by John Barnes
“My guess is,” Bref said, “that what they wanted there wasn’t rocks, but empty space—there are a bunch of very big chambers we never filled in over there, places where we did a lot of extracting the last time tin was high-priced, and instead of refilling we dumped waste magma onto the crater floor. Huge spaces that would be perfect as a place to hide their isotope separators for three reasons: plenty of flat crater floor nearby to spread the solar collectors on, great big enclosed spaces to hide the machines in, and since isotope separation is a slow process no matter what, lots of room to store the metal ingots until you can get them converted. If you look at the dates in that table closely, it looks like they started out with about a three-month lag between acquiring metal and selling it, and now it’s more like five months; I would bet they’re adding laser-centrifuge and plasma spectrometer setups over there as fast as they can, but it’s not enough to process all the metal they’re grabbing from sixty quaccos.”
“Isn’t that expensive?” Dujuv asked.
“Very, but they seem to have deep pockets, and meanwhile the shortage it’s creating is raising prices in the upper solar system. In the long run it’s more revenue for them—what’s it worth to have a near-monopoly on practically all the industrial metals?”
Durol returned with a pitcher of cocoa that tasted as if it were an experiment to determine how much chocolate would saturate a solution in heavy cream. “Well, so you heets all have the basics on it, then?”
“I think so,” Dujuv said. “How many people does MLB have?”
“Only around a hundred, but they’re dug in. None of ’em miners of any kind,” Kyffimna supplied, edging a little closer to Dujuv. “Meet ’em in Bigpile and you know right away—these are pure thugs. Not tough or disciplined or smart enough to be in a military outfit, but able to scare the hell out of miners.”
“We’re tough but not fighters,” Durol said. “We never really had much of a chance to learn. An injury that takes you off the job is so expensive to your quacco that your pizos won’t let you fight. I don’t suppose you three trained fighters could make much of a difference?”
“One-on-one, sure,” Jak said.
Dujuv nodded emphatically. “Any of us could tackle any one of them, but against ten not-too-trained goons, the three of us might have a fifty-fifty chance, and that’s not—”
The two boys were snickering. “Now that’s a panth,” Narav said. “Last week, the two panths in our quacco were in a bar in Bigpile, and they got to talking and decided to try going up against three MLBers, so they called ’em out right there in the bar. And our panths got their butts handed to them. They’re both in the Uninsured Charity Hospital, right now. Nothing against panths or anything, I mean I’ve grown up in the same krilj with ’em and all, but figuring odds, or any kind of figuring, isn’t exactly their strong suit.”
“I am sitting in front of you,” Dujuv said, very quietly, “and I would rather you didn’t talk about panths in general as if I were not here.”
Shadow made a strange, throat-clearing noise, and said, “Dujuv’s figuring is singing-on. Your two panths had no combat training, and didn’t attempt surprise. If the three of us were to try to attack an MLB party of ten, we would hit from behind without warning, each taking out one before the rest were fighting back. That’s down to seven. As you may have heard, my species is faster and stronger, individually, than yours, and I am also proficient and brutal. I could probably eliminate at least three more of them from the fight. That leaves four. Though he is only an unmodified human, Jak is skilled and practiced. He would almost certainly eliminate his first opponent, and might get a start on his second. Dujuv is as skilled as Jak, and a panth; he would take out one opponent quickly and entangle the other two in the losing game of trying to stop him. When Jak and I finished our opponents, there would be only two of them, and three of us, and we’d overwhelm the last two easily. If their numbers were much above ten, though, they would hold the advantage.
“I cannot say whether or not Dujuv calculated as I did, but in my view, he came up with the correct answer.”
“He’s talking about you like you’re not here, too,” Narav said.
“Shut up,” his brother explained. “You’re right, Shadow on the Frost. Narav, we both owe Dujuv an apology. I’m sorry.”
Narav glanced at his father and sister, and apparently didn’t like what he saw. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Obviously you know your business better than I do.”
“Accepted, of course,” Dujuv grumbled. “And it’s all irrelevant anyway since there are a hundred of them.”
