Part 6 (2/2)
You're all wrong! I'll show you!”
Nancia was pleased that her a.s.signment made no mention of collecting the previous PTA administrator, the one whom Blaize had been sent to relieve. Ap- parently, not being a member of the High Families, he was expected to wait for the regularly scheduled PTA transport rather than taking advantage of a brains.h.i.+p for the Courier Service. Hard on him, Nancia79.
thought, but quite appropriate. She would proceed directly to Vega 3.3, collect this stranded brawn, and return to Central for a real a.s.signment-with a brawn of her own choosing. Thank goodness she was through being used as a subst.i.tute drones.h.i.+p for the convenience of the rich and powerful!
She discovered her error when she was halfway from Nyota ya Jaha to Vega 3.
”What do you mean, another little errand?” she blasted poor Simeon.
”Turn it down,” came Simeon's low-intensity reminder. ”It wasn't my idea and you don't have to shout like that Anyway, what difference does it make?
you were going to Vega 3 anyway.”
”I was going to 3.3, not 4.2,” Nancia pointed out, and this reminded her of another grievance. ”Why can't these people give their suns and planets real names, anyway? This Vega numbering system makes me feel like a machine.”
”They're great believers in efficiency,” Simeon said.
”And logic. You'll see what I mean when you pair up with Caleb.”
”Hmph. You mean, when I transport the man-for that's all I've agreed to. Efficiency!” Nancia grumbled.
”That's a new word for misuse of the Courier Service.
Why, it's a whole different solar system and an extra stop to pick up this governor Thrixtopple and his family, not to mention having to feed them all the way back to Central. Time and fuel and s.h.i.+p's stores wasted. My fuel belongs to the Courier Service,” she said, ”and so does my time.”
”What about your soul?” inquired Simeon, return- ing to a normal-intensity beam. ”Oh, never mind. I keep forgetting how new you are, XN. Wait till you've been around the subs.p.a.ces a few hundred years.
You'll start understanding how the rules have to be bent to accommodate people.”
80.
6f ”You mean, to accommodate softpersons,” Nancia corrected proudly. ”I've never asked for an exception or a favor in my life, and I'm not about to start now.”
Simeon's responding burst of discordant waves and clas.h.i.+ng colors was the electronic equivalent of an ex- tremely rude word. ”I can see why Psych thought you and Caleb would be a good match,” he said. Infuriat- ingly, he shut down transmissions on that comment, leaving Nancia to wonder all the way to Vega 3.3. Why did Psych see fit to match her with a brawn whose major accomplishment so far had been the loss of his first brains.h.i.+p? Was there something wrong in her profile, some instability that made it appropriate to a.s.sign her an incompetent brawn? This Caleb soft- person was probably going to be stuck doing interplanetary hops and minor errands-like picking up Governor Thrixtopple-for the rest of his Service.
And Central Psych wanted to stick her with him and his flawed record! It wasn't/air. Nancia brooded about it all the way to Vega 3.3.
Her first sight of Caleb did nothing to restore her confidence in this a.s.signment. Courier Service records said that he was only twenty-eight - young for a softperson - but he walked slowly and carefully, as if he were already old and tired. His Service uniform looked as if it had been designed for a larger man; the tunic hung loosely from broad but bony shoulders, the trousers flapped about his s.h.i.+ns. Short, scraumy and sour-faced, Nancia mentally catalogued as he made his halting way up the stairs. And why couldn't he use the toft, if he's too out of shape to walk up one/light of stairs?
His greeting to her was correct but lifeless. Nancia responded in the same tone. Listlessly, they went through the Service formulas until Nancia displayed the orders beamed from Vega Base.
Caleb exploded. ”Detouring to pick up that lard- bottomed junketer and his family? That's not a Courier81.
Service job. Why can't Thrixtopple wait for the next scheduled pa.s.senger transport Uke anyone else?”
Nancia sent a ripple of muddy brown rings across the screen where their orders were displayed.
”n.o.body told me anything,” she responded verbally for Caleb's benefit. ”Stop here, go there, take these kids to the Nyota system, collect a stranded brawn on Vega 3.3, pick up the governor of 4.2 and take him back to Central. / don't know why he rates a special deal; he's not even High Families.”
”No, but he's been working this subs.p.a.ce for a long time,” Caleb told her. ”Probably has more pull than half a dozen empty-headed aristos with their double- barreled names.”
