Robert Asprin – Tambu

“Even if I had access to the data you’ve got, which I don’t, I wouldn’t know what to do with it-or have the time to do it if I did.”

Tambu shook his head sharply as if trying to clear his ears.

“Could you repeat that last part? It didn’t make any sense at all.”

“Simply put,” Ramona sniffed in imitation of his earlier lecture style, “I’ve got my hands full running my ship. Running the fleet’s your job, and you’re welcome to it! Bye now!”

Tambu laughed and returned her wave as she left. But after she was gone, his smile faded.

Even though she had been joking, she was right. The whole mess was sitting in his lap. It wasn’t that the captains didn’t care or that they weren’t intelligent, it was just that no one else in the fleet had the overview he had when it came to problem solving. Ramona knew much more about the intricacies of running the fleet than she had shown during their conversation. It was obvious to Tambu that she had been playing ‘straight man’ to his show-off performance so that he would have a chance to talk things out a bit. Still, even she couldn’t aid him directly in this work. Like the other captains, she lacked the detailed comparative data which currently only he had access to. The captains’ jealous hoarding of information was inadvertently giving him sole proprietorship of the job of fleet coordinator.

With a sigh, he started to turn towards the desk again when a light on his command console caught his eye. It was only an amber call-next to no importance or priority, but he was glad to answer it. Anything to stall his return to the reports.