Jak said, “Here’s half a thought. My Uncle Sib has been a mercenary and a spymaster for a lot of his life. He might have ideas. I’ll back-channel something to him and see what he thinks. While I’m at it, I want to see what Colonel Mattanga has to say for herself.”
“At least you’ll give her someone new to ignore,” Dujuv said. “I just wish we had some ideas of our own.”
Shadow added, “I shall send the Duke of Uranium a short report, also back-channeled. He is ruthless where his monopoly is concerned. MLB is a threat to some of the best uranium and thorium mines in the solar system. That will surely get his attention.”
“Anything that you think might help,” Durol said, with a sigh. “Well, I guess you were supposed to infiltrate, so tomorrow we’ll infiltrate you into our quacco. Which is a real simple way of saying, congratulations, pizos, to go with your bed and board here in the krilj, you’ve got jobs. Meeting’s adjourned.”
Dujuv stayed behind to talk with Kyffimna. Back at their shared sleeping chamber, Jak sent his messages to Colonel Mattanga and to Uncle Sib, and had just finished figuring out how he was supposed to sling the pressure suit hammock when Dujuv came in.
He didn’t move like a panth in moderate gravity. He sat down on the room’s one low bench and said, “Jak, Shadow, I don’t know how this can get any worse.”
Shadow on the Frost looked up from his reader. Rubahy do not sleep, and he had been planning to spend the night trying to solve some minor mysteries in the history of his family. “Dujuv Gonzawara, my tove and pizo, it can always get worse. We can be badly wounded or dishonored, or misfortunes that merely seemed inevitable can manifest in the present. What has so discouraged you?”
“Well.” Dujuv sat there, staring at the floor. “Radzundslag, first of all.”
“The heet who stole Bref’s outside purse?” Jak asked.
“It’s what got Bref’s outside purse, but it’s not a heet. And it’s the reason why they think a hundred and twenty is a ripe old age. And a lot of things. Background radiation here, so close to the sun, with no atmosphere, is screaming high, plus there’s also constant exposure to nasty toxic metals, in the form of dust that gets everywhere. That’s what they call radzundslag—the mix of radiation and poisons that they live in from the moment they’re born, and that they’re all dying of, all of them, all the time. Even if we do stop MLB, we will barely have touched a tenth of a percent of what’s wrong with this place.”
Shadow said, “But we will have touched that. Hard enough, I hope, to end it. Like most invasions, evil is best defeated in detail.”
Dujuv made an unhappy noise. “Weehu, I almost forgot to thank you for sticking up for me in there. I appreciate it, Shadow.”
“I was glad to do the service, but truthfully, I was also just annoyed at the slight to our honor.”
“It’s good that you were,” Jak said, “because I never know what to say when people treat Dujuv that way.”
“There are two expressions in your language,” Shadow said, “which you might try for such occasions. If they begin abusing your friend, say, ‘That’s not true.’ If they persist, say, ‘Fuck you, asshole.’ ”
Jak and Dujuv both started to laugh; Shadow said, “I was not aware that I had said anything funny.”
Smiling and shaking his head, Jak said, “It’s just that the first of those expressions is moderately rude, and the second is spect
acularly rude. It would upset people.”
Shadow set his reader down and looked at Jak long enough to make him uncomfortable. “I fancy I know humans rather better, and like them much better, than most Rubahy do. But every so often I am reminded, somehow, that you are absolutely aliens. Why should you care about showing courtesy to someone who has insulted your friend? Why worry about offense to one who has revealed himself as at best a lout and at worst a declared enemy? Yet most of you will not give the lie to, nor call out, someone who insults a whole breed of human, or a nation or a faith or any other group to which your friend belongs, even though you know full well that the insult cuts your friend as deep as a personal one would. Human courtesy seems to require that you sit and listen and nod, or even chuckle as if it were an inept joke, if someone says that panths are stupid, yet you would start a brawl that instant if they were to say that Dujuv specifically is stupid—but how much difference can it make to Dujuv? Now, I know, it’s in your Nakasen’s Principles, it’s 56: ‘Courtesy has no logical basis but practice it anyway,’ and perhaps you are not supposed to question or argue with a Principle—”
Jak’s purse said, “Urgent message from Greenworld Intelligence, via back channel.”
