Mind Over Ship (21 page)

<
You mean a case could be made for it in court?
>

<
Yes.
>

It took several long moments for the news to hit home, and then Meewee was jumping up and down, shrieking, pumping the air with his fist. He was even more excited than he had been at the original boost. He climbed the bank to his cart and said, “Call the IOPA leaders. Arrange a confab in my office in thirty minutes.” When Meewee reached the cart he realized that his pockets were still full of stones. So he returned to the bank and gleefully flung them into the pond by the handful. “Take that, you pigs,” he cried. “Eat stones, you snakes.”

A voice said <
Stop that!
>

Meewee stopped dead. It was no voice in the breeze this time. No squeaky hinge or crunch of snow underfoot. It was a real voice, and it had spoken in Starkese.

<
Arrow, was that Eleanor who just spoke?
>

<
Yes
.>

<
Ask her where she is
.> There was no reply for a full minute, and Meewee said <
Well?
>

<
I have used all public and proprietary channels, but without a known destination, I cannot complete the task.
>

Meewee bent over and picked up several hefty rocks. He tossed them one after another into all parts of the pond. Finally, a lone fish leaped out of the water, a slab of shiny silver muscle that reentered the water with a splash. <
Merrill?
>

<
Yes, Eleanor, it’s me! Arrow, tell her it’s me.
>

More fish jumped. <
What the hell?
>

<
Where am I?
>

<
What is this?
>

Meewee stared in wonder. <
Eleanor, can you hear me?
>

There was the sound of a hysterical giggle in his head, and then <
Holy crap, I must be drunk. My head is swimming.
>

<
Eleanor, how is this possible?
>

Gibberish, then nothing, and no matter how many more stones he threw, the connection was lost.

Inside the warehouse, the battered old taxi flew rapidly and unerringly through the obstruction course.

Oliver TUG and Veronica TOTE, his giant to her dwarf, stood beside a concrete blast barrier and observed.

But it’s never made an appearance in mentarspace
, Veronica said, her elbow planted against his hip bone.
At least, we’ve warned it to stay out of mentarspace.

Doesn’t matter
, Oliver replied.
Its very thought patterns mark it as a mentar, or at least a midem. The current mentar consensus, or so I’m told, says that it’s an autonomous adjunct of an as yet unidentified mind. You should keep it under wraps.

That’s not possible. We must train it in the real world.

All I’m saying
—the taxi zoomed close overhead, and Oliver ducked—
is that you should maintain secrecy as long as possible.

Perhaps. On the other hand, what harm is there in people knowing we’re raising a mentar? It’s a perfectly legal and innocuous activity.

The taxi finished the course, but instead of landing beside the track, it revved its hover fans to maximum RPM and hurled itself straight at Oliver and Veronica, who ducked behind the blast barrier. The taxi hit the barrier, cartwheeled over it, and slammed into the wall behind them, a total wreck.

Oliver pulled a bloody sliver of shattered fan vane from his calf, stood up, and dusted himself off. He pressed his knuckles hard against Veronica’s forehead.
I’ve heard stories about its irrational behavior.

PUSH is still a juvenile
, Veronica replied evenly.
Its spunk is a positive trait.

Let’s hope it matures a bit before you place a starship under its command.

At 16:26 TET, the personnel transport ISV
Fentan
was completing its docking sequence at the Consolidated Receiving Port of Trailing Earth Main. Two TECA officers, both russes, watched the docking on monitors in a forward security shack. One said to the other, “How’s this supposed to work?”

“It’s for everyone’s own good.”

“They won’t all fit?”

“It can’t be helped.”

A trio of russ officers at the docking port waited as the last group of homebound workers, a contingent of 325 jacks, pulled themselves through the central gangway.

“In here. In here,” one of the russes called, floating in the center of the gangway outside the transshipment bay doors and waving his arms like a traffic cop.

The jacks moved clumsily with their overstuffed kit bags, bumping against the walls and each other. The men in the lead arrested their motion suddenly, causing their brothers to pile up behind.

“We’re not going in there,” one of them said. “There’s no room.”

The transshipment bay, large though it was, was already crowded with over a thousand jacks, lulus, jeromes, johns, and alices. The whole mélange floated in a large tangle of arms and legs.

Hatch bolts clanged at the far end of the gangway, and the sound reverberated along the corridors. Motors whirred, and air valves hissed.

“In you go,” the russ said, escorting the lead jacks by their elbows. They hurried the jacks along and were deaf to their complaints. When the last of the outgoing workers were in the bay, the two russ officers on either side of the large bay doors pushed them shut and locked them. And not a moment too soon. The first of the replacement workers, in crisp, new gold and yellow overalls, were making their way from the transport ship.

“Follow Passage Charlie. Follow Passage Charlie,” the russes called out as the first ones went by. They were women, though they were no larger than girls. Their type was called xiang. Not particularly attractive, but they flew through the gangway with an assured flair that belied their short time in space. And the seats of their gold jumpsuits had modest cuffs for their tails.

The women were followed by a second type, male, the aslams. They, too, were small, agile swimmers, with tails.

Finally, the most numerous contingent came through, the one everyone
had heard rumors of, the type called the donalds. They had the largest build of the three new spacer types, but were still half the size of a russ. They were towing their kit duffels with their tails, leaving their hands and feet free to swim and pull themselves along. They sneered at the russes as they went by, making rude noises and letting their duffels knock against them.

Inside the transshipment bay, someone must have overridden the window lock because the shutters sprang open all along the bay. Pressed against the glassine barrier were the startled faces of Applied People employees watching their replacements go by.

