Miracle Workers (SCE Books 5-8) - Keith R. A. DeCandido_. [et al.] [76]
Morale has improved tremendously since the unfortunate incident with the so-called “monster shii.” I am still awaiting an autopsy report from Dr. Dolahn on the nature of the creature. However, my killing the thing has elevated me in the eyes of the Nalori workers. Many have taken to following J’Roh’s example and calling me “Sañuul.” I have tried to discourage this, but to no avail. I’m also not entirely comfortable with the fact that it has taken me killing an animal to gain the respect of the workers.
On the other hand, I can’t argue with the results. We’ve worked the bugs out of the antimatter reactor, the magnetic containment system is up and running, and we’ll be ready to bring the antimatter pods on-line tomorrow. In addition, when I informed Kejahna and the workers assigned to the ACB that we’d have to so radically change the power systems output, his response to my criticism of the methods employed by my predecessor—for the first time since I arrived—was not hostile.
Now it is simply a question of waiting until noon, when we get our pulsar/quasar window.
Personal log, Commander Sonya Gomez, planet Sarindar, Stardate 53281.2
I have learned several valuable lessons these last few days.
The first, and most depressing, is that if you want to gain the respect of a party of Nalori workers, kill a mutated animal (or whatever that overgrown shii was) that attacked your camp. All the sexism, all the anti-Federation sentiment, seems to have disappeared since we came back to the camp with the corpse of the “monster shii.”
The second is that I’m no good at eulogies. We held a funeral service for Kelrek, Saolgud, and Mokae the day after I killed the shii. Nalori death rituals are fairly straightforward: the bodies are burned, and a person of authority—of any authority, it doesn’t have to be someone religious—commends their souls to the afterlife. To be precise, according to the crash course Razka gave me prior to the funeral, their deaths must be announced to the Shigemos so they can welcome their mazza into the Endless Wind. (This was something else missing from the cultural database I read on the da Vinci.)
I tried suggesting the ever-evangelical Zilder as a substitute, but the Nalori would hear none of it. Zilder is an infidel, as far as they’re concerned. (Zilder’s predictable response was, “Give me time to convert you all.”) Of course, I’m as much an infidel, but Razka said that I was the only person on the planet qualified. I’m just grateful that the ritual calls for burning—burial wouldn’t be possible on the glassy surface of Sarindar.
Still, I did my best, which was pretty awful. I see no reason to commit the stumbling, awkward mess to the record—I pointedly turned my tricorder off before the funeral—but suffice it to say, the Shigemos were suitably, if not always intelligibly, informed of the incoming mazza.
The third is that I need to double-check everything. I made what could have been a huge mistake by assuming that the power output on the annular confinement beam was properly adjusted for the size of the ACB, and it wasn’t. Since the diagnostic programs were created by the same people who got the ratios wrong, no error was detected—especially since there’s no point of reference for an ACB this powerful. J’Roh expressed a concern that the nodes might not be able to handle the additional power, but I made sure the auto-shutdown features were up and running in case of such a difficulty.
The fourth is that I’ve gotten remarkably dependent on a tricorder. On a planet so loaded with chimerium, a tricorder is often little more than a glorified paperweight. That’s not entirely fair—medical tricorders still function, certain data can still be