Spindown

by Andy Crawford

  Off-duty, she was on her own — Pat was on watch at the edge of one of the safe zones. Padding the corridors and passageways near her quarters, for once she felt relatively well-rested — the surge progress was almost automatic now, and she felt confident that Loesser and some of the other senior deputies would have no problems directing the operations without her present at every moment.

  “Ah, Chief Inspector!” It was the Bigwig, Wilson Paramis. Even at a normal volume, Paramis’s deep voice seemed to resonate around the bare passageways.

  She nodded greeting. “Professor Paramis.”

  “Please, have a coffee with me.” He accurately interpreted her expression and put his hand up. “Just a business interest, I swear.”

  Mattoso nodded cautiously and followed him to an automated café. They sat, as much as one can sit in freefall, in a corner. She noted that Paramis took the seat with his back to the wall. “How can I help you?”

  He leaned in. “Things are changing onboard. Very obviously.”

  She nodded along, having no idea where this was leading.

  “Ngayabo and Maltin are very concerned. Hell, the whole crew is concerned. And why shouldn’t we be? Unsolved murders… the chief inspector a traitor… how can anyone be confident in our mission — in the Society for a New Humanity altogether — after all this?”

  She sensed a pause but he kept speaking.

  “There may come a time when Aoteans will have to make a choice going forward, and I just wanted to know that we trust you. I trust you. You’ve proven—”

  “Who’s we? You mean the other Bigwigs?”

  He blinked, then recovered smoothly, inclining his head slightly. “We trust that you have proven your integrity and loyalty.”

  Mattoso realized after a moment that he was done speaking. “What are you asking for, Professor?”

  “Nothing, Lieutenant. Nothing right now. We’ve looked into your background, you know. Very impressive — on their own, without any other connections, your parents had realized the wisdom of Paola Rahmon’s vision. I’m sure they were unhappy to see you leave, but by now they must be happy you’ll be a part of the better future. We just want you to know that you have our confidence.” With agility surprising for someone as bulky as he was, Paramis slid out of the café and down a passageway.

  She sat for a full minute trying to figure out what he was getting at, finally just assuming that all department heads received some sort of pep talk like this from one of the Bigwigs.

  Alone in her quarters, Mattoso scrolled down the projection to Conneer’s contraband articles, finding the spot she left off the last time she looked.

  A Glimpse of a Hypothetical New Humanity

  Alton Ngayabo, SNH Review

  Much has been stated about the need for a New Humanity — the need to separate from the toxically violent culture of Earth, and its daughter cultures around the Solar System. Free-floating enclaves and far flung settlements on satellites of the gas giants will not be enough — the need for trade, and the lure of other nearby settlements will doom these well-intentioned projects to be just another flavor of the prevailing culture. To truly have a New Humanity, it must be totally separate from the Solar System — no possibility of trade, and no possibility of escape to the other cultures. And perhaps most importantly, no media contamination.

  So how could it happen? What would this New Humanity look like? Here is one possibility: sometime over the next half century, scientific breakthroughs will put interstellar travel finally within reach. The current travel time between even the closest stars — centuries, or even millennia — will be reduced to within a human lifetime. When suitable candidate planets are identified (a trifle, considering the hundreds of thousands of potential candidates already spotted within a few dozen light years), dozens of vessels will set out.

  These starships will be relatively small — only a few dozen, or perhaps a hundred, couples onboard — specifically selected to provide the most diverse genetic basis possible, to ensure a minimum viable population. The couples will be childless, at first — and all will agree for the need to raise their children in an earth-influence-free environment. Years into the multi-decade journey, the first children will be born — never having set eyes on a planet, and never seeing any trace of the violence of their parents’ original cultures.

  Each of these ships will arrive at a different solar system, and each will have differences in their social systems. They will communicate with each other — such transmissions will take years, minimizing the chance for cultural contamination should unacceptable behavior break out — and the best practices of these new colonies will be shared, along with lessons learned. And the original settlers’ children will grow up and have children of their own, knowing nothing of Earth’s, and Earth Solar System’s, toxic and violent past.

  Why such small groups? Small vessels are more achievable. Challenges with genetic diversity could be addressed with DNA stores. Further, multiple small groups would maximize the chance of success — one or two might fail, but not all. But most importantly, small groups are predictable and stable, relatively speaking. Small group dynamics are much better understood than large groups. Small groups, with common goals, are much more cooperative, and much less chaotic, then groups thousands strong. With small groups, everyone will know each other, and no one will be a stranger. Small groups will be less likely to recreate the violence and strife than larger groups, even as they expand.

  With so many colonies of potential New Humanities, some will undoubtedly fail. But some will not — and the more colonies sent out, the greater the possibility that some will succeed. And in the coming centuries, one may even expand, peacefully and cooperatively, to occupy their own new solar system, to truly present to all of humanity the glory and the shining light that a New Humanity could achieve.

  Mattoso skimmed several more articles over the same time period, around 2163 by the old Earth calendar, with most presenting variations of the same theme — small groups of colonists, just hundreds of individuals at most, spreading to nearby solar systems, severing all links to Earth culture. Some ignored the problems with propulsion, suggesting multi-generation ships, or even crew hibernation, to cover journeys that would take several centuries at best.

