Mind Changer

CHAPTER 17

He had known, although he had never really expected to make use of the knowledge, that since he was a Monitor Corps officer on space service no commercial vessel (provided it had a species-suitable berth free and it was going in the right direction) could refuse to take him as a passenger. There was no restriction regarding destinations or the number of ship transfers he could make, but if he wanted to go fast and far it was best to stick to the busy commercial routes serving the long-established star-traveling cultures of Traltha, Orligia, Kelgia, and Earth. He was free to visit a more out-of-the-way planet or colony world if he wished, but that could mean spending a large proportion of his leave waiting for a suitable connection.

The Monitor Corps supply vessel Trosshannon plied the threecornered route between Nidia, Melf, and Sector General. As the initial letter of its name implied, it had been built on the heavygravity world of Traltha, where they built starships that were renowned throughout the Federation for their structural strength and dependability. It was said that on Traltha even the earthmoving machinery was put together by watchmakers. Trosshannon listed accommodation with environmental support for jive physiological classifications: Tralthan FGLIs, Melfan ELNTs, Hudlar FROBs, Kelgian DBLFs, and DBDGs like or unlike himself who were expected to use the same cabin type even though it was a tight squeeze for Orligians and the furniture was on the large size for Nidians, who considered themselves tall if they made it to more than a meter.

He met the eight-man, Earth-human crew, who were all Monitor Corps personnel, only at mealtimes. They were friendly enough but they made it clear that they were very busy and, other than at meals, they preferred him not to get underfoot. O’Mara spent most of that four-day trip in his quarters, which was exactly what he wanted to do. But Craythorne had been right about him being tired. He was surprised at how much of the time he spent sleeping.

O’Mara was feeling more relaxed than he had been for a long time when Trosshannon dropped into the Retlin transport complex on the outskirts of Nidia’s planetary capital whose name it bore. It was the largest space, air, and surface communication facility in the Federation as well as, from the point of view of the local families with young children who thronged the public viewing area, its most popular other-species zoo. As the moving walkway took him through the disembarking tunnel toward the main concourse, it felt strange to be the focus of so many curious eyes and excited, barking conversations and realize that to the many hundreds of tiny, red-furred beings staring at him he was just another strange extraterrestrial visitor.

Even though he was carrying all his belongings in a backpack so that there was no necessity for him to go though baggage claim, and Retlin was also reputed to be the most well-organized and wellappointed transport terminal on all of the civilized worlds, it was still easy for a strange visitor regardless of its species to get lost. An enormous, hairy Orligian wearing a weapons harness suggesting that it might be a security guard gave him directions.

The information facility comprised a long line of screened cubicles, each one bearing a stylized diagram represent

He was able to find the Monitor Corps’ Personnel-in-Transit office without difficulty. Its wall decorations ran heavily to pictures of service vessels ranging from tiny couriers through longrange survey cruisers up to the mighty Emperor-class capital ships. With a single exception, its six reception desk consoles were being manned by people who weren’t men, but he chose that one because the others were busy. As he approached the empty position, a graying NCO wearing full uniform so clean and crisp that it reminded him of Craythorne on a ceremonial occasion looked up. The other’s eyes rested briefly on O’Mara’s coveralls and his beret tightly folded under the right shoulder strap, which meant that neither of them had to waste time saluting; then he gave a friendly nod.

“Sir?” he said.

O’Mara gave his name and service ID code and said, “I arrived within the past hour on Trosshannon and would like a berth on anything you have going to Traltha, Melf, Kelgia, or Earth. The destination isn’t important but the stopover time is. I don’t want to spend too much of my leave on Nidia.”

“Nidian low ceilings give me trouble, too” the other said, smiling, “but if you need to stay here for a while, there’s always the Earth-human officers’ quarters on the base. They’re very comfortable.”

“Thank your’ said O’Mara, returning the smile and looking pointedly at the other’s impeccable uniform, “but on Nidia Base I wouldn’t feel that I was on leave. Have you anything going anywhere soon?”

“I know what you mean” said the NCO. “Give me a moment to check, sir.”

