by Alex Stewart
“I never do,” she said, watching my face intently for a reaction. Whatever she saw there seemed to be the wrong thing, however, because she turned away suddenly, heading for the staircase. She paused, and glanced back, with her foot on the lowest tread. “You’ve missed a bit in the corner.”
“Right,” I said, but when I went to check it looked fine to me.
As I’d hoped, but never really expected, Remington called me back to the bridge to observe the rift transit. He was just as casual about his reasons as before, saying only that I might find it interesting, but I took it as a hopeful sign that I’d done well enough by now for him to be seriously considering giving me the apprenticeship: after all, if he was planning to leave me behind on Numarkut, I’d never have reason to know what shooting the rift involved.
“Don’t say or do anything,” Rennau instructed, as I arrived on the bridge, and slipped into the seat I’d occupied before. There was an air of tension about him which hadn’t been there during the undocking maneuver a couple of days earlier, and no sign of the suppressed affability I thought I might have detected in him then. “If we screw this up, we’re all dead.”
“Don’t worry.” Remington smiled at me, in a way which wasn’t quite as reassuring as he clearly hoped. “He always says that. Just so the first thing he can say to me in heaven is ‘I told you so.’”
“What makes you think either of us’ll end up there?” Rennau said.
“I’m an optimist.” Remington shrugged. “God likes those. We make Him laugh.”
I meshed in, telling myself there was nothing to worry about, it was just banter between old—well, not friends, exactly, but people who’d known and trusted each other for a very long time. Statistically, the chances of anything going wrong while shooting a rift in a well-maintained ship with a competent crew were vanishingly small: but I couldn’t shake the little voice in my head which kept insisting that, in a volume of space the size of the Human Sphere, in which millions of vessels were popping in and out of thousands of rifts every day of the year, it was virtually certain that sooner or later something, somewhere, would go catastrophically wrong. And although the really bad stuff only ever happens to other people, so far as everyone else was concerned, we were the other people. Right?
Time to be thinking about something else. I concentrated on the data blizzarding through the boards and into my ‘sphere, half expecting snide comments and simplified diagrams from Rennau to accompany it as before, but he was too intent on whatever he was doing to bother with me. So I just watched the raw data swirling around the system, and interpreted it for myself as best I could.
According to the instruments, if I was reading them right, the space around us was riven with fractures, thousands upon thousands of them, radiating out from the central star in multiple dimensions. Which, for some reason, suddenly reminded me of my kindergarten teacher, Mister Plumridge, dropping a couple of ball bearings onto a sheet of glass to demonstrate the principle, pointing out how the resulting cracks radiated in all directions, and a few of them intersected. I hadn’t given him a thought in years, but his earnest, faintly equine face, and soft, diffident voice suddenly came back to me as clearly as if we’d last spoken only a few days before. “Large masses, like stars, create stress fractures in space,” he’d said, tracing one of the largest with the tip of his index finger. “Millions of them. But luckily for us, a few of them reach far enough to join up with a crack made by another. That makes a rift a starship can travel down.” So far as I knew he’d never even left the province, let alone Avalon, but his simple explanation of the principles of interstellar travel had stayed with me ever since.
There was a lot more to it than that, of course, which I’d only really begun to appreciate when I’d moved on to school, and begun messing about with basic gravitational theory—until Mother had decreed that particular subject superfluous to the education of a gentleman, and its immediate replacement with ballroom dancing. Which hadn’t stopped me from reading up on the subject in my own time, to the point where I knew enough to seriously consider taking it as a minor at Summerhall: until she’d stepped in again, put her foot down once more, and consigned me to the tedium of estate management. Anyhow, I felt I understood enough of the theory to follow what was going on around me, even if I couldn’t have done anything useful to help.
Basically, to shoot the rift, we had to do two things. Find the right fracture, out of the millions riddling the space-time continuum around us, then increase the ship’s mass with the internal gravitics until it broke through. Both of which were a little easier than they sounded.
