The Wellstone

by Wil McCarthy

  “Two months? With fifteen of us in a log cabin? That’s crazy. That’s a long time.”

  “If it were easy, there wouldn’t be much point. Think of the statement that makes. Not boohoo, I hate summer camp, but fuck you if you think this is over. It isn’t over. The system needs shocking, and we simply will not be controlled.”

  Conrad let out a breath. “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay. Let’s do it. Fucking space pirates.”

  “All right! That’s the spirit! That’s the Conrad Mursk I know,” Bascal said, throwing an arm over Conrad’s shoulder and breaking out in probably the widest grin Conrad had ever seen on anyone.

  Two days later, they were ready to fill the balloon. Ready to pile into D’rector Jed’s cabin, ready to launch. Ready to face the dangers and deprivations of their long voyage.

  Except that Peter Kolb didn’t want to. Peter Kolb and four other boys, actually, but it was Peter who was doing the talking.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he insisted. “Our term will be over by the time you get there. We should wait.”

  “For what?” Bascal asked calmly. “For them to come and arrest us?”

  “For them to come.”

  “Peter, the gates are down. If the authorities left today—which they may very well have done—even the fastest rescue ships would take nearly a week to get here. And the fastest ships are small, more like ambulances than troop carriers. Would they waste their ertial cruisers on us? That would take two weeks.”

  “Ertial?”

  “Yeah, ertial. Inertially shielded. I thought you were smart, boyo. They put a collapsium cap on the bow, and the black holes inside it deflect the vacuum energy which causes inertia. You can accelerate as fast as you want without feeling it. But it’s expensive, right? There aren’t many ships equipped with it—especially large ones. So if they send a fusion boat—which is what they’ve probably done—then it’s eight weeks or more, possibly sixteen.”

  Peter crossed his arms. “They’re not leaving you out here for sixteen weeks, Bas. They’re not.”

  “Look, we’re leaving. Get used to it.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Peter said. He gestured behind him. “James and Raoul aren’t leaving. Khen isn’t.”

  Khen shook his head to emphasize the point, while James and Raoul just looked hangdog, unhappy at defying their pilinisi. Bertram, whom Peter hadn’t seen fit to mention, looked blank, as if the question didn’t interest him and he just happened to be standing there. But that couldn’t be right, because Bertram and sailing were practically synonymous. He even had a fucking reentry vehicle tattooed on his foot—now there was a high-maintenance way to travel. What did it mean, if Bertram had seen the fetula math—had tacitly approved it, by failing to object— and yet was backing out at the last minute?

  “Bert,” Conrad said, glaring pointedly. “What’s this about?”

  Bertram shrugged. “I just don’t want to.” He was a large-framed kid, not fat or force-grown but still vaguely solid, as if he were carved from wood. He’d probably cultivated the look, thinking it was dashing. Or his parents had.

  “Afraid your family will disapprove?” Bascal sneered, in that way of his.

  “No. That I will. This is getting out of hand.”

  “Out of hand, yes,” Bascal agreed, nodding. “You grasp the essence. Even now, the authorities probably have no clue what we’re up to.” He made a sudden, explosive gesture, slapping a fist into an open palm. “Bam! The launch will shock them, and if we pipe light around the cabin and keep the sail turned edge-on to the Queendom—to Sol and the major planets—we should be fairly invisible. We’ll simply disappear, and they’ll wonder where we’ve gone, and why.”

  The five of them stood there, and now Khen and Raoul were crossing their arms as well. Bertram was cool, barely there. James just looked uncomfortable.

  “And why have we done it?” Peter asked.

  Bascal scowled for a moment, balling his fists, but then the tension suddenly went out of him, and he smiled. “This isn’t a pissing match, kaume’a. If you want to stay, be my guest. I’m just a figurehead—technically speaking I can’t give legal orders, much less illegal ones. I can’t override your better judgment. But stay out of our way, hmm? Because the rest of us are going.”

  “Um, that may not be wise,” Conrad felt compelled to point out.

