The Collapsium (15 page)

“Hmm,” he said. “Yes, well.”

He never had discovered a comfortable response for statements like that one. Not that he heard them all
that
often, but those little copper statues had been pretty popular for a while until, mercifully, fashion had turned its attention elsewhere. Talented students and componeers seemed to prefer living role models to dead ones, for which he could hardly blame them. Less comprehensible were the ordinary citizens, with no interest in collapsium or telecommunications or telegravitic engineering, who nonetheless made him a subject of their public admiration. For his wealth, he supposed, although many of the Queendom’s plutocrats reaped as much scorn and envy as actual respect.

So why Bruno? Who could say. Of such mysteries was society constructed. Tamra, at least, had always treated him like an ordinary person. She’d liked the idea that he was smart and famous and rich—with all of humanity to choose from, it surely helped to have some screening criteria—but
having grown up a princess, she wasn’t terribly
impressed
by these things. Impressing her was a whole separate enterprise. He truly wished he could return the favor, disregarding her station and influence to deal with the woman herself, but that was a trick he’d never quite managed in all their years together.

Not that he’d been deferential, exactly. She didn’t go for that, and in fact he’d been a real bum sometimes, pushing her away, trampling her feelings half deliberately so she’d send him off to “exile” in his laboratory. But even then he’d been acutely conscious of her station. Perhaps that’s
why
he did it, or part of the why: to rebel against the obvious power imbalance between them. And to have something to make up for, yes. They were always a great pair for making up.

“He’s pleased to meet you,” Tamra said to this Deliah van Skettering, meanwhile offering Bruno a lightly reproachful elbow in the ribs.

“Er, yes.”

Finally, Deliah presented herself before them. “Your Majesty,” she said, curtseying deeply, spreading an imaginary skirt even though she was actually wearing trousers and work boots and a heavy brown shirt made from some dense, wet-looking material. “Declarant-Philander,” she said to Bruno, and curtseyed again.

Bruno couldn’t help sizing her up: tall and sturdy, quick, self-assured. But something told him she was maybe a little bit hollow inside. Unfulfilled? She reminded him of a weaver woman he’d known in Girona: Margaret something. Master of a craft that was widely admired and very much in demand, but difficult and rather dull in the practice. “The prison of my talent,” she’d often called it. Margaret’s frustration had always seemed a terrible shame to Bruno, but if people could choose their abilities he supposed the world would drown itself in athletes and guitar players and raunchy but lovable sex artists. If you had a job you were good at and appreciated for, well, sometimes that had to be enough.

He bowed.

“Doubly honored,” Deliah said nervously. “Brushes with greatness, oh my. I’ve had this department for eight years, but
this
is the month people choose to notice.”

“Naturally,” Tamra said.

“I’m to take you to Declarant Sykes,” Deliah added, casting a glance in the direction she’d come from. “Unfortunately, the station’s only fax gate is on the opposite end from the instrument room. It’s a bit of a walk.”

“Marlon is mucking with instruments again?” Tamra asked in a disapproving tone.

“Um, well, we’ve been tuning the revpics, trying to bring the frequencies up. It’s slow work.”

“And rather beneath your rank,” Tamra observed, falling into step behind her.

“Perhaps, yes.”

The hum of machinery followed them as they walked.

“Well,” Bruno said, “it’s a very formidable station you have here. There are hundreds of others just like it?”

“That’s so.”

Bruno couldn’t help but be impressed. Projects like this one, however ill fated, bespoke a Queendom far bolder, far wealthier and more ambitious, than the one he’d left. With death a hunted quality, faxed away with every minor journey, perhaps civilization was finally able to take a longer view. Was it easier to make such pipe dreams come true when the benefits were for the builders themselves, rather than some hypothetical “posterity?”

He traced his hand along an enormous and unpleasantly warm resistor.

“The main beam holds up the collapsiter. I’m guessing its complement is anchored to a star?”

Deliah turned and smiled at him, as if the question pleased her. “Several stars, actually. It’s like sinking tent stakes into sand—the more you distribute the load, the less slippage you get.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“Partly my own idea, I’ll confess. After all, we don’t want to spend all our time tightening the, uh, tent cords.”

“Indeed.”

“It’s only for a few decades, anyway, until the ring is self-supporting, like a bridge. That’s the only reason we can do it this way. We couldn’t build a permanent structure of gravity beams—the anchor stars would all crash together eventually.”

