Torchship (20 page)

He swallowed his pastrami and waved to a chair. “Certainly.”

“Thank you. I’m Burton Reed, coordinator of the Origin Set.
We’d like to charter your vessel for an extended voyage.”

“We have some cargo delivery obligations, but after those
are complete we could certainly schedule your trip. Are you planning to go to
the Disconnect?” If these guys
needed
a non-networked ship he could jack
the rates up.

“No, we’re a pilgrimage group. We want you to take us to Old
Earth.”

“No.”

“We’re successful professionals and have accumulated over
ten million keyneses to—”

“Go away.”

“You’d be paid millions on top of all expenses—”

“Shut up.”

“The
Fives Full
is uniquely qualified to—”

“May I help you, sir?” Schwartzenberger’s wave had brought
the waiter scurrying over.

“This man is harassing me.” The captain picked up his
sandwich and took a bite.

The waiter turned to Reed. “Sir, I must ask you to
leave."

“If the captain would just give me two minutes . . .”

“We will make a public announcement that you’ve been banned
from this establishment if you don’t leave immediately.” Planetary infamy was
enough of a threat to make Reed walk out. The waiter followed him to the door
than returned to apologize.

Schwartzenberger waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. I
thought he was a businessman until he started talking.”

“What was he?”

“A suicidal psychotic.”

“Should I notify Safety about him?”

“No.” Schwartzenberger drained his beer. “He’s fine as long
as no one’s stupid enough to take him off the planet.”

***

Mitchie followed the sound of grumbling down the corridor.
She saw Billy emerge from one unused stateroom holding a box and cross into
another. When he emerged empty-handed she asked, “What’s up?”

The deckhand shrugged. “Bing wants a room cleared for the working
passage guy. So I’m moving the storage over.”

“Has anyone really met him yet? Like seen him in person?”

“Don’t think so. Bing just talks to him in that game.”

“It feels creepy, letting someone onto the ship without
knowing who he really is.”

“Yeah—but it ain’t our call.”

“Maybe we should look him up, just say hi, see what he’s
like.”

“Who’s
we
? I don’t have time for that.”

Mitchie looked over the stacks of spare parts and preserved
food. “How about I help you move all that and you come with me on the visit?”

Billy grinned. “Deal.”

***

Locating their future shipmate was easy. His name, the game
he played, and (unmentioned to Billy) Bing’s message logs sent them to a gamer
hostel a few hundred klicks from the spaceport. Mitchie had a line of patter
ready for the receptionist but there wasn’t one. The hostel door only kept out
weather.

“Don’t they want some security?” she complained.

“Everything’s recorded. Nobody here is worth going to
therapy for. Who’s going to bother them?”

“Us.”

“I’m not going to do anything to him. Are you?”

Depends on his real reason for wanting on our ship
. “No,
of course not.”

The ground floor of the hostel was VR bubbles, most of them
occupied by people going through vigorous gyrations. Upstairs had coffin beds
and hygiene facilities. Yanglo’s bubble was near the center—and empty. His bed
was also vacant. Interrogating someone emerging from another room seemed
futile—the name meant nothing to him—but their victim decoded the decorations
on Yanglo’s bunk. “Oh, he’s a Struggle for Shaping guy. They’re all having a
rally at Denisovitch Park.”

Mitchie pulled out her datasheet. There was a newsfeed
showing tens of thousands of players standing about in the sunlight. Another
autocab ride had them there.

“What a mob,” said Billy.

“Healthier than I expected,” said Mitchie.

“The games make them work hard. It’s the law.”

“Hah! This way.” They were close enough to search directly
for Yanglo without triggering stalker alerts. In a few minutes the datasheet
highlighted a middle-aged man standing under a tree. “Hi, Yanglo,” said
Mitchie.

“Hi! Um . . . hi.” His HUD glasses didn’t give him any
useful info on the spacers.

“We’re friends of Bing. Wanted to meet you before you came
on the ship. I’m Mitchie and this is Billy.”

“Pleased to meet—oh, the Stakeholder’s talking.” A smooth
voice replaced the music drifting over the park.

“My fellow citizens! Effective at noon on the fourteenth of
this month, the Council of Stakeholders has approved release of the continent
of Y’Laqxi!” The crowd erupted in cheers.

