by Wil McCarthy
“Muddy, my God. At least leave a copy behind.”
There was a pause, and then Muddy’s voice said, “I have, sir. It’s you.”
Before Bruno could reply, before he could conceive of a reply, the crackling edges of the wellstone reaction closed in over the loudspeaker, first a ring around it and then a circular wave splashing in across it and finally a smooth, blank cylinder wall. The sizzling stopped.
A rocket would have made some sound, even in vacuum, as its hot exhaust gases expanded and flowed across the landscape, impinging on the surface of the access port. But a grappleship made no sound at all. Through the little window in the airlock, Bruno could see a shadow pass briefly over the landscape, and that was all.
He stood there a long time, with his nose pressed up against the hot glass.
chapter twenty-four
in which an historic tally is counted
They watched on the sensors of Marlon’s desk as Sabadell-Andorra raced to the scene of the collapsium’s photopause penetration. As promised, the fragments shrank and vanished from view, and even Bruno had a hard time identifying their gravitational signatures as the tug of Sabadell-Andorra’s grapples flung them away from solar space. And then there was the gravitational signature of the ship itself, of the ertial shield crowning her bow; they watched this plunge headlong into the photosphere’s dense plasma, where even impervium could expect a lifetime measured in fractions of a second.
Once the ship was burned away, of course, there was no mass for the ertial shield to drag around behind it. Weightless, massless, all but inertialess, it caught a whiff of the solar convections, the outward currents in the plasma that, higher up in the photosphere, gave rise to the solar wind. It caught this breeze, yes, right at the very source, and was flicked at once toward eternity.
Bruno lost interest after that. There were a lot of tearful thanks, a lot of hugs and shoulder thumps, a lot of shaken hands. Cheng Shiao came back from the dead to congratulate Bruno on his excellent work and to offer up his deepest thanks for saving all of their lives, in so many ways. But Bruno could barely pay attention to the words, and in time his friends withdrew, realizing how deep his grief must be. The loss of his home, his ship, his brother, were as nothing to the loss of his Queen. They felt that loss—that yawning, hollow emptiness—and they had far less to lose of her than Bruno did.
They left him alone there in the study, alone not only with his grief but with his guilt, because he knew—as Muddy must surely have known—that the Queendom itself barely existed for him, except as an interest and possession of Tamra’s. He’d have let it fall, let the sun explode and the Earth run with fire, let the Iscog scatter to the far corners of the galaxy, if only he could have saved her.
Brave? He was the worst sort of coward, the worst sort of villain, because he was willing to hide behind a mask of heroism. Were all heroes that way, inside their secret selves? What an empty thought.
Time passed; he slept on the cot, awoke, ate from the fax and then slept again. In time, Deliah came to him and announced that they’d gotten Marlon’s spaceship working and were ready to go. Back to Earth, she said, and only looked puzzled when he told her he didn’t deserve to set foot there.
An argument ensued; they tried, both one by one and as a gang, to persuade him to board the ship with them. But he refused to be persuaded, and refused to be persuaded, and finally they concluded his grief had consumed all else within him—which was certainly true. They wondered aloud whether he could be trusted to remain here alone without harming himself. They extracted a promise from him regarding this, and in the end they simply had to trust him with it. He did have some experience in living alone, after all.
And so they departed, and Bruno remained behind. History does not record what he did there, as Mercury’s long day collapsed slowly into afternoon, as the sun set and darkness fell and the ground gave up its heat. Mercury’s night is among the coldest in the solar system; perhaps it matched his mood. Perhaps he donned a spacesuit and spent long hours walking under the stars’ cold light. Perhaps he remained indoors, and meditated, or slept.
Did his heart begin to turn, when the sun reached its nadir at midnight? Did it turn before dawn, when the night had reached its coldest and the sun’s stealthy advance upon the horizon had begun, finally, to heat the ground again?
