The Wellstone

by Wil McCarthy

  Conrad, who didn’t realize how tensely he’d been holding himself, also relaxed. Then he grabbed onto a stanchion to stop the slow drift he was accumulating. There was a mild force—gravity, probably—drawing him in toward the middle of the chamber. Maybe down a bit as well, toward the surface he’d identified arbitrarily as “floor.”

  “What’s a sound baffle?” the prince asked.

  Robert nodded. “Okay, picture the shape of this vessel. A cylinder, right? We’re near the aft end. Engines this way”—he pointed at the ceiling—“and holds that way.” Toward the floor.

  “Okay.”

  “The bow of the vessel is the snow scoop. Comet fragments go in there, and enter the main hold. It’s nearly full right now: a billion tons of methane and water ice clathrates, plus some coal and chondrite. Doesn’t actually matter what it is, because the hold is really a giant piston that will compress the very atoms into a neutron paste. A few weeks from now, we’ll be ready to squeeze another neuble, and for three days the noise will be awful. This chamber isolates the temporary crew areas from the worst of it. And since the last stage of compression is an antimatter explosion, the chamber also serves as a shock absorber.”

  “I see,” Bascal said. “The crew areas being what, a bridge and an engine room?”

  “Plus an inventory and two small cabins, yah.”

  “That way?” Bascal pointed at the ceiling.

  “Right.”

  “We’ll see these?”

  Robert studied the prince. “We don’t use those areas much. Ander and Nell live there, with their dogs. But if you’re so interested ...”

  Brenda muttered something foreign and surly. Conrad added his own glare to the Palace Guard’s. What did this woman expect them to do, disappear? Never exist in the first place?

  “Of course we’re interested,” Bascal said.

  Robert nodded. “Well, fine. I’ll make sure they know. We need to figure out a place for you all to sleep anyway. I suppose the inventory, or else back there in the corridor where you came in. Obviously, we’re not set up for visitors.”

  He pushed off lightly, launching himself on a gentle glide into the jungle of the sound baffle. He called back, “Watch yourselves in here. It’s fun to fly around, but the neutronium hold is right there, behind the forward bulkhead. Five neubles suspended in a magnetic liquid. It’s a pentagon pattern, to distribute the loads evenly. See there and there, where the vegetation is flattened?”

  “Yeah,” Bascal said, leaping after him.

  “Everyone? Does everyone see those areas?”

  They were hard not to see: three-meter disks of flattened grass and vines, each one near the low point between a set of meter-high foamed-metal hills. In point of fact, Robert and “Money” were drifting directly toward one of them, with Bascal trailing behind, looking up between their blue, hairy legs.

  “Sure,” Conrad said, and was echoed by Xmary and Karl and Ho. (And wasn’t it great, how quiet and unobtrusive Ho was being? For maybe the first time in his life?)

  “Those areas,” Robert explained, “are two gees at the center. Overfly one and you’ll be slammed into the deck before you know what happened. Break your arms if you’re lucky. We’ve never had a fatality, but it’s because we keep it in mind. Always. Five points, in a pentagon around the center. When the next neuble is added, it’ll be six points in a hexagon, and we’ll have to remember all over again.”

  His path had begun to curve noticeably, and presently he flapped his arms in a circular motion that brought his legs out below him. And he settled down at the edge of one of the depressions, speeding up at the last moment so that he landed with an audible thump. When he straightened, he was standing at an angle, leaning away from the gravity. Money landed beside him a little farther out, and stood at an even steeper angle.

  “That’s how we do it,” Robert said. “Where I’m standing is about a quarter gee, inclined toward the center. The gradient is steep: another step and it’s a full gee, and I’ll be leaning over too far if I’m not careful. Even here, I can hurt myself. Neutronium you don’t take chances with, understand? Five points in a pentagon around the center. Look for the flattened grass.”

  “Sure,” Bascal said, alighting almost directly between the two men.

  “Good. Good. Everyone try it. This is safety training.” Robert leaped back toward Conrad and the others. Not a leader, right. The human need for hierarchy was supposedly genetic, as inescapable as sex and taxes. And somebody needed to sit at the top—hence the Queendom, right?

