Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [251]
While he thought out his approach to Blaize, he was startled by a crackle of sound. The idiot thought he'd achieved a private channel to the lounge! And what was he planning to do with it? Polyon scowled, then began to listen attentively. It seemed that Blaize was too bright to make a good tool.
But he might still be an excellent pawn, in a game whose moves he'd never see. . . .
* * *
"Uncle Forister?" Blaize switched comm channels to the lounge. "I need to talk to you."
"Talk," Forister grunted. He was just putting the final touches to a truly beautiful strategy, designed to pit Micaya's and Nancia's Brainship pieces against one another while he moved unopposed to control all vertices of the holohex.
"Privately."
"Oh, all right." Forister got up and stretched. "Nancia, can you store the holohex until I get back? I wouldn't want to tire you by asking you to maintain the display while we're not actually playing,"
Nancia chuckled. "You mean you don't want to leave the holohex set up where we can study the positions and figure out what nasty trap you're getting ready to spring on us this time."
"Well . . ."
The holohex folded in upon itself and became a sheet, a line, a point of dazzling blue light that then winked out of existence. "All right. We're approaching the Singularity point, anyway; I really shouldn't be playing games now. Need to check my math," Nancia said cheerfully. "Be sure and get back in time to strap yourself in. You softpersons get so disoriented in Singularity."
"And you shellpersons get so uppity about it," Forister retorted. "All right. You'll warn us in plenty of time, I assume?"
"And monitor you while you're in the cabin," Nancia said. "Don't look like that; it's for Blaize's protection as well as yours. If you're left alone with him, the prosecution might try to discredit your testimony, say you'd been bribed or suborned."
"They won't have much respect for his uncle's good word anyway," said Forister gloomily, going on down the passageway to find out what Blaize had in mind. Nancia triggered the release mechanism on the door just long enough for him to slide through.
"I think Polyon's planning something," Blaize said as soon as Forister entered the cabin. He sat at the cabin console, one hand quivering over the palmpad without actually starting a program, all red-headed intensity like a fox at a rabbit hole.
"What?"
"I don't know. He wants to get out of his cabin. He keeps telling us that he can fix everything if only he could get out for a few minutes. Listen!" Blaize ran the heel of his hand over the palmpad and brought up a datacording of the last few transmissions between the SPACED OUT gamesters. From the cabin console he couldn't access enough memory to store images as well as voices; the players' words crackled out through the speaker, disembodied and robbed of half their meaning. Forister listened to the recorded exchange and shook his head.
"Just sounds like a few more moves in that dumb game of yours to me, Blaize."
"It's a move in a game, all right," Blaize said grimly, "but he's not playing the same game as the rest of us. Damn! I wish I'd been able to capture the images and the icon moves too. Then you'd see."
"See what?"
"That what Polyon was saying made absolutely no sense in the context of the actual game moves." Blaize dropped his hands in his lap and looked up at Forister. "Can Nancia keep Polyon under sleepgas until we reach Central?"
"She can," Forister replied, "but I've yet to see any reason why she should. This case is going to have all the High Families buzzing like uprooted stingherbs as it is; it'll only be worse if we give them some excuse to allege mistreatment of prisoners."
"But you heard him!"
"Didn't make any sense to me," Forister allowed, "but nothing about that silly game makes sense, in my humble opinion. Come on, Blaize. Can you seriously see me explaining to some High Court judge that I kept a prisoner stunned and unconscious for two solid weeks because something he said in the course of a children's game made me nervous?"
"I suppose not,"