by Jerry
He went backstage to meet with DeClare after the concert was over. The greatest singer of all time sat slumped, unseeing, before his dressing-room mirror, surrounded by flowers and gifts, and messages of congratulation from everyone who mattered. He was big and broad-shouldered, and classically handsome, like some god of ancient times come down to walk among his worshippers. He sat slumped in his chair, tired, depressed, lost. He could barely find the energy to bow his head respectfully to the Lord Ravensguard.
“What is wrong?” said the Lord. “Your audience loved you. Listen; they’re still cheering, still applauding. You sang magnificently.”
“Yes,” said DeClare. “But how can I ever follow that? There will be other songs, other performances, but nothing to match tonight. It hits hard, to reach the peak of your career and know there’s nowhere left to go, but down.”
“Ah,” said the Lord Ravensguard. “But what if I were to offer you the chance for an even greater performance? One last song, of magnificent scope and consequence, before an audience greater than any singer has ever known?”
DeClare raised his heavy head, and looked at the Lord Ravensguard. “How long would this performance last?”
“Just the one song,” said the Lord Ravensguard. Because he was allowed, and even encouraged, to lie when necessary.
The Lady Subtle went to meet the infamous Weeping Woman in that most ancient of prisons, the Blue Vaults. That wasn’t her real name, of course. She was Christina Valdez, just another face in the crowd, until she did what she did, and the media called her La Llorona, the Weeping Woman. The authorities put her in the Blue Vaults for the murder of many children. She wept endlessly because she had lost her own children in an awful accident, which might or might not have been of her own making. And then she went out into the night, every night, drifting through the back streets of dimly lit cities, to abduct the children of others, to compensate her for her loss. None of these children ever went home again.
The Lady Subtle went down into the Blue Vaults, those great stone caverns set deep and deep under the Sahara Desert, and there she gave orders that one particular door be opened. Inside, Christina Valdez crouched naked in the small stone cell, covered in her own filth, blinking dazedly into the sudden and unexpected light. Because normally, when criminals came to the Blue Vaults, they were locked away for ever. No clothes, no windows, no light; food and water through a slot, and a grille in the floor. The door only opened again when they came to take out the body. The Lady Subtle dismissed the guard, and spoke, and the Weeping Woman listened.
“You have a chance to redeem yourself, Christina,” said the Lady Subtle. “You have the opportunity to save all Humanity.”
Valdez laughed in the Lady’s face. “Let them all die! Where were they when my children died? Did any of them weep for my lost babies?”
“The Medusae have murdered millions of children,” said the Lady Subtle. “You could weep for them, and avenge them, too.”
The argument went round and round for some time, because the Lady Subtle was patient and wise, and Christina Valdez was distracted and quite mad. But eventually an agreement was reached, and the Lady Subtle led La Llorona out of her cell and into the light. And if the Lady Subtle felt any guilt at what was going to happen to Christina Valdez, she kept it to herself.
The Lady Shard tracked down that most dangerous of fugitives, Damnation Rue, to a sleazy bar in that maze of criss-crossing corridors called the Maul, deep in the slums of Under Rio. The media called him the Rogue Mind, because he was the most powerful telepath Humanity had ever produced, and because he would not be bound by Humanity’s rules, or the psionic community’s rules, or even the rules of polite conduct. He went where he would, did what he wanted, and no one could stop him. He built things up and tore them down, he owed money everywhere, and left broken hearts and minds in his wake, always escaping one step ahead of the consequences, or retribution.
The Lady Shard watched him cautiously from the shadows at the back of the packed bar, a foul and loathsome watering hole for the kind of people who needed somewhere to hide from a world that had had enough of them. The Rogue Mind was there to enjoy the barbaric customs and the madder music, the illegal drugs and the extremely dangerous drinks . . . and to enjoy the emotions of others, second-hand. For Damnation Rue, there was nothing more intoxicating than just a taste of other people’s heavens and hells. He could always stir things up a little if things looked like getting too peaceful.
