So despite getting all excited about rescuing "Prince Caucalsia's colony," Heller and Krak are in no hurry to get on with Mission Earth, and spend the next five days alternately studying and boinking in Gris' room. Gris is eager to get Heller off-planet, but that would require a "body bug" to be surgically implanted into the commando so Gris could monitor him remotely, and the mere thought of such a procedure is enough to make Gris indisposed. So he decides to poke around the computer again.
Hisst is secretly chilling out an Endow's place, but Gris is one of the few who knows it, so he uses a fake appointment to go to Hisst's office and use the terminal there. He checks his profile again and sees his multiple promotions, then asks about Prince Caucalsia but gets a reference to the old legend, while a search for "Royal Successors, Pretenders" gets "Really? You really want 125,000 years of threats to throne?"
Have I mentioned that the computer is my favorite character?
Gris' searches for "Nepogat" and the "Fortress of Dar" keep leading in circles, until the computer suggests "If you are so interested in fables we suggest you consult a competent poet." This is the stuff that anyone who's worked in customer service dreams about, an automated reference system that not only answers questions, but points out when the user is being stupid. A lot of the world's problems could be solved if more people understood the limits of their intelligence.
Hoping to accomplish something, Gris prints out the records for the prior explorations of Earth, which makes a clerk complain about using up all the paper. Then inspiration strikes - if Heller were broke, he couldn't buy off the guards. So Gris checks on Heller's financial records and learns that the combat engineer gets paid ten times more than Gris, never misses a bill payment, and has a credit rating of zero because he's statistically overdue to die in action. But he also gambles on occasion with his buddies. At that, a lightbulb appears over Gris' head.
Back to Chapter Five
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