Investments

by Walter Jon Williams

  By that time all the afflicted crew would be dead. Severin would be conducting funerals every day for many days to come, and in addition Surveyor would have a front-row seat for what promised to be a first-class planetary catastrophe.

  Severin unlocked his display and pushed it up over his head, out of the way. He unwebbed and stepped out of the cage.

  “Bhagwati, you have the ship,” he said. “Nkomo, Chamcha, it’s time to make the rounds of the sick and make sure they’re coping under gravity.”

  Severin would report to Lord Go that Surveyor had done well under acceleration.

  He hoped the captain would be pleased.

  *

  “Life is brief, but the Praxis is eternal,” Severin read from the burial service. “Let us all take comfort and security in the wisdom that all that is important is known.” He looked up at Engineer Mojtahed.

  “Proceed,” he said.

  Mojtahed pressed the override button that blew from the cargo airlock Captain Lord Go Shikimori, Lieutenant Lord Barry Montcrief, and four other crew. Since Surveyor’s engine was blazing a huge radioactive tail during the deceleration, and since the bodies, once out of the airlock, were no longer decelerating, the captain and his crew would be cremated within seconds.

  Severin and the four others— two remained on watch— remained at rigid attention until the airlock display stopped blinking. Mojtahed looked through the window on the inner airlock.

  “Airlock’s clear, my lord.”

  “Close the outer door and repressurize.” Severin said. He turned to the others. “Detail dismissed.” He began to walk away, then stopped. “Mojtahed, Chamcha, please join me for dinner.”

  Though Severin was now the acting captain, he hadn’t moved into the captain’s quarters, and didn’t intend to. He brought Mojtahed and Chamcha to the wardroom, where he sat them at the table normally reserved for lieutenants.

  The pulsar had killed all of Surveyor’s cooks and the meals had become haphazard, mostly stews of things emptied into the pot from cans, and all cooked by microwave because the metal burners on the galley stove were so brittle they failed if anyone turned them on. Severin and his guests were served by today’s cook, an apprentice from Mojtahed’s engine room department, who fled before any of them had a chance to taste his handiwork. Severin opened a bottle of wine from the wardroom stores. Till now he had tasted the wine only occasionally, because he’d been unable to afford the sort of private stores the other lieutenants were used to, and he didn’t want Lord Barry and Lady Maxine to think he was a leech, drinking from the bottles that would have cost him half a month’s pay apiece.

  But now Lord Barry and Lady Maxine were radioactive dust floating in the general direction of Wormhole Two, and Severin had conducted his second mass funeral in two days and wanted a drink.

  He had two goblets of wine while the others sipped theirs and ate a few dutiful bites of stew. Then he spoke.

  “We’ve done a good job of saving the ship,” he said. “Now I’d like to try to save Chee.”

  *

  There was silence at the wardroom table, and then Mojtahed wiped a bit of gravy off her chin and said, “Beg pardon, my lord?”

  “I want to save Chee,” Severin said. “And to do that we have to turn off the pulsar, and I think I know how that can be done.”

  There was another moment of silence. Mojtahed and Chamcha exchanged glances.

  Mojtahed, the senior surviving petty officer. Chamcha, who was a highly-trained sensor operator trained to detect wormholes, and the closest thing Surveyor had to an actual scientist.

  “Very good, my lord,” Mojtahed said.

  “Bear with me,” Severin said. He called up the wardroom’s wall display, and put up a simulation of an x-ray pulsar he’d got from An-ray’s Catalogue of Astronomical Objects.

  “The x-ray pulse is driven by matter infalling from the accretion disk,” Severin said. “So if we can turn that mechanism off, the x-rays will turn off as well. Unlike an electromagnetic pulsar, an x-ray pulsar can’t work in a vacuum.”

  “My lord,” Chamcha ventured, “we’re dealing with something the mass of a star. A pulsar is one of the most dense objects in the universe, and about the deadliest— how can you hope to stop it with our resources?”