“Obviously, yes,” Bruno agreed, then wondered if his tone weren’t a bit overbearing or dismissive. “I, uh, see you’ve worked out all the details.”

That
comment clearly didn’t please Deliah van Skettering. Of course, yes, because she
hadn’t
worked everything out, had not managed to prevent this newest disaster. Would she feel his words to be an insult? Bother it, people were so damned easy to offend. Especially the friendly ones. As always, Bruno could be offensive without lifting a finger.

“The Declarant’s social skills don’t see much use these days,” Tamra said, touching both Bruno and Deliah on the shoulder. She sounded amused, though not entirely patient about it. “Do please forgive him.”

“No, he’s quite right,” Deliah sighed. “Patience and mathematics. Patience and mathematics. If I’ve learned anything from his example, it’s that. If I’ve learned anything.”

“Here now,” Bruno protested. Many notions could be drawn from his example, surely, but he’d hate to count self-pity among them. “Mistakes happen, young lady. Don’t blame me for blaming you, because I haven’t. If, at some point, I
do
blame you, you’ll know it unambiguously. As you see, I’m not a subtle man.”

Deliah ducked her head. “Of … course, Declarant. Forgive me.”

“Oh, none of that,” he said, waving a hand. “I won’t hear of it; you’ll have us tied in knots. So you’re the director around here, are you?”

“For eight years now, yes.”

“And you say you’ve had no other problems?”

“Major ones? There are always problems—”

He waved a hand. “Of course, of course. I’m not grilling you; I’m just, er, making conversation. Since it appears we’ll be working together.”

“Ah. Well, for what it’s worth, I came to physics fairly late in life. And management. I’m from Africa.”

Bruno wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Is where you’re from a significant factor here?”

She gave an uncomfortable laugh. “It can be, yes. Growing up on a photocollector farm, you don’t think about much beyond the weather, the maintenance, and maybe a strong boy or two who’ll keep the dust off and laugh at your jokes. But University changes you—that is its purpose, I suppose.”

“Changes you? Leads you toward the sciences, you mean.”

“Toward the management of sciences, yes. What a shock, to discover I was a shepherd of physicists! By my second year at KSPA I was the department gopher, organizing all the home conferences, and eventually
all
the conferences all over the solar system. My grades were good, too, and my thesis did win that prize. Suddenly I was ‘Laureate van Skettering,’ right when my kiddie marriage was falling apart and I needed a fresh start anyway. But from the moment I hit the job exchange, it was clear I was headed for administration, not math.

“Knowing the material is fine—it’s common—but it’s hard for one person to really move the world. Even
you
needed a cast of thousands in the end, Declarant, if I may say so. Turning prototype to product to end-user installed base is the real test of an idea, and knowing how to pull a team together—and
hold
them together when the going gets tough—is the key to that.”

Bruno could hardly argue with that; if everyone were like him, there’d probably be no commerce or progress at all, at least in the conventional sense.

“And yet,” Bruno said, groping to understand her point, “you’re still surprised to find yourself here. Far from Africa,
among monarchs and Declarants, plotting the salvation of a star and all its worlds.”

“Exactly.” Deliah nodded once, emphatically.

He cleared his throat. “You, ah, do realize that the rest of us feel that way too? I myself grew up in the apartment above a little Spanish tavern.”

“I know,” she replied quickly.

Well of course she did. She’d already admitted to being an admirer, and Bruno’s life was in the public domain, open to all possible scrutiny. All at once, he was uncomfortable again, feeling exposed. Feeling far from
his
home, wherever that might be.

“Life is full of surprises,” he added, more sourly than was probably wise.

Suddenly, they were at the instrument room, a narrow closet Bruno might almost have missed if a pair of silk-trousered legs hadn’t been poking out of it. The walls and ceiling were of wellstone; a panoply of dials and gauges and keyboards and graphical displays raced and oozed and flickered around the flat surfaces, whose composition bubbled cubistically between metal and porcelain and various forms of plastic.

“What happened?” Deliah demanded of the legs. She was eyeing the wellstone surfaces with tired exasperation. Then, more respectfully, she said, “Can I help, Declarant?”

“No,” a voice said from beyond the legs. They disappeared, Bruno saw, into a slot at the bottom of the closet’s back wall. Big enough to hold a human torso, though probably not comfortably, not unless the space opened up back there behind the wall.

