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told you , I could have told them that already,” said Jaelle. Except for one or two wounds in battle - during her first years as an Amazon, she had fought as a mercenary at Kindra’s side - and a broken wrist when she had fallen from a horse at sixteen, she had always been perfectly healthy.
Then they took her and put her into a contoured lounge and pasted gooey flat plates to her head, and pushed her down in the chair. She must have fallen asleep, and when she woke up she had a splitting headache, not unlike the headache she had had when Lady Alida had forced her, at fifteen, to look into a matrix jewel.
“She’s very resistant,” said one man, as she woke up, and another man answered, “That’s normal for the indigenous population. Not used to technological environment. Beth said she spooked at the fluoroscopy machines. Hey - pipe down, she’s awake already. Can you understand us, Miss?”
“Yes, perfectly - oh, I see. A language-teaching machine.” That was nothing; the Comyn could have done that with a matrix and a well-trained telepath.
“Head ache?” Without waiting for her answer, the Medic handed her a small paper cup with a spoonful or so of pale green liquid in the bottom. “Drink this.”
She did. He took the cup from her, crushed it in his hand and tossed it into a waste collector. She watched in amazement as it turned into pale slime and flowed out the drain. One moment it had been a cup; then, the next instant, without transition, it was a bit of pale slimy stuff, deliberately discarded and destroyed. Yet it was not old, or outworn, the new crisp feel of it was still in her hand, the reality of it. She could still feel it, but the thing itself was gone. Why ? A few minutes later, changing back into her own clothes, Bethany told her to throw her paper tunic into the same kind of collector. It confused her still, to see the things dissolve and flow down the drain and exist no longer. The man who had worked the language machine - she heard him call it a D-Alpha corticator, which left her no wiser than before - handed her a neat packet of disks.
“Here are your language lessons in Standard for the rest of the week,” he said. “Tell your husband to show you how to use the sleep-learner, and you can go ahead on your own.”
Another machine ! This man had not been introduced to her either, but she was accustomed to rudeness by now, and was not surprised when Bethany told her to hurry or they would be late to lunch. She had been hurrying all morning, but Terrans were always in a hurry, driven by the chronometer faces she saw everywhere, and she supposed there were some good reasons to serve meals on time; it was rude to keep the cooks waiting. There were no cooks visible, only machines, and it confused her to have to press buttons to get food, but she did what Bethany did. The food was all unfamiliar anyhow, thick porridges and hot drinks and bland textured messes. Sticking a fork in one peculiarly colored red mess, she asked what it was, and Bethany shrugged.
“Ration for the day; some kind of synthetic carbo-protein, I imagine. Whatever it is, it’s supposed to be good for you.” She ate up her portion with appetite, though, and so Jaelle tried to choke some of it down.
“The food in the Main Cafeteria is better than this,” Bethany said, “this is just a quick place to eat and run. I know this was a boring morning, but it’s always like this on a new job.”
Boring ? Jaelle thought of the last job she had undertaken; with her partner Rafaella, organizing a trade caravan to Dalereuth. They had spent the first day talking to their employer, finding out what men he had and how many animals, inspecting pack-beasts and making up their loads, visiting harness-makers to have proper packs made up. While Rafi had gone off to organize the hiring of extra animals, Jaelle had questioned the men about their food preferences and gone to purchase supplies and arrange their delivery. Monotonous, perhaps, and