The Ship Who Searched b-3

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Gentlemen," she said smoothly, catching all their attentions. "Ladies. I believe you should all check your datalinks. If you do, you will see that my client, a Miz Hypatia Cade, has just this moment purchased a controlling interest in your preferred stock. As of this moment, Hypatia Cade is Moto-Prosthetics. As her proxy, she directs me to put the normal business before the board on hold for a moment."

  There was a sudden, shocked moment of silence, then a rustle as cuffs were pushed back, followed by another moment of silence as the members of the board took in the reality of her statement, verified that it was true, wondered how it had happened without them noticing, then waited for the axe to fall. All eyes were on Angelica; some of them desperate. Most of the desperate were those who backed risky ventures within the company, and were wondering if their risk-taking had made them into liabilities for the new majority owner.

  Ah, power. I could disband the entire board and bring in my own people, and you all know it. These were the moments that she lived for; the feeling of having the steel hand within the velvet glove, knowing that she held immense power, and choosing not to exercise it.

  Angelica slid back down into her seat and smiled, smoothly, coolly, but encouragingly. "Be at ease, ladies and gentlemen. The very first thing that my client wishes to assure you of is that she intends no shakeups. She is satisfied with the way this company is performing, and she does not intend to interfere in the way you are running it."

  Once again, the faces around the table changed. Disbelief in some eyes, calculation in others. Then understanding. It would be business as usual. Nothing would change. These men and women still had their lives, their power, undisturbed.

  She waited for the relief to set in, then pounced, leaning forward, putting her elbows down in the table, and steepling her hands before her. "But I must tell you that this will be the case only so long as Miz Cade is satisfied. And Miz Cade does have a private agenda for this company."

  Another pause, to let the words sink in. She saw the questions behind the eyes, what kind of private agenda? Was it something that this Cade person wanted them to do, or to make? Or was it something else altogether?

  "It's something that she wants you to construct; nothing you are not already capable of carrying off," Angelica continued, relishing every moment "In fact, I would venture to say that it is something you could be doing now, if you had the inclination. It's just a little personal project, shall we say."

  Alex's mouth tasted like an old rug; his eyes were scratchy and puffed, and his head pounded. Every joint ached, his stomach churned unhappily, and he was not at all enjoying the way the room had a tendency to roll whenever he moved. The wages of sin were counted out in hangovers, and this one was one of monumental proportions. Well, that's what happens when you go on a two-week drunk.

  He closed his eyes, but that didn't help. It hadn't exactly been a two-week drunk, but he had never once in the entire span been precisely sober. He had chosen, quite successfully, to glaze his problems over with the fuzz and blurring of alcohol.

  It was all that had happened. He had not shaken his fixation with Tia. He was just as hopelessly in love with her as he had been before he started his binge. And he had tried everything short of brain-wipe to get rid of the emotion; he'd made contact with some of his old classmates, he'd gone along with Neil and Chria on a celebratory spree, he'd talked to more bartender Counselors, he'd picked up girl after girl... To no avail whatsoever.

  Tia Cade it was who was lodged so completely in his mind and heart, and Tia Cade it would remain.

  So, besides being hung over, he was still torn up inside. And without that blur of alcohol to take the edge off it, his pain was just as bad as before.

  There was only one thing for it. He and Tia would have to work it all out, somehow. One way or another. He opened his eyes again; his tiny rented cubicle spun slowly around, and he groaned as has stomach protested. First things first; deal with the hangover...

  It was just past the end of the second shift when he made his way down the docks to the refit berth where CenSec had installed Tia for her repair work. It had taken that long before he felt like a human being again. One thing was certain; that was not something he intended to indulge in ever again. One long binge in his life was enough. I just hope I haven't fried too many brain cells with stupidity. I don't have any to spare.

  He found the lock closed, but there were no more workers swarming about, either inside the bay or out. That was a good sign, since it probably meant all the repairs were over. He'd used the day-and-night noise as an excuse to get away, assuming Tia would contact him if she needed to.

  As he hit the lock controls and gave them his palm to read, it suddenly occurred to him that she hadn't made any attempt at all to contact him in all the time he'd been gone.

  Had he frightened her? Had she reported him? The lock cycled quickly, and he stepped onto a ship that was uncannily silent. The lights had been dimmed down; the only sounds were of the ventilation system. Tia did not greet him; nothing did. He might as well have been on an empty, untenanted ship, without even an AI. Something was wrong.

