Skaffen-Amtiskaw decided right now would probably still not be the best time to tell the woman about Zakalwe being missing.
'I'll just go and take a look round, if you don't mind,' it said, drifting towards the door over the neat line of bags that was Sma's luggage.
'Yeah, on you go,' Sma waved one arm lazily, then shucked off the jacket and let it fall to the deck.
The drone had almost made it to the door when Sma sat bolt upright, a frown on her face, and said, 'Wait a minute; what did the ship mean about "... rather fuzzily specified destination"? Doesn't it know where the hell we're going?'
Oh-oh, thought the drone.
It spun in the air. 'Ah,' it said.
Sma's eyes narrowed. 'We are just going to get Zakalwe, aren't we?'
'Yes. Of course.'
'We're not doing anything else?'
'Absolutely not. We find Zakalwe; we brief him; we take him to Voerenhutz. Simple as that. We might be asked to hang around for a bit, overseeing, but that isn't definite yet.'
'Yes, yes, I expected that, but... where exactly is Zakalwe?'
'Where exactly?' The drone said. 'Well, I mean; you know, that's...'
'All right,' Sma said, exasperated, 'approximately, then.'
'No problem,' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, backing off towards the door.
'No problem?' Sma said, puzzled.
'Yes; no problem. We know that. Where he is.'
'Good,' Sma nodded. 'Well?'
'Well what?'
'Well,' Sma said loudly, 'where is he?'
'Crastalier.'
'Cras...?'
'Crastalier. That's where we're heading.'
Sma shook her head, yawned. 'Never heard of it.' She flopped back in the bed field, stretching. 'Crastalier.' Her yawn deepened; she put a hand to her mouth. 'You only had to say that the first time, goddamit.'
'Sorry,' the drone said.
'Mmm. Never mind.' Sma put out one hand, waved it through the bedside beam that controlled the cabin lights, so that they dimmed. She yawned again. 'Think I'll catch some sleep. Take my boots off, will you?'
Gently but quickly, the drone slipped Sma's boots off, gathered her jacket and hung it in a walk-in cupboard, swept the bags in there too, then - as Sma turned over in the bed field, eyes fluttering closed - the drone slipped out of the room.
It hovered in the air outside, looking at its reflection in the polished wood on the far side of the corridor.
'That,' it said to itself, 'was close.' Then it went for a wander.
Sma had arrived on the Xenophobe just after breakfast, by ship time. When she awoke, it was early afternoon. She was completing her toilet, while the drone sorted her clothes into type and colour order and hung or folded them in the cupboard, when the door chimed. Sma wandered out of the little bathroom area, wearing a pair of shorts, her mouth full of toothpaste. She tried saying Open, but the toothpaste apparently stopped the room monitor from recognising the word. She walked over and pressed the door-open instead.
Sma eye's flicked wide; she yelped, spluttered, jumped back from the door, a scream gathering in her throat.
The instant after her eyes had widened, before the signal to jump back from the door had travelled all the way to her leg muscles, there was an impression of almost invisibly sudden movement in the cabin, belatedly followed by a bang and a sizzling sound.
There, stationed between her and the door, were all three of the drone's knife missiles, hovering roughly level with her eyes, sternum and groin; she was looking at them through a haze of field the machine had also thrown in front of her. Then it clicked off.
The knife missiles swung lazily away through the air and clicked back into Skaffen-Amtiskaw's casing. 'Don't do that to me,' the machine muttered, returning to sorting out Sma's socks.
Sma wiped her mouth and stared at the three-metre tall, brown and yellow coloured furry monster cowering in the corridor outside the door.
'Ship... Xeny, what the hell are you doing?'
'I'm sorry,' the huge creature said, its voice only a little deeper than when it had been baby-sized. 'I thought if you didn't relate to a small furry animal, perhaps a bigger version...'
'Shee-it.' Sma said, shaking her head. 'Come in,' she called, heading back for the bathroom area. 'Or did you just want to show me how much you've grown?' She rinsed out the paste and spat.
Xeny squeezed through the door, stooped, and sidled into a corner. 'Sorry about that, Skaffen-Amtiskaw.'
'No problem,' the other machine replied.
'Ah, no, Ms Sma,' Xeny called. 'I actually wanted to talk to you about...'
