Lost in Transmission (10 page)

“What did you do?” Conrad said, dumbfounded. “You shot them. You bastard.”

Ho was matter-of-fact. “Judgment call, sir. One of these girls was clearly irrational, and both were violent and presented a danger not only to themselves and each other but very clearly to you as well. I felt it would be better if they were both dead for a while. The ship has instructions to record all such incidents of violence, so we can show them the whole scene when they wake up, and maybe they'll think twice next time they feel the urge.”

Conrad looked from Ho to Steve to Andres, blinking. Something wet and warm ran down his forehead, and he wiped it away, then glanced down at himself and realized he was covered in tiny, bright spatters of blood. “Who . . . who authorized this? Who gave you permission to kill people?”

“It's implicit in my job description, sir. It has to be. If you feel this particular action was in error, take it up with the captain. She may see your side, in which case I'll receive a punishment, and I don't think the captain much likes me so that's probably what will happen. But I would do it again, sir. And I have backing from the King of Barnard himself, so if shove comes to push, I have some ability to push back. I'm not stupid, Mr. Mursk, and don't appreciate your treating me like I am.”

Conrad continued to gape in disbelief at these men from security. “Who said anything about your being stupid?”

“You've always thought so,” Ho replied. “It's no great secret. You can think what you like, sir, but don't come down here and try to do my job for me. You haven't got the stomach for it.”

At that, Steve Grush spoke up. “He
is
right, sir. He did the right thing under the circumstances.”

Conrad shook his head. “He could've used a tazzer. He could have put them both to sleep, or separated them and dragged them to the fax.”

“See, that's where
you're
stupid,” Ho said. “What's the difference, if I tazz them or if I brainshoot them? Either way they lose a period of consciousness. Either way, they wake up with a hole in the memory, and none in the skull. And the fact is, I don't have a tazzer with me right now, so I made a judgment call.”

Conrad straightened, and glared at the other man. “Don't enjoy your job too much, Ho—not under my command. I'll talk to the captain, but unless you hear differently, you are to stop carrying projectile weapons, or any other form of lethal force, onboard this ship. That applies to the people under your command as well. You will proceed to the aft inventory and request a tazzer, and you will keep said tazzer with you, fully charged, at all times. When you need to immobilize a person, that is the instrument of first choice, with your own body being the instrument of second choice if for some reason the tazzer fails to operate. Do I make myself clear?”

It was an effort to keep his voice from quavering. This was not a reaction of fear, although he and Ho had certainly had their run-ins in the past. But Conrad had just watched two people murdered right in front of him, the blood splattering in his face, and although the two could be revived by any fax machine, and probably would be within a couple of days, the sight of their murder wasn't something he could shake off so easily. His body was screaming, Fight or flee! Barf or faint, do
something
!

Ho seemed to sense this and was about to say something, probably along the lines of Conrad being soft, or a pussy, or needing to leave the hard decisions in the hands of someone capable. And once a thing like that was out in the open, on the record as it were, it would hang over them all for the rest of eternity. And that just wasn't acceptable, so Conrad held up a hand and jumped right in with, “I don't want to hear any argument about it, Ho. You're already in violation of any reasonable code of conduct. Throw insubordination on top of that, and it could be a long, long time before you come out of storage.
Do I make myself clear?
”

Ho just rolled his eyes. “Very clear, sir. Full of mystery you are not.”

Conrad straightened farther, staring down the three security officers. “That will be all, Mr. Ng. The three of you are dismissed. Send someone else to clean up this mess.”

The three did as they were told, shuffling out of the chamber and up the stairs, but they seemed more amused than upset by Conrad's reaction, and he guessed, wearily, that the matter was far from settled.

chapter eight

the unpacking

The target asteroid was nameless and would remain so,
both because it was a minor body—smaller than
Newhope
—and because it was about to be destroyed. Or rather, reshaped and reborn. They pulled up alongside it on August 1 of the year Barnard 123, or Queendom 416, or—according to Robert, in a particularly pedantic mood—2680 by the old Christian calendar.

“Well,” Conrad said, cracking his knuckles, “it's finally time to unpack.”

But when he turned to Xmary, sitting beside him on the bridge, her face was misty rather than exultant.

“What's the matter? Cap'n?”

The corners of her lips twitched up for a moment, and then sank once more. “My ship,” she said sadly. “My beautiful ship. In a few minutes, we'll split open her belly, pull out her entrails, and feast upon her corpse.”

Robert looked back at them, clearly about to say something, but Conrad headed him off. On matters of crew morale, Conrad had clear jurisdiction, and concerning the emotional well-being of Xiomara Li Weng in particular, it was as close to absolute as these things ever got.

“It's not as bad as all that, ma'am. We're not pulling out
Newhope
's entrails, just, maybe, pumping her stomach. And, you know, going through her pockets. She'll never be the same, it's true: the clean, needle lines of her shape will be broken up a bit. To my mind, she's spreading her wings. Or perhaps she's a stork with four thousand babies to deliver, plus whole communities for them to live in, and infrastructure to support them. But
Newhope,
my dear, will live on. For a long time, I think.”

