Mind Over Ship (37 page)
Authors: David Marusek
Fred needed a team, but he said, “Where are your friends?”
“Who?”
“You know damn well who I mean!”
“’Fraid I don’t, Specialist. I was passing by when I saw you in here. Are you ill or on any meds?”
Fred swallowed his anger and pain and kicked off toward the door. He arrested himself before leaving the blister and looked all around. “I want my cap and wand back.” He checked his belt. “And my sidekick.”
The jay shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”
FRED STOPPED SEVERAL times on his way back to Wheel Nancy to try to control the pain with breathing exercises. He passed out again, and when he awoke, Mando was there.
“Aii, Londenstane, what has happened to you?”
“I took a wrong turn.”
“That is the truth. No, don’t move. Lie still, and I will pull you.” Fred did as he was told, and Mando towed him to a shuttle stop. They rode a car together back to the residential wheels. But instead of Wheel Nancy, Mando navigated the shuttle to the Admin Wheel where the clinic was located.
“It was the donalds,” Fred said. “They assaulted me.”
“Such foul creatures, no? But what were you doing over there?”
“Exploring.”
“Alone?” Before the word left his mouth, Mando seemed to realize what he was saying. Of course Fred was alone.
But Fred let it pass. “What about you? Did Earth Girl send you to fetch me?”
“No, I came on my own. There were pictures of you unconscious in a corridor. Everyone saw them.”
“Did you see the attack?”
“No, only you. I wondered why nobody was coming to help. A russ is down and no brothers come to help? So, I came myself.”
The pain receded, but every jostle of the shuttle car revived it. Fred looked at his onetime friend and said, “Why? Why did you come?”
Mando glanced away. “I apologize for my behavior before. Luisa says I am a dog. She says we owe you. Every evangeline and every russ married to one owes you. And it’s true. But you shouldn’t have lied to me on the ship.”
“I know that now.”
BOTH MARCUS AND Nicholas maintained a local mirror at Trailing Earth to eliminate the transmission lag. Fred floated in a regeneration tank
in the port clinic, his second entankment in as many months. The two mentars were audio only.
Earth Girl can ID them
, Fred said.
Subpoena it. And while you’re at it, sue it for not sending backup when it saw I was in trouble. It knew where I was. It contacted me shortly before the attack.
Nicholas said,
We reviewed that. It lost contact with you when you entered a blank area.
It’s lying! And besides, why are there blank areas at all?
Neither Nicholas nor Marcus replied, and Fred went on,
Then depose that Sangri person. He was there. He must have seen something.
Nicholas said,
I could do that, or Marcus could, but I want to draw the big picture for you, Londenstane. Your recent irrational behavior jeopardizes not only your own employment, but that of every Applied People employee here. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s an uneasy truce in effect at Trailing Earth. If TECA determines that
we
are the ones at fault, that
we
are incapable of working in harmony with the Capias people, they will have grounds for nullifying our remaining contracts. That’s
exactly
what Capias wants, and that’s why the donalds are allowed to act in such a provocative manner. Your brother russes are sucking it up and pulling for the team, but you—you insist on initiating confrontation. I seriously advise you to rethink your behavior.
WAKE UP, OPEN eyes, stare at ceiling, stare at ceiling, stare at ceiling.
Though still morning in San Francisco, Andrea Tiekel had already returned to bed. She simply had no energy lately, a familiar harbinger of her new body’s premature decline. And her muscles burned like fire. How brief her springtimes.
Rather than dwell on her aches and pains, Andrea buried herself in work and checked up on her projects.
Zoranna Alblaitor seemed unable to recover from her series of little shocks. And though she was aggressive in her marketing, she had been unable to stanch the mass desertion of her customer base. Furthermore, her sidebob was still quite shaken up by the attack on her person. Andrea was satisfied that Alblaitor would crack completely in the next assault, which was already commencing.
Ellen, meanwhile, had suffered a relapse since the odd incident at the fishpond. She was spending a lot of time in her hernandez tank, which was set to full privacy mode so that not even Lyra could see her. What exactly had transpired between Ellen and Meewee wasn’t clear, but whatever it was tipped Meewee’s hand and, thereby, solved a mystery. The unknown second party of his nonsensical, pondside conversations was revealed to be a Cabinet backup that had eluded the probate court. It had very cleverly been hiding out in the natpac fish since Eleanor’s death; even E-P had missed it. But Ellen’s pondside reaction had forced Cabinet to abandon its ocean refuge and return to its contaminated old constellation. The new old Cabinet was so massively corrupted, it would take some time before it could sort itself out enough to pose a threat. And Meewee? Although they had failed to pref him, they had spooked him enough to drop out of sight altogether.
