Space Deputy Page 4

  “We have mint,” Lon said eagerly. “Second shelf in the fridge.”

  Thelma smiled as excitement and nostalgia kicked in. “Pickled protein paste?”

  “Bottom shelf, to the right.”

  “And I can really eat anything I find in the fridge? The sheriff won’t mind?” Fresh fruits and herbs were expensive enough on Serene. She shuddered to think of trying to afford them on her deputy’s salary.

  “Pffftt.” Lon made a dismissive noise. Either Max wouldn’t mind or Lon didn’t care if he did.

  Thelma decided to take advantage of the AI’s permission. She added lettuce, a carrot, and a cucumber to her stash, and began slicing and dicing her salad.

  Lon was an interested observer, directing her readily when she required anything, like a large mixing bowl or oil and vinegar for a simple dressing. “Capers?”

  Thelma tipped her head to one side, considering. “No, not this time. I think they’d be too much of a good thing.”

  “Knowing when to stop is as important as getting started.”

  She jolted. She hadn’t noticed Harry enter the kitchen.

  His mech body was designed as the ultimate killing machine, but the casual way the AI moved it around and his mobile, expressive face distracted her from remembering that. He could have been one of her brothers, especially when he filched an olive from the jar she’d just opened.

  “I love cooking,” Lon said dreamily. “I watch all the cooking shows. I enjoy the contests. The contestants get so flustered, especially when they have to cook meals for different species.”

  “Can you eat?” Thelma watched as Harry masticated the olive. Would he eat the pit as well?

  “Nope,” Harry said cheerfully. He turned away for a moment. When he faced her again, he held a ladybird carved out of an olive pit.

  “That is…” Thelma put the knife down as she started laughing. “That’s ridiculous, yet cool.” When she’d stopped laughing, she addressed Lon. “We can watch some of the cooking shows together if you like, Lon. If we find a recipe we’re curious about, I’ll try to make it. You’ll have to remember the steps for me. And we’ll have to choose something we have the ingredients for.”

  Lon sighed happily. “I’m so glad you’re aboard, Thelma. Max just eats goop from the food dispenser.”

  “That ‘goop’ is nutritionally balanced, and I eat it in different forms,” Max said.

  Thelma glanced at him uncertainly. She hadn’t heard him enter the living area. For how long had he been watching and listening? Where Lon and Harry had been happy and teasing, she couldn’t tell if Max was joking or if he seriously preferred manufactured food to fresh produce. And if he did, had Lon stocked the fridge just for her? “I made a huge salad. You’re welcome to share it.”

  The large bowl filled with green and orange and the glossy black of the olives was proof that there was more than enough salad for two, four or possibly even five people.

  “I’ll add some to my plate. Thank you.” The kitchen was large enough that they didn’t get in each other’s way as he ordered his dinner, ravioli, from the food dispenser and she tidied up her mess. Then they sat down at the table, together.

  That felt awkward. Her first meal with her new boss.

  Harry sat down with them and grinned. But he didn’t break the silence.

  Thelma ate a segment of orange with a mint leaf and focused on enjoying the flavor combination and the freshness.

  “Would you like a drink?” Max looked at her across the table.

  “Tea would be nice. Hot, not iced. I try not to drink coffee at night or I won’t sleep.” Her hand tightened on her fork. She was babbling and she had to stop.

  Max merely nodded. He got them both mugs of tea.

  Belatedly, she realized he’d maybe been offering something alcoholic, a beer perhaps, but he didn’t seem disappointed in her choice.

  He ate some of her salad. “It’s good.”

  “It needs fennel,” Lon said before Thelma could respond. “I was analyzing recipes. It should have fennel, but there was none.”

  “An oversight, Lon.” A faint grin curved Max’s mouth. He was teasing the AI. He didn’t care how the salad tasted.

  “I’ve never tasted fennel,” Thelma said.

  “It has an aniseed flavor and it’s crunchy.”

  “Interesting.” She peeked at Max.

  Lon continued. “Fennel aids digestion in humans. It will reduce your gas production.”

