Yerusha’s knuckles were turning as white as her cheeks. “I have a right under my contract to bring aboard any legal piece of software that I choose, as long as I don’t infect the ship’s systems or go over my allotted weight limit.”
Al Shei waved her hand and suppressed an urge to laugh. “Oh, stop bristling, will you? I’m not interested in taking it away from you, or saying you broke contract by bringing it aboard. But I want to know if you were really going to let it loose?”
“Here?” Yerusha snorted. “You joke better than your Fool. I would never expose my foster to a crew of complete paranoids.”
“Good,” said Al Shei. “We don’t have room in the system for it anyway, do we Houston?” She cocked her eye at Lipinski.
“Hardly,” said Lipinski to the floor.
“And because it is a legal program and we’ve all got plenty to keep us busy on shift, there’s not going to be any more ideological shouting matches. Right?” She looked straight at Schyler.
“We’ve already discussed the matter,” he replied.
“Glad to hear it.” Al Shei lifted her hands off the chair back and smoothed down her tunic sleeves. “Because I’d really hate this to be the first run where we docked anybody for violating the courtesy and privacy clauses in their contracts.” She glanced first at Lipinski and then at Yerusha. “Is there anything else?”
Lipinski got up. “I guess not,” he said. “I’m going to see how Rosvelt’s doing on the intercom problem.” He left without another word or look to anybody.
The hatch cycled shut and Yerusha leaned forward.
Al Shei made a slicing gesture across her throat. “Before you say anything, I know Lipinski is a paranoiac. He may also be a bigot. Deal with it. You have to work with everyone else, and they have to work with you. If you can’t get your job done because of behavior problems, you talk to Watch. If I catch you shouting names across the bridge again, I may decide to pitch you off of here as soon as we get to The Farther Kingdom. And before you feel too picked on, I may decide to do the same to Lipinski.” Her mouth twitched. “It’s hard being one of a kind. I know Freers consider Muslims barbarians…” Yerusha had the grace to look away at that. “In fact, they consider all us groundhogs barbarians and you’re pretty much not allowed to like any of us.” Rebellion surged across Yerusha’s face but she was bright enough not to say anything. “I understand what it’s like to be set apart by your beliefs. I also understand this gives you a great temptation to lie, and cover up, and hide. I’ve done it, so I know that aboard a small ship that only leads to trouble. Maybe disaster. That I won’t have, just as I won’t have personal prejudices getting in the way of my crew getting our mutual job done. We are all here and we can’t rely on one Fool to keep us from each others’ throats. Do your job, Yerusha, and stow the stack until we get to port, all right? And rest assured that now that we’ve been alerted to the problem, Watch will make sure Lipinski doesn’t interfere with anything that doesn’t interfere with the ship or its cargo.”
“Aye-aye, ‘Dama.” Yerusha got to her feet. She cocked an eye at Schyler. “Can I go?”
Schyler nodded and Yerusha left. As soon as the hatch cycled closed, he folded his arms and looked at Al Shei. She waved a weary hand at him. “Don’t say it, Tom,” she fell into Arabic. “Just don’t.”
He shrugged. “All I was going to say was this time you may finally have found the one who refuses to make it easy on herself.”
“She’s proud, she’s scared, and she’s totally on her own. It’ll make you act funny.” Al Shei stood up. “She is not, however, totally stupid, and I do believe she needs this job. She’ll behave.” She made sure her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes. “Who knows? In time she might even be likeable. It’s happened before.”
“Are you talking about me or you, Mother?”
“Impudence,” she snorted. “Go get some supper. You’re no good to me starved and sleepy.”
He grinned. “The hell I’m not.” He cycled the hatch open.
“And don’t swear,” she said to his back as he strode out the hatch.
“Nice job.” Dobbs stood up in the corner. Now it was Al Shei’s turn to jump. She’d completely forgotten the Fool was even in the room.
Dobbs grinned. “Believe it or not, we get training in unobtrusiveness. I got an A in the course.”
“That much I do believe.” Al Shei smoothed her hijab down. “I hope I can count on you to keep an extra eye on Yerusha and Lipinski. A holy war is not something I need aboard my ship.”
Dobbs snapped to attention and saluted briskly. “Yes, Ma’am!”
Al Shei waved her away. “Aren’t you off-shift too?”
Dobbs relaxed her stance and grinned. “Cooks, owners and Fools. We’re never off-shift.”
“No, I guess we’re not.” Al Shei cycled the hatch open. Dobbs bowed deeply and gestured for her to go first. Al Shei did. The Fool took off in the opposite direction, maybe on her way to her own cabin or to catch up with Yerusha and find out how well she took Al Shei’s lecture.
As she remembered the anger flashing between Yerusha and Lipinski’s eyes, Al Shei suddenly felt very glad the Fool was aboard.
Chapter Three — Faster Than Light
Dobbs watched the clean, white side of the unnamed tanker fill the square of her view screen. The tanker would top off Pasadena’s fuel and reaction mass and send the ship on to the jump point. The Pasadena gave itself a final nudge sideways. Far away, Dobbs heard a faint clang reverberate through the hull as the two ships hooked together.
Dobbs, fastened to her desk chair by her freefall straps, found herself admiring Yerusha. The woman’s skills were certainly not over-billed. Hooking up with a re-fueling tanker could be a rough ride if one or the other of the pilots weren’t spot-on with their calculations. As a result, it was standard operating procedure to have the crew strapped into their seats during re-fueling.
Usually time in her straps made her restless. She had never quite mastered the art of sitting still. This time though, Dobbs was glad of the chance to think.
She had been right, this was going to be an interesting assignment, and not just because Lipinski and Resit were resistant to the idea that they might have to get along with Yerusha. Al Shei’s mood had her engineers tip-toeing around, and on the bridge, Schyler wasn’t doing much more than grunting out orders when necessary. Dobbs had spent the last six hours bouncing between the two departments, but her best efforts were yielding minimal results.
It didn’t take a whole lot of looking to see that there was something more than an intercom malfunction operating in the background. Just a little more looking showed that that something was probably Marcus Tully.
She glanced toward the door and then toward her screen where the view was totally blotted out by the tanker’s side.
Now might be the best time to get some research going, she thought, and then rejected the idea. The refueling would take awhile, but not as long as her researches, and if she was caught out of her straps for some reason, Schyler would give her a good going over. It was one of the strange double-standards for a Fool. Technically, Fools could get away with anything, but they had to be extremely careful not to be caught getting away with anything serious. If they did, their reputation for foolishness would change to one for stupidity, or, worse, untrustworthiness. Neither was something any Fool could afford.