Brain Ships

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Why what?" Nancia asked.

  "Your turn to pose a problem," Caleb reminded her.

  "Not until you finish that sentence."

  "All right! I don't understand why you're asking for ethical guidance from a brawn whose greatest achievement to date has been the loss of his first ship!" Caleb bit out the words with a frustrated savagery that aroused Nancia's sympathy. She remembered Simeon's grief for his lost friend Levin, the CL-740. How stupid she had been.

  "I'm sorry," she told Caleb. "I should have realized that discussing such issues would remind you of Levin. Do you miss him so very much?"

  Caleb sighed. "It's not that, XN. Levin was a good, competent brainship, and he trained me when I was a new brawn, and I'll always owe a debt of gratitude to him. But we weren't—we never just talked, like this, you know? Five years I served with him, and I don't feel I ever really got to know him. No, I'm not in mourning for Levin. But he had a right to look forward to hundreds more years of service, and I lost him that time. And I myself had rather hoped to spend more than five years as a brawn."

  "You may yet," Nancia pointed out. "Just because you haven't got a ship assignment yet—"

  "And what brainship is going to accept the brawn who let the CL-740 die?" Caleb snapped back. "You yourself have made that little point tolerably clear, XN. Now drop it. Next problem, please!"

  * * *

  Nancia started transmitting to CenCom—on a private beam—the moment she exited Singularity and entered Central Worlds subspace. She wanted to have everything arranged, with no possibility of argument, before Caleb was ready to leave the ship.

  All proceeded as planned. Dahlen Rahilly, her Service Supervisor, requested permission to enter even before the Thrixtopple family had gathered their numerous items of luggage and departed.

  "Arrogant snit," Rahilly commented as they watched the last of Governor Thrixtopple's bony shoulders through Nancia's ground viewport. "He could at least have credited you with a bonus for doing him the favor of this quick transport home."

  "I didn't expect it," Nancia replied with perfect truth. The only bonus she expected—or wanted—was still in his cabin, using the cabin comm board to enter a job application letter that somehow kept getting wiped from his personal file storage area. This was his third attempt, and Nancia could tell by the emphatic way Caleb's voice snapped out the words for the dictaboard that he was losing patience. If she didn't get matters settled soon, he would quit trying to use the ship's comm system and make his application personally, at CenCom offices. And that wouldn't suit her at all.

  "Well . . . there will have to be a few changes. Paperwork," Rahilly said. "We . . . weren't expecting this, you know, XN. In fact, VS at Vega seemed quite certain that you had formally refused the assignment."

  "He . . . may have misinterpreted my words," Nancia said demurely. "How soon can it be arranged?" Shellcrack! While she was talking to Rahilly, Caleb had managed to dictate the complete text of his application letter. He was getting ready to transmit it to CenCom. That mustn't happen . . . not yet. Nancia shut down all outgoing beams at once.

  "Oh, we can finish the paperwork in a day. If you're sure that's what you want?"

  "I am," Nancia said firmly. There was another party to be consulted, but Rahilly didn't seem to think that would be necessary.

  Caleb stalked into the central cabin, brows drawn together. "XN, what do you mean by shutting down my beam to CenCom?"

  "Your beam?" Nancia replied. "Oh, dear. All my external beams seem to have lost power for a moment."

  "We'll have a tech out to fix the malfunction immediately," Rahilly promised.

  "Oh . . . I don't think that will be necessary," Nancia told him. "I've been investigating while we talk, and I believe I have found the source of the problem. It should be easy enough to correct internally." All she needed to do was reopen the power gate. . . .

  "Very well, CN-935." Rahilly sketched a Service salute in the general direction of Nancia's titanium column. "The remaining paperwork will be completed within the day, and then you and Brawn Caleb will be requested to hold yourselves ready for a new assignment—there was one pending, actually; Central will be happy not to have to wait while you choose a brawn."

  He left as soon as the last word was snapped out, and Nancia was grateful for that. Caleb was staring around the cabin with an expression she could not read. If he was going to be angry with her for going behind his back, she'd just as soon have it out in private.