  “The pulsar’s mass is colossal, yes,” Severin said. “But the accretion disk is nothing but hydrogen gas. So what we do is fire an antimatter missile into the accretion disk, and the antimatter wipes out the inner band of hydrogen.” He grinned at them. “The pulsar’s shut down for a few critical hours, Chee is saved, we all get medals. What do you think?”

  Chamcha blinked. Mojtahed’s response was more practical. “We don’t have any antimatter missiles.”

  “We’ll use one of the lifeboats. Pack the crew spaces full of antihydrogen if we have to, and sent it out on automatic pilot.”

  Chamcha hesitantly raised a hand, as if he was in a classroom.

  “Yes?” Severin said.

  “I see two problems,” Chamcha said. “First, I don’t think we have nearly enough antimatter . . . ”

  “So we’ll jump in the lifeboats and then shoot Surveyor at the pulsar,” Severin said.

  “And the other problem,” Chamcha said indomitably, “is that when the antihydrogen hits the accretion disk, it doesn’t just wipe it from existence, it turns into radiation. The radiation directed at the pulsar won’t shut it off, it’ll heat the pulsar up, and the x-ray emissions will radically increase in power. And the radiation directed outward, into the accretion disk, will heat up the accretion disk, so when that falls onto the pulsar, you’ll get another super-powerful burst of x-rays.” Chamcha made a kind of exploding gesture with his hands. “And then Chee gets really fried.”

  Severin felt himself mentally rock back on his heels. When the idea had first occurred to him, shaving in his bath that morning, it had seemed like a brilliant strike of lightning, and subsequent consideration had only made it seem better. He rubbed his chin for a moment as he considered.

  Mojtahed, who apparently considered the discussion at an end, took a long, relieved drink of wine.

  Severin decided he wasn’t done yet. “But between the two big bursts,” he said, “there’s nothing, right? The pulsar will actually turn off.”

  An stubborn expression came onto Chamcha’s moon face. “For a short time, yes,” Chamcha said. “But I doubt that it would last more than a few seconds, not even if we threw all Surveyor at it. And if we got the timing wrong, Chee gets cooked.”

  “And we don’t get medals,” Mojtahed pronounced.

  “A few seconds is all Chee needs,” Severin said. He turned back to the display on the wall, and called up rows of figures and the Structured Mathematics Display. “Before breakfast I sent a message to Astronomer Shon-dan at the Chee Observatory,” he said, “requesting all available information on the pulsar— its mass, its accretion disk, the power of its x-ray beam. The reply just arrived, so let’s do the math.”

  The math, when it was done, was discouraging. Even if Surveyor were packed with antihydrogen fuel, it would barely produce a blip in the pulsar’s x-ray yield.

  “Sorry, my lord,” Chamcha said. “It was an ingenious idea, but it just didn’t work out.”

  Mojtahed finished her stew and rattled the spoon in her bowl. “Yes, my lord. Sorry.” She had clearly dismissed the idea from her mind.

  “Titan,” Severin said.

  The others looked at him.

  “Titan is a very large ship and it’s packed with antimatter and it’s just entered the system,” Severin said. “And Titan’s on lease to the Exploration Service, and Warrant Officer Junot is in command, and I outrank him. So— “ He smiled. “Maybe we’d better do the math again.”

  *

  There were six hundred people on Chee Station, and eight hundred forty thousand on the planet below. Two cargo ships were docked at the station, and if they discharged all their cargo they could take perhaps four thousand people, assuming
the people were packed closely enough and a sufficient number of new toilets were installed.

  Which left in excess of eight hundred thirty-six thousand people in danger on the planet’s surface, and that meant Martinez attended a lot of meetings.

  Antiradiation shielding was scavenged from the station, and several of the manufacturing plants on the surface thought they could convert in time and produce some more, but most of the people on the planet were going to have to hide from the pulsar the old-fashioned way, in a deep hole, with a lot of dirt piled on the roof.

  There was heavy equipment and construction material to provide enough shelter space for everyone, but the population wasn’t unanimous in their cooperation.

  “The railroad workers want to take their families up the line and into the tunnels,” Allodorm told Martinez. “They think they’ll be safer with a mountain on top of them.”