“You realize we’re going to have to restart the calibration estimates from scratch,” Deliah complained. “You do realize that?”

“I do, yes. Thank you.” Presently, the owner of the legs shuffled and scooted and rocked out of the opening. Only when the face emerged was Bruno sure that this was, in fact,
Declarant-Philander Marlon Sykes. Awkwardly, Sykes straightened himself up to his full height. He wiped his hands on the blue velvet and fine, gold-white embroidery of his vest, leaving black smudges there.

“Marlon!” Her Majesty snapped. “What on Earth are you doing?”

The Queen’s robots tensed on either side of her, but Sykes just flashed an easy grin and leaned back—carelessly, Bruno thought—against the madly shifting wall of the instrument room. “On Earth, I don’t believe I’m doing anything at the moment. I do have copies on half a dozen grapple stations, probably all doing the same thing right now.”

“Which is?” Tamra demanded, arching an eyebrow.

“Retrofitting the equipment, obviously.”

Her Majesty’s suede-booted foot tapped thrice on the decking. She seemed to consider for a moment before saying, “Declarant, the Queendom pays handsomely for your services. We expect handsome service in return. This—” She waggled a finger at his stained hands and clothing. “—is the best use of your talents right now? It must be, surely, or you’d be doing something else. Correct?”

“Ah.” Marlon’s smile faltered, then deepened. “Tamra, my pay is by the job, not the copy-hour. Consequently I find it easier to send my own copies to perform certain tasks, rather than having to explain these tasks to others, particularly since our laborers and technicians are operating at full legal capacity already.”

“I’ll issue a writ to waive the copy-hour limits,” Tamra said. “I should have done it already, I see. How long has this been going on?”

He shrugged. “Not long.”

“A week,” Deliah van Skettering chipped in, her tone supportive and apologetic. “I may have requested … that is, my requests of Declarant Sykes may have been …”

“Be silent, Laureate-Director,” Tamra said to the woman. Then, less haughtily, “All my conversations are official. Speaking out of turn is disruptive.”

Reddening, Deliah bowed her head, saying nothing.

Bruno empathized: Deliah was no practiced courtier, after all, and she was—admirably—trying to take responsibility for her own job. But Tamra’s role was equally clear: bureaucrats and functionaries must not be permitted to undermine her authority even in these tiny, offhand ways. A Queen must exude power and influence from every pore, yes? Else what good was a Queendom at all?

“Er, shall we … proceed?” he asked, when a few pointed moments had passed. It was a calculated risk: even
he
couldn’t talk back to her in public. Not without paying.

“We shall,” Tamra said lightly. And that was that.

“What is it you’re doing there?” Bruno asked Marlon. “Manual labor? Couldn’t robots help?”

“They
are
helping,” Marlon snapped, in a rapid-fire voice. “Look, wellstone devices are almost infinitely configurable, but where no pathway exists at all between components A and B, as often happens when you’re configuring large machinery for unintended purposes, we have to physically lay a line of wellstone down. Or copper, or fibe-op glass, but rarely, because we can program the wellstone to emulate those. So robots do the coarse installation, point to point, and the delicate final connections are completed by hand. And as I say, explaining the process to a technician requires refinement in both the theory and detail of what I’m doing, which would consume precious time. Until
I
know precisely what needs connection to what, I find it easier simply to tinker. Perhaps in another week, I’ll have gained enough experience to pass instructions along.”

“Hmm,” Tamra said, unconvinced.

A touch of sullenness graced Marlon Sykes’ features. His gaze flicked to Bruno for a moment. “
His
time costs you nothing, I suppose.”

“He donates it, yes.”

“I’ve little need for money,” Bruno almost said, but stopped himself, realizing in time that it would probably antagonize rather than soothe. Marlon, the father of the Ring
Collapsiter, was just about as brilliant and wealthy and powerful a man as ever lived, his name writ large as any Edison or Franklin or Fuller. But through the twisting of fate, Bruno’s name had been writ much larger, ridiculously larger. Along with his bank account, yes. It was a sore point between two Declarant-Philanders, and understandably so. What he did say was, “It pleases me to visit with friends again. I do it so rarely. I almost feel
I
should pay for the privilege. It’s good to see you again, Marlon.”