Brain Ships

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Nothing," she told him. "I did get into his supply acquisition database, but all the metachips in the records there show perfectly legitimate Shemali Base control numbers."

  Caleb made a fist again. "Then you didn't get into the right records. Somebody's counterfeiting metachips, and Jesen could lead us to the source . . . could have led us. He must be keeping three sets of books. Do you think if I got him on vidcom again . . ."

  An incoming transmission reached Nancia, and she activated her central display screen. Dorg Jesen's narrow face appeared. "Been doing a little research of my own," he announced, almost pleasantly. "Got your Central ID now to add in to my report. CN-935, lift your Courier Service tailfins offplanet in fifteen minutes and we'll forget this episode ever happened. Otherwise I'll file a formal complaint with CS, charging you and your brawn with entrapment."

  "You can't win them all," Nancia tried to soothe Caleb when they were offplanet and on their way back to Central. "We do many things well. Lying doesn't happen to be among them, that's all." But I'm lying, right now, by saying nothing. Nancia made an internal playback of the datacordings she'd made four years earlier, on her maiden voyage. There was Polyon, cheerfully announcing his plan to slip metachips past the SUM board and sell them to unauthorized operations like Dorg Jesen's feelieporn empire. If only Caleb knew what she knew, he could make a report to Central that would send them straight to Shemali.

  Except . . . he wouldn't do it. In the four years of their partnership, Caleb had never once wavered or compromised his moral principles. He would never stoop to using a datacording made without the knowledge or consent of the passengers. And he would never respect Nancia again, once he knew what she'd done on that first voyage.

  Sadly, Nancia ended the replay and slapped five more levels of security classifications on the datacording. Caleb must never know. But there must be some way to point Central's investigations towards Shemali, to stop them thinking in terms of counterfeit metachips and start them thinking about the prison factory.

  Shemali, Central Date 2754:

  Polyon

  Polyon slapped the palmboard built into his armchair and activated a vidcom link with Bahati.

  "Summerlands Clinic, Alpha bint Hezra-Fong, private transmission, code CX22." That would scramble his message so that only someone with the CX22 decoding hedron would be able to see and hear anything but gibberish. "Alpha, my sweet, you were just a tad premature in announcing that you'd finished your Seductron research. The free sample you sent up has one of my key techs too blissed-out to do any useful work. I've no idea when he'll stop contemplating his toenails, so you'd better find out—and fast. Unless you want to be the next test subject." He smiled sweetly into the vidcom unit. "I can arrange it, you know."

  The next message went to Darnell, using a similar scrambling technique. In a few words Polyon informed Darnell that IntraManager, the small commlink manufacturing company Darnell was presently trying to take over, was not to be touched. "It's one of mine," he said pleasantly. "I'm sure you wouldn't have made a takeover move if you'd known that, would you now? By the way—did I show you the latest vids of the metachip line?" A tap of his fingers on the palmboard called up a datacording from the lowest circles of Hell: suited and masked workers toiling amid clouds of poisonous green steam. This was the last and most dangerous phase of metachip assembly, when the blocks between the polyprinted connection patterns were burned off with a quick dip into vats of acid. The burn-off process released a gaseous form of Ganglicide into the atmosphere. Before Polyon's time, this phase had been handled—rather badly—by automated servos that misjudged the depth and timing of the burnoff phase, dropped metachip boards, and quickly self-destructed in the poisonous atmosphere. Expensive and wasteful. By contrast, prison workers in protective suits could process more than three times as many metachips in a session, and only a few of them were lost each year to leaks in the suit sealing.

  "See the third man from the left, Darnell?" Polyon spoke into the vidcom while the images unreeled. "He used to be High Families. Now he's a Shemali assembly worker. How are the mighty fallen, eh?"

  He cut the connection on that—an implied threat was ever so much more effective than a specific one. Actually, Polyon had no idea who the masked workers on the line might be. They were the scum of the prison system, the expendables who had neither tech training nor business sense to justify keeping them in the safer areas of design and preprocessing. And while there was indeed a High Families convict on Shemali, the man had been sent there for a particularly revolting series of crimes involving the torture of small children. Polyon didn't really think he could frame Darnell for something like that and make it stick; anybody would see the rich boy didn't have the guts to torture anybody.

