I glanced at her, watching to see her reaction to the announcement. Was she blushing? What a strange thought to imagine Aguella becoming a dam. Disturbing somehow. She looked nothing at all like my dam. Far younger, for one thing. Prettier.
Aguella had a seriousness that Inidar and Wormer and I lacked. She had more than the game going on in her life. She was very into passive sensor theory. In fact, one of her designs had been incorporated (in modified form) into the sensor array of the EmCee.
“Finally,” the Speaker said portentously.
“Here it comes,” Wormer muttered.
“I will announce the names of the nonessential crew chosen for the upcoming trip of the Mapping Crystal Quadrant Three. The names will be announced by level. From Pink Level: Pink Level, Seventy Spar, Yard One, Down-Messenger, Nine. Pink Level …”
“We could run a game before he gets to any of us,” Inidar grumbled.
The moment of high drama was rather undercut by the realization that we had a long wait ahead of us. And yet, we did not budge. There was some desultory conversation, but with always an ear cocked.
And then, “Violet Level, Two Spar, Main Branch, Left-Messenger, One hundred twenty-nine.”
Aguella gasped. For a long moment I had no idea why.
“Is that you?” I asked stupidly. I’m sure I’d known her formal name at some point but I’d long since forgotten it.
She nodded. She started to speak, then just nodded some more. She looked troubled more than elated. Almost worried.
I had no more time to be concerned with her strange reaction to good news. The Speaker had at long last reached Azure Level. Wormer sagged. Violet Level was done, and his name had not been called.
There were just seven names from Azure Level. My name was the fifth name spoken.
For a frozen moment of time my brain stopped synapsing. I stopped breathing. My wings faltered and I did a droop. “Did he say my name?” I whispered. “Forty-one, right? Not Thirty-one?”
Wormer did his best to be nice about it. He tried to breeze it. Maybe Inidar did his best, too, but his best wasn’t great. He looked like a crasher, and I knew that anything I said to try and take away the hurt would just hurt him worse. Pity is never very comforting to the pitied.
But at some level their reactions were already irrelevant. I knew it, and so did they, sadly.
The four of us were now two and two. Wormer and Inidar would stay behind. Aguella and I would go.
I returned to my dock, barely making it in time. I clamped on and yelled up to Lackofa.
“Hey! Hey! Lackofa!”
He opened his eyes and favored me with his usual disapproving scowl. “What now?”
“I made it. I’m nonessential!”
“As nonessential as it is possible to be,” he said dryly.
“Very funny, Lackofa, but you don’t even have a faint chance of annoying me. Not today. I’m on the EmCee! We’ll be crew together. I’m going!”
“Oh that. Yes, I know.”
“How do you know? It can’t be on the uninet yet. There’s a mandated quarter-hour lag time for official announcements.”
The uninet was a relatively recent development, barely a hundred years old, and no one wanted to obsolete the Speakers and their traditions.
Lackofa closed his eyes. I accessed the uninet. No, the announcement wasn’t on yet. Wait, here it was, just coming up. I punched in and read my own name, my lovely, lovely name. I highlighted it in crimson letters and read it again.
A very fine name that looked very, very fine placed neatly near the bottom of the list. The sight of it filled me with profound satisfaction.
Then, I realized. “Hey, Lackofa. How did you know, if it’s just now coming on the net?”
No answer.
“You did it,” I accused. “You sponsored me!”
“Why would I do that?” he growled.
“Why would you do that?” I echoed with a different emphasis. “You don’t even like me. I’m a gamer. A losing gamer. I’m a hundred and seventy-ninth in the rankings, out of nine hundred and nine registered gamers in my set. Why me?”
Lackofa didn’t answer at first, but I guess he realized I wasn’t going to let him off the hook. He sighed again, grumbled inaudibly to himself for a moment, then, sounding like a person who is being forced to confess to a crime, said, “I have developed a morbid curiosity about your failures, Toomin. I’m a biologist so I have access to your DNA map. You are in fact one hundred and ninety-fourth in the rankings — your loss earlier has bumped you fifteen slots.”
“Ouch.”
“But in terms of pure analytical intelligence you are very near the peak.”
“I am?”
“Yes, and don’t play coy with me. You know you’re smarter than gamers who beat you regularly. You lose games you should win, not deliberately, but stubbornly. You’re playing the game at a different level. Not trying to win, trying to win with kindness. Altruism.”
I was embarrassed. Amazed that Lackofa had been paying attention to me at a level that I never suspected.
“Anyway,” Lackofa said. “We have any number of brilliant scientists, brilliant analysts, brilliant communicators, brilliant theoreticians, brilliant physicists, brilliant techs, and brilliant astronomers on board the MCQ3. I asked myself what we didn’t have, and the answer came to me: We had no brilliant losers. So, yes, I sponsored you. Now please shut up, I have work to do.”
He closed his eyes and shut me out, this time for real.
Brilliant loser? Was it possible to be simultaneously flattered and insulted?
Evidently.
A memm popped up, an invitation to a game from a gamer named Dryhad. I refused. This was not the time for a game. I had deep thoughts to think; plans to make; arrangements to arrange.
Didn’t I? Yes, absolutely. It was definitely not time for a game. First and foremost, I had to learn everything there was to learn about MCQ3, about Zero-space engines, about Quadrant Three and its major star systems.
I accessed the data on MCQ3. The
