The City Who Fought Part 6

"Because he is a sh.e.l.lperson. My dear Ms. Hap, as a professional brawn, you are surely well-acquainted with the peculiarities of these persons. Why deny that they are practically a different species? With no real understanding of what it's like to be independently mobile? How could he possibly raise an active, growing child?" The slight emphasis on the two adjectives made Channa clench her teeth in disgust Dorgan's question was also rhetorical.

"Well, now, Joat," Simeon drawled, heavily borrowing from Patsy Sue again, "I guess you were right. Ms. Gorgon had made up her mind before she saw us."

"That's Dorgan," the case-worker said, leaning heavily on the "d."

"Toldja," Joat said, "ol* Ms. Organ's already decided."

"Dorgan. Dorgan. DORGANI"

"Stop it! All three of you." Channa cast her glare over Simeon's column, Joat's flushed face, and finally settled it on the Child Welfare representative. "You have some very strange ideas about sh.e.l.lpeople, Ms. Dorgan, with a D. My advice would be to consider carefully before you make any more bigoted remarks. I particularly resent your denying Simeon his intrinsic humanity. I've never met a sh.e.l.lperson who wasn't at hist as able and responsible as a softperson. And indisputably more ethical! In fact, your remarks indicate active prejudice on your part. Prejudice which is, I might remind you, legally actionable.''

Ms. Dorgan raised her chin. "There's no need, no need at all, Ms. Hap, to make threats. No doubt it is due to your long a.s.sociation with such persons that you no longer consider them... abnormal." Before Channa could get over sputtering at that, the case-worker smiled smugly. "In the child's best interests, I'm afraid that I shall have to deny this pet.i.tion. I shall make arrangements for her transport to Central, where, after a short stay at our orphan facility, she will no doubt be adopted by aproper family." Still smiling she broke the connection.

"Well?" Simeon almost shouted into the ensuing silence. "You're not going to let her have the last word on this, are you?"

"Don't she have it? Far's this orphan child's concerned?" Joat demanded bitterly. "I knew this'd happen. I told myself this'd happen. But you two trained brains were both so d.a.m.ned sure" She sneered as she counted off her points. "You knew just where to go and just who to talk to and just what to do. But you know what? You don't know ANYTHING! But after all, how could you?" she asked her eyes beginning to fill with tears. "Everything's always gone your way. Everything's always just been handed to you." She started to sob. "Sh.e.l.ls, education, food, a living place. Well, they don't get handed out, lemme tell ya. And look what you've done to me Now they know I exist and where I am, and they're coming to get me! For all I know, that lattice engineer wants to play diddly on my lattice work. Only he's human and a professor and's got an 'in* with her. You got me into this, but I'm sure not waiting for you to get me out. I'm not goin' anywhere with n.o.body don't want to!" Her voice had reached scream level before she pivoted and ran from the lounge.

*Joat!" Channa moved to follow her, but Simeon closed the door in her face. "Simeon!" she said in disbelief.

"Let her go, Channa. What could you do now? Lock her in her room until they come for her?" Channa looked as though he'd struck her. "She needs time and privacy. She needs to feel in control again. Let her alone."

"There are things we can do, Simeon. I'm not going to let that woman win. We can go over her head in Child Welfere. We can appeal to SPRIM and Double M for help. You taped that interview, didn't you?"

He laughed, for once pleased to see her so combative. "Yes, I did, and won't the Mutant Minorities and the Society for the Preservation of the Rights of Intelligent Minorities dump on La Gorgon for her att.i.tudes! Good thinking, Channa. I'm this very moment apprising them of this incident Y'know, this could even be fun."

Late that night, Simeon noticed that a light came on in Channa's quarters. He had a.s.siduously kept to his promise, but the faint glow under the door was plainly visible. Well, to anyone with photonscanners like mine, he amended. Still, he was observing the principle of the thing.

