The Ring of Charon the-1

by Roger MacBride Allen

  Sondra herself had a bit of trouble resisting the temptation to lean across the table and punch him. Just who made those promises, Sunshine? she thought.

  Raphael scanned the faces about the table and continued. “Of course this is unfair, and shortsighted of the board. We have done great things, and when the history of science in this century is written, the Ring will figure prominently.” Nice little blind side there, Sondra decided. Blame the funding board, blame the staff, but don’t blame yourself, Raffy, she thought.

  Obviously, Raphael wanted to keep them off balance, avoid substantive debate and open discussion while being careful to maintain the appearance of those things. “We can all be proud of what we did here.” Sondra noticed that Raphael was already talking about the station in the past tense. It was over already. “Some had the dream of conquering gravity, bending it to our will as electricity, fission, fusion have been put to use. But that was not to be.”

  It wasn’t you who tried to sell that dream, no not at all. Sondra was growing weary of the charade. No doubt whipsawing people was a reflex for him, automatic, unconscious by now. Still, at some level or another, Raphael had to know what he was doing. He must know he wasn’t fighting fair with that kind of buck-passing crack.

  Sondra glanced around the room. Men and women bright enough to run a particle accelerator the size of a small planet likewise had to be at least somewhat aware that they were being manipulated, even as they let it happen. Surely Raphael had figured out that they knew, and surely most members of the staff had figured out that Raphael knew they knew, and so on and on in a weary spiral.

  Possession of that knowledge did not seem to bother Raphael. Why should it? The staff members always folded, always allowed Raphael to manipulate them. Dr. Simon Raphael had been running this station by such means from day one, and it had always worked. No doubt it had worked equally well at every other operation he had ever managed. Raphael had had decades of practice bullying and manipulating.

  But the questions remained: why did these people put up with it? Perhaps some calculated that cooperation was easier than battling slippery insinuations. Others had learned the hard way that going along was simpler than arguing with an unreasonable request made in a wounded tone, or disputing an impossible order dressed up to sound like the voice of long-suffering reason.

  Probably most of them simply responded with the guilt-stricken impulse of a small boy accused of unspecified sins by his parents. There is something in human nature that wants authority to be just. It is easier to discover imagined faults in yourself rather than accept real flaws in the people that you count on, the people you have to trust. How many children find ways to blame themselves for their parents’ divorce? But very few parents deliberately try to induce that guilt as a means of control—the way Raphael did.

  “We must accept the fact that we have come to a dead end. Therefore,” Raphael went on, “the time has come to retreat as gracefully as possible, and move on to other things.”

  But a new voice spoke up. “Ah, sir, perhaps not. I think I might have found an approach.” Sondra looked around in surprise, and spotted the speaker at the far end of the table. That new kid, Larry Chao.

  Every head in the room swiveled around to find the person who had dared to speak out. Dr. Raphael’s eyes bulged out of his head, and his face went pale with anger.

  “Well, that is, I haven’t solved everything, but I ran an experiment last night—and well, maybe…” The poor kid felt the eyes on him. He was visibly running out of steam, deathly embarrassed. “I just thought that maybe my results might be good enough to impress the board, let us keep going…” Larry’s voice faded away altogether, and he stared helplessly at Raphael.

  “Chao, isn’t it?” Raphael asked in the angry tones of a schoolmaster interrupted by a naughty little boy. “I am not aware of any experiment scheduled for last night.”

  “It… it wasn’t scheduled, sir,” Larry said. “It was just an idea that came to me in the middle of the night. I tried it and it worked.”

  “Are you aware, Chao, of the regulations regarding unauthorized use of the station’s equipment? No? I thought not. You will provide me with a complete list of equipment and materials used, and the precise length of time you operated that equipment. The costs of your experiment will be calculated at the standard basis, and the total amount will be deducted from your next pay deposit. If the amount is higher than your pay—and I won’t be surprised if it is—appropriate arrangements will be made to garnishee your pay for as long as is required.”

  Larry’s face flushed and he gestured helplessly. “But sir, the results! It’s got to be enough to convince them.”

  “I seriously doubt that a funding board that has decided to shut this facility down as an economy move will be persuaded to change its mind because a junior researcher saw fit to waste even more money. That will be quite enough from you, Mr. Chao.”

  Catch that real subtle point, Larry? Sondra thought. You’re still a mere mister. Don’t you know no one is capable of actual thought unless they have at least one doctorate?

  Raphael looked around the table with a ferocious expression on his face. “Unless someone else has an equally vital contribution to make, I think we must now proceed to the logistics of the shutdown. I intend to launch the evacuation ship no later than one month from today. I propose that all department heads report back in three days, having in the meantime set the work priorities. We are instructed by the board to leave the station, the Ring, and all our facilities in standby mode. We are to ‘mothball’ the station, as the lasergram puts it, in the hopes that it might be reoccupied and reactivated at some future date. As there is a great deal to do, and very little time, I propose that we close this meeting now and set about planning the task ahead.” Raphael hesitated a moment, as if there were the slightest chance of anyone disagreeing. “Very well, then. Department heads will meet here at 0900 hours, three days from now, with preliminary shutdown schedules prepared.”

