Partnership (12 page)

Governor Thrixtopple grabbed his son's collar and dragged him out of the central cabin. The iris of the door membrane slid together.

"That," said Caleb reverently, "was brilliant, XN.

Positively brilliant. Ah — I suppose there is such a regulation?"

"Of course there is! You don't think I'd IwT

"My deepest apologies, ma'am. It was only that I had no personal recollection of the paragraph in question—"

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**I understand that softperson brains are quite limited in their storage and retrieval powers," Nancia said loftily. Then she relented. "It took me several minutes of scanning to find something applicable, actually. And I never would have thought of it if you hadn't quoted regulations to get them out of here before lift-off."

"If it weren't for meals," Caleb reflected aloud, "we wouldn't have to speak to them again all the way back to Central...."

"I have the capacity to serve meals from any room in the living quarters," Nancia informed him. Unlike the older models ... She cut that thought offbefore voicing it. It would be sheer cruelty to remind Caleb of what he had lost

"Okay, XN, try this one." Caleb manipulated the joyball to bring up a display of a double torus containing two simple dosed curves. Three disks labeled Al, B, and A2 contained sections of the torus. "You're in Al; A2 is your target space. Find the Singularity points and compute the decompositions required."

"No fair," Nancia protested. "It's never even been proved that there is a decom sequence that'll navigate that structure. Satyajohi's Conjecture." She quoted from her memory banks, "If h is a homeomorphism of E3 onto itself that is fixed on E3 — T, need one of h(Jl), h(j2) contain an arc with four points of A+B

such that no two of these points which are adjacent on the arc belong to the same one of A and B? If so, the decomposition space H does not yield E3, And in this application," she reminded Caleb, "E3 is equivalent to normal space."

Caleb blinked twice. "I didn't expect you to know Satyajohi's Conjecture, actually. Still — let me point out, XN, it's only a conjecture, not a theorem."

"In one hundred and twenty-five years of deep-PARTNERSHIP

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space mathematics it's never been disproved," Nancia grumbled.

"So? Perhaps you'll be the first to find a counter-example.''

Nancia didn't think there was much point in even trying, but she set an automatic string-development program to race through the display, illuminating various possible Singularity paths as lines of brilliant blue light, then letting them fade out as the impos-sibility of one after the other was proved. There was something else on which she very much wanted Caleb's advice, and now — with the Thrixtopple family intimidated into staying in their cabins, and Caleb in as good a mood as she'd ever seen him after his demonstration of Satyajohi's Conjecture — now was the best time she could have to bring it up.

"I haven't been commissioned very long, you know, Caleb," she began.

"No, but you're going to be one of the best," Caleb told her. "I can see it in the way you handle little things. I wouldn't have thought of finding a regulation to get the Thrixtopples out of our hair. And I don't think I'd have tested Satyajohi's Conjecture the way you're going about it right now, either." Two possible Singularity lines flashed bright blue and then vanished from the screen as he spoke, while a third snaked through Al and into the B

disk around the double torus.

"Some things," Nancia said carefully, "get more complicated than that. In mathematics a conjecture either is or isn't true."

"The same is true of Courier Service Regulations,"

Caleb pointed out

"Yes, well... not everything. They don't tell you what to do if a brainship happens to hear her passengers making illegal plans."

"If you've been eavesdropping on Governor Thrixtopple in his cabin," Caleb said sternly, "that's a 92

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dishonorable action and I hereby formally request you to stop it immediately."

"Oh, I haven't," Nantia assured him. "But whatif—

if a brainship had some passengers who didn't know she was sentient, and they liked to sit in the central cabin and play SPACED OUT, and they just happened to discuss some possibly illegal plans while they were doing it?"

"Oh — a hypothetical case?" Caleb sounded relieved, and Nancia felt the same way. At least he hadn't guessed immediately, as Simeon had, that she was talking about her own previous experience.

