Outies

by Pournelle, J. R.

  So I was very afraid, too. I wanted to go to MaMa. But I did my Duty. I watched Grampa Horace. I watched and watched him. It was very hard. His arms did not move. His hands did not move. He was in his g-force bed. It was full of water, so he would squash down into it when the ship accelerated. You had to watch and watch his face. That was hard too, because it got all squashed flat. But that’s when I noticed that Grampa Horace had two ears. They were very small. They were hard to see. They were flat against his head. At first, I thought he was afraid.

  But then Auntie Omar speaked to MaPa! And Sir Eudoxus speaked to their Master! And I could hear: their Master was afraid! Their Master was very afraid that Lord Blaine would send many warships. But even when Auntie Omar speaked to MaPa, Grampa Horace was not afraid. I was very proud. My Grampa must have been a very powerful Master, and Auntie Omar and MaPa had given him to me!

  And then I thought: If Wolves have two ears, then maybe they are like Grampa Horace. Maybe Wolves are a special kind of Humans. Maybe Wolves are very powerful young Masters. Maybe Wolves are Lord Blaine’s children. Not just his get, like me. If Lord Blaine had many warships, I was very afraid for the Tartars. I should have been afraid for us.

  After that, whenever I was not with Auntie Omar, or MaMa, I went to Grampa Horace. He was mostly in bed. We were on a warship. It was going very fast. Everyone got very heavy. Grampa Horace had to stay in the waterbed, so he would not squash completely. Uncle Kevin said that we would jump soon. I call him Uncle Kevin, because he was very close to Grampa Horace. But he was not one of Grandpa’s offspring. He was Grampa Horace’s pilot. A pilot is like an Engineer, but an Engineer who can talk. Grampa Horace and Uncle Kevin talked a lot. So Uncle Kevin was like a Master too. So that was like Auntie Omar, or me. Somebody who has a MaMa who is an Engineer, and a MaPa who is a Master, and can talk to anyone. So I called him Uncle. He called Auntie Omar a Mediator.

  I did not know what jump was. It was something they had to make the ship do, to send this message about the wolves. Uncle Kevin was afraid Grampa Horace would die. Doctor Cynthia was afraid too. I told Auntie Omar that it was my Duty to stay with Grampa Horace if he was going to die. Auntie Omar was very proud.

  Grampa was very warm. The bed was very soft. I fell asleep. And then! Oh, the horror! I wished that I would die! Everything went—silent! I could not hear MaMa! I could not hear MaPa! I could not hear Uncle Kevin, or Auntie Omar, or Doctor Cynthia, or anyone! I tried to hold Grampa Horace, but my arms could not hear my brain! I could not hear Grampa Horace! I was sure Grampa Horace had died!

  And then, just a little, I could hear Uncle Kevin. He was making noises. They were not words, just noises. I crawled. I crawled and crawled. I thought I would die. I wished I would die. I crawled onto his chest. I grabbed his clothes and rocked and rocked. “Uncle Kevin!” I screamed and screamed. But he did not hear. And then I remembered that Uncle Kevin could not hear screams. I had to think in Anglic. I tried and tried. I had not spoken Anglic before. I had listened and listened, but I had not spoken. I tried again. And then the words came out. “Ali Baba is sick,” I said. “His Excellency is sick. So is, am I. Sick in the head, scrambled brains, wobbly eyes. Kevin?” It was very hard. But I made sure to say “His Excellency.” Uncle Kevin was just a pilot. Grampa Horace was a Great Master.

  Uncle Kevin said it would be all right, but it was not. Everyone was sick. Everyone had died a little, inside. The ship was sick. Doctor Cynthia was sick. But she crawled to Grampa Horace’s side. She did things. She was his Doctor. He just lay there, on his back. But then I could hear him again. I thought: he is a very old Grampa. He should have died. It is too soon. I don’t know anything. What will I do, if my Grampa dies? What will I do without Doctor Cynthia beside his bed?

  I went back to him. He did not speak. I just listened. I did my best, but I cried and cried. Uncle Kevin could not hear. Doctor Cynthia could not hear. But I thought MaMa could hear. And MaPa, and Auntie Omar, and Sir Eudoxus. I wanted them all to know: I am doing my Duty. I will do my Duty. Even this horrible sickness will not make me stop my Duty. I will not leave his side.