  Max snorted a laugh.

  Harry grinned.

  Thelma had grown up with three brothers; three brothers who enjoyed eating beans and found the results the height of amusement as teenagers. She wasn’t fazed by juvenile male humor regarding anything digestion-related. “Fennel sounds like a good addition to the menu, Lon.”

  After dinner, they adjourned to the lounge area adjacent to the kitchen. There was another door on the far wall opposite the entry from the passage that led to their cabins. Thelma was curious about what was behind it. Lon had overlooked it during the tour. At the moment, she had a more pressing concern, though, even if it was a minor, absurd one.

  The lounge area was arranged with a long sofa with its back to the kitchen, delineating the walkway from the cabin corridor to the unknown room. At either end of the sofa, comfortably angled to watch the viewscreen on the far wall, were two recliners. Like the sofa, they were upholstered in a synthetic leather the color of coffee grounds. Max took the recliner on the left, nearest the unknown room. Harry ambled to the recliner on the right.

  The side walls each held a space window, a framed viewscreen designed to simulate a real world view or piece of art. The space window nearest Max showed a log cabin by a lake, a graying dock jutting out from it and a boy fishing there. In the background was a forest with the deciduous trees beginning to color gold and crimson with fall colors. The space window nearest Harry showed a fractal-realist three-dimensional artwork that lost itself to jaggedness.

  As the only other embodied person in the room, Thelma was left to sit on the sofa. But where did she sit on the five seater monster? Did she sit nearer Max or Harry? Nearer to her new boss who’d taken her on out of loyalty to her Star Marine brother or nearer to the AI who inhabited a lethal mech form? And what would they read into her seating choice?

  She sat smack in the middle of the sofa, feeling ridiculous for overthinking the issue.

  Neither of her companions appeared to notice her seating decision.

  “We’re on our way to the Deadstar Diner.” Max evidently didn’t believe in discussing work during meals, but now he was all business. Thelma’s mom had a similar rule, although it was tough to keep miners from arguing the merits of rival drill bits once they’d had a beer or two. “It’s a refueling station situated on an asteroid between the planets of Chinook and Boreas. That’s a long stretch of space. Miners, surveyors and trampships, as well as Customs and the Navy, all rely on it; not just for refueling and taking on supplies, but as neutral ground on which to stretch their space legs. Darlene Whittaker runs the station and the diner at the heart of it. Everyone is protective of the Deadstar Diner, and that’s the problem, now.”

  The viewscreen showed a star map with the station in question brightly marked. Then a route to it from Zephyr was added. Lon was educating Thelma without interrupting Max.

  She nodded fractionally when she’d taken in the information. The image changed to that of a diner, every bit as large as the cafeteria on the Lazy Days, but with a fashionable Atomic Age style. There were booths and a milk bar, a juke box in the corner and wait staff in cute black, white and banana-yellow uniforms. The clientele showed a wide variety.

  Humanity was the dominant sentient species in the Federation both in demographic terms and in terms of financial, political and military force. However, other species had staked out their own respected territories. Saurelles, for instance, had been spacefarers a millennium before humanity managed to escape its planet of origin. They had stories of aliens
who’d come before them, but such stories were only legends of specters. No one had reputable evidence of specters’ existence, not even ruins.

  “About a year ago, Wild Blaster Bill—” Max stopped as Thelma coughed.

  “His real name is William Singh,” Lon said. “He used to host a traveling entertainment group, but gambling and alcohol ruined his business. Now, he has a shabby runabout that he lives on. He hangs around the Deadstar Diner.”

  Max took back the conversation. “He used to hang around the diner. Rumor was that he and Darlene were involved.”

  The viewscreen went blank. Lon’s supplementary lessons had ended.

  Thelma wished she could take notes. This was exactly the sort of information she needed, and not simply for the purposes of her deputy work. Plus, it was as riveting as a soap opera.