On the base, O’Mara thought as the other began tapping keys, the uniform dress regulations would be less relaxed, and there would be a lot more saluting and fellow officers displaying too much friendly curiosity about his background. He was technically an officer but nobody, himself included, had ever considered him to be a gentleman. There could be trouble if their curiosity became too persistent. O’Mara thought that he would rather squeeze himself into a room in one of the local Nidian hotels.

“You’re in luck, sir” said the other suddenly, and hesitated. “Well, you might be in luck. How about Kreskhallar, Melfan registry, a medium-sized passenger vessel with a mixed-species crew and with accommodation for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, leaving from Dock Thirty-Seven just three and a half hours from now. It operates a continuous, round-trip, cut-price sightseeing tour of the big five-Melf, Earth, Traltha, Kelgia, Nidia, and back to Melf. Currently the passengers are mostly Kelgian on some kind of startraveling literary convention, it says here, with other-species passengers joining and leaving at their home planets. The luxury rating isn’t high, sir, only two stars, and with all those DBLFs…

“Thank you,” O’Mara broke in, “I’ll take it.”

The NCO looked concerned. He said, “Sir, if you’re not used to them, Kelgians can be a bit hard to take even one at a time. Before I book you in, are you sure about this?”

O’Mara nodded. “Go ahead, SergeantP he said, “I’m used to working with Kelgians.”

“You are?” said the other, giving him another close but unobstrusive visual examination as he tapped keys. Pla~_ly his curiosity got the better of him because he went on, “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, what ship?”

“No ship? he said. “Sector General?

“Oh? said the sergeant, looking impressed. He was still sitting at his console but somehow he gave the impression that he was standing at attention as he added, “Enjoy your leave, sir.”

As he had no idea what the food would be like on a two-star passenger vessel, or how long it would be before they served it, O’Mara decided to play safe by refueling in one of the complex’s multi-species restaurants. The place reminded him of the hospital’s main dining hail, but with the addition of wall murals showing Nidian land- and seascapes, and loud background music whose planet of origin he did not recognize but which was terrible. It had a discordant, urgent beat that, he decided, was intended to make the diners eat faster to escape from it. Out of sheer contrariness he ate slowly, blocking the music from his mind while he tried to think about what he could do with himself over the next six weeks, until it was time to board.

It was Kreskhallar’s passenger liaison officer, Larragh-Yal, an obviously overworked or perhaps just overwrought Nidian, who welcomed him aboard, wished him a pleasant voyage, and gave him directions to his cabin in a voice which, even through the translator, suggested that its mind was on other things. Probably, he thought wryly, the shipload of Kelgians. He was given a locator that would tell him how to get to the dining and recreation rooms, the observation deck, and the other passenger services, and asked if he had any special requirements.

“Only peace and quiet? said O’Mara. “I’ll be staying in my cabin most of the time.”

“With this bunch of furry sword-and-sorcery fanatics we have on board? it said, sounding relieved that he might turn out to be one of that rare breed, a minimum-maintenance passenger, “I don’t blame you, Lieutenant. But if you should need anything, the locator card will find me. I, ah, expect you already know th~t the Monitor Corps will reimburse our company for your travel fare, basic cabin accommodation, food, and a moderate quantity of liquid refreshment. Anything else you will have to pay for yourself.”

O’Mara nodded. “There will be nothing else.”

“I don’t want to sound mean, Lieutenant,” the other went on, nor do I have to stick too closely to the regulations in your case. After all, you’re the only Monitor Corps officer on the ship. Your presence would raise the morale of our security people as well as having a steadying influence on some of the passengers.

“Larragh-Yal? said O’Mara firmly, “I’m on leave.”

“Of course, sir? said the other. “But a sheathed weapon is still a deterrent.”

His cabin was about half the size of his quarters at the hospital, but comfortable if one only wanted to sleep rather than stay there most of the time. There were a viewscreen and a menu of multi-species entertainment tapes that looked old and tired even by Sector General standards, but the amenities did not include a food dispenser. If he wanted to eat alone he would have to order cabin service. The extra cost didn’t worry him, but the type of person he had once been did not feel happy with the idea of another intelligent entity becoming his servant for however short a time, nor did he know how an officer was expected to behave in that situation. He would feel awkward and embarrassed by the whole business.

