The Wellstone

by Wil McCarthy

  The operation was interesting to watch: everything happened slowly and with crisp precision, yet none of the spacewalkers were idle for long. Once the lock was depressurized and the outer hatch opened, they began clearing away sections of sailcloth, and setting up tripods in little depressions around the lock which appeared to exist there for exactly this purpose. And then pulleys were attached to the tripods, and cables to the pulleys, and hooks and carabiners to the cables.

  Then Robert and Money were standing guard at the airlock’s lip, held down against it by magnets in their boots, while the others carefully rappelled along the hull, in the direction of Viridity’s remains, ignoring the handholds Conrad and the others had used. He supposed those were only for the most desperate of emergencies, of which there were no doubt very few. Still, it took the Refugees longer to reach the cabin than it had taken the Camp Friendlies to reach the airlock from it. When they got there, they began attaching still more cables to it, and clearing away more of the sail, and attaching more tripods to the hull, until the whole area began to look like the inside of a grand piano.

  And yet, despite these fascinations, the process was deliberate and methodical enough to be boring at the same time. Conrad found himself glancing at the scene rather than staring—his mind dividing it up into a series of still images, a few every minute. Meanwhile, his attention wandered, taking in the walls and the floor and the ceiling, the bridge controls, the wellstone edges of the holie screen itself. This cramped little bridge was an interesting exercise in its own right, with hardly a millimeter wasted anywhere.

  “Hey, look,” he said at one point, eyeing the control panel in front of him. “There is a button to dump the neutronium.”

  Bascal rubbed his nose. “You noticed that, eh? You knew there had to be one. Robert can talk all he wants about the barge being less valuable than the cargo, being essentially a protective cocoon for it, but this is a semi-crewed vessel, and certain safety concessions have got to be made. There’s also a self-destruct and a cargo-destruct, although they look complicated to operate.”

  “Why would they need a self-destruct?”

  “I dunno. Loss of helm control, on a direct course for a population center? Fully loaded, these barges are bringing in a hundred gigatons; that’s a tenth of a good-sized planette. Imagine dropping that in the middle of the Irish Sea.”

  “Hmm. I suppose.”

  On the screen, the Refugees were assembling some kind of sled, with pulleys of its own that hooked onto the cables linking cabin and airlock.

  “Of course, if that were going to happen the navy would just vaporize the barge with a nasen beam, releasing all that mass-energy as far from humanity as possible. But having to would not amuse them.”

  “I don’t think they amuse easily,” Conrad said.

  Bascal seemed to find that funny.

  And then, on the holie screen, the space-suited figures were packing it in: stowing equipment on their belts and backs, and slowly rappelling back in the direction of the airlock again.

  “They didn’t get it,” the prince said, sounding surprised.

  Conrad checked a chronometer. “Their forty minutes are up.”

  “They should let us work the LIDAR for them. If we get a clean scan, they can stay out longer.”

  “I’ll bet there’s some reason they won’t do things that way. Otherwise they’d’ve stationed one of their own people in here to do exactly that, right?”

  Bascal didn’t reply, just watched the screen as the spacewalkers climbed back into the airlock again, and reentered the barge.

  “You didn’t get it,” he said to Robert, when the mob of them arrived in the corridor outside the bridge.

  Robert’s helmet was under his arm. He looked content enough, and smiled at the prince. “We weren’t trying to. We can’t fit all that into one space walk, not safely. That was just our setup run.”

  “I see. So what happens now?”

  “Now we take a LIDAR scan, pick up some more equipment, and go back out again.”

  “Because you don’t have enough equipment out there already.”

  “Right,” Robert said, unfazed by the irony. “Oh, before I forget.” He dug a gauntleted hand into a pouch on his belt, and pulled out a carefully folded square of wellstone film, several dozen layers thick. “A little souvenir from your journey.”

  “Oh. Thanks,” Bascal said, sounding pleasantly surprised as he accepted the gift. “This is from the sail?”

