Zhenyi climbed out of the airlock and stood next to Kepler. She was wearing a model of spacesuit he’d never seen. It was skintight, but the helmet was a comparatively huge glass bowl lit from inside. It looked like someone had planted Zhenyi’s head like a head of lettuce in a greenhouse. He had to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” asked Zhenyi, looking miffed.
“Your head—it looks like a head of lettuce.”
“I’m glad you’re having fun. This helmet feels great, actually, almost like being under the open sky. It hardly ever steams up.”
That was an advantage. Kepler had already had to activate the ventilation to stop water vapor condensing on his visor. He lifted his head. These walks outside were really something. If he inadvertently thought about the fact that what he called ‘up’ could also be called ‘down,’ he quickly felt queasy. No, the asteroid was floating above them, along with a white sun and 416 planets.
The view was amazing. You wouldn’t find a night sky like this anywhere else. The planets were almost uniformly bright, and looked like some sort of jewelry slung around the central star. It was a masterful feat. Hopefully the physicist would be just as masterful at helping them solve their problem so they could save the Herbae.
Zhenyi tapped him on the arm. The line was taut. His ex-girlfriend clipped herself on and pulled on the line. Due to the zero gravity, a small tug was enough and she was on her way. He followed her. Columbus had to stay behind, locked in his room. There was still the risk that Newton would take his side. They had discussed it yesterday at length. Zhenyi had even considered leaving Kepler behind in the ship. Then Newton might be more prepared, she had said suggestively, to engage in some sort of exchange.
Kepler felt a knot in his gut.
Newton was bald, a little shorter than Kepler, and with a paunch. That comforted Kepler a bit. At least he felt physically superior. He won that competition hands-down, which didn’t happen very often. Their host was exceptionally polite. Nice, in fact. They could tell from the way he gesticulated that he was extremely pleased to have visitors. He probably didn’t see other people very often.
First he invited them to a meal. Newton must be a wealthy man, because he was in possession of some exquisite recipes. He had no butler, so Zhenyi’s butler was allowed to serve the meal. The three of them sat at a round table under a glass dome on the underside of the asteroid. Kepler called it the underside because they couldn’t see the ship from here. But the 416 planets hung above them in all their splendor, almost within reach. Kepler was awestruck. From the spaceship, the planets had looked a lot further away.
The butler brought out a vegetable soup and served it.
“One moment,” said Newton, “before you eat. The vegetables in this soup are completely biologically grown on Number 59.” Newton raised his finger and a planet from the second innermost ring zoomed toward them so they could see it in detail. Roughly half of it was covered with water. Kepler counted two large continents and numerous islands. Cloud shadows drifted slowly across the surface.
“The growing region is near the equator. I could produce enough food for a million people there. But unfortunately I’m my only customer.”
Newton sounded frustrated. All 416 planets were located in the habitable zone, and his incredible creation could easily have provided a home for two trillion people. But no one actually lived there. It was an immense waste. What had happened to all of humanity’s dreams?
“How did you do that? A projection?” asked Kepler. Maybe he could redirect the conversation to a safer topic.
“No, this is all real. There are countless optics mounted on the dome that I can use to zoom in seamlessly. They’re normally set to double magnification. That’s why the planets look closer.”
“And even more impressive,” said Zhenyi, laying her spoon to the side.
So, she will be complimenting Newton to put him in a good mood, thought Kepler. Maybe it would have been better if he’d stayed on the ship. He would have to hold back so as not to undermine Zhenyi’s strategy. Why was she eating so little these days? He hadn’t seen her take more than a few bites in the last few weeks.
“Well, they’re planets. They can’t do anything other than stay in their orbits. That’s no great feat, and certainly not magic,” said Newton.
“You’re too modest. It’s a lot of hard work,” said Zhenyi. “I remember on my last visit you were busy with the outermost orbit and hardly had any time for me.”
Newton’s gaze changed. He had a faraway look in his eyes, romantic even. “Oh, 412 gave me problems. It was a bit too heavy. I had to remove part of the crust. That planet has never been as fertile as the others, but it doesn’t matter. If I’d know that then, I would rather have spent the time with you.”
Kepler scrunched up his napkin noisily. Zhenyi reprimanded him with a look. He didn’t know what had come over him. He felt like saying, ‘Hey people, I’m still here.’
“I’m sorry about 412,” said Zhenyi.
Now all that was missing was for her to hand him a handkerchief. They were only stupid planets that no one needed anyway!
“Thanks, but it’s not important. I have a surprise for you, by the way, for both of you, something you definitely haven’t seen. I only built it seven kilocycles ago.”
“That sounds exciting,” said Zhenyi.
Newton stood up. Then he moved his arms like a conductor. Dramatic organ music sounded as Newton waved his arms about. The movements looked professional, Kepler had to admit.
“Look,” said Zhenyi, pointing up.
What he saw there was crazy. The planets were moving in time to the music. Eight orbits, eight musical scales, each with 52 different notes. Newton had constructed a kind of heavenly organ!
“I’m just an ignorant astronomer,” said Kepler, “but that can’t be the actual planets you’re moving?”