  And then Uncle Kevin said he would do it again. Make the ship accelerate. Squash Grampa Horace down into his bed, so he could not even breathe. They were talking about the Eye. They were talking about a jump through the Eye. It would kill him! So I jumped first! I jumped as hard as I could, and hit Uncle Kevin in the chest, and said, “NO! Not Again!” But Grampa said “Here, Ali Baba,” so I went. And then the Engineers moved Doctor Cynthia’s travel couch right next to Grampa Horace’s bed. I hid my head under Grampa’s arm, and just listened. And then we jumped again.

  This time, she was there. Doctor Cynthia. She was a Doctor, but she could talk to everyone too. And when the others were gone, she often talked to Grampa Horace. Uncle Kevin passed out, but she never did. I never did. She breathed for him. Breathed for Grampa. I heard her breath go into him, and come back out again. Again, and again. Again, and again. I thought there is a machine for this. But I also knew: she is doing her Duty. She is doing her Duty for him.

  I could hear his heart. It never stopped. It boomed. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. On and on it pounded. I timed my breathing to it. I timed my breathing to her breathing for him. And then I heard his breath go into her. Again and again. Again and again. I was sick and afraid with joy. I thought: it is over now. It is done. He will be safe.

  Even when Uncle Kevin said “Cynthia, how much can he stand.” Grampa answered. He said: “Anything. Kevin. Do what you must It is now in the hands of Allah.” I did not know who Allah was, but his heart was so strong. Grampa’s heart was strong. They all still listened to him. Whatever he said, they listened, and so did I.

  3

  Sanctum, Sanctus, Sancta

  On the other hand, we shall expect to find that the influence of Calvinism was exerted more in the liberation of energy for private acquisition. For in spite of all the formal legalism of the elect, Goethe’s remark in fact applied often enough to the Calvinist: “The man of action is always ruthless; no one has a conscience but an observer.”

  —Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

  Makassar

  Asach stared out into the dusk, awaiting the first twinkling stars. People were clearly the problem, always and everywhere. People were unfixed, and needed fixing. Unfixed in place, in time, in purpose; unfixed in principle or intent. Unfixed in their aims or views or desires or even likes and dislikes.

  Or, alternatively, entirely fixed, in all these things. People were, generally speaking, slippery and contrary things: saying one thing, doing another, and oblivious to the contradiction. Generally speaking, the only things truly fixed about them was rut and routine. Ruts so deep that they never peered out to any horizon.

  And down there in their little ruts they stayed, bored and boring, changing aims and principles alike in a daily quest for the preferential familiar. Familiarity substituting for—Asach was going to write “character,” but stopped to ponder this presumption. A preference for the known defined character, rather than negating it. Familiarity was not a substitute for character at all. Merely for purposefulness. Familiarity was a substitute for purpose—or at least for purpose of the rut-busting sort.

  Hence the need for fixing. Down there in the deep well of rut-ness, a few found true solace and contentment, but in Asach’s experience most found a deep well of resentment, and spent a good part of every waking day trying to affix this resentment on some blameworthy party.

  Which was tough news for Asach, now fixed to a purpose, which the unfixed smelled like hot blood at a fresh kill. Asach the finally-motivated, the living contradiction of rut-ness, the past practitioner of constant movement, the perfect focus for veritable wellsprings of hostility. Asach, bearer of the unforgivable flaw: Asach, the different. Asach underlined different.

  And yet, somehow, to Asach they trooped (and always had done) for fixing—hence the decades-long stream of reportage. At this juncture, some
days Asach simply wanted to stand up and scream: go see for yourself! Open your eyes, open your ears, open your petrified, suburbanized, rut-encrusted brains and for once in your predictable life, think! But knowing better: knowing the sheltered [fill in class name here] class’s insatiable thirst for talking to itself about other people, out there, unseen beyond the rut, Asach, hermeneutic chronicler extraordinaire, donning keyboard and point-of-view, would set out once again to explain.