  While this demonstration unfolded, a substantial audience—at least a dozen people—had filtered out of the weeds and were standing or hanging around gawking at the prince, and at the other campers. The first new people they’d seen in what, three years? Five? Someone barked a question at the soaring Robert, who barked back an answer in the same tone.

  Xmary launched herself toward the flat spot, and Conrad, not wanting to be outdone, followed right behind.

  “Maybe we should take our clothes off,” he said, in a voice only she could hear. “Just to be polite.”

  “Ha ha,” she answered, more loudly.

  Behind them, Ho and Karl took the leap.

  The maneuver turned out to be almost as easy as it looked; Conrad could distinctly feel the gravity setting in as he approached. He was still in freefall—just curving along an altered trajectory—but it was a different kind of freefall somehow. Stretchy, tingly, slippery. He couldn’t put a word to it, but the feeling was there just the same. The rotation, so his feet were underneath him, was not quite a zero-gee movement. Once his feet got close the gravity seemed to seize and center them of its own accord. His only error was in judging the angle of his body; it wasn’t steep enough, so he came in a bit wrongly when his feet slapped into the baffle wall—the hilly, foamed-metal floor that attracted him like a magnet, grabbing firmly at the last instant. He felt glued.

  He wasn’t leaning enough, though. He was perpendicular to the floor, not to the gravity, and for a moment he felt as if he were standing on a steep incline, about to tumble downhill or pull right out of his shoes. But he caught himself, straightening in the proper way, and a few moments later he caught Xmary, who’d landed in front of him and leaned too far out. She flailed briefly, then fell backward into his arms.

  “Oof,” she said.

  “Wow. Weird,” Conrad agreed, his voice on the verge of breaking. Her waist and the small of her back, bare beneath the cropped camp shirt, felt alarmingly soft in his hands, both cool and warm, completely unlike the skin of a boy or a man, or his mother for that matter. She smelled sweaty, and somehow that was nice, too. The fax might arrest the Queendom’s women in a state of permanent youth, but was that enough? Was there more to the feel and scent of a person than the cells and molecules of their skin? Could you feel the youthful soul raging inside?

  He’d kept his distance from her; now the contact both soothed and agonized him.

  “No touching, bloodfuck,” Ho said quietly, drifting in behind them. “How many times I have to tell you?” But he’d gotten his approach all confused, and he went past them—nearly over their heads—and came in not only too steep but also too close to the center, and with his feet in the wrong place. He hung in the air a moment, and then fell fast and hard with the definite clunk! of bone against metal. “Ow! Fuck! Donkey fuck!”

  “You mind your own self,” Xmary said to him, picking her way out of Conrad’s arms.

  “Bitch,” he answered quietly.

  And there was a word Conrad had never liked. It basically meant “dog,” a description that bore no resemblance to any girl or woman Conrad had ever met. His father, Donald Mursk, used that word sometimes when things weren’t going his way. Used it once or twice to his wife’s own face, and once to describe the Queen of Sol cavorting regally on the wellstone holie screen of the TV. Donald Mursk was not by any means a bad guy, but Conrad personally found it unmanly for him to use that kind of language.

 
Conrad felt the urge to lash out, not with a slur or a slap but with the full force of his body, using himself as a weapon. At first he held back—when had such impulse ever served him? When had fighting? But then, bowing to fury’s slower cousins—righteous anger and the desire to impress—he considered carefully. He did have a perfect opening, and passing it up would be every bit as portentous and consequential as acting on it. Right?

  Maybe it was just impulse again, masquerading as a rational decision, but he leaned in toward the center of the flattened grass, until he could feel the neuble down there, maybe four meters under the floor. And he drew back his sneakered foot—not easy in the steep gravity—and snapped it forward into the side of Ho Ng’s head. Not hard enough to damage him seriously, but plenty hard enough to hurt.

  “That’s no way to talk,” he said.