  Huh. What changed? If the organization had planned for many small expeditions, why was Aotea so big, with the population of a small city? Maybe she could ask Paramis, though for some reason that thought didn’t feel right.

  She kept scrolling down, skimming articles and reports on the same topic. Relatively abruptly, the tone changed. Starting around 2172, no more articles supported the many-small-colonies concept. Proposals for the actual execution of the ‘New Humanity’ involved large vessels, and large colonies, exclusively, after that year.

  Damn it… what changed in 2172? Nothing stood out in the other articles related to the Society for a New Humanity. Mattoso broadened her search through Conneer’s contraband archives to all the most prominent news stories. She skimmed over headlines about the fledgling Lunar state, more discoveries by the DarkSide telescope array… and then her eyes got wide.

  Of course! She should have known — the biggest story of late 2171 was the development of the Forwood Drive. She almost kicked herself — a contortion much easier in freefall than under gravity — she had been studying for her Engineering qualifications for cycles now, and the Forwood Drive was the focal point of her studies.

  A Martian physicist had discovered the possibility entirely by accident — in experimenting with very high-energy antimatter reactions, she detected a miniscule negative mass that had been generated just for a moment. Imaginary negative mass, the physicist, Dr. Devi Millard, had called it, Mattoso recalled. Through mysteries of mathematics and physics that she still didn’t entirely understand, a negative mass wasn’t antimatter, but regular matter that somehow had a mass value of a negative number. And just as matter with positive mass attracted other matter, matter with negative mass repelled othe
r matter, allowing the possibility of a negative mass pushing a positive mass in the direction of its relative orientation, while the positive mass pulled along the negative mass, allowing continuous acceleration of a body attached to both objects, without a chemical or nuclear reaction. It didn’t make sense intuitively, but worked out mathematically, and, it turned out, in practice. “Propulsion with no fuel,” one headline had said. The negative-mass drive had actually been proposed, if only on paper, centuries before, by a researcher Mattoso thought she remembered was named Forwood.

  This so-called “imaginary negative mass” wasn’t actually real matter, Mattoso recalled from her studies. It was generated, and maintained its existence and interaction with other matter, only with continuous and enormously high levels of power and energy. So “no fuel” was not entirely accurate — something had to generate the colossal levels of energy required to maintain the imaginary mass. In the case of Aotea, that something was a combination of fusion and antimatter reactors — the other focus of Mattoso’s studies for her Engineering qualifications.

  And in recalling the particulars of the Forwood Drive, Mattoso realized she had one possible answer to why the tone of the articles changed. The multiple-small-colonies concept was not compatible with this new technology. Only ships with huge and costly power reactors, capable of generating the vast energies required for the Forwood Drive, could bridge the stars within a lifetime. Only ships like Aotea.

  This was big, she decided. She wasn’t sure how it fit, but in all the discussions she’d had onboard about SNH goals and philosophy, she couldn’t once recall anything like this small group idea mentioned. Nor was it mentioned in any of the officially sanctioned reference and educational material. Mattoso looked back over that first article, doing a double-take when she saw the author’s name again — Ngayabo. Just like the bigwig, Mara Ngayabo.

  Maybe Cy’s instincts… shit! The one person who she’d most like to talk to was off limits, at least for unscheduled visits, which must be approved by the CO. Off limits, to the new CI? Maybe she could figure something out. She had a thought — maybe a medical reason. She had a feeling Madani might be happy to help.

  CHAPTER 55

  Madani made sure the lab was empty before she ran the tests. She inserted the vials of blood into the analyzer, initiating the analysis sequence. It made a whirring sound as it spun the vials, and after a minute sent a stream of data to her wearable.

  Shit… the result was no different than the last few times she had run the tests. She had narrowed down a common factor to all those who had come in recently with minor complaints, stomach and otherwise — they all had low levels of phenelzine, an old pharmaceutical compound that hadn’t been used widely for more than a century, in their blood. According to the reference pharmapedia, phenelzine wasn’t particularly dangerous on its own — certainly not in low doses, so she wasn’t worried about anything more than these minor side effects. But she was a bit concerned about an outbreak of recreational drug usage, and had pulled some random blood samples from earlier in the cycle to check.

  To her surprise, the control group — randomly selected from samples saved from annual checkups — had tested the same, with just a few exceptions. Almost everyone tested so far, whether or not they had made any of the minor complaints that were becoming increasingly common, had about the same low levels of phenelzine in their bloodstream. If it was an outbreak of drug usage, then it had spread to almost everyone… so Madani had tested herself, finding the same low level of phenelzine in her own blood, and had ruled out the drug use hypothesis.

  Could it have been some sort of contamination? Some chemical used in equipment onboard, leaking into the environment? She had dug into her old chemistry and pharma textbooks, but couldn’t find anything about phenelzine leaking from industrial usage.

  Looking back over her data, she stopped at the few exceptions to the positives for phenelzine. Hell, maybe I can just ask them about their routine! Of the eighty-three blood samples tested, five had tested negative for phenelzine. She put in a call to the first name on the list.

