Count to a Trillion

by John C. Wright

  “What peninsula?”

  “The Florida peninsula. That was a complex buried beneath the old spaceport called Canaveral. It is the primary point for maintaining radio-link with the Hermetic.”

  Montrose had notice no lightheadedness the first time he’d ridden this rail system, with Del Azarchel. Of course, he had been deep in talk with his friend, and had not just had a recent episode of unconsciousness, or superconciousness, or possession, or whatever it was. Also, he did not know if this branch of the evacuated depthtrain passed through the mantle of the Earth at the same angle as where he had been previously.

  The smoothness had deceived him, and the lack of noise. The engines in his day always lost some energy through heat, noise, and vibration. Maybe here in the future, they had found a way to machine-tool their engines to more perfect specifications. More precise fits meant less vibration. Montrose realized the titanic energy supply the Hermeticists had brought back from the Diamond Star meant not just more raw power to level mountains and burn fortresses, but more energy, and hence more time, effort, and precision, were free to be spent on a wide variety of tasks. What was the major difference between a savage caveman and a civilized Texan, after all? Not just tools and organization, but the magnitude of power at his fingertips.

  His mother once had said that the difference from a caveman was education. That may be. But what, ultimately, was education? Something to increase the efficiency of brainpower. What was brainpower? What was a brain, really, except for an engine that turned the noise into signal—an engine that took a chaos of raw sense data and turned it into organized patterns of pretty electroneural charges holding meaningful conclusions about the universe? The more energy a civilization controlled, the more brainpower it could bring to bear on a wider range of non-routine tasks.

  The thought cheered him. Maybe the future that Del Azarchel had made was not so bad. It sure sounded like some sort of renaissance or industrial revolution was ongoing, if Blackie’s boasts were true.

  Ah, but that was the stone in the shoe, wasn’t it?

  “Hey, Doc. I was wondering about the fighting.”

  “What fighting?”

  “You know—brush wars, proxy wars, border disputes, Mormon lynching. That sort of thing. I mean, it seems quiet now, but you know how these things go.”

  Nothing could have convinced Montrose more rapidly than the look of surprise on the old doctor’s face that perhaps he had misjudged Del Azarchel. Could there really be, for once in human history, no fighting going on? Montrose did not think it possible; and yet the shock of the doc was perfectly sincere.

  The man said with a tinge of exasperation in his voice, “What are you talking about? Warfare was all abolished by the Concordats. The police are all locally controlled, each by their parish. There are unpaid volunteer militias in some areas, but they are armed with nonlethal weapons, pain-induction rays, and gumthrowers, for they face rioters and malcontents, not armed forces. There is no need to heed rogue stations—the accredited press maintains accurate reports.”

  “Pox! No one has guns?”

  The doctor turned his eyes upward, as if in thought. “The ruling houses in each area will keep retainers and men-at-arms, of course, or employ ignoble horse troopers to run down poachers or wiremen trying to set up pirate powercast rectennae. Most regional Parliaments maintain honor squads, as a symbol of their sovereignty. Protectorate areas are patrolled by Landkeepers, and they are armed. The Holy Father has the Swiss Guard. Of course, with contraterrene weapons, you do not need an army to depopulate a city, merely one civic assassin.” The doctor’s face was stern, and his shrug was short. He was clearly a man who did not think well of firearms.

  “What is this Concordat?”

  “The social covenant. The Princess has ordained peace throughout the world.” The old man’s face softened into a mass of wrinkles when he smiled. “We have no external enemies, and hence no wars. Peace has smiled on the human race at last!”

  There was a light in his eyes when he said the Princess.

  Montrose did not want to spoil the mood by pointing out that the Roman Empire and the Chinese had no significant external enemies, but were racked by horrific civil wars everytime a dynasty lost its grip on power, or someone thought it should.

  “What’s your name, Doc?”

  “Kyi.”

  “Family name or Christian name?”

  The doctor inclined his head respectfully. “That is my Medicine-Buddha name, which more fully is Sgra-dbyangs kyi rgyal-po, whom I emulate. My refuge name is Bhlogrochosnyi, Intellect Cosmic Order Sun, obtained when I took refuge in the three jewels of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. I am of Tashilhupo, who follow the Yellow Hat sect.”

