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"Me? Wha ?"
"That show they did when you first installed this station," Spud said "They reran it Your hair wasn&039;t as gray two years ago I wish that Beatriz Tatoosh would look at me the way she looked at you"
"Stow it!" MacIntosh said
Soleus&039;s shoulders sagged slightly, but he kept at his keyboard in silence
"Sorry," MacIntosh said
"Inappropriate," Spud replied
"Want me to take it now?"
"I wish so to our kelp?"
"It&039;s not our kelp," MacIntosh re it in chains It&039;s doing what any enslaved being with dignity does - it&039;s fighting the chains"
"But Flattery&039;s men will just prune it back, or worse yet they&039;ll stump the whole stand"
"Not forever There is a basic problem with slavery The master is enslaved by the slave"
"C&039;hed
"It&039;s true," he said "Look at history, that&039;s easy enough And Flattery, of all people, should know better We clones were the slaves of our age First-generation clones had it real tough They were grown as organ farms for the donors They needed us, but they needed us to do ere told Now he&039;s enslaved the kelp, stunted its reason, because he needs it to do what it&039;s told He can&039;t keep cutting it back, because he can&039;t afford the regrowth time"
"So, what&039;ll happen?"
"A shon," MacIntosh said "And if Flattery&039;s still groundside when it comes he&039;d better hope that the kelp needs hiive you two bits for his chances"
"Two bits of what?"
MacIntosh laughed again, a big bark of a laugh to uess how old that expression is," he said "When I was at Moonbase, two bits was a quarter, which was a quarter of a dollar, which was the currency we used But it started way before that"
"We&039;d say, &039;I wouldn&039;t give a dasher turd for his chances&039;"
"That&039;s probably a better assess on their ?"
"The Director," Spud said, and swiveled his chair fro about the kelp in sector eight, as though eren&039;t trying"
"Do somethin hah! If we push any harder we&039;ll fry our board, and that kelp, and anybody inside it"
"I wonder what it is that the kelp wants?"
"What if we gave it its head?" MacIntosh mused "That would be one way to find out What could it do that it hasn&039;t already done?"
Spud shrugged, and said, "You&039;ve got lance at the display showed the entire stand of kelp to be twisting itself into a vortex, like the whirlpool in a drain As near as MacIntosh could tell, Current Control was at its maximum limit of restraint
Spud pointed at the display
"There&039;s a focus of electrical override here Whatever&039;s bugging the kelp is right there"
"Electrical or mechanical?"
"Could be either, or both - it&039;s a heavy traffic area," Spud said "So the kelp"
"Yes," MacIntosh agreed, "that&039;sfro That stand&039;s not h to think for itself Or, at least, it shouldn&039;t be"
"Doc?"
"Yeah?"
MacIntosh watched the console review the kelp&039;s configuration changes over the past half-hour So that would explain the kelp&039;s sudde behavior
"I&039;ve extrapolated the path of the override"
MacIntosh looked at Spud, as busy at his own console, and saw a very thin, very pale assistant Spud&039;s pointing finger trembled with excitement
"What is it?"
"It&039;s a spiral, headed into the ht"
"That hbor - isn&039;t that what it looks like to you?"
"Or the neighbor is snatching it away"
"Spud, I&039;ll bet you&039;re right"
MacIntosh stepped up to the console and tapped out a sequence with his two huge index fingers The red lights on the er panel went black
"We just had a relay malfunction," MacIntosh said, and winked at Spud "Next time Flattery calls, tell him it was a hardwire failure and you worked it out personally Maybe you&039;ll get a prorabs Noe o the reins on this kelp and see where the hell it runs"
MacIntosh heard Spud s behind hi deal, Spud? It&039;s a plant, it&039;s not going anywhere"
"Wel well, it&039;s just that Flattery doesn&039;t trust anybody - it&039;d be like him to have some kind of booby-tra"
"He did," MacIntosh said, "and this stand got itself blown apart a few years back But he hasn&039;t reset charges here yet - the kelp&039;s not supposed to get this frisky this soon" He waited for the burst line to charge
"There!" he said, and pressed the send signal "Now let&039;s sit back and see what cooks So bizarre is inside there, and I&039;d like to be the first to knohat it is If we can&039;t do anything with this stand, ain, "Flattery&039;s down there, we&039;re not"
A beeping signal from his console interrupted hi our bird your way in five ative," MacIntosh replied "Currents at your site are stable, weather will arrive your location in approxier that, Current Control Launch is a go fo four minutes"
Canon in D
- Pachelbel
The Immensity recoiled with a snap from the shock of freedo bliss It had been a long tiood, and never had it felt this good The sub its vines were inconsequential now
A pulse went out ahout the Immensity from the tiny foil adrift at its outer reaches A hted in the scent of self that it gave from its brittle skin
The little craft was slippery and the Iently tuled with that of the One One of these scents was familiar, provocative, kelplike The Holomaster, Rico LaPush, was in the company of someone that the kelp had encountered befor befor well, no h
The Ie of humans from their spectru this time, that it would have to speak with humans to live It also concluded that it would have to speak the holo language if it wanted to speak with hule out of the kelp&039;s net There was h the vines, where all of the trains trapped in sector eight were trying to burn, cut, slash their way toward their precious atmosphere topside Some of these the kelp crushed reflexively, but when the death scents of the crews led with the sea it forced itself to calm and to reason
Death, it reminded itself, is not the answer to life
The Ied to open several kelpways andtopside Only the bright white Holovision foil suffered the grip of the I to flee, but never lashed out at its tormentor This the Immensity would expect of the One, as civilized in the arms of kelp, and of the honorable associates of Holomaster Rico LaPush