Channa heard a chiming sound and, after a surprised pause, called out "h.e.l.lo?"

Simeon's voice, carefully adjusted to low audibility, answered from the lounge, "May I come in?"

She smiled and laid aside the reader she'd picked up. "Yes, you may."

She lay in bed, looking tousled and sleepy. Simeon thought that she looked little more than a kid herself, "Can't sleep?" he asked.

She shook her head, "I keep thinking of Joat, alone down there in the dark."

"Joat's been asleep for hours,"

"How do you know that? She might still be crying her heart out for all we know."

"I know because I can hear little, Joat-sized snores issuing from one of her favorite haunts."

"She didn't turn on her sound-scrubber?"

"Nope. She was upset!"

"No, she was thoughtful. She is becoming more civilized if she didn't want us to worry." And Channa laughed in relief, then sobered. "She's such a good kid. She really didn't deserve Gorgon on her case. Look, Simeon, B & B's are considered couples by Central Worlds. Our contracts tend to last a lot longer than mere marriages. If I stayed on for say, ten years and applied for joint custody with you, most of Gorgon's objections would be invalid."

"Joint custody, huh? Well, Gorgon can't say a female brawn isn't a good role model. I've got comlines hotting up, but what I don't know is how many others at Child Welfare suffer from Dorgan's prejudice. I'd hate to see you make such a 'supreme sacrifice' for nothing. Fighting Ms. Gorgon through the bureaucracy won't turn us to stone, but it could bore our brains into oatmeal."

Channa gave a litde "tsh" of scorn. "It's not like I've got anywhere else to go."

"I know, I heard about Senalgal. Sorry, Channa. I know what it's like to lose an a.s.signment you'd sell your soul to get"

She raised her eyebrows inquiringly. "What was it for you, if you don't mind my asking - a planet-based city, a scout s.h.i.+p? Or maybe you looked as high as a whole planet?"

"I've got a city, more or less. Definitely not a scout s.h.i.+p. The brain/brawn scout s.h.i.+p is too claustrophobic and limited. Ilike dealing withalot of people. lenjoy the give and take of various personalities and situations. More challenge on a station this size. Hove being challenged."

"Not a city, not a s.h.i.+p. You're after a planet?"

"No, I wouldn't want that much responsibility. And a planet's too sedentary. But a s.h.i.+p, definitely, so I could get around a lot."

"Ah,*' she said, making the connection between his leisure interests and the only s.h.i.+p a.s.signment that applied, "a s.p.a.ce Navy command-s.h.i.+p." She c.o.c.ked her head. "Are you in line for one?"

"Theoretically, yes. I've applied and what do I get? "You're too important where you are,' " he began in a singsong monotone, " 'You're too perfect where you are, there's no one else as well-trained as you are for such a highly specialized situation.' I've always," he added wryly, "considered SSS-900-C to be a temporary a.s.signment.''

"Forty years is temporary?''

"With sh.e.l.lpersons, of course it is."

"Maybe we aren't so imperfectly matched after all." She paused a moment, then in a flippant tone added, "With Joat to sweeten the deal, I don't think I would regard staying here as a 'supreme sacrifice.' Ugh! Orphan facility, indeed! Pick her up? Like some sort of a package?" She peered out of her room towards his column. "Do you think we stand a chance of reversing Dorgan's decision?"

Simeon wouldn't have taken bets, but he had barely tackled the task. On the up side, he felt something deep inside him beginning to uncoil. "With a B & B partners.h.i.+p, we have a chance. 1 appreciate your willingness to consider one very much, Channa. Right now though, dear lady, why don't you sleep on it?"

She sighed. "Mm, but I'm restless, and," she played with an edge of the reader, "there's nothing I really want to read."

"Then," he said, gendy dimming the lights, "I shall recite a bedtime poem for you. Settle in." He waited until she had scooted down and adjusted covers and pillows, smiling as she did so. He began, "We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage ..." Her eyes dosed, and gradually she drifted off to sleep as Simeon recited. "... softly through the silence beat the bells, Along the golden road to Samarkand."

