“Okay, I’ll talk to him.”
“Simeon,” she hesitated, “why don’t you introduce us? I mean, you can discuss the adoption with him. I can stay out of sight nearby until he wants to meet me.”
She’s being conciliatory, he realized. Why doesn’t this reassure me? He forced down nonexistent hackles and replied in a neutral tone. “Sure, why not?”
Channa could hear them talking from where she sat against the cold bulkhead.
“You want to adopt me?” a young voice asked in disbelief. A yearning hope sounded through it.
“Yeah,” Simeon said, surprised to find that he was getting to like the idea.
Joat’s head popped into Simeon’s line of sight, seemingly from out of nowhere.
“You can’t do that,” he said with complete certainty, voice flat again. “They won’t let you adopt a kid. You’re not real.”
Simeon was taken aback. “What do you mean I’m not real?”
Joat’s young face was lit with amused wonder. “I hate to be the one to break your bubble, but who’s going to let a computer adopt a kid?”
“Where did you get the idea that I’m just a computer?” Simeon demanded with a hard edge to his tone.
Channa bit down on the fleshy part of her hand. That kid doesn’t pull his punches, she thought. Poor Simeon brain, though, does the offended dignity bit well . . . She stifled the rising guffaw with a swallow. An audible reaction would be out of place. Definitely.
“You told me,” Joat informed him, exasperation creeping into his voice. “You said ‘I am, in effect, the station.’ That means you’re a machine. I’ve heard about AIs and voice-address systems.”
To both his observers, his voice was conciliatory but his expression reflected an inner anxiety that maybe this computer was losing its tiny mind.
And he probably thinks that would be very interesting, the station computer losing function, Simeon thought in exasperation. Kids!
He had noted that, while Joat could keep his voice disciplined, his expression revealed his real feelings. Simeon wondered if he could maintain that duality in the presence of the visually-advantaged. Not that he, Simeon, was in any way visually-disadvantaged. Quite the opposite, as Joat would learn soon enough. “Joat, I think it’s time that notion got altered. There’s someone nearby I’d like you to meet. She’s known as a brawn, and she’s my mobile partner.” Which was true as far as it went, Simeon amended.
Joat’s face went wary. “I don’t want to meet anybody,” he muttered sullenly, looking cautiously around him. “She, you said?” Another pause. “No, I don’t want to meet anyone.”
“But we’ve already met, sort of,” Channa called out.
Joat vanished instantly.
“He’s gone,” Simeon said.
“No, he’s not,” Channa contradicted. “He’s nearby. Joat? Simeon is a real person, as real as you or me. But he is connected to the station in such a way that the station is an extension of his body. I’d be happy to tell you about it.”
No answer but a receptivity which she could almost feel beyond her in the narrow access aisle.
“Well,” she began, “shellpeople were created as a means of enabling the disadvantaged to live as normal a life as possible. At first that was limited to the creation of miniaturized tongue or digital controls, or body braces. The extension of such devices was to encapsulate the entire body, though some people still think it’s just the person’s brain—because they’re called ‘brains.’ Despite popular fiction, such an inhumanity is not permitted. Simeon is there, body, mind and . . .” She paused and then realized that she couldn’t permit personal opinion to corrupt the explanation. “ . . . heart. Simeon is a real person complete with his natural body but he is also this station-city in the sense that instead of walking about it, he has sensors that gather information for him and he controls every function of the station from his central location.”
“Where is—” Joat paused, too, struggling to comprehend the concept “—he? He is a he, isn’t he?”
“I’m as masculine as you,” Simeon said, accustomed to such an explanation of shellpeople but wishing to underline his humanity. He did note that his voice had dropped further down the baritone level he used. Well, why not?
“Oh!”
“Instead of having to give orders to subordinates,” Channa went on, “to, say, check the life-support systems, or Airlock 40, or order an emergency drill, he can do it himself more quickly and more thoroughly than any independently mobile person could.”