  "I . . . don't understand," he said slowly. "You aren't waiting to choose a new brawn? You're going to go out solo again?"

  "Hardly that," Nancia told him. "I've had enough of solo voyages, thank you very much; I find that I much prefer to travel with a partner."

  "Then . . ."

  "Didn't you hear the man? From now on I'm the CN-935. I've decided that Psych Central was right," Nancia said. It was a struggle to keep her voice projections calm and even. "We make a very good team."

  Caleb was still speechless, and Nancia felt her one fear approaching.

  "If . . . if that's all right with you?"

  "All right, all right, all right!" Caleb exploded. "The woman gives me back my life—and with the perfect brain partner—and she wants to know if it's all right? I—Nancia—oh, wait a minute, would you? There's something I've got to take care of before you restore external beam transmissions."

  He hurried off to his cabin, presumably to erase the job application letter that had taken so long to create, and Nancia permitted herself a small coruscating display of stars and comets across her three wide screens. It was going to be all right.

  More than all right. "Nancia," she repeated to herself. "He finally called me Nancia."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Angalia, Central Date 2750:

  Blaize

  Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc stared in disbelief at his new home as the exit port of the XN-935 slid shut behind him. The mesa top that had served Nancia as a landing field was the only level bit of solid ground in sight. Behind the mesa was a wall of crumbly, near-vertical rock that rose in jagged peaks to block out the morning sun. The long black shadows of the mountains fell across the mesa and down into a sea of oozing glop that looked like the Quagmire of Despair as displayed in the latest version of SPACED OUT. The only variation in the brownish sea was that at a few locations large, lazy bubbles rose from the glop and burst with a sulfurous stink.

  At the very edge of the mesa, cantilevered precariously out over the Quagmire of Despair, was a gray plastifilm prefab storage facility. Bulging brown sacks stenciled with the initials of Planetary Technical Aid hung from hooks on one side of the shack, dangling right out over the sea of glop. On the side of the shanty nearest Blaize, the plastifilm roof had been extended with some sort of woven fronds to create a sagging awning. Beneath this awning lounged an immensely fat man wearing only a pair of sweat-stained briefs.

  Blaize sighed and picked up the nearest two pieces of his kit. Staggering slightly under a gravity considerably higher than ship's norm, he made his way towards the obese guardian of Angalia.

  "PTA tech-trainee Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, sir," he introduced himself. Who is this guy? He's got to be one of the corycium miners. They're the only humans on Angalia—except, of course . . .

  "And the top of the morning to you, Sherry, me lad," said the sweating man-mountain cordially. "Never was so glad to see anybody in m'life. Hope you enjoy the next five years here."

  "Ah—PTA Grade Eleven Supervisor Harmon?" Blaize hazarded. Except my new boss.

  A richly alcoholic wheeze almost knocked him off his feet. "You see anybody else around here, kid? Who d'you think I am?"

  "The corycium mine—"

  "Dead. Defunct. Abandoned. Kaput, all gone splash, stinko," Grade 11 Supervisor Harmon said with relish. "Went bust. Owner sold the mine to me for a case of spirits before he pulled out."

  "What went wrong?"

  "Labor. Company couldn't keep miners here for love nor
money. Not that they offered much love—even a corycium miner ain't desperate enough to try and get it on with a Loosie, heh, heh, heh." Another wave of alcohol-flavored breath washed over Blaize.

  "Loosie?"

  "Homosimilis Lucilla Angalii to you, m'boy. The veg-heads Lucilla Sharif discovered, damn her soul, and reported as possibly intelligent on the FCF, double-damn her, and for her sins we're stuck administering Planetary Technical Aid to a bunch of walking zucchini. All the company I've had since they closed the mine. And all you'll have for the next five years. Next PTA transport comes by here is taking me off-planet." Harmon looked enviously at the sleek length of the XN-935, her tip now gleaming in the sun that peeked over the jagged mountains. "Nice perks you High Families kids get, transport like that. I don't suppose you could persuade that brainship—"

  "I doubt it," Blaize said.