  His heart pounding, his mouth dry with apprehension, he went to the main cabin. The boards were all dark, with no signs of activity. Tia wasn't sulking; Tia didn't sulk. There was nothing functioning that could not be handled by the stand-alone redundant micros.

  He dropped his bag on the deck, from fingers that had gone suddenly nerveless. There could be only one cause for this silence, this absence of activity. Tia was gone. Either the BB authorities had found out about how he felt, or Tia herself had complained. They had come and taken her away, and he would never see or talk to her again.

  As if to confirm his worst fears, a glint of light on an open plexy window caught his eye. Theodore Edward Bear was gone, his tiny shrine empty.

  No. But the evidence was inescapable.

  Numb with shock, he found himself walking towards his own cabin. Perhaps there would be a note there, in his personal database. Perhaps there would be a message waiting from CS, ordering him to report for official Counseling.

  Perhaps both. It didn't matter. Tia was gone, and very little mattered anymore. Black despair washed into him, a despair so deep that not even tears would relieve it. Tia was gone...

  He opened the door to his cabin, and the light from the corridor shone inside, making the person sitting on his bunk blink.

  Someone sitting on my -

  Female. It was definitely female. And she wasn't wearing anything like a CS uniform, Counselor, Advocate, or anything else. In fact, she wasn't wearing very much at all, a little neon-red Spandex unitard that left nothing to imagine.

  He turned on the light, an automatic reflex. His visitor stared up at him, lips creasing in a shy smile. She was tiny, smaller than he had first thought; dark and elfin, with big blue eyes, the image of a Victorian fairy and oddly familiar.

  In her hands, she gently cradled the missing Ted Bear. It was the bear that suddenly shook his brain out of inactive and into overdrive.

  He stared; he gripped the side of the door. "T-T-Tia?" he stammered.

  She smiled again, with less shyness. "Hi," she said and it was Tia's voice, sounding a bit, odd, coming from a mouth and not a speaker. "I'm sorry I had to shut so much down, I can't run this and the ship, too."

  It was Tia, Tia! sitting there in a body, a human body, like the realization of his dream!

  "This?" he replied cleverly.

  "I hope you don't mind if I don't get up," she continued, a little ruefully. "I'm not very good at walking yet. They just delivered this today, and I haven't had much practice in it yet."

  "It?" he said, sitting heavily down on his bunk and staring at her. "How-what-"

  "Do you like it?" she asked, pathetically eager for his approval. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to approve of, the body?

  "How could I not like it, you," His head was spinning as badly as it had a few hours ago. "Tia, what on earth is this?"

&
nbsp; She blinked, and giggled. "I keep forgetting. You know all that bonus money we've been getting? I kept investing it, then reinvesting the profits in Moto-Prosthetics. But when we got back here, I was thinking about something Doctor Kenny told me, that they had the capability to make a body like this, but that there was no way to put a naked brain in it, and there was so much data-transfer needed to run it that the link could only be done at very short distances."

  "Oh." He couldn't help but stare at her; this was his dream, his daydream-his,

  Nevermind.

  "Anyway," she continued, blithely unaware that she had stunned him into complete silence, "it seemed to me that the body would be perfect for a brainship, I mean, we've got all the links already, and it wouldn't be any harder to control a body from inside than a servo. But he was already an investor, and he told me it wasn't likely they'd ever build a body like that, since there was no market for it, because it would cost as much as a brainship contract buy-out."

  "But how,"

  She laughed aloud. "That was why I took all my share of the bonuses and bought more stock! I bought a controlling interest, then I told them to build me a body! I don't need a buy-out. I don't really want a buy-out, not since the Institute decided to give us the EsKay homeworld assignment."

  He shook his head. "That simple? It hardly seems possible... didn't they argue?"

  "They were too happy that I was letting them keep their old jobs," she told him cynically. "After all, as controlling stockholder, I had the right to fire them all and set up my own Board of Directors. But I have to tell you the funniest thing!"

  "What's that?" he asked.

  Her hands caressed Theodore's soft fur. "Word of what I was doing leaked out, and now there is a market! Did you have any idea how many shell-persons there are who've earned a buy-out, but didn't have any place to go with it, because they were happy with their current jobs?" He shook his head, dumbly.

