Chapter Three of my current wip. All and any comments very much appreciated

First day at base-camp and it felt good to have a clipboard, paper and pencil in hand again. Jess wasn’t entirely anti-Tech, but he did value privacy. He valued his team’s well-being, too. That’s why this stock-take was his first check on every new tour. If the overseers were quick about it, any shortages could be rectified while the STC-Transporter was still in orbit. But not everyone was happy about it.

“You think I’ve got nothing better to do on a first day?” the Catering Overseer Canipse complained. “The preevos left us a list.”

“So they did,” Jess agreed. “Now you’re going to check that list against actual stocks. Here, at base. And at the far units. Just as the Textile and Domestic Overseers are going to check theirs. Now.”

Canipse turned away, but not before Jess saw his sneer. He sealed his lips on a sigh. There always was one. Still, as Catering Overseer, Canipse would be busy flitting between the farms. At least for a while.

Jess marked off several more items on his Day One To-Do list, these now taken care of by the Textile, Domestic and Catering ops and their overseers. He himself checked the accommodation cells, better known as the hives.

Of prefabricated construction using carbon-based laminates, the hives were rated as near indestructible. Jess didn’t doubt it – in normal environments. But they were also biodegradable, given sufficient time, and not only was Landmass 6 brimming with a nightmare of potentially dangerous beasts – according to Briefing – but the entire area was subject to high rainfall, if only in the ‘wet season’, a season that lasted half the year. It didn’t help that the base-camp was set in the mountains to the southwest of the landmass – right in the teeth of rain-carrying winds. The one advantage: it would be cooler up here than down at sea-level where the target breeding pool hunted and fished. Having failed to dent the walls near to ground level with his Tech-issue tough leather boots, Jess marked ‘hive walls’ off the list.

The basic checks complete or delegated, Jess sounded a whistle which gathered to him his Obs.

“You’ve stowed your gear? You know who’s sleeping where? No probs? Joel? Shelek? Kookka?” As he called their names everyone nodded an okay. “Bribat?”

“Everything’s fine. But most call me Brib. I prefer.”

Jess made a note of it, on paper. Never trust to internal memory what can be externally recorded.

“Saker? Miax? Zeke? Antel? Armar?” He continued the roll-call before completing the routine with introductions. “Buds Joel and Brib. As you know, I’m your Zem – you know that ‘cause my silk’s a darker yellow than yours. Our Programme Techs think of such things. Everything to make our lives easier, yea? What you mightn’t know is that Armar, here, is the unit’s second Obs. So if I’m not available, you go to Armar. Got that? Good. You wizened wits who’ve grown hard shells –” he waited for the chuckles “– you know what comes next. Time to go sightseeing.”

As he turned away to lead his Obs to the flier port, he heard Brib ask, “Is he always like this? He’s not like other Zems where I’ve served.”

It was Kookka who answered. “Jess likes to keep it close. We’ve none got family, not any more. So Jess reckons the clutch should be that.”

“Just like being back with your milk-mother,” Miax added.

“Except here you work,” said Armar.

Jess led them out to the fly-port and climbed aboard the nearest flier. He didn’t take a seat straight off but stood just within, ushering his clutch of observers in. He grinned, knowing what was to come: the wrangle he had every time he did this. But it no longer riled him, merely amused. Kookka punched his shoulder as he passed by. Kookka, too, knew what was to happen.

Sure enough, a grey-clad, grey-skinned Tech emerged from the Techs’ hive beside the port and hastened over.

“Zem Jess, apologies,” the Tech said whilst sounding superior. “It is not usual for a Zem to want our services on the first day.”

“And neither do I want them,” Jess replied. “Though Ops Overseers Canipse and Guul will shortly need a shuttle to their respective farms. Myself, I’m taking my Obs to view the pools’ range in its entirety. While away I shall allocate Obs to skeins within that pool. As is my way.”

“Why you bother to say….” Kookka murmured, heads touching to amplify to each other.

