Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [93]
Find that device of Lasper Farr’s then leave the ship at Intel and return to Belle-Monde, said logic-mind.
Free-mind was not so optimistic. How can you make something so complex sound so simple?
‘That sniffling I can hear, Tekton?’
Samuelle peeled open the neck and suddenly he was out in ship air and feeling better. With her help, he shed the remainder of the suit and sank onto the narrow bed.
Samuelle wrinkled her nose as she lifted the suit away from him and onto a hook. ‘You sure stank that up for an ‘esque who don’t sweat much.’
‘My skin is sensitive to variations in the environment.’ He tried to be arrogant and failed miserably. It seemed, since Jelly Hob had rescued him from certain death, that he did not have the heart for his usual conceits.
Samuelle moved quickly around the cabin, dropping things from her valise into the drawers and altering the environmental and comm specifications at the desk. ‘I have to report to the Commander. Get some rest. I’ll fix the lock from the outside. For Cruxsakes, don’t use the comm while I’m out.’
Tekton stared at her, suddenly registering that he had to spend the duration of the trip to Intel in the close proximity of a strange, bossy and altogether physically unappealing old woman.
A clever and resourceful old woman, corrected logic-mind.
Free-mind would not be convinced. But so ugly.
As the cabin door shut and clicked to lock, Tekton fell onto the bed and curled into a ball. Sleep was always a good way to bypass unpleasant thoughts.
Tekton spent the short, sub-light leg to the Edo res-station wavering between boredom and fear. Samuelle set strict rules, which his logic-mind endorsed as sensible, and Tekton carefully obeyed, although he longed to be out of the cramped cabin and to be free to go wherever he chose.
Instead, he spent the time pondering recent events and talking to Samuelle about Lasper Farr. Though she remained guarded on the topic of Consilience, she seemed prepared to discuss the Stain Wars until Tekton hoped never to hear, of them again. War stories, it seemed, were not simply the province of males.
‘After the war I decided to stop rejuve,’ she mused aloud. They’d quickly fallen to the habit of conversation with Tekton reclining on the bed and Samuelle at the comm-desk interfacing with the ‘cast feeds. ‘I found it damn useful looking like an old woman - in ways that I had never dreamt - as long, of course, as I kept my agility. Looking old’s one thing, creakin’ round like a bag-o’-bones is another. So I modified my suit from the combat models we used to wear on specials and kept a credit for organ renewal.’
‘So you were . . . are a soldier.’
‘Once upon a time, I was a forward scout for OLOSS. Saw the light after the war and paid out my draft. Consilience don’t have those kind of structures. You get assigned to a task dependent on what you can do; organised disorder, some say. I say it’s creative and effective.’
‘But why do you live on Edo and work for Lasper?’
‘I was with him in the war and it seemed it worked for us, for a start. He left us alone on Ampere ‘cause I was valuable to him. I could do what I wanted without OLOSS breathin’ down my neck. These days though, seems to be Lasper that’s doing the heavy breathin’.’ She leaned back in the desk-chair and in the time it took her to shut her eyelids, drifted off to sleep. The suit automatically stiffened and the collar elongated to accommodate her slackened muscles.
Tekton had already got used to her abrupt and unpredictable sleeping pattern. He moved quickly, standing and taking the four steps to the desk to peer over her shoulder. The deskfilm glowed with a representation of the Intel station and sphere. Intelspace was cluttered with the collisions of flashing icons and graphical depictions of ships and infrastructure.
As Tekton read the key on the side of the map he stifled a sharp breath. Attached to the station like the