Now there is someone with odd fascinations!' Behind the banter, Tia sensed a kind of affection, even though the tips of his ears went lightly red. 'I started reading history because I was curious about my name, and got fascinated by Alexander's time period. One thing led to another, and the next thing I knew, every present I was getting was either a historical holotape or a bookdisk about history, and I was actually quite happy about the situation.'
So he did know the origin of her name. 'Then why military strategy?'
'Because all challenging games are games of strategy,' he said. 'I, ah, have a friend who's really a big games buff, my best friend when I was growing up, and I had to have some kind of edge on him. So I started studying strategy. That got me into The Art of War and that got me into Zen which got me into martial arts.' He shrugged. 'There you have it. One neat package. I think you'd really like Tai Chi, it's all about stress and energy flow and patterns, and it's a lot like Singularity mechanics and, '
'I'm sure,' she interrupted, hauling him verbally back by the scruff of his neck. 'But why didn't you opt for Military Service?'
'The same reason I studied martial arts. I don't like being helpless, but I don't want to hurt anyone,' he replied, looking oddly distressed. 'Both Tai Chi and Karate are about never using a bit more force than you need to, but Tai Chi is the essence of using greater force against itself, just like in The Art of War, and,'
Once again she had to haul him back to the question. He tended to go off on verbal tangents, she noticed. She continued to ask him questions, long after the time she had finished with the other brawns, and when she finally let him go, it was with a sense of dissatisfaction. He was the best choice so far, but although he was plainly both sensitive and intelligent, he showed no signs at all of any interest in her field. In fact, she had seen and heard nothing that would make her think he would be ready to help her in any way with her private quest.
As the sky darkened over the landing field, and the spaceport lights came on, glaring down on her smooth metal skin, she pondered all of her choices and couldn't come up with a clear winner. Alex was the best, but the rest were, for the most part, completely unsuitable. He was obviously absentminded, and his care for his person left a little to be desired. He wasn't exactly slovenly, but he did not wear his uniform with the air of distinction that Tia felt was required. In fact, on him it didn't look much like a uniform at all, more like a suit of comfortable, casual clothes. For the life of her, she couldn't imagine how he managed that.
His tendency to wander down conversational byways could be amusing in a social situation, but she could see where it could also be annoying to, oh, a Vegan, or someone like them. No telling what kind of trouble that could lead to, if they had to deal with AIs, who could be very literal-minded.
No, he wasn't perfect. In fact, he wasn't even close.
'XH One-Oh-Three-Three, you have an incoming transmission,' CenCom broke in, disturbing her thoughts. 'Hold onto your bustle, lady, it's the Wicked Witch of the West, and I think someone just dropped a house on her sister.'
Whatever allusions the CenCom operator was making were lost on Tia, but the sharply impatient tone of her supervisor was not. 'XH One-Oh-Three-Three, have you selected a brawn yet?' the woman asked, her voice making it sound as if Tia had been taking weeks to settle on a partner, rather than less than a day.
'Not yet, Supervisor,' she replied, cautiously. 'So far, to be honest, I don't think I've found anyone I can tolerate for truly long stretches of time.'
That wasn't exactly the problem, but Beta Gerold y Caspian wouldn't understand the real problem. She might just as well be Vegan. She made very few allowances for the human vagaries of brawns and none at all for shell- persons.
'Hypatia, you're wasting time,' Beta said crisply. 'You're sitting here on the pad, doing nothing, taking up a launch-cradle, when you could already be out on courier-supply runs.'
'I'm doing my best,' Tia responded sharply. 'But neither you nor I will be particularly happy if I toss my brawn out after the first run!'
'You've rejected six brawns that all our analysis showed were good matches for your personality,' Beta countered. 'All you'd have to do is compromise a little.'
Six of those were matches for me? she thought, aghast. Which ones? The tofu-personalities? The Valkyrie warrior? Spirits of space help me, Garrison? I thought I was nicer and more interesting than that!
But Beta was continuing, her voice taking on the tones of a cross between a policeman and a professorial lecturer. 'You know very well that it takes far too long between visits for these Class One digs. It leaves small parties alone for weeks and months at a time. Even when there's an emergency, our ships are so few and so scattered that it takes them days to reach people in trouble, and sometimes an hour can make all the difference, let alone a day! We needed you out there the moment you were commissioned!'
Tia winced inwardly. She'd have suspected that Beta went straight for the sore spot deliberately, except that she knew that Beta did not have access to her records. So she didn't know Tia's background. The agency that oversaw the rights of shell-persons saw to that, to make it difficult for supervisors to use personal knowledge to manipulate the shell-persons under their control. In the old days, when supervisors had known everything about their shell-persons, they had sometimes deliberately created emotional dependencies in order to assure 'loyalty' and fanatic service. It was far, far too easy to manipulate someone whose only contact to the real world was through sensors that could be disconnected.