“Put it up on the screen for all of us.”
The chamber lights dimmed. The projector’s white square formed on the wall. The person looking out at them was not Mattanga, but was sitting in her not-yet-redecorated office. “Hello, this is a response to your query. We have no information on why former head of security Mattanga did not acknowledge information received from stringer agents, but in any case, while we are forced to agree that it would be to Greenworld’s advantage to suppress the activities of MLB and return the situation to the status quo ante, we cannot see that the advantage is so great as to warrant our sending an armed force. We do not feel it is even enough to warrant the retention of two agents in place. The two of you, Jak Jinnaka and Dujuv Gonzawara, are therefore discharged from Greenworld’s service, in situ, and will have to make your own arrangements for transportation to any other location, or seek employment where you are. You can expect no further support from us and we request that you do not contact us. If by any chance it should happen that you are able to take effective action against MLB, that you take it, and that it succeeds—entirely on your own initiative and without making any use of Greenworld resources—we would be happy to consider reinstating you with our organization.” The message blinked out.
“Well,” Dujuv said, “I think I dak what you mean about how things can always get worse, Shadow.”
CHAPTER 13
“There’s Things Worse Than Being Broke, or Dead”
This is your rocable,” Kyffimna said. “Don’t hesitate to use it if you need it.”
The rocable strapped to the back of your pressure suit; it was a twenty-five-kilometer-long monosil cable with a rocket, transponder, and grapple at the end. Monosil, the same stuff used for sunclipper lines, could hold against tons of force, but a twenty-five-kilometer length of it massed less than a kilogram. If you were in real trouble, you fired the rocable. Trailing the monosil, the rocket and transponder climbed high into the sky, and, in Mercury’s low gravity, fell back slowly; if any craft was nearby during that long fall, it grabbed your rocable and hauled you up.
With so many small taxi and freight rockets in service, plus a large number of low-flying satellites and other crewed and uncrewed spacecraft, rescue was more likely than not.
Of course, one dirgey tune that Reedjox, the simi who played accordion, had wheezed out interminably last night, had been about two “poor stranded miners,” surrounded by rising magma, watching as their rocables fell slowly but inexorably back to Mercury:
No ship above, no rocket near
No friendly satellite
And closing ’round their island drear
The magma hot and white.
Jak remembered from ethnography class that people in dangerous occupations often had a rich folklore about accidents; he wondered if the “Bil Balee” and “Kei Sijoniz” ballad was toktru. When “and now the rocket’s fallen and the time is all run out” would anyone actually say:
Bil, we’re gonna cook here,
And suit-steamed we shall be.
So the com log ought to show you’ve been
A toktru tove to me.
Today they were substitution pumping for aluminum. Dujuv would be operating the portable slagger (a big positron laser) melting a medium-sized hill of fused metal; a mix of iron, copper, silicon, and general junk, to provide the heavy magma that would force the valuable stuff up. Shadow would be jocking remote slagger two kilometers down in the ore pocket, via telepresence. Jak was to be flowmaster, making sure the heavy magma flowed down the two-meter tube at an acceptable rate, the light melted ore flowed up through its narrow heated tube, and the flow was delivered at the proper temperature to pour across the tunable-matter plates of the separator. “That’s the only piece of equipment we rent,” Kyffimna said, “so if you gotta lose anything, don’t lose it.”
Jak looked at the separator thoughtfully. It was about sixty meters long—more than half the length of a soccer field—by twenty-five tall by forty wide. The outer casing was bright chrome steel, formed and extruded here in the vacuum of Mercury and therefore never tarnished. On each side of it, the catchers (for no reason Jak knew, he had heard some people call them the “washboards”), great racks of many thousands of thin metal rollers running the width of the separator, sat waiting, their empty bins below. To move the separator, Jak knew, would require raising it on jacks and lowering it onto a linducer track built out for the purpose.