Systems as long-settled as the Avalonian one had got all their fractures logged and sounded generations ago; a job which began as soon as a new route was discovered to a previously unvisited system, and which usually took decades of painstaking probing with graviton beams to complete (although every now and then a surveyor would luck into a previously unsuspected link with an inhabited system, and become very rich indeed.) All we had to do to find the right one was follow the beacon the nearby customs post maintained, until our own soundings found a fracture which didn’t return an echo from a closed end.
The real trick was to increase the ship’s mass fast enough to break through at precisely the right time—and into the right fracture. Get it wrong, and you’d bounce off the dead end, sustaining massive systems and structural damage if you were lucky; or being spat back out as a cloud of debris if you weren’t. Fail to get the gravity bubble even enough around the ship’s hull and you’d tear it open before you even got into the rift. And if the internal field wasn’t strong enough to push back, you’d simply implode.
All of a sudden, looked at like that, it seemed a miracle that any ships ever got through a rift unscathed, and it didn’t seem nearly so surprising that the Stacked Deck’s bridge crew seemed a little nervous, despite having shot hundreds of rifts in their time. (I have to admit, even now, after too many transits to count, I still feel a little dry-mouthed every time we go through one.)
To distract myself I called up the visual feed I’d been looking at during our departure from Skyhaven, earning a brief snort of derision from Rennau, who thereby let slip that he hadn’t been ignoring me entirely. For which reaction, in all fairness, I could hardly blame him—it wasn’t as though there was actually anything to see. One of the dots in the starfield might possibly have been the customs post, or a picket ship guarding the system from a potential League invasion, but other than that, nothing but the face of infinity, which, to be honest, isn’t all that interesting after the first few minutes—or even before. I suppose I could have magnified the image, or overlaid it with the sensor returns, to try and identify the system defense assets, but in all honesty I simply couldn’t see the point.
So I returned my attention to the graviton soundings, which rippled around and through mundane three-dimensional space in a virtual display of multidimensional fractals, reminding me in passing of the patterns in the datasphere I’d found so hypnotic in Aunt Jenny’s apartment back on Skyhaven.
There. That return was different, a bottomless well into which our probing beam disappeared without an echo.
“Locked on,” Sowerby reported, working from the power plant as before, her datastream suddenly spurting with interlocking algorithms. Power readings began to climb, our mass increasing as she fed more energy into the gravitics, carefully balancing the field around our hull. She was good, I had to admit, making minute manual corrections even faster than the automated systems a lesser engineer would have relied on.
According to the soundings we were running parallel to the rift by now, at least in the three dimensions of it relating directly to the universe we normally inhabited, and I found myself tensing involuntarily. But we remained in the physical galaxy, despite the gravitational field around us now being dense enough to warp the light from the stars into a dazzling halo.
Is something wrong? I sent to Clio, who I’d sensed, along with most of the off duty
crew, meshed in on the fringes of the node, following the datastreams. She’d seemed a little off-hand with me for the hour or two following our conversation in the hold, but she was still the closest thing I’d found to a friend aboard, so she seemed the best person to ask.
There would be if we went now, she replied, with a brief image of an amused face. A cluster of incoming datanomes from the sounding telemetry suddenly highlighted. That’s a bow wave.
Abruptly another ship, a gleaming metal sphere essentially identical to our own, popped into existence a couple of miles away, heading in towards Avalon at an impressive turn of speed. The Repent at Leisure, a Guild courier boat, according to its ident, laden with mail from Numarkut. I couldn’t suppress a shudder. If we’d entered the rift a moment earlier, there would have been no survivors from either vessel.
“Clear,” Sowerby reported, and the power levels in the gravitic system almost doubled in an instant. I felt a brief moment of disorientation, as though I’d trodden on a top step that wasn’t really there, then the gravitics abruptly shut down—save for the internal emitters, which kept us from floating out of our seats every time we stood up.