  Wordlessly, Bascal grabbed him by the meat of the elbow—hard, so it hurt—and dragged him to a stand of trees a few meters away for a private conference.

  “What.”

  Conrad shook free. “We’ll be using up several tons of lake water to make hydrogen. I’m not sure how much will be left in the lake when we’re done. We’ll also dump a lot of oxygen into the atmosphere, and then burn it out again when the bag ignites. The simulation shows a big shockwave, around the whole planette, and then heavy rain. I mean heavy, and probably hot. There’ll be no place to hide.”

  “So?”

  “So, they could be badly hurt. We’d be leaving them on a ruined planette, with no food supply.”

  Bascal shrugged. “They’ll be fine. Rescue is on the way.” “And if they aren’t fine?”

  The prince’s eyes glittered coolly. “That’s what backups are for.”

  Conrad was aghast. Risking your own neck was one thing, but risking someone else’s without permission ... They were children, fundamentally. Children whose play-time had gotten too rough. “That’s not your decision to make, Bas. That’s murder.”

  “Murder five, negligent denial of memory,” Bascal said. “A misdemeanor.”

  Conrad shook his head. “Uh-uh. This is—what do you call it?—premeditated. You can’t lie to the Constabulary; they’ll know it wasn’t negligence.”

  “Only,” Bascal said, with rising anger, “because you’ve just told me all this.” He turned toward the Palace Guard that dogged along two or three meters behind him at all times, and snapped officiously, “You there, guard: put a cone of silence on this individual, Conrad Mursk. We’ve heard enough from him for a while. I want nothing audible. Also prevent him from writing messages, or gesturing elaborately.”

  “What—” Conrad shouted, but even as the word was forming, he felt the air around him beginning to thicken, to crawl up the pathway of his voice and into his throat, silencing all. The robot was facing him with its blank metal face, training a speaker on him, focusing sound waves. Sympathetic vibration: it observed him, predicted the quivering of his vocal cords, and sent out a canceling wave. The silencer effect.

  He tried again: what, WHAT ARE YOU DOING! But it was like a two-man trampoline bounce, when your partner stole your energy and went soaring higher and higher into the air, leaving you glued to the fabric no matter how hard you jumped.

  It was like being smothered. Conrad began to hyper-ventilate, breathing in and out and in and out, much too fast. He knew the process didn’t actually interfere with his breathing, but tell that to his muscles, his lungs, his throat, which was already getting hoarse and yet could produce nothing more than a faint squeak or click. The robot advanced, taking up a position immediately beside him. Conrad shrank away, but of course the robot followed right along.

  Bascal watched him with great interest. “Feels weird? I’ll bet it does. Sorry it has to be this way, boyo.” He studied Conrad for several seconds, not looking sorry, and when he finally spoke his voice was impatient. “Fuck, man, just breathe. It’s not hurting you. I’ll take it off as soon as we seal the hatches. I just don’t want you blowing our ride over ... what, a guilty conscience? I’ve liberated you from the possibility of action. You can’t affect anything. The guilt is all mine.”

  “What’s going on?” Peter called out, from beyond the trees. He was coming in here. Behind him, Ng’s crew was dragging the electrolysis hardware along the Holy Fuckway, up toward the docks.

  Bascal gave him a cheerful thumbs-up. “Nothing, just a discussion.”

  Peter wasn’t buying that. “What
’s wrong with Conrad?”

  “Got something in his throat, I think. He’s breathing, though, so he must be okay.”

  Conrad glared with a feeling beyond anger. This wasn’t a prank, or even a cruel humiliation. This was invasive, like a rape, except really it was a murder, and Conrad was the accessory. He put a level hand up across his neck, and would have drawn it sideways in a “you’re dead” gesture, except that the robot—with bullet-quick movements— caught his forearm in a cool and painless grip, and eased it gently but firmly back down toward his side.

  Murder, Conrad mouthed at Peter. Death. Kill. He’s going to kill you.

  But Peter wasn’t getting it, wasn’t looking closely at Conrad at all. “You punched him,” he said to Bascal, who shrugged and didn’t deny it. “That’s mean. He can’t fight back, not with your bodyguard holding him. You’re the only man on this planet allowed to throw a punch.”

