“Ah! Then you accept my offer as impostor,” cried Amos. “Excellent! I shall move here as soon as you require me. Until then, I’d like to remain with my people. If you do not mind a companion in your lovely rooms?” he asked, turning swiftly to Channa, concerned that he also might have offended her with his presumption.
“We’ll let you know when,” she said, a little dazed.
“Of course,” he said. He took her hand and kissed it tenderly, smiled in Simeon’s direction, and left.
Channa stared at the closed doors for a moment, then turned to Simeon’s shaft. “Excuse me, but did we just accept his offer?”
“Well, not exactly, but we didn’t say no.”
“I noticed that. Why not, I wonder?”
Simeon was a little amused at the idea of Channa being bowled over by another personality. “Hmm. Maybe because we agree with him?” Slyly: “Or it could be the pheromones, in your case, Happy baby.”
Channa bridled and threw a cushion at the column. “Get serious. It is a good idea, even if I didn’t think of it first. You have to be protected from the Kolnari.”
“Yes,” he said, enduring excruciating embarrassment at that truth. “Nor can I see any reason not to take him up on his offer. Maybe having an outsider close to our counsels will keep us on our toes, so to speak.”
Channa gave a little grunt. “As I said, it’s a good idea, but on second thoughts, why him? He’d have to learn a lot in very little time to sound as if he knew what he’d been doing all this time. I still have trouble finding my way around, and I not only grew up on a station, I had time to study the layout of the SSS-900 before I came here. Why not someone from the station? Someone we know and have confidence in?”
“I think we can have confidence in him, Channa,” Simeon said thoughtfully.
“Hunh! Based on what?” she asked challengingly, hands on her hips.
“Authority usually stems from character, Channa. I’ve been watching him with his people, and there’s no doubt that he’s the man in charge. They look at him the way that people look at someone they can depend on. Consider the shocks they’ve all been through, especially him. Don’t forget he went with Chaundra down to the morgue. Then he came to us with this . . . viable, I think . . . plan. We could do worse than accepting his offer. Besides, who else is there?”
“Since you ask, I was considering Gus.”
“And who’s going to be Gus, while Gus is being me?” He watched her cross her arms over her bosom and frankly pout. “We could end up changing every name in the station if we go that route. What with this and that, we could get so snarled up, we wouldn’t know our arse ends from our ears.”
She laughed, suddenly visualizing the corridors full of people checking their noteboards to see who they were that day.
“Besides,” Simeon said, “I like Gus.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” she replied. “Oh.”
Whoever fronted as the station’s manager was the most likely to receive the brunt of occupational hazards. She liked Gus, and even on such short acquaintance, she liked Amos. He was undeniably nicer to look at and had already been through several layers of hell. On the other hand, somebody had to do it. If she was right there beside him to give judicious guidance—and being beside Amos was not a chore, maybe they’d get through without any really bad gaffes.
“All right,” she said, raising her hands in capitulation. “Shuffling people around really could become more difficult than teaching one stranger the ins and outs of station management. At least enough to fool these thugs. But, on your enhanced head be it, my brave brain, if he turns out to be a disaster.”
“I accept your challenge, my beautiful brawn. Shall I have him move in tonight?”
For a moment, Channa looked as though she’d inadvertently swallowed something too large and lumpy. “Ah, of course. We’ll have to get his training started right away, won’t we?”
Amos frowned. As attractively as he smiled, Simeon noted.
Sheesh. When this is over, he could earn megacredits as a vid-star with Singari Entertainments, making historicals.
“But I had wanted to stay with my people,” he said.
“I know,” Simeon told him, “but we’re placing the least injured in their own quarters, effective immediately, and scattering the rest. We can’t risk having them identified as a group, you know.”
The young man clasped his hands behind his back. “Yes, I see. All will be strange to the Kolnari, in many different ways. Our strangeness will be one more anomaly.”
