and sound.
As Masterson could not be angry with me, he brought some-one he thought could be: poor Lieutenant Shue. Masterson was in auxiliary services and therefore not in the same command structure as the Lieutenant, and was happy to be angry at him, in the hope he would then be angry with me. When the conversation started to turn to financial compensation, Lieutenant Shue sent him away, promising to sort everything out, and pulled up a chair to the other side of the table.
I looked up at him briefly. I had made the necessary tools using a duvet-cover and three pens taken from the laundry as base material, and was currently cleaning the mechanism pieces with a very fine brush which needed my attention if Gil Masterson was not to get his watch back missing a few vital pieces.
“I know you understand the concept of personal property,” Lieutenant Shue began. “And I know you understand the concept of theft. We need to have a talk.”
“I was merely borrowing it,” I replied. “If some-one had not told Mr Masterson I had it, I would have returned it before he was even aware it had gone.”
Some-one had been Polly Zamzow, who had come into the hospital in search of a little skin-seal, and had promptly gone straight in search of her friend Gil Masterson to tell him about the watch. Humans and their burning desire for communication.
“But you did not have permission to take it,” Lieutenant Shue pointed out patiently.
“He would never have been me permission to borrow it.”
“You have got to stop riding rough-shod over every-one whenever you don’t get your own way. If you want to learn what it is to be human you need to learn about accepting that you cannot always have all you want all the time.”
“I can’t?”
“Humans can’t,” he said. “Plus you need to learn that no-one actually likes some-one who acts like that.”
“No-one likes me anyway,” I replied. “Which is one of the reasons I am going to the Artemis Explorer.”
“We both know you have no intention of leaving the Bonaventure.”
I smiled.
“You need to return the watch to Mr Masterson -”
“- like this?”
“- when you have put it together again. And you need to apologize to him for taking it without permission.”
“Apologize? To him?”
“Yes.”
“Sweet,” I said. “I’ve never made an apology before. It should be fun.”
Lieutenant Shue sighed and gave me his resigned face.
“I’m not really getting through to you, am I?”
2.12. The solution to the solution
Captain Munk’s superiors were thrown into panicked uproar when she reported my intention of joining the Artemis Explorer. They did not want me anywhere near Camp Munro, but they also did not want me anywhere near a Fleur ship either. They would much rather I remained at least 1000km away from the nearest Fleur employee at all times. Their solution turned out to be to allow me to remain on the Bonaventure, and to then send the ship somewhere far, far away.
While Captain Munk agreed that I should not get close to Camp Munro, she did not think much of the proposed solution since it involved her also going far, far away, and was happy to tell them so in no uncertain terms. Her one aim in life was to get me off her ship one way or another, and all other considerations were a remote second.
The solution to the solution was for Captain Munk’s new appointment to be accelerated, and when the ship reached Camp Munro she would be transferred to her new command. She pointed out that they would then have to find a new captain for the Bonaventure who was prepared to have the control of their ship taken away from them whenever the Evil Alien Entity felt like it. The replied that they were sure they would have no difficulty finding some-one who would feel working with an alien of a type never seen before a truly exciting proposition.
Captain Munk did not like this response very much, feeling it cast aspersions on her own attitude, and many words were wasted while she justified her position and tried to persuade them just how dangerous I might be. However dangerous I turned out to be her bosses wanted me dangerous and with them, rather than dangerous and against them.
Still fondly believing I was unable to monitor her communications with her bosses she got Commander Nichols to tell me they had agreed I could go to Camp Munro on the Bonaventure after all. We were already all going to Camp Munro on the Bonaventure, but I decided not to point this out. He made it seem as if they were bestowing a great favour on me, rather than making the best of a bad job, but I remembered Lieutenant Shue’s warning about always getting my own way, and I humbly thanked the Commander for the opportunity rather than correcting him.
When I reported to Lieutenant Shue that I was not going to join the Artemis Explorer after all he shook his head.
