Carol grunted and spared him a half smile, finally giving up on the complex displays, and pulled her lip in frustration. Bruno was not surprised. Half the instrumentation of the Sun-Tzu had been built from designs taken from the Black Vault in Luna. Even partially Linked into the system, it had taken him months to master the delicacy of the Sun-Tzu's sensory array.
Carol gestured at the holoscreen in mock-frustration. “Okay, you win, smart guy.”
“Enough techno-dazzle for you?”
“More than enough, shipmate.” Crisp, quick; the captain-voice. “Let's assume the blips aren't some kind of physicist's wet dream. How many ratcat ships, and how far off? Show me where they are. Your best guess.”
They both avoided looking at the interface Link clipped to the main console. A thick array of glittering fiber-optic bundles led to the main CPU network port, which ended in a nasty-looking plug. The Link's black organiform socket was on the left side of Bruno's neck, just under his ear, where the spinal column and skull met.
Bruno could feel the lonely itch of the Link inside his head as he always did while un-Linked. Always.
After his childhood accident, the surgeons, neuroscientists, and computer scientists had replaced much of his damaged brain with macrocircuitry arrays and high-speed interface matrices. The idea of becoming part of a machine was not odd to Bruno, but familiar and comforting. He had lived with the fact that his head was half full of semiconductors and plastic since childhood.
Bruno was the most stable Linker that Early's Wild Talents project could find. But Linkers always went catatonic after a certain amount of time connected to high-level computers. Human-level computers went silent after a few months; why would a human mind mated with a computer be any different? He tried not to think about that aspect of his mission.
Bruno knew intellectually that he had to minimize cumulative Link time for that reason; he had to stay sane for as long as possible, to carry out the mission when he and Carol reached Wunderland. But with the Link, he was so much more than human. Bruno could run hundreds of servos simultaneously, all the while a carrying out dozens of other tasks. Every database in storage was instantly part of his memory, at a whim. His consciousness could exist in several places at the same time.
Linked, Bruno could see the All. Was part of it.
Without it, he was only Bruno. The pale memory of Transcendence filled his mind with wild glory he could only dimly remember with an unenhanced mind. He felt himself sigh a little in regret, and hoped that Carol wouldn't notice.
He felt her kiss him lightly, drawing him back to the here and now. She knew him that well after all, Bruno thought with a slight smile. Carol was the only person he had ever met who did not make him feel as alien as a kzin.
But she didn't care for the Linked version of Bruno, he thought sadly. She could not experience the Truth, as he could. Carol thought full Linkage was little different than what would happen to Carol and their other crewmates when she opened the cryovial at Wunderland.
But that would drive them farther apart, not closer together. Perhaps, Linked, he could find a way…
Bruno shoved the shadows of Transcendence from his mind and concentrated on less direct communication with the main computer. He murmured more commands, and flexed his fingers adroitly within the dataglove.
The relativity-squeezed view of the starfield in front of the Sun-Tzu crawled, oozing color, displaying their destination as it would appear at nonrelativistic velocities. Alpha Centauri shone clearly within a blinking green circle directly in front of them. He pointed to the raw numbers within the numeric section of the holoscreen, fingers stabbing through the light display, and showed Carol how they related to the multicolored graphic analysis he and the computer had constructed. Much of the data was actually informed guesswork and deduction, since all information was limited to light-speed — and the putative kzinti ships and the Sun-Tzu were both traveling at close to 0.7 lights.
He whispered more commands while Carol looked on, whistling impatiently. Belters didn't fidget; they whistled or hummed. Worse still, they sometimes sang. Bruno grunted in triumph as a small red blur appeared within the starfield holo, below and to the right of their destination.
“Right there, boss,” he said flatly, pointing a blunt finger at the floating image. The holographic red blur began to blink, as a window filled with scrolling data opened next to the displayed image graphic.
“Tracking us?”
“Seems likely.”
“Ahead of us, keeping constant distance?”
“I think so.” Bruno fought to keep his answers succinct and precise.
“And they are kzin spacecraft?” Carol chewed her lip. “How many?”
Bruno shrugged. “Who else would be out here in the Deep Black? I'd say there is more than one ship, less than ten.”
“How I love your engineering-style vagueness.”
He ignored the jibe and continued. “Flanking us, I figure, running a bit ahead. Slow vector toward us — like a cautious intercept.”
“Seems funny. Not kzinlike. How close are they?”
He pointed to the data window next to the red blur. “About seven light-minutes away.”
The blinking red blur looked harmless enough from an implied distance of over a hundred million kilometers, but at these speeds…
“Dolittle,” she murmured.
Both Bruno and Carol knew that the Sun-Tzu was not prepared for an interstellar dogfight. Once they launched Dolittle and entered the Wunderland system, Carol and Bruno could carve up kzin craft by the dozens. But the one-shot Dolittle would remain berthed for several more years, until they were nearer the Centauri system.
“This far out from Wunderland? Chancy at best.”
“Still, we might have a chance — if that red blur represents just a few scoutships.”
“Maybe.” Bruno's tone was skeptical. “We do carry some weaponry…”
“And we're captained by a combat veteran.”
Bruno gave her a look. “Too bad we can't hit them with our massive egos.”
Carol's tone became sweet. “We'll save it as a last resort. Then we'll use yours, Tacky. Look, let's keep assuming that the damned blip is a ratcat ship.” Carol's eyes fixed beyond the holoscreen. “Why the slow vector to intercept? Any kzin vessel out here, with their reactionless drives, could intercept us within hours.”
Silence stretched out between them.
“I have good news and bad news,” he replied softly, instead of answering directly.
“Well?” Carol's tone held a trace of impatience.
Bruno was still studying the datastreams marching across the holoscreen. “The good news is that they think we can't see them.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Ratcats make banzai raids, right?” Bruno waited for Carol's nod. “They wouldn't sit out there, waiting, if they thought we could see them. They would attack.”
“And the bad news?” Still the impatient captain.
“Yeah, that.” Bruno chose his words carefully. “Almost anything we do will tip them off that we can see them. There would be no reason to change our routine in deep space. If we change our routine, they might hit us with everything they've got.”
“Ummm. Cat… and mouse.”
He smiled a lopsided grin that went no deeper than his thinned lips. “Boss, I think they want to board us.”
Carol nodded abruptly. “Right. Otherwise they would just crack us like a rotten egg.”