“You’re not that strange,” Simeon felt compelled to say. Too bloody handsome for my peace of mind. Or maybe being that handsome is stranger’n I realize.
The elevator opened onto the corridor outside Simeon and Channa’s quarters. Channa stood in the open door of the lounge to greet Amos. She held out her hand to him, wearing a formal, welcoming smile. He took her hand tenderly in both of his, bowed over it gracefully and kissed it gently, his eyes never leaving hers. Channa raised one brow and smiled crookedly, taking back her hand and gesturing him into the lounge.
“I know you wanted to stay with the others,” she said, “but there’s a lot you’ll have to be briefed on, and we should get started. Also, Simeon may have told you, they’ll be moving to their own quarters this evening.”
“Yes, so he has told me,” Amos said softly.
He looked at her with a warm attention that she found unnervingly intimate. “This will be yours,” she said, opening the door farthest from her own.
He entered, looked around, his hands clasped behind his back once more. He nodded judiciously, “It is very nice,” he said. He opened a closet, empty but for a few hangers.
“One of the things we’ll have to do is fit you out according to your new position,” Channa said from the doorway.
He smiled at her. “Yes, I need everything. And Bethel clothing would not be appropriate.”
He walked over to stand right beside her. She had noticed that the Bethelites did that; their social distance was close and they were a very tactile people.
“I shall enjoy that,” he said, “if you will help me choose?”
She lowered her eyes. “Perhaps, if time allows. Though you’ll be guided by experts in men’s fashions, which I am not.” Down, girl! she told herself.
The door chimed and Simeon opened it. “I’ve sent down to the commissary for dinner. I doubt you’ve found the time to eat, Amos, so I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for two,” he said.
“You do not like to cook?” Amos asked, turning to Channa in surprise.
“Not when I have more important things to do,” she answered. “It isn’t among my hobbies.”
“Ah, well, doubtless your servants are skilled.” His voice implied that a chatelaine should still oversee them personally.
Ah, good one, Amos. Simeon thought, feeling more cheerful. He had been reviewing what little was known of Bethelite culture. He did not think Channa would find it agreeable. Why don’t you ask her to sit on the floor and rub your tired feet while you’re at it, then retire to the rear of the house while the men talk business?
It was worrying, though. Much as I hate to admit it, maybe Channa was right. This plan has inherent elements of disaster. I forgot to take into consideration that he’s from an insular and probably—I’ll be kind, old-fashioned. Nah! Why be kind—backward culture. All their preparations were a mishmash of improvisations. Would this be one too many?
Amos looked quickly from Simeon’s column to Channa and said in mild dismay.
“I have caused offense. Please, forgive me. This was not my intention.” He smiled ruefully down at Channa and sighed. “I clearly have more to learn than I had imagined. Even my speech—the more we talk, the more I am conscious of how old-fashioned I must sound to you. And, forgive me, we of Bethel are not used to dealing with people of strange—of different customs. That was one thing I disliked about my home, the insularity.”
Hell, Simeon tho
ught. He’s not stupid. Adaptable, in fact.
With a smooth professional smile, Channa gestured for him to take one of the seats at the table.
“Then let us begin,” she said.
To his back she made a small moue of distaste, which quickly turned into a smile as he held out her chair and looked at her expectantly. She grinned and waved him to his seat.
“First,” she said, “you must learn that we’re much less formal here. We reserve our ‘company manners’ strictly for company.”
“But,” he said, smiling as he took his seat, “a beautiful woman should always be treated like a treasured guest.”
Channa served herself from a platter and passed it to him, letting go of it almost before he’d gotten a grip on it.
“Flatterer. I’m not ugly, but I’m no great beauty, either.”
He almost dropped the hot platter in surprise, its contents tilting alarming close to the edge and burning his thumb. He put it down hastily and sucked the injury for a moment.
