Having Moira there to figuratively hold her hand during the nasty process of partial anesthesia while the techs hooked her up in her column had been worth platinum.
She shuddered at the memory. Oh, they could describe the feelings (or rather, lack of them) to you, they could psych you up for experience, and you thought you were ready, but the moment of truth, when you lost everything but primitive com and the few sensors in the shell itself... was horrible. Something out of the worst of nightmares.
And she still remembered what it had been like to live with only softperson senses. She couldn't imagine what it was like for those who'd been popped into a shell at birth. It had brought back all the fear and feeling of helplessness of her time in the hospital.
It had been easier with Moira there. But if the transfer had been a journey through sensory-deprivation hell, waking up in the ship had been pure heaven.
No amount of simulator training conveyed what it really felt like, to have a living, breathing ship wrapped around you.
It was a moment that had given her back everything she had lost. Never mind that her 'skin' was duralloy metal, her 'legs' were engines, her 'arms' the servos she used to maintain herself inside and out. That her 'lungs' and 'heart' were the life-support systems that would keep her brawn alive. That all of her senses were ship's sensors linked through brainstem relays. None of that mattered. She had a body again! That was a moment of ecstasy no one plugged into a shell at birth would ever understand. Moira did, though... and it had been wonderful to be able to share that moment of elation.
And Tomas understood, as only a brawn-partner of long-standing could, Tomas had arranged for Theodore Edward Bear to have his own little case built into the wall of the central cabin as his graduation present. "And decom anyone who doesn't understand," he said firmly, putting a newly cleaned Ted behind his plexi panel and closing the door. "A brawn is only a brawn, but a bear is a friend for life!"
So now the solemn little blue bear in his Courier Service shirt reigned as silent supervisor over the central cabin, and to perdition with whatever the brawns made of him. Well, let them think it was some kind of odd holo-art. Speaking of which, the next set of brawn-candidates was due shortly. We'll see how they react to Ted.
Tia returned to her papers, keeping a running statistical analysis and cross-tabulations on anything that seemed interesting. And there were things that seemed to be showing up, actually. Pockets of mineral depletions in the area around the EsKay sites; an astonishing similarity in the periodicity and seasonality of the planets and planetoids. Insofar as a Mars-type world could have seasons, that is. But the periodicity, identical to within an hour. Interesting. Had they been that dependent on natural sunlight? Come to think of it, yes, solar distances were very similar. And they were all Sol-type stars.
She turned her attention to her parents' latest papers, letting the EsKay discoveries stew in the back of her mind. Pota and Braddon were the Schliemanns of modern archeology, but it wasn't the EsKays that brought them fame, at least, not directly. After Tia's illness, they couldn't bring themselves to return to their old dig, or even the EsKay project, and for once, the Institute committees acted like something other than AIs with chips instead of hearts. Pota and Braddon were reassigned to a normal atmosphere water-world of high volcanic activity and thousands of tiny islands with a good population of nomadic sentients, something as utterly unlike the EsKay planets as possible. And it had been there that they made their discovery. Tracing the legends of the natives, of a king who first defied the gods and then challenged them, they replicated Schliemann's famous discovery of ancient Troy, uncovering an entire city buried by a volcanic eruption. Perfectly preserved for all time. For this world and these people, it was the equivalent of an Atlantis and Pompeii combined, for the city was of Bronze Age technology while the latter-day sentients were still struggling along with flint, obsidian, and shell, living in villages of no more than two hundred. While the natives of the present day were amphibious, leaning towards the aquatic side, these ancients were almost entirely creatures of dry land.
The discovery made Pota and Braddon's reputation; there was more than enough there to keep fifty archeologists busy for a hundred years. Ta'hianna became their life-project, and they rarely left the site anymore. They even established a permanent residence aboard a kind of glorified houseboat.
Tia enjoyed reading their papers, and the private speculations they had brought her, with some findings that weren't in the papers yet, but the Ta'hianna project simply didn't give her the thrill of mystery that the EsKays did.
And, there was one other thing. Years of analyzing every little nuance of those dreadful weeks had made her decide that what had happened to her could just as easily happen to some other unwitting archeologist Or even, another child.
Only finding the homeworld of the EsKays would give the Institute and Central World's Medical the information they needed to prevent another tragedy like Tia's.
If Tia had anything at all to say about it, that would never happen again. The next person infected might not be so lucky. The next person, if an adult, or even a child unfortunate enough to be less flexible and less intelligent than she had been, would likely have no choice but to spend the remainder of a fairly miserable life in a Moto-Chair and a room.
"XH One-Oh-Three-Three, your next set of brawn candidates is ready," CenCom said, interrupting her brooding thoughts. "You are going to pick one of these, aren't you?" the operator added wearily.
"I don't know yet," she replied, levelly. "I haven't interviewed them." She had rejected the first set of six entirely. CenCom obviously thought she was being a prima donna. She simply thought she was being appropriately careful. After all, since she was officially assigned to A and E with special assignment to the Institute, she had gotten precisely what she expected, a ship without Singularity Drive. Those were top-of-the-line, expensive, and not the sort of thing that the Institute could afford to hire. So, like Moira, she would be spending a lot of time in transit. Unlike Moira, she did not intend to find herself bouncing brawns so often that her buy-out had doubled because of the fines.
Spending a lot of time in transit meant a lot of time with only her brawn for company. She wanted someone who was bright, first of all. At least as bright as Tomas and Charlie. She wanted someone who would be willing to add her little crusade to the standard agenda and give it equal weight with what they had officially been assigned. She rather thought she would like to have a male, although she hadn't rejected any of the brawns just because they were female.
Most of all, she wanted someone who would like her; someone who would be a real partner in every sense. Someone who would willingly spend time with her when he could be doing other things; a friend, like Kenny and Anna, Moira and Lars.
And someone with some personality. Two of the last batch, both females, had exhibited all the personality of a cube of tofu.
That might do for another ship, another brain that didn't want to be bothered with softpersons outside of duty, but she wanted someone she could talk to! After all, she had been a softperson once.
"Who's first?" she asked CenCom, lowering her lift so that he, or she, could come aboard without having to climb the stairs.
"That'll be Donning Chang y Narhan," CenCom replied after a moment. "Really high marks in the Academy."
She scanned the databurst as Donning crossed the tarmac to the launch pad; he'd gotten high marks all right, though not stellar. Much like her; in the top tenth of the class, but not the top one percent. Very handsome, if the holo was to be believed; wavy blond hair, bright blue eyes, sculptured face with holo-star looks, sculptured body, too. But Tia was wary of good looks by now. Two of the first lot had been gorgeous; one had been one of the blocks of tofu, with nothing between the ears but what the Academy had put there, and the other had only wanted to talk about himself.
Movement outside alerted her to Donnings arrival; to her annoyance, he operated the lift manually instead of letting her handle it.