“And I don’t need to sleep, so I’m on call all the time.” Simeon couldn’t resist adding that.
“Never sleep?” Joat was either appalled or awed.
“I don’t require rest, although I do like relaxation and I have a hobby. . . .”
“Not now, Simeon, although—” and there was a smile in Channa’s voice “—I admit that that makes you more human.”
“Were you human . . . I mean, were you . . . did you live like one of us?” Joat asked.
“I am human, not a mutant, or a humanoid, Joat,” Simeon said reassuringly. “But something happened when I was born, and I’d never have been able to walk, talk, or even live very long unless the process of encapsulating had been invented. Usually it’s babies that become shellpeople. We are more psychologically adjusted to our situation than adults. Though sometimes pre-puberty accident victims work out well as shellpeople. I can look forward to a long and very useful life. But I’m human for all of that.”
“Very human,” Channa replied in a droll voice.
Simeon didn’t quite like the implications, but at least she said the right things.
“And you run the city?”
“I do, having instantaneous access to every computerized aspect of such a large and multi-function space station as well as peripheral monitoring devices in a network to control traffic in and out.”
“I thought brains only ran ships,” Joat said after a long pause.
“Oh, some do, of course,” Simeon said, slightly patronizing, “but I was specially chosen and trained for this demanding sort of work.” He ignored the delicate snort from Channa that somehow reminded him he’d started out his management career in a less prestigious assignment. “Do you understand now that I am human?”
“I guess so,” was Joat’s unenthusiastic reply. “You’ve been in that shell since you were a baby?”
“Wouldn’t be anywhere else,” Simeon said proudly, letting his voice ring with a sincerity no shellperson ever had to counterfeit.
There was a slightly longer pause. “Then it’s not true, what I heard?” Joat began tentatively.
“Depends on what you heard,” Channa said, having learned in academy the long list of atrocities supposedly enacted.
“That they put orphaned kids in boxes?”
“Absolutely not!” Channa and Simeon chorused in loud unison.
“That’s totally inaccurate,” Channa said firmly. “It’s the sort of mean thing people say to scare kids, though. The program won’t accept perfectly healthy bodies. To begin with, the medical costs and education are incredibly expensive. So is the maintenance for shellpersons. But it’s better than depriving a sound mind of life because the body won’t function normally. Don’t you think so?”
Silence greeted that query.
“And if you’ve also heard the one about taking the brains from the homeless or displaced—no, that is definitely not permitted, either.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure!” Simeon and Channa replied firmly.
“And we should know,” Channa went on. “I had to spend four years in academy to learn how to deal with shellpeople, of all types.”
Which, Simeon knew, was another backhanded slam at him. Did she never let up? One thing was sure, Joat’s misinformation made him more determined than ever to adopt the boy and give him such security that that sort of macabre stuff would be forgotten.
“And, no matter what sort of spaceflot you??
?ve been told, Central Worlds doesn’t make slaves of people,” Channa was saying at her most emphatic. “The very idea sends chills up my spine.”
“Not even criminals?”
“Especially not criminals,” Channa said with a little laugh. “With all the power available to a shellperson, you may be very sure Central Worlds makes certain that they are psychologically conditioned to a high ethical and moral standard.”
“What’s this e’tical?” Joat asked.
“Code of conduct,” Simeon said, “probity, honesty, dedication to duty, personal integrity of the highest standard.”
“And you own this station?” Joat asked, his voice tinged with awe.
Channa laughed in surprise at that assumption.
“I wish,” Simeon said fervently.
“Remember my mentioning that creating and training a shellperson is expensive? I wasn’t kidding. By the time Simeon graduated from training, he had an enormous debt to pay off to Central Worlds.”
“Hunh. Thought you said they weren’t slaves.”
“They’re not. Every shellperson has the right to pay off their debt and become a free agent. A good many shippersons do and then they own themselves. A management shellperson, like Simeon, will often get their debt picked up by a corporation, and when they’ve worked off the debt, they work under contract.”