  Martinez glared from the window of his office on the station down at the blue-and-green planet below. His own reflection, heavy-browed and scowling, glowered back at him. Chee rotated slowly in the window frame as the station wheeled on its axis.

  “They’ll be safer,” Martinez said, “until they try to leave.” He felt his voice rising in frustration. “How are they going to get their families down from the mountain over bridges that are brittle as icicles? On vehicles floating on electromagnets that may explode the second a current runs through them?” He looked at Allodorm and spoke with finality. “The railroad workers go into the bunkers like everyone else.”

  “Yes, lord inspector.” Allodorm’s beautiful voice showed no sign of agitation at any point in the crisis. Martinez had to give him credit for that.

  And even if he was a thief, Allodorm was working as hard as anyone to shelter Chee’s inhabitants. Martinez had to give him credit for that, too.

  “I’ve heard from the Lady Mayor of Port Gareth,” Marcella said from around the cigarette she held fiercely between her teeth. “She has a plan to save the shuttles.”

  The shuttles were designed to ferry cargo from low orbit to the surface, and were unable to achieve escape velocity and get far enough from Chee to avoid the pulsar. They would remain on the ground, with most of the other heavy equipment, and be subjected to x-ray bombardment and probably ruined.

  Martinez hoped the Chee Company had good insurance.

  He left the window and dropped heavily into the chair behind his desk. Pneumatics gave an outraged hiss.

  “Is the Lady Mayor any kind of aeronautical engineer?” Martinez asked. “Has she actually consulted with the shuttle pilots?”

  Marcella smiled. “The answer to the first question is no, and as for the second, I doubt it. She wants to put the shuttles in geosynchronous orbit on the side of Chee away from the pulsar.”

  “That won’t work,” Martinez said. “The pulsar beam isn’t coming in along the plane of the ecliptic, it’ll come at an angle from galactic north. Anything in geosynchronous orbit will be fried. In order to get the planet between the shuttles and the beam, they’d have to go into a polar orbit and get the timing exactly right . . . “ He paused for a moment. “Wait a minute, that’s a good idea. Tell the shuttle pilots that they can proceed with the polar orbit, but they’re forbidden to take passengers. It’s too dangerous.”

  As the provisional governor had declared a state of emergency, Martinez as the senior Fleet representative had become the absolute ruler of the Chee system. It was as if all the power of the Shaa conquerors had become invested in his person.

  If the situation weren’t so desperate, he would be really enjoying himself.

  “By the way,” Marcella added, “can you make use of the Kayenta? I’m happy to offer it, though it won’t hold very many refugees.”

  “Thank you,” Martinez said. “Let me think about it.”

  At another meeting, with Lord Ehl and the captains of the two merchant vessels, there was a discussion of who was going on the ships and who wasn’t.

  “We should bring off the representatives of our company,” one of the captains said. “And then paying passengers, of course.”

  “You will bring off gravid females,” Martinez said, “and children under the age of fifteen, each of whom will be accompanied by one parent. If there’s any room left, we can discuss allowing slightly older children aboard.”

  There probably would be extra room: there weren’t many children on Chee, as the workers had been recruited chiefly from the young and unattached, and settler families hadn’t really started arriving yet.

  “My owners will protest!” the captain said.

  “That will be their privilege, after this is over.” Martinez turned to Lord Ehl. “You will place members of the Military Constabulary on the ships’ airlock doors and hatches,” he said. “I don’t want unauthorized people sneaking on board.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Martinez thought he heard satisfaction in Ehl’s voice.

  “No Fleet personnel will leave Chee till this is over,” Martinez said to Ehl later, after the captains had left. “It’s our job to stand between the citizens and danger, and if that means sucking up x-rays, so be it.”

  “Er— yes, my lord.” Martinez thought he detected rather less satisfaction in Ehl’s tone than had been there a few moments before.

  “I’m going to be the last person off Chee Station,” Martinez said. “You’ll be the next-to-last, so we’ll share an elevator.”

  “Yes, my lord.” A question glowed in Ehl’s golden eyes. “We’re not staying in Station Command? It’s shielded.”

