Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8) (8 page)

To their surprise they
still hadn’t met any other sigmas. They were beginning to get the feeling that Querlak may be avoiding bringing Sigwald into contact with other members of her race. Querlak willingly answered questions when they could be communicated but sometimes they couldn’t understand the answers very well.

In response to Emma’s question Ell said, “Querlak says it’s made of the 6
th
element—carbon—just like the spectroscopy says.” Ell shrugged, “She says the carbon came from the first and fourth planets.”

“What’re
those other planets like?”

“Well, remember we don’t have great ability to analyze them. Our rocket is following a ballistic orbit and there’s a limit to what we can tell by
simple imaging over planetary distances. The first planet is a rocky world, bigger than Mars but smaller than Venus. It’s just a little closer to their sun than Venus but only has a wispy carbon dioxide atmosphere. The second planet is the sigmas’ home world. It’s quite a bit smaller than Earth. In fact, it’s only a little larger than Mars. It has a pretty dense oxy-nitro atmosphere, very similar to the ringworld’s though the ringworld has more oxygen and less CO
2
, I think because it has such an overabundance of plant life. The third planet is another small rocky world much like Mars, cold with very little atmosphere. The fourth planet is a gas giant. It’s more massive than Jupiter, though when gas giants get to be that heavy they start to shrink as their own gravity compresses them so it isn’t actually larger. Spectroscopy of its atmosphere shows it’s almost all hydrogen and helium so it’s not very clear where the carbon came from. Maybe it’s coming from one of the moons of the fourth planet?”

“Wait a minute,” Shan said, “what if that first planet used to have a substantial carbon dioxide atmosphere? Maybe they used
that
carbon to build the ringworld?”

Ell’s and Emma’s eyes widened. Emma said
thoughtfully, “They’d love Venus then wouldn’t they?”

Ell said, “Yeah! I was surprised that the first world had so little atmosphere! I think we’ve been right to put
Querlak off about how Sigwald got to their system!”

“She’s really been after me about how
Sigwald got to Sigma Draconis when I’ve been talking to her.” Shan said, “How about during your shifts?”

Ell and Emma both nodded.

Emma said, “I’ve been noticing an odd phenomenon. Sometimes Querlak is stumped by a question, then shortly thereafter, she not only understands it but can answer it. It’s as if Querlak asks someone smarter, but I never see her communicating! Or, and this is even weirder… sometimes I get the feeling that Querlak’s intelligence fluctuates? Sometimes she seems, I don’t know… kinda dumb. Other times, brilliant. But how and why would that happen?

Shan mused, “You know… I think you’ve pegged it. I’ve had a weird feeling
too, like sometimes I’m talking to someone different. But you’re right, it isn’t so much someone ‘different’ as someone smarter… or dimmer.”

Emma said, “Have either of you seen any useful tech that we can use here
on earth?”

Ell shrugged, “I’m pretty sure they’re using double ended ports. Those harvesters we’ve watched go by don’t have room to store the grain
they reap. They must port it somewhere. Maybe directly to their homeworld. Unless they’ve hidden them, they sure don’t have enough people on the ringworld to eat it all or even process it. Also it’s hard to imagine building the ring without ports to transport the material to the ringworld’s orbital location. If so it would fit with Shan’s thought about the atmosphere of the first planet. It’s a lot easier to move a gas through ports than a solid.”

Emma said, “I meant, tech we don’t have here.”

Ell looked a little embarrassed, “Yeah, I realized partway through that pontification that you wouldn’t care if they had ports. I guess what I was going for was that I don’t think they’ve figured out one ended ports or they’d be travelling to stars already. Obviously they really want that capability.”

Emma said, “
Back to
my
question. I think they’re really, really good at making graphene and building stuff out of it. I drew a repeating hexagonal structure with ‘sixes’ at the corners to represent carbon. I showed it to Querlak, then pointed to the road. One of those things happened where she stared at it like she didn’t have a clue for a while, then suddenly looked excited like she understood and said, ‘yes, yes.’”

Shan said, “I haven’t seen any tech we don’t have except for the huge engineering project to build the ring.
Admittedly, that’s an engineering project
many
orders of magnitude greater than anything we humans have ever accomplished. But I have a feeling that the human race is on the verge of being
able
to physically build a ring, even though I doubt we could muster the political and economic willpower to build it. The expense would be crushing!”

“So
, either they’re a lot more cooperative than we are… or it had to be absolutely
critical
that they build it.” Ell said thoughtfully.

Emma and Shan nodded.

Getting up, Ell said, “Let’s be very careful not to even
imply
that one ended ports might exist, OK?”

Chapter
Three

Allan said, “You have a call from Emma.”

Ell rolled over from where she’d been lying, pondering wedding plans
next to the sleeping Shan. “I’ll take it,” she whispered, softly getting out of bed. “Emma, what’s up?” Ell padded into the next room.

“Goldy’s
had another baby!”