Skaffen-Amtiskaw went still, just for a second. There was, in fact, a fairly lengthy, detailed and slightly heated exchange between the drone and the ship's Mind during that time, but Sma was only aware of Xeny pausing as it spoke.
'... about having a fancy-dress party, this evening, in your honour,' the ship improvised.
Sma smiled from the bathroom area, 'That's a lovely idea, ship. Thank you, Xeny. Yes; why not?'
'Good; I just thought I'd check with you, first. Any ideas about costumes?'
Sma laughed. 'Yeah; I'll go as you; make me one of those suits you're wearing.'
'Ha. Yes. Good idea. Actually, that might be rather a common choice, but we'll make it two people can't go as the same thing. Right. I'll talk to you later.' Xeny lumbered from the room and the door slid shut. Sma appeared out from the bathroom area, slightly surprised at this sudden departure, but just shrugged.
'Short but eventful visit,' she observed, rummaging through the socks Skaffen-Amtiskaw had just carefully arranged in chromatic order. 'That machine's weird.'
'What do you expect?' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said. 'It's a star-ship.'
- You might (the ship Mind communicated to Skaffen-Amtiskaw) have told me you were keeping the size of our target destination from her.
- I am hoping (the drone replied) that our people already out there will find the guy we're looking for and give us an exact position, in which case Sma will never need to know there was ever any problem.
- Indeed, but why not just be honest with her in the first place?
- Ha! You don't know Sma!
- Oh. Do I take it she's temperamental?
- What do you expect? She's a human!
The ship prepared a feast, and put as many human-brain-chemistry-altering chemicals into the various dishes and drinks as was normally regarded proper without attaching a specific sanity warning to each bowl, plate, jug or glass. It told the crew about the party, and rearranged the social area, setting up a variety of mirrors and reverser fields (with a total guest list of only twenty-two - not including itself - making the place look suitably crowded was one of the major obstacles it faced in trying to encourage the feel of a serious, thorough-going whoopee).
Sma breakfasted, was shown round the ship - though there was little to see; the ship was almost all engine - and spent most of the rest of the day reviewing her knowledge of the Voerenhutz cluster's history and politics.
The ship sent formal invitations to each of the crew, and specified a strict rule of No Shop Talk. It hoped that this, plus the narcotic wealth of the consumables, would keep everybody off the subject of where exactly they were heading for. It had toyed with the idea of just telling people there was a problem here and asking them not to talk about it, but suspected there were at least two of the crew who would take such a proscription as a challenge to their integrity requiring them to raise the issue at the first possible opportunity. It was on occasions like this that the Xenophobe tended to consider changing its status to that of an unstaffed ship, but it knew it would miss the humans if it did decide to ask them to leave; they were fun to have around, usually.
The ship played loud music, showed exciting screen holos, and set up a fabulous surrounding holo landscape of lush green and blue, filled with floating bushes and hovering trees where strange, eight-winged birds capered and beyond which a glowing white layer of mist plied by tall, feat
hery cloudships extended to neck-stretchingly tall cliffs of pastel-shaded rock, set about with further small clouds, draped with blue and sparkling gold waterfalls, and topped by fabulous cities of spires and slender bridges. Ship-slaved soligrams of famous historical figures wandered about the party, adding to the illusion of numbers, and were only too happy to engage the disguised revellers in conversation. More treats and surprises were promised for later.
Sma went as Xeny, Skaffen-Amtiskaw as a model of the Xenophobe, and the ship itself produced yet another remote drone; an aquatic one, still brown and yellow, but looking like a rather fat and large-eyed fish, and floating in a field-held metre-diameter sphere of water which drifted through the party-space like some odd balloon.
'Ais Disgarve, who you've met before,' the ship drone said, voice sounding rather bubbly as it introduced Sma to the young man who'd greeted her in the hangar the day before. 'And Jetart Hrine.'
Sma smiled, nodded at Disgarve - making a mental note to stop thinking of him as Disgarb - and the young woman at his side.
'Hello again. How do you do?'
'Heddo,' said Disgarve, dressed as some sort of ancient cold-climate explorer, all swathed in furs.