  “Oh, I’m not allowed,” Bascal said, with a cryptic little smile. Then he strode off in the direction of the docks, and Peter, with a quick glance in Conrad’s direction, turned and followed him, intent on discussing the point further.

  Conrad could only watch as the solar panels were set in place and the cables were dipped in the muddy lake, and the water around them began to fizz and boil. Four boys dragged the end of the folded balloon/bag/sail into place, and it billowed as if in a breeze. A bubble appeared in the material, and soon it was swelling, filling. Boys were arranging themselves underneath it, lifting it up so the hydrogen would travel down the length of the bag rather than spilling out the open mouth.

  “This’ll take a while,” Bascal observed, to no one in particular. He was polite enough—if you could call it that—to stay away from Conrad, to keep from rubbing his nose in what had happened.

  Or maybe it wasn’t politeness at all. Maybe he just didn’t want to draw attention to the issue, to get people wondering why Conrad wasn’t moving or talking, and had a personal robot guard following him around. The alarming thing was how easily everyone took this in stride. Nobody sought him out, asked him a question, even looked at him for more than a moment or two. It occurred to him, with foolish shock, that he was no major figure in these boys’ lives, any more than Peter Kolb or Raoul Sanchez were in Conrad’s own. They weren’t aching for his opinion. They weren’t pausing in their hurried work to fret about his well-being, any more than he ever had for them. And these were his friends, right? Probably the best friends he’d ever had.

  Somebody struck up the chorus of the Fuck You Song, and within a few bars everyone was singing, the whole camp ringing and echoing with it. All except for Conrad, who had never felt lonelier in his life. Weirdly, he found himself wishing Feck were here, or his parents, or even that lady from the police station. Somebody uninvolved in this conspiracy.

  He jabbed an elbow into the Palace Guard’s impervium side, and even this was ignored. Bascal might as well have made him invisible, intangible, a ghost. He considered dropping his pants, just to get some attention, then wondered if his escort would even allow it.

  While the song rolled on, the Palace Guards had begun to gather on the dock. One of them said something, in a voice that was loud and polite but not quite distinguishable over the noise. The song faltered and died.

  “This activity is dangerous,” the guard repeated. “You must desist.”

  Bascal snorted. “Dangerous? This activity is necessary.”

  The robot turned. “Spectral analysis of the gas in this enclosure indicates an explosive.”

  “Not at this altitude,” Bascal countered. “Too much xenon. It’ll just burn.”

  And that was true: you could light a match or campfire or barbecue grill with no problem, although the flames were reddish and somewhat sickly. But the boys’ research had indicated a problem with the more rapid forms of combustion. Xenon atoms were just too heavy; heating them soaked up all your energy. And they were large, swarming among the smaller oxygen and hydrogen molecules like elephants at a dog-and-cat show.

  The robot considered this for a second or so, and then said, “Network confirmation is not available. However, internal simulation supports the assertion. What is the purpose of this activity?”

  “It’s a balloon,” Bascal answered, obviously seeing little point in lying.

  “It is anchored to a structure whose foundation has been undermined. The structure’s weight may not be sufficient to counteract buoyancy.”

  A cautious look came over Bascal’s face. “Guard, are you programmed to interfere with educational activities?”

  “No,” the guard replied.

  “What are your exact instructions?”

  The robot, faceless, considered Bascal. It seemed to understand that something important was happening, that Bascal was up to something. Detecting bad intentions was the thing’s entire purpose. That, and protecting the prince—even from himself. Anyway, they’d been overhearing all the important conversations, and surely must understand at least the gist of it all. Finally, the robot said, in King Bruno’s voice, “Hold to the camp schedule, and keep these kids from hurting each other. The fax is for camp activities only.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Other than built-in directives and prior standing orders, yes.”

  The two of them faced one another—a Poet Prince versus the quantum computers of a brilliant but obedient machine.

  “Guard,” the prince said carefully, “we are leaving this planette. I’ll go crazy if we don’t. Kindly support us by staying out of the way.”

