Veera was playing with Sam, something she did at least once a day, and Jepp was watching. Their cabins were too small for such activities ... so they had moved out into me long, sterile corridor. Well, mostly sterile, since the human’s quasi-religious graffiti added what he considered to be a much needed touch of color.
The game, which Jepp watched from the comfort of a chair that Henry had fashioned from metal tubing, was as old as man’s relationship with dogs. Veera, her iridescent underfeathers occasionally catching the light, would throw the crudely made ball down the passageway, and Sam, pleased to be the center of attention, would chase it. Not only chase it, but perform tricks while doing so, each calculated to outdo the last. Jepp watched the device scoot along the ceiling, drop from above, and swallow the ball. The robot’s reward for this activity, if “reward” was the right word, were trills of approval from Veera. Trills that Sam answered in kind and made Jepp jealous. He couldn’t “sing” her language, hadn’t even tried, and felt left out.
Still, some company was better than none, and he had vaguely paternal feelings toward the little alien. Though competent in many respects, and almost impossibly bright, she was vulnerable, too. Both her mother and father were dead, she was passing through a stage analogous to human adolescence, and was trapped aboard an alien ship.
Dealing with Veera, which also meant dealing with her moods, had altered Jepp’s life. When she felt good then he felt good—and when she felt bad then he felt bad. The back and forth of which nearly drove the human crazy but beat loneliness. Something he had experienced all to often over the last six months.
Sam did a series of cartwheels, disgorged the ball at Veera’s feet, and dashed away. The Prithian uttered a series of chirps, threw the sphere down corridor, and seemed to stiffen. Her crimson shoulder plumage rose slightly and stuck straight out. Though unable to converse with the alien without the assistance of a translator, Jepp understood some of her nonverbal communications. He sat up straight.
“Veera? What’s wrong?”
The Prithian cocked her head to one side. “The ship changed direction—and picked up speed.”
The human hadn’t felt a thing but believed her nonetheless. The teenager had mentioned such changes shortly after coming aboard, and Jepp, having doubts regarding the veracity of her claims, ordered Alpha to check them out. The results were amazing. The Prithian was right at least 95 percent of the time. Her senses were more acute than his. So, given the fact that the ship had maintained the same course and speed for the last week or so, why change now? He frowned. “Tap into the Hoon and find out why.”
What could have been phrased as a request was expressed as an order. Veera felt mixed emotions. Her father ordered the youngster around all the time. And, as someone who was older than she was, and presumably wiser, Jepp was entitled to the same level of respect due Prithian elders. Or was he? Veera’s father was dead, her companion was eccentric by human standards, and she was alone. It was tempting to say “no,” on principle. To take a stand and maintain some personal space. The problem was her own highly developed sense of curiosity. What was behind the change in course?
Where was the Hoon taking them? The teenager wanted to know.
Veera trilled an order, Sam cartwheeled in her direction, and followed the Prithian down the corridor. Data ports were located at regular intervals along the bulkheads. The Hoon’s mechanical minions used them whenever they had a need to access certain types of information. The Thraki device scuttled up the wall, created the necessary adapter, and plugged itself into the ship’s electronic nervous system.
The way in which Veera communicated with machines was different from the manner in which Jepp accomplished the same thing. Her songs were comprised of individual notes, each one of which could easily be translated into binary code, and manipulated by any device having the intelligence to do so. The resulting transfer was that much more efficient. Just the son of thing that the average machine is likely to appreciate.
More than that was the fact that most soft bodies required a machine interface to communicate with other machines, which marked them as clearly inferior. Al! except for Veera, that is, who, from a machine point of view spoke something very close to unadulterated code. An accomplishment that marked her as superior to the biped with whom she chose to associate herself. That’s why the Hoon had a tendency to indulge her A tiny, nearly insignificant part of the AI’s consciousness listened as the interrogatory arrived. “The ship [I am on] changed course. Why?”
The computer intelligence spent a fraction of a fraction of a second considering the question and formulating a response. “Thraki have been detected. The fleet must respond.”
Jepp had arrived by then, and Veera relayed what she had learned. The human felt a variety of emotions: a sense of excitement born of boredom, feelings of guilt that stemmed from his last encounter with the Thraki, and a sort of spiritual lust. Because if there was anything the human hungered after it was live, honest to goodness converts.
Yes, it was true that the last group of Thraki had gone so far as to deny the existence of a single all-powerful, all- knowing god, and having done so, had paid with their lives, but they were outcasts, and these Thraki might be more amenable to reason. It was worth a try. “Tell the Hoon that I wish to speak with the Thraki in the hope that we might convert them to the cause.”
Though relatively young, Veera was possessed of an excellent mind and knew the human wanted to convert the Thraki to his cause, rather than the Hoon’s. But she was also smart enough to know that escape, if such a thing were possible, was more likely to result from her relationship with Jepp than from any connection to the Hoon. She decided to comply.
The request stuttered through the ship’s fiber optic nervous system and made the jump to Vessel 179621 where the Hoon was currently in residence. Not just any residence but the one time electromechanical home of the ill-