This much is known: that ten weeks after the Solar Rescue, when The Honorable Helen Beckart, Regent of the Crown and Judge Adjudicator of the House of Parliament, arrived at Mercury with her entourage and bodyguards, they found a de Towaji more at peace than the one Vivian Rajmon had tearfully described to them.
“Declarant-Philander,” Beckart said to him upon their meeting, inclining her head deeply. She wore a black cassock and frock, a black tricorned hat, black stockings and shoes. Fortunately, her skin was pale, or she’d have disappeared entirely.
“Judge Adjudicator,” Bruno returned, rising from his cot to bow. “I trust your landing was pleasant.”
“It was,” she said. “Your house’s instructions were most helpful.”
Bruno had come to somewhat better terms with the universe, in his time alone here. His shame and guilt were a burden not so easily dispelled, but he was slowly forgiving himself for them, and for the events that had caused them. He forgave Tamra, too, for editing herself out of the equation like that. She’d had no way of knowing help was on the way; even Bruno hadn’t known that for sure. To err was human, yes?
Bruno had suffered from impure thoughts, from callousness, from introversion, and though his behavior might appear irreproachable, still he knew the difference. Tamra’s sin was to think and feel too purely, and to act in haste. Did the two sins balance out? Who could say? They were all just children, after all, the whole of humanity, exploring only the very earliest beginnings of their long, long lives.
Still, at the sight of Helen Beckart he felt a distinct knot of unease start tying itself up in his belly. Bruno was wearing black as well, in a band around his right biceps, but Beckart’s was the black of her official uniform, not of grieving. She stood there in the doorway of Marlon’s study like a legal document, waiting for Bruno to break her seal.
He cleared his throat and spoke more gruffly than he’d intended. “It isn’t another medal, I hope.”
Her smile was polite, devoid of any true joy. And who could blame her? “No, Declarant, I’m afraid it’s more serious than that.”
“Hmm? Yes? Well, do come in. Can I offer you refreshment?”
“No, thank you.” She strode into the room, followed by two gray-robed pages, a pair of faceless silver robots, and a sedately hovering squadron of courtroom cameras. He saw that she carried something in her hands, a black velvet bag or wrapping of some sort.
“Is that for me?”
She nodded once. “It is. Forgive me, Declarant; I’m only doing my job.”
In spite of everything, his heart quailed a bit at those words. Had he done something? Said something? But when Beckart opened the bag, what she withdrew was simply Tamra’s crown of monocrystalline diamond. A souvenir? An object willed to Bruno by the instruments of Tamra’s estate?
“I … don’t understand,” he said, shrugging.
Beckart reddened. “An election has been held, Declarant. Its results were as near unanimity as any election has ever been. I’m afraid … Sir, I’m afraid you’re the new monarch of Sol.”
Bruno blinked, unable to process that statement. “I beg your pardon?”
“As I say, sir. You are the new monarch.”
“Is this a joke? ”
“It is not,” Beckart told him seriously. “I’ve spared you the formal ceremony, at least, but these cameras are recording for posterity. Kneel, please, that I might place this crown atop your head.”
Bruno gaped, then snorted. “Why, I refuse. I refuse! I, the monarch of Sol? A king? Me? It’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It isn’t,” Beckart said to him, her eyes apologetic but certain. “I v
oted for you myself. It’s a cruel fate to practice upon you but … we are human, sir, we citizens of the Queendom. Our needs are valid.”
“I refuse,” Bruno said again, in a sterner voice.
But Beckart shook her head. “You’re a figurehead, sir. You haven’t the authority to refuse. Now I ask you, please, to kneel, else these bailiffs will be forced to make you do it.”
“You can’t be serious!” he protested.
But she was: the bailiff robots stepped forward, gripped him firmly and without pity, and pressed him to the ground, knees first. Some Latin and Tongan words were recited from a document, and twenty seconds later the crown was encircling his brow. The Queendom had its King at last.
