Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [66]
“Never heard of them.”
“I have!” Furey said, impressed.
Sean reached for the film and they both had trouble unwinding it to the point where the consignment note and the invoice could be separated and read. “I don’t know a thing about this,” he added, shaking his head, especially over the fat letters of the NO CHARGE stamped on the invoice.
Furey jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the junked cabin room. “They’d be damned good things to have, y’know.”
Sean looked about him, snorting at the confusion of tiers of boxes on every available space, boxes into which Una and her helpers filed the stuff that every shuttle brought down to dump in his already stuffed premises.
Adak came in just then, waving more plasfilm. “The most humongous slabs just arrived, Sean. They gotta be unloaded and put up, and I dunno.” Adak’s eyes were wide in his round face. “What are they?”
“Climatically resistant and atmospherically adjustable additional autonomous units, complete with all facilities, that can be erected instantly and with little or no site preparation,” said the rangy redheaded individual who had followed Adak in. “But I gotta tell ya, man, we gotta fix and run or we miss the next delivery, and that’s not company policy. We only got three days to site these things, and you’re lucky to get delivery so quickly, considering how far in advance clients usually gotta book Nakatira Cubes. So where do we put ’em?”
“Them?”
The redhead flicked fingers at the film in Sean’s suddenly limp fingers.
“Five of ’em.” The redhead held up four gloved fingers. The gloves seemed to be his only concession to Petaybean weather, although the outfit he wore was probably one of those lightweight thermal beauties like the ones Minkus had brought with him from Herod’s. Now the Nakatira emissary looked about him. “This the governor’s mansion?” he asked incredulously, assessing the clutter in a single, not-quite-contemptuous glance.
“How big are these cubes?” Sean asked.
The redhead snorted. “Hell, man, you could put six of this bitty place in one and still get a rattle.”
“Then I want one right beside this,” Sean said, suddenly decisive. “Adak, get some axes and—”
The redhead held up a restraining hand. “No sweat, mate. Oscar O’Neill, the Great O.O., will take care of that detail. Like we claim, little or no site preparation is needed.”
“What wouldja do with them trees then?” Adak demanded, his head protruding from his parka like a turtle’s.
“You need the wood? We keep the wood,” the Great O.O. said amiably. “That’s one down, Governor Shongili . . .” And Oscar O’Neill paused to receive Sean’s disposition of the others.
“Make a much better school than the latchkay does . . .” Simon Furey suggested appealingly.
“Done!”
“School’s to be nearby?” O.O. asked.
“Just up the road,” Simon replied eagerly, pointing in the right direction.
“Road?” O.O. asked condescendingly.
“Road,” Sean said firmly, and wondered what to do with the others.
“Kin I make a suggestion, mate?” O.O. asked, and when Sean nodded, he said, “Well, I spent a good deal of good daylight e-rection time trying to find you. Wouldn’t have found you at all if not for Cap’n Greene and his flyin’ machine. He came along just as I was about to mark this lot ‘return to sender.’ Why not install one cube at that so-called SpaceBase of yours to direct incoming traffic and take”—he looked around him again—“some of the paperwork outta here.”
Sean couldn’t have agreed more; he was baffled by the whole situation. The NO CHARGE aspect of this largesse could not be explained by O.O. All he knew “was what was on the dockets, man,” and “no charge” meant just that, and who were they to argue with Head Office? By the time the necessary decisions were made, Sean had a new office block adjacent to the marital cabin; awed Kilcoole had a new school; Petaybee Admin had its own—if empty—premises on the