'Hi,' Jetart Hrine said. She was quite short and round, very young looking, and her skin was so black it was almost blue. She wore some ancient - and surprisingly brightly coloured - military uniform, and sported a smooth-bore projectile rifle slung over one shoulder. She sipped from a glass and said. 'I know there's no shop talk, Ms Sma, but frankly Ais and I have been wondering why our dest -'
'Aah!' the ship drone said, its water sphere suddenly collapsing. Water crashed all around the feet of Sma, Hrine and Disgarve, all of whom jumped back a little. The fish-drone fell to the red wood deck and flapped around. 'Water!' it croaked. Sma picked it up by the tail.
'What happened?' she asked it.
'Field malfunction. Water! Quickly!'
Sma looked at Disgarve and Hrine, both of whom seemed rather bemused. Skaffen-Amtiskaw, in its starship disguise, wound quickly through the party-goers towards them. 'Water!' the ship drone repeated, wriggling.
A frown gathered on Sma's brow, inside the brown and yellow suit. She looked at the woman dressed as a soldier. 'What were you about to say, Ms Hrine?'
'I was - oof!'
A one-in-five-hundred-and-twelfth scale model of the very fast picket Xenophobe thumped into the woman, making her stagger backwards, dropping her glass.
'Hey!' Disgarve said, pushing the offending Skaffen-Amtiskaw away. Hrine looked annoyed, and rubbed her shoulder.
'Sorry; clumsy me!' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, loudly.
'Water! Water!' yelped the ship drone, struggling in Sma's furry paw.
'Shut up!' Sma told it. She went close to Jetart Hrine, putting her own body between the woman and Skaffen-Amtiskaw. 'Ms Hrine; complete your question, would you?'
'I just wanted to know why...'
The floor shook, the entire landscape around them trembled; light flashed from high above, and as they looked up, they saw the fabulous gleaming cities of the cliff tops far above disappear in vast blooms of light, which slowly faded, leaving falling clouds of debris, crashing towers and disintegrating bridges. The mighty cliffs split asunder and kilometres-high tsunami of seething lava and boiling grey-black clouds of smoke and ash burst out, exploding over the quivering landscape below, where the cloudships were sinking and the eight-winged birds were spinning so fast their wings were coming off, sending them spinning into the blue-green shrubbery in squawking explosions of feathers and leaves.
Jetart Hrine stared in disbelief. Sma grabbed the woman's collar with one paw and shook her. 'It's trying to distract you!' she yelled. She turned to the fish-drone in her other paw. 'Cut it out!' she screamed at it. She shook the woman again, while Disgarve tried to pry her paw away from the woman. Sma shook his hand off. 'What were you trying to say?'
'Why don't we know where we're going?' Hrine shouted into Sma's face, over the noise of the earth splitting open in a gout of flame. A huge black shape reared from the chasm, red-eyed.
'We're going to Crastalier!' Sma yelled. A vast silver human baby appeared in the sky, shining, beatific and be-rayed, spun about with glowing figures.
'So what?' Hrine bellowed, as lightning zapped from mega-baby to earth-beast and thunder assaulted the ears. 'Crastalier's an Open Cluster; there must be half a million stars in it!'
Sma froze.
The holos went back to the way they had been before the cataclysms. The music resumed, but it was quieter now, and very soothing. The ship's crew stood around, looking mystified. There was much shrugging.
The piscine ship-drone and Skaffen-Amtiskaw exchanged looks. The ship drone, still held in Sma's paw, suddenly became the holo of a fish skeleton. Skaffen-Amtiskaw projected the model of the Xenophobe tumbling disintegrating and trailing smoke to the deck. They both flashed back to their previous disguises as Sma turned slowly and looked at them both.
'An... Open... Cluster?' she said, and took off the brown and yellow head of the fancy-dress suit.
Sma's mouth was in the shape of a smile. It was not an expression Skaffen-Amtiskaw had learned to view with anything other than extreme trepidation.
- Oh shit.
- I think we are in the presence of one annoyed human female, Skaffen-Amtiskaw.
- You don't say. Any ideas?
- None whatsoever. You can field this; my fish-like ass is out of here.
- Ship! You can't do this to me!
- Can and am. This is your prototype. Talk to me later. Bye.
The fish-drone went limp in Sma's paw. She let it drop to the water-slicked floor.