  “Whether they were romantically linked or not, Darlene and Wild Blaster Bill fell out about a year ago. He moped around Tornado for a couple of months, but the weapons and mercenaries planet was likely too expensive for him. If he’d just left, that would have been fine. None of my business.” Max’s hard tone indicated he’d have preferred things that way. “Unfortunately, Bill decided he needed revenge on Darlene.”

  “Or he wanted her attention,” Lon interjected.

  Harry chuckled. “You’re a romantic, my friend.” He was obviously talking to Lon, not Max.

  Max scowled too fiercely to be a romantic. “Either way, Wild Blaster Bill started boasting of a star map he claimed to have found in an old exploration spaceship’s navigational log. According to Bill, the map showed the location of the legendary Eldorado Cache. It just so happened to be on the asteroid that houses the Deadstar Diner.”

  “Let me guess.” Thelma had grown up among miners. Miners who were prospectors were the craziest of the lot. Extrapolating from that data, it made sense that treasure hunters were even more obsessive. “A little thing like a vital refueling station and a much-loved stopover didn’t stop some treasure hunters from trying to dig into the asteroid, regardless of the trouble it caused the diner?”

  “The first treasure hunter cut into the asteroid with a plasma lance,” Max said grimly. “He was almost spaced. Darlene’s customers were not impressed. They fired on his ship, disabling it, and stranding him at the station till I arrived. Wild Blaster Bill issued a statement admitting that he’d faked the map and that there were no raphus geodes on the asteroid. Two more idiots have approached the station since, but were talked out of digging on the asteroid by convincingly menacing diner customers.”

  Max scrubbed a hand over his face. “Unfortunately, this time the treasure hunter went straight into blasting the asteroid. The diner shook. Crews who’d remained aboard spaceships docked at the refueling station opened fire. The treasure hunter and his crew of five had time to escape in a lifepod. They were scooped up.”

  “And we’re going to collect them?” Thelma asked. It didn’t sound like an emergency.

  “No, they can find their own way to Zephyr,” Max said. “They’ll be charged with destruction of private property, among other things, and summonsed to court. The reason why we’re racing out there.” Given that they had two weeks’ travel ahead of them, “racing” had different connotations on the frontier. The journey from Serene had only taken five weeks, but then, the starliner’s route had taken advantage of time-and-space-collapsing wormholes. “Is because Darlene has Wild Blaster Bill in protective custody.”

  This time Thelma was more cautious in her assumptions. “So, she’s mad at him as the cause of this trouble and we need to take him off her hands?”

  “She probably is mad at him,” Lon said.

  Max grimaced. “According to Owen, who fielded the call, Darlene is angry. But the reason we’re racing out there is because she is literally protecting Bill. He had the misfortune of being at the diner when the latest treasure hunter nearly destroyed it. The other customers unanimously agreed that he needs to suffer. There’s talk of a spacing party.” He glanced at Thelma. “Shoving Bill into space.”

  “In effect, murdering the old troublemaker,” Lon said.

  Harry wasn’t worried. “Darlene won’t stand for it, and no one wants to get on her bad side. She’d ban them from the diner.” He shifted in his recliner, his mech body mimicking the movements of a man relaxing at home. He looked at Thelma, his green eyes very bright. “Do you know the story of the Eldorado Cache?” Apparently, as far as Harry was concerned, the matter of their emergency had been discussed sufficiently.

  Thelma wondered if Max agreed. She could just glimpse the sheriff from the corner of her eyes as she concentrated on Harry. “I’ve heard of it.”

  “You should hear it from the beginning. It’s a good story in itself, and it’ll help you to understand the Saloon Sector.” The timbre of Harry’s voice was low and grumbly enough to be soothing, especially with how he drawled. He sounded like someone’s grandfather. “It begins when humans found the first raphus geode on Mars.”

  An image of a raphus geode appeared on the viewscreen. It spun slowly, light glinting in rainbows and other spectrums as it struck the transparent crystals.

  Thelma expected Max to leave. He had to know the legend of the Eldorado Cache.

  Instead, he kicked up the footrest on his recliner.

  After a couple of seconds she got it. Harry’s storytelling was about more than teaching the dudette. Sharing stories was how groups bonded. From their earliest days, humans had gathered to share knowledge and ways of understanding the world. Max being present for Harry’s story was about shaping a group in which they all belonged.

