She looked at him. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Thanks, very.”
He relaxed. Relays thumped and sensation returned to his chest and arms. He hated dealing with people the way he had just done, but at times there seemed no way out.
Nigel was in a good mood. He and Carlotta and Nikka had spent the evening playing sambau on a traditional board. He had lost heavily, giving up a month’s worth of household chore time to Nikka and some ship credit to Carlotta. Unfazed, he kept up a stream of bad puns and unlikely stories.
“What’s got into you?” Carlotta asked. “Been skoffing those disallowed drugs again?”
“Nothing so mundane.” He winked and thumped his chest “You see here a revitalized son of Britain.” He paused, weighing whether to go on. Then: “I got on self-serve.”
“Oh, good,” Nikka said mildly.
Carlotta said, “Translation: now nobody’ll know how fast he’s falling apart.”
“Correct! A man’s enzymes are not suitable points for snooping by program directors and similar riffraff.”
Carlotta asked, “How’d you do it?”
“Moment of opportunity. Talked the medmon attendant into it.”
“Um. The attendant’s got the right—decentralized authority and all …” Carlotta said, frowning. “But a simple systems review will catch it.”
“That’s where you come in.” Nigel watched her expectantly as she arched an eyebrow. “You’ve got plenty of comm-systems lackeys. Surely you can exempt me from their small-minded scrutiny.”
The two women glanced at each other and laughed. “So that’s—”
“The old razzmatazz,” he said lightly.
“Nigel, you want me to put information into the system that’s not true.”
“Truth is merely an opinion that has survived.”
“You mean faking data.”
“Right, sacred holy data.”
“You’re presuming on our, our—”
“Oh, come on. We’re not English schoolchildren, sitting about eating crumpets and reading When the Otters Came to Tea. This is for keeps.”
Nikka said softly, “You’re asking a lot, Nigel.”
“Love survives forever and all that, but vanity is less rugged. I can’t sit in this apartment scanning reports and doing nothing.” .
“If you’re not physically capable—”
“Don’t you see, that’s merely a hand stick to beat me with. Ted—”
“I can’t do something dishonest!” Carlotta cried.
“Dishonest? Seems to me its in what the Americans delightfully call a gray area.”
Nikka said slowly to Carlotta, “It would mean a lot to him. Otherwise he’ll lose his job.”
“Which means what?” she replied. “No more servo work on the surface.”
Nikka leaned forward earnestly. “That’s very important to him.”
“Him! Always him!”
“We have to support each other,” Nikka said stiffly.
“Mierda seca.”
“I believe that means—”
“What I mean is, we’re both revolving around him. Don’t you see that?”
Nikka blinked, her face immobile. “There is inevitably some inequality …”
“Sí, nobody can balance it all perfecto—but we’re, we’re competing for Nigel, and that’s wrong.”
“Yes,” Nigel said, “it is. I don’t see this as part of a contest, though. You—”
“I see it that way,” Carlotta said.
“And I don’t,” Nikka responded. “I’m simply saying that Nigel needs help.”
