"Look, my friend, he had it coming. He's had it coming for a long, long time. I don't know why they even sent him here. Most of the kids here are basically good kids who got bad breaks and had no place to go. Marl has a place to go, if you ask me. Prison. Not political prison or anything like that-just somewhere where they put scary people so nobody else has to deal with them. A nice strong place to keep them inside and the rest of us safe out here."
Elviiz, of course, said nothing. But Hap liked to think he was listening.
It was nice out in the shuttle bay. Even during "night" inside the bubbles, the stars did not seem as close as they did out in the bay, through the viewscreen. Hap had only ever taken one ride in a spacecraft. He'd been superexcited about it and talked about nothing else for days before until everyone he knew looked pained when he started telling them about it. He'd thought back then, Boy, if they think I'm full of it now, wait till I get back!
The truth was, he probably wouldn't have had a lot of high adventure to relate to them if things had worked out like he planned. He was only going to make the runs with the agro tech rep, Scaradine MacDonald, showing people in colonies on other worlds how to use different tools, fertilizers, feeds, and seeds. Scar was a good friend of his family and he had always had time for Hap. His invitation to take Hap with him on this run was like a dream. Realistically, Hap thought Scar might be recruiting him for the companies who employed him. Hap was good with machinery and could fix or build anything, was enthusiastic, loved to talk, loved to teach, and enjoyed agriculture best in the short term-preferably at harvest-time when it came to eating some of the produce. He loved the animals, taking care of them, helping them give birth, bottle-raising the babies. He hated the butchering part, though, and still refused to eat meat, something the other colonists thought was just plain silly.
When he and Scar left New Fredonia, and he watched it grow smaller and smaller as they shot into the atmosphere, he thought he didn't care if he ever saw it again. For a long time he felt bad about that, because he hadn't meant that he never wanted to see his family again. He wasn't really close to his parents, but he liked his brothers and sisters. But all of them had still been home when the planet blew up, as far as he knew. By then he and Scar were at Rushima. When the news came, he hadn't been able to talk for two weeks, and for a long time after that, he couldn't do anything at all. It was like he'd been paralyzed. Scar was very wise about people and tried to comfort him, but when Hap did something really stupid and tried to space himself, thinking that in some way he'd be going where he belonged, with everybody else he knew, Scar decided he wasn't equipped to look after Hap. He'd needed a helper, not somebody to babysit. So, reluctantly, Scar got ahold of Calum Baird and Declan Giloglie, who were old friends, and they agreed to take Hap at Maganos Moonbase.
That had been two years ago, when he was twelve. He was fourteen now. Before long, Scar would keep the promise he made when he dropped Hap off and come back for him. When he felt up to it, Scar said. When he was sane again, Hap thought he meant.
It wasn't such a bad place, though a lot of the other kids seemed sort of babyish to Hap. Not Shoshisha, of course. She felt like-well, he had never got close enough to know what exactly she felt like, but he wanted to. Or had. Having seen her throw a fit about Marl Fidd, her beautiful face twisted with what had to be an unreasonable fear and loathing of Elviiz-on Marl's behalf, he wondered? He was beginning to think she was even more screwed up than he was, and not in a good way. What was that thug to the princess anyway? Had Marl maybe attacked Khiindi because of the underwear incident, which Shoshisha had confided to a half dozen of her best friends?
If she put someone up to being cruel to a harmless little cat because of a bit of urinary carelessness, well, she for sure wasn't the girl he thought she was, and she wasn't the girl for him. Too bad. She looked like the girl of his dreams on the outside, but it was starting to look to Hap like the girl inside was all wrong.
Some people thought Khorii was exotic-looking, but to Hap she looked too much like him, too much like the people he grew up around-that is, if you didn't count the horn and the hooves and mane and that kind of thing. Tall, willowy, blond people of both sexes had been plentiful in New Fredonia, along with large, heavy, blond people of both sexes, and redheads of all shapes as well. His sister Fri had hair almost exactly like Khorii's-well, she had had.
As if thinking about Khorii had summoned her, she walked onto the dock and entered the shuttle.
"It was very good of you to stay with Elviiz," she told him.
"Is he-you know, aware? When he's turned off, I mean? It was weird leading him along behind me like-well, like a broken toy that just went where I told it to go."
"Elviiz is not a robot, he's an android," she said. "His bionic parts and attachments are powered down now, but the organic part of him is as aware as you or I would be when we're asleep. I'm sure he appreciated your company."
"But you want me to go now, is that it?"
She looked startled. "No, I just thought you'd want to. That you had other things to do. I-have you seen Sesseli? She went to find Khiindi while I healed his assailant."
"You healed Marl?"
"I had to. It is-um, what you would say is-a Linyaari thing. I think the only time someone was injured that we did not try to heal them-I mean by 'we' my parents and other Linyaari-was when Khleevi were killed. Of course, Khleevi were not like people. They were more like armed weapons."
"That's what everybody says about their enemy du jour" Hap said. "If you're going to be better than us at being pacifists, you'll have to do better than 'not quite like a person.' "
"Since I never personally met a Khleevi, I cannot effectively argue your point," she told him. "Also, I did not realize that the degree of pacifism was a competitive issue? That seems contradictory to me."
She wished Elviiz were not deactivated. He could sort these things out more logically than she could, and also confuse everyone else in the process.
"You're right about that," Hap said. He had been sitting still too long and, without realizing it, had begun pacing the small space inside the shuttle, looking inside storage compartments to see what was there. He was rewarded with a find. A bar of chocolate! "I didn't know your people ate chocolate," he said.
"We don't," she said. "But Captain Becker, whose shuttle this is, loves chocolate. I don't think he'd mind if you had that, however."
He unwrapped it, stuffed a third of it into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. She might not know how to argue like a pacifist, he decided, but she knew how to make a peace offering when the opportunity presented itself.
She stood behind Elviiz and seemed to be massaging his hair, then scalped him, ignoring Hap's surprised yelp. Placing a finger delicately inside his head, she flicked something, and replaced the scalp patch. "Come on, stop feeling sorry for yourself," she told him. "Marl and Khiindi are both mended, so there is no need for you to be disabled."
Slowly, the android lifted his head, and said in a surprisingly level voice, considering the misery reflected in his posture, "But what I did was ka-Linyaari."
"Elviiz, you are my foster brother, and as annoying as any blood relative, from what I have seen of such relationships. You are as Linyaari in spirit as I am. I felt like taking Marl apart myself when I saw poor Khiindi."
"Thank you, Khorii. That means a lot to me," the droid said.