The Collapsium (6 page)

And of course living alone meant not having to think about these things at all, getting lazy about them, forming a bond with the house software that gradually let the language devolve to shorthand codes and even, sorry to say, preverbal grunting and pointing. At least he wasn’t in his underwear.

So with a twinge of guilt and no decorum whatsoever, he simply strode to the edge of the platform and looked down, pressing first his hands and then his forehead against the
slick, clear surface of the dome, straining for a view of the sun.

The best he could manage was an edge of the corona, the vast, diffuse, superhot solar atmosphere. As in an eclipse, magnetic field lines stood out clearly; looping threads of bright and dim against the blue-white glow, but much nearer than any eclipse he’d ever seen. Beneath this platform, the corona flared huge, as wide as ten full moons, as structured and detailed as a wreath of burning, phosphorescent ivy.

“Quite a view,” he said. “We’re close in. Six months until this ring falls in? Solar disturbances could begin sooner than that, as it passes through the chromopause.”

He tried to picture such an event. Collapsium was a “semisafe” material in that it didn’t consume matter the way a large black hole would; the component hypermasses, being precisely the size of protons, couldn’t
swallow
protons, any more than a standard manhole could swallow its cover. But they could swallow smaller particles, and slowly stretch in the process.
³

Would coronal plasma densities be sufficient to trigger such a chain reaction? The plasma nuclei would certainly cling to the collapsons as they fell past, sliding into orbit around the lattice points like planets in newly formed, rapidly growing star systems. Enough nuclei to make a difference? Enough to alter the behavior of a star?

“There’ve been detailed simulations,” Marlon Sykes said, after an apologetic clearing of the throat. “From now, it’s six months to the earliest symptoms. After that, barely a week until the photosphere is penetrated. It was the first thing we checked.”

Well, now Bruno genuinely
was
embarrassed. Of course they’d check a thing like that, long before they ever thought to send for
him
. Marlon Sykes clearly was not stupid; the glittering arch above them was proof enough of that. Bruno stepped away from the dome, absently wiping at it where his forehead had rested, though no smear or smudge remained.

“Of course,” he said, now with proper and unfeigned apology. “Of course you did. Forgive me, Declarant.”

Sykes smiled, indulgently if not quite warmly. “Stop it, Declarant. Am I to forgive you every fifteen seconds? It seems a waste of our talents, this officiousity. Call me Marlon, please. Speak to me as a friend, loosely and without calculation, and we shall both be the happier for it.”

Well, that seemed rather a courtly way of asking him not to be courtly. Was there some cunning insult here, buried in subtexts and subtleties? Bruno grunted noncommittally, then caught himself. What if there were? What did it matter? He was here to help Tamra, to help the Queendom in general and Marlon Sykes in particular. It wasn’t difficult to imagine some rancor there, some resentment at imagined usurpations of authority and respect, but did that change the physics one iota? No. Here, at least, it was better simply to state his thoughts as they actually were, with social filters disengaged.

Which of course was exactly what Sykes himself—what
Marlon
—was proposing.

“Damn me,” Bruno said, with forced cheer. “I’ve been away too long. Marlon it is, and you may call me Bruno, or ‘fathead,’ or anything you please. We’ve a sun to save, yes? And not with our manners.”

Marlon’s grin widened. “Well spoken, fathead.”

Despite Her Majesty’s sharp intake of breath at this, the two men shared a sudden laugh, and Bruno felt the easing of a mutual hostility he hadn’t fully realized was there.

He looked up at the sparkling arch of the Ring Collapsiter again, this time with an eye for the details of its construction. Based on the spacing of its gently pulsing Cerenkov pinpoints, he judged the structure’s zenith to be some two kilometers above the platform, its range increasing to perhaps millions of times that much as it sloped away to the sides. A ring, yes, but one so enormous that it looked flat, ruler-straight, until it had all but vanished in the distance, at which point it seemed to turn down sharply, and finally vanish beneath the platform. But for all its enormous girth, the ring was only about six
meters thick. Its cross-section appeared to be circular—an observation that Marlon confirmed when asked.

So what were these other lights, these bright flarepoints of yellow-white, spaced along the lattice every half kilometer or so?

