Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [73]
"So you still stay in contact with your parents?" Alex was fascinated; this went against everything he'd been told about shellpersons, either at the academy or directly from Jon Chernov. Shellpersons didn't have families; their supervisors and their classmates were their families.
"Of course I still stay in contact with them. I'm their biggest fan. If archeologists can have fans." Her center screen came up; on it was a shot of Pota and Braddon, proudly displaying an ornate set of body-armor. "Here's something from their latest letter; they just uncovered the armory, and what they found is going to set the scholastic world on its collective ears. That's iron plates you see on Bronze Age armor."
"No—" He stared in fascination, and not just at the armor. At Pota and Braddon, smiling and waving like any other parents for their child. Pota pointed to something on the armor, while Braddon's mouth moved, explaining something. Tia had the sound off, and the definition wasn't good enough for Alex to lip-read.
"That's not my real interest though," she continued. "I was telling you the truth. I'm after the EsKay homeworld, but I want it because I want to find the bug that got me." The two side-screens came up, both with older pictures. "Before you ask, dear, there I am. The one on the right is my seventh birthday party, the one on the left, as you can see, is a picture of me with Theodore Bear and Moira's brawn Tomas—Ted was a present from both of them." She paused for a moment. "Just checking. Yes, that's the last good picture that was taken of me. The rest are all in the hospital, and I wouldn't inflict them on anyone but a neurologist."
Alex studied the two pictures, each of which showed the same bright-eyed, elfin child. An incredibly pretty child, dark-haired, blue-eyed, with a thin, delicate face and a smile that wouldn't stop. "How did you get into the shellperson program?" he asked. "I thought they didn't take anyone after the age of one!"
"They didn't, until me," she replied. "That was Doctor Kenny's doing, and Lars, the systems manager for the hospital; they were convinced that I was flexible enough to make the transition—since I was intelligent enough to understand what had happened to me, and what it meant. Which was—" she added, "—complete life-support. No mobility."
He shuddered. "I can see why you wouldn't want that to happen to anyone else ever again."
"Precisely." She blanked the screens before he had a chance to study the pictures further. "After I turned out so well, Lab Schools started considering older children on a case-by-case basis. They've taken three, so far, but none as old as me."
"Well, my lady—as remarkable as you are now, you must have been just as remarkable a child," he told her, meaning every word.
"Flatterer," she said, but she sounded pleased.
"I mean it," he insisted. "I interviewed with two other ships, you know. None of them had your personality. I was looking for someone like Jon Chernov; they were more like AI drones."
"You've mentioned Jon before—" she replied, puzzled. "Just what does he have to do with us?"
"Didn't I tell you?" he blurted—then hit himself in the forehead with his hand. "Decom it, I didn't! Jon's a shellperson too; he was the supervisor and systems manager on the research station where my parents worked!"
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "So that's why—"
"Why what?"
"Why you treat me like you do—facing my column, asking permission to come aboard, asking me what kind of music I want in the main cabin—"
"Oh, you bet!" he said with a grin. "Jon made darn sure I had good shellsoft manners before he let me go off to the Academy. He'd have verbally blistered my hide if I ever forgot you're here—and that you're the part of the team that can't go off to her own cabin to be alone."
"Tell me about him," she urged.
He had to think hard to remember the first time he ever started talking to Jon. "I think I first realized