Fool's War

by Sarah Zettel

  She’d sat at the board for hours, dealing impatiently with the realities of negotiating a bureaucracy over a real-time link with a four-minute delay.

  “What I found out, eventually, was that Tully’s partner had tried to crack the Intersystem Bank Network and divert a whole load of bond sale data to a friend of his, using Pasadena’s catch-and-drop facilities to do it. There were traces on the try before it was even halfway started. Of course, all they pointed to was Pasadena, not the actual cracker.

  “Tully turned his partner in to save his skin, and to keep the thing from blowing up so big that his in-laws got notified, or, worse, so that some far-sighted security team decided to warn their compatriots in Settled Space to keep an eye on Marcus Tully.” She shook her head again. “That would really put a lock on his future plans.

  “I took leave from the shuttle. I went home and spent a week talking the whole thing over with Asil. Then, I went to Tully and laid down my conditions.

  “Asil would be our chief accountant. Tully could hire someone to keep tabs on him if he wanted to, but all the money would go through Asil. Each partner would have the ship a maximum of eight months and would have complete control over whatever profits they made during that time. They’d also have complete responsibility for any new debts they managed to incur. Our crews would be separate. Our logs would be separate, and if he was ever officially charged with breaking anybody’s laws, the Pasadena was mine.” She sighed at the memory of Tully’s eyes. Despite their bright blue color, they’d seemed dark then, as though he was a cornered rat looking for a way out that didn’t exist.

  “After he agreed to all that, and agreed to have it recorded and sealed,” Al Shei ran her hand along the smooth desk top, “I said to him ‘don’t ever forget what you did to your partner, because I’d do the same to you, in a picosecond.’

  “I thought it would hold him down,” she murmured to the wall over Dobbs shoulder. “I thought that and the fact that he knew I’d tell Ruqaiyya if I found out anything that was a grade one fire hazard, would keep him from trying anything irredeemably stupid. Apparently, I was wrong.”

  “Pray forgive your humble Fool.” The unwavering look in her eyes made a joke of her subservient tone. “But why do you choose to honor her with this confidence?”

  “I wanted to see if it still sounded like it made sense,” said Al Shei. “If I had missed anything when I set this deal up.”

  Dobbs licked her lips thoughtfully. “Do you know about Nasrudine?”

  Al Shei smiled. “Once there was and there was not, the wise fool Nasrudine,” she recited. “One day, Nasrudine came to a friend of his and said ‘Congratulate me! I am a father!’ ‘Congratulations!’ said his friend. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ ‘Why yes,’ said Nasrudine. ‘How did you know?’”

  Dobbs chuckled. “Another time Nasrudine was selling donkeys. He would go to market every Friday with a fine donkey which he would sell at an outrageously low price. Finally, one of the donkey merchants came up to him and said ‘Nasrudine, how are you doing this? I force the haymakers to give me fodder for free. I make my slaves work without pay, and still I cannot sell my donkeys as cheaply as you sell yours.’

  “‘Well, Friend,’ says Nasrudine, ‘you are going about this all wrong. You are stealing fodder and labor. I’m just stealing donkeys.’”

  Despite herself, Al Shei gave a short laugh. “Are you saying I stole the Pasadena?” she asked, not really expecting a serious answer.

  “I’m saying, Boss, you might want to consider how long you are going to let Marcus Tully steal labor and fodder. Particularly when you know he’s going about this all wrong.”

  Al Shei opened her mouth and closed it again.

  The emergency alarm shrilled through the room a split second ahead of Javerri’s voice.

  “Intercom to Al Shei!”

  Al Shei was on her feet in a split second. “Al Shei here. What’s going on, Javerri?”

  “We’ve got a situation with the fusion mix. The readouts say we’re pouring in deuterium.”

  Al Shei didn’t even pause to say anything to Dobbs. “I’m on my way. Intercom to close.”

  She just strode out the door, straight across the corridor and through the hatch. She grabbed the stair railing and started running down.

