Jamie saw Rafferty's head nod. The shuttle was turning its nose toward the center of the runway. The shriek of the engines became a head-splitting roar, and the Greased Pig threw itself down the runway, to rise, turn and arrow through the cloud of nanomachines that had turned day into night and reduced Lincolntown to a stone-age encampment of nerve-shattered primitives.
Jamie did not care for the panicky-falling feeling of zero-G, but there was compensation in the indescribable view of Columbia's cloud-patched globe, turning beside them (as Jamie's perception chose to have it) in space. Shortly after the zerospike engines shut down, Jamie felt the cargo bay actuators pulling the bay doors into their sheaths.
"Back door's open. You got anything else you want me to do?" Rafferty asked from the command couch. He had not turned to face Sahan-Grusa even once since strapping in.
"No. My agents have access to space. They have been at work in the cargo bay for some time."
Jamie felt something tickling first behind and then within his left ear. His head jerked, startled, then he pressed back in the couch. Subvocalize, as I taught you. I now have a small mobile agent in your ear. I know you forbade such communication, but I do not trust the shuttle pilot, and apparently the Missus knows about what we did to Lincolntown.
|What are you doing in space?|
I am preserving our options.
Jamie closed his eyes and breathed deeply, letting his breath hiss out between his teeth. This was a bad place and a worse time to get in a dominance argument with the beast that was supposedly his thrall. Obtuse answers to direct questions could only mean it was doing things of which Jamie would not approve. Let it work, then. Whatever it could possibly be doing, he, Jamie, certainly had no better ideas.
Jamie dozed and nodded; he was surprised at how exhausted he was. It might have been an hour later that Jamie saw Rafferty's hand pointing to a flashing indicator in one corner of the main command screen in front of him. "Yellowknife is calling us. They know we're up here. What do I tell them?"
The membrane vibrated wordlessly for several seconds before speaking. "Tell them whatever you like. I have decided that I am uninterested in them."
Rafferty pressed a switch on his armrest. A harsh female voice filled the cramped command cabin. "Rafferty! I ordered you to stay groundside! And what's that slimeball hanging from your bulkheads?"
Jamie started. He should have ordered the man not to put them on camera. But that was a small distraction beside his recognition of the voice: the Governor General of America!
Press the blue button marked 'video' on the armrest console, the thing in his ear whispered. Jamie complied. A small tombstone embedded in the soft black arm of the couch lit with the scowl of the Province of America's most powerful official.
Rafferty sounded nervous. "Miz, my guess is it's a piece of the thing what's eating our town. Magic Mikey and his bodyguard brought it in with them. It already convinced me not to argue. So if you give me any orders I got to ask it first."
Sophia Gorganis sounded annoyed but not fearful. "Mikey, I told you never to create free-range nano. That stuff belongs in a jar."
Mikey was weeping again. "Miz, please, it wasn't me! Jamie brought it in his blood. It's all backwards with them! He's the player and it's his agent! They're the ones who tore up the town! I think the game is over." The boy put his face in his hands.
Jamie squirmed in the embrace of the passenger couch. He couldn't blame the boy for telling the simple truth. And he knew her eyes were on him.
"Jamie. Hmmm." He heard Sophia Gorganis's hands tapping on a tombstone keyboard. There was a few seconds' delay. Then the armrest tombstone split vertically. On one side the Governor General sat back in her command chair, arms crossed.
On the other side Jamie saw his own face—as it was when he had been booked on the trip to Hell, pallor, sunken cheeks, and all.
"Yup. That's you. Spat in the face of a health services counselor while carrying HRIS. Looks like you had a pretty miraculous recovery from something that's pretty much 100% fatal. I wonder if your night in a cell with Peter Novilio had anything to do with it."
"Peter encouraged me to fight the disease. I was giving up. He..."
Sophia Gorganis chopped the air with one hand. "Plug it. He got the Sangruse Device into your bloodstream. That would explain a number of things I've just learned, none of them good."
