Mosaic - Jeri Taylor [28]
She heard him chuckle. "You're a funny little bird, you know." He eyed her mud-splattered body. "Tonight you're a blackbird." There was a silence, and then he looked over at her. "Kathryn, I want you to promise me you'll never do anything like this again. We were all worried sick about you. "I promise, Daddy." She waited for him to praise her for figuring out the distance formula, but he didn't talk about anything except how frightened they'd been. When they got home, her mother put her in the sonic shower and then tucked her into bed with hot soup, but Daddy had gone to his office and didn't even come out to say good night. Under the warm covers, sipping hot soup, Kathryn was nonetheless ice cold. Her heart felt like stone. Daddy didn't even care that she had derived the formula. She was more miserable than she had been lying in the cold mud with the rain pouring down on her.
CHAPTER 7
THE CAPTIVE LAY ON THE TABLE, EYES GRADUALLY LOSING A struggle to stay open as the narcotic had its inevitable effect on his system. It had proven necessary to keep the prisoner under almost constant sedation, a situation Trakis, the Trabe physician, regretted because he was uncertain as to the ultimate effect of such high levels of drugs on this alien being.
However, unless lie was narcotized, the captive had demonstrated an alarming unwillingness to cooperate with Trakis' examinations. Perhaps all members of this species were similarly truculent, or perhaps this one was particularly fierce, but Trakis had no intention of coming to bodily harm in order to aid the Kazon-Vistik in their vain quest for control of the sector.
A noise startled him as the door to the ship's laboratory opened, and Nimmet entered, swaggering slightly, as always, adopting an air of lofty condescension intended to make Trakis feel insignificant.
Would it matter, wondered Trakis, if Nimmet knew that his posturing had quite the opposite effect: made Trakis feel decidedly superior to this preening toady Kazon, who rendered himself ridiculous with his mannered arrogance?
Nimmet was his Control. He had been assigned to Trakis soon after the physician had been abducted from the Trabe outpost on Slngsnd and brought to the Kazon ship. Trakis was not the only Trabe on board, but he was the only physician. The smug but foolish Vistik hadn't even bothered to abduct a physician until they had a specific purpose-as though they had no need of regular medical examinations themselves. Pride would be their undoing, Trakis reflected.
"Well?" Nimmet all but barked the question. Trakis turned to look disdainfully at him.
"You have eyes. You can see. I've done nothing more."
Nimmet's eyes flared. Trakis knew he became furious when treated with such disrespect, but he also knew Nimmet couldn't retaliate: Trakis was necessary to their mission and couldn't be harmed until it was completed. Afterward, of course, was a different story, but Trakis was already laying his plans for escape before he became expendable. Nimmet advanced toward him, narrowing his eyes to slits and adopting his most menacing growl. "Why not? Maje Dut is waiting for your report."
"The Maje will have to wait. I cannot do these procedures any faster than they can be done."
"Do you know what the Maje would say if I told him that?"
"He would explode in a tirade of fury, threaten to cut off my fingers, and then realize he has no choice but to let me proceed as best I can." Nimmet then tried to squeeze his eyes into even narrower slits as though that would intimidate Trakis, but the physician knew how to respond to this posturing. He turned his back and approached the captive, now unconscious on the table.
"I can perform the examination now," said the physician matter-of-factly. He was busily keying controls at a large console, quickly scrolling through blocks of data. "Although with this outmoded equipment I can't guarantee the accuracy."
"That is equipment the Trabe constructed," Nimmet reminded him, still trying to get the upper hand in the