Every child knows of the Winter Palace that de Towaji commanded to be built in high orbit around Earth. Every child knows of the year he spent there, shunning attention, appearing only for the wedding of Vivian and Cheng Shiao, and the funerals of the thousands upon thousands of True Dead the destruction of the Iscog and Ring Collapsiter had left behind.
Not that de Towaji was idle during the time of his seclusion; far from it. Following the trial and confession of Marlon Sykes—who had steadfastly refused treatment for megalomania and homocidia—Bruno’s first decree was that a cage de fin should be constructed, inside which time would not pass. Sykes—hunted by every search engine in the Queendom and meticulously reconverged to a single copy—would be placed within it.
“There you will see the lights and darknesses of uncreation,” de Towaji is known to have said, “for the span of the universe will pass for you in a single instant.”
“Thank you, Sire,” Sykes is known to have replied. And together the two of them designed the thing, and built it, and it is rumored that they spent a final evening together, drinking alcohol and smoking from weed pipes, singing and dancing and weeping together, their enmity in brief abeyance. Despite all Marlon’s villainy and Bruno’s long reticence, the two did after all have more in common with one another than with any other person, living or dead. Perhaps this is the origin of the nursery rhyme:
A cigarette, a mandolin, a glass of wine,
A trip to see the devil at the end of time.
In any case, the recordings clearly show both men dry eyed and somber at the execution, as Bruno closed his old friend and nemesis inside the cage de fin and fired him on an inertialess trajectory out of the solar system, at very nearly the speed of light.
When this was done, and a sigh of relieved closure was heaved by all and sundry, de Towaji commenced to brood and agonize over the decision to restore the Iscog. The last words of Wenders Rodenbeck—in his nonspider form, at least—weren’t lost on Bruno at all. Collapsium was dangerous stuff to have around. In the end, though, he was swayed by the ruling opinion of the Queendom’s citizens themselves. The collapsium’s dangers meant little to them, it seemed, in comparison to its benefits.
“Fire is dangerous, Your Highness,” they insisted, in billions upon billions of respectfully snitty letters. “Shall we ban that as well?”
It seemed to be a kind of slogan. Still, it was Bruno’s money they were talking about spending, and of course, in retrospect the old Iscog could be seen to suffer from all manner of unfortunate design errors and oversights. The Ring Collapsiter, for all its grievous faults, did indeed point the way to a new and better paradigm in material telecommunications. So Bruno began the slow, hard work of designing a new Iscog—a Nescog—from the neubles up.
But every child knows that he had barely begun this effort, barely scratched the surface of the new design, on the morning when his most famous visitor arrived.
There was a polite but rather urgent-sounding knock on his study wall, and he rose from his desk and walked over there and said, “Door.” And a door opened up, and he gasped, and some say he nearly fainted when he saw who it was.
“You,” he managed to say as he staggered back.
“Me,” the visitor agreed. She stepped inside, pursing her lips, surveying the room with a critical eye. She took in the desk, the chair, the chandelier and clutter-strewn floor. The hugeness of the place, the emptiness, the decoration all in crystal and alabaster and silver. Finally, she nodded. “About what one would expect, yes. This really is a hideous building, Bruno.”
Still reeling, he said, “My Taj Mahal. The tomb of my undying love.”
She laughed. “You’re not supposed to live in the tomb of your undying love.”
He came forward and touched her shoulder gently, lightly, afraid to confirm her solidity. “Am I dreaming? Are you real?”
She laughed again, but there were tears in her eyes. “I feel real. They tell me I am. I’m out of date, though—years out of date.”
He gasped, backing away a step. “You’re not Marlon’s copy, surely?”
But she just shook her head. “It seems the Royal Registry finally earned its keep. They’ve been closed for years, I guess, but the way I hear it, there was this disc at the bottom of a closet …” Her eyes clouded. “Bruno, is it true, all these things I hear? Did I really cut my throat? Are you really the King?”
