correct—the Patrol would almost certainly be monitoring the call. “Answer the question!” he barked.
“Sir, you followed your customary pattern, in that you also entertain habitual romantic ideals of a Hero’s Lady. If a girl refuses your sexual advances, you classify her as a prude. If she submits, then you assume she is a whore.”
Vaun bit back an angry retort that would have made no sense when addressed to a machine. Punching it on the nose wouldn’t help, either. He reminded himself that the standard psychiatric programs were designed for the standard human mind; he was a long way from being a standard human, so the machine’s confusion was understandable.
“You are computing from faulty premises,” he snapped. “My duties require me to be assisted by a resident hostess with class and social know-how. My physical needs…” He fell silent. How could he possibly explain to a machine that some girls were more satisfying than others? “I was disconcerted to discover she was a wage earner…”
He didn’t want to think that Citizen Feirn might be no more than a commoner lucky enough to have been picked up by that gawky spacer ensign and taken to a rich-folks party.
So she had dreams of being hostess at Valhal? She certainly looked the part. Perhaps she was not a bourgeois gold digger, but a bored little rich girl playing at holding down a job…
He wiped a strangely damp forehead.
A boy could hope, surely? A hostess and bed partner both, the ideal mate, able to flatter a duchess or tackle in mudball with the same finesse, pick out a fake in a set of Jing porcelain or spear a strealer with equally unerring eye, organize a fifty-plate banquet, or spend an evening before the fire reading poetry…inflame a boy right out of his skin all night long in bed and next day charm a bishop into blushes. And she would have to come equipped with red hair and freckles and generous breasts…
Maeve, of course.
Last night she had asked him, What are you searching for?
Old times, Maeve.
He wished he’d thought of that response at the time. Valhal parties had been more fun in the old days. When it had all been so new. When he had believed her lying protestations of love.
He discovered that he was scowling back at the contemptuous sneer of the Jeevs sim.
“Anything more, Admiral?”
“Cancel any visitors due within the next three days.” There was something else, surely? Oh, yes. Tham.
“One other thing. Patch through a call now to whichever Patrol base is closest to Forhil and copy for my records. I have a report to file.”
T HE PATROL WOULD certainly send in its own people before it informed the civil authorities. Oppressed by the dead, silent house, Vaun wandered out into the sunlight and stood on the terrace, drawing deep breaths of the dewy morning. Amazingly, the sun was still not very high above the hills. He had most of the day before him yet.
He was hungry, he remembered. He set off in the direction of the orchard, a little annoyed by his evident reluctance to return indoors, and amused by his reluctance to admit that first reluctance to himself. There was nothing in the galaxy more complex than a human brain, someone had told him once.
He was going to miss Tham, a twenty-four carat guy. He would not waste precious living time in mourning him, though. That would not bring him back. And certainly Vaun need feel no guilt over the manner of Tham’s death, for what he had done was a kindness.
No guilt. The brethren regarded guilt as a sign of failure, and remorse as a weakness. They were ever practical, never maudlin. But their friendship knew no limits.
Forhil boasted a famous collection of fruit trees, and many were still laden. Apples he recognized, and ospers, but most of the others were a mystery to him—delicious products collected or invented on a dozen worlds as humankind progressed outward from ancestral Earth to Ult. Most of them would have long since traveled outward in symbiosis
“Sir, you followed your customary pattern, in that you also entertain habitual romantic ideals of a Hero’s Lady. If a girl refuses your sexual advances, you classify her as a prude. If she submits, then you assume she is a whore.”
Vaun bit back an angry retort that would have made no sense when addressed to a machine. Punching it on the nose wouldn’t help, either. He reminded himself that the standard psychiatric programs were designed for the standard human mind; he was a long way from being a standard human, so the machine’s confusion was understandable.
“You are computing from faulty premises,” he snapped. “My duties require me to be assisted by a resident hostess with class and social know-how. My physical needs…” He fell silent. How could he possibly explain to a machine that some girls were more satisfying than others? “I was disconcerted to discover she was a wage earner…”
He didn’t want to think that Citizen Feirn might be no more than a commoner lucky enough to have been picked up by that gawky spacer ensign and taken to a rich-folks party.
So she had dreams of being hostess at Valhal? She certainly looked the part. Perhaps she was not a bourgeois gold digger, but a bored little rich girl playing at holding down a job…
He wiped a strangely damp forehead.
A boy could hope, surely? A hostess and bed partner both, the ideal mate, able to flatter a duchess or tackle in mudball with the same finesse, pick out a fake in a set of Jing porcelain or spear a strealer with equally unerring eye, organize a fifty-plate banquet, or spend an evening before the fire reading poetry…inflame a boy right out of his skin all night long in bed and next day charm a bishop into blushes. And she would have to come equipped with red hair and freckles and generous breasts…
Maeve, of course.
Last night she had asked him, What are you searching for?
Old times, Maeve.
He wished he’d thought of that response at the time. Valhal parties had been more fun in the old days. When it had all been so new. When he had believed her lying protestations of love.
He discovered that he was scowling back at the contemptuous sneer of the Jeevs sim.
“Anything more, Admiral?”
“Cancel any visitors due within the next three days.” There was something else, surely? Oh, yes. Tham.
“One other thing. Patch through a call now to whichever Patrol base is closest to Forhil and copy for my records. I have a report to file.”
T HE PATROL WOULD certainly send in its own people before it informed the civil authorities. Oppressed by the dead, silent house, Vaun wandered out into the sunlight and stood on the terrace, drawing deep breaths of the dewy morning. Amazingly, the sun was still not very high above the hills. He had most of the day before him yet.
He was hungry, he remembered. He set off in the direction of the orchard, a little annoyed by his evident reluctance to return indoors, and amused by his reluctance to admit that first reluctance to himself. There was nothing in the galaxy more complex than a human brain, someone had told him once.
He was going to miss Tham, a twenty-four carat guy. He would not waste precious living time in mourning him, though. That would not bring him back. And certainly Vaun need feel no guilt over the manner of Tham’s death, for what he had done was a kindness.
No guilt. The brethren regarded guilt as a sign of failure, and remorse as a weakness. They were ever practical, never maudlin. But their friendship knew no limits.
Forhil boasted a famous collection of fruit trees, and many were still laden. Apples he recognized, and ospers, but most of the others were a mystery to him—delicious products collected or invented on a dozen worlds as humankind progressed outward from ancestral Earth to Ult. Most of them would have long since traveled outward in symbiosis
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