Channa emerged into the lounge, heading for the table and her morning coffee. A wave of sound struck her - very much a wave, like plunging into a curling jade-green wall that seized her and bore her back towards the beach.

She couldn't help but recognize the music as "The Triumphal March" from The Empress of Ganymede by User.

She paused with a slight frown when she realized that she had unconsciously altered her stride to suit the march tempo. She stopped, and her pause was the length of a measure. She laughed when she realized it. "Does this mean I get to be queen today?"

"Actually, after your restless night, I decided something upbeat would suit."

"Well, I sure got off on the right foot, then," she said with a sound approximating a giggle.

Simeon was pleased. Last night their relations.h.i.+p really had turned a corner. They were going to be all right.

"So, a good morning to you, Simeon," she said with an impish smile.

"And a good morning right back atcha, as Patsy Sue would say."

Channa's appreciative smile faded slowly into a frown. "I'd consider it a real good morning if I could see and speak to Joat as soon as possible. I'm very worried that she might jump s.h.i.+p on us, and that would ruin every step of progress we've made with her." fc? SM. Stirling "Wish I could oblige you on that, Charm a, but I don't know where she is now. She turned on her sound-scrubber early this morning and effectively vanished." He hurried on when Channa's face showed her disappointment clearly. "I don't think she'd leave on two counts. One, she knows her way intimately between the skins of this station, and it's certainly big enough for her to change hidey-holes on an hourly basis if necessary. And two, none of the s.h.i.+ps undocking today are the type she could stow away on or hire out on. I've got every sensor tuned to her registered patterns, and I've discreetly alerted key personnel."

Channa nodded and went to her console, pulling the notescreen towards her. "Then we had better get to work. SPRIM ought to be moving on that dispatch you sent off last night." Her anxiety lifted at Simeon's knowing chuckle. She ran her fingers in a tattoo on the console. "And I suspect Child Welfare won't like being on their hit list."

"Hit list?" Simeon spoke with some alarm. "Are they that way inclined?" He didn't wish Ms. Dorgan any pkysicalharm.

"The way SPRIM execs rave about humanocentric chauvinism is enough to turn even a tolerant person into a xenophobe. They've got money and they're tireless in ensuring protection. That slur she made on sh.e.l.lpeople, well.,. And the MM make SPRIM look like a quilting party."

"Quilting party?" Simeon searched his lexicon for the term.

"Old-fas.h.i.+oned way to spend a productive and socializing evening," she explained absently, "Oh. Not much we can do until they get back to us, I suppose."

Simeon sounded unhappy. Channa quirked a corner of her mouth.

"We can't go in with lasers blazing and slag Child Welfare Central, if that's what you mean. If the station had full self-government, they wouldn't be able to mess with us - so let's concentrate on station business for now, shall we?" She cleared her throat. "I've been going over your accounts, Simeon, and I've got to say that you have some weird entries. For example, tucked away in the fourth quarter is the notation 'stuff.' You'll have to be more specific than 'stuff.'"

"Why? 'Stuff' is acceptable to the accountants," he said in a facetious tone.

"I'm not an accountant. I'm supposed to be your partner. Would you explain 'stuff'?"

"It's like this, Channa, I buy things that interest me. Me, Simeon, not the station master brain." Never mind that that also accounted for why he hadn't paid off his natal debt to Central Worlds. So Tm a packrat. Is that her business now?

Far out in s.p.a.ce, Simeon's peripheral monitors, the ring of sensors that warned of incoming traffic, began to transmit information that suggested a very large object was headed their way. From the ripples it caused in subs.p.a.ce, it was very large or very fast or both. He split his attention between her and the alert, and sent a communicator pulse in the direction of the disturbance. There were strict rules on how to approach a station. Approaching unheralded broke half a dozen regs and invariably caused stiff credit penalties.

