Ishtar Rising Book 1 - Michael A. Martin [23]
“So. You have—”
“—come back—”
“—to shame—”
“—us further.”
Turning to face 1011 and 1110, Soloman felt his face flushing to a temperature that rivaled the air outside the station dome. Nevertheless, he remained determined not to react overtly to the expressions of naked contempt etched across the smooth, pallid faces of his fellow Bynars.
Only then did Soloman notice the presence of members of the ground team’s human staff.
“Listen, guys,” Adrienne Paulos said, looking tired and harried as she scowled at each of the three Bynars. “I don’t know what sort of grudges you’re carrying around and I don’t care. But in spite of our success in the simulator yesterday, our margin for error is still way too slim to allow for anybody’s private hissy fits. Understood?”
The Bynar pair said nothing. They merely continued staring impassively at Soloman.
“I came here to assist Dr. Saadya with work that will benefit our people, as well as the people of Earth,” Soloman said carefully, his eyes alternately boring into 1011’s and 1110’s. “I trust that my conspecifics feel the same way. Unless I missed the point of all those atmospheric simulations we’ve been running in preparation for today’s task.”
The Bynar pair continued their stony silence. Moving as one, they turned their attention to a tandem console situated amid a complex cluster of computer terminals that lined the small room’s cramped center. As one, the pair began interfacing with the computer, speaking to it in high-pitched, rapid-fire ululations of vocalized machine code.
Soloman felt a surge of envy for the rich dataflow in which the other Bynars immersed themselves with such apparent ease. So much like what 111 and I shared—
With a supreme effort of will, he forced the thought from his mind, as though purging a computer of a damaged file.
“I’m glad that’s settled,” Paulos said, a sour half-smirk crossing her face as she crossed to one of the other nearby consoles, where a trio of human technicians busied themselves with similar tasks. She quickly examined her readouts, then paused to confer with the other human staff members.
Feeling even more awkwardly alone than usual, Soloman took his seat at a console adjacent to the one being used by the Bynar pair, neither member of which deigned to look in his direction. Working in silence, Soloman summoned several columns of figures to the touch-sensitive display screen.
Turning his chair slightly away from the other Bynars, Soloman was relieved to note that only the other humans now lay within his immediate line of sight. Let 1011 and 1110 think whatever they wanted about him. He was determined to put their ill will out of his mind, concentrating instead on monitoring and checking their dataflow, which roared through his terminal like the desert winds of Bynaus.
Then he noticed one of the human technicians, a female, glancing at him and shuddering, evidently involuntarily. Though the incident occupied only some small fraction of a second, Soloman thought the woman might have tried to do a better job of concealing her revulsion.
The woman’s reaction brought to mind a warning that Fabian Stevens had once given him. Some humans, Stevens explained, felt uncomfortable around members of the slight, large-brained, computer-dependent Bynar race. “Creeped out” was the expression he had used to describe this unconscious flinching reaction.
I truly am at home nowhere, Soloman thought, sparing a quick glance at his—thankfully preoccupied—Bynar brethren.
“Aphrodite Ground Station ready,” declared a voice carried over the comm speakers. The scratchy message instantly brought Soloman’s entire concentration back to the mission before him.
“Helel Ground Station, check,” another distant voice reported.
“Ground Station Sukra, ready to go,” came the next.
One by one, each of the thirteen remaining staffed ground stations, distributed at even intervals around the planet’s equator and along its prime meridians, reported their status to the central surface-based hub at Ground Station Vesper. Each of these facilities