Nancia limped into Spica Base on half power, dependent on Caleb for reports on the lower deck damage where her sensors had self-destructed to preserve her from shock when the asteroid struck them.
"Freak accident," commented the Tech Grade 7 who came out to survey the damage in person.
Nancia mourned the sleek gloss of her exterior finish, now pitted and gouged around the torn metal shreds of the entrance hole. "I should have taken a different route."
"Freak ship." The tech snapped his IR-Sensor goggles down, hiding his eyes behind a band of black plastifilm. "Ain't natural. Ship talks, pilot don't."
"The correct terms, as I'm sure you are aware, are 'brainship' and 'brawn,'" Nancia said frostily. "Caleb is . . . it's none of your business. Just leave him alone, okay?" She'd seen him plunged into these unreasoning depressions before, whenever one of their missions was less than one hundred percent successful. He'd retreated into himself without speaking for a week after the disastrous undercover assignment with Dorg Jesen, while Nancia tried to tempt his appetite with fancy dishes from the galley and interesting tidbits of news picked up from the gossipbeams.
"I'll need somebody at the other end to help me link the hyperchips into the ship's system," the tech protested. "Somebody who knows the ship. My guys are good, but this is a small base. They ain't never worked on a talking ship before. And nobody's got that much experience with hyperchips. They might not interface with these sensor setups just like the old metachips did."
"Then," said Nancia, "perhaps you should explain to them that a talking ship can, in fact, talk. There's no need to trouble my brawn for information; I'll manage the installation myself." She didn't feel nearly so cheerful and carefree as she tried to sound; the thought of some dolt like this tech fooling around with her synaptic connectors made her feel sick and weak. But she did not want him bothering Caleb. One thing she'd learned in the last four years of partnership was that Caleb only stayed depressed longer if he was forced to talk to people before he was ready to.
The tech grunted acquiescence and twiddled something she couldn't see. "Sensor connection to OP-N1.15, testing."
"If you mean can I see what you're doing," Nancia responded, "the answer is no."
The tech gaped but recovered himself quickly. "Hah! OP-N1 series . . . optic nerve connections? Sorry, lady—ship—whatever you are. What I'm looking at, see, it's just schematics. I didn't think . . ." His voice trailed off for a moment. "Awesome, really, when you think about it that way. That there's a person somewhere inside this steel and titanium."
"Correction," Nancia said. She was becoming used to this tendency among softpersons; they insisted on equating her with the body curled inside the titanium column, as if that was all there was to her. "I am a person. That's my lower deck vision you're twiddling with now, and I'd very much like to have it—Thank you!" A partial visual field opened as she spoke. Now she could see the tech again, and one gloved hand reaching up into the tangle of fused metal and wires that had been her lower deck sensory system.
"OP-N1.15 restored," the tech noted. "Now if—say, this is going to be easy. Don't need this stuff" He clipped a test meter to his belt and used both hands to rejoin severed wires. "OP-N1.16 functioning now? Good. 17?" He worked through the full series rapidly, while Nancia kept him informed of the status of each repair.
"Thank you," she said again when he'd restored her full optic series for the lower deck. "It's . . . most troubling, being unable to look at a part of myself."
"Imagine it would be," the tech agreed. "Glad to help a lady, any time."
Nancia noted that in the course of one short repair session she had advanced from "unnatural talking ship," to "person" to, apparently, "lady in distress." By the time the repairs are finished, he'll be wanting to sign up for brawn training . . . and most distressed to learn he's over age.
"And this is just the beginning," the tech promised. "We'll have you fixed up good as new in a day or so. Better than new, really. You had any hyperchips installed before? Thought not. They're—I dunno—about a thousand times better than the old line metachips. You're gonna like this, ma'am." His fingers twisted, seating one of the new chips. It felt strange to see the movements without feeling the slight pressure and hearing the click as the chip slid into place.
"Can you feel anything when I do this?"
"No—yes. Oh!"
"Hurt you?"
"No. Just—surprised." Nancia felt as if her sensors had been turned up to full volume, without sacrificing the slightest accuracy. Every movement was clear; the world sparkled like crystal around her. "How many more of those do you have? Can you replace my upper deck sensor chips too?"
The tech shook his head regretfully. "Sorry, ma'am. It's a new design out of Shemali. There's not enough hyperchips out yet to go around to all the folks who need them for repairs, let alone bringing in functional equipment and retrofitting it. Shemali Plant estimates it'll be a good three-four years before they can produce enough to retrofit all the Fleet ships."
