The Collapsium

by Wil McCarthy

  Still, he’d forgotten how much he missed Tonga, how very many memories he had tied up here. The noisy palace, the quiet beaches, the secret harbors of Eua accessible only by catamaran … He’d come to Tamra’s court at the age of thirty, and remained for thirty years more, fighting always for the time to seclude himself, to lock these sultry islands away behind white laboratory walls and work. The arc de fin, the arc de fin! But now he’d been away and alone for nearly as long, his life neatly trisected by this residence and birthplace and ancestral capital of Queen Tamra Lutui.

  He moved his chair closer to hers, and would have reached for her hand if they’d been anything like alone together. As it was, there were seven people in the room here, and dozens more visible in the rooms nearby, and hundreds or thousands of news cameras swarming like thirsty mosquitoes at the cordon line, three hundred meters out. But Tamra seemed to sense his thoughts, and nodded sidelong at him: Yes, Philander, I remember it too.

  Vivian set down her wellstone slate and rubbed her eyes with her thumbs in a very unchildlike gesture. “I need more information. This isn’t falling into place for me. You, Sergeant,” she said, singling out one of the uniformed officers standing guard. “Find me Cheng Shiao, with a reconstruction of the attack on Sykes’ house. No excuses—I want whatever he’s got. And bring me a soda, also.”

  “Yes’m. Right away.”

  To Bruno, for some reason, she said, “It’s like something I’ve learned in school but mostly forgotten.”

  “Mademoiselle?” Bruno said, in a tone meant to convey incomprehension.

  “My life. My job. I feel as if I know them until it’s time to do something, and then I’m never sure what. I keep expecting people to laugh, to say I’m doing it all wrong.”

  Bruno felt a little smile plant itself on him. “I’ve often felt that way myself, mademoiselle. It’s more normal than you might suppose. I do think you’re being too bossy, though. You might tone that down a notch.”

  “My name is Vivian, sir.”

  “Ah. Well. I shall call you that in the future, and if you like, you may call me Bruno. Understand, I’ve never met a person in your … circumstances before. We’re making up the protocol as we go along, both of us.”

  “Hmm.” She considered that answer, or perhaps the smile behind it, and finally seemed to find it good.

  “You’re doing a splendid job,” Tamra added sincerely. “Believe me, I’d remove you if you weren’t. The Queendom deserves no less.”

  “Hmm.” After a moment’s reflection, Vivian seemed to like that answer even better.

  They all fell silent. The hum of ventilators and lighting seemed, somehow, to match the rolling and crashing of the ocean, too distant to be audible behind the wellstone glass of the windows.

  Half a minute later, Cheng Shiao strode into the office, a glass of dark, fizzing soda in his hand. He set it down in front of Vivian, then stood at attention. “Cola Five-Two, no ice. Regrettably, I’m unavailable with the full reconstruction at this time, as my cruiser is presently docking with the remains of Sykes Manor. Only the gross reconstruction, based on our last radar assay, is available yet. I’ve taken the liberty of uploading it to your pads.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Will you walk us through it?”

  “A pleasure, Commandant-Inspector, though I’m afraid there isn’t much to it.” Images appeared on all the little pads, and on a backlit holographic rectangle that appeared in the center of the table’s smooth surface, like a glass window looking down on outer space, on the golden-white sphere of Marlon’s house spinning silently against the starscape, lit mainly by floodlights but with a sliver of bright sunlight illuminating one side. “A directed energy stream approximately six meters wide strikes the house in a single pulse at fourteen hours fifty-two minutes, penetrating here and exiting here. Although the structure remains largely intact, atmospheric containment fails immediately—note the venting gases—and power distribution fails within seconds.”

  The little house shot gouts of debris and glittering crystals of frozen air from a pair of circular openings that appeared in it. The mangled Athenian structures within showed clearly.

  “Power distribution failed?” Marlon asked angrily. “There’s wellstone all through that house—more than enough redundancy to keep it alive.”

  “Yes sir. Apparently it was the embedded computing structures themselves that failed.”

  “Secondary radiation?” Bruno speculated. “A shower of charged particles released by the sudden energy flux?”

