John Maddox Roberts - Spacer: Window of Mind Read Online Free PDF Page A

really missed him."
    "Well," said Bert, "we'll see if we can't improve your education a bit. You can begin your duties by helping me sort out the cargo records, and you'll learn a few things in the process. How does that sound Michelle, my sweet?"
    "Fine," Michelle said. "She's on light duties until I say otherwise. Here, Kiril, drink this." Michelle handed Kiril a tall beaker filled with a thick, foamy liquid.
    "It's basically milk and sugars, with a couple of eggs and a lot of vitamins and nutrients. It'll help you put on weight and dear up your deficiency conditions. Drink it slowly, over the next hour or so. From now on you'll drink three liters of this each day until I discontinue it." Kiril sipped at the stuff gingerly. It was intensely sweet, but not unpleasant. It was a temptation to drink it fast. She had never been able to get enough of sweets before, and her body craved sugar.
    When she finished eating, Kiril followed Bert to his cabin-office combination on the lower level. The two small rooms were crammed with the souvenirs of a long life spent in space, but the area devoted to business was perfectly neat and orderly. While Bert called up his records on a little desk console, Kiril examined odd bits of rock, shells, plates containing three-dimensional images of alien landscapes and seascapes, odd fabrics and jewels. "This place looks like one of those curio shops for spacers."
    "These aren't just for looks," said Bert, picking up a cube of transparent glassite in which was embedded something that looked like a lobster with wings. "Every item here has a story behind it, some connection with my life and travels. I've never felt comfortable with keeping a diary. It feels too much like talking to myself. This is my substitute." The screen lit up with columns of figures and words. "Now, my dear, you are going to learn the mysteries of bills of lading."
    Kiril leaned over his shoulder, sipping at her beaker and studying the screen.
    "These are the food troughs," Michelle said. They were in the hydroponics room, amid high humidity and the smell of growing things. This was a wonderland. Civis Astra had had no parks and Kiril had never been into the countryside. She had seen few plants in her life except for weeds growing in vacant lots and occasional decorative plants growing high on the balconies of rich peoples' housing.
    In a long, transparent trough, dozens of small, green apples grew from a single, thin stem which ran along the bottom of the trough. "A couple of centuries ago," Michelle told her, "we'd have needed a whole tree to grow these. Master stem fruits and vegetables were developed around the time of early space settlement. People just never got used to fully artificial food. In an HP room this small we can't grow enough to feed everybody, but it makes a nice supplement for preserved foods."
    The last few weeks had been like this: Kiril helped one crewperson after another, getting instruction in most of the ship's jobs and other, related subjects. Bert polished up her reading, Nancy and Finn gave her progressively more advanced mathematical instruction. Torwald versed her on the ins and outs of a spacer's existence, about which he seemed to know more than any honest spacer should. He was, as advertised, a self-proclaimed expert on everything. The odd thing was, he really seemed to be almost as knowledgeable as he said he was.
    The only places where she wasn't receiving instruction were the bridge and the engine room. She would need years more education and experience before she could begin to study for a bridge officer's job. The engine room, domain of Achmed and Lafayette, Michelle had ruled off limits as too subject to extremes of heat when under conventional drive, and the work to be done there too heavy.
    "You think I lived in a controlled environment back on Thoth?" Kiril protested. She had been learning lots of new terms like that.
    "I'm the doctor," Michelle answered, and that was that.
    When they were