"Florian?"
"We call him Gus."
"I can see why."
Patsy smiled warmly. "He's quite a guy-a retired Navy man, a crack navigator. The stories he's got… I mean to tell you, mmhm."
"I see he's spoken for," Channa said with a grin.
"Not so you'd notice," Pasty said primly. "I admit I lahk him, though. I jus' love to heah him talk. When I was a kid, I thought I'd do what he did. You know, join the Navy and scour the universe of evil doers, jus' like some ferocious holo-hero." She sighed. "But heah I am, nothin' but an algae-herder."
"An algae-herder?" Channa asked in amusement. "Algae travel in herds?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. Instead of doin' somethin' adventurous, I'm just watchin' these bubblin' vats o' goop. The excitement is not goin' to give me ulcers." She sighed. "Sometimes I wish fer a real disaster. Something special."
Channa looked at her seriously. "Be careful what you wish for," she said. "You may get it."
Channa hummed tunelessly as she filled out the adoption forms, looking perfectly content and at peace with the world. The sound irritated Simeon excessively. True, he could in a sense "leave" the area and had done so. But he kept coming back, as though to a blown circuit; drawn to the irritant, checking again and again to see if anything had changed.
Finally he said, "You seem happy." Hap. Happy. Bet that would bug her bad.
"I love filling out forms," she said. "The more complex the better."
Somehow it figures, Simeon thought. When you became a brawn, the universe lost a great tax auditor.
"Filling out your side of this is no problem," she said. "Your whole life is on file. But I'm going to have to talk to the child soon."
"I can do that," he said defensively. I can also fill out the damn forms, in half the time or less and without making obnoxious noises.
She turned to look at the column that held him. "Simeon… while I grant you that we should be as delicate as possible." She paused and gestured helplessly. "I've… we've, got to get him to Medical. We've got to prove, by retinal patterns and gene analysis, that he exists at all. You know how bureaus are: no tickee, no washee. We've got to do a recorded interview of him. So he's got to emerge, fully grown-well, almost-from the engineering compartments and into the real world," she concluded in a rush.
"Okay, I'll talk to him."
"Simeon," she hesitated, "why don't you introduce us? I mean, you can discuss the adoption with him. I can stay out of sight nearby until he wants to meet me."
She's being conciliatory, he realized. Why doesn't this reassure me? He forced down nonexistent hackles and replied in a neutral tone. "Sure, why not?"
Channa could hear them talking from where she sat against the cold bulkhead.
"You want to adopt me?" a young voice asked in disbelief. A yearning hope sounded through it.
"Yeah," Simeon said, surprised to find that he was getting to like the idea.
Joat's head popped into Simeon's line of sight, seemingly from out of nowhere.
"You can't do that," he said with complete certainty, voice flat again. "They won't let you adopt a kid. You're not real."
Simeon was taken aback. "What do you mean I'm not real?"
Joat's young face was lit with amused wonder. "I hate to be the one to break your bubble, but who's going to let a computer adopt a kid?"
"Where did you get the idea that I'm just a computer?" Simeon demanded with a hard edge to his tone.
Channa bit down on the fleshy part of her hand. That kid doesn't pull his punches, she thought. Poor Simeon brain, though, does the offended dignity bit well… She stifled the rising guffaw with a swallow. An audible reaction would be out of place. Definitely.
"You told me," Joat informed him, exasperation creeping into his voice. "You said 'I am, in effect, the station.' That means you're a machine. I've heard about AIs and voice-address systems."
To both his observers, his voice was conciliatory but his expression reflected an inner anxiety that maybe this computer was losing its tiny mind.
And he probably thinks that would be very interesting, the station computer losing function, Simeon thought in exasperation. Kids!
He had noted that, while Joat could keep his voice disciplined, his expression revealed his real feelings. Simeon wondered if he could maintain that duality in the presence of the visually-advantaged. Not that he, Simeon, was in any way visually-disadvantaged. Quite the opposite, as Joat would learn soon enough. "Joat, I think it's time that notion got altered. There's someone nearby I'd like you to meet. She's known as a brawn, and she's my mobile partner." Which was true as far as it went, Simeon amended.
Joat's face went wary. "I don't want to meet anybody," he muttered sullenly, looking cautiously around him. "She, you said?" Another pause. "No, I don't want to meet anyone."
"But we've already met, sort of," Channa called out.
Joat vanished instantly.
"He's gone," Simeon said.
"No, he's not," Channa contradicted. "He's nearby. Joat? Simeon is a real person, as real as you or me. But he is connected to the station in such a way that the station is an extension of his body. I'd be happy to tell you about it."
No answer but a receptivity which she could almost feel beyond her in the narrow access aisle.
"Well," she began, "shellpeople were created as a means of enabling the disadvantaged to live as normal a life as possible. At first that was limited to the creation of miniaturized tongue or digital controls, or body braces. The extension of such devices was to encapsulate the entire body, though some people still think it's just the person's brain-because they're called 'brains.' Despite popular fiction, such an inhumanity is not permitted. Simeon is there, body, mind and…" She paused and then realized that she couldn't permit personal opinion to corrupt the explanation. "… heart. Simeon is a real person complete with his natural body but he is also this station-city in the sense that instead of walking about it, he has sensors that gather information for him and he controls every function of the station from his central location."
"Where is-" Joat paused, too, struggling to comprehend the concept "-he? He is a he, isn't he?"
"I'm as masculine as you," Simeon said, accustomed to such an explanation of shellpeople but wishing to underline his humanity. He did note that his voice had dropped further down the baritone level he used. Well, why not?
"Oh!"
"Instead of having to give orders to subordinates," Channa went on, "to, say, check the life-support systems, or Airlock 40, or order an emergency drill, he can do it himself more quickly and more thoroughly than any independently mobile person could."
"And I don't need to sleep, so I'm on call all the time." Simeon couldn't resist adding that.
"Never sleep?" Joat was either appalled or awed.
"I don't require rest, although I do like relaxation and I have a hobby…"
"Not now, Simeon, although-" and there was a smile in Channa's voice "-I admit that that makes you more human."
"Were you human… I mean, were you… did you live like one of us?" Joat asked.
"I am human, not a mutant, or a humanoid, Joat," Simeon said reassuringly. "But something happened when I was born, and I'd never have been able to walk, talk, or even live very long unless the process of encapsulating had been invented. Usually it's babies that become shellpeople. We are more psychologically adjusted to our situation than adults. Though sometimes pre-puberty accident victims work out well as shellpeople. I can look forward to a long and very useful life. But I'm human for all of that."