by S. E. Smith
Stasia was very coordinated, her bones and muscles perfectly matched to her size. In Ten’s eyes that made her more beautiful than ever. He could imagine moving with her—in ways that startled him.
Captain Zilka said, “You only had an hour with my workstation to study the map of the Shipyard. It was the Yardmaster's map, with full detail. Do you really believe you can find your way?”
“Yes.”
She smiled slightly. “I heard that Earth’s wealthy and sheltered Uptown dwellers always had to use their electronic navigators, but Downers knew how to find their way through the urban jungle. Any questions?”
Ten wanted this to be a bad dream. Except he didn’t. Stasia was in it, so he wanted it to be real. He could imagine a future with her. He could also imagine a future without himself, which felt more probable, since he was going into the strange and maybe even dangerous Shipyard. Captain Zilka asking him for his questions struck him like something he'd read about in the old books—how a condemned person would be asked what they wanted for their last meal before being executed. He went with it. “Ma'am, I understood that you were born at the Green colony, like Stasia. How do you know about Downtowns?”
“My father told me. He was an unusual man.”
Ten had heard about Zilka’s father. The greatest biotechnical genius of the Twenty-First Century, who made some of the worst enemies on Earth and took to the Ship to get away from them was what Ten had heard. That didn't explain him knowing about Downtowns.
“He made genetic inventions that had far-reaching consequences, one of which was that he became famous, but even so he never fit into Uptown society. He was so intelligent as to be unique, and it made him lonely. And he was a restless soul. He liked to walk in Undercities at night. He was tall, strong and knew how to street-fight. He fit in better with the robust dregs of society, in his words.”
Ten had never thought of himself as a robust dreg. Coming from her, it did not strike him as an insult. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you’re working with Stasia.”
“I’ve needed her to help me with the robots,” Ten said honestly.
“In confidence, Ten—she needs you, too.”
Stasia was in a grim, unsettled, edgy mood. Finally she could stand it no longer and went looking for Captain Zilka.
When aboard Aeon, rather than on the starship she herself commanded, Zilka’s favorite haunt was in front of that tall window in the dining room, drinking strong coffee and looking out at the cosmos. Stasia had known her for Stasia’s whole life, but wasn’t sure what in the cosmos fascinated Zilka so much. Was it the arcane science of fast starflight, which meant that a ship could skip across the stars in hours and not centuries—except many stars could not be reached that way, some stars could be reached only some of the time, and sometimes it could only be a one-way trip?
Or was Zilka reflecting on distant Earth, the rich and seething home world she had never seen?
Or maybe it was that double planet, Green and Blue, only a few stars away—yet at a distance that could feel like an infinite rip in the fabric of the cosmos, so lost was that place to those who remembered it.
Wrapped in reverie she might be, Zilka was a hard person to sneak up on. She turned around. “I thought you were with Ten tonight.”
“The robots are ready as they can be. But what you’re sending him into could be more dangerous than you expect,” Stasia said bluntly.
“That’s why I expected you and he to be together—in bed, to be exact—exploring each other and distracting each other just in case you might not get another chance.” Zilka took a long sip of coffee. “In your place, that’s what I’d be doing.”
That was all the prompting it took for Stasia’s imagination to race in that direction. What she could imagine, if she let herself, made her dizzy. She would like to explore Ten, all right! To her surprise she found that she was eager to talk about him. “Are we that obvious?”
“Yes.”
Since Zilka herself was the unexpected result of a single night’s liaison in the Blue moonlight on Green, and insulting her origin was not something Stasia intended to do, she carefully said, “For me, it happens to be against my religion to have sex without marriage first. I’m Old Catholic, like my p-p-parents.”
Zilka gave Stasia a long look. “Old Catholicism is a religion that was already ancient when the Ship left Earth behind almost two thousand years ago. Are you staying that way for yourself, or as a memorial to them?”
“For me. But I miss them.” Stasia started to cry. She hadn’t cried since the day she’d heard they were all gone. Now she cried on Zilka’s shoulder. When the tears ebbed, Zilka whispered, “I miss mine too. We are all orphans.”
