"'Salright," Joat said. Somehow it is, she thought, then flogged her mind back to practical matters. "Need a snot-rag?"
"Thanks." He blew noisily on the one which she offered and then gave it back to her. "What do we do now?"
"We get out of sight. Channa's going to go ballistic, and she's nearly as hard to hide from as Simeon. Worse, 'cause I can't screw up her sensors."
"There she is," he said.
Joat's head whipped around. The noise was reaching tidal proportions around the tall lean figure of Channa Hap. Only the escort of Vicker's security personnel kept her from being bowled over in the crowd. She had a canvas carrier bag in one hand. Joat recognized the foot of the stuffed bear sticking out one side.
"That satisfies the letter of it," she said. "Let's go."
Channa stalked into the lounge, opened the door to Joat's room and flung the canvas bag she carried as hard as she could against the room's far wall. It made a solitary spot of disorder in the servo-neat room. Then she shut the door and walked stiffly to her desk, sat down and began keying through her messages, back hunched in rejection.
"It's not my fault," Simeon finally ventured to say.
She turned slowly to glare at his column.
Oooh, I'm glad this is titanium crystal, Simeon thought. Now, if only there was something similar available for the psyche.
Just as slowly, just as silently, Channa turned back to her console.
Simeon sent her a message that read. "I'm sorry you had to go through that scene at Disembarkation."
Channa let out an exasperated little hiss and slapped the screen. Simeon's image appeared on it, wincing realistically.
Unwillingly, a smile quirked at her mouth. "Simeon, I would have been there anyway, to speak words of encouragement, to wish well, to shake hands, to show solidarity." She swung a fist in a go-get-'em gesture. "But I would have had a lot more credibility if I hadn't been standing there with an overnight bag in my hand. Did you see the suspicious looks I got? Half of the evacuees probably think I'm on one of the other ships. You could have said something, a quiet word of warning in my ear, as it were. Then I could have dumped that damned incriminating bag!" She turned to look at his column again. "Why wasn't she there?"
"She wouldn't go," Simeon said weakly. "She said she'd see you. I thought she meant there at the Boat Dock."
"You did?"
"Well, I hoped," Simeon said. "I tried my best to get her there. Pushed every emotional button I could. Manipulated shamelessly, you know the way I can."
"Ol' silver-tongued Simeon slips up again, huh?"
"I can't exactly get out of my shell and chase her down and hog-tie her, Channa. She wouldn't go. She told me that we could never find her in fifteen minutes and she was right. Even you'd have to agree with that. Trying to manipulate Joat is like trying to suck liquid hydrogen through a straw."
Channa sighed. "Indeed! But standing there with that bag was hideously embarrassing for me. Besides, I really wanted to get her to safety."
"I know how you feel," he soothed her. "This surrogate parent stuff is pretty intense." And it was your idea, he reminded himself. Oddly, he felt no impulse to remind her. I guess I like it, he decided.
She ground the heels of her hands into red-rimmed eyes. "I apologize."
Well, that's a first. "I accept."
"Announce me," Amos ben Sierra Nueva said to the door.
It hinged softly, and he knew it would be turning to a screen on the interior, showing his image in real-time. Such things still made him a little nervous. Bethel had never used much in the way of sophisticated electronics. Doors there were usually plain honest wood. He smiled slightly in spite of himself. Here, wood was an unthinkably expensive luxury, and the most advanced technology, the stuff of common life. At least he had been able to dress properly, from the baggage somebody threw into the shuttle at the last minute. It was demoralizing to look like some cottonchopper goatherd from the backlands. Loose black trousers tucked into his boots, silver-link belt emphasizing the narrow hips, open robe throwing his broad shoulders into relief. He bowed ceremoniously as he entered, sweeping off his beret to Channa.
"Come in." Channa's voice was flat and tired as the door opened, but her face lit in an inadvertent smile of welcome.
Good, he thought, smiling back. Even in this desperate hour, it was pleasant to have so exotic and attractive a woman smile at him. Then he bowed again, to the column. To Simeon, he forced himself to think. And tried not to think of the pale deformed thing in there, among the tubes and neural circuits. Whenever the image came to him, a slight tinge of nausea accompanied it. He was afraid that Simeon could detect his reaction. He could imagine several sensors that would make it difficult or impossible to lie to a shellperson. Guiyon he had never thought of so. Guiyon had always been there in the background, a sympathetic voice from his earliest days. Guiyon was my friend.
"I am sorry to disturb you," he began. "Now that the most urgent tasks are done, I wish to reiterate my desire to assist in the coming battle."
"When our plans are more solid, I assure you there will be a place for you in them," Simeon said.
Amos's mouth quirked. You mean, when you've figured out something we can do, he thought.
"We are not trained as soldiers," he said with a self-deprecating smile and a shrug. "And we are from a backward world. But," he raised a finger, "I have thought of something which you both, being so close to the matter, may have overlooked." He glanced from Simeon to Channa and back again. "It is something that Guiyon said that makes me think of this.
"He said to me, I am one of Central Worlds' most valuable resources. The Kolnari do not have any brainships in their fleet and I do not intend to be the first."
"Oh," Channa murmured.
"Hell," Simeon said. "I knew it but I didn't think of it. Brains are so rare, out in the backlands."
"Yes." Amos nodded vigorously. "We must hide the fact that Simeon exists. Or the first thing that the Kolnari do will be to cut out Simeon's shell and send it back to their fleet. This must not happen."
"Indeed it must not," Simeon said, his voice slow and flat. All three of them knew what followed from that. If the Kolnari did get their hands on a brain-one trained in strategy, at that-it would immediately change them from a wandering pack of scavengers to a first-rate menace.
"Simeon would never-" Channa began body, then trailed off.
"Yes." Simeon's voice was now as expressionless as a subroutine robotic. There were dozens of unpleasant ways of forcing a captive brain to capitulate. The most effective was also the worst: simply cut off the exterior sensor feeds which would mean sensory deprivation fugue in days or less. "I tend to forget how… helpless I am, most of the time," he went on. "Forget I'm a cripple, so to speak."
"You are not!" Channa blazed.
Amos blinked at the sight. She seemed to bristle, the widow's peak of her rusty-brown hair rising. I would not like to have this lady wrathful with me, the Bethelite thought respectfully.
She forced herself to be calm. "Compared to you, we are cripples, Simeon," she said. "You have a hundred abilities we lack."
"Thank you," he said in more normal tones. "Still, what Amos says is true. At all costs, we can't let the Kolnari get their hands on me."