  “Yah. I thought you might want some. We’re trying to minimize the damage, in case you still need it for something, but these pieces had to come out.”

  “You’re very thoughtful,” the prince commended.

  “Funny, that’s not what the prudes back in TSA used to say.”

  The second space walk was, if anything, even slower and more methodical than the first, although there was slightly more talking as the work progressed into areas outside the routine. The Refugees found it necessary to slice away large pieces of D’rector Jed’s shattered cabin, and to carry them around to the fore end of the barge for disposal in the great, all-consuming maw of the mass crusher. Luckily, there wasn’t a snowball storm while they did this, although—of course—there was no luck involved. These people knew the location and course of every snowflake within five million kilometers!

  It occurred to Conrad that Martin’s lifeless body, along with the missing Palace Guard, must be among those cataloged objects. In the hours since the crash, they probably hadn’t drifted far. For all he knew, the guard might still be alive, an angry monster adrift in the nothingness, struggling in vain to return to its prince. Or maybe it had swept in front of the barge and been eaten.

  “If we have to dispose of any evidence,” Bascal noted, obviously thinking along similar lines, “that crusher would be the place. Neutronium tells no tales, and preserves no information about the atoms and molecules which formed it.”

  “Great,” Conrad said, just loving the sound of that. The Poet Prince was drinking in every sight and sound, every datum, every stray thought anyone had given voice to. He was scheming, and the gist of it was already unsavory.

  And then, once again, the spacewalkers were stowing their gear and climbing back inside.

  “They still didn’t get it,” Bascal grumbled. Then later, to Robert: “You people are awfully patient.”

  Money Izolo smiled at that. “We got time, Your Majesty. The machine is secure, and as far as we can tell your boy is safe in there. So we got nothing but time.”

  Fortunately, the third space walk hit pay dirt almost immediately, as Viridity’s fax machine was winched aboard the little sled, webbed and strapped in place, and transported without further fuss to the airlock. After that it was just the anticlimactic—ha!—disassembly of all the cables and pulleys and trusses and tripods, which for some reason went much faster than their setup had.

  And then Robert’s jolly crew were carting their prize through the hallways on a complicated sort of hand truck, and soon enough they were back at the inventory again, grinning and thumping each other, and tossing heaps of equipment back into the fax machine.

  “Well done,” Bascal told them sincerely. “Very, painfully well done. You’re an example to us all.”

  And then, while the Refugees got naked again and chatted about their various adventures outside, Bascal took Conrad by the elbow and led him back into the corridor, stopping halfway between the inventory and the bridge.

  Conrad groaned inwardly. Conspiracy time. “What is it?” he asked.

  “I have a plan.”

  Wearily: “I know you do, Bascal. But for crying out loud, why don’t you just ask these people for help? They might give it. If you trick them or force their hand, and something goes wrong ...”

  “Yes?” Bascal was annoyed again, impatient.

  “Why do I talk to you, Bas? Never mind. Let’s hear it.”

  “Thank you so much, me boyo. Just out of curiosity, if I really do get us back to Denver, ag
ainst all odds, against all hope ... If I do that, will you bow down to me as your monarch?”

  Conrad sighed. “It isn’t the deed, Bas, it’s the means. If you can do great things without losing your honor, that’s when I’ll bow. I’ll stand on my head if you do that.”

  “I see. Hmm. So you, a paver’s boy from County Cork, are giving me advice on how to behave nobly. Is that it?”

  Conrad thought for a moment before answering, “Absolutely. It’s my right as a citizen. Your job as monarch is to fulfill my expectations, however unreasonable. These people seem to have their shit together. Why can’t we?”

  “Ah.” Despite his impatience, Bascal actually smiled at that. Actually seemed interested, even maybe a little bit grateful, for the observation. “Promise me you’ll never change, Conrad.”

  “I will change,” Conrad answered. “That’s the whole idea. That’s the very right we’re fighting for.”

  “Oh, so now we’re fighting again? How curious. Does that mean you’re ready to hear my plan?”

  “Sure. Enlighten me.”