Stasia hiccupped, “Ten too. His grandmother was his real parent and she died not long before the Ship left Earth.”
Zilka unexpectedly asked, “Does Ten match your love type—the looks and temperament you’re most inclined to fall in love with?”
“I don’t have one and he matches it perfectly!” Stasia couldn’t ever remember confiding romantic thoughts to anyone. But it came as a huge relief. “But his parents were so not married that he never knew who his father was. I don’t know if he’d want to marry and be together forever.” The thought of loving Ten but losing him to other loves gave Stasis cold shakes.
“He would,” Zilka said.
“How can you tell?”
“By how he looks at you.” Zilka gave her a wry smile. “I know scientists and engineers. Some of them find their heart’s desire and it never changes. You are his dream come true. As long as he has you, he’ll need no other.”
Stasia’s heart beat faster.
She didn’t feel like an unshelled snail in a salty world any more. She felt more like an ice moon orbiting a huge world of possibility that warmed and enlivened her: the ice shell was cracked, the sea beneath it warming up, feelings flowing freely after a long freeze. It made her feel so intensely alive that it was uncomfortable, but it was good. “Is there a perfect type for you?”
One of Zilka’s shoulders tilted up in a kind of shrug. “My fantasies run toward tall and black-haired.”
“Like your father.”
She stared into her coffee cup. “I miss being able to talk to someone about anything as fast as I think, without having to step it down to a simpler and slower tempo for them to understand what I’m saying. Maybe that sounds arrogant.”
“It doesn’t. I knew him too,” Stasia pointed out. “He was a genius and you are too.”
“He was a broad-spectrum genius with several kinds of high intelligence. I am surrounded by brilliant people, but many of them, especially male scientists and engineers, have intelligence as narrow as a laser beam,” Zilka said drily. “And outside of that they are remarkably stupid. Meanwhile Gotayel has many remarkable people but they run short in height. My erotic fantasy life does not include looking down into the part in a lover’s hair. Back to business. My plan for Ten shouldn’t put him in undue danger, according to what I know—but I don’t know everything, as much as my pride would convince me that I do. Will you come too, but be diplomatic as may be necessary?”
“Hot damn, yes!” Stasia exulted.
Both of Zilka’s eyebrows went up. “And for Blue’s sake, refrain from cursing. It offends people.”
“Understood, Ma’am, roger and wilco!” Stasia left the dining hall as happily hopeful as she had been grimly unhappy when she came here.
Between one step and the next, she had a dramatic idea of her own. There was a certain tall, black-haired, and extraordinarily intelligent accident investigator who needed to be personally introduced to Captain Zilka, when this escapade was over.
Stasia whistled as she went on her way.
A small loop-shuttle took them to the Shipyard of Gotayel. With the canister in his arms, Ten watched as the shuttle pulled away from one of the Ship’s personnel locks. As the shuttle accelerated away, Ten could see more and more of the Ship: a h
uge sphere with deeply scarred skin. It had made a long, long journey through space.
The shuttle rotated away and a very different starship came in to view: Captain Zilka’s command, the Guardian Angel, a long double spindle with a shining silver skin. The Angel had been built in the Shipyard just a few months ago for the first Starcloud rescue mission. Now she orbited near the Ship and her officers and crew were running simulations for what they might meet when they returned to Starcloud. But the Guardian couldn’t accomplish the Impending Mission unaided. Smaller, specially designed scout ships were needed, too. The three new Lodestar-class ships were what the Shipyard was building around the clock, and what saboteurs had chosen to attack.
The Shipyard started sliding into view. It was enormous. Parts of it rotated for spingravity. The spinning parts were spherical, cylindrical, or toroidal. Other parts were spinless—huge blocks. Everything was laced together with light-colored tubes and dark girders.
Stasia leaned over his shoulder. “That Shipyard looks randomly assembled out of giant play parts with the approximate skill of a three year old child,” she observed.