  “Uh … that’s right nice. Doctor Key…”

  “Kyi.”

  “Doctor Kyi … if I can ask. Who is this Princess of yours?”

  The doctor looked amused. “So you are infatuated just from her picture?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “I am a doctor: I know the signs of neural imbalance. She is Her Serene Highness the Sovereign Princess Rania of Monaco, daughter of Rainier. Her mother bore her aboard the Hermetic, making the princess the first born beneath the light of another sun: Her phylum is classed as Exosolar. Place your dreams elsewhere. She is above your rank.”

  “Impossible.”

  The old man shook his head wearily. “Resign yourself. The effort the Noble Master expended in recovering your sanity has placed you in a debt beyond recovery. And I do not mean a monetary debt—only the lower orders concern themselves with such things. I mean the honor code that governs the arms-bearing class. By any rational calculation of debt, you are a client, a dependent, of the Nobilissimus, a retainer, even if you take no oath—and therefore you cannot impose yourself on his fiancée.”

  Montrose forced a smile onto his face, and uttered a bitter laugh. “Why would I care about that? I never met the girl! Seems a little, ah, on the young side for him, though, don’t she? Where did you say she was born?—and anyhow, I meant it was impossible that she was birthed aboard ship.”

  Dr. Kyi said coolly, “She was aboard the great ship when the Hermetic received the capitulation from the Old Order.”

  “Which old order is that?”

  “The Purity Order: Azania, the Coptic Union, and Greater Manchuria. Superceded, now. They were absorbed peacefully into the Concordat.”

  “How did they win? The Hermeticists, I mean. The ship was an antique. She was not a warship, wasn’t carrying missiles or linears or nothing.”

  “I am no soldier. I can only say what I have heard.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “Let me hook your suit to my bag first, that I may do a complete scan and checkup. May we proceed?”

  Montrose submitted with ill grace.

  The way the doctor told it, the weapons of the Hermetic were her sails and magnetic umbra. The ship enjoyed several incomparable advantages: Because contraterrene is ultralightweight, hard to detect, and impossible to deflect, once the vessels closed to engagement distances, even a microscopic fleck flung at an incoming vessel, striking any part of it, would emit a pulse of radiation hot enough to blind or cripple it.

  With her immensely more powerful drives, the Hermetic was able to outmaneuver her foes, and she had no supply lines to protect. The Old Order vessels were overextended; they tried to re-supply by using unmanned high-acceleration canisters, but the Hermetic jinxed their radio-controls, and sent the supplies off-target. Her radio-emitters were more powerful than any Earthly emitter, even at interplanetary ranges. Her attacks were handled with a precision the finest computers on Earth could not match.

  From beyond Mars, the Hermetic used her sail to focus (with impossible accuracy) solar beams onto navigation satellites orbiting the Earth, burning them like ants beneath a magnifying glass, and the captains of the scattered vehicles of the Old Order suddenly were blind and lost without Earth-based navigation.

  “Perhaps,�
� the old doctor said, “had they been truly devout to their cause, the Copts could have calculated their positions with sextants and almanacs, and plotted their orbits with their onboard equipment, but then the voice of the Princess came across their radio-sets, calling them each by name, and offering them the Concordat. Their choice was to become the military backbone of the New Order, with land, dignities, and honors long denied to them, or to perish of exhaustion in the vacuum. Her voice none could deny: she is not of this Earth.”

  Montrose sat up so quickly that the doctor’s black bag, connected to him by half a dozen sensitive lines, bleeped in annoyance. “Wait—What? Are you saying the Hermetic picked her up on some other planet? That she is an alien? But there are no planets like that, and even if there were, no star systems are between here and V 866 Centauri…”

  “I said she was born aboard ship.”

  “And I said that was impossible. Who was the mother? There were no women aboard.”

  “Three women were smuggled aboard, disguised as crewmen who had washed out of the program, but were too ashamed to allow the public to know.”

  “Oh, come on. Smuggled how? When? Why?”

  “They were comfort women. It is thought best in polite circles not to inquiry too closely into the matter, in case face be lost. You see that the matter is delicate.”

  “You mean whores?” Montrose uttered a laugh and slapped his knee. “Hee-howdie! That would have been a hoot. Playing belly-thumper all the way to Centauri and back. If’n I were a jane, I’d’a gone for it. Wait … you’re serious? You’re not serious.”