  Yes, the food is different here. No, those people over there are not criminals. They are just poor. In this [village, town, city, country, planet] those are not the same thing. Ad nauseum. A lot of the explaining was more prosaic, having to do with enabling a warehouse operations chief to talk to an ITA implementation team, but it all boiled down to the same thing: amazing but true, other people do not live in your rut! They live in a different rut!

  The explanation went that this made them actually different. But in Asach’s mind, the opposite was the case: they were all exactly—exactly—the same. Hide-bound, parochial, inexperienced, defensive, and, generally speaking, hostile, although they papered that over with varying degrees of hubris. In need of fixing.

  It was late evening. The soft air and crickets recalled so many other evenings, filled with crickets, or peepers, or cicadas, or all three. A lot had changed in Makassar over thirty-five years. A lot more might have changed—and not for the better—if the ITA hadn’t originally dumped the Prince Samual’s World exiles into the most god-awful, pestilential armpit of the continent. Thankfully, MacKinnie’s successors were still fully occupied with re-creating Church, State, and the Silk Road among the winter-frozen peasantry scattered from Jikar to Batav. Which had the added benefit of occupying the jihadis allied against them, and leaving the warm, gracious, civilized realms of the Bungar delta to the (thankfully largely absentee) colonials and Tambar traders. The local wealth generated by all the movement of exotic woods, and spices, and coffee made life here quite comfortable indeed. And yet.

  Asach underlined: fixing, and reassessed. So far, Pie, Coffee, People, Different, Fixing. Asach decided, personally, to head into the kitchen, fix some pie and coffee, and give up on this book thing. It just seemed safer that way. Asach was, generally speaking, profoundly tired of being different. It was probably a fair trade for the heaven-sent experience of knowing fifty-seven different ways to explain coffee, but right about now a little rut would be nice. Just a different rut. Somebody else’s rut. A rut that didn’t require so much fixing.

  The light faded. Wind played through the makassar trees. Asach sat on the roof, wolfing down pie and sucking down aromatic draughts of coffee. Watched curiously as a hefty shape made its way down the lane, raised a fist, and pounded on the door below.

  It took Asach half an hour to throw essentials into a hand grip, lock up, pass the keys to a neighbor, and hitch a rickshaw into the authorized ITA landing zone in Ujung Pandang. After that, an interminable wait for a pinisi up to the space hub, where Horvath’s Goon was, inexplicably, waiting, accompanied by the Librarian.

  The Librarian was understandable. Contrary to know-it-all opinion, librarians actually thought long and deep over, were meticulously trained in, and knew a lot about information archives. That included not just what to stuff into them, but how to establish and maintain integrated resources, data maintenance and recovery, remote access, redundant storage, cataloguing, search and retrieval, unpowered access, and all the other arcana that went along with ensuring that locals got, and kept, and kept up with, what they needed. Or what the Empire thought they needed. Or both.

  Horvath’s Goon was another matter. HG, as he had already been mentally christened by Asach, was a graying, impatient, imperious version of Horvath, and like Horvath utterly without any social grace known in any civilized society. Alternately whining and blustering, HG’s express purpose seemed to be—well, Asach was not sure what HG’s purpose might be. Presumably to Represent The Academic Might And Gravitas Of The Empire, for whatever that might count to the failing stock farmers of New Utah. Why that required travel halfway across the galaxy and back, just to escort Asach to a meeting, was even less clear.

  Of course, HG had a real name, a title, a doctorate, and a reputation, but Asach didn’t much care. It was the sort of name and title that came with birth; the sort of doctorate that came from privilege (via a grandfather clause at a prestigious university), and the sort of reputation that came from snapping up and claiming as his own the works and limelight of a parade of graduate students and lesser-known scholars who had actually done most of the slog, made most of the insights, and slaved over most of the write-up and lecture prep. HG just showed up to make the pitch and collect the accolades, not to mention the honoraria.

