Use of Weapons (10 page)

The
young man sneezed mightily.

'Due
for a spot of R-and-R soon, are we?' Skaffen-Amtiskaw asked him. Sma nudged the
machine with her elbow.

The
young crewman looked puzzledly at the machine. 'Jusd bidished sub, adjilly.'

He
glanced away to the elevator door as it started to open, Skaffen-Amtiskaw and
Sma exchanged looks; Sma crossed her eyes.

They
stepped into a wide social area, floored and walled with some dark red wood,
polished to the point of gleaming; it supported a variety of richly upholstered
couches and chairs, and a few low tables. The ceiling wasn't particularly high,
but very attractive, composed of great flutes of gathered-up material rippling
in from the walls and hung with many little lanterns. From the light level, it
looked to be early morning, ship time. A group of people round one of the
tables broke up and came towards her.

'Biz
Sba,' the young crewman said indicating Sma, his voice seeming to get thicker
all the time. The other people - about fifty-fifty men and women - smiled,
introduced themselves. She nodded, exchanged a few words; the drone said hello.

One
of the people in the group held a little bundle of brown and yellow fur,
cradled against one shoulder rather as one might hold a baby. 'Here.' the man
said, presenting the tiny furry creature to Sma. She took it reluctantly. It
was warm, had four limbs arranged conventionally, smelled attractive and wasn't
any sort of animal she'd ever seen before; it had large ears on a large head,
and as she held it, it opened its huge eyes and looked at her. 'That's the
ship,' the man who'd handed her the animal said.

'Hello,'
the tiny being squeaked.

Sma
looked it up and down. 'You're the
Xenophobe
?'

'Its
representative. The bit you can talk to. You can call me Xeny.' It smiled; it
had little round teeth. 'I know most ships just use a drone, but,' it glanced
at Skaffen-Amtiskaw, 'they can be a bit boring, don't you think?'

Sma
smiled, and sensed Skaffen-Amtiskaw's aura flicker out of the corner of her
eye. 'Well, sometimes,' she agreed.

'Oh
yes,' the little creature said, nodding. 'I'm
much
cuter.' It wriggled in her hands, looking happy. 'If you
like,' it giggled, 'I'll show you to your cabin, yes?'

'Yes;
good idea,' nodded Sma, and put the thing over her shoulder. The crewpeople
called out to say they'd see her later as she, the ship's bizarre remote drone
and Skaffen-Amtiskaw headed for the accommodation section.

'Ooh,
you're nice and warm,' the little brown and yellow creature mumbled sleepily,
snuggling into Sma's neck as they headed down a deeply carpeted corridor for
Sma's quarters. It stirred and she found herself patting its back. 'Left here,'
it said, at a junction, then, That's us just breaking orbit now, by the way.'

'Good,'
Sma said.

'Can
I cuddle up with you when you sleep?'

Sma
stopped, detached the creature from her shoulder with one hand and stared it in
the face. 'What?'

'Just
for chumminess' sake,' the little thing said, yawning wide and blinking. 'I'm
not being rude; it's a good bonding procedure.'

Sma
was aware of Skaffen-Amtiskaw glowing red just behind her. She brought the
yellow and brown device closer to her face. 'Listen,
Xenophobe
-'

'Xeny.'

'Xeny;
you are a million-tonne starship; a Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. Even
-'

'But
I'm demilitarised!'

'Even
without your principal armament, I bet you could waste planets if you wanted to
-'

'Aw,
come on; any silly GCU can do
that
!'

'So
what is all this shit for?' She shook the furry little remote drone, quite
hard. Its teeth chattered.

'It's
for a laugh!' it cried. 'Sma; don't you appreciate a joke?'

'I
don't know. Do you appreciate being drop-kicked back to the accommodation
area?'