  Pasadena ran on fusion reactions. The hydrogen-boron reaction required a very high temperature, so they used deuterium-tritium for brief periods to warm the reactors and generators when a cold start was required. The problem with deuterium-tritium reactions was that occasionally you got a deuterium-deuterium reaction which produced fast, energetic neutrons. Deadly radiation. The radiation was absorbed by the lithium jacket around the reactor, but the jacket could only absorb so many neutrons before it became radioactive itself.

  If a delivery valve had accidently gotten open and deuterium pellets were pouring into the reactors, there would be a massive number of deuterium-deuterium reactions, producing more radiation than the jacket could hold back. The jacket, and the valves, would begin to overheat. The bombardment of neutrons would make the metallic surfaces brittle, and burn through the ceramics. If the Lithium began to boil, it would add its own reactions to the stew and the heat and decay would build even faster. Her imagination all too easily painted a picture of tiny, glowing pellets slicing through the suddenly delicate shielding like sleet.

  What those pellets would do to her crew was not something Al Shei was allowing herself to think about. She especially did not allow herself to think about what would happen if the engines broke down during the jump. They needed power to stop. Without enough power, the jump wouldn’t end until Judgement Day came and the recording angels opened their books.

  The cargo platform was waiting at the galley deck. Al Shei swung herself on board and grabbed the railing.

  “Engineering. Emergency override, Katmer Al Shei.” The ship identified her voice and the platform started to sink toward Main Engineering.

  “Intercom to Shi’mon and Ianiai.” Her voice rang off the walls.

  “Shi’mon here.”

  After a much longer moment, and in a much sleepier voice, “Ianiai here.”

  “Emergency call. Report to Main Engineering, now.”

  On the other side of the hatch, Javerri stood elbow-deep in the right-hand wall. Good, thought Al Shei. Alert the chief, check the wiring, then panic.

  The look she turned on Al Shei said that step two was almost completed.

  “Can’t find an instrumentation fault, Engine,” she reported in a voice as hollow as her eyes.

  “What’s the reading from the compartment?” Al Shei yanked out her pen and stabbed at the main menu to call up the valve displays from the engine room.

  Javerri double-checked her boards. “It’s the same thing all the way down the line. The D-2 valve is stuck all the way open and we’ve got an infusion of twenty grams per second.”

  Might as well be twenty kilos. Al Shei flicked through the menus and felt her brows draw together. Javerri had read it right.

  The hatch cycled open. Shim’on ducked through, the hem of his prayer shawl flapping behind him.

  “Ianiai is right behind me,” he reported breathlessly.

  “Good.” Al Shei crossed the deck to the equipment locker. As she outlined the situation, she pulled out a bright yellow containment suit and began stepping into it. “You’re with me. I’m going down into the engines to get that valve closed.” The hatch opened again and Ianiai, still rubbing his eyes stepped through. “Javerri, bring Ianiai up to speed.” She yanked on her gloves. “You two will monitor the situation from here. Shim’on, your job is to be my back-up. If I get hit too hard by the radiation, your first priority is to get the valve shut, then you worry about getting us out of there. Understood?”

  Shim’on paused in his suiting up long enough to nod at her.

  Al Shei locked the helmet in place. Javerri opened her mouth, closed it without saying anything and took her place at Station One.

  Al
Shei strode back into the drop shaft with Shim’on right behind her. She took the stairs as fast as she could manage in the thick boots. The tools on her belt slapped against her thighs.

  The spiral stairway ended at the hatch to the engine compartment. Al Shei’s mind’s eye showed her the engine compartment full of thin wires of golden light strung across the room like a manic spider had been set loose in there. Each one was ready to slice straight through her as soon as she walked into it. The suit should protect her, and Chandra should be able to take care of any minor radiation injuries. If she didn’t have to stay down there too long.

  “Bismillahir rahmanir,” she said. In the name of Allah, the most Merciful.

  She took a deep breath and opened the hatch.

