127 - How Much Do We Need?

Eshmaeel and Davood both sat next to Terry as he stared at the screen in front of him. Mom's high-speed run over packed sand was smooth enough that no one was restrained. On the screen were two women he recognized from his program download that he'd left waiting in code; Shashi Basserus, some level of security officer, and the Milari girl Hara Vania. “Wait. How is this even possible? Eshmaeel said you didn't even have near universal literacy up until five years ago! You have this hard-copy network that requires fibre and water to run and now you've got screens? Real-time vid? HOW?”

“No need to shout, Terence,” Mom said. “My speakers are quite adequate to the task.”

“No, Mom, it was my emotional reaction,” he said in an aside to the machine. “It's just mind-boggling that these people have gone from--” he glanced sideways at the screen and changed what he'd been about to say because he certainly didn't want to insult anyone. “--such limited resources to being able to screen us.”

“It's something the Great Hive mentioned in our history,” the security woman said. “So we extrapolated from what we had. This is projected on a mist-curtain. How do you maintain such a thing in a moving vehicle?”

“The image on this end is projected onto a liquid glass matrix that I hardened up especially for your transmission,” Mom said, proudly. “There's lots of sand perfectly suitable for that purpose, here.”

“Of course,” Hara and Terry said at the same time. It was hard to read their faces over the filter veils. He'd never seen so much crud in the air as was here. It whipped up at the slightest breath of air and hung suspended for days sometimes. Not so much with the rains sweeping north ahead of Mom though and for that he was very thankful. The drinking water that Mom synthesized no longer tasted bitter or stank of sulphur.

“You're bringing our surviving investigators home,” Shashi said approvingly, a whirl of black butterflies swooping around her head. Terry was more than a little disconcerted by them and by the bees all over Hara, but he'd be damned to the Index if he was going to let on. “And you've already given us an enormous boost in our tech, just with the questions you've asked. To let you know, we can build things, but sometimes we've forgotten concepts and ideas.”

“I see. So, your emperor and his husband are off rounding up refugees from Prime's last set of love taps and you not only need a way of defending yourselves from that crap but getting some lawyers and muscle from off planet on your side... or build enough muscle to stand toe-to-toe with Perrin. You might just manage to out-live him. His meds aren't finding a lot left to work with, he's so old.”

“Doesn't he have an Heir? You said something about your brother injuring the man, I believe.” Shashi's voice was cool. “It might be to our best interest to let Prime do what he wants and we'll have an injured opponent.” Her eyes flicked toward Davood who sat, listening, staring down at his clenched together hands.

“I have no control over what my brother does. He may not be able to do anything at all.”

“And Prime... is a known quantity. He can be trusted to strike at us as hard as he can,” Hara said. “He's proved that.”

“Yes. We're laying as low as we can on our way to you, to not draw his attention. To tell you the truth, given Thurmontaler's temper now a days, I'm amazed he was as restrained as he was, with that Nadu thing. If he'd been in a bad temper or the threat level had come to his attention personally, he could have waved a hand and dropped five hundred or so rocks on you, rather than a mere dozen.”

Both women blinked and he wondered for a moment if it was because of the liquid nature of their screen.

“Five hundred rocks,” Hara said, finally. “On a whim.”

“So, if we were to build some kind of defense, Terry,” Shashi said. “How much would we need?”