Hibiki blinked and then looked thoughtful. “You know, that's not a bad idea. I'll talk with her when I get back.”
“If Dorah doesn't ambush you the moment you're out of the lock when you return...” Irons said with a grin.
Hibiki blinked. “Crap,” he breathed. “Can I stay here with you?” he asked, eyes wide with fright. The admiral laughed. “Seriously, the last time I was gone for more than two hours I was saddle sore for days when she was through with me!”
Irons guffawed. Hibiki shook his head and then sighed. “Okay, I suppose it's funny for you. I'll just... put up with it I guess.”
“Right,” the admiral laughed.
...*...*...*...*...
It took three runs to transfer everything. He was okay with it, each time Hibiki came over he had someone else in the copilot and engineering slot. He smiled, treasuring seeing some of his friends once more. They apparently had enjoyed seeing him, going out of their way to come over.
...*...*...*...*...
On the last load Dorah joined Hibiki. She flew into the admiral's arms the moment the lock cycled, surprising him. He disentangled her with a chuckle. “Nice to see you too Dorah.”
“I've got something for you!”
“Actually I do,” Tara said, holding a squirming bundle of fur. Irons noted the ball was about hand sized and not happy about being woke up. “Here you go,” Tara said depositing first one, and then a second tiny ball of spotted fur in his hands. “They're all yours,” she said mock sweetly.
The admiral looked at the kittens and then to the two grinning women. “You needed a ships cat and well...” Dorah toed the deck.
“What she means to say is that the captain told her she needed to cull her brood or she'd do it for her. And since the grounders don't want any animal imports...” Tara said spreading her hands.
“That's not fair!” Dorah said indignantly, looking up, eyes flashing.
“Well, it's true,” Tara said with a sniff. She indicated the load of material stacked near the lock. “This going our way?” she asked. Irons nodded. She grunted and grabbed the yoke to the pallet jack.
“I... I...”
“It's a tradition to have a ship's cat,” Phoenix said from the overhead. Dorah looked up wide eyed.
“You have an AI here too?” she asked breathlessly. The admiral nodded.
“Wow!” she said, almond eyes the size of saucers. He chuckled as he looked over the handfuls of fur. Both were cats that much he could tell.
“They're mini cheetahs. They're so cute. I got their mother cheap in the last port. I didn't know she was pregnant honest!” she said with wide innocent eyes. He caught Hibiki's rolling eyes and snort out of the corner of his eye and smiled.
“It's been known to happen Dorah. So these two...”
“I didn't name them. They're seven weeks old. They sleep a lot still,” she said, one elfin finger to her lips. One of the bundles looked up and yawned needle sharp teeth, eyes still closed. It flicked a black ear and then settled back down into the admiral's hand and started to buzz softly. The admiral snorted softly in response.
Mini cheetahs, he thought, looking at the speckled creatures. Sometime back in the twenty-first century in the early stages of genetic engineering and the beginning of designer pets someone had gotten the idea to miniaturize wild animals as house pets. These would get no larger than a common house cat. They were lean, and short haired which was good from a ship's perspective. Long hair tended to make a mess of things in a ship.
Some miniature animals worked out better than others. Miniature elephants and rhino's had not. The effort however had helped to combat the threat of extinction of many animals including cheetah. Their popularity as pets had gone a long way to seed the world with their genetic material that was later used to resurrect their species in the wild, both on Earth and on some of the colony worlds.
Cheetahs were better than oh, say lions, tigers, or leopards. Even full size cheetahs seemed domesticated to most people. It would however be interesting if he ran into another Neocat though. They tended to be prickly about their gene engineered distant cousins.
“Aren't they darling?” Dorah cooed, sounding anxious.
“They're cute Dorah. I had one as a kid. Well, a friend did. I had a coonie,” he admitted. Granted it had been when he had been four but... and well, the kids had each had a pet growing up too hadn't they?
“Oh. I...”