  “Possibly, sir.”

  “What sort of beam was it?”

  “Unknown, sir.”

  “Hmm.” Bruno pinched his chin between thumb and forefinger, as was his habit when attempting to concentrate. “I don’t suppose you have the precise time of impact? Coupled with the rotation rate of the house, that could be used to trace the beam back to its source.”

  “We have timeline only to the half minute, sir, based on long-range radar tracks of the larger debris. I expect to refine that figure through proximity scan and direct assay of the impact site.”

  “This is police business,” Vivian noted impatiently. “Shiao does know what he’s doing.”

  “Please,” Tamra said, holding up a hand in what was either a scolding or a beseeching gesture, or perhaps both. “The Royal Committee for Investigation of Ring Collapsiter Anomalies does share jurisdiction here. Their investigation precedes yours, in fact precedes the murder itself, and I daresay their business is the more urgent. You’re to provide de Towaji with anything he asks.”

  “Oh,” Vivian said, with surprising equanimity. “Okay.”

  Bruno, who hadn’t realized he was a member of any sort of official committee, said, with some embarrassment, “Er, what’s the soonest you could get us a full reconstruction?”

  Shiao shrugged. “Unknown, sir. Since the investigating cruiser is some seven light-minutes distant, I haven’t communicated with myself directly. For a precise figure, you’d have to ask me there yourself, in person.”

  “Ah. An excellent suggestion. Your cruiser is fully equipped? Can I fax myself there?”

  Shiao looked alarmed. “Well, um, technically yes, sir, but in actuality I was attempting a joke. You’d need to be certified for shipboard operations. Have you even had any spacesuit training?”

  Bruno laughed. “Breathe in, breathe out, and keep your boot grapples engaged? I’ve seen it in the movies.”

  “Sir, emergency procedures alone require eight weeks of intensive immersion. I’m afraid I can’t authorize—”

  “You can authorize it,” Her Majesty said firmly. “Was I unclear about this? De Towaji is operating under full royal dispensation, and shall have whatever resources he requires. His safety is my responsibility, not yours.”

  Nervously, Shiao pressed. “Sir, have you ever even worn a spacesuit?”

  “No,” Bruno admitted, “but I grew up in a back-to-basics community where primitive skills like that were highly prized. I’m adaptable. Don’t worry, son; I intend no unwarranted risks, and you’ll be held blameless for any foolishness on my part. I do think this merits my attention, though. And yours, Marlon, if you feel up to accompanying me.”

  “It’s my house,” Marlon said unhappily. “Of course I’ll go.”

  “And I,” Tamra said, stifling Shiao’s protest with a stern look. “It’s my Queendom at risk. And I have had spacesuit and spaceship training—in fact, I’m a level-one instructor.” Shiao looked surprised at this, which only made Her Majesty grow sterner. “You think I’m a twit, like my dear departed Queen Mother? All my life I’ve had the finest doctors, the finest fax programmers, the finest tutors and trainers. I’m as fit and as fast and as wise as modern science can make me, and I’ve been certified with more tools and vehicles and weapons than you’ve probably ever heard of. It’s not Tamra Lutui who’ll step aboard that cruiser, but the Queendom of Sol itself, and your approval, Lieutenant, has not been solicited.”

  Bruno
noted that Marlon, who’d been Tamra’s childhood mathematics tutor long before he’d been anything else, swelled with pride at these remarks. Shiao, though, gasped, bowed his head, and dropped to his knees.

  “Meaning no disrespect, Your Majesty! My concern is only for your safety!”

  “And appreciated as such,” Tamra conceded. “But overruled. Vivian, have you retained any spacesuit training?”

  “Um, I think so.”

  “Excellent. Will you accompany us?”

  “Sure.”

  Bruno watched Shiao’s down-turned face, thinking he’d never seen someone actually bite back a protest before. He wondered if it was anywhere near as uncomfortable as it looked.

  It took less than fifteen minutes for the Constabulary wardrobe to dress them all in custom-fit, top-of-the-line vacuum-safety equipment, by which time Shiao admitted that his docking maneuvers were complete and that he was dutifully awaiting the Royal Committee in what remained of Sykes Manor.

