For just an instant, she thought about erasing the entry. Jessup would discover a deleted record, though. The company would withhold her 500,000 credits, keep her enslaved for future missions. For future lies. It might even accuse her of sabotage.
Sabotage. The ancient act of shoving sabots—wooden shoes—into machinery, to spare workers from the evils of the Earthside Industrial Revolution. Where had Sarah learned that? What source had taught her? How had she gained the knowledge?
She shook her head. She, too, could bring technology to a halt. She could insert things where they did not belong, bring the so-called wheels of progress to a stop. She could cripple Jessup Universal Mining as certainly as French peasants had destroyed their massive threshing machines.
On one side of her workcon, Sarah pulled up a digital representation of one of the ornate Marduran scrolls. Eldercare—Its Goals and Its Rewards. One of the crucial Marduran works. One of the volumes that showed civilization, that proved the species was worthy of a Class Three designation.
On the other side of the ’con, Sarah opened her catalog. She summoned a blank form, completing the rote task as she had hundreds of times before, as she would hundreds of times more, before Earthfall in three short weeks.
Her fingers flew as she primed the icons. She mouthed the catalog entry rapidly, enunciating the title, the Marduran author, the subject matter. She took the time to add half a dozen alternative subject headings, selecting ones that would attract attention from the broadest community of scientists, from segments beyond mining and manufacturing. Society and social structure. Daily life on other planets. Ethics. Voortman Index. Marduran society.
The image of the alien scroll shimmered in front of her, shifting as if her eyes were blurred by tears. Her fingers hovered over her ’con.
One touch, and she could upload the entry. One touch, and she could tell every librarian in the universe about the Mardurans’ highly evolved social structure. One transmission, and she could open the doors for Class Three status.
One heartbeat, and she could lose 500,000 credits, her job, her future. Bernard.
The wildcatters exploded into boisterous applause, shouting out praise to their embattled warrior colleague. Sarah heard them swear; she smelled the drinks they poured out on the floor. She recoiled at the foul words they shouted.
Without glancing at the miners’ game, Sarah touched the icon and sent her catalog entry to the stars.
* * *
When Mindy L. Klasky was learning how to read, her parents encouraged her, saying that she could travel anywhere with a book in her hands. Mindy never forgot that advice. While growing up, Mindy’s travels took her from Los Angeles to Dallas to Atlanta to Minneapolis. She now lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C. Mindy’s academic travels ranged from computer science to English to law to library science. Professionally, she has moved from practicing trademark and copyright law at a major law firm to managing the reference department in a large law firm library. When Mindy is not reading, writing, or working as a librarian, she fills her time with swimming, baking, and quilting. She is an active member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, many legal bar organizations, and a number of library societies. Her two cats, Dante and Christina, make sure that she does not waste too much time sleeping.
FERRET AND RED
by Josepha Sherman
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FERRET, flat as she could get in the narrow engine tubing, swore under her breath. It was hot and airless in here, and her sleek brown fur was plastered to her skin, and picking up interesting stains despite the coveralls. Yes, and if one of the humans did something stupid, like accidentally hitting the start-up button before her partner, Red Collins, could stop him, she was one fried Ferret.
Don’t think about that. Don’t think about anything. Trust Red and just get the skelking job done.
Ferret’s real name was much longer and more complicated, listing as it did her clan and family as well as her own use-name, but all that tended to be too much for anyone not of her own species to manage. Some human had once dubbed her “Ferret,” and even after she found out what an Earth ferret was, she’d had to admit that her species really did bear a resemblance to bipedal ferrets.
No matter names. She really did like her job as part of Station Alpha’s mech crew: meet new species, see new ships and equipment that needed to be puzzled out, work—and drink, yes—with Red, her human partner for three station-years now, Red, who was a good mech with a sense of humor as wry as her own—
Yeek, yes, all enjoyable except for jobs like this. Once the starfaring humans had colonized the world they’d christened York (apparently a nostalgic name for their home world, which most had never seen), and built this station/dry dock (silly name: space was never wet) to orbit it, of course mechanics had been needed. Once you had interworld contacts, you needed mechs even more, because then you had trade.
Yes, and once you had trade, there were always going to be scruffy independents like the crew of this ship, living off whatever scraps of contracts they could snag that were too small for the big companies.
And cutting costs wherever costs can be cut. Must rankle them to have to pay mech fees. Be more careful, silly humans, have no need for mechs.
One arm stretched out in front of her as far as it would go, she groped blindly with the long seizing-talon of her forefinger, touching composite, composite …
Yes! Just as she’d guessed, something had gotten pulled into the engine, and not been quite vaporized.
Lucky they didn’t blow themselves into just some more space dust. The talon snagged the offending whatever-it-was. Nothing living, not at this point.