But Xmary was shaking her head. “She won't be aerodynamic, Conrad. She won't be
properly equipped
. She won't ply the starways ever again—not without a major overhaul, or unless we strip her down even farther. From starship to tugboat, in one vicious cut.” She dropped her voice to a murmur, so that only Conrad could hear her—although technically, the wellstone around them was more than capable of picking up her voice, amplifying and recording it, and since the fundamental programming had been laid down by Queendom engineers, one had to assume it was doing exactly that. But barring the unlikely return of said starship into the hands of said Queendom engineers, this mattered little.

It should also be noted that in the Queendom, belief in far-future “quantum archaeologists” was widespread and unshakable. People generally agreed, for whatever reason, that their actions, their imprints, their electromagnetic
ghosts
would be open to future scrutiny, even where the events themselves took place in the absence of witnesses.
Information persists,
people were fond of saying. This was a reasonable supposition, and in many ways provably true, for such archaeologists already existed in small numbers. But for the most part the belief sprang from the same irrational roots as the urban and rural and faery myths of earlier ages. And the queen's subjects could not know of the terrible changes in store for Sol and her planets—changes that would crush a great deal of this information completely out of the observable universe.

Be that as it may, the conversation was as private as it could reasonably be in a programmable environment, in a quantum universe, with live human beings all around. And so the two of them spoke and thought and emoted without artifice, without any thought of audience or posterity. Such exchanges are, when preserved, the rare treasures of quantum archaeology.

Xmary went on, in her quiet voice. “I hate this. I never wanted to be the captain of a tugboat. What kind of job is that, for a spoiled girl from Denver?”

For a moment, Conrad was surprised to hear her say this. Unpacking was good, right? Getting the hell out of this prison! But then, thinking about it, he supposed he too might feel some ambivalence about it if his role were about to shrink and shift so dramatically.

In point of fact, he was personally very excited, because once the initial colony structures were printed and assembled, there would be need—enormous need!—for the design of new buildings and support systems. The Kingdom would require an architect or two, and while Conrad had only ever designed and built one major structure, and that a mere school exercise which was torn down afterward to make room for another project, Conrad knew he had it in him to do the job. He was a decent matter programmer in the aesthetic sense, as the bridge's current motif of white gold and pearl could attest, and really a pretty good one on the materials science side as well.

Why, at age seventeen he'd pulled the lining out of a midsized planette and fashioned it into a rigid one-way superreflector—the photosail of the good ship
Viridity
. He'd handled that ship's climate controls and waste disposal systems as well, and had even taught Xmary enough about programming to support two abortive mutinies. During his later studies, he'd even discovered a new material, which was named after him in the
Encyclopedia of Elements and Compounds
: Mursk Metal. It wasn't the strongest or the brightest or the most conductive of materials, but it had the interesting property of “intermittent optical superconductance as function of temperature.” From 84 to 104 Kelvin, and again from 200 to 231 Kelvin, the stuff was a pure insulator with an optical band gap of almost 10 eV. Opaque, yes, but at every other temperature it transmitted photons with zero energy loss, making it a new and unique member of the optical superconductor family. Conrad, all fired up to design his building, had intended the stuff to be used as window glass. To the best of his knowledge no one had ever used it that way except himself, but somebody at World University had later found an application for it in hypercomputer designs.

Conrad supposed he was still technically accruing royalties on that in his Queendom bank accounts. Twenty dollars a year? A hundred? The price of a good massage, anyway, or a couple of fax trips around the solar system. None of this meant much of anything by itself—probably half the adults in the Queendom earned occasional royalties on something or other—but it was a visible sign, something that Conrad could point to in an argument to defend his supposed architectural abilities. In fact, no such argument had ever come up, nor was it likely to. The point was simply that Conrad was going to do some designing, both in orbit around P2 and on its surface, and no force in the Kingdom could prevent him, or was likely even to try.

What he said to Xmary was, “I think it will be exciting. You never wanted to be a starship captain either, but you've been doing it for nearly half your subjective life now, and have grown nicely into the role. Right? And it seems to me there's a lot more to do on an interplanetary vessel than an interstellar one. For a hundred years you traveled in a straight line, and for twenty-three in a big spiral. Now you'll have a new destination every couple of months. A new cargo, a new mission. Maybe not as many lives will depend on you at any particular moment, but no civilization could possibly rise here without your efforts.”

That didn't seem to mollify her. She said, “Conrad, I want to live on a world. I want to stay with
you
. But then someone else would be
Newhope
's captain, and what would I be? A party girl? I
will
drive the tugboat. I'll stay here with
Newhope,
bumping around Barnard system, but you won't. I know you won't. You're going to Planet Two.”

And here was a thought which had honestly never occurred to Conrad, though surely it should have. In his mind, somehow, Barnard system was conceived as a single place. But in fact, of course, it was hundreds of light-minutes across, and consisted of many thousands of individual places, not even counting the surface of the planet, which was an infinity of places unto itself. None of which would contain Xmary.

Suddenly, he felt his own eyes grow misty, though he kept his voice brave. “Oh. Well. Not to worry, dear; you'll be stopping frequently at P2. I mean, I have to assume you will. As the main population center, it stands to reason it will also be the center of industry, and therefore the main destination for cargo. Right? So you'll pop down to the planet, or I'll come up, and we'll see each other nearly as often as we have on
Newhope
.”

