The Water Bear

by Groucho Jones

  Her Navigator, instantly awake, brought her military systems online.

  In the city below, her crew also woke.

  Box was jolted by a burst of adrenaline. She stumbled naked from her bed. There were people in her room. Her skinsuit found her. Its facemask extruded, sealing her panicked objections. She was bustled out and up the spiral stair. In the control room, Alois was clipping himself into the oversized captain’s chair. Holographic displays were flickering into life. A plexiglass window popped out, and fluttered onto the piazza.

  Seconds had passed.

  Alois was talking calmly to Pax.

  “Ah, Dr Box. Good to see you’re dressed. We’re getting ready to leave.”

  “What the hell is happening?”

  “Visitors.”

  “Who?”

  Alois manipulated a display. A ghostly flower, floating in space. Then five ghostly ships, scattered around the ecliptic plane.

  “Horu,” said Kitou.

  “More than we’ve seen in one place since Fluxor,” said Alois.

  “Are we safe?”

  “For now,” he said. “They’re at a safe distance. Ten light minutes away.”

  By the time it passed the nearest Horu ship, the ten-tonne comet nucleus had accumulated .5mv^2 ˜ 420,500,000,000 GJ ˜ 100,000 Mt of potential energy, or more than the deployed nuclear arsenal of all the nations on Earth, ever. As it passed through the perimeter ring, its bootstrap drive restarted, this time at full power, creating pressures unknown outside the center of collapsed stars. The ball of snow and ice fell into the drive, to form a sphere of degenerate matter, indistinguishable from the crust of a neutron star.

  The drive had become the weapon.

  Alois was explaining their situation.

  “Threnody’s best defense was always its secrecy.”

  “Was,” said Box.

  “So it appears. There’s nothing we can do about five Horu warships. It might as well be five thousand.”

  “What about the Fa:ing?”

  “There’s nothing we can personally do for them now.”

  “What about the cavalry? That big Wu warship we saw.”

  “A half-hour away.”

  “Ten light-minutes vs. half an hour?”

  “That’s the equation.”

  “It’s a shitty equation.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s Ito?”

  “In the basement.”

  “Why? Someone go get him.”

  “It’s as the Fa:ing have requested.”

  The Water Bear’s sensing apparatus used the same physics as Wu lightship drives. Beefy quantum computers reimagined the origin of incoming gravity waves. The weapon’s bootstrap drive was acquired instantly upon restarting. The first Pax knew of it, was when he began to lose consciousness. At over a thousand Earth gravities, even the smallest change of direction manifests as violent lateral acceleration.

  [Sorry, boss.]

  Ungh.

  On the planet, Alois Buss said, “Merde.”

  [On my way,] said the ship in their heads.

  “What’s happening?” asked Box.

  “Planet killer,” said Alois.

  “Out we go,” said Brin a few moments later.

  Box felt herself falling towards the piazza. She’d been thrown bodily from the tower. Overhead, the decelerating Water Bear announced itself with a shuddering boom. It looked like a moth, spiraling into a dish. Box felt herself pulled towards the Po warship.

  She awoke in the ship’s control room, for just a few seconds. She was strapped in her usual chair.

  She passed out again.

  She had a dream.

  She dreamed she was looking into the eyes of a striking, flaxen-haired woman. “I was worried you were catatonic,” the woman was saying.

  “Who are you?” asked Box.

  The woman stepped back. Box saw Pax, Brin and Kitou, studying a holographic image of the Threnody system.

  “I’m the Water Bear,” she said. “This is my gamespace. A military virtuality. I’ve slowed things down, so we can think.”

  “You look familiar,” said Box.

  “A cultural reference, especially for you.”

  “Kara Thrace? You really have got to be kidding.”

  “Dr Box,” rumbled Pax.

  “I have no idea what’s happening,” said Box.

  “Don’t worry,” said Pax. “We’re the soldiers here. This is our time. Later, you can say how we went.”