The Governor General said nothing for several heartbeats. The voice, when it returned, sounded angrier and perhaps a little weary. "So the Cunning Blood has leveled Columbia, and Peter Novilio has had his revenge, whether he realizes it or not. Now, Jamie, I've been having a real bad day. I can either blast you to scrap where you sit, or we can sit down and cut a deal. I'd like a closer look at your ugly friend. If that's a free range nanimal, someone who should know better is lying through his teeth to me."
Jamie's picture vanished from the split screen on the armrest. In its place appeared an image of a middle-aged man seated on a cot in a small space—a cell or a starship cabin—staring at his folded hands. "I thought you might know this guy, but I realize now you don't. He's the leader of the secret society that created the pus ball hanging off your walls behind you. I'll admit, one of my guys died trying to finger him, but he was surprisingly easy to nab once Peter gave me a clue as to who he was."
|Do you know that man?|
Yes. He is my Nautonnier.
|Nautonnier. French. What does he navigate?|
The future history of all humanity.
"Here's the deal, Jamie. Your dossier tells me you were involved in a number of efforts I might modestly call ‘humanitarian.’ I'll trade you the man on your screen for an obedient instantiation of that thing behind you, assuming it can do what my remote cameras down in Lincolntown are telling me it can do. You'll probably need his help to give me that instantiation."
She is correct about that. But if she is foolish enough to believe that I will be 'obedient,' I am more than willing to play the part for awhile. Don't accede too quickly. You might first ask her what she wants me to do.
Jamie tried to look stern. "I assume you're not going to ask it to mix your cocktails for you. Forgive me if I can't just hand it over without knowing what you're going to do with it, not that I'll have any reason to believe you."
Sophia Gorganis shrugged. "Hey, I'll be completely honest with you. It's easier. Nobody's ever done anything like the mess your little friend's made of my colony. I'm pretty pissed, but I'm also pretty impressed. There are things it could help out with that might get me back on track. If you've spent some time on Columbia, you know what my agenda is."
Jamie now spoke with considerable anger. "Killing a quarter of a billion people isn't an agenda."
"Not hardly…it's a bloody mess, but absent better nanotech than I've got it's the shortest path between where I am and where I belong. If you help me harness your free-range beasties, I can neutralize 1Earth with a mere handful of casualties, no more than a thousand or so."
"A thousand lives is a thousand too many."
The woman pointed to her left, as though indicating the picture of her prisoner on Jamie's armrest. "That means one life lost is one too many. And if you won't trade, not only will I kill you, I'll reduce your fearless leader to bones a layer at a time until he's just a bleeding lump of agony on a heart-lung machine."
Let her try! Not only won't it work, she and her inquisitors will get a hellish surprise. My alternates can do that same trick.
Jamie shivered, and found himself so aghast as to be unable to speak.
"It's a missile or a deal. Your choice, guy."
|What do I say?|
Tell her you'll deal. My agents are still busy.
"So, kid…what's the monster want to do?"
Jamie realized that his eyes had gone up and to one side while he listened to Sahan-Grusa's advice. Anyone who had seen his face would know his attention had been elsewhere for a moment. Jamie tried to sound firm. "I am in complete command of the device
."
The Governor General laughed cynically. "You. An accidental operator of what rumor holds to be the most powerful nanomachine ever built. You're nothing but a disguise and you know it. The bug's calling the shots here. I've got its boss. So tell me what its decision is."
I had hoped to convince Rafferty that I was a Gaian or something else suitably alien. I had not expected anyone to reveal my true nature. So I will abandon this ruse. The membrane fluttered for a moment and spoke, this time in a higher and more human-sounding voice. "I will speak for myself now. As I am sure all parties involved would prefer to live, I will make the trade. Transmit your orbit to Rafferty and we will rendezvous."
She will refuse. All this talk is simple stalling.
|Why do you say that?|
The Edmonton is matching orbits with us. It's now quite close. Rafferty knows of its approach. He probably thinks it is attempting to rescue him. I have other suspicions.
|What is the Edmonton?|
A large starship designed to carry cargo. It brought most of the heavy equipment across space to the Numenor colony, and later, to the first colony on Hell. It is old, and crude, but it contains huge atmosphere replenishment tanks.
|Why is that significant?!
