Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [270]
"An error of judgment, perhaps," Javier Perez y de Gras said when the silence had lasted too long, "but never . . . please believe me . . . an error of love. You're my daughter. I only wanted the best for you." And rising from his padded chair, he laid one hand briefly on the titanium column that enclosed and protected Nancia's shell.
* * *
"Requesting permission to come aboard!"
There was no identification this time, but Nancia recognized Forister's voice, even though there was something unfamiliar about the way he drew the words out. She activated her external sensors and saw not only Forister but General Questar-Benn standing on the landing pad.
"Request permission to come aboard," Forister repeated. He was pronouncing his words very carefully. And Micaya Questar-Benn was standing very properly, stiff as if she were on a parade-ground. A suspicion began to grow in Nancia's mind.
She slid open the lower doors and waited. A moment later the airlock door opened and Micaya Questar-Benn stepped into the lounge. Very slowly and carefully.
Forister followed. He was holding an open bottle in one hand.
"You are drunk," Nancia said severely.
Forister looked wounded. "Not yet. Wouldn't get drunk before I came back to share the news with you. Just . . . happy. Very happy," he expatiated. "Very, very, very . . . where was I?"
"Looking at the bottom of a bottle of Sparkling Heorot, I suspect," Nancia told him.
Forister's wounded expression intensified. "Please! Do you think I'd toast the best brainship on Central in that cheap stuff? It's only fit for, for . . ."
"Starving musicians?" Nancia suggested. Some day she would have to have a serious talk with Daddy about Flix; suggest that he stop finding Flix promising career openings and just let the boy be a synthocommer. But this latest visit of Daddy's hadn't seemed the right time to bring the subject up. And she couldn't beam him now; Forister had other things on his mind. What there was left of his mind, she corrected with a shade of envy.
"I'll have you know," Forister announced with a flourish, "this is genuine Old Earth wine! Badacsonyi Keknyelu, no less!"
Nancia's new language module included not only Latin and Greek but a sprinkling of less well-known Old Earth tongues. She skimmed the Hungarian dictionary. "Blue-Tongue Lake Badacsony? Are you sure?"
"Believe him," Micaya Questar-Benn chimed in. Like Forister, she was taking great care with her consonants. "If it's as good as the red stuff; it's worth every credit he paid for it. What was the red stuff called, Forister?"
"Egri Bikaver."
"Bull's Blood from Eger," Nancia translated. "Oh, well. You know, sometimes I don't really mind not being able to share softshell pleasures. Er—what are we celebrating?"
"End of the trial! Don't you follow the newsbytes?"
"Not lately. They never have much to say," Nancia equivocated. And if there were any questions about my deposition, I don't want to hear them.
"Well, they do now." Forister pulled himself erect and stood in the center of the lounge swaying slightly. "Sentencing was this morning. Alpha bint Hezra-Fong and Darnell Overton-Glaxely got twenty-five years each. They'll do community service on a newly colonized planet—under strict guard."
"Alpha may be some use to the colonists," Nancia commented, "but I don't know what a bunch of poor innocent colonists have done that they should be saddled with Darnell."
"Farming world," Forister said cheerfully. "They need a lot of stoop labor. As for the rest—" He sobered briefly. "Polyon's back to Shemali."
"What?"
"Working the hyperchip burnoff lines," Forister said. "The new manager's worked out a failsafe way to disable the virus Polyon built into his hyperchip design. So the factories are to continue production . . . under