Empire & Ecolitan (48 page)

J
ORJE WATCHED SILENTLY
from the landing as the tall Ecolitan walked down the steps and into the afternoon mist that heralded the reappearance of winter.

Jimjoy had not looked back.

Overhead, the clouds from the southwest continued to thicken. A touch of frosty rain brushed his face, and his breath steamed in the quick-chilling air.

His steps lengthened as he headed toward Thelina's quarters. After the less-than-satisfactory meeting with Harlinn, and his effort to break the news of Geoff's death to Carill, he needed…something.

Thelina was not likely to be too sympathetic, nor was Meryl.

A figure appeared from the mist, ghostlike, heading toward him.

“Professor Whaler,” called Althelm. Bundled in a heavy green parka and a green stocking cap, with only his unbearded face uncovered, he stopped.

“Yes,” answered Jimjoy neutrally.

“You were rather convincing, if a trifle brutal.” A trace of Althelm's thin white hair protruded from beneath the cap.

“Wasn't trying to be brutal, just to lay out the facts. I've—” He caught himself and stopped, trying to rephrase the words that would have indicated too much about his past. “I've seen enough of Imperial responses to know that the Empire isn't interested in sweet reason or freedom—only in tax levies and self-preservation.”

Althelm shrugged, a gesture that incorporated a shiver. “You are doubtless correct, but that can be a hard truth to face. I would like to continue, but unless you are from Sierra or White Mountain, you should already be a block of ice, and my entrophy is carrying me too quickly in that direction—bad physics, I know, but pardon my excesses. We economists are known for our inaccuracies with hard numbers. In any case, my best wishes, Professor.” He inclined his head, stepped around Jimjoy, and disappeared into the mist.

Jimjoy shook his head, realizing that even he felt a bit of chill, wearing only a set of medium-weight greens. He debated heading home first, but decided against the detour, since Thelina's and Meryl's was on his way in any case.

The steps to Thelina's front deck looked even more forbidding than those to Geoff's home had.

After a deep breath, he took the stairs two steps at a time, then paused. His hand reached to knock on the door.

“It's about time.” Thelina's eyes took in the greens, the lack of a jacket, the dusting of ice on his hair and shoulders. “Where have you been?” she asked quietly. Like him, she had on the greens she had worn at the meeting.

“Telling Carill about Geoff.”

“You look like it.” She stepped back and held the door open. “Would you like something warm?”

He nodded. “Liftea?”

“The kettle was just on. It shouldn't take long. Something to eat?”

“Anything light—I can get it,” he protested.

“Just sit down, and take the couch. You hate the armchairs.”

Jimjoy eased onto the couch, taking a quick look through the closed sliding glass door at the light snow beginning to fall across the deck.

“Here's the liftea. I hoped that would be where you were. How did it go?” She perched on the edge of one of the chairs.

Jimjoy did not answer, instead taking a sip from the dark, heavy mug, then looking again at the light snow outside.

Thelina waited, not quite tapping her toes in impatience.

Finally he shrugged, took another sip of the tea. “Didn't want to walk up those steps. Didn't want to tell her that I'd killed Geoff.”

“Is that the way you really feel?”

“Not that I killed him, but that he'd be alive if he hadn't been my friend. Wasn't a friend to him. He was to me.” Jimjoy took another sip of the liftea, welcoming the scalding taste. “One afternoon, almost a year ago, he came over, told me he recognized me. Just wanted me to know. We talked. Or he talked. And he asked me why I hadn't told you how I felt about you. If he hadn't asked, I never would have told you. So, in a way, I owe loving you to Geoff, too.”

The snow outside began to swirl, although Jimjoy could only see the flakes closest to the window as the twilight dropped into darkness.

“Let me get you something to eat. You're as pale as that snow outside.” Thelina hopped to her feet and headed for the small kitchen.

Jimjoy sipped from the mug and looked at the snow, not seeing it.

“Here you are.” Thelina resumed her perch on the chair. “It's simple, and not up to your standards, but…”

“Thank you.”

On a small tray were a stack of crackers, two types of sliced cheese, a sliced pearapple, and three thick slices of meat. He nibbled at a pearapple.

“How is Carill?”

“She's all right. A friend, somebody named Cerla, is staying with her.”

“How are you?”

Jimjoy wanted to talk about Jorje, about the boy's reaction, his running away. But he couldn't. He took a cracker instead, put a cheese slice on it, and ate both in a single bite. Then he ate another.

“Guess I'm all right. Easier when I didn't have to worry about people.” He folded one of the beefalo slices and began to chew, gesturing at the plate for Thelina to help herself.

“No, thank you. We ate earlier.” In response to his unspoken question, she added, “Meryl went over to the Tielers for the evening.”

