They locked eyes and he could see that hers were disturbed in a particular way that made his heart ache. He had fallen for a few women over the years, but none of them -were -willing to live for long on a salvage vessel, though a couple of them had been quite happy to take off with everything on the vessel that wasn’t bolted down and a few things that were. They seemed to consider him a little eccentric, too. Mostly he just had his tavonte bawdy houses and a favorite girl or two at each when he was in port. But nobody had ever looked at him the way Acorna was looking when she was thinking about Aari.
Roadkill jumped onto his lap and dug all of his claws in, purring madly. Becker sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth and waited for the pain to subside. Then he rubbed the cat’s thick brindled fur with his knuckles. “I don’t think so, Princess. But you know the guy has a lot of problems. And he probably thinks a classy gal like you wouldn’t like a Linyaari with no horn.”
Acorna shrugged. “I was raised by men -who had no horns. And he will have a horn again some day. But-”
That was as far as they got before they heard Aari’s footsteps clanking on the deck plating. He wore no disguise this time, and he said in -what -was for him a brusque tone, “Now let us see what else the Niriians had to say.”
“Okay,” Becker said, and reached for a crowbar he kept on the bridge, just in case he wanted to pry or bash one of the second-hand parts that was no longer working. While he was wondering which method would work best with the pod, he heard a series of snaps and clicks.
Turning, he saw that Aari had opened the pod and pulled out what looked(and smelled)like the slimiest mess of cheese Becker had ever seen. It was full of holes, covered in places with green moldy luminescent stuff, and had the fragrancewell, RK had the right idea when he backed up to it and started making shoveling motions with his feet.
Aari grinned up at Becker, showing his rather large teeth in a way that could be intimidating if the guy -was pissed.
“What is that?” Becker asked.
“Niriian organic technology,” Aari said. “They have developed ways to use products of their own bodies, slightly chemically altered, for functions some peoples achieve with inorganic materials. The biotechnology does not supply all of their needs, of course, but with the properly stabilized balance of biological components and nutrients, quite sophisticated functions, including information storage and retrieval and energy generation, may be performed by … lifeforms … such as these.”
“Yeah, but how do you plug it in?”
Aari laughed. “You don’t plug it in, Joh! But it is legible-nreanically-based arrays can provide a remarkably compact form of data storage. Its contents are accessible in an orderly fashion.”
“Oh, sure. Mold and mildew and slime on Limburger cheese-I had an accountant like that one time. Real orderly. Acorna, sweetheart, can you do anything about the stench with-you know?” He was trying to be delicate, pointing at her horn while Aari’s head was bent back over the cheesy thing.
“What do you use to retrieve the data?” Acorna asked.
“Yeah, whaddaya use? An ice cream cone?” Becker asked.
Aari rolled his eyes. “No, Joh. The usual scanner the computer uses to examine and analyze objects.”
“The Anscan? I don’t quite get how that would do the trick, buddy, but whatever you say-hey, you’re not putting that thing on my console, are you?” Becker asked. He was not normally all that fastidious, but that smell was more alien invasiveness than he could handle. And the Anscan was expensive.
Acorna set the pod upright and Aari returned the cheese to it.
Then they set the -whole gizmo on the console. Aari pulled the Anscan over to where its probe could read the structure of the cheese.
“That is not what that delicate piece of equipment was engineered to do!” Becker said.
“The Niriians know that, Joh. Though it is true they have not probably encountered this particular piece of equipment, but they and their trading partners have similar technology and they have developed this device so it will work by this means. Ihere have been many fascinating seminars about how Niriian organic devices can be used with conventional equipment-you should access them sometime.”