Misfits (3 page)

"There go, kid," her escort directed in
Terran with an accent damn' close to Surebleak's. "Take the corner
there. I gotta bring this cause there's a bunch of tech-stuff
stowed inside, and Mr. Brunner'll be wanting that after the Scout
finishes sharing out today's mess o'secret. No use us working
stiffs hearin' all that; just makes us anxious."

"Call me Redhead, why not?" she suggested,
letting the pack settle into the slightly rounded corner of the
lift. Damn if she was going back to ‘kid,' now she had chops on her
sleeve. "Or corporal."

Jack leaned against the door panel,
twitching at a couple of the push plates while he craned his neck
to peer down the corridor, then turned back to her.

"Corporal, is it? They must have rushed
grades from what I see."

Redhead sighed inwardly, but she knew from
experience that the best answer was a joke.

"Nah, not really," she said to Jack,
deadpan. "I'm big for my age, is all."

He shook his head.

"You can't be young enough to be big for
your age and still carry a gun for Commander Liz," he said in
Trade.

She followed that without any trouble,
grinning wryly.

"I've known Liz a long time. Guess she knew
me longer, really, 'cause she was my mother's friend, even before I
was born."

Jack nodded sagely. "Right then, she mighta
known you longer.…" Back in Terran, that was--and cut off as
something on his capacious belt beeped and something else clanked.
His hands moved as quick as the sounds. The beeping stopped but the
clanking didn't, 'cause he was checking the location of some other
stuff on the belt. He'd been doing that every so often all the time
he'd been in her sight--like he couldn't stand not knowing exactly
where his equipment was. She knew a couple of hands in the Lunatics
like that: might call it a nervous habit, but they weren't the ones
to run low on ammo or to suddenly need batteries in the field.
Might be Jack'd done soldier-time somewhen, though he seemed even
more disinclined to salute than Tech Brunner.

Jack mumbled something and she'd said,
"Huh?" before realizing he was talking to his collar. Something
twerped on his belt and the lighting in the lift went up a couple
notches.

"Sorry 'bout that, Corporal. Lift's got some
extra solar shielding so I had to go to back-up to get the lights
on. Company don't like to waste power lighting the lifts!" He
glanced at her casually, left hand still doing its tour of the
belt.

"Must be handy to have the overrides right
on your belt!" she said, honestly admiring such efficiency.

He sighed, surprisingly deeply. "You might
think so, Corporal Redhead, but answer me this: What happens when
you control the overrides?"

She shook her head and shrugged, hands up,
the unfamiliar mass on her back making her shift her feet too, for
balance. "Dunno. What happens?"

"When you control the overrides, sometimes
you gotta make the decisions. Comes with the territory. Same with
pilots, you know?" He gave her a hard look. "Same like maybe you'll
hafta do, carrying all that info on your back."

"Yah," she said to Jack, nodding in
agreement. "I guess that's so.…"

Liz hit the lift, then, ahead of her escort,
leaned against the wall opposite Jack, and gave him a grin.
"Penthouse, if you please!"

Jack said something with his hands that
Redhead couldn't see, then the door shut behind the tech and the
Scout, with Jack and Liz sharing a smile over their heads.

There was a beep, and the car jerked into
motion, going sort of northwest according to Redhead's stomach.
Jack's belt beeped and the lighting went down a notch.

"Penthouse, next stop!" he said, maybe
louder than he needed to--at least, it seemed Tech Brunner thought
so, if he wasn't frowning about something else entirely. The Scout,
tucked into the corner next to Liz, only smiled.

* * *

Jack was dismantling the shipping crate,
piling each piece just so on the conference room floor, making sure
that all the pockets and cavities were empty of whatever odds and
ends might have been stuffed there. He hummed as he worked, which
was annoying, but Brunner kept himself busy by acting the host,
quite happy to see the backs of the Scout and the commander as they
fled for the canteen's small bar after approving the conference
area as a classroom, and after the Scout passed him a small blue
envelope.