”We are not all,” Nancia said, ”empty-headed. Per- haps you failed to read your orders in detail?” She flashed her full name on the screen to get his attention.
”Oh, well, you can't help your birth,” Caleb said ab- sent-mindedly, ”and I suppose a good Lab Schools training will make up for a lot. Are you ready for lift- off? We can't waste time gossiping if we have to fit this extra stop into the itinerary.”
I give him ten minutes after we reach Central to get himself and his bags off me and make room for a brawn with some manners, Nancia vowed to herself as she drove her en- gines through a harder and faster takeoff than she would normally have imposed on a softperson pas- senger. No, that's too generous. Five minutes.
She felt slighdy regretful when she peeked through Caleb's cabin sensors and saw him struggling to sit up after the takeoff, white and shaken. But she wasn't sorry enough to change her basic position on brawn a.s.signments.
”There's one thing we should have settled before liftoff,” she announced without preamble.
”Yes?” Caleb didn't bother turning his head to look at the cabin speaker. Of course, he was an experienced 82.- if incompetent - brawn; he would know that she would be able to pick up his words from any direction.
Still, Nancia felt vaguely ruffled - as if she were being ignored even as he replied to her.
”Transporting you back to Central Worlds is my offi- cial a.s.signment, and I cannot refuse it. But I do not wish you to construe this as formal acceptance of you as my brawn. I have no intention of waiving my rights to free choice of my own brawn just because this match is convenient for Central.”
Now what ailed the man? He had just begun to regain some color after the high-G lift-off; now his face was drained again, still as a mask - or a corpse. Nan- cia began to wonder if this brawn would live to see Central. If he wasn't fit enough to make the journey, some- body should have warned me.
”Of course,” said Caleb in a voice so level and drained of meaning that it could have issued from any housekeeping drone, ”no one would expect you to waive that right. Particularly for me.” He turned his head and for the first time looked direcdy at the sensor.
”Shut down sensors to this cabin, please, XN. I wish to rest In privacy,” he emphasized. He lay down again with one arm flung over his face. After a moment he rolled over and lay facedown on the bunk, as if he didn't trust Nancia not to peek at him.
”Simeon? Sh.e.l.lcrack, Simeon, I know you're pick- ing up my beams. TALK TO ME!”
”You're an excessively demanding young thing, XN-935, and you're shouting again.”
”Sorry.” Nancia was so glad to have got some response from the Vega Base brain that she immedi- ately lowered the intensity of her beam to match Simeon's almost inaudible burst. ”Simeon, I need to know about this brawn they've saddled me with.”
”So scan the newsbeam files.”83.
”I did. There's nothing in them. Not what I need to know, anyway.” The files had been enlightening in their own way, with their lurid stories of a s.h.i.+p and a man almost destroyed by a sudden radiation burst, the brawn's limping, months-long journey homeward in his crippled, brainless s.h.i.+p and the hero's welcome he had received when he arrived at Vega 3.3 with the sur- vey data he'd been sent to gather. The tale of what Caleb had gone through, the months of solitude anddeprivation and the lingering effects of radiation poisoning, had done much to reshape Nancia's feel- ings towards the pallid brawn who'd boarded her on Vega 3.3. She felt a grudging respect for the man she saw spending hours in her exercise facility, working out with gyroweights and spring resistors to restore wasted niusdes.
The man who had accepted her initial hostile at- t.i.tude as no more than his due, who'd shut her out of his mind at once and had not spoken a word to her since. They had traveled in silence through the three days it took to move between the suns of Vega 3 and Vega 4, while Nancia waited impatiently for Simeon to resume communications so that she could ask what she wanted to know. Finally she'd begun battering at the Vega Base brain's frequencies with ever-increasing bursts of communication that must have given him the equivalent of a softperson's ”headache.”
Nancia condensed the newsbytes she'd read and transmitted them in three short bursts to Simeon, just to convince him she'd done her homework.
”So what else do you want to know?”
”How. Did. He. Lose. His. s.h.i.+p?” Nancia punctuated each word with a burst of irritated static ”You read the newsbytes.”
”WE'RE s.h.i.+ELDED AGAINST - sorry.” She started over at normal intensity. ”We're s.h.i.+elded against radiation. He shouldn't have been harmed, 84.
&f unless he was being careless - leaving the s.h.i.+p without checking radiation levels? And there's no way his s.h.i.+p could have been affected. What could have got through her column?”
”His column, in this case,” Simeon corrected, as if that mattered.
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