  “There might be a structural failure of the station. If there isn’t, we’ll be able to get from the ground back to the station easily enough.”

  Then Martinez recalled Marcella’s offer of Kayenta. “No, wait,” he said. “You’ll take the last elevator with the control room crew. I’ll see you off, then depart in Kayenta. That way I’ll be able to return to the station once the pulsar’s passed and make certain everything’s in order before you bring a crew back up the elevator.”

  The plan pleased him. Last off the station, and first on again. It was a role that was not only proper for the senior officer in a crisis, but would reflect well on him.

  It wasn’t as if he minded looking good.

  It wasn’t until he left his office for the walk to the grandeur of the Senior Officers’ Quarters that he found out about another problem. A Terran with a wispy blond mustache and a jacket with a grey stripe came up to Martinez as he walked, and introduced himself as Hedgepath, a stock broker.

  “There are brokers on Chee?” Martinez asked.

  “Yes,” Hedgepath said, “though most of what I do is invest workers’ pay elsewhere in the empire. But Port Vipsania has its own little stock market, for locally-raised issues. We even have a futures market.”

  “Congratulations,” Martinez said.

  “Perhaps congratulations aren’t precisely in order.” Hedgepath touched his slight mustache. “There has been an, ah, problem with the market. The futures market in particular. In the hours before the announcement of the threat from the pulsar, there was a lot of selling. Agricultural futures in particular, though there was some selling in industrial and fishery futures as well.”

  Martinez found himself nodding. “After word about the pulsar came out, the futures turned worthless.”

  “You might understand that my clients have been complaining. And since you now seem to represent the civil authority now as well as the military, I thought I’d pass the complaints to you.” He touched his mustache again. “I couldn’t seem to make an appointment, by the way. I’m sorry I had to stop you on the street.”

  Martinez considered this. Hedgepath’s lack of an appointment wasn’t necessarily an element of a deep conspiracy— a lot of people were trying to set meetings with him, and the Lai-own secretary that Lord Ehl had assigned him might well have assigned Hedgepath a low priority.

  “I’ll look into that,” Martinez said. “In the meantime, I’d like to give you some names. Led
o Allodorm. Lord Pa Maq-fan. Lady Marcella Zykov.”

  Hedgepath seemed surprised only by Marcella’s name “I can assure your lordship that Lady Marcella hasn’t done any selling that I know of,” Hedgepath said. “But there were sell orders from other Cree Company officials— Her-ryng and Remusat, for two.”

  Martinez couldn’t put any faces to the names, though he’d very possibly met them at one or another of the banquets in his honor.

  “I’d like you to retain all information of the trades,” Martinez said. “Things are urgent right now, and I won’t be able to deal with this till after the pulsar’s passed. Make sure the data is in hard as well as electronic form.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Can you give me contact information?”

  Hedgepath sent his information to Martinez from his sleeve display, and Martinez told him that he would be in touch.

  “By the way,” he said. “How’s Chee Company stock doing?”

  “It’s worth about a third of what it was worth two days ago.”

  Martinez told Terza this over supper. “I’d been starting to think well of Allodorm and Lord Pa,” Terza said. “They’ve been so responsive in the crisis.”

  “And all the more responsive for knowing their money’s safe. And of course they’re working to save their own skins, and their company’s assets.”

  There was a low chime from Martinez’ sleeve display. He gave a snarl; he’d forgotten to turn it off at dinner.

  “Apologies,” he said to Terza, and answered.

  The orange eyes of his Lai-own secretary gazed back at him from the display. “I beg your pardon, my lord. A communication has arrived from Lieutenant Severin, logged as personal, confidential, urgent, and immediate.”

  Martinez exchanged glances with Terza. Severin wouldn’t use such a bundle of impressive adjectives without reason.

  “Send it,” Martinez said.

  When Martinez’ display indicated that the message had been downloaded, he broke the connection to his secretary and played the message.

  “This is going to be complex,” Severin said, “and I’d be obliged if somewhere along the line you could check my math.”