Cauldron of Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page B

that emotions were dangerous to such as they. Those looks made Nancy furious, but she let no sign of her anger show on her own face.
    After the first batch of slaves passed through the compartment, a green light on the box started flashing. While they’d been waiting for the slaves to arrive, Anderson and Tsang had programmed the box to record the right number of slaves for one chip.
    “Go ahead,” said Nancy. Gingerly, the Ramathibodi ’s captain reached into the box and removed one of the chips.
    One chip only—and she was careful to lift that one out with just her thumb and forefinger. If the box sensed that more chips were being removed than had been properly accounted for, the lid would slam down and make sure the chips stayed inside—along with the hand that held them.
    * * *
    When the slaves arrived at the open hatch that led into the rest of the Station, the two guards from the Ramathibodi relinquished control to three people from Parmley Station’s contingent. Two of them were equipped with the same neural whips; the third was outfitted as a medical technician. She was there to give each arriving slave an examination to make sure no defectives were being pawned off on them.
    She went about the business in a quick, almost perfunctory manner, giving each slave a scan with the medical detection device in her hand before they passed into the personnel tube beyond. The device would catch anything obvious, like a contagious disease or late-stage cancer.
    It wouldn’t spot more subtle problems, but those weren’t of much concern. The sort of medical chicanery involved in passing off immediately defective units as healthy slaves was avoided in the slave trade as bad business. Contrary to the popular saw there is no honor among thieves, illegal or extra-legal transactions actually required a more punctilious attention to dealing in good faith—for the good and simple reason that no recourse to the courts was possible in the event of a dispute. That meant that such disputes were usually settled violently, which made everyone involved stay away from petty chiseling.
    The other reason the medical technician didn’t pay much attention was even simpler. Given the nature of Manpower’s production methods, it was a given that a high percentage of their slaves would have some long-term medical problems. The sort of radical genetic engineering that created such slaves often produced unwanted side effects. A slave bred for great strength might have a severe blood pressure problem, for instance, or be prone to renal failure.
    As a rule the lifespan of genetic slaves was shorter than that of most humans, even leaving aside the fact that such slaves were almost never given prolong to extend their lifespan. According to the Bible, The days of our years are threescore years and ten. Manpower, Inc., perhaps not wishing to seem presumptuously equal to the Lord, figured fifty or sixty years was plenty good enough for their products.
    Once the medtech nodded her approval, each slave passed through the hatch into the personnel tube leading to their new quarters aboard Parmley Station. The two guards waiting inside shepherded them along. More precisely, lounged against the walls and occasionally waved them along in as perfunctory a manner as the medtech did her duties. They weren’t worried about rebellion. The slaves knew perfectly well that a station like this one would have the same forced evacuation mechanisms that all slave ships did. If they rebelled successfully here in the compartments and corridors, someone in the inaccessible control room would just push a button and they’d all be expelled into vacuum.
    * * *
    Lieutenant ColonelAyibongwinkosi Kabweza and her team passed a total of eight hatches along the way before they finally arrived at a hatch that Ayako told them led into the crew’s quarters. According to Ayako, at least six of the compartments they’d passed held slaves.
    If she was disturbed by the fact that