“No more,” he said at once, snatching the diamond crown off his head and placing it on hers.
She laughed, and the tears spilled down her face. “You can’t abdicate, Bruno; I’ve tried it. Lord, how I’ve tried it. They won’t even let you die …”
Suddenly, it occurred to him that this was really happening. He grabbed her by the shoulders, crushed her to him. “Tamra! My Queen!” And he was crying, too, and laughing, and trying to tell her so many things at once that no words came out at all. They stood like that for a long time.
“Strange,” he mused later, as they rocked back and forth with her brown hair tickling his nose. “I’m the King, and you’re the Queen, and here we’ve never even been married.”
“I accept,” she murmured, then giggled a little and kissed him lightly on the neck.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
appendix a
in which an appendix is provided
collapsium
Perhaps it was novel, to imagine black holes not as highly compressed stars but as very heavy elementary particles—mega-particles, like protons massing a billion tons, their surfaces able to devour light, to bend time and space, to tear energies loose from the zero-point field of the “empty” vacuum itself …
An enterprise worth pursuing!
Einstein may have changed the world with his famous equation linking mass and energy, but when you ask the more fundamental question—just what is mass?—you soon find yourself scribbling:
E = mc2
m = E/c2
E/c2 = E/c2
E = E
Mass is like energy because energy is like itself, just an electromagnetic vibration of the zero-point vacuum. Soon the quantum-age profusion of particles and forces falls away like a bad dream, leaving only charge, electromagnetism, and the vacuum. There is nothing else, no other force or substance required to construct the universe. And you wonder why you ever thought there was.
It all comes down to zitterbewegung vibrations—the “trembling motion” of charged particles buffeted by the very real energies of the zero-point field. Even the neutron is composed of quarks, charged +⅔, –⅓, and –⅓ proton equivalents, and the secondary fields emitted by these trembling particles give rise to a net force that is always attractive, always infinite in range, always difficult to block or channel or deflect. Call it gravity—Newton did. The experiment had been performed dozens of times before Bruno de Towaji came along: isolate a proton, subject it to oscillating electric fields at frequencies comparable to those of gravitation, and measure the increase in its mass. The Haisch effect. Bruno’s “genius” was simply to dump in a neuble’s worth of mass-energy, upping the frequency and amplitude of the oscillation, upping the illusory mass until the neuble was gone and the proton weighed a billion tons—enough to collapse it into a miniature black hole.
The rest had seemed obvious en
ough: two black holes, not only vibrating but vibrating each other, their interactions exactly 180 degrees out of phase with their zitterbewegung motions, gravities therefore canceling out. That turned out to be statically rather than dynamically stable, but eight holes arranged in a cube just so, at excruciatingly precise distances, would hold their positions indefinitely, for billions of years, for as long as the Hawking-bled holes themselves would last. A stiff cage, a “collapson,” the elementary building block of a wholly new material: crystalline collapsium.
Obvious.
And once you did this, once you began bricking the collapsons together into three-dimensional structures, you were well on your way to the control of physical reality at its most fundamental levels.
wellstone
Consider the humble semiconductor, which is an insulating substance that can nonetheless conduct electrons within a certain range or “band” of energies. The most common of these is silicon, whose native oxide is the main crustal component of every terrestrial moon and planet. Silicon’s electrical properties are fixed by immutable physics, but through “doping,” the carefully controlled introduction of impurities, its crystals can be tuned so that, for example, room-temperature electrons have a good chance of jumping up into the conduction band when a voltage is applied.
Now, by layering these doped silica in particular ways, we can trap conduction electrons in a membrane so thin that from one face to the other, their behavior as tiny quantum wave packets takes precedence over their behavior as particles. This is called a “quantum well.” From there, confining the electrons along a second dimension produces a “quantum wire,” and finally, with three dimensions, a “quantum dot.”