Part 6 (1/2)
Fa.s.sa started to shake her head and then obviously thought better of it. She waved Alpha's hand away with a languid gesture. ”Never touch drugs.”
”More fool you,” said Alpha. ”I know more about side effects than any of you, and I promise you a few blues won't do any harm. Just wish I'd thought of it before we entered Singularity. Blaize?”
”Excellent idea,” Blaize said hollowly, accepting the offered pills. Unlike Darnell, he made his way to the far side of the cabin and found a half-empty bottle of Stemerald to help him choke down the pills. ”Almost as good an idea as walking. Don't think I ever really ap- preciated Earth before.” His skin was pale green under the spattering of freckles.
Polyon chuckled. ”May have been a blessing in dis- guise that you weren't allowed to go in for brawn training, little one. Apparently you haven't die stomach for it. Now when you imagine combining frequent Decom hops with Mil Spec meals of boiled synthoprot and anonymous vitacaps that all smell like cabbage-”
Fa.s.sa clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for the door. Darnell swallowed convulsively two or three times. ”Would you mind very much not mentioning food just now?” His last words were slurred and relaxed; the Blissto was already taking effect.
”At least not till I've had my own blues,” Alpha added, pouring a handful of the s.h.i.+ny blue pills down her throat.
74.
fcf Fa.s.sa didn't quite make it to the privacy of her cabin.
Silendy, Nancia extruded probes that captured and vaporized the resulting mess. She activated the release latch on Fa.s.sa's cabin door so that it irised open in front of the girl.
”T-thank you,” Fa.s.sa hiccuped into the wet doth Nantia's second probe held out. ”I mean - I know you're just a drones.h.i.+p, so this is silly, but-oh, thank you anyway.” She collapsed on her bunk, a huddle of misery. Nancia closed down the cabin sensors, trans- mitted a shut command to the door iris, and left Fa.s.sa to recover on her own. At least, she thought, the girl had the strength of character to abstain from mind- rotting drugs. And the manners to thank whoever helped her, even a supposedly inanimate drones.h.i.+p.
Her stated intention of using s.e.x to get concessions for her company was appalling, as were her manners in general; but maybe she was a shade less repellent than the rest of Nantia's young pa.s.sengers.
They had completely ignored Fa.s.sa's distress, Nan- cia noted. Polyon was playing a solitaire round of s.p.a.cED OUT and the other three were giggling over a new bottle of Stemerald. Nancia wondered uneasily what the mix of stimulants and depressants was likely to do to a softperson's nervous system - and what else Alpha might have smuggled aboard. Maybe it had been a mistake to turn off the cabin sensors; these people didn't deserve privacy.
But then, what business was it of hers if they wanted to drug themselves into a stupor? They'd be much nicer that way, after all. Nancia herself could conceive of nothing more horrible than voluntarily scrambling one's synapses, but softpersons did, by all reports, have very strange tastes.
Besides, they were much easier to put up with now that they were too doped to do anything but giggle softly and spill their Stemerald. Nanria's housekeep-75.
ing probes mopped up the green puddles on the cabin floor; her pa.s.sengers ignored the probes and their cleanup activity, and she, as far as possible, ignored the pa.s.sengers.
Because now, at last, there was somebody else to talk to- Within seconds of her emergence from Singularity, Nancia had initiated a tightbeam contact with Vega Base. By the time Fa.s.sa was cleaned up in her cabin and the odier pa.s.sengers busy with their own peculiar amus.e.m.e.nts, she had gone through the recognition sequences and the official messages and was happily chatting with Simeon, the managing brain of Vega Base.
”So how did you like your first voyage?” Simeon inquired.
”Singularity was...” Nancia couldn't find words for it; instead she transmitted a short visual burst of colors melting and expanding like soap bubbles, iridescent trails of light joyously spiraling around one another. ”I can't wait to jump again.”
Simeon chuckled. ”You're one of the lucky ones, then. From all I hear, it doesn't take everyone that way.”
”My pa.s.sengers didn't seem to enjoy it much,” Nan- cia conceded, ”but who cares?”
”Even brains.h.i.+ps don't always get such a kick out of Singularity,11 Simeon told her.
Nancia found that hard to believe, but she remem- bered that Simeon was a stationary brain. Embedded in die heart of Vega Base, his only experience of travel would have been the jump that brought him here from Laboratory Schools - as a pa.s.senger, like any softperson. Perhaps she shouldn't go on about the joys of Singularity to someone who could never experience the thrill of managing his own jumps.
Besides, Simeon wanted to pursue something else.