  The doctor certainly looked serious. Of course, he probably looked that way most times.

  Montrose guffawed. “Who told you we had strumpets aboard? Where was they stowed? Every square half-centimeter of space was accounted for. Or were the hussies just clinging to the outside of the hull like a remora fish on a submarine? That’d be quite a bit of clinging, considering that the ship’s carousel was spun for gravity. Hanging by your hands with the stars under your toes for fifty years, and the boys would have to be pretty lonely for you, cause you’d be older than grandma by the time the johns thawed out. Pee-shaw. Who came up with that stretch of baloney?”

  “These women, arrested for breaches of public decorum laws in Argentina, were given the opportunity to escape the Decency Inquisition the newly-reconstituted Spanish Crown had initiated, by doing community service. Essentially they were volunteering for permanent exile. The women were smuggled aboard because one of the high-level expedition organizers thought it would be a good idea, necessary for the sanity and well-being of the all-male crew, to send along…”

  Menelaus just shook his head, smirking in disbelief.

  The doctor looked offended. “Would you accuse the Nobilissimus Lord Regent Del Azarchel himself of perpetrating a lie? Be warned!”

  “Would you accuse Captain Grimaldi of being so jackass loco yack-stupid as to lock up three warm-blooded señoritas in a canful of two hundred ten lusty young men and lonely old professors? Be warned yourself, Doc. Be warned not to believe any tin-plate panner-junk they try to palm off on you. Del Azarchel should’ve asked me. I would’ve come up with a better whopper than that one. Space whores!” He shook his head, unable to suppress a smile. “That’s cracked.”

  Dr. Kyi favored him with a cold look. “You were in a coffin the whole time. You have no knowledge of what occurred.”

  “Impossible. Im—poss—see—bull. And the emphasis is on the bull.”

  “Why are you so certain, Mr. Montrose?”

  “Do you think someone could have just up and added an extra biosuspension unit aboard? How about three? The ship was designed for ninety-five percent of lightspeed. Do you want to see the figures on how much oomph it costs to accelerate even a single gram of mass to that velocity? The crew had to slim down like wrestlers training for a weight class too light for us. We were shaving our heads bald because two hundred ten crewhands’ worth of hair—I am talking about the weight of the hair—’tweren’t worth the cost of fuel to boost. Our uniforms was tissue paper, and it was more lightweight to paint our feet with insulator goop than to carry socks. We didn’t have shoes! Pox and plague, man! They had little plastic bags we were meant to pee into before docking, and we were going to leave them on the punt before we boarded, so that we’d be that much lighter before weigh-in. Each gram of urine counted.”

  Dr. Kyi looked puzzled, even disturbed. Obviously Montrose’s words had struck doubt into him. “The history files are not clear. A large mass of data was lost when the Coptics and Voortrekkers aligned with the Chinese and came to power: One of the cybernetic battles—I cannot recall the historian’s name and number code for which microsecond it happened in—was called the Aneurysm.”

  “Well, I can tell you that security aboard the ship was as airtight as the ship herself. Our biometrics were all on file in a separate back-up computer called Little Big Brother that was not even physically connected with the mainframe. Little Big Brother were these little black boxes dotting the inner hull that made sure no one entered or left officer’s country or the engineering deck where the manipulator-field controls were locked. You understand, we were going out there to mine antimatter, and nine-tenths of the ship’s complement was going to be cold slumber. It was not the kind of ship where a person could just hop around from deck to deck with no one looking. Only the captain had access to Little Big Brother, and the First Mate if and only if Brother thought the Captain was dead. You going to tell me Captain Grimaldi smuggled some painted trollops aboard and left behind needed crew? Not him. Never. You are talking about men I knew, a ship I served on—well, nearly.”

  “But you were not privy to the decisions of the command. Or so the histories say. You were the only man from your nation aboard, and the world still regarded the Norteamericano with suspicion and contempt.”

  “Well, shoot, I regards your tall tale here with suspicion and contempt. It don’t hang together. Where’re these women now?”

  “They did not survive the voyage.”

  “Convenient. Where’re the bodies?”