  “I’m thinking we rebuild Viridity, then dump this vessel’s neutronium overboard. We hide behind a rigidized sail, right? Then go back into fax storage and detonate a neuble. The energy release will be huge . It could push us back into Queendom space in just a few months.”

  Conrad sighed. “Bascal, you’re crazy. I mean crazy. Never mind the danger—to these people as much as ourselves—or the legal ramifications. Think of the cost. Even your splendid allowance doesn’t cover these kind of big-ticket items. Does it?”

  “It doesn’t need to,” the prince said, his eyes sparkling merrily.

  But at that very moment, there was a sound from the bridge: a shrill, insistent pinging.

  Bascal stiffened. “Proximity alarm. Shit. Something’s approaching from the stern. Probably stealthed, or the scans would’ve—”

  Then came a huge, hollow groaning noise from one end of the barge to the other. And its walls shimmered for an instant, and then laid themselves out in a series of broad metal traces against a green-white insulative background. Something was reprogramming all the wellstone, making connections through it, tracing out the Queendom’s largest circuit board. Then the barge groaned again, and Conrad heard clanking noises from far away, as if something very large were attaching itself very firmly to the barge’s other end.

  They were back on the network.

  And then the fax machine in the inventory gave off a sizzle and a flash, moments before a swarm of armored, black-and-bronze SWAT robots began pouring out of it— literally pouring like a fluid, rolling and swirling through the inventory chamber and the corridor beyond it, flowing onward and outward to fill the human spaces of the ship. An army of beetle-black, statue-bronze man-things, overwhelming in number, built up from the eight hundred tons of base matter in the ship’s mass buffers. Faxborn for this very moment, this very instance, this very fight.

  One of the bronze troopers restrained Conrad, grabbing him gently but firmly by the wrist and ankles. Another pair grabbed Bascal, and a struggling, space-suited Robert M’chunu drifted by with three of them attached, swarming and grabbing at his arms and legs.

  “Please remain calm,” said a high, mechanical voice in Conrad’s ear. “By authority of the Queen’s Navy and the Royal Constabulary, you are under arrest on suspicion of vandalism, hijack, and space piracy. You have the right to consult with an attorney. You have the right to be interrogated by disposable copies. As a minor, you do not have the right to commit suicide without entering a plea, but you do have the right to blame your parents. Do you understand these rights?”

  “Fucking finally,” Conrad snarled at the robot that held him. “Thank you, you’re welcome, and Jesus H. Bloodfuck. What took you guys so long?”

  chapter nineteen

  single-celled life

  Conrad half expected to wind up in the same interrogation room as before, with Officer Leslie of the Dandelion Sweater. It seemed like a very Queendom-of-Sol way to handle the situation: assign a caseworker to each unruly child, build a rapport, write a series of lengthy analyses.... But instead he was led to a windowless holding cell: larger and darker, with an actual cage door that slammed shut with the clang of metal and the mirrored gleam of impervium bars.

  He was in a basement somewhere; he didn’t know what city, or even what planet. Could be Venus for all he knew; there were towns there now, on the highlands, and the gravity was indistinguishable. Why they would ship him there he had no idea, but he also had no idea why they’d separated everyone, and locked him up alone. This wasn’t the Denver police station, he knew that much, but the cool, processed air provided no other clues.

  How long they left him there alone was something he never learned, because in point of fact he was exhausted. It had been a long day, commencing with the fax deaths and ensuing argument aboard Viridity. More than a week had passed since then, and though he’d been stored as data for most of that time, he’d still lived through twenty or thirty hours of it, all in one big subjective push. He was running, he realized now, on a pure adrenaline high.

  But with the action suddenly over, the fear and uncertainty ended, and the heavy Refuge breakfast still weighing him down, he simply stretched out on one of the cell’s bunks and went straight to sleep. Ah, night, Bascal had said to him once in the early days of Camp Friendly. That puts to rest the work of men.

  His waking came harshly and too soon: a brightening of lights, a clanging open of the cage door.

