Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [72]
Tia had known that Professor Barton was genuine—without checking. And Barton had said things that indicated he knew who she was.
Alex had never really wondered about her background. He'd always assumed that she was just like every other shellperson he'd ever known; popped into her shell at birth, because of fatal birth-defects, with parents who would rather forget she had ever been born. Who were just as pleased that she was someone else's problem.
What was it that the professor had said, though? You both have backgrounds in archeology. Hypatia, you know how digs work, intimately.
From everything that Jon Chernov had said, the shellperson program was so learning-intensive that there was no time for hobbies. A shellperson only acquired hobbies after he got out in the real world and had leisure time for them. The Lab Schools' program was so intensive that even play was scheduled and games were choreographed, planned, and taught just like classes. There was no room to foster an "interest" in archeology. And it was not on the normal course curriculum.
The only way you knew how digs worked "intimately" was to work on them yourself.
Or be the child of archeologists who kept you on-site with them.
That was when it hit him; something Tia had said. The Cades met while they were recovering from Henderson's Chorea. That kind of information would not be the sort of thing someone who made a hobby of archeology would know. Details of archeologists' lives were of interest only to people who knew them.
Under cover of running a search on EsKay digs, he pulled up the information on the personnel—backtracking to the last EsKay dig the Cades had been on.
And there it was. C-121. Active personnel, Braddon Maartens-Cade, Pota Andropolous-Cade. Dependent, Hypatia Cade, age seven.
Hypatia Cade; evacuated to station-hospital Pride of Albion by MedService AI-drone. Victim of some unknown disease. Braddon and Pota put in isolation—Hypatia never heard from again. Perhaps she died—but that wasn't likely.
There could not be very many girls named "Hypatia" in the galaxy. The odds of two of them being evacuated to the same hospital-ship were tiny; the odds that his Tia's best friend, Doctor Kennet Uhua-Sorg—who was chief of Neurology and Neurosurgery—would have been the same doctor in charge of that other Tia's case were so minuscule he wasn't prepared to try to calculate them.
He replaced the file and logged off the boards feeling as if he had just been hit in the back of the head with aboard.
Oh, spirits of space. When she took me as brawn, I made a toast to our partnership—"may it be as long and fruitful as the Cades'." Oh, decom it. I'm surprised she didn't bounce me out the airlock right then and there.
"Tia," he said carefully into the silent cabin. "I—uh—I'd like to apologize—"
"So, you found me out, did you?" To his surprise and profound relief, she sounded amused. "Yes, I'm Hypatia Cade. I'd thought about telling you, but then I was afraid you'd feel really badly about verbally falling over your own feet. You do realize that you can't access any data without my being aware of it, don't you?"
"Well, heck, and I thought I was being so sneaky." He managed a weak grin. "I thought I'd really been covering my tracks well enough that you wouldn't notice. I—uh—really am sorry if I made you feel badly."
"Oh, Alex, it would only have been tacky and tasteless—or stupid and insensitive—if you'd done it on purpose." She laughed; he'd come to like her laugh, it was a deep, rich one. He'd often told her BB jokes just so he could hear it. "So it's neither; it's just one of those things. I assume that you're curious now. What is it you want to know about me?"
"Everything!" he blurted, and then flushed with embarrassment. "Unless you'd rather not talk about it."
"Alex, I don't mind at all! I had a very happy childhood, and frankly, it will be a lot more comfortable being able to talk about Mum and Dad—or with Mum and