  Apparently, for this stint The Goon had claimed “lifelong” experience in the “remote regions” of “the New Caledonia and Purchase systems,” and “intimate acquaintance” with those societies, their religious practices, and the doctrines of the Mormon True Church. In fact, Asach knew, two decades earlier as a graduate student HG had spent a smattering of summer weeks over the course of several years out in the boonies, unsuccessfully prospecting with a rock zapper and chemical test kit. While playing with his chemistry set he’d probably met about a dozen people total, including his paid field crew and the drivers who hauled him out to the middle of nowhere. He did not speak one relevant language aside from Anglic, was appallingly inept at negotiating through interpreters, and wouldn’t recognize a religious zealot if it smacked him over the head with The Book. But, like most suburbanites, he fancied his little camping trips as real adventures, a fiction that he probably actually believed. His audiences certainly did.

  In any case, there he sat, and Asach would have to endure him throughout the long slog, via Sparta, to the Commission’s prep meetings on New Scotland, and thence until arrival at Saint George on New Utah. Thankfully, thereafter, true to form, The Goon would reside in the safety of the TCM Security Zone, while Asach flew on to Bonneville, and from there to—to where?

  To wherever necessary to answer the Imperial Questions. There were eight. They were The Questions that determined the fates of nations:

  1. Does New Utah possess a planetary government?

  2. If yes, is that government controlled by the True Church theocracy?

  3. Is the True Church on New Utah politically subordinate to the True Church on Maxroy’s Purchase?

  4. Is New Utah disposed to willing accession to the Empire of Man?

  5. If yes, under what terms?

  6. If yes, can sufficiently profitable opportunities be identified to justify the costs of Imperial accession?

  7. If yes, in what accession class?

  8. If no, does New Utah pose immanent, credible threat to the Empire or any of its members?

  It was The Goon’s job to answer these from within the cloisters of the TC safe zone on the outskirts of Saint George. It was the Librarian’s job to establish a “knowledge mission” to “rebuild capacity” for “education in the rule of law” at the largely gutted university. And it was Asach’s job to go anywhere and everywhere else, then report back directly, and discretely, to the Commission. But only Asach knew of those latter instructions. They were unknown to The Goon and The Librarian. As far as they were concerned, Asach was “coordinating with locals” to “set up offices” for a trade mission in Bonneville.

  Sparta

  Of all things, Peet's coffee at JCF Interstellar! A whiff of Makassar in a sea of Anglos. Horvath’s Designated Minion insisted on handling every cent, clearly thought Asach’s quest for fair trade dark roast an eccentric extravagance, yet also insisted on paying for it. Conversely, the extravagance of forced meal consumption was nothing short of amazing. Dinner outbound at the JCF sector hub, dinner on the jumper, then lunch on arrival at Sparta Imperial Spaceport, then dinner on the planetside shuttle (again). Total actual elapsed time between meals: about 3 hours.

  Asach could not keep up, and enduring dour glares skipped th
e SIS lunch in favor of leftovers saved from a boxed breakfast from the inbound shuttle. Clearly, there was a minefield of food control issues there. They hadn’t really had any business on Sparta itself, and no-one felt the need to play tourist, but they had a few hours to kill and decided to freshen up and catch some good sleep under gravity before making the Trans-Coal Sack trek. So, down they went, and checked in for a couple of hours at the SIS Crown and Thistle. It was clean, pleasant, and close to the gates.

  HG paid for that, too, then forced Asach to endure a nightcap accompanied by an interminable lecture on Alderson Drive technology. Being amply convinced by decades of experience that they did so, Asach did not really care to hear yet again the details of how tramlines opened between some stars, nor how the drives exploited these to play interstellar hop-scotch, nor the theoretical basis for why onboard systems flailed through multiple checks and restarts on re-entry into normal space. Nor—especially nor—how many times HG had or had not puked his guts out while recovering from jump shock. At a momentary lull during the third recounting of his outbound trip to Makassar, Asach mad brisk apologies, abandoned the unfinished, unwanted drink, and bolted for a shower and bed.

  Maxroy’s Purchase.

  The trip had already taken forever. Asach detested pretty much everything about space travel. The jumps were excruciating. The boredom transiting between jump points was interminable, but it at least allowed time for writing. Then came the agonizing waits at orbital hubs for planetary shuttles, where the cramped little seats and disorienting floating about in search of the right exit corridors made any more writing impossible. Finally, the even more cramped shuttle descents.