Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [166]
But then, what business was it of hers if they wanted to drug themselves into a stupor? They'd be much nicer that way, after all. Nancia herself could conceive of nothing more horrible than voluntarily scrambling one's synapses, but softpersons did, by all reports, have very strange tastes.
Besides, they were much easier to put up with now that they were too doped to do anything but giggle softly and spill their Stemerald. Nancia's housekeeping probes mopped up the green puddles on the cabin floor; her passengers ignored the probes and their cleanup activity, and she, as far as possible, ignored the passengers.
Because now, at last, there was somebody else to talk to.
Within seconds of her emergence from Singularity, Nancia had initiated a tightbeam contact with Vega Base. By the time Fassa was cleaned up in her cabin and the other passengers busy with their own peculiar amusements, she had gone through the recognition Sequences and the official messages and was happily chatting with Simeon, the managing brain of Vega Base.
"So how did you like your first voyage?" Simeon inquired.
"Singularity was . . ." Nancia couldn't find words for it; instead she transmitted a short visual burst of colors melting and expanding like soap bubbles, iridescent trails of light joyously spiraling around one another. "I can't wait to jump again."
Simeon chuckled. "You're one of the lucky ones, then. From all I hear, it doesn't take everyone that way."
"My passengers didn't seem to enjoy it much," Nancia conceded, "but who cares?"
"Even brainships don't always get such a kick out of Singularity," Simeon told her.
Nancia found that hard to believe, but she remembered that Simeon was a stationary brain. Embedded in the heart of Vega Base, his only experience of travel would have been the jump that brought him here from Laboratory Schools—as a passenger, like any softperson. Perhaps she shouldn't go on about the joys of Singularity to someone who could never experience the thrill of managing his own jumps.
Besides, Simeon wanted to pursue something else.
"You don't seem to care much for your passengers' comfort."
Again words failed Nancia. She damped the colors of her visual burst to a muddy swirl of greenish browns and grays. "They're not . . . very nice people," she finally answered. "Some of the things I overheard them discussing on the trip . . . Simeon, could I ask you a hypothetical question? Suppose a brainship happened to learn that some people had unethical plans. Should she report them?"
"You mean, like a plot to murder somebody? Or high treason—an attempt to overthrow Central?"
"Oh, goodness, no, nothing like that!" How could Simeon sound so calm while discussing such dreadful things? "At least, I don't think—I mean, suppose they weren't planning to hurt anybody, but what they meant to do was morally wrong? Even illegal?" Alpha's plans to profit from a drug that should have been credited to Central Meds, Polyon's idea of creating a black market in metachips—no, Nancia assured herself, her passengers were nasty and corrupt as all get-out, but at least they weren't violent.
"Hmm. And how might this brainship have found out about her passengers' plans?"
"I—they thought she was a droneship," Nancia said, "and they discussed everything quite freely. She has datacordings of it all, too."
"I see." Simeon sounded quite disapproving, and for a moment Nancia thought he shared her shock at her passengers' plans. "And has it occurred to you, young XN-935, that masquerading as a droneship in order to eavesdrop on High Families' conversations is a form of entrapment? In fact, given that the passengers involved are High Families and very close to CenCom, the act of taking surreptitious datacordings could even be interpreted as treason.