The effort would have been gigantic. Moving six sextillion tons back and forth at this pace, even Newton couldn’t be capable of that.
“No, those are just pretty effects that I create purely with the optics in the dome,” said Newton, continuing to conduct. “But the music does correspond with the apparent movement of the planets. I write it myself. If you can imagine yourself as a synthesizer, each planet is a key.”
It was still impressive, but he was also relieved. Newton wasn’t superhuman.
The music grew quieter and faded out. Newton sat down and they applauded him. Then it was quiet. Dramatic organ music always killed conversation for a while.
“Isaac,” said Zhenyi, breaking the silence. “I have a problem—we have a problem—and I was hoping you could help.”
“I thought you’d never spit it out.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me?”
“How about you tell me what it’s about first?”
Zhenyi explained what they had found and what had happened. Newton asked questions at various points. It reminded Kepler a lot of the fruitless conversation with Columbus, who ended up wanting to arrest her. This time Zhenyi hadn’t brought a handbag containing a pistol.
“It sounds to me like there are two different powers at work, that are partially competing and partially cooperating,” said Newton.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, the disappearance of the Herbae’s home world serves the interests of those determined to follow through with the Rescue Project. But not all of them seem to be in agreement. Columbus, for example.”
“Maybe they just didn’t want to make him an accomplice?” hypothesized Zhenyi.
“As Secretary of the Convention he plays an important role, and has always been in favor of the Rescue Project. He of all people not knowing who eliminated Gropius and the Guardian? That sounds very unlikely to me. I believe there’s another, smaller group with their own plans.”
“The Curies,” offered Kepler.
He described their strange visit to Zhenyi’s base.
“When I think about it, maybe I was quite l
ucky,” Johannes said.
“How?” asked Zhenyi.
“Gropius had to die. The Curies must be responsible for that. Maybe they also wanted to kill you. If you had been there, I would have had to die too, being a witness.”
Kepler felt cold at the thought. Did saving a species have to be so dangerous? Newton was now probably calculating how unlikely that was.
“That sounds plausible to me,” said Newton.
Shit, thought Kepler.
“But the question is,” continued Newton, “what is this other motive? I think if we find that out, we’ve got them.”
Well that was obvious, thought Kepler, I could have said that.
“Right,” said Zhenyi. “Does that mean you’ll help us?”
“I already promised you that long ago.”
“Isaac, you’re a true friend.”
“Thank you, Zhenyi. I’d like to visit the Herbae myself. I’m sure I could learn a lot from them.”
“You will. But first let’s unravel it from the beginning,” said Zhenyi. “Everything starts and ends with the Rescue Project. Is there something underhanded going on? Were we sold something different from what we’re really getting?”
“That’s exactly the right question,” said Newton. “We’ll recalculate the Rescue Project precisely from beginning to end, taking into account the official plans and the current data.”
“Do you have a quantum computer here?” asked Kepler.
The asteroid seemed far too small to house a computer of the size needed to plot out the Rescue Project.
“My computer is floating above us in space,” said Newton. “The planets, with their mutual gravitational influence, are perfectly suited to simulations like this.”
“The 416 planets are a computer?” asked Zhenyi.
Kepler was as impressed as she was.
“Together with their sun. I know how they react to one another. I constructed the system myself. It responds in a self-sustaining manner to small alterations. I just have to convert the situation mathematically. Then I deflect one of the planets in a certain way, and the reaction of the whole system over time gives me the answer I’m looking for.”
“Like a pendulum,” said Kepler.
“More like a gigantic, well-oiled calculator,” said Newton.
“And how long does that take?” asked Zhenyi.
“I already have the data from the Rescue Project. I can adapt it to a mathematical model today. But that means you’ll have to amuse yourselves without me for a while.”
Ha, Kepler thought, and then felt guilty.
“The actual calculation process will take two days at the most,” said Newton. “If you like, you can come with me tomorrow to set it in motion.”
“That sounds exciting. Where do we go?” asked Zhenyi.
“I still have to work that out.”
Cycle ZT2.6, Kepler-1229
“That’s out of the question!” Kepler looked at the seat with a gleaming dish where his head was supposed to go.
“Don’t be like that,” said Zhenyi. “Surely you sometimes use direct laser transfer?”
“I’m not submitting my body to Newton’s control!” said Kepler.
“But he’s coming with us!”
“If I might say something,” Newton interjected, “there’s no other way. It’s far too dangerous to fly there with my ship.”
“Why?” asked Kepler.
“The relative speed of the planets in their various orbits is enormous! It would be like putting your hand into a mixer.”
“But we’re coming from above, perpendicular to the ecliptic.”
“Your hand comes from above too. That actually makes it harder,” said Newton. “If there was an accident, we’d be putting the stability of the whole system at risk.”
Kepler was silent. The physicist was right, of course. Unfortunately. But that significantly decreased the value of his diligent work. If people lived on one of the planets, they could only visit their brothers and sisters on the 52 neighboring planets, but not the ones in the other rings, even though they were continuously passing them by.
“So, are you coming?” asked Zhenyi.