It stores atmosphere in liquid form, at 200° Kelvin.
"I'm not sure I want free-range nano on my flagship," Sophia Gorganis said. "We can talk right here until we work out the details. Then you can match orbits with one of my other craft."
This will be close.
|Why?|
I am not quite finished with the mechanism I am building, and by now I am certain that she has no intention of letting any of us live, much less releasing my Nautonnier.
|How far away is the Edmonton?|
The image on the armrest display changed. A complex black object was centered in the view, with only the starry depths beyond it. It was very black, and its details were difficult to make out. As Jamie watched, it grew visibly larger. It was shaped like an elongated cake of soap, with the mandatory Hilbert ring around its middle, jutting into space like a child's toy hoop.
Rafferty is very skillfully keeping the shuttle oriented so that we cannot see the Edmonton through the forward windshield. I'm letting him retain that illusion of control for the time being. In truth all control of the shuttle now belongs to me.
|So we could escape!|
Not without letting the Governor General know that we control the shuttle. We do not have sufficient delta-v to outrun a missile. She is fully aware of my power, and fears it.
"What say, Mr. Sangruse? You're being awfully quiet."
The white membrane warbled and hummed for several seconds without forming words. Finally it spoke. "I am contemplating my responses to your anticipated demands."
"That sounds like a stall to me. Rafferty! Do a preemptive diagnostic on all command and control systems. Now!"
Jamie heard the older man tapping on a keyboard and flipping switches.
|I still don't understand what she's doing!|
Look closely.
The view on the armrest began to zoom in. On the forward dorsal surface of the Edmonton a corrugated cargo bay door was fully retracted, exposing a space more than large enough to swallow the entire Greased Pig. Perhaps forty men in silvered suits stood in an ellipse around the periphery of the cargo bay. Some held arm-thick silver hoses in their hands. Other held various tools, including what looked like pickaxes.
Plainly, they intend to puncture the shuttle at several places and fill it with liquid nitrogen to render me immobile.
|Can you survive that?|
I may. I will certainly try. But you will not.
Jamie shivered. |So what are you building? What are you trying to do?|
I hate to raise your hopes in vain.
"Miz, the pre-empt don't work. And that's hardened hardware." Rafferty turned and looked apprehensively over his shoulder at Jamie and Saha-Grusa. "I don't think I'm running the Pig anymore..."
There was a long pause before Sophia Gorganis spoke again.
"Rafferty, it's been good knowing you. The Edmonton's cameras report things like jellyfish swarming around outside your cargo bay. I think pieces of the Sangruse Device are booby-trapping the shuttle. I've still got one eye on what's left of Lincolntown. That's a dangerous thing you've got there. I've decided not to proceed."
"Miz, you can't just leave me here!" Rafferty shouted.
"I wouldn't do that. The missile will be there in forty seconds."
"Ms. Gorganis, I've decided not to discuss this further," Sahan-Grusa said, rumbling. "I am forbidden to surrender to a hostile agency. All of us are prepared to die in the service of the Society—the Nautonnier most of all. So I choose to abandon this negotiation."
"Hey, good decision. Saves both of us some breath."
The Edmonton is pulling back. That's unfortunate. I want it to be close.
|What are you doing!|
"Instead," Sahan-Grusa said, "I've decided to go to Hell."
Jamie heard the shuttle's engines stutter and then roar, felt acceleration. The image of the Edmonton on the armrest began to approach again, rotating as the shuttle turned in pursuit. Rafferty, his face wild with panic, reached up and pulled a red handle. Nothing happened.
Sophia Gorganis rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. All the way to Hell, in a shuttle."
The Edmonton's image swung up dizzyingly. They would collide in only seconds. Rafferty was screaming. Jamie's jaw was clenched tight, his fists white, gripping the armrests.
"Precisely," said Sahan-Grusa, as the shriek of the Greased Pig's brand-new Hilbert drive rose past the ultrasonic, in the moment before it folded in a blaze of actinic radiation.