“Are you paid off, Simeon?”
“No, though my contract fee is generous enough. But, as I mentioned, I have hobbies . . .”
“Like what?” Joat asked.
“I’ve got a great sword and dagger collection which includes a genuine Civil War flag, a regimental eagle.”
“Hey, way cool! Got any guns?”
What is it with some males? Channa thought.
“Yeah,” Simeon said eagerly. “I’ve got a real Brown Bess flintlock, and an M22. And one of the first backpack lasers ever issued!”
“No shit!” Joat said, seeming to forget Channa’s presence for a moment. His voice sounded louder, as if he was drifting back from whatever refuge he had bolted towards. “All sorts of old weapons, eh?”
“You name it. A Roman gladius, even.”
“A what?”
“Good question,” Channa said.
“Shortsword. Over three thousand years old,” Simeon broke in. A pause. “Of course, it could be a reproduction. If so, it’s still in awfully good shape for an artifact of that age. I can trace it back at least five hundred years’ provenance. The records say it was first owned by the legendary collector Pawgitti, then dug up out of the ruins of his villa.”
My throat is getting hoarse, Channa realized an hour later. Amazing what he knows. Joat had probably neatly escaped formal education, but had acquired a jackdaw’s treasure chest of information about his keener interests. Anger awoke in her. It was criminal that a mind like Joat’s had been ignored, like a weed in a corner lot. Or the barbaric way in which pre-shell handicapped were ignored as nonproductive persons. Joat wasn’t just interested in showing that he knew things that she didn’t, either. There was a naked hunger to learn in his voice. Closer and closer . . . She could see a little huddled shadow and an occasional glint of his eyes as he turned his head.
“And weapons are merely a part of what I’ve been collecting over the years,” Simeon was saying. “I’ve got great strategy games—whole boards . . .”
Channa was shocked. Simeon would adopt the kid as a games partner? Then she realized he was only sweetening the pot.
“I don’t know of a shellperson who has adopted, but I think it would be to your advantage, Joat. Certainly it would mean security and a place to call your own instead of ducking from one hidey-hole to the next when inspection teams go through. You’d have regular meals, and you could go to engineering school.”
Channa heard a soft “yeah” from out of the cold darkness.
“Think it over tonight, why don’t you?” Simeon said. “Tomorrow you can come up and scan the room I can assign you. Maybe have dinner with Channa and talk about it some more.”
“Yeah,” came more clearly from out of the darkness.
“Okay,” Simeon’s voice was pleased. “If you have any questions tonight, just speak ‘em out, and I’ll answer.”
Chapter Four
It’s an honor to win the trust of a child, Simeon thought, especially one who’s been through what this kid has. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite this happy. He intuited that the feeling approximated what the word “tickled” meant, and he also thought that this was what it felt like to smile. Since Joat had moved in, he’d been trying to empathize more with the softperson worldview.
Of course, there have been some surprises. . . .
Seen for the first time by the full light of day-cycle floros, Joat was not prepossessing. Short for his age, scrawny to the point of emaciation, with huge blue eyes in a face that might have been any color short of black under the gray, ground-in coating of grime and machine oil. The mouse-brown hair had been hacked off and was standing up in tufts. The clothing was an adult-sized coverall with the arms and legs cut off to fit. An air of sullen suspicion accompanied a pungent odor.
“I’ve never run across the name, ‘Joat’ before,” Channa began casually. “It doesn’t give a clue about where you’re from the way that some names do. I use ‘Hap’ as a surname because I was born on Hawking Alpha Proxima Station, for example.”
“Joat’s my name.” Joat answered, sticking his chin out aggressively. “I gave it to myself. It means ‘jack-of-all-trades,’ ‘cause that’s what I do, some of everything.”
“So it’s a nickname,” Channa said. “Shall we put you down on the form as Jack, then?”
Joat looked at her with cool contempt. “Why? That’s a boy’s name.”
“You’re a . . . girl?” Simeon asked, bringing the “g” sound up from the depths of his diaphragm and managing to split the word in several astonished syllables.
