Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIV

Persoff nodded, wishing he could think of something sufficiently respectful to say about that pilot. Then he frowned. “Johnson, Denver, Hale, Wells, Blacker, and Schafer make six,” he said. “Who was the seventh survivor?”

“Foote,” said a voice from outside the firelight. An old-looking woman stepped forward, propping herself up on two canes. “James Foote.”

“Foote with a final ‘e,’” said Sophia.

“He financed the Galaxias ,” said the old woman. “He was a planner.”

“One man paid for that thing himself?” Persoff said, thinking of the Cyclopean ship he’d seen so briefly.

The old woman smiled. “He was a good planner. My name is Eden. Currently I’m the senior Foote. There are seldom more than eight or nine of us. Everyone else is good at some form of implementation, but original planning is too abstruse.”

“Then I guess you’re the one I need to talk with about cutting the trees,” he said.

Everyone else had been quiet, but up to then they’d been breathing. It got quieter.

“Out of the question,” Eden said. “Those are our history. The first of them were planted by the Pilot’s own hand.”

“The thing is, to get off the planet we’ll need to build a launch catapult.”

“Do it on another island.”

“We can’t move the power plant off this one.”

“We’ll help you make others. There may not be much smeltable iron, but there’s sure plenty of thorite.”

“All the other islands are volcanic.”

“There are ways to drain off the magma, we’ve just never gone to the trouble.”

“They’ll take time.”

“We’ve waited a couple hundred years so far.”

“Goddammit, we’re forty years overdue on our mission already!” Persoff bellowed, then shut up, ashamed.

She frowned. “What’s your mission?”

“We were supposed to attack the kzin home system, but we were attacked before we got there and flung this way when their gravity planer blew.”

“Just like us,” said Eva.

Eden said, “You mean, you need to cut the trees to beat the kzinti?”

He actually felt the air go out of him. “Uh, well, yes.”

“Then cut the trees,” she said, and her voice broke. She turned to Henry and said, “Go tell the rest of the Hales, and make sure everyone’s at the first trees, first thing, morning after tomorrow. Captain Persoff, there’s something we’ll want to do before you start cutting. It’s going to take us at least a few days. Will that delay you, or are there other steps you can take while we’re doing that?”

Things were changing too fast for him. “I doubt we’d be able to start cutting for weeks,” he said.

“Good. Then we can do this properly. If you don’t mind, Captain, it would be better for your nerves if you were back with your ship while the news is spread. I have arrangements to make as well.”

“It was out of the question, but now we can cut them? Just like that?”

She gave him a look that made him wonder if he’d make it to his car, but all she said was, “Yes, Captain, just like that. Be at the first trees on time if you want to know the story.”

When he took the car up, he saw hundreds of campfires below. The entire population must have come-and if they never cut the trees, then they’d brought the firewood with them. Yet they were letting him cut them, if it meant striking against the kzinti.

He set the car to take him back to the ship, wished he drank, and got on the radio. The tech on duty was Blackwell, who was evidently startled out of watchstanding trance by the call: “Is there an emergency, sir?”

“No, I’m just coming back early. Pass the word that I’ve met the locals, and they are disposed to help.” Had he said “friendly,” it would have told his crew that he was under duress. “I did get a minor injury, but they treated it. I want Meier to look at their work. Some of the things they’ve come up with are likely to be useful.”

“Yes, sir. May I speak freely, sir?”

Wondering, he said, “Granted.”

“The ship doesn’t feel right without you here, sir. Mister Thurston’s a good man to work for, but I’m glad you’re coming back early.”

“Thanks, Blackwell. Fact is, I didn’t feel right being away from the ship. Persoff out.”

Meier kept exclaiming under her breath, and finding more things to exclaim over with every instrument she used. “Did you know your jaw had been broken?” she finally said.

“It was?”

“By some kind of blunt impact. Right at what I would judge to be the weakest spot, if that’s not a silly thing to say about a jawbone. It’s had two pins put in, which the autodoc says are made of cellulose, gelatin, and powdered sterile bone. New bone is already growing as your cells digest the protein. The tooth they restored is pegged, but that seems to have been done out of sheer thoroughness, as it’s already taken root. And as for the scars, if I hadn’t seen you without them I’d swear they were weeks old. You’re absolutely right, I do want to see what else these people have got. It’s like they had to reinvent medicine.”

“I think they did. I didn’t see any equipment from their shuttle, so I think it must have sunk in the last landing. I’d sure want to keep that stuff handy.”

“It wouldn’t have worn out, either,” Tokugawa said from his bed. “Those old colony ships had equipment that was even better than required by law. And in those days you could go to the organ banks for making defective lightbulbs.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Meier said.

“He’s not,” Kershner said, walking in. “I hated the idea of organ banks when they thawed me out, so they had me read about one case. Indicator light on a paranoid’s autodoc burned out. He killed off an entire family, root and branch. I still hate organ banks, but I have to admit the only other thing that could possibly be appropriate for that degree of negligence, when you know how serious the risks are, is eternal damnation. Which is difficult to enforce. You need a demon on monitor duty, at least.”

“They get the paranoid?” Persoff said.

Kershner froze in place, mouth open, an odd habit he had when he couldn’t retrieve a piece of information. It could be disturbing, but he had fewer quirks than a lot of other ex-corpsicles. “I’m sure they must have, but I can’t call up the details. There was something weird about his case. But I was talking about the manufacturer. Three people went to the organ banks for negligent homicide. It was open and shut. One didn’t do maintenance on a monitor that supervised the filament composition, one was the middle manager who used to fire employees in quality inspection for failing too many products, and one was the interviewer who hired the manager and gave her instructions about keeping costs down. If any one of them had been doing a diligent job, the killer would have gone on being treated properly. What really capped it for the jury was that the ARMs investigated all the other lamps they’d sold over the same period, and found two more of inferior quality. We’re talking a specialty light here, made specifically for ’docs.” He frowned. “I wish I could remember-I do recall, the guy who did maintenance on the ’doc in question had to have some serious therapy. Totally blameless, but it was eating him up.”

Kershner didn’t look much happier than the man he was discussing. “Did you have a report for me, Mr. Kershner?”

Kershner came out of his funk and said, with a different kind of gloom, “We’ve got no spares for the hyperwave. It looks like when the railgun shot us, a piece of the bulkhead spalled through that locker. Since I have to use parts from the ’wave for redundant systems in the drive, we won’t be in contact with Earth until we get there.”