  And then, like magic, the Palace Guard was there, and Conrad felt the warm circle of a guide laser on his arm, half an instant before the tazzer beam made jellied agony of his muscles. He could feel the neuble again as he fell; the sharp, steep field of its gravity all around him, rushing by. Then he hit the floor, and the pain flared brighter, and he was—out for a moment. Then back in again, buzzing and ringing. But when he sat up, the pain was fading (except in his elbow, which he’d apparently banged hard), and Bascal and Karl and Xmary were all kneeling around him in a ring, with Robert M’chunu looking on worriedly from a few meters away. And behind him, the Palace Guard, standing upright like a battered chrome statue. Not smug or righteous, not concerned for Conrad’s welfare. Just there.

  “What was that all about?” Bascal asked him, sounding half worried and half amused.

  “Difference of opinion,” Conrad answered vaguely, fighting not to swoon. He was tempted to play it up—to be melodramatic. Swoon, sure, and groan, and ask everyone what happened. All that stuff you usually did when you unexpectedly got hurt. But there was too damned much going on today—people had died—and frankly he was embarrassed to draw any attention at all, much less by picking a fight in front of strangers.

  “What were you trying to do?”

  “Nothing, Bas. I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “It was out of line. Won’t happen again.”

  “All right,” the prince said, tentatively accepting that without quite understanding.

  They helped him up, brushing the grass off him, and Xmary caught his eye and mouthed the words “Thank you.” He didn’t know how to respond, and in thinking about it he used up the opportunity.

  “Is he all right?” Robert asked nervously. Seeing the Palace Guard in action again had shaken him. Maybe reminded him what a close brush he’d had himself—how lucky he was to have painfully blistered fingers instead of no fingers at all.

  “He’s fine,” Bascal answered. “Just a mild tazzing. We’re not allowed to fight.”

  A murmur went through the South Africans, and Conrad could hear some of the tension going out of them. What a clever thing for Bascal to say: turning an incident of double violence into an advertisement for their cherubic harmlessness. Never mind that killer robot, that kick to the head, that poisoned glare Ho was aiming in Conrad’s direction. Just boys having fun, eh?

  “Oh. Huh. Well maybe we should continue the tour, yah?”

  “I quite agree. Boys, behave yourselves.”

  Obediently, Ho came forward and put a brotherly arm around Conrad’s shoulders.

  “We’ll see, bloodfuck,” he murmured quietly, squeezing a little. “We’ll see when I catch you alone.”

  “Or I catch you,” Conrad murmured back. “Or someone else does.” There was no bravado in the statement. Conrad couldn’t win a fair fight, but as he’d just demonstrated, he could launch a sneak attack as well as the next guy. Or defend himself at cost, sure, landing a punch or kick or wrench-to-the-knee that Ho would not soon forget. Really, Ho was going to pound the crap out of him either way, so it was in his best interest to pound as much out of Ho first as he physically, possibly could. By whatever means, fairly or un-. And the barge was big enough and empty enough that the opportunity wouldn’t be long in coming.

  This message got through, too: Ho blinked and pulled his arm away, thinking it over. He’d made two enemies just now, and maybe more. In a foreign place. When he owed his life to their efforts.

  “Be useful,” Conrad advised. And his words brought color to Ho Ng’s cheeks, and suddenly Conrad had the upper hand again, fight or no fight.

  Score another point for rational thought.

  The bridge turned out to be a surprisingly cramped little chamber, with pilot and nav/logistics stations on opposite sides: one chair facing up and the other facing down from above, skewed one meter to the side so the two operators’ heads wouldn’t collide. The arrangement made maximum possible use of a tiny space, but it seemed kind of crazy given the hugeness of the rest of the ship. Even the corridors were wider.

  Conrad took this as a vote of confidence for the on-board hypercomputers. This was an automated barge, after all, and while it was clearly expected to need cleaning and tuning from time to time, it was apparently not expected to require human piloting. Maybe there was a regulation or something, stating that it had to be possible, so this token of a bridge was shoehorned in between the two much larger crew cabins.