“No, truly,” he said, flapping his hand to cool it. “I think you are most attractive.” There was no doubting the sincerity in his wide, gentian-blue eyes. The lashes, she noticed, were long and curled. His gaze grew playful. “In a strange, foreign, exotic fashion, of course.”
“Well, you’re very attractive, too, Amos,” she said seriously.
“I like attractive women,” he said, and his gaze was subtly challenging.
“Mmh, I don’t like attractive men,” she said positively. Actually, I don’t approve of them, which is not exactly the same thing, she amended to herself. “They tend to be spoiled and self-centered and in general much more trouble than they’re worth. Now, let us eat before the food cools. We have a great deal of work to do and not much time and energy to spare.” She gave him a direct stare. “I’m sure we’re going to have an excellent business relationship, manager to manager.”
“Of course,” Amos said with a neutral, social smile.
“Shouldn’t you start calling Amos Simeon-Amos, Channa?” Simeon broke in, before the atmosphere got any cooler.
“Good idea,” Channa said.
Amos, as far as Simeon could tell, was sulking slightly.
Aha, Simeon thought. With those looks, plus brains and charisma and high position, he’s probably used to women succumbing to his every ploy. And, he noted charitably, the Bethelite was only in his early twenties. All the textbooks said softshells were highly subject to hormonal influences at that stage in their pitifully short development spans.
Nine gets you ten, he told himself, that there’s a worn-down track in the carpet between their doors within a week. The notion was oddly unpalatable. He put it aside and launched into some of the nineteen million things Amos would have to become familiar with about station management.
Chapter Twelve
Ahhha, gotcha! Simeon crooned to himself. “Channa? You awake?”
“You can always tell when I’m awake. Why ask?”
“Because it’s polite,” he replied.
“What is it?” Her tone noted that the sleep period was three hours gone and, in barely five more, she would have to be awake for more of the interminable meetings and briefings.
“I’ve found out something about our expected and uninvited guests,” he went on.
That brought her alert, sitting up in bed and reaching to key up the lights and switch off the soft fugue she had been playing to court sleep.
“Couldn’t sleep anyway,” she said. “Let me have it.”
“Got a download from Central. Had to burn some butts to get it released. It’s not much. Planet named Kolnar, settled way, way, way back. Quite a ways from here, too, as such things go. About forty times as far as the sun Saffron, further in on the spiral arm.”
Channa frowned. “That’s really out in the boonies, settled in the second or third waves.”
“Uh-uh. It was first wave.”
She pursed her lips in a silent whistle. “Right at the beginning of interstellar colonization.”
He went on. “Involuntary colonization. Translation program running . . . Okay, a whole bunch of bad-hat groups; the Khimir Reddish Rice Cosmetic, the Temil Large Striped Felines, the New Council Men, the Resurrected Aryan-Germanic Statewide Associationist Employees Party, the Sons of Chaka, the Luminescent Footway, the Darwin-Wilson Society, the—”
“What’s so amusing?” she said as she caught the laughter ripple in his voice.
“You’d have to be a historian to understand, my voluptuous popsie,” he said cheerfully. “Anyway, according to the records, they sent out about ten thousand of these oscos, and about three thousand reached their destination.”
“Bad voyages?”
“Internal fighting in the holds,” Simeon said. “With fists and teeth and soft plastic cups, since they didn’t have anything else. Then when they got there, they realized they’d have to interbreed, like it or not.”
“What sort of planet is Kolnar?”
“Nickname was ‘Hell’s Orifice.’ They picked it because it was easier on tender consciences. Society could pretend the planet killed the convicts, who deserved it, from the records. One-point-six gees, hot sun, enormous heavy-metal concentrations, thick but low-oxygen air, superactive and largely poisonous biosphere. No ozone layer. Vulcanism, unpredictable climatic shifts . . . the whole nine yards! Not much visited since. When the Grand Survey went through a few centuries later, they were fired on. Evidently the locals have a nuclear war about once every forty years or so, and the ship got in the way of one. Their descriptions of the physical type match what Amos and the others say. There’s been some contact with them since. That incident with the survey seemed to remind them that the rest of the universe was still there, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?”
