Playing God(41)
All at once, all the boxes in the room started chattering and clacking as if their insides were being rattled by an earthquake. Vreaith caught Pem's hand and squeezed. Between a gap in the coder's shoulders, Pem saw a wave of figures sweep across the screen. One of the printers began to disgorge a ribbon of paper. A coder tore it free and spread it across the conference table. She and her duty-sisters began pulling books out of the piles, flipping them open and running their fingers down columns of letters and figures. All the while they jabbered and exclaimed excitedly to one another. Whatever jargon they were using, Pem could only understand every third word.
“Well?” boomed Trindt Simnet in a voice that could have carried across the deck in a raging gale.
One of the coders looked up from her book and papers. “It will be a while before we have anything coherent, Sisters, but we are receiving real information, and the binary standard we calibrated to appears sound.”
“Superb.” Pem folded her hands across her pouch. “We will leave at once to report to our members. Where else will you be able to set up these listening stations?”
“Near port,” said Trindt Irdeth, as they made their way back to the bridge. “Near the biology station. We are scouting for other locations.”
Trader Cabal hopped off his stool as they returned to the bridge. “Everything working out all right, Trindt Kilv, Members Shavck?”
“It appears so.” Pem reached into her wallet and pulled out a small sheaf of sealed papers. “Here are the letters of reference promised. My sister in Crater Town will receive you if you present these.”
“Thank you, Member Pem.” Trader Cabal rifled through the papers, then stowed them in a pocket of his canvas jacket. “I'm leaving tomorrow morning on a last swing around the ocean, but I will be back. It should still be a week or three after that before I have to be on my way. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Trindt Simnet waved her ears. “The code translation would go much faster if we could wire our scopes to Human comm stations. I don't suppose you have three or four of those lying around anywhere?”
“Actually, Trindt Simnet,” said Cabal, “I know where six will be available within the week. Perhaps we can come to an arrangement for them?”
Trindt Simnet's entire demeanor lit up. “I'm sure that would be possible.”
Pem laid a cautionary hand on Simnet's arm. “We cannot use any machinery set aside for Parliament or the evacuation crews. It would be noticed if it went missing.”
“Of course.” Trader Cabal bowed his head once. “When I said abandoned, I meant it. This equipment belongs to the Human outpost I am based out of. I'm the only one with the facilities to salvage any of the hardware out of there, and within a week there will be no one left to see what I do with it.”
Vreaith caught her sister's gaze, and Pem nodded. “Then, Trader Cabal,” said Vreaith, “I think we should hear your price.”
Chapter VI
The Council bus was long, battered, and brown. Its engine sputtered. However, it was enclosed from the drizzle that had started up. The fans didn't work, but the roof didn't leak either. Praeis and her daughters, properly stripped for the weather this time, sat on one of the unpadded benches with their arms companionably around each other. The bus was about three-quarters full of mothers, daughters, and sisters from the country heading to the inland city of Charith.
Outside, the flat, ragged grasslands stretched all around them. The weeds opened their gold-and-scarlet rain funnels or spread their waxy green leaves to shelter their bit of ground. In the distance, towering stone walls bisected the meadows to enclose farms and factories.
For the first half of the trip, Praeis had babbled cheerfully to her surprisingly attentive daughters. “See, Res, see Theia, there's the Hytai family compound. Textiles in there mainly. That's Reari. I was a management trainee there for a year before I went into the defense. It's not much more than a glorified warehouse, but it was great training in tracking ebb and flow of supplies. Complex inventory is halfway to logistics. Oh, and that pinkish grey roof over there? That's an orchard under there. Belongs to the Oarn family. They're near family to us. They grow incredible berries. My friends Baya, Kiesh, and Paleth Oarn t'Theria were just taking over from their mother and her sisters when I… left. I wonder if they've still got the management?”
She did not, however, point out the guard towers and fortifications that marked the end of the t'Therian lands and the start of the t'Ciereth's. With the relocation two weeks away, it was not something they really needed to know. It also was not the impression of her world, their world, that she wanted made on her daughters’ minds. It was enough that the rest of the traffic on the road consisted of funeral processions, families walking alongside carts or slow frame cars carrying their dead to the smoking crematoriums that appeared whenever the walls parted. Surely, that was nightmare enough without her adding even the vague threat of war so close.