  “A kinetic weapon has been fired,” Pax said to everyone. “The planet is lost.”

  A communal groan.

  “Ito has made his way to the basement, as planned. Alois is still in the Threnody control room, not as planned. What happened?”

  “Alois accidentally locked himself in a chair,” said Brin.

  “Can I please go get him?” asked Kitou.

  “No,” said the ship.

  “Solutions?” asked Pax.

  “Extract his brain,” said the ship.

  “How?” asked Pax.

  “I can recover it though a ceiling fan.”

  “What, intact?” asked Box.

  “No,” said the ship.

  “When?” asked Pax.

  “Sooner better,” said the ship.

  “But he’s alive,” said Box, aghast.

  “Do it,” said Pax.

  Seen from the planet’s surface, the weapon arrived unannounced. Not only was it travelling at near lightspeed, but it was only a few centimeters across. It passed through the atmosphere in a fraction of second, and ten cubic kilometers of ocean and crust disappeared in a flash.

  The Fa:ing disappeared.

  Ito was in the basement, ready to be extracted.

  And then he wasn’t.

  In the Water Bear, concentration.

  “Final recommendations?” asked Pax.

  “We go as originally planned,” said the ship.

  “Dr Box?”

  “Me? You’re asking me? Go Pax, go.”

  He nodded.

  “Take us in, please.”

  Bodily, they were strapped in the control room lattice. In the Water Bear’s gamespace, they watched as the ship performed high-g maneuvers, inside the base of the city, moving towards the unshielded reactor, towards the Fa:ing rip, which now seemed half the size of the universe. Now that the Fa:ing lifting bodies were gone, the city belonged to gravity. The planet awaited its prize. Ten seconds after impact, the crimson forest raised a gnarled hand to receive it.

  As a wall of fire rose over the horizon.

  “Go,” said Pax.

  The Water Bear accelerated.

  4 ∞ By a Milky-White Sea

  2056

  On Xerxes, in the Pleiades, in the region of space called the Smear, the city of Avalon basked under an emerald sky, beside a milky-white sea. Once a fortress, then a frontier spaceport, now a trading hub, bunting fluttered from its brutalist gun emplacements.

  In a rough dockside bar, crowded with spacers and whores, the cryptologist Felix Revelstoke weighed the delicate game of risk to be played by helping the three foreign women. He watched as a troupe of bioengineered transvestites sought to gain the attentions of a visiting krëw of Magellanic Navigators. The tranvies worked hard, but the Magellanics had eyes only for themselves.

  The thousand worlds were characterized by their genetic naturalism. They were a civilization on a biological mission. Here, in the Smear, by contrast, anything was possible. One of the tranvies gave Revelstoke a lascivious wink. He smiled politely in reply.

  In the same dockside bar, on a crowded dancefloor, Kitou Gorgonza was being pawed by four outsize youths, while Brin Lot looked on disinterestedly. The young men’s older, harder companions, bristling with radical piercings and body enhancements, also looked on, too hungrily for Ophelia Box’s liking.

  “That’s not a fair contest,” said Brin.

  Brin was wedged into a corner, nursing a drink.

  “Aren’t you going to hel
p her?” asked Box.

  Brin shook her head.

  Box knew this bar well. In Aberdeen, high on ecstasy, evading the clumsy advances of roughnecks and squaddies. In Marseilles, where the gangsters cut smiles into the faces of their enemies with cutthroat razors. In Punta Arenas, when Antarctica was first opened for mining exploration.

  A frontier slaphouse.

  Kitou became bored with the youths trying to lay hands on her, and rejoined her companions, leaving the young men searching comically for her.

  “Foreign men are strange,” she said.

  “It’s not strange,” said Box. “They’re displaying.”

  “They want to copulate?”

  Box nodded.

  “How do they think behaving like fools will impress me?”

  “Thinking doesn’t come into it.”

