“You know anything about that place?” the colonel asked.
“Only what’s in the encyclopedia,” Kris said. “Oh, and my grampa doesn’t want me to start a war. That’s more than he usually tells me about a mission.”
“He offer any suggestions on how you avoid falling into your usual evil ways?” Abby asked.
“Not a thing,” Kris said.
“ ’Cause I got some news for you, sweet pea, the locals already know you’re coming, and they already know what you’re going to do.”
That got everyone sitting up straight.
“How can they know I am coming when I didn’t know I was coming until yesterday?”
“Beats me, but the cowboys are sure you’re on their side, ready to enforce the old ways. And the industrials are just as sure you’re on their side, ready to make the old-timers see the error of their ways.”
“That’s nice to know,” Kris growled.
“Can it get any more complicated?” the colonel asked.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Cowboys and industrials. My dad researched our family tree. Traced it back to someplace on Earth. Arizona in the original United States of America. The kids had a game there. Cowboys and Indians. The two were usually at war with each other. Guns. Bang, bang,” he said, making a gun with his fingers and pulling the trigger twice.
“I think I know what you mean,” Abby said, pulling something up on her reader and sending it to the wall behind her.
A political cartoon appeared. A cowboy in chaps and spurs, huge hat on his head, and a six-gun in his hand, had a silly look on his face as his gun went click, click on empty.
Running at him was a bigger fellow. From the waist down, he was in breechclout and moccasins. From the waist up he sported a worker’s overalls and neck bandana. He had a band around his head with two feathers in it and was waving a huge wrench like it was a battle-axe, good for bashing in the cowboy’s head.
“That don’t look all that good,” Abby said.
“What do you expect?” Kris said. “Remember who gave us our orders.”
25
Kris would not pass along Honovi’s assessment of matters in human space to Ron. She got no argument there.
The problem was, what could she do with six Iteeche while she went to Texarkana, performed a miracle, and came back. And not leave any tracks that they’d ever been here.
Professor mFumbo wanted to get them talking to his experts. So far, they hadn’t made it past the front door.
“Could we give them access to the ship’s computer?” Kris asked after lunch.
“Too much there we don’t want them to know,” the colonel said, and got nods from all around the table.
“Actually,” Kris said, slowly measuring her words, “some Iteeche know quite a bit about us. Apparently, there were some communication lines left open after the war.”
“I never heard about that,” Abby said.
“Well, there were. Most people didn’t know about them.” The blank stares showed Kris that her listeners weren’t buying it. “Okay, almost nobody knew about them. I didn’t. Ron didn’t. That was something I learned after the rest of you . . .”
“Got the bum’s rush out of the room,” Abby said.
“Well, yes.”
“How much info were they swapping?” Penny asked.
“I don’t know, and wouldn’t tell you if I did figure it out, okay? I’m not that much less in the dark than you are.”
“But you want to let your Iteeche buddy there be less in the dark about us than we are about them,” the colonel said.
“I’m hoping that if we give him something, then he’ll give us an equal amount.”
“Hope is not a strategy,” the colonel pointed out.
“Does anyone have a better idea?” Kris asked.
“May I point out a tactical problem,” Penny said, quietly. “Even if you give them access to the ship’s database, they’ve got no way to translate. You going to loan them Nelly?”
“No!” Kris said.
“One of Nelly’s kids? One of the two not being used at the moment?”
“No!” Nelly said.
“No?” Penny echoed.
“I will not have one of my children raised by an alien. They have a hard enough time relating to you humans, and with you, I can help them. Imagine how crazy it would make one of them if they had to adapt to a totally strange mind.”
“And here I thought Kris’s mind was about as strange as it got,” Abby said.
Now it was Nelly’s turn to sniff. “I’ll assume that was an attempt at a joke. The upbringing of my children and their sanity is not a joke to me.”
“It’s not a joke to us, Nelly,” Kris put in.
“Well, ah,” the colonel said, “what do we do? Assuming we want to keep the Iteeche from going stir-crazy on a long trip with no shore leave.
“And the boffins,” Penny said. “We don’t want them going crazy either.”
“They are crazy,” Abby insisted.
“As I see it,” Kris said, raising two fingers, “there are two problems. First, what part of the ship’s database do we want the Iteeche to access? It seems to me that we and Nelly ought to be able to decide what stories and histories won’t give them too much about us.”
That got some agreement.
“Then the second part of the problem is who does the translation. None of us want to spend our time or our computer’s time doing that full-time. Nelly, do you have a solution?”
“I’m already working on it,” Nelly said, proudly. “I’ve asked Chief Beni who has the oldest computer on the Wasp. It seems the cook is rather proud of that distinction. For a ridiculously large sum, he is willing to accept Abby’s old computer, which I must say is disgustingly obsolete.”
“No, little darling, you may not give away my computer.”
“Why?”
“Because it is not nearly what you think it is.”
“You’ve fooled me.”
Kris had a hard time believing anyone could fool Nelly.
“Let’s just leave things as they are. Cookie can have Cara’s old computer. It’s got plenty of fun stuff on it and can still hold his recipes, both of them.”
“Can Cookie’s old computer do the translating?” Kris asked.
“It will after the chief makes a few minor upgrades,” Nelly said. “Don’t worry, it will still be fifty years behind the bleeding edge. It will also be unable to access the ship’s net. It will get what we feed it, not one gram more.”
So Kris found herself knocking on the door to Iteeche country.
“My master was expecting you,” the herald told her as he bowed her in . . . and slammed the door shut before two boffins right behind her could slip in.
Today, Ron was busy with paint and brush, coloring in a sketch he’d made on the wall across from the beach scene. This one showed towering buildings and sparkling ponds with slashes of color that Kris took for flowers along walks of brightly colored stone.
“Do you like what you see?” he asked.
“Yes. Where is it?”
“A portion of the Imperial Palace. I’ve painted from memory the spawning tidal pools and the Palace of Learning for the newly chosen ones.”
“From memory?” Kris asked.
“Maybe someday when I have spawned myself, these pools will take on better memories. For now, they are of being a tiny fish, fleeing from larger fish. There is a reason why evil and chaos lurk in the deep, dark depths of our sea.”
Kris shook her head, then remembered she had to nod to be understood by Ron. “I cannot conceive of a mother leaving her child in such a horrible place.”