  “Comms Chief Zalinsky.”

  “Hello, Chief. This is Dr. Ilsa Madani. May I have a few minutes of your time?”

  “Uh… hold on. Okay, what can I do for you?”

  “Just to reassure you, there’s nothing to worry about. I just have a few questions about your diet.”

  “My diet?”

  “Yes, what you eat. And drink.”

  There was a pause. “Rations, of course. That’s all we’ve been eating since the Spindown.”

  “And drink?”

  “Water — at least that system has been working. What else could I drink? I guess I heat it up with coffee crystals sometimes.”

  Damn. She couldn’t think of any more questions. “Thank you, Chief. I may get back to you later.”

  The next two on her list — Chief Engineer Papka and a Senior Administrator named Halonen — were similarly unhelpful, consuming nothing out of the ordinary.

  She called the fourth.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Habitability Tech Second Class Razak?”

  “Yes.”

  “Second, this is Dr. Madani. Do you have a few minutes?”

  Razak told her that she ate the rations, just like everyone else so far.

  “What about what you drink?”

  “Oh, hab water.”

  She perked up. “What’s hab water?”

  “It’s the water straight from the purifiers, before it even goes to the smart pumps, enrichers, and distro system. I like it better than the tap stuff. The purifiers are mine — I supervise all the maintenance, when—”

  “Thank you,” she interrupted. “That will be all, Second.”

  She ended the call and floated back against the lab bulkhead. Could it be in the water, but infiltrating the piping somewhere after going through the purifier system? But if so, then how did Zalinsky, Papka, and Halonen avoid it?

  Madani shook her head to herself. She’d like to tell Konami. In fact, maybe she could do that right now — she was technically supposed to schedule the visits ahead of time, but she was a department head, she could come up with something to tell the deputies on duty. He needs a checkup… yeah, that’s the ticket.

  She pulled her way across the lab to the door. But when she opened it, someone was floating in her way.

  “Wha—”

  An arm, clutching something, swung toward her neck — she blocked it just in time with both of her hands. While they were locked together, her attacker kicked himself into the lab, shutting the door behind him with his feet. His face was hidden by a masked hood.

  She screamed, struggling frantically. He was stronger than her, and the object in his hand, which she identified as a syringe, slowly closed on her neck.

  Keeping the syringe clear, barely, she jammed her head to the side, biting into his arm. His grunt was muffled, but he pulled back sharply, and the syringe floated free. She batted it aside just before he struck her, full force, in the jaw.

  She was launched backwards, dazed, striking a cabinet. She fumbled behind her into one of the drawers, pulling a metal scanner probe out just as her attacker launched into her once again. She awkwardly swung the probe, grazing her attacker’s head, but he brushed it off and locked his hands on her throat. She hammered and batted at his arms and shoulders, trying to knee his crotch, but his hands just closed tighter.

  Her vision started to go black.

  CHAPTER 56

  As always, Mattoso checked the watchbill — Madani was not on duty. She didn’t want to call; she was still too afraid that calls might be monitored, so she made her way to the Medical department head’s quarters. The surface of the Cans was still almost empty, from both the curfews and the exhaustion that most of the crew must be feeling in between duty shifts and watches. With so few Aoteans away from their quarters or watch stations, the empty green spaces on the surface, arcing around and over her head, seemed unna
tural and out of place among the clean, industrial lines of the surface structures.

  Movement far above — a bare few Aoteans traveling along the guycables across the Can — made Mattoso want to turn her head upwards as she “climbed” between civil and food service buildings to the doctor’s hab. At the doctor’s quarters, a large, first deck unit that Madani was assigned as a department head, no one responded to her knocks.

  Mattoso grimaced and kicked herself out the double-doors of the hab, and dove for a convenient guycable. Situated at an angle that crossed just a sliver of the Can, it was a short ride to the medical offices. MedTechs and doctors jostled her without concern as she navigated through the offices — no one responded to her greetings with more than the barest grunt, busy as they were with the ongoing outbreak of minor complaints.

  The Admin tech in front of the chief medical officer’s office just shook his head as soon as he saw Mattoso. “Not here, Lieutenant.”

  “Where else could she be?”

  The tech sighed. “Maybe her lab.” He pointed. “That passageway, second door on the left.”

  Mattoso thanked him and pulled her way across the passageways. Oddly enough, the door was shut. Could she have a patient?

  Mattoso put her ear to the door and her eyes went wide. She instinctively clutched the weapon at her right hip.

  In one motion, she turned the handle and kicked the door open. A hooded figure held Madani by the throat against a cabinet, with his other hand bringing down a syringe. Mattoso didn’t think about it — she aimed and fired three times. Two shots went wide; the third put a hole in the attacker’s head. Horrified, she realized belatedly that she had drawn the slugthrower, not the dart gun.

  Madani’s coughing brought her back to the present. “Emergency!” Mattoso cried. “Shots fired, one casualty! Lab, uh, number three in Main Medical.” Mattoso kicked off the doorway rim over to Madani, pushing aside the hooded corpse. The doctor’s eyes finally stopped dancing and focused on her.