The air was full of drifting smoke, and the general gloom was broken only by the sudden flares of discharging energy guns or flashing blades. There was blood and slaughter and much rough laughter. The Rogue Mind loved it. The Lady Shard watched it all, hidden behind a psionic shield.
She brought Damnation Rue to book through the use of a pre-programmed pleasure droid, with a patina of artificially overlaid memories. She was beautiful to look at, this droid, in a suitably foul and sluttish way and, when Damnation Rue persuaded her to sit at his table, and watched what he thought were her thoughts, she drugged his drink.
When he finally woke up, he had a mind trap fastened tight to his brow, holding his thoughts securely inside his own head. He was strapped down, very securely, in a very secure airship, taking him directly to the Blue Vaults. The Lady Shard sat opposite him, told him where he was going, and observed the panic in his eyes.
“You do have another option,” she said. “Save all of Humanity by performing a telepathic task no other could, and have all your many sins forgiven. Or you could spend the rest of your life in a small stone cell, with your mind trap bolted to your skull, alone with your own thoughts until you die. It’s up to you.”
“Money,” said Damnation Rue. “I want money. Stick your forgiveness. I want lots and lots of money and a full pardon. How much is it worth to you, to save all Humanity?”
“You shall have as much money as you can spend,” said the Lady Shard. “Once the mission is over.”
The Rogue Mind laughed. He didn’t trust the deal, and was already planning his escape. But no one escaped the clutches of the Lords and Ladies of Old Earth. The Lady Shard hid her smile. She hadn’t actually lied to him, as such.
And so the three parts of Humanity’s revenge on the Medusae came together at Siege Perilous, brought there by the Lord Ravensguard and the Ladies Subtle and Shard. Samuel DeClare, the very soul of song, looking fine and noble in his pure white robes, and only just a little disturbed, like a god who had come down to mix with men but could no longer quite remember why. And Christina Valdez, mostly hidden inside voluminous black robes, the hood pulled well forward to hide her face. Constantly wringing her hands, and never meeting anyone’s gaze. Now and again a tear would fall, to splash on the marble floor. And Damnation Rue, wrapped in new robes that already appeared a little shabby; a sneaky sleazy little rat of a man, picking nervously with one fingertip at the mind trap still firmly fixed to his brow. Still looking for a way out, the fool.
The Lords and Ladies of Old Earth were not cruel. They praised all three of them as though they were volunteers, and promised them that their names would be remembered for ever. Which was true enough.
“You will sing,” the Lord Ravensguard said to Samuel DeClare. “The greatest, most moving song you know.”
“You will mourn,” the Lady Subtle said to Christina Valdez. “The most tragic, heartbreaking weeping of all time.”
“And you will broadcast it all telepathically,” the Lady Shard said to Damnation Rue. “You will project it across all the open reaches of Space.”
“Just one song?” said the Man With the Golden Voice.
“I only have to mourn?” said La Llorona, the Weeping Woman.
“And after I’ve broadcast this, I get my money?” said the Rogue Mind.
“Yes and yes and yes,” said the Lords and Ladies of Old Earth. Who were not cruel, but knew all there was to know about duty and responsibility.
The three of them were taken immediately to the landing pads on to
p of Siege Perilous, where the starship was waiting for them. Specially adapted, with powerful force shields and a pre-programmed AI pilot. The ship was called Sundiver. The three of them stepped aboard, all unknowing, and strapped themselves in, and the AI pilot threw the ship up off the pads and into the sky, and then away from Old Earth and straight into the heart of the Sun.
The three inside knew nothing of this. They couldn’t see out, and the force shields protected them. The pilot told them that the time had come, and one of them sang, and one of them mourned, and one of them broadcast it all telepathically. That was a terribly sad song, reaching out from inside the heart of the Sun. Earth did not hear it. Humanity did not hear it; the Lords and Ladies saw to that. Because it really was an unbearably sad song. But the Medusae heard it. The telepathic broadcast shot out of the Sun and spread across the whole planetary system, to the outer ranges of Space where the Medusae heard it. That marvellous, telepathically broadcast, siren song.
