all.
I was about to leave when Mitch said, ”That's only the stuff that failed, right?”
”Yeah,” I said, ”why?”
”Well what about the stuff that didn't fail? If you add that in somehow, maybe it'll tell you something.”
Rebecca looked at him like he had sprouted a second head. ”How can you tag something that didn't happen?” she asked him.
He shrugged. ”I don't know, but when we started getting the s.h.i.+pNet back online, lots of systems were just waiting to be powered up. They weren't damaged at all.”
I thought about that for a full tick. ”Thanks, Mitch. You're on to something there.”