Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [236]
Blaize was confined in the cabin opposite Darnell's. After half an hour's furious argument about who would look after "his" Loosies while he was being shipped back to Central, he'd accepted Nancia's promise to see that her sister Jinevra personally oversaw whoever was sent to replace him on Angalia. "One thing about the Perez line, they're hopelessly honest," he said in resignation. "Jinevra may not be creative, but at least she won't let that swine Harmon get his hooks into them again. You do realize that if this year's harvest fails, all my work will be wasted?"
"I realize, I realize," Nancia told him patiently. "Trust Jinevra." And as she sent out a general Net call to Jinevra and explained the situation to her sister, she wondered guiltily just how different she was from the rest of the High Families brats. Daddy had pulled strings to get her sent on this assignment. Now she was calling in favors owed her in Courier Service, and making her sister feel guilty, so that she could interfere in what should have been left to the normal channels of PTA administration.
But "normal channels" left the Loosies without the kind of aid they needed. Nancia sighed.
"Will there never be a bureaucracy that does what it's supposed to without sinking into corruption and inefficiency?" she asked Forister.
"Probably not," he replied.
"You sound like Simeon—advising me to accept corruption because it's everywhere!"
Forister shook his head. "Not in the least I'm advising you not to waste energy being surprised and shocked about the predictable. No system, anywhere, is proof against human failings. If it were—" he forced a tired smile—"we'd be computers. Your hyperchips may be foolproof, Nancia, but the human part of you makes mistakes—and so do all of us. Fortunately," he added, "humans can also recognize and correct mistakes—unlike computers, which just go on until they crash. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like access to your comm system for a while. I want to see what I can do to prevent Blaize from crashing."
While Blaize's explanations had satisfied all of them on an emotional level, he still had some legal problems to face. No matter how excellent his motivation, the fact remained that he had falsified PTA reports, sold PTA shipments on the black market, and transferred the profits into his personal Net account. To leave him on Angalia while the others were shipped back for trial would have seemed like the worst kind of favoritism. All Forister could do was to make sure that all the facts were on record for the trial—not just how Blaize had obtained the money, but what he had done with it and how he had improved the lives of the people he was sent to aid.
"They are people," Forister reported to Blaize with satisfaction.
"Of course they are! Couldn't you tell that?"
"What I thought, or what you thought, is beside the point," Forister told him. "What counts is CenDip's decision. And there must be at least one intelligent man in CenDip, because your report has already been received and acted on. The Loosies have ISS as of yesterday. And the decision's palmprinted by no less a person than the CenDip Secretary-Universal, Javier Perez y de Gras."
Nancia heard that with great satisfaction and turned her attention to her last prisoner. Fassa was spending most of this voyage just as she had spent the trip from Bahati to Angalia, crouched on her cabin floor, arms around her knees, staring at nothing and ignoring the food trays Nancia extruded at the dining slot. Untouched bowls of soup, baskets of sliced sweetbread, tempting fruit purees and sliced synthobird in glow-sauce went back into the recycling bins to be synthesized into new combinations of proteins and carbohydrates and fats. To all Nancia's gentle suggestions of food or entertainment Fassa replied with a dull "No, thank you," or "It doesn't matter."
"You must eat something," Nancia told her.
"Must I?" Fassa seemed obscurely amused. "No, thank you. I've had enough of men telling me what I must do and what I must be. Who cares if I get too skinny