'Ooo!
What's your problem, lady? Have you got something against small furry animals,
or what? Look, Ms Sma; I know very well I'm a ship, and I do everything I'm
asked to do - including taking you to this frankly rather fuzzily specified
destination - and do it very efficiently, too. If there was the slightest sniff
of any real action, and I had to start acting like a warship, this construct in
your hands would go lifeless and limp immediately, and I'd battle as
ferociously and decisively as I've been trained to. Meanwhile, like my human
colleagues, I amuse myself harmlessly. If you really hate my current
appearance, all right; I'll change it; I'll be an ordinary drone, or just a
disembodied voice, or talk to you through Skaffen-Amtiskaw here, or through
your personal terminal. The last thing I want to do is
offend
a guest.'

Sma
pursed her lips. She patted the thing on its head, and sighed. 'Fair enough.'

'I
can keep this shape?'

'By
all means.'

'Oh
goody!' It squirmed with pleasure, then opened its big eyes wide and looked
hopefully at her. 'Cuddle?'

'Cuddle.'
Sma cuddled it, patted its back.

She
turned to see Skaffen-Amtiskaw lying dramatically on its back in mid-air, its
aura field flashing the lurid orange that was used to signal Sick Drone in
Extreme Distress.

Sma
nodded goodbye to the little brown and yellow animal as it waddled away down
the corridor which led back to the social area (it waved back with one chubby
little paw), then closed the cabin door and made sure the room's internal
monitoring was off.

She
turned to Skaffen-Amtiskaw. '
How
long
are we on this ship for?'

'Thirty
days?' Skaffen-Amtiskaw suggested.

Sma
gritted her teeth and looked round the fairly cosy-looking but - compared to
the echoing spaces of the old power station mansion - rather small cabin.
'Thirty days with a crew of viral masochists and a ship that thinks it's a
cuddly toy.' She shook her head, sat into the bed field. 'Subjectively, drone,
this could be a long trip.' She collapsed back into the bed, muttering.

Skaffen-Amtiskaw
decided right now would probably still not be the best time to tell the woman
about Zakalwe being missing.

'I'll
just go and take a look round, if you don't mind,' it said, drifting towards
the door over the neat line of bags that was Sma's luggage.

'Yeah,
on you go,' Sma waved one arm lazily, then shucked off the jacket and let it
fall to the deck.

The
drone had almost made it to the door when Sma sat bolt upright, a frown on her
face, and said, 'Wait a minute; what did the ship mean about "... rather
fuzzily specified destination"? Doesn't it know where the hell we're
going?'

Oh-oh
, thought the
drone.

It
spun in the air. 'Ah,' it said.

Sma's
eyes narrowed. 'We are just going to get Zakalwe, aren't we?'

'Yes.
Of course.'

'We're
not doing anything else?'

'Absolutely
not. We find Zakalwe; we brief him; we take him to Voerenhutz. Simple as that.
We might be asked to hang around for a bit, overseeing, but that isn't definite
yet.'

'Yes,
yes, I expected that, but... where exactly is Zakalwe?'

'Where
exactly
?' The drone said. 'Well, I
mean; you know, that's...'

'All
right,' Sma said, exasperated, 'approximately, then.'

'No
problem,' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, backing off towards the door.

'No
problem?' Sma said, puzzled.

'Yes;
no problem. We know that. Where he is.'

'Good,'
Sma nodded. 'Well?'

'Well
what?'

'Well,'
Sma said loudly, 'where is he?'

'Crastalier.'

'Cras...?'

'Crastalier.
That's where we're heading.'

Sma
shook her head, yawned. 'Never heard of it.' She flopped back in the bed field,
stretching. 'Crastalier.' Her yawn deepened; she put a hand to her mouth. 'You
only had to say that the first time, goddamit.'

'Sorry,'
the drone said.

'Mmm.
Never mind.' Sma put out one hand, waved it through the bedside beam that
controlled the cabin lights, so that they dimmed. She yawned again. 'Think I'll
catch some sleep. Take my boots off, will you?'

Gently
but quickly, the drone slipped Sma's boots off, gathered her jacket and hung
it in a walk-in cupboard, swept the bags in there too, then - as Sma turned
over in the bed field, eyes fluttering closed - the drone slipped out of the
room.

It
hovered in the air outside, looking at its reflection in the polished wood on
the far side of the corridor.

'That,'
it said to itself, 'was close.' Then it went for a wander.

