McNair, seeing Dwyer’s glass was empty, added some ice to it and poured.
The priest looked down into the glass and then, unaccountably, began to giggle. The giggle grew until it became a chortle. The chortle expanded to a laugh. The laugh took him over and shook him until he could barely sit his chair.
“Oh, I can’t wait to dump this one on His Holiness’ desk.”
The Indowy were a fairly imperturbable race. This may have explained why they took an immediate liking to the cats Davis had brought in to clean out the ship’s complement of rats. One of those cats, Morgen, purred happily under Sintarleen’s stroking palm.
Being imperturbable, instead of jumping through his skin when the ship’s avatar appeared beside him, Sintarleen merely bowed his head in recognition.
“Ship Daisy, may I help you?”
“Maybe,” Daisy answered, after taking a seat to look the Indowy in the eye. “How familiar are you with cell regeneration and expansion from incomplete DNA samples?”
The Indowy shrugged. “You refer to what we call, ‘inauspicious cloning.’ I am somewhat familiar with it. Why do you ask?”
Daisy didn’t answer directly. Instead, she asked, “Have you opened your mail today?”
Still stroking the cat, the Indowy replied, “Why no, Ship Daisy, I didn’t even check it. I almost never get any missives. My clan is dead, you see, all but the few representatives here aboard this vessel, and about one hundred transfer neuters and females on another planet far away. So there is really no one to write.”
“No, no,” Daisy said, impatiently. “I mean your mail. Physical mail. Letters. Packages.”
“Well, I am a little behind on my parts’ accounting and storage…”
“Check please. There is something, some things, I have had sent to you. I would find them and bring them but…”
“I understand,” Sintarleen said. “Will you wait here for a moment?”
When the Indowy returned he was clutching a polka-dotted halter, a pair of high heeled shoes, and a small clear plastic bag containing what appeared to be blonde hair.
“What are these things?” he asked of the ship’s avatar.
“They belonged to someone, what the humans would call an ‘actress.’ She is possibly long dead. They are samples which should contain enough DNA, even if only traces, for you to create for me a body. It is amazing what one can find on eBay.”
“Aiiiii!” the Indowy exclaimed, loudly enough to frighten off Morgen, the kitten. “What you ask is impossible, illegal. Why if the Darhel ever found out, the price they would exact from my clan is too horrible to contemplate.”
“But,” Daisy pointed out, reasonably, “you have just admitted that your clan only exists on this ship, for any practical purpose. Do you not think that I can defend you from anything the Darhel might have?”
“This is so,” Sintarleen admitted reluctantly. “But even so, there are things I would need to…”
“The regeneration tank arrives next week,” finished Daisy, with an indecipherable smile. “It’s amazing what you can…”
“… find on eBay,” the Indowy finished.
The sun was just beginning to peek over Colon’s low skyline, its rays lighting up Lemon Bay, the Bahia de Limon, in iridescent streaks. The USS Des Moines glowed magnificently in the early morning light.
Davis stood with the supply officer on the Cristobal pier to which CA-134 was docked, the two of them receipting for supplies.
“Got to admit it; that yellow awning does look nice.”
“I don’t mind the awning, Chief,” said the Chop. “I’ll even admit, reluctantly, that it’s kinda pretty. But those goddamned paisley coverings over the brows are just too fucking much.”
The chief shrugged. “Take the good with the bad,” he said.
“Speaking of good with bad, what the hell is this?” asked the Chop, pointing at a large box in Galactic packaging, resting on the dock.
“Dunno, sir. I can’t even read the writing.”
The chief bent down to look for a shipping label. He found something that might have been one, but the writing on this, too, was indecipherable.
“Best have Sinbad look this over.”
Davis pulled a small radio from his pocket. As he was about to press the talk button, he spotted the Indowy walking his way with a half dozen of his clanspeople in tow.
“Sinbad, can you make this out?’ asked the chief, pointing at what was probably a shipping label.
“I can,” answered the Indowy, looking down as usual, “but it really isn’t necessary. It’s for me.”
“Oh. Well, what is it, Mister Sintarleen?”
“It is hard to explain,” which was the truth. “It is for… manufacturing parts… and… ummm… assemblies. Yes, that’s it: assemblies,” which was also the truth, if not the whole of it.
“Very well, Sinbad,” agreed the Chop, holding forth a clipboard and pen. “If you will sign here for it.”
“I can’t see anything,” said Daisy. “I can’t sense anything. Are you sure it’s working?”
Sintarleen gave an Indowy sigh. “Lady Daisy, you can’t sense or see anything because right now the tank is manipulating and selecting the scraps of DNA we gave it. When it has enough to make a full cell then the process will begin.”
“And it will make me a body? A real, human, body?”
“It will, if it works, if we have provided enough material. But I must warn you again, Lady Daisy, that it will have no mind. There are protocols built in to the machine, protocols I can do nothing about, that forbid the creation of colloidal sentiences by artificial means.
“Instead of a brain it will have something very like your physical self. Simpler of course. Not really able to think on its own. All of its intelligence must come from you.”
“That will be just fine,” Daisy agreed.
“There is one further thing,” the Indowy insisted. “You will be connected with this… body… as soon as it starts to grow from a single cell. It will be under accelerated growth, but that growth will be irregular. Moreover, it will be, biologically, a human female body. Even in the tank it will be affected by human physiological processes. Those processes will affect you, Lady Daisy.”
One thing you can say for having an AID run your galley, thought Chief Davis, you can be certain that the food is going to be first rate.
It wasn’t that Daisy Mae physically made the omelets, or boiled the lobster, or flipped the steak. There were cooks and mess boys for that.
Instead, Daisy bought the very best ingredients out of her slush fund and — while she did not routinely show herself in the galley itself — would appear there suddenly and without warning, cursing like a cavalry trooper over the shamefaced cook if a filet mignon approached half a degree past medium rare when medium rare had been ordered.
And the coffee was always perfect. She ordered it fresh roasted from a little coffee plantation in the Chiriqui highlands, one of Digna’s family holdings as a matter of fact. Then Daisy insisted that the big brewers be scrubbed to perfection, the water poured in at the perfect temperature, and the brewing stopped at precisely the right moment.
It probably didn’t hurt that she was paying the cooks a small bonus under the table. Then again, good cooks took pride in their work. Having the best materials to work with, to produce a better meal, only fed that pride.
Actually, the coffee puzzled the chief. It was on the rationed list. And high end, gourmet coffee was on the serious rationed list. But there was always plenty of it and it was always perfect.