“It's okay Dorah. I'll take care of them,” Irons said, reassuring the girl. She was obviously torn and he didn't need her turning on the water works. “Though they will have to spend time in stasis while I'm on planet.”
Dorah bit her lip. Tara came back and rolled her eyes. “They'll be just fine. Remember Faith? They'll wake up just as if they went to sleep. Like a nap,” she amended. Going to sleep had negative connotations to pet lovers.
“And this way they'll be out of trouble and won't miss me while I'm gone. I can't haul them around on the planet. I've got some stops to make and I'll be ground side for a week or two here.”
“Oh!” Dorah said. She bit her lip. “I'm sure they'll be okay,” she said in a small voice. She didn't sound so sure though.
“I'll take good care of them, honest,” he said, tucking them into his coverall.
She smiled suddenly, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said and kissed him on the cheek. “Now um....”
“I've got some of the stuff you asked for over there,” he said, pointing to the small package nearby. She smiled and started moving stuff. Irons snorted, she lifted it like it weighed a ton. She was a tiny little thing, barely one hundred fifty centimeters tall and thin. Still she managed the load. He nodded and stepped back.
“I'll deposit these two in a room with some food and a litter box and be back in a jiff,” he said.
“Take your time, we've got this.”
...*...*...*...*...
“Are you really keeping them?” Sprite asked, clearly amused. Sprite he thought, had a way of twisting his tail.
“Well, they'll make things lively during the trip,” Irons replied as he replicated a litter box. Dorah had been thoughtful about sending over a pair of food and water dishes but she'd forgotten or overlooked the obvious. “I'll... I don't honestly know. We'll see. How about that, we'll see. If they become more trouble than they are worth...”
“Out an airlock?”
He looked up sharply. He wasn't that cruel! He shook his head. “No, stasis, I'll give them to a loving home on some unsuspecting planet. Until then, prep a stasis pod will you Phoenix?” he said looking up to the overhead sensor array. “We'll pop them in after the Io crew leaves so I can go ground side.”
“Understood admiral. You have a ground side appointment in four hours,” the ship AI reminded him.
Irons winced. It was going to take an hour to get down and then another hour or so just to get through the usual red tape of customs. Hazard seemed too have way too much of that, and of course the paper work was accompanied by the usual graft in the flavor of duties and import fees. He hated that, he was fairly certain the government didn't see a dime of that. The port certainly didn't, it was barely maintained. “Then we better hustle if we're going to make delivery on time.” There was no telling what variable might crop up to slow things down. Weather, a slow down at the port... anything. He wanted to appear professional by being punctual and ship shape in a military manner.
...*...*...*...*...
He didn't anticipate feeling like a heel when he put the little beggars in stasis. It felt like a betrayal when they mewed so piteously. He closed his eyes for a moment, leaning on his hand as the stasis chamber stabilized and then he sighed softly when his implants told him that it had. Even then his eyes still locked on the LCD readouts to make sure.
“Not as easy as you thought?” Sprite asked softly.
“No, it never is,” he admitted. The cats were going to hate that, and they would associate him with this or
the pod with something bad. It wasn't good for their long term relationship. He'd have to figure something out later.
“Like being a parent all over again,” Sprite replied with just the right hint of amusement. “From what I understand of what Io told Phoenix and I they picked up a few Neocats as crew and passengers in their travels. I guess one of them didn't like the idea of keeping cats and coonies as pets.”
“Really?” the admiral asked, climbing into the shuttle. “I'm not sure why.”
“Would you mind if some cat had a monkey as a pet?”
“No, the monkey isn't sentient and only distantly related to my species,” he replied affably. She snorted over the link. “But in the interest of cutting this conversation short I'll say I understand it intellectually. They equated the pet animals with themselves and didn't like the comparison. Too bad for them it's like apples and oranges.”
“I'll remember that,” Sprite chuckled as he sat in the pilot chair and sent the first of a series of mental commands through his link to start the preflight checklist.
...*...*...*...*...
“Admiral, don't forget your party favors,” Sprite said after he landed. Irons blinked at her image in confusion. She snorted. “The memory chips,” she said helpfully.