Another period of silence followed, and Jimjoy took the second slice of beefalo, chewing it methodically. He followed with cheese, then finished off the pearapple.

“I worry about Shera and Jorje.”

“You were there a long time.”

“Jorje ran away, all the way to the top of the nature lookout. I followed…tried to give him space. Just waited for him. Took a while.” Thelina shook her head slowly but said nothing, balancing a mug of something on her knee.

“He didn't say anything…just ran out the door and kept running.”

“You followed him?”

“Enough to make sure he was all right, that somebody cared.” He looked at the snow, already beginning to taper off, before taking the last sip of tea.

“You knew…. Do you wish someone had followed you?”

He shrugged. “Little late for that now.”

For a time they sat there, not speaking. The snowfall had stopped by the time Jimjoy shifted his weight, swallowed, and looked up.

“Just the beginning,” he mused. “Hardly taken any real casualties…and they're all scared.”

“Aren't you?”

Jimjoy smiled wryly and briefly. “I know what's coming. Just don't know what to do. Except I need to get to Thalos and start building up what space capability we can. Get me out of sight and get that job started. You and Meryl can do whatever has to be done here. Far better than I could right now.”

Thelina set her mug on the table beside the half-eaten plate of food she had prepared. Then she moved to the couch, settling herself on Jimjoy's left, not quite touching him.

“You don't have to go tonight, do you?” Her tone was lighter.

“No.” His hand found hers, but he only squeezed it, and let his shoulder rest against hers, trying to draw in her warmth, wondering if she could lift the chill inside.

“F
INE
. W
E'VE GOT
hulls for another fifteen needleboats. We've got drives and basic screen units. And no controls and no jump units.” Jimjoy looked at Mera, then at the console blinking back at him.

The small office, with two consoles side by side and its single ventilator and rough-melted gray mineral walls, smelled of ozone, oil, and stale Ecolitans.

The apprentice who had just recently been a fourth-year student looked back at the Ecolitan professor. “Not bad, considering how little time we've had.”

“Right,” he snorted. “Except that without the micros for the screens and the grav-field controls, all we have is well-designed junk. There's still no response from the Institute. If we had just two lousy chip bloc machines…”

Jimjoy stood up and glared at the console, as if it were the nonresponsive Institute. He shrugged. “Going over to the magic shop.”

“When will you be back?”

“Whenever…whenever.”

“Don't forget that fax cube.”

“Oh—thanks.” Jimjoy picked up the cube he had made for Jorje. For the past day it had rested on the console because he had kept forgetting to send it.

“Do you think Jason can do it?”

“I can hope.” He shrugged again, then lowered his head to clear the hatch, easing it shut behind him.

His boots echoed in the empty corridor, the sound bouncing from the melted rock beneath to the melted borehole walls and back again. This latest addition to Thalos station had not been developed with long-term comfort in mind, but with cobbled-together equipment as a manufacturing/staging/facility.

While some of the Impies had probably learned the Institute had hidden facilities off Accord, trying to locate and neutralize them without an in-system base would require more resources than they could afford, not to mention better intelligence. Not even Harlinn knew exactly where the new facility was located.

Jimjoy looked back over his shoulder. Mera had not left his/their office.

At irregular intervals, hatchlocks punctuated the corridor. Jimjoy entered the third hatch on the right, south of his office. Inside, before a small console from which ran a handful of silvery cables, sat a youngster with short, nearly stubbly black hair. He did not look up from the console, which displayed a three-dimensional circuit bloc design.

Jimjoy watched as the bloc was rotated on the screen, broken apart, and reconfigured. Finally, he coughed.

“Oh—Professor!”

“Jason.” Jimjoy inclined his head. “Any luck?”

“Yes and no. I think I can adapt standard fax transceivers and an obscure design probe, plus other assorted junk, into a screen controller…or a reasonable facsimile thereof.”

“But we only have enough of that stuff for one or two boats?”

“Maybe three—if the shop doesn't make any fabrication errors.”

“Forget that.”

Jason nodded slowly.

“What about grav-field and jump units?”

“Do we need grav-fields on all the boats?”

Jimjoy pursed his lips. “Probably not. But that means heavier hulls and more reliance on the screens.”

“We can design around that.”

“The jump units?”

“That's the hardest. I can build one from the subcomponents, but I don't know enough and we don't have the documentation to redesign from other stuff.”

“I was afraid of that. Who makes them?”

“Veletar, Osmux…”

“That's Imperial?”

“Yeah.”

“Where do Halston and the Fuards get theirs?”

Jason shrugged.

“
If
I can ever get the grounders to answer, I'll see what we can find out. Can you rebuild faulty units?”

“If the two central blocs are intact. Those you don't play with.”