The alternative was to use the ship’s dining room and meet people, some of whom, Larragh-Yal had implied, might not be too happy to meet him.

The whole idea was ridiculous. He had been working so long with Monitor Corps specialists-and he had even become one himself-that he had almost forgotten that the force’s primary function was the maintenance of the Pax Galactica, a duty it had performed so well over the past century since its formation that it had been given other jobs to do. Its vast, Emperor-class capital ships, each one capable of wrecking a planet although none of them ever had, were on standby for disaster-relief or ~-~olonizationsupport operations, because a vessel that could level a whole country could clear and till an awful lot of fallow land for settlers. The thousands of lesser ships, the light and heavy cruisers, transports and small communications vessels, while still retaining their weaponry and their highly trained and disciplined multi-species crews, practiced the arts of peace rather than war-although, on the rare occasions when widespread violence occurred which posed a threat to Federation stability, no matter how many ships and land forces had to be deployed or how much firepower was required to regulate the situation, it was always referred to as a police action. But usually the violence and the lawbreakers were stopped before it got that far, by infiltration, subversion, and other nonviolent dirty tricks. O’Mara had heard that the specialist Corps psychologists who now handled the first-contact situations had been nasty, devious, and quite brilliant in that form of activity, and he wondered if the polished and urbane Major Craythorne had ever had a hand in stopping a war or, he corrected himself, a riot that required police action on a planetary scale.

As the Galactic Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, the Monitor Corps had rendered redundant the large, national armies that once had fought each other on the member worlds, and taken over as the galaxy’s peacekeeper. In essence, regardless of the wide range of specialist duties the Corpsmen now performed, each and every one was regarded as a policeman, a form of life that was never supposed to be off-duty even when on leave. If, as Larragh-Yal had said, there were a few potential troublemakers among the passengers, they were people he could not help meeting when he went to the dining room or anywhere else on the ship, and they might not be happy with the idea of what they thought was a policeman mixing with them and trying to spoil their fun. O’Mara sighed and began to unpack.

He was finished by the time the launch warning and thirtysecond countdown was relayed over the ships’s PA sys_m, and he watched through the cabin’s direct-vision port as Retlin Complex dropped away and the city proper and then more and more of the surrounding countryside crawled into his field of view. There had been no sensation of motion in spite of the high takeoff acceleration; the old vessel’s gravity compensators, at least, were working. He had been taken to space construction sites on ships where they hadn’t been, and traveling with a bunch of spacesick and regurgitating other-species workmates was not an experience he wanted to repeat. The planetary surface shrank until Nidia filled the viewport. He continued to watch it, telling himself that the ship was simply a scaled-down Sector General without doctors and he shouldn’t worry about it, until they were at jump distance and suddenly there was nothing to see but the flickering grey fog of hyperspace.

Shortly afterward the PA cleared its throat and said, “For the information of passengers who have come aboard at Nidia, the first Meal of Welcome for the next leg of our tour will be served in the dining room in three standard hours’ time. As you probably already know, it has become a tradition that all passengers, except for members of those species who do not customarily use body coverings or decorations, should wear formal dress for this occasion. Thank you for your attention.”

O’Mara was feeling hungry again. In three hours’ time he would be starving.

He dressed in full uniform, the first time he had done so since Sergeant Wenalont had fitted him with it, and feeling safe in the knowledge that as the only Monitor on board he would have to neither give nor return salutes, but to be doubly sure he folded his beret under the shoulder tab. As he stared at himself in the cabin mirror he thought that he looked well, very well, and remembered some of the other things the technical sergeant and tailor had said to him. He wondered if the passenger list included any young, unattached Earth-human females, then sadly put the tls

He was a Corps psychologist, O’Mara reminded himself as he stared at his image, but he had to admit that he looked like everybody’s idea of a hefty, scowling policeman.