Kepler grunted. He had to. He wasn’t going to grant Newton a romantic escapade with Zhenyi.
“We have to visit a planet in the fourth orbit,” the physicist explained. “I think we’ll have fun there.”
Something was tickling his leg. Kepler lifted his head. He was lying in some kind of wooden hut with a loose grass roof. Beams of sunlight pierced through it and drew patterns on the walls. A spider crawled over his leg. It was taking its time and seemed unable to make up its mind. Then it lifted its head. It must have seen or sensed something. It quickly climbed off his knee onto the ground and scuttled to the wall of the hut.
“Kepler? Are you there?”
That was Zhenyi’s voice. He heard something rustling, then the ringing of small bells. Kepler turned his head. It was Zhenyi. She’d pulled aside the curtain at the entrance to the hut. She had a flawless female body and was wearing a bikini. Kepler chuckled. This must be where Newton spent his spare time. The man had it good. He looked down at himself and got a shock. He was also in a woman’s body, just as perfectly designed as Zhenyi’s, with darker skin.
“You look good!” said Zhenyi, laughing.
Great. He shook his head. It would be best if he paid no attention to it. They weren’t there to amuse themselves, they were there to start the simulation. Kepler stood up. Zhenyi left the hut and he followed her.
It was blindingly bright outside. They were standing on a white sand beach. Blue waves broke on the shore. He saw a line of palms beyond the beach. Newton had created a little paradise for himself here. Were the other planets designed in such detail?
Another woman was waving at them from farther away. That must be Newton himself. What was Kepler supposed to make of that?
“Come on, I’ll race you,” said Zhenyi. “First one there!”
She took off. Kepler followed her once he had recovered from the surprise. It was terrific running through the warm sand with bare feet. The body was in good shape. He even started gaining on Zhenyi and had nearly caught up to her when she threw herself at Newton with a leap and touched his toes.
Her toes.
“I won,” cried Zhenyi, rolling around in the sand on her back.
Kepler smiled. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. Without the element of surprise, he would have beaten Zhenyi. Maybe he should give up his old body. There were so many better artificial ones! But somehow he felt bound to it.
“Oh, we’re in luck. A transit,” said Newton, pointing to the sky.
Kepler shielded his eyes with his hand, but it wasn’t necessary. As soon as he looked at the sun, the body reduced the photosensitivity of its visual organs.
“You can zoom too, by the way,” said Newton. “You just have to think about it.”
Kepler imagined seeing the sun up close, and the image actually enlarged. A black circle was passing in front of the flaming disk of the sun, a planet on one of the inner orbits.
“Is that rare?” he asked.
“Not really,” replied Newton. “About once every eight days. But since we’re only here for a short time, you were lucky.”
Kepler surveyed the sky. It wasn’t nearly as exotic as he’d imagined it would be. He could see a few unusually bright stars above the eastern and western horizons. Those must be the next planets in the same orbit. But they weren’t even as close as Earth’s moon had been to the Earth. The view was probably much more impressive on the night side because there would be so many more bright ‘stars.’
“I suppose you’ve only made these types of bodies for this planet?” asked Kepler.
“Why would I want to amuse myself here as an old man?” asked Newton. “How about I grill us a couple of fish?”
“You’ve thought out every detail of the ecosystem,” Zhenyi praised him.
“Shouldn’t we get the calculations star
ted first?” said Kepler.
Work. Then pleasure.
“Good thinking, Johannes, you’re completely right,” said Newton. “Come this way, please.” He pointed toward the palms beyond the beach.
They walked across the warm sand until they reached the shade of the trees. Out of nowhere, a shelf with sandals appeared in front of them.
“Please choose a pair and put them on,” said their guide.
Zhenyi looked at him questioningly.
“You’ll see why in a minute.”
Kepler slipped into a pair of red leather sandals, the color matching the polish on his toenails.
“This way,” said Newton, who was now wearing pumps.
They looked a bit out of place in the sand. But the ground soon became firmer. Spiny fruit lay on the ground between the palms. Was that why they needed sandals? They crossed a sparse grove. Behind it was an area of black. At first it made Kepler think of a volcanic plateau. But that’s not what it was.
Newton remained standing under a palm at the edge of the grove. The ecosystem ended here. The planet seemed to be covered in giant metal plates, above which powerful mechanical linkages were operating. Steam escaped from between the plates. It no longer smelled of the sea. It smelled of oil.
“Nothing comes from nothing,” said Newton, gesturing into the distance with his hand.
“Is this... a factory?” asked Kepler.
“No. This is a machine. To put it more precisely, it’s the planetary machine, as it really is. The beach, the sea... the machine produces all of it.”
“The planet is a machine?” asked Zhenyi, eyes wide.
“Yes, what else? The mass has to be exact. I have to balance the effect of the other planets’ tidal forces. Otherwise the orbits aren’t permanently stable.”
“Isn’t that a lot of effort?”
“It was at the beginning, Kepler. It took a few kilocycles before this was all set up. But now it runs like clockwork.”
“And the computer?” asked Kepler.
“Come with me!”
The Death of the Universe: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 1) Page 18