The choice of food available from the
conference room fresh-case was somewhat more limited than the
canteen's, but since the room was used from time to time for
working meetings, it was stocked with some proper teas in addition
to coffee, and it held an unreasonably wide supply of chernubia
especially baked for Tech Brunner by the canteen's cook, who
applauded his insistence that each meal should be made more
memorable by one or two small sweets to choose from.

The water steaming and a selection of
fruited chernubia set out upon a tray, with cups and plates,
Brunner turned toward his young student, only to discover her
sitting back in the soft, oversized for her as for him, Terran
conference chair, her eyes closed and breath regular. He paused,
making use of the unguarded moment to study her more closely.

Her face was tanned and thin, with a spangle
of freckles bridging her nose. Unlike Commander Lizardi, who wore
her hair cut close and utilitarian, the halfling had made a single
thick dark red braid and wrapped it around her head, like the
copper crown of a barbarian princess.

Her uniform was tight to her slender throat;
any jewels or necklace she might wear sealed away from his sight,
but her hands, resting half-curled on her knees, were a garden of
small silver and gem-chipped rings, matching those in her thin,
blue veined ears. None was a Ring as one might find on a delm or
even a pilot, rather they were barely more than fine wire. A
child's wealth of play-jewels, gaudy and gay. There might be need,
he thought, of bright color and friendly glitter, in the places
this soldier frequented.

In other dress, and with her hair styled
more fashionably, Brunner would not have been surprised to find her
at Joint School, or at college, or as a passing guest in his own
clanhouse.

The annoying hum ceased, reminding Brunner
that he was not alone with his sleeping student. He turned to see
Jack slowly unwinding from his knees to a crouched stand, where he
paused for a long moment, as if feeling his age, or perhaps twinges
from an old wound.

"Other stuff's all here, Brunner. I'm
guessing you got the key already, 'cause that's not. Me, I gotta
check some compressors. Catch you next shift!"

With remarkably few clinks and clanks Jack
stretched to his full height, touched the ceiling with one hand,
while the other did a quick inventory of his belts. He nodded once
to himself, as if satisfied with his count, and departed.

Brunner fetched the tray, and carried it
quietly to the table, unwilling to disturb the child, though his
duty as well as hers demanded it. As it came about, he was spared
the necessity; her eyes opened before he set the tray down, but he
could not help but feel a small flicker of guilt for having
disturbed her repose.

He bowed slightly, the words coming without
thought. "Forgive me for disturbing your rest. I bring chernubia
and tea, that we might study in comfort, for study we must."

The soldier blinked, and pushed herself up
straight in the too-large chair.

"Sorry, sir," she said huskily, in a rush of
backworld Terran. "I--uh, I mean, I guess that's Liaden. It's real
pretty, but--I don't know Liaden! Terran's best, if you speak
it--or Trade." She looked around the room, her eye lighting on the
clock and it seemed she reached some further level of wakefulness.
"The lesson," she said, cheeks coloring; "we don't have much
time!"

Momentarily, Brunner's mind went blank,
empty of words in any language. He hadn't realized how much he had
been certain that she--how much he had needed someone who would be
delighted with chernubia, and tea, and who would hear the language
of home with pleasure.…

"Yes," he managed at last, and found a smile
for her youth and her obvious embarrassment. "Of course I speak
Terran. How else?"

* * *

They'd settled on Tech, or Brunner or Tech
Brunner; and Robertson or Redhead. So Liaden a name as "Miri"
attached to one with such an accent and so misplaced a sense of
food as to prefer coffee to his carefully brewed tea--… that was
awkward, even unacceptable. Corporal Robertson had the Terran habit
of trying to shorten names, but he could not hear himself called
"Liad," nor would she allow "Ich" as acceptable.

"These are great! Never had anything so
good!"

It was the fifth time she had told him so,
and it made him feel she was even younger than he had first
supposed.

"They help make my stay here livable," he
answered now; "it pleases me that they please others as well."