  The meeting broke up, but Sondra Berghoff kept her seat, and watched the people go, all of them moving carefully in the low gravity.

  None of them had spoken up.

  With the whole project about to crash down about their ears, none of them had so much as lodged a protest. What, exactly, did they have to lose, if the station was lost anyway? And what sort of madness was it to ignore the Chao kid? Sure, it was a long shot, but what harm could possibly come from listening?

  Probably Chao’s improvements wouldn’t be enough. At a guess, Chao had managed to force some minor increase in gee-force generation, to two or three gravities, or held the field together for something more than the current record of ten seconds. Well, if he had, that would be a real accomplishment and bully for him. It wouldn’t be enough to change any minds, but why couldn’t anyone speak up, and at least demand that he be heard?

  Sondra drummed her fingers on the table. Just to pull an example out of the air, why hadn’t she spoken up herself?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bills to Pay

  Gone. The bright beacon in the dark was gone After only the briefest moment. The Observer strained itself to find the signal again, but it was not there.

  How could it be gone? A pang of sorrow, of loneliness, washed over it. Abandoned. Abandoned again after such a long time. It struggled to calm itself, and resume its aeons-long sleep.

  But there was a small part of itself that would not allow complete rest. A small part of it watched still.

  And hoped.

  * * *

  Sondra stood in front of her mirror. There she was, for what it was worth. Pudgy figure, chubby face, red hair a mass of tight curls. She was dressed in her usual style: a rumpled shirt of indeterminate color, shapeless sweatpants, and Velcro-bottom slippers. But she wasn’t at the mirror to check her appearance. The point here was to try an age-old test. Most people meant it figuratively, but her family had made it literal. She tried to look herself in the eye.

  And faile
d.

  She remembered the first time that had happened, when she had fibbed about dipping into the cookie jar at age five. Her father had marched her into the bathroom, stood her on the sink, and forced her to look in the mirror as she repeated her childish lie. She hadn’t been able to do it then, and she couldn’t do it now. Of course this time she hadn’t lied. But she failed to do right—and that came to the same thing.

  She turned and left her cabin, determined to make it up.

  * * *

  Five minutes later, she tapped at the door to Larry’s room, more than a little embarrassed, and quite unsure what she was there for. She had a guilty conscience, and Sondra had been brought up to believe in doing something about feeling guilty. Any action, any gesture to make amends, however pointless, was better than letting guilt feelings fester.

  She should have spoken up at the meeting, and she hadn’t. She had to do something to fix that, even if she didn’t know what that something might be.

  “Come in,” a muffled voice said through the thin door. She pushed the door open and stepped into the little compartment. Larry was sitting up on the bed, a portable notepack computer in his lap. He looked up in surprise. “Uh, hello, Dr. Berghoff.”

  “Hello, Larry.”

  He tossed the notepack to one side of the bed and stood up, not quite sure how to make his guest welcome.

  “Um, let me pull a chair out for you.” He reached behind her and yanked a fold-out seat from the wall. Larry sat back down on the narrow single bed, and Sondra sat down opposite him. She had always thought of him as young, a wide-eyed kid. Probably that was true, even if it wasn’t fair. Sondra herself was twenty-six, and Larry couldn’t be more than a year or two younger. Sondra had unconsciously pegged him at about seventeen or so. That was patently impossible, now that she thought about it.

  The station was the province of highly specialized researchers. High-energy physics was full of whiz kids— but not even a whiz kid could make it here earlier than twenty-four. It would take a certifiable genius, the sort who skipped every other grade all through his schooling, even to get here that young. Sondra herself had been the youngest-ever fellow at the station when she had arrived here two years ago. With a start, she realized Larry was just about the same age she had been at arrival.

  Had she been this much of an innocent then?

  She looked more closely at him. Certainly there was something about his face that made him look more youthful than he was. His wide, solemn eyes, his jet black hair trimmed in the station’s standard amateur bowl-over-the-head style, his smooth, unlined skin, the oversized coveralls added to the appearance of extreme youth. Sondra was willing to bet he didn’t need to shave more than once a week.

  But there was more to it than that. Life had not yet put a line upon his face, or touched his expression, his eyes, his soul. There was no hint of incident, of tragedy, of pain’s lessons or sorrow’s teachings in his eyes.

  She had no idea where he was from. He had a strong American accent to Sondra’s ear, for whatever that was worth. Was he born there, or did he merely learn English from an American tutor? So much she didn’t know.

  And he was one of only 120 people within a billion kilometers of here! One of only twenty scientists who sat around that science staff table at the damned weekly meetings. How could she have lived in such a small community for so long and know so little about one of the people in it? Sondra thought for a moment about some of the other people at the station, and was stunned to realize she could not put names to several of the faces.