“Oh yes,” he said nodding. He turned, looking for the crate of flash sticks he had replicated. He'd taken to bringing along the flash sticks, really micro computers with one hundred petabytes of digital storage. They didn't have a display method but had the ability to wirelessly connect to each other or to pieces of equipment. It was Sprite's hope that by handing them out he'd set up a rudimentary net for her to use. It wasn't much but it was something.
Also, each time he handed out a chip he was handing over a piece of technology, making those with it slightly indebted to him and hopefully more amiable to reasoning with, hopefully anyway.
Each stick had four ports, one could serve as a power supply while the other three could plug into various devices like wireless keyboards or a flat screen or holographic projector. It was a taste of the past most people he encountered wouldn't understand but many wanted badly anyway.
Back in the hey days of the twenty first century on Earth they were called Dongles, micro computer devices used by hobbyists and those interested in turning old two dimensional entertainment devices into computers. They were great for what he had in mind, he was glad Sprite had come up with the idea after leaving Antigua. He just wished she'd come up with it before then.
He filled his pockets until they were practically bursting. Sprite could customize the load out on each just as she had with the stick he handed over to Deputy Rogers. Hopefully Rogers wouldn't get paranoid about the device being a microcomputer. Some would be a little suspicious of hooking up a wireless device to their hard wired network.
Sprite had delved into the more public files of the sheriff's mainframe, restricting herself to closed investigations or wanted ads. She'd been limited on bandwidth in the short time she'd had to hack the net. Hacking the net had been a little risky but it kept her busy and it might help him in the long run under the right circumstances.
...*...*...*...*...
Helen hit the flush and then turned, pushing through the door to her stall and into the open area of the bathroom. She smiled politely to a nurse doing her hair up in a bun as she turned to the sink. She smiled into the mirror to herself as her eyes flicked to the sign. “All staff MUST wash their hands! AND USE SOAP!” that had been her doing, something to combat the ever present possibility of cross contamination.
She'd overhauled a lot of things in her quest to modernize medicine on her world. Take for instance waste handling and water. When she had been a mere student she'd carefully reviewed what she could and come to the conclusion that both needed to be treated, and handled very carefully if the population was going to prevent another epidemic. Her evaluation along with her planned steps to deal with it had hit the medical establishment and worked its way around the rarefied circles of government. Apparently someone high enough had taken her words to heart and had put them to action, or at least some of them. Perhaps they too had been touched by the last plague and had vowed to try to prevent another.
She shivered as she dried her hands with a paper towel. She knew Doctor Pratt, he'd been a patient teacher. She just wasn't sure she could continue on after losing her entire family to influenza.
Pratt had lost himself in the bottle for a while before finally crawling out of it. She still didn't take into account that it was her, his star pupil that had inspired him to clean up his act. Her reading him the riot act, respectfully was something she acknowledged had changed his attitude toward her, but one she had never known he'd treasured with rich amusement.
Professor Whitney had been an old curmudgeon to most of his students but her smile, wit, and smarts had cut him to the quick on several occasions. He'd grown into a grudging acceptance of her and her intellect, and she'd later found out he too had shadowed and nurtured her early career, steering her for higher office.
She still hadn't gotten the delivery from Phoenix, which wasn't all that surprising since it was passing through Hazard. Should she give Hodges a call and gently “remind” him that she knew about the shipment? No, if he didn't know it might draw attention to it, or if he did know he'd probably act up and do something out of spite. The man was terrible, simply dreadful. He needed to take better care of himself and lose weight in the worst way. He and his wife.
Hodges was typical of the movers and shakers of her world's government, something she resented but had grown fatalistically used to over time. Her cynicism wasn't as deep as Nurse Marlone's, but it was getting there, she thought wryly as she checked to make sure her reading glasses were still in her breast pocket.
Ah yes, good, she thought, and then turned to adjust her silvering brown hair. Marlone and a few others may cling to the old uniforms but she much preferred the modern white smock of her profession. She was glad she had resurrected it. She brushed an errant hair off her lapel and then turned to the door.