  Harmon chortled. "No, didn't much sound like it, way you come out yelling and screaming over your shoulder, with it dumping your luggage after you. You musta pissed it off real handsome. No matter. Next PTA shipment oughta be along any day now. And when it comes, my new assignment should be ready." He stretched luxuriously, took a deep drink from the bottle beside him, and sighed with anticipated contentment. "Reckon I've earned myself a nice long tour of duty on Central, in a nice office tower with air conditioning and servos and no need to pay any bloody attention to bloody nature unless you happen to feel like looking out the window. Sit down, Madeira y Perez, and don't look so miserable. Do your five years and maybe they'll post you back in civilization. You're in luck, coming when you did."

  "I am?" The sun was over the mountain by now, and it was hot on the mesa. Blaize pulled his largest grip under the shade of the awning and sat down on it.

  "Sure. Today's feeding time at the zoo. Put on a real show for you, the Loosies will." Harmon waved again, this time as if beckoning the cliff that towered above them to come on down. Blaize stared in shock as craggy bits of mountain broke loose and trickled down to the mesa top, shambling like crazy puppets made of rocks and wire. Strange costumes—no, they were naked; that was their skin he was looking at.

  "Yaohoo! Feeding time! Whoee!" Harmon yodeled, simultaneously jerking the cord that ran along the side of the PTA prefab. One of the sacks overhanging the muddy basin opened and brownish-gray ration bricks spilled out in a torrent, piling up in the mud below the mesa.

  The Loosies scurried to the edge of the mesa and let themselves down into the muddy sea, fingers and toes clinging to crevices in the rocks. The first ones down threw themselves on the ration bricks as if they were greeting a long-lost lover; the later arrivals piled on top of them, swinging uncoordinated limbs and wriggling to burrow into the muddy heap of rations.

  Blaize felt a rumbling vibration coming up through the soles of his feet.

  "Look out!" Harmon roared.

  Blaize jumped and Harmon chuckled. "Sorry to startle you, kid. You wouldn't want to miss the other big show of Angalia." He pointed to the western horizon.

  It seemed to be moving.

  It was a wall of water. No, mud. No—Blaize struggled for the right word and could only find the one that had first occurred to him: glop.

  The "Loosies" had ignored Harmon's shout as if they were deaf, but something—perhaps the rumbling vibration that Blaize felt—alerted those still at the bottom of the quagmire. They swarmed up the sides of the mesa, clutching their ration bricks in teeth and fingers. The last one got out of the way just before the advancing tide of glop struck the mesa.

  The whole desperate, squirming consumption of ration bricks had taken place in total silence. Now, less than three minutes later, it was over and the mesa was surrounded by a sucking, slimy tide of glop. As Blaize watched, the tide receded, sliding back down the sides of the mesa until the new mud melted into the same soggy configuration of puddles and bubbles that had greeted him on arrival.

  "That was a small one," Harmon said with regret. "Oh, well, there'll likely be some better ones before you go. Bound to be, in fact."

  In response to Blaize's questions he explained, without much interest, that the erratic climatic pattern of Angalia produced a constantly moving band of thundershowers in the mountains which surrounded this central basin. Whenever the storms stayed in the same place for a while, the rainfall built up into a flash flood which raced across the plain, picking up mud as it went, and sweeping away anything that might be foolish enough to remain in its path.

  "Terraforming," Blaize mused. "Dams to catch the rainfall and release it slowly . . ."

  "Expensive, and who'd bother? Nothing here to repay the investment. Besides," Harmon explained, "it's fun. Damn sure ain't much else to watch out here!"

  Blaize gathered that one of Harmon's amusements was trying to predict the times of the mud-floods so that he could feed the natives just before one, forcing them to scramble first for ration bricks and then to save themselves from the tide of mud.

  "Ain't it the damnedest thing?" he demanded as the rock-like natives climbed back to their mountain heights, some clutching a few ration bricks for later consumption, some still chewing the last mouthfuls of their haul. "You ever see anything like it?"

  "Never," Blaize admitted. Are the—the Loosies starving? Is that why their skin hangs loose like that? Or is that their normal appearance? And how does this fat creep get away with putting them through such a degrading performance?