“It looks kind of big to lose,” he observed, “but I guess we can tie a string on it or something.”
“I mean lose it to a magma flood or from overloading or any stuff like that,” Kyffimna said. “You sure you’re not the panth in the crowd?”
“Uh, I said something dumb, but is that a reason to insult my tove?”
There was a long silence, and then Kyffimna asked, “Dujuv? Why didn’t you say something?”
“You’d have just thought I was humorless, like all panths.”
She left in silence.
The work was not complex or demanding, and they had soon settled into the rhythm of it. The sun, two and a half times as wide as it was seen from Earth, the Hive, or the Aerie, bathed the landscape in fierce light. Though the brightness was filtered by Jak’s faceplate, the stark contrast and pallid grays of the land around him still demonstrated the fury of a nearby star. The short horizon—just three kilometers away—gave a strange, foreshortened feel to the view, as if it were a stage set or a photo backdrop.
Jak hadn’t realized what “the busiest space in the solar system” could really mean until he looked up from the Mercurial surface. Always at least fifty satellites, local rockets, space stations, ferries, longshore capsules, and interplanetary spaceships were within fifty kilometers of the surface, all in the dead silence of vacuum, moving at six times the speed of a bullet, so that they shot from horizon to horizon in no more than four minutes.
Now that he was getting a little accustomed, Jak took a moment to watch the separator. On one end of the huge machine, there was a blur in the air, like a hummingbird’s wings if a hummingbird were made of silver, extending almost the length of the machine itself beyond its edge, an oddly rectangular cloud of blurred shining metal. Those were the heart of the big machine, four hundred plates—sheets of tunable matter, thinner than tracing paper, more rigid than reinforced concrete, the surface of each covered with more than 1025 pseudoatoms—flying in and out two to five times a second.
Each pseudoatom was a complex knot of a few hundred ordinary atoms, essentially a molecule configured so that an electronic signal on one end of the molecule changed the effective valence on the other end. Ordinary chemical atoms cannot tell the difference between a pseudoatom and a real one; both have the same electrons in the same orbitals, and the fact that a pseudoa
tom has no nucleus and is tuned to imitate a particular atom is invisible to ordinary matter. The pseudoatoms on the separator were tunable to be pseudofluorine (the strongest oxidizing atom), pseudo-francium (the strongest reducing atom), or pseudohelium (the most inert atom). Behind each pseudoatom sat a molecule-sized NMR detector; as hot magma poured over the plates, the pseudoatom switched to fluorine. If the NMR detector registered aluminum, the pseudoatom stayed fluorine and retained it; if the detector registered anything else, the pseudoatom switched to helium, let it go, and then switched back to fluorine to try again. That process could be repeated many thousands of times per second; in a mere hundred iterations or so, faster than one can speak a single syllable, the tip of every pseudoatom would be occupied by an aluminum atom, and the sheet would shoot out to deposit the aluminum onto the rollers of the washboard; wipers moved the aluminum continuously off the rollers and down into the bin, and the now-blank sheet of pseudoatoms flew back into the magma to collect another load.
Every stroke of a plate represented a little over four hundred grams of aluminum, they had told Jak, allowing for leaks and wastage; in six hours of working flat out today, the 383 separator plates tuned for aluminum would pull out about ten thousand tonnes of pure aluminum.
Aside from watching the pumps for trouble and monitoring flow rates, Jak was to watch the NMR indicators for any good quantities of anything resalable. Right now, after all the aluminum had been captured, nine of the other seventeen plates were capturing oxygen for the krilj’s own use, and the last eight were capturing nitrogen, which was the most abundant stuff in there that could currently be sold for a profit.
Anything that it didn’t currently pay to smelt went off the tunable-matter plates and into the heavy slag that Dujuv was pumping down. (Because they were mainly extracting light elements today, the residue was much heavier than the raw stuff coming out of the ground.)