  “Prince Rainier married all three, to remove the women from the use of the crew, and this contributed to the rebellion.”

  Menelaus stared up at the roof of the chamber or, rather, the car. “There is no way the Captain Grimaldi I knew would have turned polygamous—his people had no love for the Jihadi, and keeping spare wives around was their knack, not a Monegasque thing at all. Speaking of which, the crew was one-third Indosphere, one-third Hispanosphere, and one-third were odds and ends, mostly from the Sinosphere—including me, since Oddifornia was Sino back in the day. How many of the expedition survivors were from the Spanish-speaking parts of the world?”

  The doctor said stiffly, “These days, it is considered impolite to look into a man’s language loyalties or enthophylum. We do not take in account…”

  “So they were all Beaneaters? All the ones who lived?”

  “We do not use that kind of language—it is regarded as a matter of insult to…”

  “Yeah, well, I damn well regard it as a matter of insult to tell a lie. In my day, your primary loyalty was to whoever talked like you. Not to your Church, like in the days of the Jihad, and not to your King, like in the First Dark Ages, not to your race, like in the Second—in my day, the lines were drawn between Anglosphere, Gallosphere, Hispanosphere, Sinosphere, and so on. Del Azarchel was Spanish. He would not have killed Argentine women. It never happened. There weren’t no women.”

  The doctor regarded him with narrowed eyes. “Your suspicions have no ground.”

  “Oh, I think the grounds are in what you said about the space battle. Sounds as if the Hermeticists outsmarted their opponents. Like a man outsmarting a monkey. And this girl just talked everyone into surrendering, did she? And the crew—by any chance, did they do any reconfiguring on the ship’s electronic brain while they were at V 886 Centauri? Never mind. You wouldn’t know the answer to that, would you?
Anyhow, they are still outsmarting you.”

  “In what regard?”

  “You want to know how to sniff out a lie? Lies are told with a particular audience in the sites, see? If you understand the audience, you understand the lie. Your little story about three crewmen being too dishonored to be willing to admit they flunked out of the space expedition—you believe it, because that is the way you’d act, the way your generation expects people to act. I haven’t seen more than a glimpse of y’all in this time, but you are a military culture, and militant cultures have a cult of honor. Always have. People of my day did not act that way. We were a free-market culture. A guy who flunked out of Space Camp would have done pixies, maybe wrote a book, walked the lecture circuit. Because we cared about money, not honor so much, on account of the world was in a depression, and every penny counted. See what I mean? Time changes people, don’t it? That’s one reason why lies do not last.”

  The doctor said, “Paranoia symptoms are the type of self-reinforcing neural-path behavior I regard as an bad sign: We do not want to see a collapse into your previous halt state.”

  Menelaus leaned back in his chair, stuck his thumbs in his sash, and spread his legs in a comfortable slouch. “And is common sense a bad sign?”

  “Then where did Princess Rania come from?” the doctor retorted. “You can see she looks like her father. Blood samples match. Her gene-print can open a legacy lock left by him in a Swiss Bank, for any heirs of his body born after him: this was one of the things done early on to confirm her right to the throne of Monaco.”

  “Who nursed the baby, back aboard ship? We weren’t carrying no baby milk in bottles. We…” And then Menelaus got a strange, distant look in his eye, and he straightened up suddenly out of his slouch. “Of course, we did have biosuspension coffins. Equipped with molecular mechanisms to restore and replenish decayed cells … and matrices of formalized molecules, all lined up nice and pretty, the way they never do in nature, waiting for microscopic electron-commands to tell them what patterns to make. And the code for a milk gland is right there in anyone’s DNA: males have an X chromosome, after all, and all you need is two XX’s to persuade the molecular machinery to start making female cells. And a damnified totipotent cell can damn near turn into damn near anything—people been doing it since before I was born. All you would need is the right code. The right expression. Doc, you got a piece of paper? I wanna see how many transformation steps it would take, using a simple Pell Expression, to get from a flat array of molecules via the minimum number of knots to a complex spline formation. Because one of the theories we discussed for the Gamma Grouping of Monument signs was that it was a spline expression for a complex surface, and that this was a generalized model for a brain. Any brain, not just a human brain, seeing as how the spline function could simply be mapped onto other nervous systems—or whatever information system the little green men had instead of brains…”