Leisa

How much longer are we going to stand for this?"

Carhart held the man with steady eyes. "We’re working on it, Owen." He said, his voice monotone and fatally serious. "Crane has been putting together a new operating program and we should have the latest bugs worked out any day."

"Bugs? What does any of this have to do with bugs?" Hodder’s eyes were wide and his insistent, almost frightened gaze fluttered from man to man. Then it locked on Willis Crane. "What about you, Crane? Tell everybody what she said to you on your night. Come on."

Crane’s chin fell to his chest. His left hand – the bad one – was posturing again, drawing tight like a crab claw. Both arms were shaking. The others could only watch. There was nothing for him. The usable meds had all run out, not that anyone at the World Space Council could have ever foreseen the need for arthritis medication among their offworld mining technician. "She said, she… uh…."

Out of mercy or simply impatience, Hodder let the man go. "When are we going to face the truth? We can’t go on like this!"

"All right, Owen." Said Carhart, now clanging the debris in his pocket with a steady rhythm. "It’s top of the list. Got it?" He eyed the room. "Whose night is it, anyway?"

"It’s his." Said Hodder without pointing or even looking up.

The other four turned to Jose in unison. Eyes leveled and mouths closed. Only the hum of circulating air kept the silence from being absolute.

"Talk to her," Carhart said very slowly, "will you Joe?"

Leisa never moved suddenly. She stood in the doorway until he motioned her into his quarters. The only light was a bar of ceiling mounted mercury vapor that cast the room in dark shades of gunmetal and slate. Her smile was a tepid thing while she hovered near the lone computer desk and Jose tried to dry his palms on the top of his sleeping bag. He wondered if she knew, if she could register his uncertainty even from a distance. If she did she gave no sign. She was always considerate, at least with him.

Her makers had given her brown hair of a length that came just below her shoulders. Composite plastic skin, a shade too light for human, looked somehow angelic in the soft illumination of the tiny room. Her features were rounded and her shape all too feminine. Multiple actuators controlled hydraulic muscles with a high enough degree of freedom to allow her movements to seem natural. She was dressed in the only clothes that she had: a set of grey coveralls that would have been more suited for a mining droid than as the sole garment of a consort for six lonely men.

Leisa sat down at a respectful distance on the far side of the bed. "Did you miss me?" She asked in a voice that sounded as if it were being heard through a intercom.

"I uh… I thought about you."

Twin optics focused on him, studying his posture. "Were you lonely?"

"Yes."

Her hand reached out for him. He wanted to pull her close. He wanted her to let him forget the details of his morose situation the way she always had for one night out of six.

"What happened? Last night I mean."

Eyelids blinked up and down. It was a reflex on her part, a function of the personality program; her lens covers needed no moisture. "I’m not sure what you’re asking."

"Owen Hodder nearly had an embolism at the meeting today. Willis Crane said that you did it again. Leisa, I thought that we talked about this."

"Willis didn’t say anything to me."

"Of course not.