  “Hello,” said a man’s voice.

  Conrad rolled over onto his side, facing the wall. “I’m sleeping.”

  “Lad, we need to talk.”

  Oh, shit, he knew that voice. His father’s. And presently his mom’s chimed in. “We came as soon as possible. Dear, you have no idea how worried—”

  “Please, I’m so tired,” Conrad complained, but his voice sounded too whiny in his ears, too childish. After everything they’d been through—the daring, the recklessness, the sacrifice and deprivation—he had earned the right not to sound like that in front of his parents. He wasn’t a hundred years old, all right, but he didn’t feel seventeen either. And with a shock, he realized he wasn’t: it must be August by now. Since Denver, he hadn’t paid any attention to the calendar, and his late-July birthday had come and gone unnoticed. He was eighteen now, and since Bascal was a few weeks older, so should he be as well.

  He didn’t feel eighteen any more than he felt seventeen, but that number at least seemed less jarring, less alien to his recent experience. Did eighteen-year-olds make credible space pirates?

  “All right,” he said in a deliberately deeper voice, and hauled himself up to a sitting position. He rubbed his eyes blearily. “Hi.”

  Maybel Mursk smiled, and rushed forward to crush him in a hug. “Oh, my brave, clever boy. Welcome home, lad.”

  “Where am I?” Conrad asked.

  “City and County of Cork,” she said, still squeezing him. Her auburn hair was a frizzy mess that tickled his face. Her company blazer was rough against his bare arms. “Very near to the house, about ten kilometers. We could almost have walked from there, on your father’s own roads.”

  When she finally disengaged herself, Conrad found himself staring at his father’s hand, held out for him to shake. He did so.

  “We’ve worried,” Donald Mursk said. “We’ve worried a great deal.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Conrad told him sincerely. “I had no way to contact you.”

  “We’re very proud,” his father added, a bit tentatively. And that made no sense: proud of him for running away? For breaking the law? For being implicated in nine deaths?

  “Of what?”

  “Well...” Donald ran a hand through his hair. Like everyone else in the Queendom, he looked like a strong and confident young man, but here was a gesture that suggested otherwise. It belonged with a balding scalp, a bulging gut, a hat clutched between nervous fingers.

  “Na
turally we’re angry with you,” his mother said.

  “Right,” Donald agreed. “Angry. But it’s a strange thing you’ve done, isn’t it? A strangely compelling thing. All sorts of people have been coming up to us and, well, complimenting. I mean, it’s illegal—”

  “But not antisocial,” Maybel finished for him. “You’ve done a thing a bit like the Republican hunger strikes: powerfully expressing a viewpoint people can relate to. Mere words don’t compare.”

  Conrad sighed. He was tired, and while he’d missed his parents terribly, this was not at all the homecoming he’d envisioned. “We destroyed property. We got people killed.”

  “Oh, that may be,” Donald agreed seriously. “But you should hear from the dead boys themselves, before you pass judgment. In the old days we knew, there’d always be some bitter affliction keeping pace with our joys. But we knew there’d be joys. You should give your friends a bit of credit, lad.”

  Conrad processed that, not knowing what to think.

  “We know you and Bascal disagreed,” Maybel told him. “His letter was very clear on that point, and the visual records from the Palace Guard support it. We know you did your best.”

  But Conrad was shaking his head. “No, don’t say that. I helped him. I waffled occasionally, but he always had his way in the end, every step. I deserve my equal share of blame.”

  “Or credit,” his father said. “And that’s the way the law sees it, too. You’re to be severely punished, never doubt it. Your point is well made, but now there’s little else the Queendom can do except punish. Unless it wants to encourage more of the same, and I don’t think anyone wants that.”

  Listening to his parents’ voices, their faint but unmistakable accents, he considered the strange fact that the two of them lived and worked and socialized in the very town of their birth. Donald looked after the roads, yes, which few people and fewer vehicles ever used. Maybel was a housing inspector—one of six for the county. Neither of them traveled much outside of southern Ireland, or needed to.