"Oh!" she exclaimed. "So that's why,"
"Why what?"
"Why you treat me like you do, facing my column, asking permission to come aboard, asking me what kind of music I want in the main cabin."
"Oh, you bet!" he said with a grin. "Jon made darn sure I had good shell-soft manners before he let me go off to the Academy. He'd have verbally blistered my hide if I ever forgot you're here, and that you're the part of the team that can't go off to her own cabin to be alone."
"Tell me about him," she urged.
He had to think hard to remember the first time he ever started talking to Jon. "I think I first realized that he was around when I was about three, maybe two. My folks are chemtechs at one of the Lily-Baer research stations. There weren't a lot of kids around at the time, because it was a new station and most of the personnel were unattached. There weren't a lot of facilities for kids, and I guess what must have happened was that Jon volunteered to sort of baby sit while my parents were at work. Wasn't that hard. Basically all he had to do was make sure that the door to my room stayed locked except when he sent in servos to feed me and so forth. But I guess I kind of fascinated him, and he started talking to me, telling me stories, then directing the servos in playing with me." He laughed. "For a while my folks thought I was going through the 'invisible friend' stage. Then they got worried, because I didn't grow out of it, and were going to send me to a headshrinker. That was when Jon interrupted while they were trying to make the appointment and told them that he was the invisible friend."
Tia laughed. "You already knew that Moira and I have known each other for a long time, well, she was the CS ship that always serviced my folks' digs, that was how I got to know her."
"Gets you used to having a friend that you can't see, but can talk to," he agreed. "Well, once I started preschool, Jon lost interest for a while, until I started learning to play chess. He is quite a player himself; when he saw that I was beating the computer regularly, he remembered who I was and stepped in, right in the middle of a game. I was winning until he took over," he recalled, still a little aggrieved.
"What can I say?" she asked rhetorically.
"I suppose I shouldn't complain. He became my best friend. He was the one that encouraged my interest in archeology and when it became obvious my parents weren't going to be able to afford all the university courses that would take, he helped get me into the Academy. Did you know that a recommendation from a shell-person counts twice as much as a recommendation from anyone but a PTA and up?"
"No, I didn't!" She sounded surprised and amused. "Evidently they trust our judgment."
"Well, you've heard his messages. He's probably as pleased with how things turned out as I am." He spread his hands wide. "And that's all there is to know about me."
"Hardly," she retorted dryly. "But it does clear up a few mysteries."
When Alex hit his bunk that night, he found he was having a hard time getting to sleep. He'd always thought of Tia as a person, but now he had a face to put with the name.
Jon Chernov had shown him, once, what Jon would have looked like if he could have survived outside the shell. Alex had known that it was going to be hideous, and had managed not to shudder or turn away, but it had taken a major effort of will. After that it had just been easier not to put a face with the voice. There were completely nonhuman races that looked more human than poor Jon.
But Tia had been a captivatingly pretty child. She would have grown up into a stunning adult. Shoot, inside that shell, she probably looked like a doll. A stimulating, lifeless adult, like a puppet with no strings; a sex-companion android with no hookups. He had no desire to crack her column; he was not the sort to be attracted by anything lifeless. Feelie-porn had given him the creeps, and his one adolescent try with a sex-droid had sent him away feeling dirty and used.
But it made the tragedy of what had happened to her all the more poignant Jon's defects were such that it was a relief for everyone that he was in the shell. Tia, though...
But she was happy. She was as happy as any of his classmates in the Academy. So where was the tragedy? Only in his mind. Only in his mind...
CHAPTER SIX
Alex would have been perfectly happy if the past twelve hours had never happened.
He and Tia returned to Diogenes Base after an uneventful trip expecting to be sent out on another series of message-runs, only to learn that on this run, they would be carrying passengers. Those passengers were on the way from Central and the Institute by way of commercial liner and would not arrive for another couple of days.
That had given him a window of opportunity for a little shore leave, in a base-town that catered to some fairly heavy space-going traffic, and he had taken it.
Now he was sorry he had... oh, not for any serious reasons. He hadn't gotten drunk, or mugged, or into trouble. No, he'd only made a fool out of himself.
Only.
He'd gone out looking for company in the spaceport section, hanging around in the pubs and food-bars. He'd gotten more than one invitation, too, but the one he had followed up on was from a dark-haired, blue eyed, elfin little creature with an infectious laugh and a nonstop smile. 'Bet' was her name, and she was a fourth-generation spacer, following in her family's footloose tradition.