Meanwhile, Ellen’s companion evangelines were showing the first signs of distress. Also, the little crisis that E-P had engineered at Dr. Rouselle’s hospital in Sierra Leone had succeeded in luring the doctor home, further isolating Ellen. Ellen, like Alblaitor, was primed for the next assault. Two birds with one stone.
THE FARMSTEAD AT the heart of the Starke compound possessed its own little cemetery where generations of Bedfords and Fayettes were interred. Samson Harger Kodiak had been the first person buried there in over a century. The cemetery was situated on a small rise overlooking troutcorn fields and was bordered by a white picket fence.
When the cart first appeared in the distance, Georgine sprang to her feet. But she sat back down on the bench and said, “I thought it was her.”
Mary said, “She’s not coming.”
“I already know that, Mary!”
“I was only saying.”
“You’re always only saying!”
The sisters fell silent until the cart arrived. Then they rose to greet their visitors: a beautiful young woman, a tall young man, and a retrogirl. The visitors brought armloads of exotic flowers, and after introducing themselves to the evangelines, decorated Samson’s grave.
“Lovely,” Mary said when the task was complete.
“Kitty grew them,” April said, indicating the retrogirl. “Kitty Kodiak is a famous microhab engineer.”
“They’re gorgeous, Kitty.”
The retrogirl bobbed a quick curtsy and said, “Thank you, I’m sure.”
She looked up at one evangeline and then the other. “You were both there?”
“Mary was there,” Georgine said. “I chickened out at the end.”
Mary glanced at her sister with mild dismay. “That’s not true,” she told the retrogirl. “Georgine was off duty that day is all.”
“We loved Samson very much,” April said. “On his behalf we give both of you our deepest thanks for all you did to help save his daughter, Ellen.”
With the mention of Ellen’s name, the young man, Bogdan, who had been mute until then, asked, “Will she be joining us?”
“Fat chance,” Georgine said.
Mary frowned. “What my sister means to say is that Ellen is not feeling well and can’t leave the house.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” April said. “I wanted to meet her too.”
The young woman may have been sorry, but the young man seemed devastated.
“What’s wrong, Bogdan?” Mary said.
“Nothing. It’s just that I was hoping to ask her about the Oship program.”
“It was canceled,” Georgine said. “Don’t you view the news?”
“I know,” Bogdan said a little defensively, “but there are rumors of it coming back, and I wanted to ask if it’s true.”
Mary said, “You’re interested in becoming a colonist?”
“Oh, yes, myr,” Bogdan replied. “I’m going to be a pilot on one of the Oships. I even got my acre to trade.” In a few words he filled the evangelines in on the Superfund mine in Wyoming where the Kodiak Charter had moved when their charter in Chicago was decertified. “Kitty stayed behind with Denny, and April was already married to the Boltos, but the rest of us went west and merged with the Beadlemyren. And I worked out a deal with them so that if I put in ten years at the mine, I can have an acre to trade. But now—”
“But now the program is canceled,” Mary said sympathetically. “I’ll look into it, and if I learn anything, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“But don’t hold your breath,” Georgine added.
A short while later, the two parties returned to their carts and left the cemetery. On the way back to the Manse, Mary debated whether or not to ask Georgine why she was making such rude remarks lately. But before she made up her mind, Georgine said, “Grieving for the dead makes no more sense than an amputee trying to scratch a missing limb.” Mary stared at her in wonder, and Georgine added, “What? I’m only saying—”
“You’re only saying what?”
“The obvious.”
IN ELLEN’S BEDROOM the hernandez tank was a silver column. Gray Bee crawled up its opaqued side to the top and plopped into the purple syrup inside. It sank to where Ellen floated and waited for her to open her eyes.
At first Ellen reacted to it with fear and startlement, causing a blip in her biometric feed, but she quickly recognized the tiny family retainer and relaxed.
Go ahead,
she told it.
The bee opened a small frame, distorted in the syrupy liquid, and her mother’s proxy appeared. For a long while Ellen only gazed at it, and then the proxy said
Ellen was furious.
Ellen began to cry, and her tears were absorbed by the purple medium even as she shed them. After a while, Eleanor’s proxy said
The proxy nodded and said
The baby nodded its adult head, and Eleanor’s proxy went on
Ellen took all of this in with quiet reserve, and when her mother’s proxy was finished, she said