“Oh! Allan, get me the feed!” She looked up at her HUD to see
Goldy and Silver, her two winged friends from Tau Ceti—at least she thought of them as her friends—huddled around a floppy little teecee. They alternated nudging the baby with their lips and wrapping their necks around each other. Their previous two children bounced around excitedly in the background, occasionally taking off in the short bursts of flight that were all they’d managed so far. “Aw, man… that’s sweet. Do you think the baby’s OK? I mean, heck even after seeing the first two kids I’m not sure I’d know if it was healthy or deformed!”

“I think it’s fine,” Emma said, “I’ve seen them upset and they don’t look upset at all.”

“So,” Ell said with a chortle, “you know what the big question will be at our next Teecee group meeting don’t you?”

“Uhhh, no, what?”

“Is it a boy, or a girl?”

Emma snorted.

***

Querlak’s TS was running 32 individuals at present for a human IQ of about 135.
Her clade, stressed by having so many sigmas in TS for long periods of time was beginning to complain that nothing good had come from the investment so far. The clade, being small, couldn’t afford to dedicate so many individuals to TS for this much time like some of the big clades that ran the world. On the other hand, if her clade made a breakthrough on some tech, especially how to get to the stars, they’d be able to expand and perhaps
become
a ruling clade.

Watching Sigwald slide down the road she wondered how many sigwalds were in his TS at present. At different times he responded very differently—almost like a completely different person—suggesting more or fewer or perhaps different individuals in his TS. But, he didn’t seem to understand Querlak’s drawings of ancestor-descendant trees forming a clade
or of part of the clade forming a TS. Or perhaps he was just pretending to be obtuse?

He readily seemed to confirm that he came from another star, but couldn’t or wouldn’t point out which one. Interrogatives about how Sigwald got from his star to Querlak’s were met with the word
they’d agreed indicated a lack of understanding. Sigwald had indicated interest in how graphene was formed and from looking at him—all boxed up in magnesium—he did seem to lack that technology, unless there was some other reason to cover oneself in metal.

Querlak had decided to take Sigwald to one of the carbon allotrope fabrication
and repair shops there on the ring. It made harvesters and planters and repaired broken items. She hoped that seeing the fabrication techniques and having them explained would provide the good will for Sigwald to teach her how to travel between the stars.

However, Querlak greatly feared that once other sigmas saw Sigwald, word would get out and eventually Querlak’s clade would be pushed aside by one of the huge clades that could provide hundreds of members and a truly genius level IQ. Querlak hoped that the fabrication center would be working on an off schedule to Querlak’s clade so that they could enter the center during its down time. Several members of Querlak’s clade worked in fabrication so
she should be able to explain the processes to some extent. If only they could show Sigwald the facility without any other sigmas seeing Sigwald…

She dropped her TS, saving
her clade’s resources until she and Sigwald got to the facility.

***

Ell’s “Raquel” AI said, “You have a call from AJ Richards.”

Ell frowned, “Is that the AJ from skiing in Colorado?”

“Yes.”

Ell had liked AJ’s quiet nature, especially in contrast to
his obnoxious ski buddy Jordan. “Put him on.” She switched to her Raquel accent, “Hey AJ, what’s going on?”

“A lot of things. First I wanted to apologize for… Jordan… and for the fact that I hang around with such a shallow jerk.”

Ell laughed, “Well, you
should
be embarrassed about that. Apology accepted. What’s number two?”

“Well, numbers two and three are related. I find myself thinking about Morgan all the time since
that weekend. Does she have a boyfriend who just didn’t come on that ski trip?”

“I’
m pretty sure she doesn’t. But Jordan might have poisoned the waters for you with the Kinrais sisters.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that. That’s why I’m talking to you. I’m no fast talking lady charmer like Jordan. So I’m thinking that when I graduate I’d like to move to North Carolina and try to ‘run into her,’ far, far from Jordan.”

“Wow! That’s a serious commitment to a romantic goal!”

“Yeah, when I say it out loud, it sounds crazy to me too. But, I think about it all the time.”

“So what’s item number three?”

“Well, I’d need a job in North Carolina and I’d
really
love to work for D5R. I’m hoping you’ll be my inside connection. Would you know if they might have any use for a ‘wet behind the ears’ civil engineer? I can’t find them advertising
any
jobs, much less a civil engineer job.”

“Hah!” Ell laughed, “Well HR always says they ‘just want good people’ and they get most of them by word of mouth.
There’s a philosophy at D5 that says if you’re smart and decent and they hire you, they’ll find
something
useful for you to do. They do need engineers. If you send me your résumé, I’ll get it to the HR people and put in a good word.”

“That’d be great!”

“Don’t get your hopes up too high.”

“I won’t. I’
ll still be looking at other possibilities.”

“Good move, catch you later.”

A moment later Ell was studying AJ’s records. He looked pretty good ‘on paper’ with impressive grades and scores though Ell was well aware that some people who tested well didn’t actually do all that well in the real world. And, he’d as much as admitted he had to work hard for his grades, so he probably wasn’t a genius. However, the fact that he hadn’t brought his good scores up, either while in Colorado skiing or during his call, rubbed Ell the right way.