“Not as often. Not nearly as often.”

Conrad sighed, because she was right. There was no sense kidding themselves about it. They had loved and fought, grown bored with each other in the perpetual sameness of
Newhope
and then rekindled their passions as Barnard approached. And every step—even the negative ones—seemed to make them stronger in the end. But here was a new challenge of an altogether different sort: time and space, unfettered.

“Well,” he said carefully, “maybe so, but it's only for a while. When we get the collapsiter grid installed, we'll be able to fax back and forth at leisure, and this whole ship will be just one more room in my big, beautiful house. We'll have the speed of light between us, and nothing more.”

“And when is that?” she asked sadly. “Twenty years from now? Forty? A collapsiter grid doesn't just grow, like a houseplant. It's built up from pieces of pieces of pieces.”

“Maybe,” he acknowledged. “Maybe that long. We'll see, I guess.”

But the time had come for personal conversations to cease; the target rock was in position, snared with electromagnetic grapples and pressors, and a team of gleaming humanoid robots was out there wrapping physical lanyards around it, to keep it from sliding around during passfax operations. The bridge was plastered with views from various points on the ship and a few—lurching sickeningly—from the robots themselves.

Xmary raised her voice to normal command levels. “Brenda, what is your status?”

A well-window appeared in the bulkhead, showing Brenda Bohobe in the aft inventory. She looked up and said with all seriousness, “Ma'am, the passfax clears every diagnostic I can push it through. It has been edge-on to the particle flux for most of our journey, and has suffered some cosmic ray streaking, which I've repaired, but no other serious damage or degradation. As far as I'm concerned, you can throw open the doors and begin operation.”

Xmary nodded, her demeanor once again professional and leaderly. “Information?”

“Nothing to report,” Agnes said.

“Systems?”

“Everything is nominal,” said Zavery.

“Engineering?”

When Money Izolo appeared, he said, “The door has three latches, ma'am, and I've opened them all singly, while leaving the others closed. They all function, no problem. I can't test the force on the hinge motors, but I can verify that the coils are working, so there is virtually nothing that can go wrong.”

“I've heard that before, mister. Are you prepared for unknown emergencies?”

There was a twinkling in Money's eye, and he said, “Tell me what the unknowns are, ma'am, and I'll tell you if I'm prepared for them. We're as ready as we can be, yah? Let's quit dawdling already, and unpack our bags.”

Robert, for once, was not queried. He'd done his job already, guiding the ship alongside this nameless rock, and as far as the unpacking operations were concerned he was nothing more than a spectator. He fidgeted under the strain of this, but did not offer any opinions. Nor did Bascal, who sat a good deal more regally in his “temporary” chair behind the captain's.

Xmary paused for a few moments, sucking her teeth and frowning, before saying, “Open the doors, please, and activate the passfax.”

Newhope
's mass buffers were already full, stocked with
the assortment of elements a fledgling colony was expected to need, although the more reactive atoms had been compounded with carbon or hydrogen and stored as small, inert molecules. But the colony structures were all stored as data, in the same shielded memory cores which held the colonists themselves, and to instantiate them all would take nearly ten megatons of raw material. Hauling that mass all the way from Sol—even within the confines of an ertial shield—would be wasteful madness. Might as well haul the artifacts themselves! Instead,
Newhope
was designed to live off the land, making use of the materials native to Barnard system.

In a sense,
Newhope
was a fax transaction unto herself: both the transmitter and receiver, and also the carrier of the signal. In fact she
was
the signal, packaged as small and as light as the Queendom engineers could cram her. All she carried were emergency supplies: the organics and alkalai metals and electrolytes of human bodies and foodstuffs, and the heavier metals and semiconductors of wellstone and other programmable materials. There was also a supply of basic industrial metals, heavy on titanium and gold, plus a contingency periodic table with at least a ton of every stable element, just in case. And some of this would no doubt prove handy—perhaps even priceless—in the metal-poor environs of Barnard.

“He's an elder star, our Barnard,” the king said to no one in particular. “Not one of the original Titans—the hydrogen supergiants that blew themselves to plasma in the first gigayear of creation—nor even one of their helium-swollen children the Olympians. He's safely removed from that bitter past, that stellar ice age when even lithium was still a dream. He tastes of metal, and it's a good thing or we'd've never come to see him in the first place! But he is not of Sol's young, fat lineage. He's a grandchild, this runt star of ours, not some great-great spoiled in a carbon-rich nursery. His parents sent him off starving with a half-empty purse. And here we are, raiding it! Thank you, old man! There are younger, hotter stars than Sol, and they'll burn out sooner, choking on the iron in their bellies, and then Sol herself will swell and die.

“But Old Man Barnard will still be here, whiling away the eons. He learned frugality at an early age, learned to plan and save for the long haul. By the time he breathes his last, the galaxy will be dark with collapsars and neutronium, with iron nebulae and calcium dwarfs. These ancient, red-orange stars will be the last to go, the fading lights of creation.”