Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show by Edmund R. Schubert Read Free Book Online Page B

Earth?
    “Who is it from?” asked Mazer, knowing perfectly well who it would turn out to be. So the boy had taken his time before pushing the matter. Time enough to learn how impossible his task was? Probably not.
    Mazer was sitting on the toilet—which, thanks to the Formics’ gravitic technology, was a standard gravity-dependent chemical model. Mazer was one of the few still in the service who remembered the days of air-suction toilets in weightless spaceships, which worked about half the time. That was the era when ship captains would sometimes be cashiered for wasting fuel by accelerating their ships just so they could take a dump that would actually get pulled away from their backside by something like gravity.
    “Lieutenant Hyrum Graff.”
    And now he had the pestiferous Hyrum Graff, who would probably be even more annoying than null-g toilets.
    “Erase it.”
    “I am not allowed to erase ansible communications,” said the female voice blandly. It was always bland, of course, but it felt particularly bland when saying irritating things.
    I could make you erase it, if I wanted to go to the trouble of reprogramming you. But Mazer didn’t say it, in case it might alert the program safeguards in some way. “Read it.”
    “Male voice?”
    “Female,” snapped Mazer.
    “Admiral Rackham, I’m not sure you understood the gravity of our situation. We have two possibilities: Either we will identify the best possible commanders for our war against the Formics, or we will have you as our commander. So either you will help us identify the traits that are most likely to be present in the ideal commander, or you will be the commander on whom all the responsibility rests.”
    “I understand that, you little twit,” said Mazer. “I understood it before you were born.”
    “Would you like me to take down your remarks as a reply?” asked the computer.
    “Just read it and ignore my carping.”
    The computer returned to the message from Lieutenant Graff. “I have located your wife and children. They are all in good health, and it may be that some or all of them might be glad of an opportunity to converse with you by ansible, if you so desire. I offer this, not as a bribe for your cooperation, but as a reminder, perhaps, that more is at stake here than the importunities of an upstart lieutenant pestering an admiral and a war hero on a voyage into the future.”
    Mazer roared out his answer. “As if I had need of reminders from you !”
    “Would you like me to take down your remarks as—”
    “I’d like you to shut yourself down and leave me in—”
    “A reply?” finished the computer, ignoring his carping.
    “Peace!” Mazer sighed. “Take down this answer: I’m divorced, and my ex-wife and children have made their lives without me. To them I’m dead. It’s despicable for you to attempt to raise me from the grave to burden their lives. When I tell you that I have nothing to tell you about command it’s because I truly do not know any answers that you could possibly implement.
    “I’m desperate for you to find a replacement for me, but in all my experience in the military, I saw no example of the kind of commander that we need. So figure it out for yourself—I haven’t any idea.”
    For a moment he allowed his anger to flare. “And leave my family out of it, you contemptible…”
    Then he decided not to flame the poor git. “Delete everything after ‘leave my family out of it.’”
    “Do you wish me to read it back to you?”
    “I’m on the toilet!”
    Since his answer was nonresponsive, the computer repeated the question verbatim.
    “No. Just send it. I don’t want to have the zealous Lieutenant Graff wait an extra hour or day just so I can turn my letter into a prizewinning school essay.”
     
    But Graff’s question nagged at him. What should they look for in a commander?
    What did it matter? As soon as they developed a list of desirable traits, all the bureaucratic buttsniffs would