'And what about engee?'
'Right now ... we don't know too much about the ... phenomenon. You can think of engee as an energy field that permeates known space and broadcasts ... signals ... that can affect sensitive individuals such as you. That kind of sensitivity is also necessary for a needle jockey.'
'Mental signals?'
Bekunin shook his head. 'We don't know exactly their basis. They affect certain people in a relaxed state, and sometimes in a highly emotionally disturbed state. We can duplicate the signals and read your reactions, but the signals mean nothing in any way we can discern. They're definitely discrete energy patterns, and they stimulate visual signals ...' He shrugged.
I had the feeling that everything he said was true ... and very incomplete, but I couldn't find enough information quickly enough to ask an intelligent question.
The door opened, and Cerrelle stepped inside.
'He's as good as you suspected.' The doctor nodded to the redhead.
'Good for what?' I wish I hadn't spoken. Bekunin had just told me.
Cerrelle shook her head, but she didn't say anything. 'I—' I decided more words wouldn't help. It was just that questions about some things didn't come easily. In a way, I felt it was grossly unfair. The Rykashans expected me to pick up information and concepts instantly when they'd grown up with them.
'You're right,' said Cerrelle. 'But we're working to give you the information and the skills to make the effort, and you keep resisting. Don't you understand? The universe doesn't really care about fairness. It responds to actions. Your survival depends on you, your understanding, and your actions. Rykashan society isn't structured to baby-sit adults. We're trying to make the transition as easy as we can, but you have to help. Otherwise, you'll end up adjusted or dead or in the nastiest and dirtiest scut job we can find you.'
I couldn't help nodding. Her words weren't even a threat -just an absolute cold statement of fact. I tried not to shiver.
Bekunin nodded gravely. 'I think you finally impressed him, Cerrelle.'
'It's hard for him. I know how hard. It was—' She shook her head abruptly and cut off her own words, looking directly at me. 'Let's go. There's nothing more Bekunin can do, and we need to get you new quarters. Then we could use something to eat. I could, anyway.'
I was ready to leave, leave Rykasha, but where could I have gone? And what could I have done? I took a deep breath. And I'd thought Master Manwarr had been difficult.
18
Truth is one, although the sages call it by many names.
As usual, Cerrelle wasted no time, marching me to another lodge or dwelling area - except this time I got two rooms and a refresher, and an introduction to Thaya - a blocky young woman in charge of transient quarters and a lot more, I gathered, in Runswi.
'Tyndel, here,' concluded Cerrelle, 'is still having trouble with using nanite-implanted information. He's at the stage where his first impulse is to look to others for the answers.' She smiled. 'Please don't you do it. He's got to learn to be his own Rykashan.'
Til try not to,' said Thaya with a warm smile under her blond thatch. She turned to me. 'The basics are simple. The Authority pays for your training, and that includes lodging, clothing, and food here at Runswi, plus a basic stipend ...'
She kept talking, but my mind scattered around the word 'Authority.' Central decision-making body of Rykasha, composed of five senior controllers ... The demons just accepted that kind of power in the hands of five people?
'... use your personal code for such things as links, food elsewhere, special clothing, transport - you'll get it figured out. It's on the screen in your quarters, under "Candidate Basics" ...'
Just like that - given once, and I was supposed to recall it all.
'Any questions?' Thaya finally asked.
'I'm not going to remember all that. Is there somewhere I can look that up?'
The two exchanged glances, and, again, I felt stupid. Why? Why was I still asking stupid questions, reacting ... not thinking?
'Everything I just told you is on the screen in your room. Look for the icon for "Candidate Basics." You use your personal code. I'll write it out for you.' Thaya found a yellow card and wrote out something and handed it to me.
I looked at what she had written: 'Tyndel-IP-red-95.'
'That's your personal code,' Thaya repeated.
You're reacting because that's the way you were conditioned,' Cerrelle said gently. 'This training will help you change that ... if you work at it. Also, your blood sugar's low, and your system's not used to the extra energy demands of the nanites. Low energy levels don't exactly help with thinking.'
'Get him something to eat before he falls over,' Thaya suggested.
'That's where we're headed, off for some old-fashioned nourishment.' Cerrelle whisked me right out of the transient lodge and back onto one of the ubiquitous polished stone lanes under the clear blue winter sky.
You take advantage of her good nature, Tyndel, and I'll make you wish you'd never been born or that you were back in a stone cell in Dorcha.'
Even though Cerrelle had offered the words humorously, I felt she would have.
She then dragged me through a gymnasium with exercise rooms and then along the side of a black-tiled pool where one man swam back and forth endlessly, watched by another tall bronze man who could have been an ancient gladiator. That kind of swimming was a form of physical conditioning that seemed both masochistic and futile.
We kept walking, past a series of two-storied long structures with smoothly finished stone half walls topped with metal-and-glass window panels and glistening gray slate roofs. Several had odd-shaped metal devices mounted above the roofs - devices that my internal information bank identified as antennae.
This is orbital operations... and there's logistics.' Cerrelle's voice was clipped and rapid, as though she were trying to ensure she pointed out everything to me. To try to help me integrate the knowledge thrown into my brain by nanites? 'That's where you show up tomorrow morning at zero nine hundred - they use old-style military time here.'
Logistics? Why?
'Someone has to plan cargo distribution over the Web. It just doesn't happen. And that's where your training starts.'
'I understand that.' I did understand trading and transport. It was just hard to imagine that the Rykashans so matter-of-factly shipped goods between the stars.
'We don't ship that much - usually the few items that can't be replicated or the machines and technology necessary to set up replication facilities.'
I wasn't sure I wanted training to start, but did I have that much of a choice?
'There's where we're headed now.' She pointed at another stone and gray metal-and-glass and slate-roofed building half sunk into a low hill - or perhaps the hill had been formed around the side of the building. Who knew with the demons? 'It's one of the lounges. There are almost a dozen in Runswi. Sooner or later, you'll find those that are most comfortable to you. They all have food formulators, and the menus are similar.'
Once through the wooden doors and the empty foyer, we entered a room where one side was entirely windows. 'Let's sit down for a moment.'
I looked out at a brown-grassed meadow when we sat, waiting in the small lounge that held five tables widely spaced. The tables were a dark oak, polished, bound at the edges in shimmering brass. The dark oak chairs also were brass bound, with a dark gold-and-blue brocade over the upholstered seats.