“All part of the game,” Jess murmured back to him, hand over mouth. “Can’t have them knowing that we know that they know our thoughts.”

“Oh, but only when standing this close. And I liked that added tag,” Kookka said. “That’s sure to wind them.”

“A miss-phrasing, of course,” said the Tech. “It is we Techs who allocate which skeins to which Obs.”

“Perhaps with other Zems of other clutches,” Jess answered him, leaning in so close their heads almost touched, in imitation of how he had been with Kookka. “But I have found my clutch works best when I allocate them.”

Behind him he was aware of his clutch now moving in closer, to watch, to listen, to observe – and later, to laugh. Jess had been through this before, it was part of his behaviour that the Nexus Yeho had described as non-conformist.

“Let me explain,” Jess said in amicable tone. “First, as a team, they are answerable to me, not to you. Secondly, with the exception of the two buds, they have each served several tours with me, while they are entirely new to you. Can you say you know them as well as I do – without consulting records on the STC? Which soon will be gone. I know your methods. You Techs don’t even grace us with names but pull numbers like it’s a lottery.”

“We….”

But as Jess well knew, the Tech needed to consult with others to know what to say.

“And let’s speak honestly here,” Jess fired into the silence. “If you Techs were so great at understanding social nuances you wouldn’t need an Obs team to observe and evaluate. Would you. You’d do it yourselves. And now we’re on that subject, as the Zem here, I do need the previous data. I didn’t notice it available in my hive. Instead of faffing around here, you might organise that?”

Jess turned back to his clutch, shooing them inside as if in a nursery.
“Come on, time to strap. Two bits to lift off.”

The Tech watched, still in a seeming daze though more likely in a comms-trance.

“Oh brother,” Kookka said as Jess took his seat. “You may have overstepped this time.”

“And what will they do to me? By the time the STC returns all they’ll see is another tour completed, satisfactorily.”

Jess hit the door-button. But the door didn’t close. He turned to see what the problem. The Tech was the problem, standing there, wedging it open with his foot, mouth dropped to belt-level.

“But….”

Jess looked, waiting for the Tech to say more.

“But….”

“I think he’s trying to say that only Techs know how to control these fliers,” the bud Joel offered.

“Hands up,” Jess said, “all those Obs who know how to control a flier.”

He held up his own hand, as did Kookka. The bud Joel hesitated, then raised his.

“Care to count them?” Jess asked the Tech.

“But that isn’t….” the Tech drifted to silence.

Before he could enter another comms-trance, Jess told the Tech to remove his foot from the flier. “Else I shall have to report you as failing in your duties to my team. And don’t fret, we’ll bring the flier back in one piece.”

As with the STC-Transporters, the fliers were designed as dodecahedrons. This allowed two Obs each at the five down-slanting panels, each dual-seat with an interface on the up-slanting panel above. But those controls were primarily environmental. To control the flier required entry to the psi-sphere.

As taught by the Fire-keepers of Colabri, Jess imagined his mental activity as peaks on a graph that slowly flattened until they presented a smooth up-curving arc. Meanwhile, he gained greater awareness of the star-tetrahedron formed of the electro-magnetic field around him. He took control of that magnetic field, turning it by ninety degrees And ninety more. And there was the connection he sought – in the psi-sphere, the sixteenth dimension.

The flier lifted. He directed it westward, first to fly over the coastal plain before turning northward, across the peninsula’s dividing ridge. But while still in sight of the flier-port he saw beneath him that most irksome Catering Overseer, Canipse. He was wildly gesticulating at two other Techs.

“What d’you think he wants?” Kookka asked.

“Probably requesting more toilet paper,” Jess said, his voice seeming to come from afar.

Sat across the pentagonal cabin from Jess and Kookka, Brib chuckled. “Is that ‘cause he talks a load of crap?”

Sat beside the bud, Armar let out a snort. “Though I shouldn’t encourage it does seem like this Brib is going to fit in with the others just fine.”