Ferret wriggled her way backward out of the tube, and did a neat little twist-jump that brought her out onto the engine room floor, facing the five humans towering over her. Red was the shortest of them, still taller than Ferret but stocky, at least as one of his species went, with the blazing red hair that had given him his nickname. He was also, Ferret thought, cleaner man the four others, even now, and had more recently taken care of his human facial fur. The others looked downright ready to molt.
Living close to the edge, these. Independents, yes.
“Got it?” Red asked succinctly, and Ferret gave him a head-flip of a nod. Glowering at the others, she shook the talon and its incriminating evidence at them.
“Cloth, maybe,” she snapped. “Space suit scrap, something tough, carbon-lump but not vapor. Not good in engine, not good in deep space. Lucky you that nothing did go fiery on you!”
She was familiar enough with human expressions by now, thanks to Red, to recognize embarrassment and relief when she saw it. They muttered thanks, and Ferret, who had never yet mastered the human art of bargaining, let Red handle the details of payment: so much to Mech Central, so much as his and her bonus. Red, finished, knowing his partner, put an arm around her shoulders to start her walking. But she couldn’t resist a parting shot over her shoulder.
“Think you not that mistake make again, okay? Good.”
“A hundred mechs in service,” Red muttered, “and I had to get stuck with Mom.”
“Heh. Not minding funny stuff. Such as you. But, yeek, time wasting.”
They headed down one of the station’s narrow, no-frills off-white corridors. There was transit throughout the station, but transit cost credits. Besides, they’d been working here long enough to know all th
e quickest ways from one module to another. Red and Ferret cut through the cargo module, avoiding a robot cart heading the other way on its air cushion, then casually taking a shortcut through the zero-G cargo zone, kicking off from one side, steering with the skill of experience, and exiting just as casually back in the next artificial gravity module, just a short walk from Mech Central.
“Bet we got another job, yes?” Ferret said, shaking her fur back into place.
Red ran a hand through his wildly ruffled hair, marginally smoothing it. “With so much traffic coming in? No bet there. Want to wager me which is the next species in trouble?”
She curled up her lips in a grin. “Want to have to clean my quarters again?”
Red dodged under a low-slung pipe. “Hey, you got lucky!”
“A human partner? That is luck?”
“A hundred mechs,” Red repeated, grinning as well, “and I got stuck with a ferret.”
“Big laughs. You think you could have wriggled into that engine tubing and not gotten stuck?”
“Yeah, well, never mind that. Let’s go check in and see what they’ve got.”
Ferret stifled a sigh and followed her partner. One thing about Red, when he worked, he worked. Not lazy, like some humans. More like her people.
That thought made her stifle another sigh. Her people usually were more, well, groomed, She really, really would have rather stopped at the nearest sonic shower to get the sweat out of her fur, maybe get something nice to drink, too. But the station mechs worked on commission and bonuses, so the more jobs, the better. Money to send home, earn a nice place in status-ranking. Red was sending money to Earth-home, too, she knew.
Good people, us.
But did Red have to be so cursed cheerful about it?
* * *
Red was still cheerful as they came to the separate module that was Mech Central. He and Ferret duly entered their license numbers, waited for their retinal scans, and were greeted by the computer’s dispassionate male voice, “Live long and prosper.”
Some human tech with too much free time, Red had once told Ferret, had reprogrammed the computer to sound like a character from an ancient Earth entertainment.
“Job listings, current,” Red told it.
“Searching … current listings. One urgent. Ateil ship requests minor adjustment to freighter.”
“Ateil!” Red snapped, all good humor gone in an instant.
“That is accurate.”
“Never mind accurate. Find us something else.”
“Red,” Ferret whispered, “what—”
He waved her to silence. “Don’t confuse the computer.”
“Searching … current listings. One urgent—”
“You gave us that already! Computer, damnit, find a new listing.”
“It is illogical to damn a computer.”
“Just find a new listing, okay?”
“Searching … current listing. There are no new listings. Do you wish to refuse this assignment?”
Ferret ducked under her partner’s arm, took one look at the screen and the fee being offered, and snapped, “We accept!”
“Ferret!”
“Assignment accepted,” the computer cut in.
“Damnit, Ferret—”
“Live long and prosper,” the computer said, and shut off contact.
“Come,” Ferret said to Red, clamping down on his arm with a hand. “Talk, now!”
She couldn’t have actually dragged him along, but Red followed her out into the station without resistance. “Ateil!” he said. “Damn it to hell, Ateil!”
“We both saw. That was the only job needed. Nice money. Too nice to turn down!”
“I don’t care what—”
“We refuse job, bad look on record. Also some other mech take it instead. You can refuse money, heh? You have some secret nest-cache?”
“Ferret, stop it.”
“Not knowing species, Ateil. Why this fury?”
Red took a deep breath. “They’re Birds,” he began. “Hell, I mean they’re what humans call avian sapiens.”
“So?”
“So, that’s not the point. The point is, they hate humans. Say that we’re inferior.”
Ferret blinked, puzzled. “Their problem, not ours, yes? This explains nothing. Why the rage, Red?”