“What’s wrong with that? She’s a girl!” Joat declared defensively, pointing at Channa, as though ducking responsibility.
Channa burbled with heavily suppressed laughter before she managed some reassurance. “Hey, it’s all right that you’re a girl. It’s just that . . . All that dirt . . .” Channa couldn’t risk continuing in that vein and switched abruptly “ . . . is an effective disguise.”
“Good disguise,” Joat said proudly. “Bad idea to let people know when you’re a girl. Can cause you trouble. But, since you say I gotta go to a medic,” she paused to look questioningly at Channa who nodded, “best you don’t look surprised then.” She grinned slyly and then looked over at Simeon’s column. “You really didn’t know?”
“Not a clue,” he said wonderingly, and Joat giggled with pleasure. “Hmm. According to the biological studies I had, it’s not easy to tell with the pre-pubescent . . . dressed or in disguise.”
“I can always tell,” Joat said with some contempt for his ignorance.
“You’re a softshell.”
“You sure you’re not a computer?”
“Yes, I am—stop teasing!”
Joat grinned unrepentantly. Simeon felt an unfamiliar sensation and tried to identify it. A flutter in the ribcage? he thought wonderingly.
“Why haven’t they answered the tight-beam?” Simeon asked nervously a week later. “I sent everything. The forms were all correct.”
“It’s a bureaucracy,” Channa said soothingly.
“Oh? That’s supposed to reassure me?” Simeon said. A moment later: “Why is Joat’s room always a mess? I send in the servos twice a day and it’s still in a maximum-entropy state.”
“It’s called ‘adolescence,’ Simeon,” Channa said. “At least she seems to be settling in at school.”
Simeon’s image winced. Joat had unexpectedly cleaned up as pretty, though she had wrinkled her nose when he’d mentioned that. She seemed to trust him—Channa as well—to a limited extent. Any further social interfacing was . . . lacking.
“She gets in too many fight
s,” he said. She also fought very, very dirty. He winced again when he thought of the places some blows, kicks and punches had landed.
“She’s not used to interacting except as a potential victim,” Channa replied. “I don’t think she’s ever been with anyone in her own age group. She certainly doesn’t know the local rituals. She’s an outsider—practically a feral child. We’re lucky she can respond to other human beings at all.”
An awkward silence fell for a moment. Unspoken: and she didn’t think you were human when she met you.
“She’s learned about daily showers,” Simeon pointed out helpfully.
“Oh, there’s good stuff in Joat,” and Channa grimaced. “Even if her brand of ethics is unusual, at least she’s consistent in applying it. All she needs is some security and a chance.”
“Isn’t that all anybody needs?”
Several hours later, Simeon still glowed with satisfaction in their accomplishments with Joat. This, being a father thing, is great, he thought, and wanned measurably towards Channa. I’ve got to thank her.
For the first time since she had arrived, Simeon looked into her quarters and was surprised at how, in that short time—under two weeks, although it seemed like more—it had changed from the spartan chamber Tell Radon had occupied. She had tinted the walls a soft, off-pink and had put “paint-chips” into the permanently installed frame-projectors. The jewel-bright colors and romantic images of the pre-Raphaelites, Alma-Tadema and Maxfield Parrish glowed from the walls, along with some modern Mintoro reproductions. The bedspread was an icy gray satin on which were scattered embroidered pillows of peach and gray and blue.
“Say, Channa,” he said in tones of pleased approval, “I like what you’ve done with the room.”
Channa emerged from the bathroom clad in a blue silk robe trimmed with lace, a brush in her hand and swept out of her quarters into the main lounge without saying a word. She stopped in front of Simeon’s column and crossed her arms, her eyes blazing. All Simeon’s warm feelings fell into cold ash as he looked out at her. Maybe if he didn’t say anything, she’d go away and not say whatever it was that was burning inside her eyes. Nah, when have I ever been that lucky where she’s concerned?