Softie, she thought, with a rueful affection. Even if he was… what was the jingle? Spam-in-a-can? Nice guy, she decided. He needs someone to look after him. Besides Channa Hap, that was. Channa might be his brawn, but she seemed to have looked after everyone else yesterday instead of him.
"Yeah, Seld's not a bad osco. Sorta knows his way around a keyboard, in a kid sorta way. Can't fight worth shit, though."
"He says they miss you at school," Simeon replied noncommittally.
Joat gave a second bark of sour laughter. "Not that bitchite Louise Koprekni, she doesn't."
"Pushing her face in the toilet bowl was a bit extreme, wasn't it, Joat?"
"She said I smelled."
"You did smell. Then! That's about the time you considered regular washing wasn't such a bizarre notion."
Joat's lower lip stuck out, and she turned back to her keyboard and the collection of miscellaneous electronic junk which Simeon had been trying to identify.
"What's that you're contrapting?" Simeon asked.
"Riffler."
"Dare I ask what a riffler is?" Do I want to know?
"Ultrasonic. Pops the caps." At Simeon's interrogative sound, she explained. "Bursts the capillaries, like, you know, instant really, really bad sunburn?"
"It what?" Then he modified his tone to a more conversational level. "We hadn't planned on dragging you out, you know."
"I didn't figure you would."
"You haven't… ah… tried it out, have you?"
"Not yet."
"How will you know it works?"
"It will!" The confidence in that reply was unnerving.
"Is it… umm…"
"Wouldn't kill anyone, but it'll sure make 'em think twice about following me."
"Ah, I see."
His visual picked up just the hint of a grin as Joat bent her head to continue her handiwork.
"Some things," she said cryptically.
Silence fell again. Conversations with Joat reminded Simeon of documentaries he had seen of catching trout by hand. You had to be very patient to succeed.
"Looks like trouble coming," she said neutrally.
"Trouble's over," Simeon said. "Look, Joat, I do apologize for not checking on you during the alert, but…"
"No need. You gave me a suit, remember. That was all I needed," Joat pointed out reasonably. "Something threatens you, the station, we're all in deep kimchee. Right? Much better you spent your time keeping us from getting in so deep we have to shovel our way out."
"You've an extremely realistic attitude, Joat," Simeon said, with a certain tone of admiration for the independence in her that also worried him.
"I'm no sap," Joat announced with satisfaction. "Troubles don't come by ones and twos, either-you get 'em by kilobyte loads. I'll be ready." She patted the riffler.
"I'm sure you will," Simeon replied soothingly.
"Yuh. See you at dinner."
"At dinner?" He sounded surprised but that pleased her. "Umm, yes, see you then," he added, doing a good job of sounding casual.
Joat whistled soundlessly to herself as she felt Simeon's attention withdraw-most of it, at least. She also switched on the white-noise maker and the scrambler she'd rigged up. She was no longer completely sure they worked, Simeon having had enough of a look at her contrivances to perhaps neutralize them. Not that he'd have had time to bother about her with so much else on his mind these days. Even a brain had some limitations.
She didn't want an audience while she reran the stuff she'd recorded during Channa's exploits on the intruder ship. First she screened something that had come in on the Central datablip just today. The watchman program Joat set up had cut it out and routed it to her system automatically.
Stretching luxuriously, she popped the tab on a can of near-beer. She stayed away from the real thing because it made her feel loggy and squiff. She bit a big hunk off a chocolate nut bar, grinning around the mouthful with vindictive delight as the scene played on.
A crowd surrounded the obviously official building and their chant ran shrill and menacing as they waved their placards which bore the same message they chanted.
"Dorgan the bigot! Dorgan out! Dorgan the bigot! Dorgan out!"
The ground-floor windows have been shattered and a line of riot-armed police were holding the SPRIM demonstrators at bay. The visual shifted to an interior room where Ms. Dorgan of the Child Welfare department, looking rumpled and alarmed, was gesticulating wildly.
"And I categorically deny saying that shellpeople are unnatural abominations with no right to live!" she wailed. "Or that they make me want to puke!"
Joat grinned. She wanted to be a systems engineer when she grew up-or maybe even a brawn-but editing was a nice hobby. Editing transmissions of recorded conversations sent to SPRIM and MM, for example. Channa had the right idea, but adults had no enthusiasm for taking an idea and running with it.
"Like the teacher said," she muttered, taking another mouthful. "I gotta lot of buried hostility I got to learn to express."
"I felt a good deal like screaming myself," Joseph said.
Amos sighed and lowered himself into a chair. Once Joseph insisted, the doctor here-a man, oddly enough-had moved him into a small suite, with a private sitting room.
Apparently private, he reminded himself, though there might well be listening devices. Otherwise, it had the common strangeness of everything here, like soft synthetics for the walls which could alter shade or suddenly turn themselves into view screens. He had commanded that the space-scene transform itself into something more restful, and the holograph had turned to a neutral brown solidity. In its way, that made him uneasy too. What appeared to be plain bare plastic was obviously anything but.
"It is difficult to believe that we are safe," he said, rubbing a hand over his face, which had grown enough beard to rasp. He resolved to ask for a sonic, or the local equivalent. "To be frank, my brother, I never expected to wake again."
"Neither did I," Joseph said, prowling with slow restlessness. The gravity was slightly higher than Bethel, just enough to be noticeable. "But we do not know that we are safe-even from the Kolnari."
Amos looked up sharply. "We do not?"
"The shell-Guiyon," Joseph amended, at Amos' frown "-said that it-"
"He." Amos compressed his lips firmly after that correction; the more so since he himself had never felt entirely easy with Guiyon.
Guiyon saved us, he remembered. More than that. Guiyon had been the first to listen to his youthful doubts without recoiling in horror and ordering him to do penance. Only families descended from the Prophet were allowed speech with the Planetary Manager. Most Bethelites thought that entity was at best legend, at worst an abomination of the infidel. I am too old to believe in nursery tales, Amos thought. He was a man now, with many depending on him.
"He," Joseph said, making a soothing gesture with both hands. "He intended to take us to Rigel base. This is not Rigel."
"No," Amos conceded. "SSS-900-C. Although they seem reluctant to tell us more."
"Understandable, sir. Would you immediately trust fugitives who came so close to destroying them, though we knew it not? However, there are things they cannot help but tell us."
"Yes," Amos said slowly. "For one, that this is no military base."