“Curved sheets of superreflector,” Marlon said, with something like rue in his tone. “Placed near the ring’s outer edge, they reflect Hawking radiation back in the direction of the sun. Since the radiation already headed for the sun
isn’t
reflected, there’s a net downward flow of mass-energy, pushing the collapsiter upward. Like a very weak rocket engine, using collapson evaporation as the energy source.”

“Ah!” Bruno said, impressed. “What holds the superreflectors in place?”

Marlon pursed his lips, shook his head. Now he did look rueful. “Nothing, my friend. Nothing at all. They’re perfect sails, and between light pressure, solar wind, and Hawking radiation, they start accelerating right away. Within an hour they’re pushed too far to do any good, and within a few days they’ve exceeded solar escape velocity. Bye-bye, superreflector. We could hold them down with electromagnetic grapples, but of course that simply reverses the problem of holding the collapsium lattice
up
.”

“So it’s useless, then,” Bruno said cautiously.

Sykes gave an emphatic nod. “Quite useless, yes. I told Her Majesty as much—” Here he raised his voice and looked glumly at Tamra. “—but she’s in a mood to try … almost anything.” And here his gaze was directed at Bruno: another idea born of royal desperation.

“Not your idea, then,” Bruno said, ignoring what must certainly have been a deliberate jibe.

“No. Some functionary’s.”

They were silent for a while, Marlon looking at Tamra, Tamra looking at Bruno, Bruno looking at the collapsium arch, the two golden robots looking studiously at nothing.

“Tell me
your
idea,” Bruno said to Marlon after a while.

The clearing of Marlon’s throat held an indication of
surprise—the question was unexpected. Bruno turned in time to see the smaller man blush. “
My
idea. The, uh, grapples are my idea. Build them faster, you know. Find ways to crank them to higher frequencies, for greater pull. We have to pull the ring
up
, away from the sun. That’s really the sole nature of the problem, dress it up however you may. We’ve got to
apply force
to the collapsium, and the grapples are our only means of doing so without tearing the lattice out of whack and creating ourselves an even bigger problem.”

“Hmm,” Bruno said, nodding absently, pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger.

A flicker of resentment crossed Marlon’s features. “You disagree?”

“Hmm?” Bruno looked up, met Marlon’s gaze. “Disagree? No, of course not. You’ve got the right of it, clearly.”

Her Majesty cleared her throat at that, her eyes flashing angrily. “Nobody’s giving up, Declarants. It’s time to broaden your thinking, and
keep
broadening it until a solution emerges. That, or all your brilliance is for naught. There
is
a solution; I’m sure of that.”

Marlon smoldered visibly at the rebuke, and it was several seconds before Bruno, deep in thought, realized the obligatory reply was his to make. “Um, yes,” he said, looking up and nodding, because he didn’t disagree with
that
statement, either.

He and Marlon were
orbiting
Tamra, he saw, striding slowly around her on the platform as if she had some dangerous gravity of her own. Which of course, she did, and his reticence clearly did not put him on the right side of it. A not-so-subtle no-no in the grammar of decorum: ignoring the Queen of All Things.

“I do need time to think,” he pointed out.

She nodded once, and her gravity seemed to drop a bit. Permission granted; his orbit could slow and widen. God, how many times had scenes like this played out? Tamra impatient for answers—scientific or otherwise—and Bruno begging silence to contemplate them? He hadn’t missed the
feeling, exactly, but now it had a kind of déjà vu effect, reminding him of a lot of things he
had
missed. He was back in her world, yes. Nodding to himself, he pinched his chin again, and looked down to examine the reflection of the collapsium in the di-clad whiteness of the platform.

Time passed.

“Can I answer anything else for you, Bruno?” Marlon asked, with perfect politeness, when ten minutes had gone by.

“Bruno?” he prompted diplomatically, after another sixty seconds. Finally he snapped his fingers. “Hey you, fathead! Are we through here?”

Bruno looked up, blinking. “Hmm? Oh, yes, please, go on about your business. I think I have all the information I need for the time being. The problem, as you say, is an exceedingly simple one, even if its solution is not.”

“You don’t need anything more from me, then?” Marlon prompted.

