`Xexo?’ Afra called. XEXO? he added with more volume in the mental call. The Tower engineer had enough Talent to hear that.
Rojer!
Afra could now locate both minds in the machine shop where Xexo in his capacity as chief mechanic – and lately his truant son – were most often found.
when Afra `felt’ Rojer’s mind, it was bristling with such vivid calculations, theories and excitement that small wonder the boy hadn’t answered his shouts or telepathic query. Rojer’s fascination with and attention to all things mechanical – preferably with moving parts – was absolute. Not a bad area of concentration, but only in the proper place and time.
Yeah, watcha want, Dad?’ was the muffled but incurious-sounding acknowledgement.
Rojer’s mental tone held neither apology nor anxiety: more an impatience at being interrupted just then for any reason.
It seemed undignified to Afra to summarily `port his son away as he had frequently had to do when the boy was younger. But fifteen-year-olds can be extremely concerned with dignity – even if they are concerned with little else except the project at hand.
while Afra and Damia approved of the boy’s zo6
keenness – Xexo said he was a very good mechanical apprentice – a Prime had to be well rounded and versed in more than just the generators which augmented his mental abilities. Afra muttered to himself and proceeded to the oil-and grease-redolent chamber that was his wayward son’s heaven. when he reached the doorway, he stood for a moment, surveying the scene.
Xexo and Rojer were peering at a screen which showed an enlargement of many parts, some obviously twisted out of their original shape, others broken, with assortments of likely missing bits arranged like satellites about them, indicating possible appropriate matches.
On the table were scale accurate plastic facsimiles of all these pieces, arranged almost exactly as the screen display.
Xexo was a master mechanic, often inspired, considering how he managed to keep the elderly generators of the Iota Aurigaean Tower working.
He adored machines, contraptions, gadgets, any device, far more than he liked humans. In that he had found a soulmate in Rojer Raven-Lyon up to the point where said fifteen year old skived out of regular duties – and Rojer was definitely delinquent in these right now.
Furthermore, his `Dinis, as much satellites of Rojer as the boy was of Xexo, were also engaged in trying to assemble anomalous parts’ into a whole.
Sprawled belly-down on the grease-stained floor, they were clicking and clacking as their clever finger digits patiently pushed bits around the periphery of larger pieces, trying to make a fit.
`Rojer… oh, Rojer,’ and Afra added a mental poke.
`Huh?’ His son looked over his shoulder, widened his eyes in semi-horror as he also saw the digital clock on the wall, clapped an oily hand to his mouth, leaving a black four-fingered imprint on an already grease-smeared skin, and broadcast apology, dismay, guilt and self-reproach all at once. `Gee, Dad, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was getting so late – Did anyone else go out hunting?’ Hunting had been an immediate heed and, his parents having dismissed Rojer from the Tower to handle it, they had gone on to other business. Afra tapped his foot and sighed heavily to indicate his displeasure. Lately, since the Joint High Councils had released data on every bit of the salvage so far recovered, as well as schematics, drawings, approximations and deductions concerning the Hive wreck, there wasn’t an engineer anywhere that wasn’t trying his or her hand at putting just a tiny portion of the puzzle together.
The `Dini ship, the KLTL, which had continued its search for the Hive homeworld and/or the space debris thereof, had collected more bits and pieces which had been strewn by the injured Hive ship as its nova-driven path hurtled it outward. Afra thought that Thian’s affinity for the odd stingpzzt of Hive artefacts must be on overdrive, considering how much he had located in the vastness of space.
There was no telling how much more would be found but each discovery was carefully documented in the absurd (Afra felt) hope that perhaps enough of the enigmatic Hive engines could be reconstructed to give the Allies some clue as to how their space drive had operated, and what fuel it used.