Sma
had arrived on the
Xenophobe
just
after breakfast, by ship time. When she awoke, it was early afternoon. She was
completing her toilet, while the drone sorted her clothes into type and colour
order and hung or folded them in the cupboard, when the door chimed. Sma
wandered out of the little bathroom area, wearing a pair of shorts, her mouth
full of toothpaste. She tried saying Open, but the toothpaste apparently
stopped the room monitor from recognising the word. She walked over and pressed
the door-open instead.

Sma
eye's flicked wide; she yelped, spluttered, jumped back from the door, a scream
gathering in her throat.

The
instant after her eyes had widened, before the signal to jump back from the
door had travelled all the way to her leg muscles, there was an impression of
almost invisibly sudden movement in the cabin, belatedly followed by a bang and
a sizzling sound.

There,
stationed between her and the door, were all three of the drone's knife
missiles, hovering roughly level with her eyes, sternum and groin; she was looking
at them through a haze of field the machine had also thrown in front of her.
Then it clicked off.

The
knife missiles swung lazily away through the air and clicked back into
Skaffen-Amtiskaw's casing. 'Don't
do
that to me,' the machine muttered, returning to sorting out Sma's socks.

Sma
wiped her mouth and stared at the three-metre tall, brown and yellow coloured
furry monster cowering in the corridor outside the door.

'Ship...
Xeny, what the
hell
are you doing?'

'I'm
sorry,' the huge creature said, its voice only a little deeper than when it had
been baby-sized. 'I thought if you didn't relate to a small furry animal,
perhaps a bigger version...'

'Shee-it.'
Sma said, shaking her head. 'Come in,' she called, heading back for the
bathroom area. 'Or did you just want to show me how much you've grown?' She
rinsed out the paste and spat.

Xeny
squeezed through the door, stooped, and sidled into a corner. 'Sorry about
that, Skaffen-Amtiskaw.'

'No
problem,' the other machine replied.

'Ah,
no, Ms Sma,' Xeny called. 'I actually wanted to talk to you about...'

Skaffen-Amtiskaw
went still, just for a second. There was, in fact, a fairly lengthy, detailed
and slightly heated exchange between the drone and the ship's Mind during that
time, but Sma was only aware of Xeny pausing as it spoke.

'...
about having a fancy-dress party, this evening, in your honour,' the ship
improvised.

Sma
smiled from the bathroom area, 'That's a lovely idea, ship. Thank you, Xeny.
Yes; why not?'

'Good;
I just thought I'd check with you, first. Any ideas about costumes?'

Sma
laughed. 'Yeah; I'll go as you; make me one of those suits you're wearing.'

'Ha.
Yes. Good idea. Actually, that might be rather a common choice, but we'll make
it two people can't go as the same thing. Right. I'll talk to you later.' Xeny
lumbered from the room and the door slid shut. Sma appeared out from the
bathroom area, slightly surprised at this sudden departure, but just shrugged.

'Short
but eventful visit,' she observed, rummaging through the socks Skaffen-Amtiskaw
had just carefully arranged in chromatic order. 'That machine's weird.'

'What
do you expect?' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said. 'It's a star-ship.'

-
You might (the ship Mind communicated to Skaffen-Amtiskaw) have told me you
were keeping the size of our target destination from her.

-
I am hoping (the drone replied) that our people already out there will find the
guy we're looking for and give us an exact position, in which case Sma will
never need to know there was ever any problem.

-
Indeed, but why not just be honest with her in the first place?

-
Ha! You don't know Sma!

-
Oh. Do I take it she's temperamental?

-
What do you expect? She's a human!

The
ship prepared a feast, and put as many human-brain-chemistry-altering chemicals
into the various dishes and drinks as was normally regarded proper without
attaching a specific sanity warning to each bowl, plate, jug or glass. It told
the crew about the party, and rearranged the social area, setting up a variety
of mirrors and reverser fields (with a total guest list of only twenty-two -
not including itself - making the place look suitably crowded was one of the
major obstacles it faced in trying to encourage the feel of a serious,
thorough-going whoopee).