anything.
It’s entirely likely that she’d still be staring at the credenza screen by the time the sun climbed up out of the sea again, were it not for the fact that she has someone to look after her.
The door to the botany cabin opens and an extraordinary thing enters, a skeletal creature of gleaming steel, moving scorpionlike on a number of legs. Its skull face and glowing eyes could frighten an unprepared observer into coronary arrest, but Mendoza is oblivious to its approach.
The steel thing stops beside her and proffers the dinner tray it carries. She glances up briefly.
“Thank you, Flint,” she says. She becomes fascinated by something on the screen and her hands, which had begun to rise to accept the tray, halt. She remains frozen like that as the minutes pass by. The thing she has addressed as Flint waits patiently.
But the cameras mounted in the upper corners of the room swivel and focus on her, and a moment later the image of a man materializes beside Flint.
Mendoza doesn’t notice him either, though he too is extraordinary. Large,powerfully built, attired in a three-piece suit. His wild hair and wild beard are black. He wears a gold earring and looks capable of frightening the Devil himself, though his voice is only mildly reproachful as he says, in a gravelly baritone: “Now then, Mrs. Checkerfield, you stop that and eat yer dinner afore it gets cold.”
“Oh.” Mendoza looks up from the screen, startled, and notices the tray again. “I beg your pardon, Sir Henry.” The fire in her hair dims, dies down a little.
As she takes the tray and lifts the cover from the dish, he saves her work and shuts down the credenza. She notices that no more than she’d noticed the sunset. She turns her whole attention to her meal. Only once or twice does she stall, blank-eyed suddenly, fork halfway to her mouth; and both times the Captain reminds her, and she starts and obediently resumes her meal.
She is not, in fact, a person of diminished capacity. Her problem is exactly the opposite: she is a cyborg, a botanist Preserver drone, formerly the property of Dr. Zeus Incorporated. Mendoza was the inadvertent recipient of a massive transfer of data that overloaded even her fantastically augmented brain.
The Captain has been able to restore function, but only very slowly has he been able to guide her toward any data integration. In the meanwhile her only defense, emotionally and mentally, is a concentration on particular details so intense it resembles autism.
The blue fire is a different matter. It’s called Crome’s radiation. It’s generally only produced by mortals who have been diagnosed as
psychic
, and it’s generally invisible. Cyborgs aren’t supposed to be able to generate Crome’s radiation, visible or otherwise. That Mendoza does, however, is the least of her problems right now.
When she finishes at last, Flint collects the tray and scuttles away to the galley. She turns back to the credenza, but the Captain (Captain Sir Henry Morgan, to use his full name, only indirectly any relation to the legendary pirate) steps close and holds her attention with his sea-colored gaze.
“No, dearie. Exercises come next, remember? And then it’ll be time to go see our Alec.”
He pauses slightly before he pronounces the name, though she misses it.
“Alec!” Mendoza’s face brightens wonderfully. And literally; the cold fire leaps up, dancing. “Okay.”
He leads her away, up through the decks of the vast ship to its infirmary.
It should perhaps be further explained here that Captain Morgan is neither a ghost nor a man. He is an Artificial Intelligence, housed for the most partwithin the ship that bears his name. He is arguably the most powerful AI in existence, which is remarkable, considering that he started out life as a Pembroke Playfriend designed to monitor and amuse children aged four to eleven. He has long since ditched the cocked hat and scarlet coat his little master originally conferred on
It’s entirely likely that she’d still be staring at the credenza screen by the time the sun climbed up out of the sea again, were it not for the fact that she has someone to look after her.
The door to the botany cabin opens and an extraordinary thing enters, a skeletal creature of gleaming steel, moving scorpionlike on a number of legs. Its skull face and glowing eyes could frighten an unprepared observer into coronary arrest, but Mendoza is oblivious to its approach.
The steel thing stops beside her and proffers the dinner tray it carries. She glances up briefly.
“Thank you, Flint,” she says. She becomes fascinated by something on the screen and her hands, which had begun to rise to accept the tray, halt. She remains frozen like that as the minutes pass by. The thing she has addressed as Flint waits patiently.
But the cameras mounted in the upper corners of the room swivel and focus on her, and a moment later the image of a man materializes beside Flint.
Mendoza doesn’t notice him either, though he too is extraordinary. Large,powerfully built, attired in a three-piece suit. His wild hair and wild beard are black. He wears a gold earring and looks capable of frightening the Devil himself, though his voice is only mildly reproachful as he says, in a gravelly baritone: “Now then, Mrs. Checkerfield, you stop that and eat yer dinner afore it gets cold.”
“Oh.” Mendoza looks up from the screen, startled, and notices the tray again. “I beg your pardon, Sir Henry.” The fire in her hair dims, dies down a little.
As she takes the tray and lifts the cover from the dish, he saves her work and shuts down the credenza. She notices that no more than she’d noticed the sunset. She turns her whole attention to her meal. Only once or twice does she stall, blank-eyed suddenly, fork halfway to her mouth; and both times the Captain reminds her, and she starts and obediently resumes her meal.
She is not, in fact, a person of diminished capacity. Her problem is exactly the opposite: she is a cyborg, a botanist Preserver drone, formerly the property of Dr. Zeus Incorporated. Mendoza was the inadvertent recipient of a massive transfer of data that overloaded even her fantastically augmented brain.
The Captain has been able to restore function, but only very slowly has he been able to guide her toward any data integration. In the meanwhile her only defense, emotionally and mentally, is a concentration on particular details so intense it resembles autism.
The blue fire is a different matter. It’s called Crome’s radiation. It’s generally only produced by mortals who have been diagnosed as
psychic
, and it’s generally invisible. Cyborgs aren’t supposed to be able to generate Crome’s radiation, visible or otherwise. That Mendoza does, however, is the least of her problems right now.
When she finishes at last, Flint collects the tray and scuttles away to the galley. She turns back to the credenza, but the Captain (Captain Sir Henry Morgan, to use his full name, only indirectly any relation to the legendary pirate) steps close and holds her attention with his sea-colored gaze.
“No, dearie. Exercises come next, remember? And then it’ll be time to go see our Alec.”
He pauses slightly before he pronounces the name, though she misses it.
“Alec!” Mendoza’s face brightens wonderfully. And literally; the cold fire leaps up, dancing. “Okay.”
He leads her away, up through the decks of the vast ship to its infirmary.
It should perhaps be further explained here that Captain Morgan is neither a ghost nor a man. He is an Artificial Intelligence, housed for the most partwithin the ship that bears his name. He is arguably the most powerful AI in existence, which is remarkable, considering that he started out life as a Pembroke Playfriend designed to monitor and amuse children aged four to eleven. He has long since ditched the cocked hat and scarlet coat his little master originally conferred on
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