'There's not a thing in all the data. This is the fourth full survey, and not a one has shown anything,' replied the round-faced man in green. 'T-type planets are so rare that everyone rushed the surveys, and Thesalle is pretty, not like Actean or Halcyon Four.'
'Pretty, yes,' agreed the angular woman. 'The holos don't show everything ... couldn't believe what—was like. Vegetation ... that green ... everywhere, and I felt like I was moving in a dream.'
'Nembret says that the air has an unidentified hallucinogen.' Those words came from another man in green. 'Here! I'm taking this with me.' He looked at Sanselle, who was reentering the ship's hold, and gestured toward the oblong container.
'If you would let me scan the tag number ...' Sanselle's voice was polite.
'Of course.' He eased the meter-long container past the half-webbed cargo cube I'd been working to sort through.
Sanselle scanned the tag, and he floated awkwardly back into the main section of the Reichmann, leaving the other two.
'... could be some inroads by engee ... on the same side of the Arm.'
That was yet another reference to engee ... but I still had no idea to what the term referred. There was nothing anywhere in all the nanite-loaded information I had absorbed, nor in the station's data banks.
'Who cares? We've got to recheck Alaric ... something about polar ammonia dispersion reinforcing the greenhouse effect. Qualcon's worried about an imbalance ...'
I muscled the last lumntagged crate onto Sanselle's cargo sled, then began to web everything in place, strapping the green-striped case on the top.
'You get the other sled,' she suggested.
So I did, and I had it locked in place before she returned.
'Not bad, Tyndel.'
'I learn.'
Only the Reichmann's third stayed around to watch us unload and stow the remainder of the cargo. She was angular in a way that reminded me of Cerrelle. Her eyes were muddy brown, not the deep blue of Foerga's or the piercing green of Cerrelle's or the honest full brown of Fersonne's.
Neither Sanselle nor I spoke much. In ways I did not try to analyze, the presence of the officials in green had damped our normal interest in unloading. We wanted to get the job done and return to other duties.
'That's it,' the third finally said. 'We'll close up.'
We nodded.
Then we had to unload the sled in the transshipment bay. It was easier without anyone looking over our shoulders, although we both knew that Gerbriik monitored us periodically. He didn't trust anyone. That was why he was maintenance officer - and why he'd never be more.
Afterward, when we got to the canteen, I stuck myself to the seat and glanced across at Sanselle. I preferred to ask her questions where I might look stupid, rather than Fersonne or Gerbriik. Sanselle took everything evenly, and I hoped she could help.
'Sanselle ...?'
'Another question?' Her eyebrows arched. 'I was fixing the glow strip. The Reichmann came in with those passengers Gerbriik didn't expect.'
'Right.'
'They were talking when they kept looking over our shoulders.'
'I didn't care much for that. They couldn't do any better.'
'No, they couldn't.' I paused. 'They used a term I've never heard, and I can't find it anywhere.'
Sanselle's blond eyebrows rose. 'You couldn't find it anywhere?'
I flushed. 'I searched the station database, and the library's, and all the information that's been pumped into me.'
She half grinned. 'You think I'll know?'
'You know more than you ever say.' That was true enough.
'What's this mysterious term?'
'Engee ... or something like that.'
Her visage clouded momentarily, before another grin appeared, shakier. 'That's what some folk called the Anomaly. The Believers think their God created it and lives there. Engee is short for nanite-god or something like that.'
Anomaly? The angle between the radius vector to an orbiting body from its primary (the focus of the orbital ellipse) and the line of apsides of the orbit ... That wasn't it. I tried searching my personal data stocks again. Deviation from rule, irregularity ...
'Why isn't there any reference to it?'
'There isn't any evidence,' she pointed out. 'They teach that in all the early histories. That's what brought down the early system nets - all sorts of information that wasn't even true in some cases. Anyone can get anything, just about, off a net, but you have to know the protocols to add stuff. Adding stuff without clearance is cause for adjustment.'
Just adding information to a data system could get a demon adjusted?
A main system. You can put anything you want in a local system, but it can't be lifted by outside access. There are ways around it.' She grinned, but the grin faded. 'Most wouldn't try it. Not worth the risk.'
Another hidden and cold aspect to Rykashan controls. I pushed on with my first line of inquiry. If I didn't, it would get lost in all the other questions for which I had yet to find answers. 'I've heard people talk about the Believers. I met one on my way here. She was absolute about going somewhere ... where this engee ... was the true God. Something like that, anyway.'
'They have a deep-space colony somewhere. They have to go by slow boat. Photon drive all the way. That takes years objective, but only weeks subjective.'
'Near this Anomaly that no one recognizes?'
'That's what they say.' Sanselle's words were wry and flat simultaneously.
I laughed, but I wondered.
'They also think free rock climbers are suicidally antisocial. We have to carry a positive societal balance at all times.' My laugh stopped. 'Or we face adjudication adjustment.'
'Because ... ?' Because what? I wasn't sure even how to frame the question.
'It's costly to rescue a climber who's stranded or injured. 'A waste of scarce resources' I believe is how the adjuster put it.' She shrugged. 'I'm inhibited from climbing unless my resources are sufficient to cover rescues and medical disasters.'
'You build up a credit base ... ?'
'Exactly. Then no one can say anything. Or do anything. Not even the little monitors they stuffed inside me.'
I did shiver at that.
'It's better not to be adjusted, Tyndel.'
I'd known that already, if not so strongly.
38
Desire always seeks to deceive pure thought.
Fersonne slipped onto the seat at the canteen table across from me, a canteen as dim as the caserns of the soldiers of five millennia earlier. She readjusted the sticktites, then smoothed her dull gray coveralls and took a sip of the hot tea from the bottle. A spheroidal droplet floated sideways, an extravasion propelled toward the gray composite walls, where it would be ensnared by the housekeeping nanites and added to the other wastes for molecular recon-stitution.
Fersonne's brown eyes studied me before she spoke.
'Gerbriik offered me a bonus of another full year's credit if I'd stay for a half year more.'
'Are you thinking about it?'
'I could leave on the next outbound, or the one after that if I don't stay.' She took another sip of tea from the squeeze bottle.
'What will that mean for you?'
'It's not that anyone's waiting. When he didn't renew the contract, I decided I'd do something. I wanted to earn enough to have my own place on Thesalle or Actean - a bigger place, I mean.'
Fersonne had never mentioned, even when we were close, who 'he' had been, and I'd never asked. She had never asked about anyone in my past. I was grateful for that.