Irons had better not have pulled a fast one with that shipment, she thought, pushing her way through the swinging door and out into the brightly lit hall. She turned, orienting towards her office but then reluctantly towards a knot of doctors who were talking quietly but vehemently about some subject. It looked like she had to do some arbitration before she started lighting a fire under some asses to get that shipment she thought with a pang.
...*...*...*...*...
As the admiral prepared his shuttle Sprite entertained herself by checking the various systems she'd managed to gain access to on the planet. There really wasn't much else to do. Watching the organics was the equivalent of watching television, sometimes there really wasn't anything decent on worth watching.
Sprite flipped through the various databases before she switched to the camera feeds. She watched one of the few cameras in the city of Hazard. A two meter tall and very slim Terran in a black outfit was cackling and rubbing his bony hands together right in the center of town. He had a top hat and cape on, and of all things a handlebar mustache that he kept fingering. He really seemed involved in his gloating, muttering something about we've got her now, over and over. Another guy was with him, some henchman he called Homer. She turned up the audio as she spotted the sheriff coming into frame. Out of idle curiosity Sprite lip read their discussion.
“Snidely! You best not of tied that girl up to the tracks again! Nell's mom called, she didn't show up for work this morning! Boss is fit to be tied... err, you know what I mean!”
The tall man flinched as the sheriff came over. He turned slowly and then shrugged, trying hard not to hunch his back and shoulders. Coltrain brandished a fist. “Now look here, you want to play your perverted games that's your business. You and Nell, but we've got a train coming in around five as usual so you just trot your scrawny ass on over to wherever you tied that poor girl up and let her loose and apologize. You hear me?”
Sn
idely hung his head and toed the ground in an obvious 'ah shucks do I have to' gesture. His partner did too. “Yes, Sheriff,” they finally said, from the look of them they seemed to be pouting.
“Now get before I really get mad. I mean it!” The Sheriff warned. “Oh! Oh! Oh! You just get on out of here,” he growled as the two villains left hastily as he pretended to send a kick there way. “And I want to see Nell when she's free. If it's not consensual I'll throw you both in the slammer!” he yelled. He made some inarticulate sounds and seemed to strut for a bit and then walked off frame.
“Organics. I can never figure them out,' the AI said.
“Oh?” Proteus asked. She showed him the compressed video. The AI blob just bobbed. “I do not understand.”
“Never mind. You were never programmed to handle human interactions on this level anyway,” Sprite replied with a sigh. “Sometimes I envy you that.”
...*...*...*...*...
Helen, Director Richards to her subordinates and Doctor Richards from her patients swore softly as she looked at the latest budget. Things were getting there, she judged they had managed to get mainstream medicine in the major cities up to somewhere close to what Terrans had in the early twentieth century or so. Still it was slow, sometimes maddeningly slow. Part of it was right here, the budget. Many of the patients didn't have funds, her clinics were open to all, rich or poor. She had a small line in the budget from the government... she flipped the paper up and swore again... that was getting smaller every year. Damn them! The only time they threw her a bone was when someone wanted a miracle or there was a major crisis! Didn't they know prior planning... getting the resources and training the people to the right skills was as important in such situations?
No, of course not. All they thought about was reducing their tax burden to line their own pockets. Screw the little guy. She hated that.
Then again there were some of the people... she sighed and put the paper down and closed her eyes. She couldn't blame them for being at the bottom... well yes and no. Some... they had just been kicked so often that's what they expected. She lost patience with them as much as she did with the ones who wanted a hand out... expected it. That was exasperating. You'd think after a while they'd want to pick themselves up and move on with their lives! Did they like living in squalor sick all the time? Didn't they know they had to make an effort to help themselves? She ran a frustrated hand through her hair and then sighed. She checked the clock and then sighed again. She had a few minutes before she had to make her rounds.
Plague Planet (The Wandering Engineer) Page 8