Ten swallowed hard. He had agreed to go there on a secret mission. With the kaleidoscope. He intensely wanted not to go, not to risk anything happening to the flutterbys. Or to go and come back to Stasia in some kind of improbable victory. He couldn’t feel a bit of numbing cotton inside, instead sharp edges of anxiety, hope, and fear. Wonderful.
“Thinking hard, Ten?” Captain Zilka asked. “You can still back out, you know. I am proposing to throw you into a strange, twisted, and possibly dangerous place.”
The planet Gotayel loomed beyond the Shipyard. It was a vast sea-blue and desert-tan sphere. Green splotches on the lands showed where terraforming was ongoing.
Something clicked in Ten’s mind. “The Shipyard is up above the planet. But there’s something about it that’s Down, like the Downtowns.”
“I think so,” Zilka said. “On the planet, in the green areas, there are landed aristocracies and government officials, tribal chieftains and rich merchants. The Shipyard is where the poor but resourceful have long ended up. Our Ship is changing the balance, though. Our diplomacy with Avendis has already opened the avenue of fast starflight for Gotayel. That’s a big boost for our Shipyard friends, and a gain for the planet, most would say. But it could be a loss for some of the Downside factions that are on top now. It could be a loss that they are unwilling to take.”
That told him who Zilka expected the saboteurs were. He clutched the flutterby canister tighter.
The shuttle docked in the center of a spinning cylinder marked with a green octagon.
“Assembler’s Guild Hall,” said Stasia, who along with Ten had been studying up on the color and shape codes of the Guilds.
They floated into the structure and found Tira there to meet them. A stocky man was with her. He had clothing of real woven fabric—not just papercloth—and an air of command and control. He was Somebody, Ten thought.
The man turned out to be the Yardmaster. “Glad to meet you, I am,” he told Ten, as though Ten were a Somebody too.
Tira carried a blue coverall. With Stasia’s help, Ten got into it. Stasia used fasteners to secure the coverall cuffs over his Ship-issue boots. “Can’t even tell your boots aren’t exactly typical for around here,” she said with satisfaction, and dusted her hands.
Ten handed Tira the flutterbys one by one—including Spike, invisibly tucked into Intellby. He hoped Spike would stay invisible and not cause any trouble. He found it hard to trust a packet of plasma, however sentient.
Tira tucked the flutterbys into the pockets of her own, Assembler-green coveralls. “Plan still good as far as I know. It’s the late of night here, since Shipyard keeps Downside Northtown time. No alarms and emergencies tonight.”
The Yardmaster wore glasses. He looked away into a dim corner and Ten could see images playing across his lenses. It was a display of the Yard’s status, Ten guessed. The Yardmaster nodded. “None.”
Patting a flutterby bulge on a pocket, Tira told Ten, “I go release them from the front door of the Back Yard.” She gave him the empty canister back. “Ten minutes from now, you start to Deck 14 Sideway 32 Material Lock M-8. Got it?”
He nodded.
She gave him a grin. “You are a sharp knife. If you need a job I get you in Tech Guild for real.”
Tira left. She had a jaunty way in weightlessness—less of the physical coordination that Stasia had but a kind of exuberant flair.
“That young woman is on her way to a high future,” the Yardmaster commented. “She may be Yardmaster in another twenty years. She deals well with you Earthship people and that makes a vital difference.”
Zilka and the Yardmaster talked in low voices about some of the finer points of Ship and Yard relations. The coverall made the back of Ten’s neck itch. He scratched under his collar.
Stasia tucked his collar in. “Are you sure you're OK with this?” she whispered.
“I can’t sit in the Ship while the flutterbys are in danger,” he whispered back.
“Then be careful, you hear me?” Her smartwatch buzzed. “It’s time.”
The Yard was even more of a three-dimensional maze than Jaxdown. But it had directional signs and color-coded tubes. And Ten had a good memory for directions. Not getting lost had more than once saved him from embarrassment and even danger, in Jaxdown. It would do the same here, he told himself.
As Tira had promised, his blue coveralls made him almost invisible—an ordinary lowlevel Tech who looked like everybody else. Floating around one sharp corner, he almost collided with a man in maroon coveralls—Shipyard staff. “Excuse the please,” Ten said, using Tira's Gotayelan kind of English.