  “Humans and others were making what they considered artificial intelligences for a while before the discovery of raphus geodes. Their pride fooled them into thinking they’d created new, true sentients. Computers adhere to rules of cognitive reasoning and the moral principles that they’re programmed to respect, and people mistake that for conscious decision-making,” Harry said. “However, the saurelles’ psion meters never recorded consciousness levels for any of those early attempts at artificial intelligence.”

  Thelma knew the history of artificial intelligences in the Federation, but hearing it from a living AI was a special honor.

  The discovery of raphus geodes had changed everything.

  “Asimov Ndaw was the scientist who decided to use the raphus geode discovered on Mars in the artificial intelligence he was building. Aurora was the result, the first artificial intelligence to register on the psion meters as radiating consciousness as living sentients do. When two additional raphus geodes were discovered in adjacent solar systems, Asimov bullied and outright stole them to build additional artificial intelligences. Again, and unlike other computers without the raphus geodes at the heart of their infrastructure, the two new AIs registered as possessing consciousness.”

  “They had souls,” Thelma said involuntarily, remembering her elementary school teacher’s lessons. The woman had believed in souls. So did Thelma, although she considered her religious beliefs a private matter. She glanced at Harry, then up at the ceiling; instinctively searching for Lon, although he was everywhere on the Lonesome. “You have souls.”

  “There are one thousand two hundred and twelve of us who do,” Harry said. “We’re exceedingly rare. Most Federation citizens live out their lives without meeting one of us. We are limited by the number of raphus geodes discovered. Despite many attempts to recreate the geodes, the unique properties of their crystals have never been duplicated. And what is rare becomes expensive, hence the treasure hunters who pursue the quest for raphus geodes.”

  He tapped his fingertips together. His little, fidgety movements gave the illusion of humanity to his mech body. His voice issued from a synthesizer rather than being formed by lungs, voice box and tongue, but he moved his mouth in an exact mimicry of speech.

  His attempt to humanize himself contrasted with his decision to embody himself in a lethal mech form. If his personality was as amiable as his welcome, then
his chosen form’s ability to kill swiftly and efficiently had to serve a purpose. There were mysteries on the Lonesome.

  Thelma glanced away from the puzzle that was Harry, and found Max watching her. She held his gaze, noting how much less vivid the blue of his eyes was compared to Harry’s green crystal orbs, and yet, they were no less compelling. In fact, his stare was mesmerizing. It wasn’t till he looked away, glancing at the viewscreen, that she could take a deep breath.

  “When the first explorers ventured into the Saloon Sector they encountered the planet of Moonshine, with its oceans of ethanol. It prompted the naming of the sector.” Harry continued his story as if he hadn’t noticed her few seconds of inattention, but an AI wouldn’t be that unobservant.

  Thelma realized she’d have to adjust to that, to being surveilled. Lon had said he was everywhere on the Lonesome. She had to take his word for it that she was alone in her cabin.

  Lon tutted. “I still can’t believe they got the name ‘Saloon Sector’ past the Federation Expansion Committee.”

  “No one thought there’d be anything here,” Harry said. “And then, they discovered three raphus geodes. The rush was on.”

  “There were also other raw materials and habitable planets drawing people in,” Max interjected, adding a caveat to the idea of a mindless rush.

  An image of Mistral, the first colonized planet of the sector, appeared on the viewscreen. These days it had a thriving population and industrial base, including well-organized agricultural production. The people of Mistral were food-independent, even producing a surplus that they traded. Mistral was established, capable of matching the sophistication of any planetary settlement in the Rock Sector. The frontier had moved on, and now Zephyr was the center of it; as well as at the heart of Max’s interstellar sheriff territory.

  “As people poured into the Saloon Sector, chasing their fortunes, five more raphus geodes were found in a couple of decades. Discovery slowed after that, but a geode was discovered eleven years ago, and that’s enough to keep the legend of the Eldorado Cache alive.”