  Bruno flexed his fingers and elbows and knees experimentally. The silvery-blue garments weren’t nearly as heavy or stiff as they looked, and the helmet dome, when he commanded it to swing shut over his head, was optically superconducting, invisible except for faint silver marking dots applied to it—he supposed they were there so he’d know where the dome was, so he wouldn’t accidentally try to put his gloved fingers through it.

  They each had their name emblazoned on their rebreather backpacks—literally emblazoned, in dully glowing red letters. Bruno’s said TOWAJI, an error or abbreviation he hadn’t seen fit to correct. And here around him, as they crowded into the fax atrium, were SYKES and SKETTERING, a miniature RAJMON and a couple of hulking SHIAOs.

  Tamra’s suit alone was nameless, bearing only the royal seal, but it was unmistakable from any angle, being purple in color, with bright gold trim that seemed to—possibly did—glow with its own inner light. It also managed, despite its bulk, to look sexy on her, the cut somehow exaggerating the hourglass of her waist, the curve of her calves, the gentle swell of rump and bosom. Crisscrossing reinforcement straps, their placement engineered to look coincidental, contrived to emphasize each perfect breast in a way that made Bruno feel almost as though he were imagining it, as though he were a lecher and a boor unworthy of the Virgin Queen’s chaste presence. Doubtless, she’d downloaded the pattern from her palace wardrobe, which had designed it for exactly these qualities. Of such silly but powerful subtleties was court life constructed. Perhaps it was a kind of joke.

  The royal bodyguards alone remained undressed, looking almost vulnerable alongside their armored Queen. Nonetheless, pistols at the ready, they stepped through the gate to prepare the way for her. She followed closely; Bruno, right in tow, felt compelled to study the heart shape of her purple armored behind.

  Seven minutes’ travel time vanished in a faxed instant; stepping through a curtain would have provided a greater sense of travel.

  The inside of the police cruiser was surprisingly large, a gravity-free cylinder twice as wide as Bruno was tall, with token “floor” and “ceiling” of waffled rubber and all the rest an expanse of wellstone, smooth gray panels set with deep, breadbox-sized niches every couple of meters, and larger, coffin-sized ones interspersed less frequently. The thing appeared to be about a hundred meters long, somewhat larger than the shattered sphere of Marlon’s house visible outside the round, di-clad portholes. The ship’s setup was enviable and no doubt expensive—a complete laboratory that could, on a moment’s notice, be reconfigured for nearly any purpose, and that could simultaneously protect or confine dozens of human beings, be they SWAT troopers or prisoners or refugees plucked from some civil disaster.

  A Cheng Shiao stood, waving uncertainly, in the aisle a dozen meters ahead, next to what was probably an air-lock hatch. Tamra, with her robots on either side, advanced toward him, her improbably swiveling derriere beckoning Bruno to follow, which he did. The others appeared behind him one by one, clearly visible in the small rearview mirrors projecting forward from each of his shoulders.

  “Any warning lights in your suit collar?” Shiao asked anxiously. “Any unfamiliar noises or sensations?”

  “No,” Tamra answered him with apparent good cheer. Their voices rang in Bruno’s helmet as intimately as if they were right in there with him.

  “Er, no,” he said, though in fact the weightlessness—despite the fax filters that had conditioned his body against space sickness—was already making him a bit queasy. The food and drink Marlon had served him earlier now seemed to be rocking back and forth as a single, fluid mass in his stomach.

  “Nope,” Vivian said behind him.

  “No,” Marlon said more sullenly, echoed by an even more sullen Deliah van Skettering. Why she’d insisted on accompanying them Bruno was not at all sure—she’d seemed to regard the prospect with a mix of resentment and dread. But she’d died already; little worse could happen now. Perhaps she just wanted to feel included, to be present in case anything important happened. Or perhaps she had something material to contribute—she was, after all, a Laureate in the sciences and a Director in the bureaucracy. But that didn’t mean she enjoyed the idea. Like Bruno, she had no spacesuit training of any kind, so her obvious fear of space’s vacuum was well founded, more sensible really than Bruno’s own nonchalance.

