continued on automatic, traversing Pell System at a lazy rate.
Of Norway there was now no sign. Station was giving nothing away on that score.
A long way, yet, for the likes of a loaded merchanter, to the jump range. Easy
to have set up the coordinates. He went over the charts, turned off the sound on
comp, ran the necessities through—started through the manual then, trying to
figure how to silence comp for good.
(I’ll get it on tape, Ross. For myself. Lose no words. No program. Nothing.
Figure how to access it from my quarters only.)
But Ross knew comp and he never had, not at that level; Ross had done things he
did not understand, had put them in and wound voice and all of it together in
ways that defied his abilities.
(But, Ross, there’s too much of it. Everywhere, everything. All the care—to
handle everything for me—and I can’t unwind it. There’s no erase at that level:
not without going into the system and pulling units…
(And Lucy can’t lose those functions…)
“We got it.” Neill was leaning on the back of the cushion, startled him with the
sudden voice. “Got it done.—Is there some kind of problem, there?”
“Checking.”
“Help you?”
“Why don’t you get some sleep too?”
“You’re in worse shape.”
“That’s all right.” A smooth voice, a casual voice. His hands tended to shake,
and he tried to stop that “I’m just finishing up here.”
“Look, we know our business. We’re good at it.”
“I don’t dispute that.”
Deirdre leaned on the other side of the cushion. ‘Take some help,” she said.
“You can use it”
“I can handle it”
“How long do you plan to go on handling it?” Neill asked. “This isn’t a solo
operation.”
“You want to be of help, check to see about those trank doses for jump.”
“Is something wrong there?”
“No.”
“The trank doses are right over there in storage,” Neill said. “No problem with
that”
“Then let be.”
“Stevens, you’re so tired your hands are shaking.”
He stared at the screens. Reached and wiped everything he had asked to see. The
no-sound command went out with it. It always would. It was set up that way.
“Why don’t you get some rest back there?”
“I’ve got the jump set up,” he said. He reached and put the lock back on the
system; that much he could do. “You two take over, all right?” He got up from
the chair, stumbled and Neill caught his arm. He shook the help off, numb, and
walked back to the area of the couches to lie down again.
They would laugh, he thought; he imagined them hearing that voice addressing a
boy who was himself, and they would go through all of that privacy the way they
went through the things in the cabins.
He should never have reacted at all, should have taken the lock off and let her
and the others hear it as a matter of course. But they planned changes in Lucy;
planned things they wanted to do, destroying her from the inside. He sensed that
And he could not bear them to start with Ross.
He was, perhaps, what the others had said, crazy. Solitude could do that, and
perhaps it had happened to him a long time ago.
And he missed Ross’s voice, even in lying down to sleep. What he discovered
scared him, that it was not their hearing the voices in Lucy that troubled him,
half so much as their discovering the importance the voices had for him. He was
not whole; and that had never been exposed until now—even to himself.
He did not sleep. He lay there, chilled from the air and too tired to get up and
get a blanket; tense and trying in vain to relax; and listening to two Dubliners
at Lucy’s controls, two people sharing quiet jokes and the pleasure of the
moment. Whole and healthy. No one on Dublin had scars. But the war had never
touched them. There were things he could have more easily said to Mallory than
to them, in their easy triviality.
Mallory did not know how to laugh.
They reached their velocity, and insystem propulsion shut down; Allison felt it,