“Isn’t it exciting?” yelled Yanglo as he applauded.

“Where is . . . Ill-whatever?” asked Billy.

“It’s the new area for our game world. We’ll have a landrush
as soon as it’s open.” The speaker continued on, alternating praise for the
game developers and testers with complaints about the paranoia and sloth of
Stakeholders for worlds less-enlightened than Sukhoi. “Should’ve had it a year
ago, but other planets kept holding it up as a bargaining chip.”

“If you’re so happy about the landrush why do you want to
leave?” asked Mitchie.

“Well, um, the expansion’s more
fun
, but I want to do
something more
real
. If I go to the Disconnect I can get some land to do
art on.”

Billy chuckled. “It’ll take you a while to earn some good
land as unskilled labor.”

“I’m not unskilled. I’m an
artist!”
Two sophisticated
men would have followed that with a discussion about the Disconnected Worlds’
lack of economic surplus for supporting aesthetics and the value of a VR
portfolio for demonstrating talent. Billy and Yanglo wound up name-calling.
Mitchie was amazed how fast it degenerated.

“Shut up, you fucker!” The gamer swung a fist at Billy.

The spacer side-stepped and slapped Yanglo on the shoulder
as he stumbled past. Arms flailing, he fell toward some prickly bushes.
Stopping himself short left Yanglo wrist-deep in the surrounding compost. “Ugh!”
He rolled onto his back and frantically wiped his hands on his clothes.

Mitchie blushed. Her paranoid fantasy of a Fusion
intelligence operative trying to infiltrate their ship vanished like a soap
bubble.

“Those VR guys think they can fight, but they spend all
their time in spheres. It’s amazing they can walk on flat ground without
falling down.” Billy’s gloat trailed off as he realized how upset Yanglo was. “Dude,
it’s just dirt.”

“It’s got germs and bugs and I don’t know what all else!”

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” Billy pulled the gamer to his
feet. Mitchie led them to the nearest necessaries room. “You know gardening
means handling dirt, don’t you?”

“That’s what bots are for.”

Billy sighed. “We don’t have gardenbots in the Disconnect.
They cost too much.”

“Oh.” Yanglo was silent until they dropped him off at the
necessary. “Thanks. Bye.”

The spacers waved and headed back to the park gate. The
Stakeholder droned on with praise for the new software’s resistance to AI
probes. “Well, I owe you an apology, Michigan,” said Billy.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I thought this was a waste of time but you probably saved
that guy’s life. In the Disconnect he’d’ve starved inside twelve months trying
to be an artist. Hell, with that temper he’d get killed inside six months. You
made a good call.”

Mitchie said, “Thanks,” and stayed silent the whole way back
to the ship.

Planet Pintoy. Gravity 9.4
m/s
²

Hauling three thousand decorative fish to Pintoy sounded
like a vacation to the crew. After they rigged extra lighting in the hold they
expected to just watch the show the rest of the trip. Then Captain
Schwartzenberger explained “daily cleaning” meant cleaning the
inside
of
the tanks. By arrival they were ready to blow their share of the profit on
perfume and incense.

Guo had volunteered to run over to Port Services to pick up
loaner datasheets and downloads of the latest news. When he came into the
galley it was clear he’d checked the headlines and didn’t like them. “Mitchie?
Do you know anyone in Noisy Water?”

She looked up from her soup bowl. “Yeah, it was a stop on my
shuttle run. Really just knew the field boss, Mbenga. I’d stay at his house if
I had to overnight there. Why?” Guo held out a datasheet. “Akiak made the news?
What happened?”

“It’s—it’s gone. Noisy Water was destroyed.”

Even Billy grabbed one of the datasheets. The top headline
was “FLEET SMASHES WORLD-MELTER NEST ON OUTER WORLD.” Curses went around the
table as they dug into the story. A Fusion Navy ship with a Demeter crew had
gone into orbit on a “port call” then fired a modest nuke at the town.

“No survivors in the whole valley,” said Bing.

“Hah! The defense network took the bastards out,” exulted
Billy.

Guo had found the motive for the attack. “There was a
conference of AI researchers there. Guys trying to recreate the Friendly AIs
from the Golden Age. Just theorists it sounds like.”

“Theories like that can be dangerous,” replied Bing. “Anybody
can try to implement them.”