"Oh. Of course." Nancia remembered the plan Polyon had described on her maiden voyage. "I suppose," she said, feeling very crafty, "I suppose a lot of the chips are failing QA tests? It being a new design, and all," she added hastily.
The tech shook his head. "No, ma'am. Actually, these new chips don't fail in testing near as often as the old design. Pretty near the full production run is being cleared for distribution, most times. It's just that even a year's full production runs out of Shemali don't amount to that much when you consider all the places the chips have to go these days. It's not just the Fleet, y'know. Hospitals, Base brains, cyborg replacements, defense systems—seems like we just about couldn't run the galaxy without 'em!"
Nancia felt first disappointed, then relieved. She had expected to hear that the new design somehow caused a great many metachips to fail in the QA phase and that nobody knew what became of the substandard chips rejected by the SUM ration board. That would have been evidence she could mention to Caleb, something to steer his mind in the direction of Polyon's illicit activities without revealing that she already knew about the plan.
Instead, it seemed that Polyon had given up his plan altogether. He was brilliant. Perhaps the hyperchip design was his idea; and perhaps, Nancia thought optimistically, he had forgotten his original notion of stealing metachips in favor of the honest pleasure of seeing his design accepted and used galaxy-wide.
The third annual progress meeting of the Nyota Five was held on Angalia, an arrangement which pleased no one—least of all the host.
"It was your idea to rotate the annual meetings," Alpha bint Hezra-Fong pointed out, somewhat snappishly, when Blaize apologized for the primitive accommodations. "We could have been comfortably settled in a Summerlands conference room, but nooo, you and Polyon had to fuss that it wouldn't be fair if you two had to travel to Bahati every time just to suit the three of us who had the good luck to be stationed there. So we have to rotate. Two nice meetings on Bahati, now this godforsaken dump, and next time, stars help us, Shemali. You and your bright ideas! Send someone to unpack for me—you must have some help around the place, surely?"
"'Fraid not," Blaize said with a sunny smile. He was beginning to enjoy the prospect of Alpha's discomfort on Angalia. Rotating the meeting sites had really been Polyon's idea, not his, but Alpha was obviously afraid to take out her bad temper on Lieutenant de Gras-Waldheim. Blaize glanced sidelong at Polyon, very straight and correct in his Academy dress blacks, and admitted to himself that he didn't blame Alpha. Given a choice of tongue-lashing the enigmatic technical manager of Shemali MetaPlant, or the little red-haired runt from PTA, who wouldn't choose to lash out at the PTA wimp?
But this understanding didn't make him love Alpha—or the rest of the Nyota Five, including himself—any better.
"Welcome," Blaize said with a sweeping bow that included all four of his guests, "to the Angalia Tourist Center. A modest facility, as you can see—"
Darnell's snort of laughter testified to the truth of that statement.
"—but vastly improved from its humble beginnings," Blaize finished. "If the winner were to be chosen on the basis of progress rather than of absolute wealth, I'd have no doubt of succeeding next year." And that, by God, was the absolute and unvarnished truth! The rest of them might sneer at Blaize's long, low bungalow with its thatched roof and thatch-shaded balcony, the garden of native ferns and grasses and the paved path leading from there to the corycium mine. Never mind. He knew what it had taken to create these amenities from the mud-hole that Supervisor Harmon had left him with.
"All done with native labor?" Fassa interrupted his explanation. "But everybody knows the Loosies are too stupid to do anything useful."
Blaize put one finger to the side of his nose and winked, a gesture borrowed from an old tri-D show called Fagin and His Gang. "Amazing what even a veg-head can do with the proper . . . incentive," he drawled.
"Where d'you store the whips and spiked sticks?" That was pudgy Darnell, bright-eyed as if he actually expected Blaize to produce a panoply of torture instruments and demonstrate their use.
"You've no subtlety, Overton-Glaxely," Blaize reproved the man. "Think. The—er—Loosies were starving when I came here, kept alive only by PTA ration bricks. The task of distributing the ration bricks, naturally, belonged to the PTA representative on Angalia. Me."
"So?" Darnell really was amazingly slow. Not for the first time, Blaize wondered how he'd made such a success out of OG Shipping and the smaller corporations that OG Enterprises had swallowed up over the years.