  "I know what you're thinking, Port-Wine y Medoc," the fat man said, "but wait'll you've done six months out here, you'll forget all the PTA regs about respecting the natives' dignity and all that crapola. Damned Loosies don't have any dignity to respect, anyway. They're a bunch of animals. Never developed agriculture—or clothing—or even language."

  "Or lies," commented Blaize.

  "What?" For a moment Harmon looked startled, then he chuckled and wheezed with amusement. "Righto. No language, no lies—gotta say that for them, anyway! But they're not people, young Claret-Medoc. Waste of resources, this whole operation—some paperpusher's mistake. Only encourages the veg-heads to breed more little veggies. We oughta pull outa here and let 'em starve on their own, y'ask me."

  "Maybe they could be trained to work the mine," Blaize suggested.

  Harmon snorted. "Yeah, sure. I did hear about some prisoners in olden times who amused themselves trying to train their pet rats to run errands. You could do that sooner'n you could teach a Loosie anything, kid. I tell you, there's just three amusements on Angalia: feedin' time for the Loosies, drinkin' time for me, and playing computer games. And I've mapped every damn level of the Maze of the Minotaur so many times I can't stand to look at it no more."

  Blaize felt in his pocket. The datahedron recording the wager wasn't the only item he'd copied from Nancia's computer. "Does your computer—"

  "Yours now, Sake-Armontillado," Harmon interrupted with a cheerful belch. "PTA issue."

  "Does it have enough memory and display graphics to run SPACED OUT? Because," Blaize said, "I just happen to have a copy of the latest version here. Pre-release—it's not even on sale at Central yet." He winked at Harmon.

  "Is that so!" Harmon oozed to his feet. "C'mon inside, Burgundy-Champagne. Pass the time in a li'l friendly game until my transport gets here." He scratched his bare chest, squinting at Blaize with the rudiments of a thoughtful expression on his face. "Have to name some stakes, of course. No fun playing for nothing."

  "My sentiments exactly," Blaize agreed. "Lead the way."

  Five days later, exactly as scheduled, the PTA transport touched down to deliver new supplies and to pick up Supervisor Grade 11 Harmon for the months-long FTL journey to his new assignment. Blaize remained behind with the Loosies and his winnings: two partially depleted cases of Sapphire Ruin, Supervisor Grade 11 Harmon's hand-woven palm-frond sun hat, and the title to an abandoned corycium mine.

  Deneb Subspace, Central Date 2750:

  Nancia and Caleb

  "That," said Caleb as he and Nancia left Deneb Spacebase, "was one of ou
r more satisfying assignments."

  "Out of a grand total of two?" Nancia teased him. But she agreed. Their first scheduled run out of Central, delivering medical supplies to a newly settled planet, had been worthwhile but hardly challenging. And they had both been apprehensive about this assignment: transporting some semi-retired general, another High Families representative, into the middle of a particularly nasty conflict between Central Worlds settlers and Capellan traders. But General Micaya Questar-Benn had proved completely different from the spoilt High Families children Nancia had taken out to Vega subspace on her first assignment. Short, competent, unassuming, the general had won Caleb's heart at once with her in-depth knowledge of Vega's complex history. She'd proceeded to spend much of the short run to Deneb subspace talking shop with Nancia; half the general's body parts and several major organs were cyborg replacements, and she was interested in the possibility of improving her liver functions with one of the newer metachip implants such as kept Nancia's physical body healthy within its shell. Nancia had never envisioned herself discussing something so personal with anybody, let alone a high-ranking army officer, but something about General Questar-Benn's unassuming manner made intimate talk unthreatening and easy.

  Nancia wasn't too surprised to learn that before she and Caleb had even prepared for the return journey, General Questar-Benn had drawn human and Capellan antagonists into negotiations and worked out a settlement that would allow each side to feel they had "won."

  "And here I thought we were warmongering, delivering somebody with authority to send in the heavy armored divisions!" Caleb went on.

  Nancia chuckled. "The galaxy could do with a few more 'warmongers' like Micaya Questar-Benn. Ready for Singularity, partner? Central should have a new assignment for us by now."