“Akiak is banning Fusion military vessels from their space
and calling for the committee of Disconnected Worlds governments to craft a
joint response,” said the captain. “I expect Bonaventure will support that.”

Mitchie stared at a pre-attack image of Noisy Water, a small
town below a rapids flowing through a grassy valley. “It was a beautiful place.
I always liked landing there.” She wiped her eyes. “I took a lot of tourists
there. After the mine played out they built a hotel. Said they made more money
from skiers than tantalum.”

“Is there going to be a war?” blurted Billy.

Bing shuddered. Schwartzenberger answered, “Only if the Disconnect’s
being suicidal. Or like you. Demeter has to be freelancing on this. The rest of
the Fusion will lean on them to pay reparations.”

“I hate to put a price on killing our citizens,” said Guo.
Arsenic Creek was on the other side of planet from the attack. He’d never heard
of Noisy Water before the news. It was just luck that kept the researchers from
having their conference somewhere near his relatives.

“The Fusion’s too big for us to have a vendetta with it.”
Guo nodded. Private justice wasn’t uncommon in the Disconnected Worlds but it
kept to areas too poor to support organized law enforcement.

Bing gave Mitchie a hug. “Are you going to be okay, honey?”

“Yeah.” She leaned into the hug. “It’s just a shock.” A
moment went by. “I’ll be fine.”

Bing looked up at the captain. “What are we going to do?”

“About this? Nothing,” said Schwartzenberger. “It’s not our
job, and the people whose job it is are working on it. If Bonaventure signs on
to an embargo, or”—he glanced at Billy—“calls for enlistments, we’ll head home.
Until then we’ll do our job. Starting by getting those fish unloaded.”

***

Guo and Mitchie hurried into the ship. They’d shared an
autocab to the port when the captain called a crew meeting. They weren’t the
last to arrive. Billy’s chair in the galley was still empty.

“Did you see Billy coming?” asked the captain.

“No,” answered Guo. “Can we start without him?” New cargo
briefings usually covered navigation decisions the deckhand had no input on.

“He asked for the meeting.”

Mitchie gave Guo an inquiring look. He shook his head—that
had never happened before.

It was only ten minutes before Billy showed up. He’d brought
along a tall stranger in a suit that had been elegant five years ago. “Sir, I’d
like to present my friend Alexi Frankovitch. He has a proposition I think we
should consider.” He briefly introduced the crew then took his seat, leaving
Alexi the floor.

“None of you have heard of me before,” began Alexi. “But you’ve
heard of my great-grandfather, Maxim Frankovitch. Yes, the same one who founded
the Eden colony. At one point the richest human alive.” He held out his arms,
showing worn patches on his suit. “You can see we didn’t keep the money.”

“Eden was one of the first worlds lost after Earth,” said
Captain Schwartzenberger.

“Yes. My family was on the last ship out, including my
father as a boy. We brought out a bit but it was all spent fighting the
Betrayal. We all work for a living now.” His audience paid polite attention. “But
we left a lot of wealth behind. Now, obviously everything on the planet is
lost. It’s probably all reduced to atoms and made into something else by now.
But the best of it was taken off-planet. They couldn’t take it with them—it
massed too much—but they hid it in interplanetary space. The heart of our
fortune. Art from Old Earth centuries old. Some statues over two thousand years
old. Tons of heavy metals. A back-up of the planetary archive. And whatever
else my grandfather grabbed on his way out the door.”

“If that’s been in free space, or in a container floating
free, it’s all probably ruined now from solar heating,” said the captain.

“Yes, sir, it would be. But Grandpa put it in vacuum-rated
containers and then buried them on a comet.”

“You have the coordinates of this comet?” asked
Schwartzenberger. Alexi nodded. “Who else does?”

“No one else. My grandfather and his brother were the only
ones on the bridge for the drop-off. Vanya died in the Betrayal. Grandpa only
told my father. And he only told me.”

“But other people know about the treasure?”

“A dozen men helped bury the containers. There’s rumors. But
nobody knows for sure what’s in them or where the comet is except me.”

“What’s your proposition?”

“I join your crew. We go to Eden System. Once we’re there I
give you the coordinates. When we get back to civilization I get a quarter of
the price of each piece as it’s sold off. All expenses come out of the other
three quarters. I don’t care how you divvy it up.”