The aliens moved forward to investigate. The Fleet fell back on all sides, to let them pass. The Medusae came to the Sun, our Sun, Old Earth’s Sun, drawn on by the siren song like so many moths to the flame. And then they plunged into the Sun, every last one of them, and it swallowed them all up without a murmur. Because as big as the swarm of the Medusae was, the Sun was so much bigger.
They never came out again.
The Sundiver’s force shields weren’t strong enough to last long in the terrible heat of the heart of the Sun, but they didn’t have to. The ship also carried that ancient horror, the Time Hammer. The weapon that could break Time. The AI pilot set it to repeat one moment of Time for all eternity. So that the siren song would never end. The Man With the Golden Voice sang, and the Weeping Woman mourned, and the Rogue Mind mixed them together and broadcast it, for ever and ever and ever. They’re in there now, deep in the heart of the Sun, and always will be.
We never saw the Medusae again. It could be that they died, that not even they could withstand the fierce fires of the Sun. Or it might be that they are still in there, still listening, to a song that will never end. Either way we are safe, and we have had our revenge upon them, and that is all that matters.
That is the story. Afterwards, we left Old Earth, that poor poisoned planet, our ancient home which could no longer support us. Humanity set forth in our marvellous Fleet of Dreadnaughts, looking for new worlds to settle, hopefully this time without alien masters. We keep looking. The last of Humanity, moving ever on through open Space, on the wings of a song, for ever.
A TALL TAIL
Charles Stross
This is true, I swear:
I was in Orlando in October, staying in one of those big, bland conference hotels. DARPA, the Pentagon department tasked with nurturing Mad Science in all its most speculative forms, had decided to throw a brainstorming conference on the 100 Year Starship—a mind-meld to try and figure out what research they’d have to conduct in order to have a hope of beginning to build a starship some time in the twenty-second century. And for no reason I clearly understood, they decided to fly in a bunch of SF authors from all over the world. I’m not sure why the Pentagon might want a starship, but I was glad someone was paying for me to go to Orlando and kibitz on their conference, and I was happy to bloviate about such things from a hard SF point of view.
The 100YSS conference exceeded all my expectations—and everyone else’s. But the sheer amount of information on tap made the experience feel a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose. It turns out there’s a lot we don’t know about how to build a starship, but also a lot that we do know, and this was the mother of all networking opportunities for folks with an interest in the field.
Like all networking sessions, a lot of the interesting stuff happens among small groups by the poolside bar, or over a dinner table in a nearby restaurant. You get talking to some interesting-sounding folks who ply you with beer, and the next thing you know you discover you’ve been drafted into some kind of DARPA-funded think tank, or wake up with a hangover in a North Korean labour camp, doomed to spend the next two years coaching the Great Leader’s son through writing the Nobel Prize–winning SF novel that daddy expects him to produce.
Luckily that’s never happened to me, but I have had an eye-opening experience or two. Like the chat I had on Sunday evening by the swimming pool.
The Orlando conference center where they held the 100 Year Starship event had a resort-grade outdoor water attraction. Not only were there hot tubs and a regular swimming pool and a water slide, this hotel had an artificial river about a quarter of a mile long, down which you could drift along on a truck tire, propelled by aquajets and drenched by fountains. On a muggy October evening, after a long day of listening to talks about liquid indium ion drives and aneutronic boron fusion reactors, this was exactly the right place to hang out if you wanted to bump into inebriated floating rocket scientists. Like Greg Benford’s twin brother, Jim.
