“And anyway, what do you know about it?” Even as the words formed she thought, Well, actually, Jon Von knows exactly what you do. Or will, when he’s finished mapping your lobes, dipped into your hindbrain, plumbed the reptilian core of you. It was a sobering thought.

JonVon chose to not reply. Tact? Or was she indulging the usual programmer’s bias, reading human traits into machine responses?

The delicate cool tickling continued. She relaxed, letting her mind glide away from the red swirl of emotions the recollection had called up.

She knew that memories lodged close to sites where physical associations were stored, so that the body led the mind in storing data. A crisp dry smell could call up a distant dusty afternoon or childhood. But this made her wonder about the radical experiment she was attempting here.

The mechs needed supervision. Special processing programs controlled subtle waldo arms, but they weren’t smart. JonVon was fairly “smart” but he couldn’t help a mech turn a screwdriver or balance a suction sponge. As a stochastic machine, he was built to deal in uncertainties. He did not interface well with the mechs’ reductionist, solve-the-equation worldview. And JonVon lacked the intricate motor skills that evolution and exercise had given humans.

So she had decided to try one of her outlandish, low-probability dreams: Let JonVon read her skills. Her reflexes were also stochastic and holographic. He might understand them better.

The technology was available, if you knew where to look. The brain stored memories in the orientation of electrons, deep down in the cells and synapses. In principle, one could read the directions that these electrons pointed. The entire swarm of spins stored information—the intricate turns and tugs necessary to swivel a wrist, poke a finger. Virginia already had good programs that translated the human moves into mech moves. If JonVon could store her motor skills, he could take over much of the mech-managing. That would be a big help. Carl and other spacers had nagged her endlessly to spend more time with the mechs, and she was getting frazzled.

This was a way out. Maybe.

She would have to develop this technology eventually, anyway. Even with Saul’s microwave eraser, things were still dicey. Oakes and Lopez still gave mech-directing top priority.

If they kept losing people, over the seventy-year haul the mechs would have to be much more independent than the expedition had planned. And she had to be slotted eventually, so she had to at least start on a better programming system right away.

She sent an expression of relieved excitement: burnt-gold lightning strokes zapping across a velvet sky.

“I wasn’t a child, you bucket of bolts.”

“And I don’t think it was `entertaining’ either. That big hulk of a boy—“She had a sudden jolting memory of a rasping, panting male voice muttering Eli a hohonu keia lua. His hard, machinelike ramming had hammered the words into her memory: I dig this hole deep. She shuddered.

“Thanks.”

She knew JonVon didn’t mean the reading. “No, it wasn’t. Oh, he was kind enough, I guess. I liked him enough to go out with him several times before that, after all. But never after… that.”

“I’ve had my share. An engineer in college… no, who am I kidding? Not many. Not many at all.”

“It’s not a mathematical congruence, you know, JonVon. People don’t look for someone exactly like themselves. Almost the opposite, in fact.”

Saul’s s desert-weathered face came to her, grinning in that lovely distracted way he had, and for a moment she was not sure whether she had recalled it or…yes… “JonVon, you put him in my head.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. At least let me stage manage my own fantasies!”

But the quick vision of that lopsided grin below the dark, seldom-joyful eyes had indeed gotten to her. It seemed an age since she had seen him, taken shelter in those strong enveloping arms, smelled the heady musk of him, talked—

“JonVon! Call him for me.”

“Drat! I miss him.” She jerked the foam padding away from her head and grimaced at the imposing banks of equipment: spindly nuclear resonance pickups, looming pancake magnet poles, ranks of digitizers.

“I’m worn out with this everlasting crisis.”

“You bet.”

A picture leaped into her mind—so graphic, so lurid—silky entwined limbs, and more. She would have turned away if she had ever seen it displayed in mixed company…and yet she found it sensually enticing, pulse-quickening, as if calculated to pry up the hinges of her own special private places.

“JonVon!”

The quilted scenes faded, leaving a halo of blue afterimage.

“How did you… know?”

It was, she supposed, a joke.

Over here!” Carl shouted.

Saul’s silhouette turned at the far end of Tunnel K and waved. The figure kicked off and glided the hundred meters, passing through pools of ivory phosphor radiance.

“Damned chilly,” Saul said as he windmilled to bring his feet around in front of himself. He landed, knees taking the shock.

He’s getting better, Carl reflected. Everybody’s going to have to learn to sweat from now on. “We’re keeping it cold even in the central tunnels now. Me, I’d like to vac all these.”

“It would cut down on our maneuverability enormously.”

“Cut down on the purples, too.”

“I use the inner tunnels every hour or so. If I had to suit up every time”

“I’m going to recommend it anyway.”

“Bethany Oakes has already decided.”

“Yeah, I know.” Every time you confront Lintz with a problem he starts citing decisions by the higher-ups.

Saul seemed reflective. “On the way here Lani and I saw Ingersoll down one of the side passages near Level A. He’s eating native forms, I think. Amazing. He seems harmless, if crazy.”

Carl felt a jab of irritation at the mere mention of Ingersoll. Things are so bad we can’t even catch a madman. But he kept his voice matter-of-fact; diplomacy came first. “Yeah, he’s crazy, but crazy like a fox.”

He shook his head and decided to get right to the point.

“I… Look, I’m going to propose to Oakes that we go retrieve the Newburn.”

“Really? You’ve really located it?”

“Right. It was Lani’s idea, actually. We were just talking, looking at that numerical simulation Virginia did a while back.”

“The one which showed how the Newburn’s solar sail could’ve been shredded by Halley’s plasma tail?”

“Yeah. I figure the other slot tugs were just plain lucky they didn’t get hit. The cross-tail-induced currents probably blew out Newburn’s tracer beacons, too. Without that sail deployed, finding Newburn was hopeless. So Lani, she says maybe we could try sending tightbeam microwaves and listen for an echo. I used a little sack time and did just that and—bingo! —got a signal back after a week long search.