  He flexed his hand, trying somehow to feel the absence of air around him. He realized, with a twinge of worry, that he’d once again neglected to leave a copy of himself behind. He wouldn’t want to be left behind, so the idea hadn’t occurred until now, to make a copy and mistreat it that way. Was this unwise, given the risks he was taking? Ah well, done was done, and the fax machines at both ends should retain his pattern in their buffers, at least until something else overwrote it.

  He followed Her Majesty around the corner and into the airlock, both of whose doors stood open. Beyond it was some crude hardware—a kind of metal tunnel that seemed to have been jammed straight through the hull of Marlon’s home. Bruno’s sense of up and down did a little cartwheel, making him queasier still. Where the floor of the police cruiser had been “beneath” him and the airlock “in front,” now the airlock and its hatchway seemed to point “up” through the floor of Sykes Manor. And Bruno was clinging to the wall by the grapples on his boot soles! If the police hadn’t stopped the house’s spin “gravity,” he’d be falling backward right now, pivoting on broken ankles—his boot soles still clinging—until he finally bashed the back of his helmet against the wall below. But if not for the weightlessness, he wouldn’t be so disoriented in the first place. He’d be climbing a ladder or something.

  The police had stopped Marlon’s house from spinning, he realized, for safety reasons. With centrifugal “gravity” pressing everything to the hull—or out through the holes the energy beam had punched in it—there would be a risk of flung debris or even outright disintegration of the house, like a merry-go-round whose bolts had all come undone.

  “You’ve despun it,” Bruno said to one of the Shiaos, and though the Shiao was “below” or “behind” him and had no direct cue that he was the one being spoken to, the reply was immediate. “Yes, sir. To facilitate docking. Watch your step, please.”

  This exchange of words had a soothing effect on Bruno, who hadn’t realized he was in need of soothing, hadn’t realized quite how difficult and uncomfortable and not-a-game this business was going to be. He wondered if it mightn’t be easier to disengage the boot grapples and simply launch himself up the tube, to rise like a soda bubble through the hole in Marlon’s floor. But probably, if that were easiest, they’d have told him to do it. There was of course the problem of stopping.

  Her Majesty’s first robot walked up the side of the tube and around its upper lip as if this were the most natural thing in the worlds, and then Tamra herself did likewise, and then the other robot. Bruno, when his turn came, found the maneuver less difficult than it looked. Really, it was a matter of ankles and calf muscles, of letting the boots pull flat against
whatever surface was handy, and of keeping one’s leg—and with it the rest of the body—aligned. He marveled again at how supple these suits were. Thick enough to feel sturdy and safe as two winter coats with a suit of armor in between, they nonetheless flexed and twisted quite readily, as if shrinking away from the areas under compression—such as the insides of joints—and in turn rushing to the areas under tension, somehow adding length there, so that the fabric needn’t stretch or tighten.

  Marlon’s house, alas, was a mess inside. Power had failed, leaving the interior dark save for starlight streaming in through one gaping hole, and sunlight tinting the edges of the other, and between them the wandering flashlight and headlight beams of white-space-suited evidence technicians, a dozen of whom swarmed the wreckage like bizarre creatures of the deepest ocean. Where a few hours ago there’d been marvels here, or at least architectural curiosities, now there were simply floating debris and the stubs of pillars and the empty foundations of buildings.

  It looks more like Athens than ever, he thought suddenly. He nearly said it out loud, to God knew what effect on Marlon, but keeping the observation inside made it seem all the more insistently true. The real Athens, the contemporary one, preserved its temples and Acropolis forever in their twenty-first century state of ruin, lighting them up at night with floodlights and search beams …

  Well, in an earlier age, at least. Bruno hadn’t been to Athens in more than eighty years, almost before the Queendom’s founding, and hadn’t heard even the slightest news of it since moving up to his little planet in the Kuiper Belt. By now, he supposed the city could look like anything: a dome or a beehive or a forest of sky-scraping towers, perhaps even a restoration of its dusty classical grandeur. There was no limit to what people could do these days, or at any rate there shouldn’t be.