  The youths had surrounded another woman, and were pushing her from one to the other. Pushes became shoves, then slaps, and the woman was pressed to a wall.

  “Put an end to that,” said Brin. Kitou rose and walked towards the group.

  Box rose to follow, but Brin held her wrist.

  “Observe the Po art in combat mode.”

  Kitou seemed to move at walking pace, but when she struck it was a blur. It was like liquid violence. She used the youths’ movements against them. None of them got near her. They were in more danger of striking themselves.

  One by one, the youths went down.

  No one seemed to realize there was a fight on.

  Kitou was sauntering back to their table. The youths’ older, rougher companions were piling onto the dancefloor, looking for payback.

  One was striding towards them.

  “That was provocative,” said Brin, “leaving the older ones standing.”

  “I was being deceptive,” said Kitou.

  Brin nodded, and got to her feet, and with a snarl, marched towards the advancing man, and folded him in two with a vicious side kick to the solar plexus.

  “The Lo art does include kicking,” said Kitou.

  “Well, that should get someone’s attention,” said Box.

  Revelstoke did realize there was a fight on. After all, as a secret policeman, and a relatively senior one, with territory to protect, it was his job to be observant.

  The how of it was interesting.

  The who was unlikely.

  He finished his drink, and departed.

  [Well done team,] said Pax from the Water Bear.

  [I think we have him.]

  They were thrown from the bar.

  “For fighting the wrong assholes,” said Box.

  They sat down on an upturned pallet. A passing law enforcement prowler slowed, then let them be. A handsome young man came out of the bar, and gave them the address of a religious congregation.

  A sharp tang of salt air, and diesel, swirled around them.

  Gulls cawed in the distance.

  Brin was bleeding from a lacerated eyebrow.

  From somewhere, came the sizzle and heady aroma of sausages. Box thought, this is the best time of my life. It can’t get any better than this.

  They burst out laughing.

  They found a room in a dockside hotel, overlooking a doglegged lane, leading down to the harbor. By comparison with spaceflight, it was a ramshackle palace. A neon sign flashed sporadically outside their window.

  “Otel,” it said.

  Box asked the ship to disable her Broca transfer. Now it flashed gibberish.

  They were woken at dawn by lively commerce beneath their open window. The lane had become a market. While Box lay in bed, Kitou morphed her discarded party clothes into loose training gear and set out running. Box dragged herself from bed, and watched Kitou disappear toward the harbor.

  She noticed that Kitou was followed.

  With her Broca transfer still off, Box listened to a dozen languages. The prevailing argot sounded like Mediterranean Arabic, a beautifully liquid language. She smelt the heady aroma of the stalls. Clean air, fresh produce, hot food, and an undertone of rotting garbage.

  Brin rose, scowled, and seeing that Box’s translator was off, began to make the Avalon equivalent of strong coffee.

  Kitou ran down to the harbor, then along a wide corniche, beside a tumbling sea. Finding her stride, she surged onto a steep hill, which climbed towards a beam-weapon emplacement, and accelerated.

  Running was pure pleasure. Her simple shoes slapped lightly on the salt-encrusted concrete. Soon her pursuers were left far behind, as plain as day on the steep ocean road. She relented, almost letting them catch her.

  At the top, she waited, breathing.

  There were two young men and a woman. One of the panting men said, “We’re the police.”

  Kitou said, “I know.”

  The second man said, “Are you really a Po soldier?”

  Kitou wrinkled her nose. “Not really.

  “But my friends are,” she said.

  They companionably enjoyed the view, like any young runners would, at the top of a challenging climb. Avalon was a beautiful city, by its milky-white sea, with its military towers painted every color.

  “Can we run with you tomorrow?” asked the young woman, politely.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well,” said the first young man.

  “I guess we’ll be off,” said the second.

  Kitou nodded.

  After her police escorts jogged self-consciously down the hill, Pax said, from above, [Good job]. Kitou, knowing she was observed, gave him a virtual thumbs-up of approval.