76.
fcf ”You don't seem to care much for your pa.s.sengers'
comfort”
Again words foiled Nancia. She damped the colors of her visual burst to a muddy swirl of greenish browns and grays. ”They're not... very nice people,” she finally answered. ”Some of the things I overheard them discussing on the trip... Simeon, could I ask you a hypothetical question? Suppose a brains.h.i.+p hap- pened to learn that some people had unethical plans.
Should she report them?”
”You mean, like a plot to murder somebody? Or high treason-an attempt to overthrow Central?”
”Oh, goodness, no, nothing like thatl” How could Simeon sound so calm while discussing such dreadful things? ”At least, I don't think - I mean, suppose they weren't planning to hurt anybody, but what they meant to do was morally wrong? Even illegal?” Alpha's plans to profit from a drug that should have been credited to Central Meds, Polyon's idea of creating a black market in metachips - no, Nancia a.s.sured her- self, her pa.s.sengers were nasty and corrupt as all get-out, but at least they weren't violent ”Hmm. And how might this brains.h.i.+p have found out about her pa.s.sengers' plans?”
”I - they thought she was a drones.h.i.+p,” Nancia said, ”and they discussed everything quite freely. She has datacordings of it all, too.”
”I see.” Simeon sounded quite disapproving, and for a moment Nancia thought he shared her shock at her pa.s.sengers' plans. ”And has it occurred to you, young XN-935, that masquerading as a drones.h.i.+p in order to eavesdrop on High Families' conversations is a form of entrapment? In fact, given that the pa.s.sengers in- volved an High Families and very close to CenCom, the act of taking surrept.i.tious datacordings could even be interpreted as treason. What if they'd been discuss- ing vital military secrets?''77.
”But they weren't - I didn't - Listen, VS-895, they're the criminals, not me!” Nancia shouted.
”Ouch.”
Simeon's reply was almost an electronic whisper.
”Turn down your waveforms, would you? That nearly jolted me out of my sh.e.l.l.”
”Sorry.” Nancia controlled her impulses and chan- neled a clean, tight beam at Simeon. ”But I don't see what you're accusing me of.”
”Me? Nothing, XN, I a.s.sure you. I'm just trying to warn you that the courts may see things rather dif- ferently. Now, I don't know what your young pa.s.sengers have been up to, and 1 don't particularly care to know. You haven't seen much of the world yet, or you'd realize that most softpersons have some way or other to get a little extra out of every situation in which they find themselves,”
Nancia mulled that over. ”You mean - are they all corrupt, then?”
Simeon chuckled. ”Not all, Nancia, just enough to make it interesting. You have to understand the poor things. Short lifespan, limited to five senses, single- channel comm system. I expect they feel cheated when they compare themselves with us. And some of them translate that feeling into trying to get extra goodies for themselves.”
Nancia had to agree that what Simeon said made a lot of sense. She tried to emulate his att.i.tude of lofty detachment while she went about the business of land- ing her pa.s.sengers at their a.s.signed stations in the Nyota ya Jaha system. Since four of them still thought her a drones.h.i.+p and the fifth knew she wasn't speak- ing to him, it was easy enough to remain aloof.
Nancia made each planetary landfall an exercise in split-second timing and perfect orbit-matching. It was good practice, it kept her concentrating on her own business and not on that of her pa.s.sengers, and if the 78.
& Margaret Baft rapid maneuvers involved gave them a b.u.mpy ride - well, so much the worse. She took pride in making the actual moments of touchdown as gentle as the landing of a feather. At least, Bahati and Shemali went that way.
When she reached Angalia, she couldn't quite restrain her impulse to give filaize a good shaking on the way down. He was pale and sweating by the time they came to a b.u.mpy halt on the mesa that served as Angalia's s.p.a.cefield.
”That,” he said as he collected his baggage, ”was not necessary.”
Nancia preserved an icy silence - literally. Each moment that Blaize delayed, she lowered her internal temperature by several degrees.
”You could at least send a housekeeping probe to help me with all this stuff,” he complained, gripping a box of novelhedra with fingers that were rapidly turn- ing blue with cold.
”^fou're not my mother, you know,” he said while lean- ing on the b.u.t.ton to the lift. ”n.o.body asked you to pa.s.s judgment on my moral standards. Just like n.o.body asked me if I wanted to come out to this G.o.dforsaken place.”
”I guess it would be too much to expect anybody to have a little sympathy,” he said as the lift sped downward.
Nancia tilted the hatchway floor so that Blaize's carefully stacked boxes of supplies tumbled out as soon as he stepped onto the surface of Angalia.
”I know what you're thinking,” he shouted from the red dust of the mesa top, ”but you're wrong about me!