Playing God(34)
“Trader Cabal,” replied Advisor Tvir. “The shades of night look well on you. What's your news?”
Cabal nodded. “Scholar Arron is contacting a friend of his on behalf of the members of the dayisen he lives with. They want to change the relocation schedule, and this friend, she's working on that part of the project.”
Advisor Cishka had lost an ear in some skirmish long ago. She rubbed the scar thoughtfully. “Do we know how likely he is to succeed in this?”
“I have no idea,” Cabal shrugged. “They were close once, but he hasn't seen her in years. He's not talking about it much.”
“Why is he talking about it at all? You and he are not true friends, you have said.”
“He asked me to take him to t'Theria to meet her, and I've also told you how he gets going about internal affairs at every opportunity.”
Advisor Cishka's remaining ear twitched. “You do not respect him, do you?”
Cabal shrugged again and thought a minute before he found a way to construct the sentence in Getesaph. “There are places where he is shaded by night in broad daylight. He doesn't always understand how people could not completely agree with him.”
“I hear you.” Advisor Tvir nodded. “At least I think I do. Thank you, Trader Cabal. You will let us know if he succeeds or fails? We need to know which of their plans the Defenders will implement.”
“As soon as I know, you'll know.” Cabal stood up, flexing his knees to keep his balance as the boat bobbled on the harbor's gentle waves. “Is there anything else, Advisor Tvir? Advisor Cishka?”
“Not tonight, Trader Cabal. Go with care.”
Cabal smiled and let his teeth show behind his face mask. “Always.”
Chapter V
The command center for the city-ship Ur looked more like an office than a ship's bridge. Captain Elisabeth Esmaraude and her section officers worked at a multiterminal table that had a dedicated AI of its own. The space around the walls had been divided into private meeting rooms, screening facilities, a flash-cook foodstore with an attached coffee urn and bread box, and a lavatory complete with shower stall.
When Keale stepped through the hatchway, Captain Esmaraude was at the central table, going over something on the screen with her chief gravity engineer, Rudu King. King was an ebony-skinned man wearing tan coveralls with no markings except a small, silver commander's insignia on his collar.
Keale suppressed a smile. If there was a man who loved his job, it was Rudu King. When Captain Esmaraude brought the Ur in, Keale had asked her for a tour, and she had handed him over to King to see the gravity deck. Rudu had taken him down the work shafts, seemingly oblivious to the weird pushes and pulls of the gravity fields. He'd delivered a nonstop commentary as Keale peered through thick glass at the forests of lozenge-shaped tractor units hanging in the yokes that controlled their slew and pitch. Each tractor contained the toroids or “doughnuts” of neutral particles that turned in on themselves according to equations that King reeled off like other people reeled off plots of simulations or paragraphs of regulations. He talked nonstop about angles of interference, field calculations, the need for constant spot checking of each and every “doughnut holder” in case a charged particle somehow got into the toroid, which would cause the toroid to start breaking down into heat and X rays, or, worse, if some irregularity developed in the particle spin, which could shake the entire doughnut, the holder, and its neighbors, and eventually the whole ship and …
Keale had watched the man carefully for signs of boredom or attempts to impress, but had seen neither. This was simply King's entire life, down here in this dizzying world of fields, neutral particles, and delicate, precise angles and calculations.
The only time Keale managed to make King pause was when he asked if one of the tractors could be shut down.
“Why?” King's eyes narrowed.
“Security precautions,” Keale had replied.
“You want a zero-gee section somewhere?”
“No, no, just a … an area of confusion.”
Standing on the work platform, King stared at his rows of tractors with his mouth pressed into a long, thin line.
“Yes, we can do that. Bleed off one of the doughnuts.” He drummed his thick, callused fingers against the platform's rail. “Rotate the field angles on a few others. We won't like it, the captain won't like it, and the ship won't like it, but we can do it.”
Now, watching the captain and the gravitor together, Keale folded his hands behind his back and got ready to wait. King was methodical in the extreme, and Esmaraude … Keale had known her for a long time. She did not rush for anybody.