Everything Nancia had learned or seen of Caleb—the newsbeams of his heroic solo return to Vega, the dedication with which he put himself through a gruel-ing exercise program, his respect for Courier Service regulations — made her think of him as a man of supreme integrity, one whose word she could trust under any circumstances. She would not have wanted to hear him laugh at her as Simeon had done, or suggest — as Simeon had done — that her own actions in this instance had been morally culpable.

"Well, in such a case—if it ever arises — you should remember that a sentient ship is morally obliged to identify herself as such to her passengers at the first opportunity."

"That's not in the regulations," Nancia defended herself against a charge Caleb didn't know he had made.

"No, but it's common sense. Anything else would be like — like me hiding in a closet to catch Governor Thrixtopple counting his ill-gotten gains from bribes while in public office." Caleb said this with so much disgust in his voice that Nancia shrank from pursuing die subject.

So, evidently, did Caleb. He looked up at the central display screen, where a network of dim gray lines PARTNERSHIP

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showed Nantia's repeated attempts to compute a path of Singularity points through the topological configuration he'd defined.

"Let's just take it that Satyajohi's Conjecture is upheld in this particular case," he suggested, "and now it's your turn to put up a problem. I don't know why we're discussing hypothetical ethical problems that are never likely to arise when we could both be improving our Decom Math skills. Nor do I understand why — " He bit his lip and blanked out the screen with a swift roll of the joybalL

"Why what?" Nancia asked.

"Your turn to pose a problem," Caleb reminded her.

"Not until you finish that sentence."

"All rightl I don't understand why you're asking for ethical guidance from a brawn whose greatest achieve-ment to date has been the loss of his first ship!" Caleb bit out the words with a frustrated savagery that aroused Nancia's sympathy. She remembered Simeon's grief for his lost friend Levin, the CL-740.

How stupid she had been.

"I'm sorry," she told Caleb. "1 should have realized that discussing such issues would remind you of Levin.

Do you miss him so very much?"

Caleb sighed. "It's not that, XN. Levin was a good, competent brainship, and he trained me when I was a new brawn, and I'll always owe a debt of gratitude to him. But we weren't — we never just talked, like this, you know? Five years I served with him, and I don't feel I ever really got to know him. No, I'm not in mourning for Levin. But he had a right to look forward to hundreds more years of service, and I lost him that time. And I myself had rather hoped to spend more than five years as a brawn."

"You may yet," Nancia pointed out. "Just because you haven't got a ship assignment yet—"

"And what brainship is going to accept the brawn 94

Atme McCaffrey 6? Margaret BaH,

who let the CL-740 die?" Caleb snapped back. "You yourself have made that little point tolerably dear, XN.

Now drop it Next problem, pleasel"

Nancia started transmitting to CenCom — on a private beam — the moment she exited Singularity and entered Central Worlds subspace. She wanted to have everything arranged, with no possibility of argument, before Caleb was ready to leave the ship.

All proceeded as planned. Dahlen Rahilly, her Service Supervisor, requested permission to enter even before the Thrixtopple family had gathered their numerous items of luggage and departed.

"Arrogant snit," Rahilly commented as they watched the last of Governor Thrixtopple's bony shoulders through Nancia's ground viewport. "He could at least have credited you with a bonus for doing him the favor of this quick transport home."

"I didn't expect it," Nancia replied with perfect truth.

The only bonus she expected—or wanted — was sufl in his cabin, using the cabin comm board to enter a job application letter that somehow kept getting wiped from his personal file storage area. This was his third attempt, and Nancia could tell by the emphatic way Caleb's voice snapped out the words for the dictaboard that he was losing patience. If she didn't get matters settled soon, he would quit trying to use the ship's comm system and make his application personally, at CenCom offices. And that wouldn't suit her at all.

"Well... there will have to be a few changes. Paperwork," Rahilly said. "We ... weren't expecting this, you know, XN. In feet, VS at Vega seemed quite certain that you had formally refused the assignment"

"He ... may have misinterpreted my words," Nancia said demurely. "How soon can it be arranged?"

Shellcrack! While she was talking to Rahilly, Caleb had managed to dictate the complete text of his application PARTNERSHIP

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letter. He was getting ready to transmit it to CenCom.