  "Not too many ships," she told him, "but a lot of shell-persons running installations. Lots of them. And there were a lot of inquiries from brainships, too, some of them saying that they'd be willing to skip a buy-out to have a body! Moto-Prosthetics even got a letter of protest from some of the Advocates!"

  "Why?" he asked, bewildered. "Why on earth would they care?"

  "They said that we were the tools of the BB program, that we had purposely put this 'mechanical monster' together to tempt brainships out of their buy-out money." She tilted her head to one side, charmingly, and frowned. "I must admit that angle had never occurred to me. I hope that really isn't a problem. Maybe I should have Lars and Lee Stirling look into it for me."

  "Tia," he managed, around the daze surrounding his thoughts, "what is this 'mechanical monster' of yours?"

  "It's a cybernetic body, with a wide-band comlink in the extreme shortwave area up here." She tapped her forehead. "What's different about it is that it's using shell-person tech to give me full sensory input from the skin as well as output to the rest. My range isn't much outside the ship, but my techs at Moto are working on that. After all, when we take the Prime Team out to the EsKay homeworld, I'm going to want to join the dig, if they'll let me. What with alloys and silicates and carbonfibers and all, it's not much heavier than you are, even though it outmasses a softperson female of this type by a few kilos. Everything works, though, full sensory and well, everything. Like a softperson again, except that I don't get muscle fatigue and I can shut off the pain sensors if I'm damaged. That was why I took Ted out; I wanted to feel him, to hug him again."

  She just sat there and beamed at him, and he shook his head. "But why?" he asked, finally.

  She blinked, and then dropped her eyes to the bear. "I, probably would have gone for a buy-out, if it hadn't been for you," she said shyly. "Or maybe a Singularity Drive, except that CenSec decided that maybe they'd better give me one and threw it in with the repairs. But, I told you, Alex. You're the most special person in my life. How could I know this was possible, and not do it for, for both of us?"

  He dared to touch her then, just one finger along her cheek, then under her chin, raising her eyes to meet his. There was nothing about those lucent eyes that looked mechanical or cold; nothing about the warmth and resiliency of the skin under his hand that said 'cybernetic'.

  "You gave up your chance of a buy-out for me, for us?" he asked.

  She shrugged. "Someone very wise once said that the chance for happiness was worth giving up a little freedom for. And really, between the Advocates and everybody, they really can't make us do anything we don't want to."

  "I guess not." He smiled, and she smiled back. "You do realize that you've actually done the BB program two favors, don't you?"

  "I have?" She blinked again, clearly bewildered.

  "You've given shell-persons something else to do with their buy-out money. If they don't have Singularity Drives, they'll want those first, and then they'll want one of these." He let go of her chin and tapped her cheek playfully. "Maybe more than one. Maybe one of each sex, or in different body types. Some brainships may never buy out. But the other problem, you've solved fixation, my clever lady."

  She nodded after a moment. "I never thought of that. But you're right! If you have a body, someone to be with and, ah, everything, you won't endanger the shell-person. And if it's just an infatuation based on the dream instead of the reality, well,"

  "Well, after a few rounds with the body, it will cool off to something manageable." He chuckled. "Watch out, or they'll give you a bonus for that one, too!"

  She laughed. "Well, I won't take it as a buy-out! Maybe I'll just build myself a second body! After all, if we aren't going to be exploring the universe like a couple of holoheroes, we have the time to explore things a little closer to hand. Right?"

  She posed, coyly, looking at him flirtatiously over her shoulder. He wondered how many of her entertainment holos she'd watched to find that pose. "So, what would you like, Alex? A big, blond Valkyrie? An Egyptian queen? A Nubian warrior-maid? How about a Chinese princess or..."

  "Let's learn about what we have at hand, shall we?" he interrupted, sliding closer to her and taking her in his arms. Her head tilted up towards his, her eyes shining with anticipation. Carefully, gently, he took the bear out of her hands and placed him on the shelf above the foot of the bed, as her arms slid around his waist, cautiously, but eagerly.

  "Now," he breathed, "about that exploration..."

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 3cacf9ef-7d8f-48ca-b801-bca641965598

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 25.02.2011

  Created using: htmlDocs2fb2 software

  Document authors :

  Milhent

  About

  This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.

  (This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)

  Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.

  (Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)

  http://www.fb2epub.net

  https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/