  The cabins themselves were no big deal—just a zero-gee sleep pallet and a toilet/shower enclosure, with a wardrobe, sink, and mirrored necessities cabinet. No fax, no wasted space, no program in the wellstone aside from lights and bare metal. D’rector Jed’s bathroom was more lavish. But Nell and Ander—the cabins’ two residents— had clearly made themselves at home; the walls were brightly decorated, one with waves and splatters of paint and the other with hundreds of printed 2-D and 3-D pictures—mostly landscapes with people in the foreground, mostly on Earth but a few from Mars and Venus, as well as some less identifiable locales. Rock tunnels? Space platforms?

  Both rooms stank of dog, although the animals themselves were not in evidence.

  The empty inventory, on the other hand, was rather a large room, with rather a large fax machine dominating its aft wall. “Some big equipment has to go through here,” Robert explained. “When this thing pulls into port they have to change out all the gases and fluids. The fittings are instantiated as needed. This is also where the crew transfers in and out, nominally, when the gate is working. And it’s the main medical facility as well.”

  Bascal eyed the room and the fax and the doorway, nodding in satisfaction. “It’s great, yeah. No material restrictions? Other than legal limits, I mean?”

  Robert shrugged. “None that we’ve ever encountered, no.”

  “Little gods, I wish we’d’ve had one of these on Camp Friendly. Life would have been so much easier. How’s your buffer mass? Will you object if we cart away a few tons? Mostly silicon?”

  A white grin brightened Robert’s blue face. “We’ve got eight hundred tons of buffer mass, Your Highness. With all that neutronium to push around, the engines aren’t going to notice an amount like that. Each neuble masses ten times the dry weight of the ship.”

  Bascal looked both impressed and appalled. “Jesus. You must burn a lot of fuel pushing it around.”

  “That’s so,” Robert agreed. “Loaded, we have to abandon the fusion drives for anything other than attitude control. Course changes are made by the antimatter drive, usually during squeezing operations.”

  “Wow. Fuck. These barges should be ertially shielded.”

  “Can’t,” Robert said. “First off, that’d be a lot more expensive than antimatter, especially since we need the antimatter anyway to compress the neubles. We get twice the work out of it. Efficient. Whereas ertial shielding for something this big would take, what, a million gigatons of collapsium? It’d take hundreds of years for this thing just to gather its own shield mass.”

  “Or hundreds of barges,” the prince suggested, “to equip one superbarge, which you could push around with flashlights and fart gas.
No inertia, no fuss.”

  But Robert was shaking his head. “Still can’t, no. The bow of the ship has to be open, right? It’s a scoop. Put a collapsium cap over it and suddenly you can’t gather snow anymore.”

  “So put it on the stern.”

  “Then you can’t run the engines.”

  “So use gravity hooks. Little gods, we’ve had inertialess grappleships for centuries.”

  “Wouldn’t work,” Robert said. “For a lot of reasons. Maybe if there was infinite money you could set up a better system. But this one is practical, and self-sustaining. Been working since even before your father’s time, or he’d have never invented collapsium in the first place. Right? No Nescog. No Queendom.”

  “Hmm.”

  “How,” Conrad interrupted, “do you get the neutronium out?”

  “At port? They use magnets; big ones. Like you smacked us with.”

  “Oh.” Conrad took the hint. “Our braking system caused you some trouble, did it?”

  “Banged the cargo out of alignment,” Money Izolo confirmed. “Gravity fluctuations and a hell of a loud noise. That Plasma discharge was something to see! There may be some structural damage as well, though we can’t get into the chamber to confirm it. We’d have to drain the working fluid, which would be challenging out here in Kuiper wilderness. If something is broken, we’ll know soon enough.”

  “You sound just like a mass wrangler,” Conrad said.

  Izolo shrugged. “We live here. The ship’s systems are our whole world.”

  “I wasn’t making fun. You’ve probably spent more time at it than the real wranglers. Are you going to get jobs when all this is over?”

  Izolo laughed. “I doubt it. Jail time, most likely.” “Does the barge have a name?”

  “It has a registration number,” Robert said. “But we call it Refuge.”

  “Refuge. Hmm. Catchy.”

  Bascal was still studying the room, but now his eyes were looking back in the direction of the bridge, and flicking occasionally forward, toward the holds. “What happens in an emergency?” he asked. “Say you’ve got to change course in a hurry.”