“You were never going to join the Artemis Explorer,” he said.
“Yes, but now I’m officially not going to join the Artemis Explorer. You get to have my company all the way to Camp Munro.”
He shook his head again.
“Hey, you think we’ll go there directly, now, rather than all this faffing about we’re doing at the moment?” I asked with interest. I was not, of course, supposed to be aware of their delaying tactics.
“We’re not faffing about.”
“Well, we made 37 course changes today and are now further away from Camp Munro than we were yesterday,” I pointed out. “Do you want to see my chart? I’ve been plotting our daily progress in half hour increments.”
This time he both shook his head and walked away.
2.13. The pretty little stones
Lieutenant Shue came to the ward to see how I was getting on, working with a still unhappy Gil Masterson. He normally kept an eye out for any new artwork I had tacked up on the walls since his last visit, but this time his attention was soon fixed on the stones laid out in front of me on the bed.
“What are those?” he asked ominously.
“Diamonds,” I said.
“You’ve been making diamonds?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh Christ.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell any-one. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life making diamonds for people.”
“So you understand how much they are worth?”
“Of course.”
Masterson’s watch had had artificial gems in the movement and two genuine diamonds set at the 12 and 6 positions on the face. I was used to diamonds in their natural state, but had not experienced cut diamonds before, and was exploring them further. I had used half a chair and a couple of scalpels from the hospital as the base material and had made diamonds in ten different shapes, including one called an emerald cut. Yet another example of bad human terminology. I had also made them in white, yellow, champagne, blue, red, pink, green and black, and a few shades in-between. I had tried a few in different sizes, as the small ones were particularly tricky, and I had a pile of stones that I did not feel were quite up to standard.
Lieutenant Shue sat down on the opposite end of the bed and picked up a marquise cut pink to study. He was fascinated.
“Do you really get diamonds this colour?” he asked.
“These are all perfectly natural shades.”
He picked up a minute blue princess.
“Well, when you’re done with them, you need to hide them away somewhere safe. Somewhere very safe.”
He chose a round white and watched the light catch it. “So do your people have rules about interacting with other races?” he asked, still staring at the diamond. “I mean, if you sat here churning out diamonds and gold bars by the tonne you could pretty much ruin our economy if you wanted. Do you have rules against things like that?”
“There probably are some, but I’ve never paid much attention.” I paused, and added the round I had just finished to the correct pile. “I do know we’re allowed to be gods.”
Lieutenant Shue did not look up. “We’ve already been over that.”
“And we’
re not a ‘people’. We’re a Fellowship.” I regretted saying it immediately. I was supposed to be learning more about them, not them learning more about me. Perhaps Lieutenant Shue sensed this because he glanced at me before picking up a black round and comparing it to the white. “Are these genuine?” he queried instead of asking more about the Fellowship. “Or will they melt away, or turn to dust or something?”
“They are not what you would call genuine-genuine,” I said. “But no human could spot the difference.”
He put a finger in the pile of the less than perfect stones and stirred them round gently as he shook his head in disbelief. I had 159 diamonds laid out on my bed. I counted them after Lieutenant Shue left, and I still had 159 diamonds.
He had not even taken one of the small ones. It appeared Lieutenant Shue was an honest man.
2.14. The uses of half a chair
Dr Howard spotted the chair I had used for the diamonds and wondered why she suddenly had half a chair in her hospital. She also noticed the missing scalpels and a few other bits and pieces, and an inventory in the laundry showed up a missing duvet cover and a towel.
It did not take long for every-one to start looking at me.
Knowing Lieutenant Shue’s line on personal property I was not surprised when the subject of the missing objects was brought up in our daily briefing.
“I needed them as base material,” I explained.
“Base material?”
“To make things.”
“To make new objects? Like the diamonds? You need base material to make new objects?”
“Well, you can’t make something from nothing.”