Robert Asprin – Tambu

“I’m not sure how much good it would do you without other reports to compare it to. What you might do is call a couple of the other ships and ask for copies of their reports.”

“I just might do that,” Ramona nodded. “Now you’ve got me wondering.”

Tambu’s simply giving her copies of the reports submitted to him was not mentioned by either of them. Yearly reports were strictly confidential between Tambu and the individual captains.

Tambu continued, “Besides checking on individual ships, I use the reports to look for new ideas. There’s one ship in the fleet, for example, that’s shown significant savings on their food expenses by allowing planetside food services to open a franchise on board the ship. Food preparation and planning becomes the service’s problem, and the crew buys their meals in a cafeteria.”

“Interesting. Does it work?”

“I’m still checking into it,” Tambu said. “Even though their food costs have been reduced, they’ve had to pay their crews more to cover the price of the meals. It could be a false savings.”

“I can see where it gets a bit complicated,” Ramona commented.

“Oh, that’s not the complicated part,” Tambu replied innocently. “Where it gets rough is trying to use the reports to find answers to nonspecific quantitative questions.”

“You’re showing off now!”

“You’re right. But it’s true nonetheless.”

“I’ll call your bluff,” she challenged. “Give me an example of a nonqualitative… whatever it was you said.”

“Gladly. Do you remember the item on the agenda about next year’s captains’ meeting that calls for a review of the funds allocation methods?”