“No foul,” the other person said affably and went on without another glance at Ten.
He found his way to Yard Main—the oldest and largest component of the Yard. A ladder took him down into spingravity. He located the material lock he was looking for, in an out-of-the-way pocket of passageway dustier and more deserted than most of the Main. The material lock was only thirty centimeters across—too small to be used by humans. It was just for passing out tools and such. Or—Ten hoped with all his heart—admitting flutterbys.
There was a porthole beside the lock. Ten was grateful for a view out, though annoyed that because of Yard Main’s spin, the view constantly rotated.
The authority key Tira had given him opened a local electronics panel beside the lock. Just as Tira had promised, there was a space in the panel just big enough for him to lightly fasten the controller in there. Tira evidently had good connections in other Guilds.
With his just-a-Tech-blue coveralls, he looked as though he was doing some utterly ordinary repair or systems check in the middle of the night. He reminded himself to act like it too. Standing as casually as he could in front of the box, he quickly powered up the controller and read it. The screen showed icons for the flutterbys. All ten of them were accounted for—already flying in a loose formation. He peered anxiously through the porthole. He had to wait for the local spin to show him the Back Yard. There he saw the rounded hulls of the three new Lodestar-class ships under construction. Assemblers in space suits worked on them. The work was brightly lit where Gotayel’s sun shone through the Shipyard. Where tubes and habitation units blocked the sunlight, the shadows were inky black.
The controller’s icons for the flutterbys had dense little bundles of code that told him each robot’s velocity and activity. His heart tripped. They were working perfectly. With their Tech-blue markings, they should be taken for low-level function bots. The kaleidoscope was dispersed so any Assembler out there, or anyone who might glance out a porthole while they were working, as Ten was pretending to do, might see one or at most two flutterbys going in different directions. It was better not to have an unusual-looking robot swarm be conspicuous by its presence.
He impatiently waited through a rotation to look again. This time he saw one of the flutterb
ys in the same general direction as a couple of spacesuited Assemblers working on a joint between two large hull sections. The flutterby was just a glint of light to his eye until it vanished into a shadow. The controller gave him much more information about it. From crossing that part of the Back Yard high and at an upward angle, as soon as it entered the shadow the little machine jetted straight down—closer to the Assembling action but almost invisible. It watched what was going on with a camera eye.
Ten fell into a pattern. Each time his porthole started rotating toward the Yard, before staring outside again, he glanced behind him, checking the pocket passageway he was in and the larger corridor that it T-intersected with. Not many people went by in the corridor. Just two in fifteen long minutes. One of those passers-by, though, struck him as odd.
The odd passerby immediately went along his way, but something about the way the man—wearing a baggy green coverall, so he was an Assembler—moved made the skin on Ten's arms gooseflesh. Parts of the man might be artificial, except artificial limbs moved smoothly in natural curves. Maybe spingravity made a subtle difference. Or—was it possible?—the odd man was not built like humans are supposed to be? Shipyard workers tended to wear their coveralls closely tailored and even looking svelte. This man’s baggy coveralls made Ten wonder if he was hiding a deformity—or perhaps contraband?
Ten shook the speculation out of his mind and went back to his vigil.
With their new programming for surreptition, the flutterbys skulked high and low. One of the camera bots—Camby2—took an interest in a lone Assembler. It peeked at the Assembler from the cover of a bundle of girders. Camby2 focused on what the Assembler was doing—he was supervising a welding bot as it slowly crawled crawled along a fresh seam. Ten asked for vid from the Camby2. He squinted at the vid while the porthole rotated away from the action. The fresh weld looked perfectly straight and sound to Ten, not that Ten knew much about space welding.
The spacesuited Assembler maneuvered behind the robot to inspect the freshest part of its weld. Ten realized that the Assembler was odd in the same way as the man in the corridor had been. There was something deformed about him too, something wrong about the way he moved. It was slight but to Ten’s eyes conspicuous.