Chapter 7

Ferro absently scratched the day old skin melt on the left side of his ribs as he bent over the drawing board. The digital board was huge, at least as large as the span of both his arms and half as high. He had a writing pad for notes running in one corner and an on-time series of engineering schematics running down the entire right side of the board. When he made a change on the design in the middle, the schematics on the side automatically recalculated whatever items he designated from stress per millimeter to density requirements.

Xerba was his overseer, supervisor, taskmaster and slave driver. The older man did for engineering what Doyan did for warfare — he took it up another notch. He was singularly focused and driven, to be sure, but he couldn't jump tracks to another subject easily. He focused on one idea at a time and did it very well — but only one thing at a time. The man followed the rules of physics and he didn't understand how create flexibility within the physical laws without breaking them. Xerba would have been happy in an engineering professorship teaching one class over and over, if there was a university that tolerated the death of lesser talents when they failed to understand the teacher.

"The same problem keeps coming up time after time," Ferro said, not looking at Xerba who was leaning against the wall while studying the screen. "Whenever we seek to turn on a penny, everything cracks at the focal point. When we compensate with more structural support, the ship can no longer turn quickly."

Xerba nodded. "Don't pick at your scab; it's a sign of weakness."

"I'm asking for insight and you're giving me lessons in etiquette," Ferro said, pointing his stylus at the man.

"You're not thinking because you are addicted to fighting and fucking. Chemung got some revenge yesterday and you are still smarting at the insult."

"He won on points and that's no big deal," Ferro said. "The big deal is that he won't just let it drop. He thinks that Quiyo won't be his fuck bunny because of me. By the Mother, I swear I haven't been in her bed since I came to this ship but he doesn't believe me."

"If that is the problem, then I will talk with Benni and he will put a stop to the nonsense. In the meantime, what are we going to do about this design?"

Ferro tapped the screen for the controls and wiped the image.

"Delete it and start over. Give me some insight; show me something else about Volentin that is unique."

Xerba paced the small room for a moment and then glanced at the chrono on the wall.

"The weapons master has a demonstration of one-on-one combat in vacuum in ten minutes or so. He has a new armor accessory to demonstrate."

Ferro put down his pen and grabbed Xerba by the bicep, pulling him out the door.

"Let's go!"

Ferro's design studio was on the upper level of the ship and the hallways were less crowded. Ferro delighted in the open space but most of the Family was disconcerted by it. The experience was fun, Xerba explained, but the lack of family was disquieting.

The lower level of the ship was systems, maintenance and children. Ferro was forbidden from entering that level and the guards were armed with pulse rifles to demonstrate how seriously Volentin felt about that policy. He didn't understand why children were segregated that way. He chalked it up as another mystery to be solved in the future.

Xerba escorted Ferro into a large room with a screen that covered one entire wall. Most of the people in the room were sitting on the floor but a few of the older men and women were sitting on low stools. Benni was in the middle sitting on one of the stools and talking animatedly with several people clustered around him.

Benni was another mystery that Ferro didn't understand. The man was the patriarch of one of the most militaristic societies ever, and yet, he acted like a father figure more than a general. The contradiction gnawed at his admittedly preconceived ideas of what a leader should be.

Scanning the room, Ferro noticed the woman with whom he had started a tryst several weeks earlier and he smiled at her. She smiled back and gave him a brief wave.

Trying to keep his tasks on track the past month or so, Ferro had avoided the fuck bunny club and sought conversation in one of the fun bunny lounges, where people went to just sit and enjoy the off-shift. He had been drinking some sort of juice concoction and a green-vegetable-paste-on-crackers meal when she had sat down and struck up a conversation with him.

After she managed to steal about a third of his meal, he was smitten. He knew that she was playing a game with him and trying to snare him with a harmless game of steal the cracker, but he was attracted to her social forwardness. They had agreed to meet for dinner again and then again. Their dinners or end-of-shift cocktails had become a regular rendezvous.

Once in a while he still went to the fuck bunny club. Ferro liked to shoot the bull with the bartender who was always full of news and gossip. He learned that he had a reputation for confusing and delighting women in bed. He had also heard that there was an on-going debate about whether a night on the mat with him was worth the turmoil he left behind.

"Once a geek, always a geek," Ferro had replied because he really didn't understand why his approach to sex would be troublesome. He chalked it up to his lack of worldliness.

The bartender had considered Ferro's statement for a while.

"What's a geek?" he had finally asked.

"I'll trade an answer for an answer," Ferro had said. "You tell me why one eye is white and the other is yellow, and I'll give you the true insight into geekdom."

"Stupid trade unless you're an outsider, I guess. My yellow eye was a transplant purchased when I got an eye poked out before we were freed from the Hole. This is what I could afford and it still works. Your answer, please."

His answer had posed more questions that Ferro couldn't follow up on because, like the armed guards blocking the lower level, he wasn't allowed to pass the history barrier either. Whatever had happened to these people, there was a great stigma of shame and anger surrounding it, especially among the older members of Volentin. Many people had given him hints of "the Hole" and great subjugation, but no one would explain to him the story in full.

He had raised his glass in acknowledgement.

"Imagine, if you will, being surrounded by beautiful, nubile young women who are eager to fuck for the price of a drink and all you want to do is scratch out a mathematical formula on a napkin. Consider the group of horny young men and women who have an entire evening free to drink, play and fuck, and they are in the stairwell calculating velocities and arcs by rolling marbles down the stairs. This is what geeks are like. Imagine thinking that a woman whispering in Fermi programming code is the sexiest fantasy a guy can have."

"All spaceship designers are geeks?" the bartender had asked, shaking his head as if he had just heard that a dear old friend had died.

"I'm sure there are exceptions out there but I'm not it. I used to think I was a card-carrying member of the club and I was quite proud of the fact. Since coming here, I dunno, I'm different, a better man now."

"Not according to the nice little blond piece you took home last week," the bartender said, which led to the discussion of Ferro's reputation all over again.

Ferro's thoughts returned to the present as the colors flickered across the huge screen. Riata, the woman who was his newest and only sustained tryst, stood up and came to stand next to him as he leaned against the back wall.

"Hello, father," Riata said, looking around Ferro.