“Maybe we can find a good scrap merchant…” Jimjoy took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Thanks, Jason. Go ahead and cannibalize anything extra to get two of the new boats semioperational.”

“What about Ecolitan Imri?”

“I'll talk to Imri.” Jimjoy repressed another sigh. The mining/research station commander was not going to be too happy. Then again, she'd be less than happy if an Imperial fleet were to plow through the system.

He shrugged as he bent over again and left Jason in front of his screen, designing another way to accomplish the impossible.

T
HE TALL MAN
eased the laser into position, readjusting the settings.

Hssstttt
…

Nodding, he eased the laser into the next position, resetting the equipment, wishing he could shake his head, but not daring to. The basic equipment was good, but precision microcontrollers would have made the job easier—much easier. The Institute had never considered Thalos as a mainline production facility, only as a source of those few raw materials not easily available on Accord—and mainly for orbital or outsystem use.

All the controls and microblocs had been produced planetside or imported. Now the imports weren't possible, and microengineering equipment was scarce, even for the few independents that dared circumvent the Imperial embargo.

Hsssssttt
…

He continued the laborious process until the two sections were welded together. After carrying the assembly to the storage area, he began the equally laborious process of storing and racking the laser and the welding heads. The morning shift would be arriving shortly and one more unit would help—some, at least.

With a last look at the equipment, he slipped on the more formal green tunic he would need for the rest of the morning.

He shrugged as he eased out through the crude lock into the main section of Thalos Base.

“Good morning, Professor.”

He looked up sheepishly at Mera. “Good morning, Mera.”

“A little midnight welding? Along with the twilight electronics? Or the lunchtime power systems?”

“Not midnight, just early morning. They needed a little help.”

She shook her head, then turned and left him standing there. Mera did not argue, but left her position clear, quite clear, without ever raising her voice.

He took a deep breath and let his feet carry him toward the mess. His stomach growled, reminding him that he had not eaten since…had it been the afternoon before?

If they only had micros, or chipbuilders, or—But why not ask for an entire fleet? The needleboats would be fine for delivering biologicals, if they got the biologicals, if they could build the boats. If…if…if…He shook his head angrily.

He'd sent two messengers to Thelina, and still no answer. No answer at all, but he couldn't leave yet, not until the standard defenses were functioning and the station had managed to damp all EDI detectable radiation.

He slowed as he approached the mess, his steps dropping to a mere quickstep. His stomach added another sound effect to the echo of his boots.

“Morning, Professor,” called a voice. Gilman, about to become an apprentice and another member of the needleboat framing crew, waved as he headed back in the direction from which Jimjoy had come.

“Good morning, Gilman.”

This time he pulled at his chin, then ducked to step into the mess-room. Most tables were empty this early.

On the heat counter were various hydroponics. No synthetics. The Institute did not supply synthetics. You ate real food of some sort. Better real dried kelp than tasty synthetic beef.

Jimjoy chose real and dry muffins with a large dollop of pear-apple preserves, a slice of cheese that seemed more holes than cheese, and an empty mug. Carrying the mug to the beverage table, he filled it with old-fashioned tea, a variety even more bitter than liftea, and scooped in enough sugar to rouse departed dieticians from graves parsecs away.

He sat at the end of an unoccupied table.

“Good morning, Professor.”

His mouth full, Jimjoy only nodded to the stocky man who eased himself into a chair to Jimjoy's right.

“How is your needleboat project coming?”

Jimjoy took a sip of the tea, so bitter that even a mug saturated with sugar could not remove the edge. “Well as expected.”

“Do you really think needleboats can defend us against a fleet?”

“We can build needleboats. Can't build cruisers. No one's selling any these days, not that I know of.” The muffin crunched as he bit into it and sprayed crumbs over the green cloth covering the table.

“Do you think the Impies will attack Thalos or Accord first?”

Jimjoy shrugged as he devoured the second dry muffin.

“They say you were once an Impie. Is that true?”

Jimjoy stuffed the hole-filled cheese into his mouth, wishing Thelina would send the equipment he wanted, and wishing Imri's deputy would stop making a practice of quizzing him at meals. “Yes. I've also been a Fuard, a Halstani, a true-believer, and a Swartician.”

“A Swartician? Where…”

“On Swartis, of course.” Jimjoy almost smiled. As far as he knew, there was no Swartis system. He stood. “Have a good day, Ecolitan Ferbel.”

Now all he had to do was figure out how to get hold of three dozen jump units. Too bad you couldn't fit people in torps…

He dashed toward Jason and the magic shop. The micros had to be the same, and that was what they needed, not all the power and hardware connections. At least that was what he hoped, but Jason would know, and three dozen torps, or even ten dozen, shouldn't be impossible to find. Obsolete ones might do as well, might even allow them to develop new torps.