When the last of the donalds had passed, the senior russ said, “Let ’em out.” His two subordinates moved toward the doors, but arrested themselves suddenly and tried to shield themselves with their arms.

Alarmed, the senior russ looked up the gangway to see what was wrong. A barrage of tiny missiles was flying toward him. Reflexively, he pushed off from the wall to dodge them, but he was too late, and he was hit repeatedly in the chest, torso, and face. The workers behind the windows watched in horror as the russ cartwheeled out of control. His mind cartwheeled too— were they weapons? Was he dead?

He hit the gangway ceiling and knew he was all right. He wiped his damp face, not knowing what to expect, and found, not blood, but spittle. The missiles had been a well-aimed fusillade of spit. Meet the donalds!

“We see it more as providing opportunity than breaking a promise,” Million Singh said affably. “Instead of only a few lucky landowners, now millions of ordinary people are eligible.”

“Perhaps,” said the interviewer, “but the Garden Earth Project colonists were promised new worlds.”

“Space is a new world!” Singh replied, spreading his arms to encompass the universe.

Seated next to him, Jaspersen fielded equally innocuous questions. “You are correct, Monica, I did cast the deciding vote a century ago, and forced to do so again, I’d make the same decision today. If you want to see what a world without the Procreation Ban would look like, you need look no farther than outside the United Democracies where entire populations crash on a
regular basis. Millions starve or succumb to disease, and misery is universal. In fact, if I had my way, I would make all nations conform to the ban, whether they signed it or not. By force if necessary.”

The plan had been to bring Singh up to Jaspersen’s Alaskan home, stage a joint press conference there, and control the pictures.

Jaspersen and Singh relaxed in rocking chairs before the window wall in Jaspersen’s new mountaintop house. Behind them, Mt. Blackburn, the nearest of three sometimes restive volcanoes, was emerging from a bank of clouds. There were no hordes of dying people in sight. Instead, viewers were treated to breathtaking flights through the Bagley Ice Field just outside Jaspersen’s door, where eight thousand square kilometers of glaciers were melting. There were no vistas of parched land on three continents, but the facilities of Jaspersen’s St. Elias Waterworks and North Pacific Aqueduct bringing rivers of cold glacial melt to a thirsty nation. No armies of the destitute squatting in squalid camps around Singh’s Mumbai industrial campus, but walking tours of his elegant Elephant Rescue Reserve where baby pachyderms embodied the hope of an entire people. Because hope, as Singh liked to point out to Jaspersen, sells.

And so there were no pictures of the Oship plankholder demonstrations either, but artistic renderings of luxury space condos at Leading Mars and links to easy financing.

They were making love when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Fred sobbed.

“What was
that
?” Mary said.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “A hiccough?”

Their smallish null room bed was perched on an Arctic shore. The tide was out, and from the darkness came the sound of breakers rattling the shale beach. Directly overhead, the Big Dipper wheeled around Polaris. Fred pulled Mary to him for a kiss, but instead he sobbed against her chest.

“Fred, what’s wrong?”

Tears sprang from his eyes. He turned on his side, spilling her off him, and his whole body shuddered. Mary touched his forehead with her
open hand. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go out to the autodoc.” But he shook his head no.

“You go out, Mary. Maybe you won’t catch it.”

“I’d say it’s too late to worry about that.” She took a hold of his arm and pulled, but she could not budge him. So she crawled to the foot of the bed where the door of the supply locker appeared floating in the Arctic night. She opened it and took a quick inventory. She brought a pack of facial tissues back to Fred and said, “Here, blow.” Then she took one of his used tissues and climbed over him to reach the hatch. “I’ll be right back.”

THE AUTODOC IN the bathroom confirmed that Fred had the most recent designer flu to plague the uncanopied world. It was so recent that no one had released a patch for it yet, and the best the autodoc could dispense was advice: bed rest and plenty of fluids. The flu strain was not considered dangerous, and its effects lasted only a day or two. While she was in the bathroom, Mary tested herself too. The autodoc said she had been exposed to the flu but that her body seemed to be fighting it off.

In the kitchen, Mary dialed up several meals’ worth of food and packed it in lock-proof containers. She loaded it and fresh cases of ’Lyte and Flush into the lock. Before cycling through for her second time that day, she called Cyndee at the Manse to say she might miss work the following day.

“Everyone here’s coming down with it too,” Cyndee said. “Half the Capias crew is out sick. Dr. Rouselle says to keep Ellen in her tank for the duration because there’s no telling how it might affect her. Ellen’s not happy about that, but so far she’s complying. So don’t worry about anything. Stay home and take care of Fred. Georgine and I can manage.”

“Thank you. I’ll come in as soon as I can to spell you. If I don’t come down with it myself, that is.” She laughed. “If you don’t see me by the day after tomorrow, send a rescue party to our null room.”

“You won’t catch it.”

“Let’s hope not.”

“No, I mean it. The Sisterhood posted a bulletin a little while ago. So far, no evangeline anywhere has come down with it. They think we’re immune.”

“We’re immune to grief?”

THE NULL ROOM was still set to the Arctic night. The Aurora was out, like a milky green curtain slowly fluttering in the breeze. She killed the simulation and brought the wall lume up to quarterday. Fred was shaking the whole bed with his weeping and knocking the top of his head against the
wall. There just wasn’t enough goddamn space in the room. She climbed on the mattress and walked over to put a couple of flasks of ’Lyte next to him.