Free Space Eater by David Langford Page B

Maybe he thought his nutshell version of the routine was some kind of joke you laughed at.
    “Sure,” I said into the crack, put the chair down, and went for my clothes. You learn to dress fast in the game, and in a moment I was whipping the door open, checking up and down the dim passage—OK.
    Wui gave me a grin. He was carrying a cardboard box that clinked.
    “Where’s this party?” I said.
    “Ssshhh! First we get Rossa.” He moved down the corridor and I followed; he was swaying very slightly, maybe just tired. In the yellow nightlights it was hard to tell. Two doors down: “Ssshhh!” again, and he tapped with the ends of his fingers. “Rossa?Mick y here. Come to a party, Rossa?”
    She answered soon enough to convince me she hadn’t been sleeping either. I could imagine her lying with her strained face looking straight up into the dark. Soon she peeped carefully around the door (not even bolted!), shrank a little as Wui dropped a friendly hand on her shoulder, and fell in behind when he moved on. “What sort of party is this? Anything is better than lying there, but it had better not be psychoactives. With my job I daren’t touch them—“
    I filed that one away for future reference. “Don’t know,” I whispered back. “Wui’s got bottles in there: juice, maybe. You don’t think he’d have alcohol?”
    “Why not? That’s not supposed to be psychoactive in the way I meant. I used to rely on it a good deal in the bad times.”
    Forceman Jacklin would have said: “What bad times? What’re you talking about?” I was thinking differently enough now to keep quiet. Rossa Corman was wound up very tight inside and I didn’t want to hit the wrong lever. The picture in my head came from when we were rigging clockwork timers for another improvised-incendiary test: someone had poked too hard with the long-nosed pliers and six feet of coiled spring had whipped out to slash his cheek. Got a big laugh. I still remembered that whiz and twang...
    Then we were at a door where Wui didn’t knock: he pushed straight in, and white light spilled from the doorway. The low voices inside turned out to be Ellan and Ngabe talking together on the bunk; over in a corner there was Patel, a tech/4 from the AP lab, sitting cross-legged and staring into an empty plastic cup.
    “Started already, eh?” said Wui cheerfully, putting down his box against the wall. Inside were dusty bottles. “Did themselves proud, those government planners—all the necessaries for a five-year piss-up while the war burns itself out overhead. I’ve got Scotch and vodka and gin and rum and orange juice.
    Plenty more where that came from.”
    “Medical stores?” said Ngabe, smiling.
    “Well, no. There’s this storeroom on level 2 with PRIVATE: EMERGENCY RATIONS on the door, and I never figured why anything as revolting as emerg rations should have two locks on it. The Science of Deduction, aided by the resources of the AP lab. Do I hear applause?”
    Ellan’s mouth was hanging open. “If you used a welding torch on that lock—“ She sounded almost satisfied at the thought of Wui getting himself in bad.
    “Security would bust me, yes, I know. The ancient family of Wui has more subtlety than that. No, I wheeled down the FACTOTUM, used the micromanipulator arm and didn’t leave a clue. Now, for God’s sake, let’s drink it.”
    There were more cups on the table. Wui splashed brown liquid into one and took a swig. “Ahhh. This stuff would burn holes in space without any MT gear. What are you drinking, friends?”
    “Juice,” I said automatically. Wui looked at me with his head on one side.
    “For myself also,” said Ngabe. “Tomorrow, after all...” He stopped. Maybe surgeons don’t discuss fine details of their attack plans in front of the, so to speak, battlefield.
    Corman had juice with the white stuff called vodka in it. Patel filled his cup to the very top with Scotch and took it away to his corner like a kid who doesn’t want