He shrugged angrily and started to walk off, but Ferret slipped past him in the narrow corridor and twisted about to confront him again.
“Damnit, Ferret—”
“Come, tell.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“No? Together we work, and needing to know your emotions are not causing danger to me or you.”
“You know better than that. I don’t endanger a partner.”
“Yes? Then together we have worked long enough for trust.”
Red said something fierce under his breath. “Okay, if it’ll get you off my back.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, okay. I wasn’t always a station mech, you know that.”
“Yes. More than that, no.”
“Worked on a freighter, nothing fancy. But we got along, the crew and I. In fact, I’d say we were all pretty good friends, and I was able to fix pretty much anything that went wrong with the ship. Almost anything. We were a bare bones operation, like the guys we saw today.”
“Something went too much wrong.”
“Yeah. Too much. There was an Ateil sip within reach, so we sent them a distress call. They ignored us.”
Ferret straightened. “Not possible! Against all interstellar law! Maybe the communication did not—”
“It went through, all right. They got it. They just didn’t want to be bothered with inferiors.”
“Red, not proved!”
“Like hell it’s not! I heard them say something about ‘inferors’ just before the com went down, I swear it. Ferret, we lost more than half the crew before I could cobble something together to get us into a station. More than half of my friends! All because we were too inferior to be helped.”
Ferret let out her breath in a soft hiss. How much of what Red said was truth, and how much what a human, confused and frantic in the middle of deadly chaos, had thought was truth? “Red,” she began carefully. “That was space—years back, yes? Ek, wait. Nothing can change past harm. But is living well, what, old Earth saying?”
Red snorted. “‘Living well’s the best revenge,’ you mean?”
“Is so! Money offered us is good, I say again. Ateil not recognize you, you not know them, so we hurt Ateil in money-place, then drink to lost friends.”
He grunted.
“Yes?” Ferret prodded. “Ateil said minor adjustment to freighter. So faster done, faster gone.”
Red glared at her. “You know, you can be a real pain in the ass sometime.”
“So?” Ferret held up one clawed hand. “You want real pain there?”
That forced a reluctant laugh out of Red. “Hell, you’d do it, too.” He shook his head. “Okay, I guess I can be a pain, too. Guess that’s why we get along so good.”
“Said well, yes. Now, about job?”
“Yeah. Trouble is, ‘minor’ can mean anything with the Ateil, anything from, oh, a recalibration of the heating system to maybe replacing or rebuilding some major component.”
“Ek.”
“Exactly. But as you say, money is money. So let’s go see what the Birds want.”
It wasn’t easy to judge the size or scale of a ship that was docked to a station, but from what Ferret could see of it, the Ateil freighter was illogically streamlined—illogical, because a spacecraft had no need to fight against the friction of an atmosphere. Not so illogical, Ferret thought, if its owners were bird-types.
But the four Ateil waiting for them looked more like reptile-types, tall and fine-boned bipeds but with narrow, almost serpentine heads topped with feathery crests. There was the hint of what could have been either very fine scales or very fine down on creamy-pale face and limbs. Their
coveralls … Ferret assumed that the colorful layers of fabric were coveralls. Birds, after all, maybe, imitating the bright plumes their species no longer had.
From lighter gravity world and maybe weaker here? Ferret speculated, and stored that possible fact away.
At first glance, the four looked absolutely alike. But Ferret, used to finding the difference between humans, noted that there were definite differences in the coloring of the Ateil clothing: yellow predominant, blue predominant, green predominant, and purple predominant. Status or job rankings, maybe.
Red, meanwhile, was proving himself a better actor than Ferret would ever have imagined, showing nothing at all in his face or body language but professional interest. “Mech Central sent us,” he said without emotion, flashing his credentials—and Ferret belatedly remembered to show hers as well. “What seems to be the problem?”
The Ateils’ stiff, almost beaklike lips couldn’t sneer, but sneers were implicit as they glanced at each other.
“This is a substandard station,” Yellow Ateil said to the others.
“They send us these beings,” Purple Ateil agreed.
A muscle in Red’s jaw twitched, and Ferret said hastily, before he could speak, and in her most charming voice, “If so substandard this, why bend you down to learn Standard speech? Come, please, the problem, so we may fix it and you be gone.”
She caught Red’s quick sideways glance, a glint of wry humor in his eyes.
“We wish others,” Purple Ateil said, not quite to the two mechs.
“Sorry,” Red drawled. “We’re what you get. My partner said it: Tell us the problem, we’ll fix it, and you can get out of here.”
Ferret could have sworn she heard an Ateil whisper, “Unlucky color.”
What? Red’s hair? Yes, that, certainly. No red on the Ateil.
Oh, joy. Superstitious, too.
But Purple Ateil unbent enough to point out the problem, which turned out to be, yes, a major job, broken parts that had broken other parts. Wonderful.
The only good side to this job was that the work space was small, which meant that Ferret fit and Red was the one sent to get this gear or that component.
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