  The main engineering compartment was a sculpture in bright, white ceramic panels. Al Shei descended the ladder beside the bulge of the main coolant pipe. Below her feet hulked the housings for the reactors and accumulators. Each was a conglomeration of mounds like sand dunes in a barren desert. The only color was the glowing display panels on each one. Readouts for fuel consumption, power output, and structural integrity. She glanced between the toes of her boots and saw nothing but green.

  Good. Things haven’t gone too far.

  Al Shei reached her foot out toward the nearest staple and with hands and feet swung herself over to the ladder beside the D-2 pipe. As big around as her torso, it ran straight into the largest housing on the floor. The valve stuck out of the pipe’s smooth side. It was a spoked wheel that would have been recognizable to a steam-boat captain six hundred years ago. She hitched her belt to the ladder and checked her radiation badge on her wrist. Still green. Good. If this thing was well and truly jammed, she might need help down here. If it were welded open from heat and pressure, she’d need help then too. Preferably from Allah and all His angels.

  She peered at the display above the valve and her eyes widened in surprise. The numbers shone bright green. The display said the flow was non-existent, and the pressure was zero, exactly as it should be, and that the valve was tightly shut.

  Just like it should be. She looked at her badge. Still green. She turned her head and surveyed the sterile, white room. All around her shone green stars.

  “Intercom to Engineering,” she barked toward the wall. “Javerri, what are you reading up there?”

  “Same thing,” her voice came back. “Massive D-2 flooding, increased radioactivity throughout…”

  Al Shei cut her off. “I’ve got a bunch of green readings down here.” She grabbed the valve wheel and turned it toward the CLOSE label. It wouldn’t budge. She eased it in the other direction and all at once a bright red WARNING wrote itself across the display.

  She locked the valve back at once. “And I got set of completely closed valves, all the way down, and a green radiation badge.”

  The walls fell silent.

  “Intercom to Watch and Houston,” Al Shei called out. “Conference room now. We’ve got a problem. Intercom to FTL and Ensign, I want a download of the readings we’re getting up there. Shim’on, get down here and compare them with the readings we’re getting on the direct displays. Keep everything on film and bring it to the conference room. Stay suited up, just in case.”

  She unhitched her belt and started climbing back toward the main ladder.

  It would have been easier if it was the valve, she bit her lip as she started up toward the hatch. At least then we would have known what we were dealing with.

  The conference room was already filled when she got there. Schyler had a list of the defective systems and their corresponding diagrams up on the main memory board. From the looks on their faces, everyone had already had a chance to study the display.

  Al Shei let the hatch cycle shut behind her and seated herself at the foot of the table. She nodded to Schyler.

  “So,” he tapped the memory board with one knuckle, “we already know we have a problem, and that it’s growing worse. As of now, we are on emergency duty until we have it cleared out.”

  Al Shei looked at each face in turn, waiting for a challenge, waiting for someone to say they had already found a solution. No one so much as blinked, not even Dobbs sitting quietly in her corner.

  “All right,” Schyler went on, “all section chiefs are to work double shifts. Work out a relief schedule so there’s someone attending to routine at all times while you’re out hunting. I do not want any system left unmonitored. I do, however,” he stabbed the table with his index finger, “want this cleared up before we make the Farther Kingdom delivery.”

  “You know the one about the needle in the haystack?” inquired Lipinski.

  Schyler nodded. “If you’ve got a suggestion, I want to hear it. Otherwise, I want a schedule worked out and I want all efforts coordinated through me.”

  “I’ve got a suggestion,” said Yerusha.

  Schyler faced her. “Which is?”

  Yerusha’s face was absolutely dead-pan. “You could let me hatch the AI stack I’ve got into the Pasadena’s system. We’d get a dynamic picture and intelligent help.”

  The blood drained from Lipinski’s face. He leaned forward, mouth open. Schyler glanced at Al Shei and waved Lipinski back.

  “Thank you for volunteering, Pilot. We’ll save that as a back-up option. I don’t want to lose the loading time.”