  But I won't need to, will I? The threat will be enough to keep old Darnell in line.

  The last call was to Fassa. He was lucky enough to catch her in person. Polyon enjoyed the sight of Fassa's eyes widening while he explained in detail just how unhappy he felt about the collapse of his new metachip assembly building, how personally hurt he was to discover that Polo Construction had supplied the substandard materials used in the building, and exactly what he might do to assuage his sense of loss and betrayal. The only trouble with the live connection, Polyon thought, was that he didn't get to finish outlining the list of things he could do to Polo Construction as a company and to Fassa personally. Before he was half through, she was stammering apologies and practically begging to be allowed to rebuild the assembly facility. Free of charge, naturally.

  Polyon graciously accepted the offer.

  Just one more item of business to clear up. "Send in 4987832," he commanded.

  A few minutes later, a pale-faced man in the prison uniform of green coveralls came into the office. He gave Polyon a confident smile. "Thought it over, have you?"

  "I most certainly have," Polyon agreed. He smiled and shrugged with palms outspread. "Can't say I'm altogether happy about the idea—but I see you leave me no choice. You're a clever fellow, 4987832. Who were you, before?"

  "James Masson," the prisoner said. "Head of research for Zectronics—you've heard of them? No? Well, it's a large galaxy. But it so happens I personally directed the metachip design effort there. That's how I happened to recognize the changes you've introduced in the chips."

  "My hyperchips will be faster and more powerful than the old metachips by at least two orders of magnitude," Polyon said. "They'll revolutionize the industry. It didn't take any genius to recognize that. The genius was in figuring out how to do it."

  "And that's not all the hyperchips will do, is it, de Gras-Waldheim? Industry isn't the only thing about to suffer a . . . revolution."

  Polyon inclined his head slightly. "You'll have a glass of Stemerald with me, to celebrate our arrangement?"

  Masson's eyes widened and he licked his lips. "Why, I haven't tasted Stemerald in—in—well, it must be ten years! Not since I came here! I must say, de Gras-Waldheim, I didn't think you'd take our little arrangement so well."

  Polyon's back was to Masson as he poured out the Stemerald into two sparkling globes from OG Glimware.

  "A lot of men would be petty about cutting me in on the profits," Masson babbled on, accepting his globe and draining it between words, "but that's you High Families type, you know how to accept defeat graciously. And after all, giving me a small cut isn't much when you think of what it would do to your plans if I told Governor Lyautey about all the hyperchips' programming." He swallowed the last drops of Stemerald, ran his tongue round his lips once more to savor the taste, then sat back with the slightly dazed expression of a man who'd just had his first strong drink in ten years.

  "As I said," Polyon repeated, "you leave me no choice in the matter." He frowned quickly. "You have honored your end of the agreement, haven't you, Masson? No word to anyone else?"

  "No word," Masson agreed. He spoke more slowly now. "I wouldn't . . . want . . . anyone else . . . cutting in . . ." His eyes glazed ov
er and he sat staring into space with a blissful smile on his face.

  "Very good. Now, Masson, I have a special task for you." Polyon leaned forward. "Hear and repeat! You will go to the dip chambers."

  "I . . . will . . . go . . . to . . . the . . . dip . . . chambers," Masson droned.

  "I want you to make a surprise inspection. You will not announce yourself."

  ". . . not . . . announce . . . 'self."

  "You do not need a protective suit."

  Masson nodded and smiled. All the intelligence had left his face now. Polyon felt a twinge of regret. The man had been brilliant; would be again, if the Seductron wore off. He could have been a useful subordinate if he hadn't made the mistake of trying to blackmail Polyon. But as it was . . . well, there was no point in waiting, was there? Damn Alpha. If she'd only developed the controlled Seductron she kept promising, with doses ranging from ten-minute zaps to a state of mindless, permanent bliss, there would be no need for this last distasteful step.

  Polyon finished his orders to Masson and snapped a dismissal. "Go. Now!"