“Well, I’ve got cross-references under piracy, brigandage, police actions, war crimes and aggression. Also entries in the anthro files under genocide, slavery, cultural pathology, xenophobia and societal devolution. There are apparently pockets of the descendants of the original social aberrants scattered through a number of systems in the area nowadays. Little asteroid colonies, freebooter dens, unsurveyed worlds.”
“Urk. Characteristics?”
“Apart from not being very nice? Dark skin is a climatic adaptation—all that UV—and the hair and eye color genetic drift you’d expect in a small initial population. They breed like, hmm, rabbits, though. Puberty at eight, all children twins or triplets. Overall, the Kolnari subrace seems to have very efficient immune systems. They’re extremely strong and fast. You’d expect good reflexes on a planet like that—those with bad ones didn’t survive. They can see in the dark like cats, and they’ve got an amazing tolerance for ionizing radiation. There’s so much fallout and natural background radiation on Kolnar that they’ve genetically adapted to it. The scientists seem to disagree whether their paranoia is inbred or just cultural.”
“Hard to get rid of, I’d expect.”
“Like cockroaches,” Simeon said, deliberately misunderstanding. “One Space Navy type a few generations back said the only way to solve the Kolnari problem would be to drop antimatter bombs from orbit. Even then, you wouldn’t be really sure of destroying them all.”
“Very depressing, thank you, and now can I get some rest?”
Later that night, still unable to sleep, Channa called out his name softly.
“You should be sleeping, Channa.”
“I know, but I’ve got to clear my mind first. Will you talk with me?”
A pause hung in the air. She took a breath and went on. “I know I haven’t been as good a brawn as—”
“Ancient history,” Simeon said. “You’ve been handling a hellacious emergency better than most anyone could. I can certainly listen. What’s on your mind?”
“He is,” she said, as if the two words covered the problem adequately.
“Ah. Not what you expected, huh?”
She sighed, “No, the opposite. Too much wha
t I expected. He’s . . . I’m afraid I won’t be able to work with him.”
Why am I not surprised? Simeon thought. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Aside from his being a smug, pushy, egotist, you mean? Well, he doesn’t have any faith in my competence and I expect to have to fight to keep him from trying to usurp my position. He’s very much a take-charge kind of person, you were right about that. And he has no respect for women.”
“What makes you think that?” Let’s hear how you came to that difficult conclusion. Simeon enjoyed the challenge of following the workings of her mind.
“For crying out loud, Simeon, he expected me to cook for him! Oh, yes, he got over that. He’s always ready with an apology for ‘different customs.’ But, deep down, he doesn’t really believe it. He thinks ‘customs’ is whether you sit on the floor or on a chair, stuff like that. He doesn’t grasp the difference in fundamental cultural views.”
“Channa-my-sweet, back on Bethel, there aren’t any fundamental differences. This quarrel he had with the Elders, it’s hard to grasp exactly what it was about . . . but it seems overwhelmingly important to them.”
“Oh, I understand why he’s that way,” Channa said, striking the pillow with a frustrated fist. “And it’s not as if he’s stupid. He’s intelligent and he notices things, but that makes it more irritating, not less. You could ignore what a stupid person does. What’s more, suddenly he’s living in my pocket. I’m just a little surprised he didn’t ask to see the other rooms in order to choose the one he preferred.” Her face suddenly flushed a becoming rose.
Simeon noted that. After all, he could see in the dark, too. “And he came on to you like the colony ship he flew in on, didn’t he?”
“Damn right he did,” she muttered, half under her breath. “ ‘I like attractive women,’ ” she said in exaggerated imitation of his manner and accent. “What do you suppose he does when he has to deal with an un-attractive woman? Carry a bag to put over her head? I hate men like that!” She thumped the bed with both fists for emphasis.