For a second or two I felt a flash of panic, wondering what had gone wrong, before realizing that the stars in the visual display had shifted a couple of degrees.
“So, you’ve shot your first rift,” Remington said. “How do you feel?”
I thought about that, but only one honest answer came to mind.
“Hungry,” I admitted, disengaging from the torrent of information still cascading through the Stacked Deck’s central datanode.
“Good.” Rennau glanced up from the board he was manning, his unfocussed eyes giving away the fact that he was still deeply meshed in. Nevertheless, they found me instantly. “You can do the galley run again. Tea and a sandwich.” He turned to Remington. “Anything for you, Skip?”
The skipper shrugged. “The same, I guess. How long have we got till the pirates come aboard?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In which an error of judgment pays unexpected dividends.
Well, the Numarkut customs inspectors weren’t pirates exactly, but once their cutter had matched velocities (using plasma reaction drives, as gravitic repulsion this far from anything big enough to bounce off was pretty close to useless), I could see why Remington seemed unclear about the distinction. A thin, weasely fellow came aboard through one of the personnel locks, his uniform so encrusted with braid and impractical-looking sidearms it seemed a miracle he could walk about in it without getting tangled up in something every time he took a step.
“Inspector Plubek.” Remington extended a hand for a perfunctory shake, and withdrew it hastily, surreptitiously checking the number of fingers he had left. “Always a pleasure.”
“Likewise, I’m sure.” Plubek wiped his hand against the seat of his trousers, leaving a small, greasy stain—knowing the skipper’s tastes, I’d been generous with the mayo while making the sandwiches, and, though long gone, they’d left traces of their passing. He favored me with the sort of look normally reserved for squishy surprises on the sole of your shoe. “Who’s this?”
“My new deckhand. He’ll look after you.” So that’s why he’d brought me down here from the bridge with him. But I suppose it made sense. My duties were among the least pressing, and while I was fetching and carrying for our unwelcome visitor, everyone else could be getting on with something useful.
“No doubt,” Plubek said, in a voice which managed to convey exactly the opposite. He turned to me. “Come on then. First hold.”
Just keep him busy, Remington sent, to my faint surprise.
Doing what? I asked.
Remington shrugged. Doesn’t matter, he responded. Just so long as he takes his time. Got some stuff to discuss with Sarah. Then he turned and ambled away, already engrossed in conversation with Sowerby, who’d appeared from a nearby utility conduit while we were greeting the Inspector. Whatever they were talking about, it didn’t look like business—their heads were close, and her arm was around his waist before they’d even reached the end of the corridor. I resolved to make sure our tour of inspection skirted around the crew quarters, in case a piece of cloth had appeared on either door in the interim.
“Would you like to see the manifest?” I asked, snagging a copy from the central datanode.
“Might as well take a look at it, I suppose.” Plubek shrugged. “Some of it might even be true.”
“Of course it’s true,” I said, perhaps a little more vehemently than I’d intended. In all honesty, the idea simply hadn’t occurred to me that it wouldn’t be, despite my new avocation of intelligence gatherer, and I resolved to check it through again myself at the earliest opportunity. I shouldn’t be taking anything for granted any more.
Plubek snorted. “How long have you been aboard?”
“About a week,” I admitted. “Still finding my feet, if I’m honest.”
“If you’d found them by now, it’d make you the fastest on record.” Plubek stopped walking, and really looked at me for the first time. “You’re Commonwealth, right? Not Guild born?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked, a trifle defensively. “I’m hardly the first dirtwalker to sign on with a Guild ship.” The slang term slipped out without conscious thought, and it was hard to say which of the two of us was the most surprised.
“Just a piece of advice,” Plubek said. “Lot of Commonwealthers on Numarkut. Leaguers too. And people picking sides who aren’t either, but see some advantage in it. Watch your step when you get there, that’s all.”