"So," Blaize drawled, "I saw no reason to give away PTA ration supplements when they could perfectly well be used to train the natives. We have a simple rule of life now on Angalia, my friends—no work, no eat." He pointed towards the entrance to the corycium mine. "And it's not just applied to building the master's bungalow. I hold the title to that mine. United Spacetec abandoned it because they couldn't keep human miners on Angalia. I use the native resources to mine the native resources, so to speak—you'll see the day shift coming out in a few minutes."
"And you pay them with ration bricks, which come free via PTA?" Alpha gave Blaize an approving smile that chilled him to the bone. "I must admit, Blaize, you're not as stupid as you look. Anything you make from the corycium mine is profit, free and clear."
Blaize opened his mouth wide in simulated shock. "Dr. Hezra-Fong! Please! I am deeply shocked and disillusioned that you should think such a thing of me. Any profits accruing from the corycium mine naturally belong to the natives of Angalia." He waited a beat before continuing. "Of course, since the natives of Angalia do not have Intelligent Sentient Status, they can't have bank accounts—so the credits do, perforce, go into a Net account in my name. But held in trust for the Loosies—you understand?"
The others chuckled knowingly and all agreed that they did indeed understand, and that Blaize was a clever lad to have found such a good way of covering his tail in the event of a PTA inspection. All but Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, who was tapping one finger against the seam of his black trousers and staring at the thunderclouds on the horizon.
"You've done pretty well, considering," Darnell admitted, "but with creatures as dumb as these, surely you have—er—discipline problems?" He was getting that whips-and-chains expression again.
"If he does, maybe regulated doses of Seductron would be the answer," cooed Alpha. "I've just about got the bugs worked out of the dosage schedule now, and it might be interesting to test it on non-humans."
Blaize forced himself to smile. Time for his demonstration. He'd planned it beforehand, in case there was need to make an additional impression on the others, but had hoped it wouldn't be necessary. Messy, it would be. And wasteful. But apparently they still weren't convinced of his firm control over the Loosies.
"Thanks, Alpha, but Seductron wouldn't quite do the trick; the Loosies are passive and malleable enough already. What they need is occasional stimulation, and that," he said with a low laugh, "that I can arrange for myself." He raised one hand in the air and brought it down with a swift chopping motion.
Two of the tall rock pillars beside the garden wall moved forward in the shambling, awkward gait characteristic of the Loosies. With movement, their features and humanoid shapes could be dearly seen, although until a moment earlier they had blended in with the real stones making up the rest of the wall. Between them they hauled a third "rock," a native whose double-jointed legs sagged under him and whose flapping liplike folds of skin opened and closed with a mimed display of silent terror.
"They may not talk," said Blaize, "but they've learned to understand simple sign commands quite well. Most of them have, anyway. This fellow in the middle dropped a serving dish when he was waiting on me at dinner yesterday. I've been saving him to make an example of in front of the miners, but since there's an audience here already"—he allowed his eyes to roam lazily over his four co-conspirators—"why wait any longer for the pleasure?"
He pointed over the side of the mesa with a deliberate downward motion, three times repeated. The two Loosie guards bobbed their square heads and half carried, half dragged their prisoner over the edge.
"You make 'em throw themselves over the cliff?"
"Not at all," Blaize cackled. "Too fast, that'd be. Come and watch!"
By the time everybody had crowded around the low wall at the mesa's edge, the three Loosies were already down on the mud flats, approaching one of the areas where bubbles rose and burst in the glop with a stench of sulfur. The two guards hauled the prisoner to the edge of this bubbling area and thrust him into the soft mud. As he writhed and struggled to escape, they picked up the long sticks that had marked the site of the bubbles and used them to thrust him back into the steaming mud.
"Natural hot springs under there," Blaize explained. "Very hot. Takes a couple of hours to cook 'em through. Fortunately, the Loosies are real patient. Those two I use as guards will keep pushing him down until he quits trying to get out, even if it takes most of the evening."
He turned away from the spectacle of torture and bowed once again to his guests. "Well, ladies and gentlemen," he inquired with a benign smile, "shall we begin the business meeting?"
Even Polyon, Blaize noted, was pale against the dead black of his uniform; while the other three were shocked into silence. So much the better. It would be a while, he thought, before any of them underestimated little Blaize again.
After the shocking scene Blaize had just provided, the third annual progress meeting began more quietly than the previous meetings had gone. The underlying tensions in the group were still present, however, and all the sharper for another year's fermenting.