"That's important on something so closed up
as this." She stood, snatching one last chernubia before donning
the Stubbs as he indicated.

"It is important to stay occupied and
pleased with your diet," he agreed. "So let us study basic
operations. It is unlikely that you will need to deploy the
DRAPIN--that is the Direct Report And Pinbeam option--which rapidly
drains the energy source and requires a modicum of effort; more on
this later. You will be acting as our mobile unit; and while the
Stubbs can report continuously on deployment of the antenna, the
antenna itself may make your travel--… less convenient. We shall
therefore assume that you will not be simultaneously traveling and
transmitting. Instead, let us assume that you have arrived at a
destination. Or not even a destination--let us call it not a
bivouac but a simple rest stop. You then release the stand--…"

Here Robertson did as indicated.

"The unit may be set to begin automatic
operation when the stand is released. However, I understand from
your commander that she prefers the reports to be under your
control. To access the basic operator program, one merely inserts
the key. To adjust the program from your side--if, for example, you
wish to access the location transponder screen, you must insert
both keys."

She looked up, gray eyes slightly squinted.
"Both?"

He removed from the envelope the Scout had
given him all three keys; it was conceivable that she might need
them all, and the idea of a "manager's key" kept safe on station,
to be issued only at need was ludicrous.

"This one," he said, handing it to her, "is
basic. With this key anyone can turn the unit on or off. You may
carry it in your pocket if you like."

The basic key was flat, silver-colored, and
recognizable as what it was. Unlike an everyday key, though, it was
clad on several levels with a patina of a metallic insulation and
had shaped insets at both ends.

Robertson accepted it without comment; her
fingers were surprisingly cool as she made light contact with his
hand.

"Right then," she said, nodding so deeply in
agreement that at first he took it as a bow. "This is a workday
key."

"Yes. Good. A workday key. This, too, is
such a ‘workday key.'" He waved it for emphasis. "Normally, they
both must be inserted in order to set local reports or alerts, or
to use the unit as a communicator. If you lose one key you may
still access basic functions with the other; I will give you the
override instructions before you leave for the surface. This system
is to insure that little mistakes do not happen, that alerts are
neither set, nor lost, easily. It is perhaps best that these two
keys not be carried in the same pocket. If you have an assistant,
that person might carry one."

He handed the second key over reluctantly,
startled again by the cool touch of her fingers, and more so by her
laugh as he held the pair up and compared them by eye.

"That'd be good, wouldn't it? Miri
Robertson's assistant! Might be a long time before I'm in charge of
anyone 'cept that--what is it?--Stubbs Ranger, what already knows
what its doing."

He bowed, acknowledging that he had heard
her.

"It often happens," translating a line from
one of his nadelm's favorite melant'i plays, "that expectation and
event are not the same. When necessity exists, conduct
follows."

She looked at him firmly, gray eyes serious,
and nodded once more.

"That's the way it works everywhere, ain't
it? Push comes to shove, that's when you find out what somebody'll
really do."

She shook herself then, as if casting off
unwanted implications, and showed him the keys.

"So, all I need to do is put these in once a
day and you'll get the data and whatever else you need?"

It was his turn to smile.

"If this ‘stop once a day' is all that is
possible, then that is what we will hope for. But we have far more
hopes than that!"

He produced one of the hard copy instruction
manuals and a series of charts he'd printed out of the station's
own records. "You will know about the basics of weather from your
schooling. But this world you invade--for many reasons this is not
a world of standard weather."

Robertson shook her head energetically.

"Nah, you can't depend on what I know about
from school. My folks never sent me to school."

After a moment Brunner realized he might be
said to be staring, and dropped his gaze.

"Surely, some education--…" he offered,
daring to look up again when he heard her short laugh.

"Not so you'd call it school. The money came
in, and it went out, and school was on the list for when there was
enough. Never was enough, I guess. But I do a lot of reading, you
know? My mother taught me how to read. Liz--Commander Lizardi--she
gets me classes to study when we got time. And, sorry--… weather
ain't been covered yet."