You probably know Greg Benford best as a physicist and hard SF writer, one of the “Killer B’s” who dominated the field in the 1980s and who is still actively writing novels and research papers. But you might not be aware that Greg has an identical twin, or that his sibling Jim is a card-carrying rocket scientist. Back in 2011, Jim was doing impressive things with microwave sails, and Greg was talking up the applications of a lot of recently declassified Russian research into nuclear thermal rockets: “They built this underground test complex near Semipalatinsk, so that they could capture the exhaust. And then they ran their motor for nearly five hundred hours. That’s about a thousand times longer than Project NERVA managed, in total—in one burn! It’s safe, and it’s reliable, and it’s the best way of getting to the outer planets.” His tire spun slowly round as he drifted under one of the fountains, and because we were orbiting near opposite sides of the artificial river, our paths diverged. Intrigued, I paddled to catch up.
“Don’t you think launching a nuclear reactor might be a bit problematic?” I asked, as I closed to within hailing distance. “I mean, the antinuclear protests when Cassini launched . . .”
Jim waved dismissively. “It’s safe as houses,” he assured me. “You’re looking for safety, right? Nuclear thermal, you launch the reactor fuel piecemeal in Soyuz or Dragon capsules with a man-rated launch escape system, then fuel the reactor once it’s in orbit. No, nuclear-thermal is fine. Not very efficient, but it’s not going to kill anyone. If you want efficient propulsion technology, you’ve got to look elsewhere. But unfortunately the best rocket tech we know of is far too dangerous to use.”
“How dangerous?”
Jim winked at me. “Let me introduce you to Leonard,” he said as we drifted toward the poolside cocktail bar. “He’ll fill you in on it . . .”
Leonard Hansen—not his real name—is a tanned seventy-something rocket scientist who spent the 1950s in California and New Mexico, as a graduate student researching rocket fuels under John D. Clark and then as a fuels scientist working on various missile programs. Today he lives in semiretirement in Florida, but he retains a keen interest in the field of rocket fuel design.
“What you need to understand is that in order to go faster, you need to increase the exhaust velocity,” he explained. “You can do this by making it much hotter, or by using lighter exhaust particles. If you want to make it hotter, however, you need to pump more energy into it. So if you’re using chemical rockets, you need to use very energetic reagents—fuel and oxidizer.”
He paused for a mouthful of lime margarita. “Take the space shuttle,” he said wistfully. “With just two tweaks, we could have put a hundred tons into its payload bay!”
“Two tweaks?” I asked doubtfully. A hundred-ton payload (in a vehicle already massing close to a hundred tons) would have put the shuttle in the same bracket as the Saturn V.
“Yes.” He smiled sourly. “They could have stretched it, given it a bigger thermal protection system as well—the Columbia disaster wouldn’t have happened. But they rejected my proposal. The
first part, to upgrade the SRBs, would have been trivially easy! Although the alternate oxidizer for the space shuttle main engines would have presented certain handling difficulties, that much is true . . .”
“Tell him about the SRBs first,” Jim suggested. He leaned forward expectantly; at a guess, he’d heard this before.
“All right. First, the solid rocket boosters. Regular SRBs run on a mixture of ammonium perchlorate—the oxidizer—and finely powdered aluminum, suspended in a rubbery polymer that holds everything together and provides additional reaction mass. When they ignite you get aluminum oxide and ammonium chloride and lots of energy. But it’s not really enough! We could make them about twenty percent more efficient if we just replaced the aluminum with powdered beryllium. It’s a lighter atom and the redox reaction is more energetic—”
“Hang on!” I stared at him. “Beryllium is really poisonous. Wouldn’t that—”
Leonard shook his head. “Nonsense.” A small smile. “You see, then there was my second proposal. If you replace the oxidizer in the space shuttle main engines with liquid fluorine, you could also get an extra twenty percent out of them. And I know what you’re going to say next: wouldn’t that give rise to an exhaust plume of extremely hot hydrofluoric acid? You’re absolutely right: it would! But hydrofluoric acid reacts with beryllium oxide to give you beryllium fluoride—which is almost inert in comparison—and hydrochloric acid, which is neither here nor there.” A shadow crossed his face. “It’s totally safe, compared to some of the other projects I’ve worked on. But NASA took one look at the environmental impact statement and, and . . .” His shoulders began to shake; whether with laughter or tears, I couldn’t tell.