As host, Blaize claimed the honor of giving the initial report. While Polyon gazed over his head in unfeigned boredom and the two girls sat pale and silent, he began reciting facts and figures to back up his earlier assertions. In earlier years he'd had little to report. This year he was at last coming into his own. He fancied a glimmer of respect in Polyon's eyes as Blaize explained how he was using the first profits from the corycium mine to finance the purchase of heavy mining equipment that would open up even more of the planet for exploitation. Darnell twitched and muttered to himself during this part of the report, but he didn't explode until Polyon pointedly inquired as to how Blaize had financed the initial startup costs of the mine.
"Reselling surplus PTA shipments," Blaize replied promptly.
"Dear me," commented Polyon, "I thought the—ah—'Loosies' were starving. Didn't this move reduce your potential worker population somewhat?"
"Waste not, want not," Blaize waved his hand in vague circles. "There's a lot of surplus in any bureaucracy. I just—as you might say—cut the fat out."
It was perhaps unfortunate that his eyes met Darnell's at this moment, and that the airy circles his hand was sketching could have been taken for an indication of Darnell's growing paunch.
"The hell you did!" Darnell exploded, surging to his feet on a wave of red-faced fury. "Cut it right out of my hide, you mean!" He turned to the others as if appealing for their sympathy. "Little bastard blackmailed me to ship extra food here—free—while he was selling the supplies that ought to've gone to the natives!"
This accusation did not have quite the effect he might have been hoping for.
"Really, Darnell?" asked Polyon with bright-eyed interest. "And what were you doing that he could blackmail you for, I wonder?"
Darnell puffed and stammered and Alpha interrupted him. "Who cares? I'm delighted somebody finally nailed you. Ever since you took over Pair-a-Dice I've wanted to pay you back!"
"What do you care whether I buy out a crummy casino?"
"That 'crummy casino,' " Alpha informed him, "just happened to be my primary outlet for Seductron at street prices. The gambling was only a front—once you pay the Bahati cops off for a gambling operation, they're too dumb to check and see if that's really where all the money is coming from. Pair-a-Dice—Paradise—get it, stupid? That's the street name for Seductron."
"I thought you didn't have the dosage schedules worked out yet!" Fassa sounded appalled.
Alpha shrugged thin, elegant shoulders. Her face was sharp as a knife under the elaborate Nueva Estrella style of tight braids piled high in a prismawood spiral frame. "So a few Blissto addicts go out happy. Who cares? I've got to start making something off Seductron before next year. Even if I work around all the side effects, it's too late to patent it now. So it's street deals or nothing." This reminded her of her grievance. "And since you took over my best outlet, Pudge-face, it's been nothing. You owe me!"
"So do you," Fassa told Blaize. "Del Parma was low bidder on the corycium processing plant. By government regulations you ought to've given us the job. How much did the winning contractor slip you under the table?"
"That," Blaize replied stiffly, "is between the two of us, and nothing to do with you, Fassa! Besides, knowing what I do about del Parma's construction methods, what made you think I'd be fool enough to let you build a latrine trench on Angalia?"
"Huh! Angalia already is a latrine trench! Ha-ha-ha!"
Nobody except Fassa paid the least attention to Darnell's lame jest. She whirled and stabbed a long iridescent corycium-sheathed fingernail at his chest. "And you! Remember the Procyon run? That's the last time OG Shipping gets any del Parma business!"
Darnell smoothed down his green synthofur jacket and smirked. "Can't see what you're complaining about," he replied. "Switching good construction materials for substandard ones is standard practice for del Parma."
"Only," Fassa said, "when I keep the profit. I'm not running a charitable association for the benefit of OG Shipping."
"Can't see why not," Darnell leered. "The word is you've been charitable to enough of Bahati's male population already."
Fassa sat down abruptly, holding her head in her hands. "Don't remind me," she wailed, "as if you and everybody else cheating me weren't enough, can't I at least forget about that inspector from CreditLin for a little while? I gave him what he wanted, the space station's paid for, I can't understand why he won't go away."
"I can," suggested Blaize helpfully. "Fraudulent QA records, shoddy materials, slipshod building practices, non-union workers . . ."
"Cheat!"
"Bloodsucker!"
"Shark!"
The meeting dissolved into the usual chaos while Polyon sat back, arms crossed, and murmured, "Naughty children."