18. Divide and Conquer
A sparkling trail of debris followed the Hans Moravec in its orbit. Peter hung in space a hundred meters from the broad flat face of the giant starship, and could clearly see the patterns of heat scorch from the exploding Rotons. Little severe damage had been done to the Moravec, except to the forest of antennas and cameras mounted to the face. One of the four huge cargo doors had been punctured by a caroming fragment, and the others bore numerous dents. The spacecraft itself was a chunk of solid asteroidal nickel-iron, and could survive a great deal more than four nearby slush hydrogen explosions.
To assuage their own consciences, Peter and his crew had scanned near space for survivors, knowing that the radiation sleeting from the Hilbert radius of the escape capsule would have sterilized anything as close as the Rotons had been, even if heat and induced currents had not detonated their fuel supplies. Losing four comrades, however, did not have the impact of discovering that a fragment of one of the four exploding craft had sliced through the corrugated steel housing of the Hilbert ring, destroying three meters of the delicate field-generator superconductor cables.
Peter squeezed the throttle of his pogo and boosted back toward the airlock. Without the Hilbert drive, the Hans Moravec was an in-system shuttle. It was also a sitting duck. Slush hydrogen would barely pock its iron sides. Nuclear weapons were a different story.
Peter gathered the other five members of his crew and returned to the command deck, at the giant craft's tapered aft end. Snitzius was conferring with several of his aerospace experts.
"There's a huge bite taken out of the Hilbert ring, sir," Peter said. "I think we can repair it. But it'll take awhile."
Snitzius, gripping the zero-G webbing that covered the plain curving wall of the bridge, turned his face away for a moment. No one spoke while he considered.
"Geyl's escape means that Earth now knows what has happened. It's unclear how soon they'll respond, but it won't be long. And when they get here, they will be in no mood to parley. We need to get the Hans Moravec where it won't be as easily found. That may buy us enough time to repair the Hilbert drive." He turned to Nelson Threader. "Nelson, figure out how to get us moving, and plot a continuous-boost course to Longshadow."
Nelson nodded and toed his way off around
the wall of the bridge to the command consoles.
Longshadow. Zeta Tucanae 1. A smaller planet sunward of Hell. Tidally locked on its star, with a marginal Gaian ecology around the twilight ring.
|I guess anyplace is better than here.|
It has five tiny moons, two of them less massive than the Moravec. I suspect we will rendezvous with one of them, and merge the two radar signatures in any probe from interplanetary distances. Earth's first suspicion will be that we have folded and could be anywhere else in the universe. They will then return to Earth to defend it against our attack and not search further.
|You hope.|
So do you.
Jamie Eigen was screaming, terror a monstrous weight pressing in on all sides. It subsided by degrees, and he brought himself enough sanity to listen to the small thing chirruping in his ear.
I did not have time to prepare you. It was a near thing. But we are safe now.
Jamie wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his right arm. He remembered the strange feeling that came upon him when the great zigship folded on its trip to Hell from Earth: a feeling of being struck like a gong, and ringing with black despair until he wept. Sahan-Grusa had explained: It was a consequence of the Hilbert drive's instantaneous travel from one place to another. A person's emotional state at the moment the drive folds is wildly amplified. If you ever take a Hilbert transfer again, blank your mind, it had advised.
Jamie had only laughed. It could have warned him then, but had not. Sahan-Grusa taught its lessons harshly.
Rafferty remained silent and still in his cot for many minutes. Jamie had been about to unfasten his crash web to go and see if the man were still alive when the shuttle pilot spoke.
"There ain't no Hilbert drive on this thing," he muttered, knowing it was no longer so.
Sahan-Grusa was quick to explain, and with (Jamie thought) more than a little pride. "I dismantled one of our zerospike engines for its Hilbert generator, and used the materials from that generator to create a Hilbert stardrive." The display on the cot arm showed a view from the open cargo bay. A thin curving bar of shining metal arced over the bay and out of sight on either side. Thin struts supported it, and wires descended from its circumference and vanished into odd-shaped objects attached to the beams running the length of the cargo bay. "It was constructed quickly, and I learned much from our first fold. My agents are already improving the mechanism." Jamie saw small things like gray leaves moving purposefully around the cargo bay. They were clustered like butterflies around the new machinery on the bay bulkheads.
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