  Masson stood unsteadily and left Polyon's inner office. Polyon sat back and began sketching a metachip linkage plan with one forefinger, tracing glowing paths across the design screen.

  Five minutes later, his vidcomm lit up to show the face of the afternoon shift supervisor. "Lieutenant de Gras-Waldheim? Sir? There's been a terrible accident. One of your designers just . . . the man must have gone mad, he walked right into the dip room without a suit . . . if only he'd knocked they could have kept him waiting in the outer lock until the gases were cleared out . . . they didn't even know he was there. . . . The room was filled with Ganglicide in gaseous form, he didn't have a chance. . . ." Screams sounded in the background. "Oh, sir, it's terrible!"

  "A most distressing accident," Polyon agreed. "Begin the paperwork, 567934. And don't blame yourself. Sometimes it just takes them like that, you know, the lifers. Better any death than a lifetime on Shemali, they think, and who knows? Perhaps they're right. Oh, sorry, I forgot—you're a lifer too, aren't you?"

  He didn't start laughing until the connection was broken.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Spica Base, Central Date 2754:

  Caleb and Nancia

  Nancia limped into Spica Base on half power, dependent on Caleb for reports on the lower deck damage where her sensors had self-destructed to preserve her from shock when the asteroid struck them.

  "Freak accident," commented the Tech Grade 7 who came out to survey the damage in person.

  Nancia mourned the sleek gloss of her exterior finish, now pitted and gouged around the torn metal shreds of the entrance hole. "I should have taken a different route."

  "Freak ship." The tech snapped his IR-Sensor goggles down, hiding his eyes behind a band of black plastifilm. "Ain't natural. Ship talks, pilot don't."

  "The correct terms, as I'm sure you are aware, are 'brainship' and 'brawn,'" Nancia said frostily. "Caleb is . . . it's none of your business. Just leave him alone, okay?" She'd seen him plunged into these unreasoning depressions before, whenever one of their missions was less than one hundred percent successful. He'd retreated into himself without speaking for a week after the disastrous undercover assignment with Dorg Jesen, while Nancia tried to tempt his appetite with fancy dishes from the galley and interesting tidbits of news picked up from the gossipbeams.

  "I'll need somebody at the other end to help me link the hyperchips into the ship's system," the tech protested. "Somebody who knows the ship. My guys are good, but this is a small base. They ain't never worked on a talking ship before. And nobody's got that much experience with hyperchips. They might not interface with these sensor setups just like the old metachips did."

  "Then," said Nancia, "perhaps you should explain to them that a talking ship can, in fact, talk. There's no need to trouble my brawn for information; I'll manage the installation myself." She didn't feel nearly so cheerful and carefree as she tried to sound; the thought of some dolt like this tech fooling around with her synaptic connectors made her feel sick and weak. But she did not want him bothering Caleb. One thing she'd learned in the last four years of partnership was that Caleb only stayed depressed longer if he was forced to talk to people before he was ready to.

  The tech grunted acquiescence and twiddled something she couldn't see. "Sensor connection to OP-N1.15, testing."

  "If you mean can I see what you're doing," Nancia responded, "the answer is no."

  The tech gaped but recovered himself quickly. "Hah! OP-N1 series . . . optic nerve connections? Sorry, lady—ship—whatever you are. What I'm looking at, see, it's just schematics. I didn't think . . ." His voice trailed off for a moment. "Awesome, really, when you think about it that way. That there's a person somewhere inside this steel and titanium."

  "Correction," Nancia said. She was becoming used to this tendency among softpersons; they insisted on equating her with the body curled inside the titanium column, as if that was all there was to her. "I am a person. That's my lower deck vision you're twiddling with now, and I'd very much like to have it—Thank you!" A partial visual field opened as she spoke. Now she could see the tech again, and one gloved hand reaching up into the tangle of fused metal and wires that had been her lower deck sensory system.

  "OP-N1.15 restored," the tech noted. "Now if—say, this is going to be easy. Don't need this stuff" He clipped a test meter to his belt and used both hands to rejoin severed wires. "OP-N1.16 functioning now? Good. 17?" He worked through the full series rapidly, while Nancia kept him informed of the status of each repair.