The drone dispensed with the warship disguise; it floated in front of her, fields on clear. It dipped its front a little, held it there. 'Sma,' it said quietly. 'I'm sorry. I didn't lie but I did deceive.'
'My cabin,' Sma said calmly, after a brief pause. 'Excuse us,' she said to Disgarve and Hrine, and walked away, followed by the drone.
She floated on the bed in the lotus position, naked but for the shorts, the Xeny suit discarded on the floor. She was glanding calm and she looked more sad than furious. Skaffen-Amtiskaw - expecting a fight - was feeling awful, faced with such measured disappointment.
'I thought if I told you, you wouldn't come.'
'Drone; this is my job.'
'I know, but you were so reluctant to leave...'
'After three years, with no warning, what do you expect? But how long did I actually hold out? Even knowing about the stand-in? Come on, drone; you told me what the situation was and I accepted. There was no need to keep quiet about Zakalwe giving us the slip.'
'I'm sorry,' the drone said, very quietly. 'This is inadequate, I know, but I really am sorry. Please say you might be able to forgive me one day.'
'Oh, don't take the contrition bit too far. Just tell me things in future.'
'All right.'
Sma let her head drop for a moment, then brought it back up. 'You can start by telling me how Zakalwe got away. What did we have trailing him?'
'A knife missile.'
'A knife missile?' Sma looked suitably amazed. She rubbed her chin with one hand.
'Quite a late model, too,' the drone said. 'Nanoguns, mono-filament warps, effector; point seven value brain.'
'And Zakalwe got away from this beast?' Sma was almost laughing.
'Not just away; he wasted it.'
'Shee-it,' Sma breathed. 'I didn't think Zakalwe was that smart. Was he smart, or just incredibly lucky? What happened? How did he do it?'
'Well, it's very secret,' the drone said. 'So please don't tell anybody at all.'
'My honour,' Sma said ironically, palm on chest.
'Well,' the drone said, making a sighing noise. 'It took him a year to set up but, on the place where we dropped him - after his last job for us - the local humanoids shared their planet with large sea-going mammals of about equivalent intelligence; quite a viable symbiotic relationship, w
ith much cross-cultural contact. Zakalwe - using the exchange we'd given him as payment for his work - bought a company which made medical and signalling lasers. His trap involved a hospital facility the humanoids were setting up on the coast of an ocean to treat these sea-going mammals. One of the pieces of medical equipment being tested was a very large Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Scanner.'
'A what?'
'Fourth most primitive way of looking inside your average water-based living being.'
'Go on.'
The process involves the use of extremely strong magnetic fields. Zakalwe was supposedly testing a laser attached to the machine - on a holiday, when there was nobody else around - when he somehow got the knife missile to enter the scanning machine, and then turned on the power.'
'I thought knife missiles weren't magnetic.'
'They're not, but there was just enough metal in it to set up crippling eddy currents if it tried to move too fast.'
'But it could still move.'
'Not fast enough to get out of the way of the laser Zakalwe had set up at one end of the scanner. It was only supposed to illuminate, to help produce holos of the mammals, but Zakalwe had in fact installed a military strength device; it grilled the knife missile.'
'Wow.' Sma nodded, staring down at the floor. 'The man never ceases to amaze.' She looked at the drone. 'Zakalwe must have wanted away from us awful bad.'
'It looks that way,' agreed the drone.
'So maybe there's no way he'll want to work for us again. Maybe he never wants even to hear from us again.'
'I'm afraid that must be a possibility.'
'Even if we can find him.'
'Quite.'
'And all we know is that he's somewhere in an Open Cluster called Crastalier?' Sma's voice sounded tinged with disbelief.
'It's a bit more focused than that,' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said. 'There are maybe ten or twelve systems he could be in by now, if he left immediately after stiffing the knife missile, and took the fastest ships available. Thankfully, the tech level in the meta-civilisation isn't that high.' The drone hesitated, then said. 'To be honest, we might have been able to catch up with him, if we'd gone in fast and strong immediately... But I think the controlling Minds were so impressed with Zakalwe's trick they thought he deserved to get away. We kept a very general watch on the volume, but it's only in the last ten days the search has become serious. We're bringing in ships and people from wherever we can now; I'm sure we'll find him.'