Respond to hailing, he transmitted. Respond immediately.

"Well, we've got this inspection and audit coming up in two weeks," he heard Channa saying in a firm let'snot-beat-about-the-bush tone. "We have get to have everything s.h.i.+pshape and Bristol fas.h.i.+on, partner."

He did appreciate that she subtly reminded him of her promise to help with Joat, but this was no time for petty details.

"I don't have a s.h.i.+p shape, Channa," he muttered in his distraction, "but I do have something very unusual out there, approaching me without due protocol."

Visual information was now reaching him. Dropping out of interstellar transit and approaching at... Great Ghu> .17 c! A large vessel whose profile did not fit any known human s.h.i.+p. The basic hufl-fonn was spherical, but carried a web of crazy-quilt additions, constructions of girder and latticework. Some of them looked as if they had been slashed off short with energy beams, and the cutpoints were tattered. People were generally not sloppy with cutting tools. Enemies were. Simeon relayed a standard "please identify" message and put the tugbays on standby.

"Nor am I abristle," he continued to Channa. "The inspectors will be when they come, though."

Channa groaned. "Even for you that was lame. You're being unusually ridiculous, Simeon. You know the mentality that goes with these inspections - sentence first, trial afterwards."

"In other words, off with our heads, if they could reach mine."

"And us running as fast as we can to stay in one place, too. Which capability you also don't have. Now, since this is my first time with you.. .** "Oh, Channa... pant, pant** "Simeon," she said warningly. "I know where the controls for your hormone balance are."

"Heh hen, sorry. What's the worst they can do to me? Send me back to asteroidic purgatory? Like I told you, I'm only on temporary duty here anyway."

Channa had been running a scan. "There are twelve entries for the word 'stuff'! You want this to be a temporary a.s.signment? Well, you may get your wish."

"It's not a wish, my dear, I never said 'I wish they'd take me away from here and put me anywhere else.' I've a very definite destination in mind, as you so astutely concluded the other evening. If I had my druthers, I'd be running a command s.h.i.+p and waging star wars on the Axial Perimeter. But," and he gave a huge audible sigh, "wbo believes in wishes anymore?"

"You do, with all your war games and tactical daydreams."

The approaching s.h.i.+p still had not responded, nor was it dumping speed as fast as it should. In fact, whoever was in command had waited much too long to begin doing so. The flare of drive energies should be blanking out that whole quadrant, and the neutrino flux was barely enough for a pile just ticking over. Simeon came to a disagreeable conclusion.

"Whoa, there, Channa. We've got stuff, not mine, coming in to make mince of us if we're not careful. Have a look?"

Simeon slapped up a main screen view of the intruder bearing down on them. Surprise and alarm held her motionless for only a split second before she reacted.

"I'm alerting the perimeter guard," she said, wiping her previous program and inputing the new.

"Right!" Although he already had, two sources of the same alert emphazised the emergency. "I'm busy calculating how to cus.h.i.+on the impact of that great hulking ma.s.s whistling towards us. I hope they know where the brakes are." Nice to have a brawn to share emergency work. The station personnel should get used to dealing with her.

Stabbing the alert b.u.t.ton on the main console, Channa then called up a finer resolution of the object, which to her appeared to be a darker ma.s.s against the black of s.p.a.ce.

"Unannounced arrival!" She transmitted the image to the personnel on perimeter traffic control, alerting them to the pertinent vector and ordering them to begin rerouting incoming traffic.

"How do you know it's ivhistting toward us?" she asked in as calm a voice as he was using while her fingers flew over the controls. "There's no sound in s.p.a.ce."

Simeon could detect just a micro-tremor of fear in her noncommittal tone. "If I think it whistles," he answered, "it whisdes."

"Perimeter says it's like nothing they've ever seen before either and -" she paused and licked her lips "- it's about to cut a broad swath through the proper traffic pattern."