  The guard digested that, and replied, “You may not perform any activity without accompaniment.”

  “Very well,” Bascal said, nodding. “One guard will accompany us.”

  “A minimum of two guards are required in the presence of royalty.”

  “Two, then.”

  The robot did not reply. Did that mean it agreed? Assented? Conrad wanted to scream his objections. But the cables in the water bubbled on, and the bag slowly filled.

  At first there was just a gas pocket, swelling down here at the bag’s lower end, but the boys did a fair job of teasing it along, driving it up the length of the wellstone tube. Eventually, the middle of the bag gained buoyancy and lifted into the air, forming a great arch like a rainbow over the planette’s northern hemisphere, while teams of handlers held the ends down firmly. This was impressive, considering how enormous and heavy the thing was. The wellstone film was translucent and microscopically thin, but there was a lot of it, folded over on itself several dozen times.

  Then the rainbow itself began to swell and fatten, and Bascal gave the order to release the upper end, which shot up like a cork in water. It swelled as the pressure around it eased, dropping off rapidly with altitude. Now the balloon was the size of a small cabin, rippling slightly in the convection breeze, and the growing team of handlers was having more and more trouble holding it down. There was a lot of nervous joking, nervous laughter, boys calling for assistance or complaining that their fingers were tired.

  “If you’re not a handler,” Bascal called out, over the rising commotion, “get in the cabin. Now! Now!”

  And it was really happening. They were leaving, soon, in the next couple of minutes.

  “There may be danger to any person left behind,” one of the robots said. “You may not leave any person behind.”

  “Danger?” said Peter. “What danger?”

  “The men staying behind are volunteers,” Bascal said. “They’re awaiting a rescue craft.”

  “What danger?” Peter asked again.

  “The explosion,” Bascal told him impatiently. “And some rain. It might get a little rough.”

  “This is out of control,” Bertram said to the robot. “Stop it now. Please.”

  The robot regarded him without comment. It wasn’t programmed to take orders—or even suggestions—from anyone but palace staff.

  “It’s too late to stop it,” Bascal said. His voice was calm, brisk, triumphant. “The bag is
an explosion waiting to happen. When we let it go, it rises and expands, and its buoyancy increases. If it doesn’t detonate immediately, it detonates when we unmoor the cabin and float a little higher.”

  As if in answer, one of the Palace Guards danced forward and grabbed the bottom of the balloon. Another of them did the same.

  “Guards,” Bascal said, annoyed, “in about five minutes that material is going to become very slippery. You will not be able to hold it. The balloon will rise and explode, possibly injuring me. You must escort me to a safe place: a wellstone-reinforced structure which is not anchored to the planette.”

  The guards, watched closely and nervously by everyone, pondered this.

  “All children must enter the structure,” they finally said.

  “I’m not going up in that thing,” Peter insisted. “I’m not.”

  There were guards all around now, and one of them took hold of Peter’s wrist. Preparing to drag him to safety.

  “Let go of him,” Bascal said impatiently. “Do you have any instruction to protect him from himself?”

  “No,” the guard admitted.

  “Then let him go. He’s not welcome among us. Run away, Peter. Head for the hills. You have about two minutes.”

  “You’re a shit, Bascal!” Peter screamed. He was crying now, and Conrad didn’t blame him a bit. He realized what should have been obvious all along: that Bascal was crazy. He’d inherited his father’s driving passions and his mother’s easy charm, plus an artistic sensibility that seemed to come straight out of nowhere. But where was the de Towaji compassion that had won Bruno three Medals of Salvation in the days before his kingship? Where was the Lutui common sense, or the Tongan tradition of respect?

  In that moment, it seemed that young Bascal would do anything, pay any price, to shock and embarrass his Queendom. He was enjoying Peter’s fear. And suddenly there were no safe options, not for Peter, not for any of them.

  “Garbage pussy bloodfuck,” Ho Ng replied, sounding outraged on his monarch’s behalf. “You better run, little fucker.”

  “Yeah,” Steve Grush added. Apparently he was back on the management team again.