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Qiwi was a genius at taking questions the way she wanted them: "We got the same scut-work shift starting in two thousand seconds. I thought we could go down to the bactry together, trade gossip."
Vinh dived into the back room, this time shutting her out. He changed into work fatigues. Of course, the Brat was still waiting when he emerged.
He sighed. "I don't have any gossip."Damned if I'll repeat what Trixiasaid.
Qiwi gri
Vinh had first met Qiwi Lin Lisolet back in pre-Flight, in Trilander space. She'd been an eight-year-old bundle of raw obnoxiousness. And for some reason she'd chosen him as the target of her attention. After a meal or training session, she'd rush up behind him and slug him in the shoulder—and the angrier he got, the more she seemed to like it. One good punch returned would have changed her whole outlook. But you can't slug an eight-year-old. She was nine years short of the mandatory crew minimum. The place for children was before voyages and after—not in crews, especially crews bound for desolate space. But Qiwi's mother owned twenty percent of the expedition....The Lisolet.17 Family was truly matriarchal, originally from Strentma
Now the two were descending through the main axis of the temp. "Hey Raji, how's business?" Qiwi waved and gri
"I don't trust the Emergents, Ezr. After all the generous talk, they'll slit our throats."
Vinh gave an irritated grunt. "So how come you're smiling so much?"
They floated past a clear section of fabric—a real window, not wallpaper. Beyond was the temp's park. It was barely more than a large bonsai, actually, but probably held more open space and living things than were in all the Emergents' sterile habitat. Qiwi's head twisted around and for a short moment she was quiet. Living plants and animals were about the only things that could do that to her. Her father was Fleet Life-Support Officer—and a bonsai artist known across all of near Qeng Ho space.
Then she seemed to startle back to the present. Her smile returned, supercilious. "Because we're the Qeng Ho, if we only stop to remember the fact! We've got thousands of years of sneakiness on these newcomers. ‘Emergents' my big toe! They're where they are now from listening to the public part of the Qeng Ho Net. Without the Net, they'd still be squatting in their own ruins."
The passage narrowed, curving down into a cusp. Behind and above them, the sounds of crew were muted by the swell of wall fabric. This was the i
The duty here was scut work, about as low as things could get, cleaning the bacterial filters below the hydro ponds. Down here, the plants didn't smell so nice. In fact, robust good health was signaled by a perfectly rotting stench. Most of the work could be done by machines, but there were judgment calls that eluded the best automation, and that no one had ever bothered to make remotes for. In a way, it was a responsible position. Make a dumb mistake and a bacterial strain might get across the membrane into the upper tanks. The food would taste like vomit, and the smell could pass into the ventilator system. But even the most terrible error probably wouldn't kill anyone—there were still the bactries on the ramscoops, all kept in isolation from one another.
So this was a place to learn, ideal by the standards of harsh teachers: It was tricky; it was physically uncomfortable; and a mistake could cause embarrassment that would be very hard to live down.
Qiwi signed up for extra duty here. She claimed to love the place. "My papa says you gotta start with the smallest living things, before you can handle the big ones." She was a walking encyclopedia about bacteria, the entwined metabolic pathways, the sewage-like bouquets that corresponded to different combinations, the characteristics of the strains that would be damaged by any human contact (the blessed ones whose stink they need never smell).
Ezr came close to making two mistakes in the first Ksec. He caught them, of course, but Qiwi noticed. Normally she would have ragged him endlessly about the errors. But today Qiwi was caught up in scheming about the Emergents. "You know why we didn't bring any heavy lifters?"
Their two largest landers could hoist a thousand to
"Ha. You don't need rumors. You'd know the truth with a little arithmetic. Fleet Captain Park guessed we might have company. He brought the minimum of landers and habs. And he brought lots and lots of guns and nukes."
"Maybe."Certainly.
"The trouble is, the damn Emergents are so close, they brought a whole lot more—and still arrived on our heels."
Ezr made no reply, but that didn't matter.
"Anyway. I've been tracking gossip. We've got to be really, really careful." And she was off into military tactics and speculations about the Emergents' weapons systems. Qiwi's mother was Deputy Fleet Captain, but she was an armsman, too. AStrentma
Ezr finished a sequence and took another sample. "Well," he said, "Trixia thinks they don't see this as a trade interaction at all."