“She’s hogging your equipment,” I said.
“No, she’s just really cute,” Bennett said. “And that’s going to get me in trouble with the wife. But also, I’ve only got a couple of her diagnostic machines in here, and if we ever have a real medical problem, we’re going to want more available.”
I nodded. We’d already had one broken arm, from a teenager climbing up on the barrier and then slipping off. He was lucky not to have broken his neck. “Do we have enough mesh?” I asked.
“This is pretty much our entire stock,” Bennett said. “But I can program it to make some more of itself. I’d need some more raw material.”
“I’ll have Ferro get on that,” Zane said, referring to the cargo chief. “We’ll see what we have in inventory.”
“Every time I see him, he seems really pissed,” Bennett said.
“Maybe it’s because he’s supposed to be at home and not here,” Zane snapped. “Maybe he doesn’t much like being kidnapped by the Colonial Union.” Two weeks had not served to make the captain any more mellow about the destruction of his ship or the stranding of his crew.
“Sorry,” Bennett said.
“I’m ready to go,” Zane said.
“Two quick things,” Bennett said to me. “I’m almost done printing most of the data files you were given when we came here, so you can have those in hard copy. I can’t print the video and audio files, but I’ll run them through a processor to get you transcripts.”
“Okay, good,” I said. “What was the second thing?”
“I went around the camp with a monitor like you asked and looked for wireless signals,” Bennett said. Trujillo raised an eyebrow at this. “The monitor is solid state,” Bennett said to him. “Doesn’t send, only receives. Anyway, I think you should know there are three wireless devices still out there. And they’re still transmitting.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Jann Kranjic said.
For not the first time, I restrained the urge to punch Kranjic in the temple. “Do we really need to do this the hard way, Jann?” I said. “I’d like to pretend we’re not twelve years old and that we’re not having an ‘am to, am not’ sort of conversation.”
“I turned over my PDA just like everyone else did,” Kranjic said, and then motioned back to Beata, who was lying on her cot, a washcloth over her eyes. Beata was apparently prone to migranes. “And Beata turned in her PDA and her camera cap. You have everything we have.”
I glanced over at Beata. “Well, Beata?” I said.
Beata raised the edge of her washcloth and looked over, wincing. Then she sighed and reapplied her washcloth. “Check his underwear,” she said.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Beata,” Kranjic said.
“His underwear,” Beata said. “At least one pair has a pouch in the elastic that hides a small recorder. He’s got a pin of the Umbrian flag that’s an audio/video input. He’s probably got it on right now.”
“You bitch,” Kranjic said, subconsciously covering his pin. “You’re fired.”
“That’s funny,” Beata said, pressing the washcloth against her eyes. “We’re a thousand light-years from anywhere, we have no chance of ever getting back to Umbria, you spend your days reciting overblown notes into your underwear for a book you’ll never write, and I’m fired. Get a grip, Jann.”
Kranjic stood to make a dramatic exit. “Jann,” I said, and held out my hand. Jann snatched off his pin and pressed it into my palm.
“Want my underwear now?” He sneered.
“Keep the underwear,” I said. “Just give me the recorder.”
“Years from now, people are going to want to know the story of this colony,” Kranjic said, as he fumbled with his underwear from inside his trousers. “They’re going to want to know the story, and when they go looking for it, they’re not going to find anything. And they’re not going to find anything because its leaders spent their time censoring the only member of the press in the entire colony.”
“Beata’s a member of the press,” I said.
“She’s a camerawoman,” Kranjic said, slapping over the recorder. “It’s not the same thing.”
“I’m not censoring you,” I said. “I just can’t allow you to jeopardize the colony. I’m going to take this recorder and have Jerry Bennett print you out a transcript of the notes, in very tiny type, because I don’t want to waste paper. So you’ll have these notes. And if you go find Savitri you can tell her I asked her to give you one of her notepads. One, Jann. She needs the rest for our work. Then if you need any more you can see what the Mennonites have to say about it.”
“You want me to write out my notes,” Kranjic said. “In longhand.”
“It worked for Samuel Pepys,” I said.
“You’re assuming Jann knows how to write,” Beata mumbled from her cot.
“Bitch,” Kranjic said, and left the tent.
“It’s a stormy marriage,” Beata said laconically.