Pay Me, Bug!

Chapter 33

WHEREIN Our Hero Wins a Wager in an Inconvenient Fashion

A day later they received word from Varkav Orbital Command that they were cleared to land on the planet's surface. They landed without incident and were searched once more without incident. That past, Grif decided it was time for Ebur to wake up.

Grif, Amys, Cyrus, Cutter and Bennet entered the secret hold in Bay Three to find Ktk had already assembled the bed where Ebur would spend most of his time. Cyrus and Bennet opened the stasis cylinder, and when Cutter turned it off Ebur shivered, then opened his eyes.

Grif grinned at him.

"Well come on," Ebur said, annoyed. "Quit toying with me. Turn the damn thing on already."

"Already did that. Welcome to Varkav. Now it's time to strap you to a bed and have Ktk shock you for a month and a half."

"Great!" Ebur said. "The best part of the job is when I get to be tortured by a bug."

Ktk replied, somewhat crossly, that it wasn't particularly fond of the experience either.

"What's the pool this time?" Ebur asked.

"Oh, no," Grif said. "That'd influence the outcome. We'll tell you after."

"What pool?" Bennet asked. "What are you talking about?"

"We always bet on who Ebur will get to first," Cyrus explained. "It's trickier this time around, because of the extra crew."

Ktk added that it had bet on Amys trying to kill Grif at some point.

"Stop giving Ebur ideas," Grif ordered. "But yeah, I've got money on that too."

"Hey!" Amys protested.

"Well I do," Grif said. "He's done it to you before. More than once. Must be some sort of secret urge."

"I stopped secretly wanting to kill you years ago," Amys insisted.

Cutter helped Ebur into his bed, and began applying the restraints.

"That doesn't look like much fun," Bennet observed.

"Better than what you lot had planned for him," Grif said. "Ebur's a trooper, though. That reminds me, Ebur, I have a question that needs your expertise."

Grif quickly told Ebur about the Sword, and the incident on Tyrelos station where the Sword read his mind.

"What I want to know," Grif explained, "is whether or not the Sword would have been able to read what I was thinking when I came up with the plan."

Ebur frowned. "Let me get this straight. The Sword was rifling through your mind, forcing you to remember specific pieces of information?"

Grif nodded. "Files and reports, yeah."

"And you came up with this idea while you were reliving one of those memories?"

Grif nodded again. "That's right."

Ebur shrugged. "Then you're safe. There's no way he could have known what you were thinking at the time."

"But he was reading my mind!"

"Sure," Ebur said. "He was reading it in a very specific way. Trying to recreate a memory at that level of detail is very specific work, and it's a different part of your mind. He probably felt when you made that connection, but he wouldn't have known what it was. At most he knows you thought of something, but he wouldn't know what."

"Well," Grif said, "that's certainly a load off my mind. Now I can focus on all the other things that are very likely to get us killed."

"Glad to help." Ebur grinned. "Now could you all get the hell out? I'm trying to go insane here."