“But community votes are pretty near binding.”
“No, they’re merely indicative. My fellow crewmen can’t give me the sack, zip, like that. You’re the command structure, Ted. Surely you know you can overrule anything short of an absolute majority in the community.”
“Well—”
“And with 1266 voting, I doubt a majority wanted me out of my slot. Most don’t know my work, or care.”
Ted had a small habit. He braced his jaw a bit and tightened his mouth, so slightly that Nigel could scarcely see the pressure whiten the red of his lips. Then he touched his front teeth together and rubbed them carefully back and forth, as though he were methodically sharpening them against each other. His jaw muscles rippled.
“Technically, Nigel, you’re right.”
“Fine, then.”
“But your sense of community must lead you to see that active opposition by a significant minority is, well, contrary to the long-term interests of our mission and—”
“Bloody hell!”
Again Ted made his teeth-sharpening motion, jaw muscles flexing. “The alternative job I think you’ll find quite attractive.”
“What is it?”
“Heavy foundry work.”
Fusing the asteroid rock, prestressing struts, using laser cutters and e-beams. “Socketed?”
“Uh, yes, of course.”
They hooked you into the big machines, connected you at hip and knee and elbow and wrist, the delicate electronic interface matching directly to your nerves. And you sensed the machine, you felt the machine, you worked the machine, you served the machine, you were the machine. “No.”
“You’ve been using that word a lot lately, Nigel.”
“It’s terribly economical.”
Ted sighed—spontaneous, or calculated? Hard to tell—and clapped his big hands to his knees. The zazen position was uncomfortable for him, even with his shoes off. For some reason most guests adopted that position, even though Nigel usually sprawled on the cushions. Perhaps they felt the rectangular simplicity of this Oriental room suggested a spine-straightening discipline to its inhabitants. To Nigel it suggested just the opposite.
“Nigel, I know you won’t like leaving external operations, but I think after you made the switch to foundry work, you’d feel—”
“Like a canceled stamp.”
Ted’s face reddened suddenly. “Damn it, I expect sacrifice from everyone on board! When I ask you to change jobs, elementary—”
Nigel waved him to silence. He had found that a particularly abrupt gesture, ending in a thrust forefinger, nearly always stopped Ted’s rapid-fire attacks. A valuable trick. “And if I don’t comply? The Slowslots?”
This had the intended effect. Dragging the Slowslots suddenly to stage center raised the stakes. This in turn disturbed the controlled way administrators liked to negotiate, and also brought floating to Ted’s mind the fact that Nigel had helped develop the Slowslots as a volunteer guinea pig; he had already paid dues that were more than metaphorical.
“Nigel …” Ted drawled, shaking his head soberly. “I’m surprised you would think in those terms. No one in the Lancer community wants to stick you into a sleep box. Your friends are simply trying to tell you that perhaps it is time to step aside from the tasks that require reflexes, skill, and stamina which—let’s face the facts—you’re gradually losing. We all—”
“Right. In other words, they’ve always seen my appointment to a real, working exo job as a political fish thrown to a 3-D-elevated seal.”
“Harsh words, Nigel. And of course completely untrue.”
Nigel smiled and laced his hands behind his neck, leaning back with elbows high, easing the quiet chorus of strain in his lower back muscles. “Not so far from the mark as you might think,” he said almost dreamily. “Not so far …” His mind flitted over old pictures: the alien incursion into the solar system, the pearly sphere of the Snark, an exploratory vessel he had met for only moments, beyond the Moon; the Mare Marginis wreck, a crushed eggshell that had fallen from the stars a million years ago; the webbed logic of the Marginis alien computer that had taught them how to build Lancer. He had been there, he had seen it, but now the pictures were faded.
Ted said solemnly, “I had hoped to impress you with the weight of opinion behind this vote. We’ll be in Isis space within months. The surface teams must begin practicing in earnest. I cannot in all good—”
“I’ll go on fallback status,” Nigel said casually.
“What?”
“Put me in the reserve exploration unit. There’ll be dead times when we’re on the surface, surely. Times when most of the crew is asleep or working on something else. You won’t want those servo’d modules standing idle on the surface, will you? I’ll simply hold down the position, keep watch until the real working crew comes back on control.”
“Ummmm. Well, it’s not exactly what I had—”
“I don’t give a ruddy toss for your plans, if you must know the truth. I’m offering a compromise.”
“Backup isn’t a full-time position.”
“I’ll do scutwork, then.”
“Well …”
“Hydro jobs. Agri, perhaps. Yes, I’d like that.”
He watched Ted savor this new possibility. The man treated the idea like a small quick animal, probably no threat but unpredictable, as likely to sink fangs into his thumb as it was to suddenly dart off in unexpected directions. Nigel was neither snake nor sturgeon, though, and Ted disliked things without labels. Behind Lancer’s cosmetic groupgov policy lurked these traditional top-down managers, with instincts as old as Tyre.
Ted’s smile suddenly reappeared. “Good. Good. Nigel, I’m happy you were able to see it our way.”
“Indeed.”