“Er, not that I can think of,” Bruno said, realizing that some more time had passed. “I can reach you, yes? If further questions occur?” Then it dawned on him that he was being rude again, perfunctory, exactly the sort of boor Marlon had probably thought him in the first place. Peerless indeed, usurping this other man’s place, his project, his problems. To compensate, if belatedly, he allowed his gaze to narrow, his face to grow shrewd. “If you must go, Declarant, I implore you not to go far. This matter’s been on my mind a fraction of the time it’s been on yours, but once we’re on a more equal footing, I’ll be more ready to assist you.”

Marlon Sykes was, it seemed, not impressed by such transparent flattery. Without a word he doffed his cap, bowed deeply, replaced it again, and walked to the fax gate; and if it’s possible to disappear in a testy, irritable way, then be assured Marlon Sykes did just that.

“Nicely handled,” Tamra chided, emphasizing the remark with a not-so-playful punch in the arm.

“Hmm?” he said, looking up. “What?”

She sighed, then removed the diamond crown and scratched
the indented band it left across her forehead. “Bruno, Bruno. I thought you’d changed. You
seemed
to have grown at first, matured, but maybe that was just the gray hair. Maybe we’re just ourselves, irredeemably, until the end of time. A dreary thought. So are you going to stand there all night? If I send for a chair, will you sit?”

He looked at her, his attention divided, struggling to understand what she wanted here. Finally he just shrugged. “I’m comfortable enough, Tam. If I need to sit, I’ll sit. There’s a fax machine, right? So really, I’ve got everything I need.”

He saw right away that it wasn’t an optimal response. In fact, she seemed to find it funny.

“Have you? Are you dismissing
me
now, Philander? Don’t be foolish: left to your own devices you’ll happily starve out here.”

He frowned, not liking the condescension in her tone. Was that what she thought of him? “You’re the first human being I’ve seen in nearly a decade, Majesty. I think I’ve gotten on rather well without your assistance.”

“I suppose you have,” she said, clearly amused at his expense. “But I must attend a dinner party tonight, and I think you shall accompany me. You’ll eat; you’ll socialize; you’ll astonish me with your ability to get on.”

“Ah.” Dinner parties: loud, complicated. Bruno sighed, feeling his delicate chain of thought breaking apart already. “Bother.”

“Oh, bother yourself. For all your complaining, you do think best when you’re distracted. Leaving you here alone is really a disservice to all.” Frowning, she pinched the shoulder seam of his vest. “Bruno, where did you get this pattern? We’ll need to stop by the palace, have it dress you in something suitable. And me, for that matter; we look like a couple of time travelers.”

“From twenty years ago?”

She nodded. “At least.”

Well humph, he’d been trying to continue his apparent funny streak. He was pretty sure there’d been a time when
Tamra had laughed at his jokes, finding them witty and apropos. So long ago? Perhaps he
should
go partying with her, freshen up the skills a bit. With six whole months until disaster struck, he could hardly begrudge himself a single evening’s fellowship, could he? Particularly when the Queen herself commanded it.

He grunted suddenly, recalling that “disaster” meant, literally, “bad star.” Perhaps
that
could be made into a joke later. Or perhaps not, since nothing leaped immediately to mind. Jokes you had to think about were not usually the funniest. Especially if they were in bad taste to begin with. He did smile a little at that.

“What?” Her Majesty asked, marking his shift of mood.

“Er, nothing. I’ll … tell you later.”

Accepting that answer, she smiled, took his hand, threaded her fingers through his, and began leading him toward the blank vertical slab of the fax gate. “Well. It’s time, then.”

“Wait,” he protested, “it’s not evening
now
, is it?”

“It is on Maxwell Montes.”

“Maxwell Montes?
Venus?
That’s where we’re going?”

“Yep. And it occurs to me we’ve less than an hour to get ready.”

“But …” he said, realizing the futility of the words even as they left his lips. “An hour? Bother it, I’ve only just eaten breakfast.”

Maxwell Montes is the highest point on Venus, reaching
through fully a third of the planet’s thick, toxic atmosphere, and as such, was the first place to become marginally habitable once terraforming began. Or so Tamra informed Bruno as her Tongan courtiers—a trio of gorgeous but nearly flat-chested ladies affecting a quite implausible adolescence—fussed with the final details of his hair and clothing.