That mustn't happen... not yet Nancia shut down all outgoing beams at once.

"Oh, we can finish the paperwork in a day. If you're sure that's what you want?"

"I am," Nancia said firmly. There was another party to be consulted, but Rahilly didn't seem to think that would be necessary.

Caleb stalked into the central cabin, brows drawn together. "XN, what do you mean by shutting down my beam to CenCom?"

"Your beam?" Nancia replied. "Oh, dear. All my external beams seem to have lost power for a moment"

"Well have a tech out to fix the malfunction immediately," Rahilly promised.

"Oh... I don't think that will be necessary," Nancia told him. "I've been investigating while we talk, and I believe I have found the source of the problem. It should be easy enough to correct internally." All she needed to do was reopen the power gate....

"Very well, CN-935." Rahilly sketched a Service salute in the general direction of Nancia's titanium column,

"The remaining paperwork will be completed within the day, and then you and Brawn Caleb will be requested to hold yourselves ready for a new assignment—there was one pending, actually; Central wiU be happy not to have to wait while you choose a brawn."

He left as soon as the last word was snapped out, and Nancia was grateful for that. Caleb was staring around the cabin with an expression she could not read. If he was going to be angry with her for going behind his back, she'd just as soon have it out in private.

"I... don't understand," he said slowly. "You aren't waiting to choose a new brawn? You're going to go out solo again?"

"Hardly that," Nancia told him. "I've had enough of solo voyages, thank you very much; I find that I much 96

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prefer to travel with a partner."

"Then..."

"Didn't you hear the man? From now on I'm the CN-935. I've decided that Psych Central was right,"

Nancia said. It was a struggle to keep her voice projec-tions calm and even. "We make a very good team."

Caleb was still speechless, and Nancia felt her one fear approaching.

"If... if that's all right with you?"

"All right, all right, all rigktl" Caleb exploded. "The woman gives me back my life — and with the perfect brain partner—and she wants to know if it's all right? I

— Nancia — oh, wait a minute, would you? There's something I've got to take care of before you restore external beam transmissions."

He hurried off to his cabin, presumably to erase the job application letter that had taken so long to create, and Nancia permitted herself a small coruscating display of stars and comets across her three wide screens.

It was going to be all right.

More than all right. "Nancia," she repeated to herself. "He finally called me Nancia."

Angalia, Central Date 2750:

Blaize

Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc stared in disbelief at his new home as the exit port of the XN-935

slid shut behind him. The mesa top that had served Nancia as a landing field was the only level bit of solid ground in sight. Behind the mesa was a wall of crumb-ly, near-vertical rock that rose in jagged peaks to block out the morning sun. The long black shadows of the mountains fell across the mesa and down into a sea of oozing glop that looked like the Quagmire of Despair as displayed in the latest version of SPACED OUT. The only variation in the brownish sea was that at a few locations large, lazy bubbles rose from the glop and burst with a sulfurous stink.

At the very edge of the mesa, cantilevered precariously out over the Quagmire of Despair, was a gray plastifilm prefab storage facility. Bulging brown sacks stenciled with the initials of Planetary Technical Aid hung from hooks on one side of the shack, dangling right out over the sea of glop. On the side of the shanty nearest Blaize, the plastifilm roof had been extended with some sort of woven fronds to create a sagging awning. Beneath this awning lounged an im-mensely fat man wearing only a pair of sweat-stained briefs.

Blaize sighed and picked up the nearest two pieces of his kit. Staggering slighdy under a gravity considerably higher than ship's norm, he made his way 98

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towards the obese guardian of Angalia.

"PTA tech-trainee Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, sir," he introduced himself. Who is this guy? He's got to be one of the corydum miners. They're the only humans on An-gatia — except, of course...

"And the top of the morning to you, Sherry, me lad,"

- said the sweating man-mountain cordially. "Never was so glad to see anybody in m'life. Hope you enjoy the next five years here."

"Ah — PTA Grade Eleven Supervisor Harmon?"