“I will. Thanks,” I said, with about as much sincerity as I thought the thinly veiled warning had been delivered in. (As things turned out, though, perhaps I did the fellow an injustice, and it had been sincerely meant.) I directed the manifest I’d retrieved to Plubek’s ‘sphere, but, to my surprise, he simply redirected it to a hand-held datapack he’d pulled out of his pocket. I regarded it curiously. “What’s that for?”
“What does it look like?” My incomprehension must still have shown on my face, because his own held a faintly condescending expression now. “Making a permanent record.”
Can’t you just mesh with the datanode back at the customs post? I asked, and the fellow actually smiled.
“You really are a dirtwalker, aren’t you? Not everywhere’s the same as where you grew up.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” I said, leading the way out onto the catwalk over Number One hold.
Plubek sighed. “Not everyone uses neuroware. Some places don’t trust it. Which means they do things the old-fashioned way, with handhelds, and so do their merchant crews. And don’t get me started on the Sanctified Brethren—paper and clipboards. Faugh.”
“That must make your job quite difficult,” I said, deploying the appearance of polite interest I’d honed to perfection though innumerable social engagements.
“You have no idea,” Plubek said. “Especially with the number of trade partners Numarkut has.” He began poking at some crates which had preceded me aboard. “So we standardized on the handhelds. What’s in here?”
“Apple brandy,” I said, reaching into the shared space where our ‘spheres overlapped, and filleting out the appropriate item from the manifest.
“Like I’ve not heard that before,” Plubek said skeptically. “Avalon’s principal export, if you believe the paperwork. And it just happens to attract the lowest rate of tariff.” He gestured to the crate. “Let’s see it. And if it’s Silverwine in brandy bottles I won’t be amused.”
“Hang on,” I said, rummaging around the tool locker for a crowbar. The little handheld fascinated me, a concentrated mass of data, on the edge of the ‘sphere, but walled off from it. This was precisely the kind of thing Aunt Jenny would be interested in, I thought, logging the comings and goings of every ship Plubek had boarded, along with their cargoes, crew complements, and heaven knows what other juicy little nuggets of information. The problem was how to
get at it: I might be able to use the direct interface he’d used himself, but unless he was a complete moron, which I rather doubted, he’d be certain to notice me trying to access it.
But there might be another way . . .
“That’s odd,” I said, handing him the tool, and standing back as he levered the lid off in a shower of splinters and wood shavings: Avalon’s distillers believed in traditional methods of packing their wares as well as producing them, although how much of this was genuine reverence for the generations of craftswomen who’d gone before them, and how much was just appreciation of the premium customers were prepared to pay for a sense of history to accompany their intoxication, I couldn’t have said without sounding cynical.
“What is?” Plubek asked, lifting a bottle from its nest of shredded wood. He held it up to the light, and shook it suspiciously, listening to the gurgle. Nothing rattled inside, so it contained only liquid; no contraband hoping to escape notice by holding its breath.
“There’s one crate too many,” I said, poking the manifest with my sneakware. Getting inside was so simple I didn’t even have to think about it, beyond a faint sense of unease as I recalled Remington’s threat of dire consequences if I started mucking about in the Stacked Deck’s datanode. But the prize was worth the risk. I hoped. . . . Reducing the number of crates recorded by one was the work of an instant, and I pulled back from the manifest with the sense of a job well done. If I’d read my man well, he’d only react in one way. “See?”
“So there is.” Plubek shrugged, with an eloquent lack of surprise. “Bloody shipping clerks. Couldn’t find their own asses with both hands and a map, some of them.” He twisted the cork out, and took a mouthful. Swallowed, and sighed with satisfaction.
“Silverwine?” I asked, and he shook his head.
“Not this time.” Which didn’t stop him taking another mouthful to be sure. I felt a small glow of triumph, which I was careful not to show. Instead, I tried to look indecisive.