  She had once been such a people person. Pluto had turned her into a sour recluse, even as it poisoned Raphael. But it didn’t seem to have touched Larry Chao at all. She looked at him and wondered what to say.

  “I’m just trying to work up my usage figures for the Ring,” Larry said, trying to find something to fill up the silence. His voice sounded most unhappy. “It looks like I spent the planetary debt last night. I don’t know what the hell to do.”

  “I’ll bet. Can I see your figures?” Sondra asked, grateful that Larry had given her something to talk about.

  Larry shrugged. “Sure, I guess. I can’t get in any deeper than I am now.”

  Sondra wrinkled her brow and looked at him oddly. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, the director sent you, didn’t he? To check on me?”

  Sondra opened her mouth in surprise, shut it and had to start over again before she was able to speak. “Send me! Raphael sending me! The only place he’d tell me to go is outside without a heater or a suit.”

  It was Larry’s turn to look surprised. “I thought you were one of his favorites. You always sit so close to him at the meetings.”

  Sondra grinned wickedly. “There are always plenty of seats at that end. Besides, if I sit close I can keep an eye on him. I’ve sort of made a hobby out of watching how he handles things.”

  “He sure as hell handled me,” Larry said mournfully. “Now I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll never be able to pay this back. It’s more than I’ll earn in my whole life. Hell, I still haven’t paid back all my loans to MIT.”

  “Let me see how bad it is,” Sondra said gently. Larry handed the notepack over to Sondra. She took one look at the figures and gasped. “Five million BritPounds! How the hell could you possibly run up that high a tab? That’s more than the monthly budget for the whole station.”

  Larry nodded miserably. “I know. It’s all down there.”

  Sondra paged through the cost estimate and started to feel a little better. This guy might be a genius at what he did, but he obviously didn’t know from cost estimating. His price figures were astronomically high, even for an honest cost report—though Sondra did not intend Raphael to get an honest report. “This can’t be right. You’ve got yourself down for six full hours of Ring time.”

  “That’s how long I was at it last night. Ring time is most of the cost. I checked the accounting records in the main computer. Ring time is billed at seven hundred thousand pounds an hour.”

  “First off, that’s the figure we use when we bill to an external experimenter. Let me check the rate for staff experimenters.” Sondra worked the controls on the note-pack, powered up the radio link to query the main station computers, and pulled down the answer. “Thought so. Inside work is billed out at five hundred thousand. Besides, even that’s an artificial rate set up for accounting purposes. It’s got nothing to do with actual costs.”

  “Great. That knocks one-point-two million off my tab,” Larry said. He flopped back on the bed and sighed. “I should be able to scrape up the other four-point-eight million from somewhere. Ha ha. Big laugh.”

  Sondra looked up from her figures with a smile. The joke wasn’t funny, but the attempt to make it was promising. “Secondly,” she said, “you billed yourself for power and materials when those are supposed to be covered by the hourly rate. It’s not a big chunk, but we can subtract that out too. Third, six hours isn’t how long you were running the Ring, it’s how long you were in the control room, according to the logging report on the instruments. You couldn’t possibly have been operating the Ring for that six hours straight. You’d have gone through a month’s power allocation. I bet ninety-five percent of that time was in computer time and setting up the experiment, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Okay, how long was the Ring itself powered up, actually taken out of standby mode and cooking?”

  Larry thought for a second. “Seven, maybe eight minutes. I’d have to check the experiment log file.”

  “We’ll check it in a second, but let’s assume we’re talking eight minutes. At the internal experimenter’s rate of five hundred thousand pounds an hour, that comes to sixty-six thousand, six hundred sixty-six BritPounds.”

  “That’s still two years’ pay for me!” Larry protested.

  “So we fudge together a ten-year garnisheeing plan and submit that,” Sondra said. “You pay the first month’s installment
like a good little boy—and by the second month the whole Institute shuts down. If the station shuts down, how can it dock your pay—especially when it isn’t paying you anymore? And while we’re at it, we arrange to have it paid off in Israeli shekels. That’s the convertible currency with the highest inflation rate right now. The debt will lose half its value in a year.”

  Larry thought about it for a moment and frowned. “It doesn’t sound exactly honest to me.”

  Sondra muttered a curse under her breath. “It’s bad enough that Raphael wants to penalize you for showing initiative and being inspired. Why the hell do you have to cooperate with him when he does it?”

  “But he’s got a point. I wasn’t authorized to run the test. I didn’t get it scheduled.”

  People want authority to be just, Sondra thought. “Three-quarters of the experiments here aren’t scheduled. That rule is on the books to prevent people from doing side jobs for commercial labs. We’re supposed to be working in the public interest and our data is public domain. Without a rule to cover moonlighting, private companies could hit a researcher up for secret experiment runs. The rule wasn’t meant to punish you for thinking, and Raphael is wrong to use it against you. We couldn’t get anywhere complaining directly to him, so we have to find backdoor ways around the rule. Give me a chance and I bet I can whittle the charges down even further.”