  "Thank you," she said again when he'd restored her full optic series for the lower deck. "It's . . . most troubling, being unable to look at a part of myself."

  "Imagine it would be," the tech agreed. "Glad to help a lady, any time."

  Nancia noted that in the course of one short repair session she had advanced from "unnatural talking ship," to "person" to, apparently, "lady in distress." By the time the repairs are finished, he'll be wanting to sign up for brawn training . . . and most distressed to learn he's over age.

  "And this is just the beginning," the tech promised. "We'll have you fixed up good as new in a day or so. Better than new, really. You had any hyperchips installed before? Thought not. They're—I dunno—about a thousand times better than the old line metachips. You're gonna like this, ma'am." His fingers twisted, seating one of the new chips. It felt strange to see the movements without feeling the slight pressure and hearing the click as the chip slid into place.

  "Can you feel anything when I do this?"

  "No—yes. Oh!"

  "Hurt you?"

  "No. Just—surprised." Nancia felt as if her sensors had been turned up to full volume, without sacrificing the slightest accuracy. Every movement was clear; the world sparkled like crystal around her. "How many more of those do you have? Can you replace my upper deck sensor chips too?"

  The tech shook his head regretfully. "Sorry, ma'am. It's a new design out of Shemali. There's not enough hyperchips out yet to go around to all the folks who need them for repairs, let alone bringing in functional equipment and retrofitting it. Shemali Plant estimates it'll be a good three-four years before they can produce enough to retrofit all the Fleet ships."

  "Oh. Of course." Nancia remembered the plan Polyon had described on her maiden voyage. "I suppose," she said, feeling very crafty, "I suppose a lot of the chips are failing QA tests? It being a new design, and all," she added hastily.

  The tech shook his head. "No, ma'am. Actually, these new chips don't fail in testing near as often as the old design. Pretty near the full production run is being cleared for distribution, most times. It's just that even a year's full production runs out of Shemali don't amount to that much when you consider all the places the chips have to go these days. It's not just the Fleet, y'know. Hospitals, Base brains, cyborg replacements, defense systems—seems like we just about couldn't run the galaxy without 'em!"

  Nancia felt first d
isappointed, then relieved. She had expected to hear that the new design somehow caused a great many metachips to fail in the QA phase and that nobody knew what became of the substandard chips rejected by the SUM ration board. That would have been evidence she could mention to Caleb, something to steer his mind in the direction of Polyon's illicit activities without revealing that she already knew about the plan.

  Instead, it seemed that Polyon had given up his plan altogether. He was brilliant. Perhaps the hyperchip design was his idea; and perhaps, Nancia thought optimistically, he had forgotten his original notion of stealing metachips in favor of the honest pleasure of seeing his design accepted and used galaxy-wide.

  Angalia, Central Date 2754

  The third annual progress meeting of the Nyota Five was held on Angalia, an arrangement which pleased no one—least of all the host.

  "It was your idea to rotate the annual meetings," Alpha bint Hezra-Fong pointed out, somewhat snappishly, when Blaize apologized for the primitive accommodations. "We could have been comfortably settled in a Summerlands conference room, but nooo, you and Polyon had to fuss that it wouldn't be fair if you two had to travel to Bahati every time just to suit the three of us who had the good luck to be stationed there. So we have to rotate. Two nice meetings on Bahati, now this godforsaken dump, and next time, stars help us, Shemali. You and your bright ideas! Send someone to unpack for me—you must have some help around the place, surely?"

  "'Fraid not," Blaize said with a sunny smile. He was beginning to enjoy the prospect of Alpha's discomfort on Angalia. Rotating the meeting sites had really been Polyon's idea, not his, but Alpha was obviously afraid to take out her bad temper on Lieutenant de Gras-Waldheim. Blaize glanced sidelong at Polyon, very straight and correct in his Academy dress blacks, and admitted to himself that he didn't blame Alpha. Given a choice of tongue-lashing the enigmatic technical manager of Shemali MetaPlant, or the little red-haired runt from PTA, who wouldn't choose to lash out at the PTA wimp?