Simeon took full control of the traffic control boards. He could see and respond to die necessary changes in traffic patterns faster than any unsh.e.l.led human. He was simultaneously redirecting and responding to dozens of s.h.i.+ps.

Suddenly Channa started cursing. "d.a.m.n their eyes and innards! These d.a.m.ned civilians are asking questions instead of doing what they're supposed to in emergency routines. Now you see why I didn't like you calling those false alarms. No one's paying a blind bit of attention to tkasgenuine emergency! Wolf-cryer!"

"I've put it on every public screen. They'll know it's no drill," Simeon said, his voice velvet with malice, "and it's coming straight at us. I don't think it'll stop,"

I didn't realize you could banter when you're terrified, he thought with tight control, though it helped being able to set your a.n.a.logue of adrenal glands.

Channa stared, stunned, as the screen filled with the alien s.h.i.+p. "You haven't activated the repel screen? Hit it for G.o.d's sake!" She pressed her rocker switch just a fraction of a second behind Simeon.

Joat gritted her teeth and wiped eyes and nose on the back of her sleeve. It was a good s.h.i.+rt, and dean. Dumb, she told herself fiercely. Dumb, dumb, dumb b.i.t.c.h, dumb gash, just like the captain told you you were. Especially when he was drunk. He'd always been worse then.

She turned her attention back to the little computer. It was the best she'd ever been able to steal, a real Spuglish; jacked into the station system right now, with the skipper-unit she'd cobbled up to keep the station from knowing just where or why.

s.h.i.+p schedules / departures / outsystem, she told it Machines didn't lie to you! You could trust machines and, if they didn't do what they were supposed to, it wasn't because they had lied. Maths and machinery could be believed.

A barking sob broke through her lips, spattering drops on the screen. She bit down on her hand until the pain and the taste of her own blood let her continue. Then she wiped the machine down with the tail of her s.h.i.+rt Machines didn't let you down, either.

Departures, the computer said. Look, Joat, you don't have to leave here. Trust me, we're- "No!" she screamed.

Joat stuffed the scramblers into her pockets and went off down the duct at a scrambling crawl, ignoring projections and brackets that only slighdy impeded her progress. The motions were reflexive, with a graceless efficiency.

n.o.body's going to give me away again, she thought. Get me used to eating regular and school and everything, then give me away! The thought went round and round in her head, filling it, so that it was minutes before the klaxon penetrated her self-absorption.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," she whispered in a still small voice, listening. Then she turned and went back the way she came, faster still The computer was back there, and without it, she wouldn't be able to find out what was really going on.

Her s.p.a.cesuit was diere, too. This sounded serious.

"THIS IS NO DRILL! REPEAT, THIS IS NO DRILL1" The words rang down the corridors and haUs.p.a.ces, without the melodramatic klaxons Simeon had always used. "Nonessential personnel report to secure areas. Report to secure areas. Prepare for breach of hull integrity."

This time the citizens of the SSS-900-C listened, hastening into suits, gathering children and pets and heading for the central core or section shelters. Crews pelted onto their s.h.i.+ps, even as moorings were detached and entry locks irised shut and each "all on board" signal was relayed to Simeon. Emergency crews flocked to their a.s.signed stations. Infirmary patients who could not be moved were placed in individual, independently powered life-support units. All too soon, most of the citizens of SSS-900-C could only wait, imagining their station crushed like an egg as die invader plowed into them.

Simeon worked frantically, ordering s.h.i.+ps of all sizes out of the projected path of the incoming s.h.i.+p, brutally suppressing the knowledge that s.h.i.+ps with ordinary, unsh.e.l.led pilots could barely handle the split second timing he was asking of them. So for, so good - no one out there seemed destined to die today. For a heartstopping moment he thought the alien might be decelerating, but the blaze of energies sputtered and died. It's only shed 7% of relative velocity, he calculated dismally. Not nearly enough.