  Then she set off at a fast lope, back to the hotel, for breakfast.

  They spent the day buying local clothes, and food for the room, and cheap souvenirs. The local currency was paper and coins, and Pax had given them pocketsful each, with instructions to spend it.

  Garner attention, he said.

  In the early afternoon, they found themselves in a larger market. This was what Box would call a souk, or bazaar. The street food and local attire gave way to consumer electronics, entertainments, and in one section, weapons. For the Po, these were of little value. They regarded them with professional curiosity.

  “Why,” asked Brin, “would any sane person buy a weapon?”

  “To defend themselves?” asked Box.

  “Nonsense. It only puts them in danger.”

  Kitou only seemed to partially understand the concept of property. She spent all her money on gifts for the others, then happily asked for more. By the mid-afternoon, they were local celebrities. Box steered Kitou away from a sex shop, not to protect her, but for fear of the number of things she might buy there.

  They were enjoying a meal of sticky rice, served up with raisins and pine nuts, and the ubiquitous local sausage, when Pax broadcast in their sensoria.

  [You’re about to be arrested.]

  The Water Bear chimed in.

  [Dr Box, please follow my instructions. Brin is about to rise and pay for your meal. At the same time, you rise and follow the pulsing red line, at normal walking pace.]

  A red line appeared in the floor, leading from the cafê.

  Box did as she was instructed.

  [Our main goal here is to not get you shot. There are three local heavies. They may or may not be professional law enforcement. They could perceive you as a threat, and might over-respond.]

  The red line snaked behind some market stalls. She followed it. She heard crashing behind her. The pulsing line then passed through a laundry, and snaked towards a tall, professorial man, who was standing by a wall, speaking into a throat mic.

  [At the same time as keeping you safe, we wish to make a point. I want you to approach that man, and put your hands in the air.]

  She saw Brin and Kitou doing the same, from opposite directions. They would finish up on three sides of him.

  [If this goes wrong, I’ll lift you straight out of there. If anyone shoots, I’ll lift the bullets in flight. You’re completely safe, Dr Box.]

  Box was intrig
ued. This was proper cloak and dagger stuff. She did as she was told, and raised her hands in the air.

  The man stiffened, and said, “I have you surrounded.”

  Brin raised one eyebrow.

  The three local heavies crashed into the open space behind them, brandishing snub-nosed weapons. One shouted, “Hands in the air.”

  Another one bellowed, “Drop your weapons.”

  The third, who had brightly colored clothing strewn around him, just crouched and pointed his handgun.

  Brin said, “We surrender.”

  The man sighed, and motioned his men to holster their weapons. They did so with military precision.

  Not amateurs, then.

  “I’m Revelstoke,” the man said.

  “We know,” said Brin.

  “Will you come peacefully?”

  “As you wish.”

  The gunmen escorted them to a nondescript building, with Revelstoke following at a distance. Inside, they were regarded with frank curiosity. Kitou waved at a young woman. They were taken to a dusty, academic’s rooms. Open books of mathematics and criminology climbed over each other. Revelstoke appeared, and motioned them to sit.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “We’re a hand of the Po, on a covert mission,” said Brin.

  “If that were true, I’d never have seen you.”

  “We gave you cause to see us.”

  “So you say.”

  “We deployed the barfight signal.”

  He sighed. For a double agent, a special ops team was like an anxiety dream. They’d have their own, stifling agenda. Worst of all was a hand, if that’s what they were. They’d burn all the oxygen in his room, in sips and then gulps, then leave, never to be seen, never having been there.

  “What do you want?”

  “We need backup, with utmost secrecy.”

  “Secret from my own people?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you can justify that?”

  “Our mission is to prevent a major war.”

  “Who are you?”

  “We’re the hand of the Water Bear.”

  He shook his head. “No, you’re not. I’ve sequenced your DNA.”