After a moment Ell said, “Nancy.” Trusting that her AI would hook her up to Nancy in
human resources, she continued, “I have a résumé I’m forwarding you. Raquel met him and liked him. Check him out and if you don’t find anything odd, I’d like to hire him. I’m thinking that we might try him out by having him work with Carter to engineer better processes for collecting the ore from the asteroids. I think the waldoes are still spending too much ‘hands on’ time just to keep the mining going.”

Nancy
chuckled, “He’s cute. You sure that his picture isn’t influencing your decision making process Dr. Donsaii?”

Ell sighed theatrically. “You have
got
to start calling me ‘Ell.’ And, no, I hadn’t noticed his looks at all. Let me look back at his picture. Hmm,” she sniffed, “I’ll grant you that he
is
somewhat attractive. That had
no
bearing on my recommendation though.”

Nancy chuckled, “Sure Bosslady. Of course
... No doubt.”

***

Ryan looked up from working with John Parker to refine the control of his prosthetic hand. Most of the remaining issues were related to interpretation of sensory input regarding “position sense.” Those sensations were hard for John to describe. Programming the neurotrodes to deliver appropriate signals to the correct fibers of John’s sensory nerves that would give him proprioceptive perceptions like he had experienced from his real hand had been very difficult. Far more difficult than touch and heat and cold anyway. However, they were gradually understanding what type of signal they had to inject into the proprioceptive axons of the nerve for John to have a correct sensation of his hand’s position.

Ryan saw Ell Donsaii step
out of the machine shop.

He
got up and walked her way. “Ms. Donsaii…?”

“Mr. Keller?” She smiled, “Though I would hope that we would be on a first name basis by now?”

He looked abashed, “Ell.” He found it difficult to believe that he had a hard time calling her by her first name when he so desperately wanted to ask her out. “Um, I know you love Velos. I happen to have tickets to the show in Greensboro?”

She grinned at him, “I’m really flattered.”

Ryan’s heart thumped hard as she leaned closer to him. He noticed a fresh clean evergreen smell. Probably her shampoo he thought.

But then she
dashed his hopes by saying quietly, “Sad to say I already have a boyfriend. I just go to great lengths to hide him away from my public life here.” She glanced aside, then back. “So much as I’d love to go to the Velos concert, you should take someone else with that extra ticket.” She grinned at him again and raised an eyebrow, “By the way, Bridget likes Velos.” Ell poked him gently in the chest, “
And
she thinks you’re really cute.” Ell winked and was gone before Ryan’s mind got back on track.

***

Emma rapped on the frame of Ell’s open door. “Hey, have you seen the latest tirade from Michael Fentis?”

Ell looked away from her screen, a bemused expression on her face. She slowly shook her head.

“This time no one trapped him or badgered him. An interviewer said something about him being the ‘world’s fastest man’ and he just went off. The interviewer hadn’t said anything about you or your run up to the vault, but apparently Fentis thought he had, or was about to, imply something about it. Anyway, Fentis exploded, saying that he’d had that video of you analyzed, that parts of it were fake and that it didn’t actually show you going very fast at all. Then he implied that
you
were the one that faked it.”

Ell tilted her head curiously, “Do you think he’s lost touch with reality?”

“You mean, ‘gone crazy?’”

Ell nodded.

“No, I think he’s completely sane, just a jerk. Well… and this thing about you is really irritating him.” Emma grinned, “He said if you could run even close to the speed claimed on that video, you would have entered a track meet a long time ago. He says that the fact you haven’t done so proves that you can’t, and that if you were a decent person you would just come out and admit it.”

Ell grinned crookedly, “Well, you’re right
… he is kind of a jerk.”

Emma looked at her musingly for a moment, “
Can
you run that fast?”

Ell just shrugged. “Who knows?
Never tried.”

***

Emma watched in growing excitement as Querlak landed in front of a large building. Finally an end to the
interminable
fields of crops! Her AI said, “Shan is contacting you. He’s ready to take over for his shift with Sigwald.”

“Connect me to him
… Shan! Querlak’s taking us to a building! We’re just about to enter. I’m turning over control to you, but I’m going to stay to watch a few minutes. I’ve been bored senseless and I’m not leaving
just
as something finally happens.”

“OK…” Shan said. “Looks like the building is made out of the same stuff as the road. Do you think they make
everything
out of carbon? Is it all graphene?”

“No, graphene’s too flexible to hold up a wall. It’s incredible in tension but
in compression it’d just fold. It’d be like trying to build a house out of nylon cloth.”

Querlak looked a little tentative as she entered the building.
She looked around a moment, then waved Sigwald forward almost furtively. Emma had the feeling they were doing something illicit.

To Shan and Emma’s astonishment
the huge building, though filled with equipment, had not a single sigma, other than Querlak, in it. Querlak led them into the building, at first looking about as if she were curious herself. Then another of those transformations rolled over her, changing her from a somewhat confused and dull appearance, to sharp and confident.

Emma wondered why she had that feeling of a change in Querlak. There wasn’t any way she could truly
be comprehending Querlak’s body language.

Querlak
stopped in front of a large machine and began pointing out its features in the pidgin English-sigma that they had been speaking. She opened the front of it like she worked with it all the time. From the look of the seals at the opening it appeared as if the inside was pressure tight. Inside were nozzles of varying sizes hanging on arms over a long bed.