  Somewhat to Al Shei’s surprise, Yerusha didn’t try to argue. Good, maybe she was cooling off.

  Next came some of the usual wrangling about resources and priorities and coordination. There wasn’t much, though, because they were all very aware of what this latest incident meant. If the instruments were reporting false disasters, they might have lost their ability to report real ones.

  Schyler laid down the last coordination order and broke the meeting so the chiefs could alert their teams and work out their individual schedules.

  Al Shei let the crew filter past her. The last one out the hatch was Dobbs.

  “In case Schyler hasn’t mentioned it, you’re also on emergency duty,” Al Shei told her. “If we’ve got a virus running loose, things might get worse before they get better. I am going to need you to help keep us from overload.”

  Dobbs bowed. “God gave them wisdom that have it, and fools, let them use their talents.”

  Lipinski was waiting by the stairway hatch when Al Shei came out. He had regained some of his color, but he still looked sick.

  She knew what was coming before he even opened his mouth.

  “You’re not going to let her hatch that thing, are you?”

  Al Shei sighed and pressed her fingers against her temple. “I might.”

  “We have got an unidentified dynamic system fault and you’re willing to chuck an AI in there?” he was trying to whisper and not managing too well. “A Freer AI?”

  Al Shei let her hand drop. “If you don’t want the AI hatched, Lipinski, you find out what’s causing our problems.” She drew herself up to her full height. “Get a lock on this paranoia, Houston. You’re running the risk of disrupting my ship.”

  A strange light came into his eyes. “She thinks she can use that thing to catch a human soul. That’s blasphemy in your book too.”

  Al Shei took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She reminded herself firmly about Lipinski’s unparallelled skill and commitment. She reminded herself how, as a young man, he had helplessly watched his whole world die around him.

  “My book also says ‘tolerate patiently what unbelievers say and part from them in a polite manner.’” She cycled the hatch back. “And I believe yours has a few things to say about faith and trust in God.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “I’ve been doing some talking too. I said to Resit at the beginning of this run that you were a reasonable man. I do not want to have to say to her I was wrong.”

  She watched his face shift as tone of her statement sank in. He straightened his shoulders. “You won’t.”

  Al Shei let out a silent sigh of relief. “Thank you, Lipinski.” She let
him precede her up the staircase.

  When Al Shei returned to her cabin, Resit was kneeling on her prayer rug. Al Shei realized, with a small wince, that maghrib prayers must have just finished.

  The look her cousin gave her was without reproach, however. “You’d better do two sajdatus sahw for forgetfulness,” she said mildly. “You haven’t made prayer once today.”

  “There you’re wrong, Cousin.” Al Shei dropped wearily into the desk chair. “I’ve been doing nothing but pray for the last three hours.”

  “I heard the alarm, of course.” Resit unfolded her legs and stood up. “Do you want to tell me about it, or should I read the report from Watch?”

  Al Shei pulled out her pen and activated the desk. “Read the report, would you? I’ve got to get my ducks on a new schedule.”

  “Uh-huh.” Resit draped her prayer rug over her arm. “Anything I need to be immediately worried about, then?”

  “Not immediately.” Al Shei did not turn around. She pulled up the engineering schedule for the next three days and stared at it.

  “You know, I get nervous when you don’t look at me,” Resit remarked. “Tell me, should I start drafting up a call-in on Tully?”

  “Yes,” said Al Shei, quietly. “That you should do.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll do.”

  Al Shei heard the bathroom door open and close.

  She forced herself to concentrate on the schedule. After the first attempt at reorganization, she realized that she hadn’t left herself any time to sleep. She had to blank everything out and start again.

  Finally, she wrote TRANSMIT across the boards. Her gaze strayed to the drawer where she’d put the day book recorder. She stared at it for a moment, thinking about the next run, when Asil would be hearing this. What would the ending be? Would he know already that it had all worked out? Or would he be sitting silently listening to how she had slid so far down they’d be years digging themselves out? For a moment, she missed him with such appalling force that her throat closed around her breath.