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The third annual progress meeting of the Nyota
Five was held on Angalia, an arrangement which pleased no one # least of all
the host
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"It was your idea to rotate the annual meetings,"
Alpha bint Hezra-Fong pointed out, somewhat snap-
pishly, when Blaize apologized for the primitive accommodations. "We could
have been comfortably settled in a Summerlands conference room, but nooo, you
and Polyon had to fuss that it wouldn't be fair if you two had to travel to
Bahati every time just to suit the three of us who had the good luck to be
stationed there. So we have to rotate. Two nice meetings on
Bahati, now this godforsaken dump, and next time, stars help us, Shemali. You
and your bright ideas!
Send someone to unpack for me # you must have some help around the place,
surely?"
" 'Fraid not," Blaize said with a sunny smile. He was beginning to enjoy the
prospect of Alpha's discomfort on Angalia. Rotating the meeting sites had
really been
Polyon's idea, not his, but Alpha was obviously afraid to take out her bad
temper on Lieutenant de Gras-
Waldheim. Blaize glanced sidelong at Polyon, very straight and correct in his
Academy dress blacks, and admitted to himself that he didn't blame Alpha.
Given a choice of tongue-lashing the enigmatic technical manager of Shemali
MetaPlant, or the little red-haired runt from PTA, who wouldn't choose to lash
out at the
PTAwimp?
But this understanding didn't make him love Alpha
# or the rest of the Nyota Five, including himself#
any better.
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"Welcome," Blaize said with a sweeping bow that in-
cluded all four of his guests, "to the Angalia Tourist
Center. A modest facility, as you can see # "
Darnell's snort of laughter testified to the truth of that statement
" # but vastly improved from its humble begin-
nings," Blaize finished. "If the winner were to be chosen on the basis of
progress rather than of absolute wealth, I'd have no doubt of succeeding next
year."
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Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball
And that, by God, was the absolute and unvarnished truth! The rest of them
might sneer at Blaize's long, low bungalow with its thatched roof and thatch-
shaded balcony, the garden of native ferns and grasses and the paved path
leading from there to the corycium mine. Never mind. He knew what it had taken
to create these amenities from the mud-hole that
Supervisor Harmon had left him with.
"All done with native labor?" Fassa interrupted his explanation. "But
everybody knows the Loosies are too stupid to do anything useful."
Blaize put one finger to the side of his nose and winked, a gesture borrowed
from an old tri-D show called Fagm and His Gang. "Amazing what even a veg-
head can do with the proper... incentive," he drawled.
"Where d'you store the whips and spiked sticks?"
That was pudgy Darnell, bright-eyed as if he actually expected Blaize to
produce a panoply of torture in-
struments and demonstrate their use.
"You've no subtlety, Overton-Glaxely," Blaize reproved the man. "Think. The #
er # Loosies were starving when I came here, kept alive only by PTA ra-
tion bricks. The task of distributing the ration bricks, naturally, belonged
to the PTA representative on An-
galia. Me."
"So?" Darnell really was amazingly slow. Not for the first time, Blaize
wondered how he'd made such a suc-
cess out of OG Shipping and the smaller corporations that OG Enterprises had
swallowed up over die years.
"So, Blaize drawled, "I saw no reason togrw away
PTA ration supplements when they could perfectly well be used to train the
natives. We have a simple rule of life now on Angalia, my friends # no work,
no eat"
He pointed towards the entrance to the corycium
mine. "And it's not just applied to building the master's bungalow. I hold the
title to that mine. United
Spacetec abandoned it because they couldn't keep
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human miners on Angalia. / use the native resources to mine the native
resources, so to speak # you'll see the day shift coming out in a few
minutes."
"And you pay them with ration bricks, which come free via PTA?" Alpha gave
Blaize an approving smile that chilled him to the bone. "I must admit, Blaize,
you're not as stupid as you look. Anything you make from the corycium mine is
profit, free and dear."
Blaize opened his mouth wide in simulated shock.
"Dr. Hezra-Fong! Please! I am deeply shocked and dis-
illusioned that you should think such a thing of me.
Any profits accruing from the corycium mine natural-
ly belong to the natives of Angalia." He waited a beat before continuing. "Of
course, since the natives of An-
galia do not have Intelligent Sentient Status, they can't have bank accounts #
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so the credits do, perforce, go into a Net account in my name. But held in
trust for the Loosies# you understand?"
The others chuckled knowingly and all agreed that they did indeed understand,
and that Blaize was a clever lad to have found such a good way of covering his
tail in the event of a PTA inspection. All but Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, who
was tapping one finger against the seam of his black trousers and staring at
the thunderclouds on the horizon.
"You've done pretty well, considering," Darnell ad-
mitted, "but with creatures as dumb as these, surely you have # er #
discipline problems?" He was get-
ting that whips-and-chains expression again.
"If he does, maybe regulated doses of Seductron would be the answer," cooed
Alpha. "I've just about got the bugs worked out of the dosage schedule now,
and it might be interesting to test it on non-humans."
Blaize forced himself to smile. Time for his demonstration. He'd planned it
beforehand, in case there was need to make an additional impression on the
others, but had hoped it wouldn't be necessary.
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Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
Messy, it would be. And wasteful. But apparently they still weren't convinced
of his firm control over the
Loosies.
"Thanks, Alpha, but Seductron wouldn't quite do the trick; the Loosies are
passive and malleable enough already. What they need is occasional stimula-
tion, and that," he said with a low laugh, "that I can arrange for myself." He
raised one hand in the air and brought it down with a swift chopping motion.
Two of the tall rock pillars beside the garden wall moved forward in the
shambling, awkward gait char-
acteristic of the Loosies. With movement, their features and humanoid shapes
could be clearly seen, although until a moment earlier they had blended in
with the real stones making up the rest of the wall. Be-
tween them they hauled a third "rock," a native whose double-jointed legs
sagged under him and whose flap-
ping liplike folds of skin opened and closed with a mimed display of silent
terror.
"They may not talk," said Blaize, "but they've learned to understand simple
sign commands quite well. Most of them have, anyway. This fellow in the middle
dropped a serving dish when he was waiting on me at dinner yesterday. I've
been saving him to make an example of in front of the miners, but since
there's an audience here already" # he allowed his eyes to roam lazily over
his four co-conspirators #
"why wait any longer for the pleasure?"
He pointed over the side of the mesa with a deliberate downward motion, three
times repeated.
The two Loosie guards bobbed their square heads and half carried, half dragged
their prisoner over the edge. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]