by Scott Rhine
“I lost the professor,” Roz lamented.
“You saved Max and Ivy. I’ll start wading through the stack of notes you brought as soon as they finish decontamination.” Then the Magi placed Roz in her medical pod that resembled a magician’s prop. At a thirty-degree incline, the transparent tube could be closed in four separate segments. The gel padding inside cradled Roz like the high-g pilot’s couch. Closing the bottom quarter, Echo programmed the device to apply artificial skin. “The synthetic skin mesh will contain seeds of your own cells. The pod will keep you hydrated and stimulate cellular division. Once the new growth is established, you can walk around this sterile area freely.”
“How long will that take?” Roz asked as the lower third of the pod closed on her legs.
“Up to five days.”
“Imprisoned in this tube? I’ll go stir-crazy!”
Echo smiled. “Try over a century. This will be extremely uncomfortable. I urge you to take the drugs and sleep as much as possible.”
“No. I need to listen to the radio and make sure everything goes well. They may need my technical advice. Max may need me. You might require a pilot.”
Echo lowered her head. “I suggest a compromise. You may listen to Deke’s first voyage, and then we will suspend operations to allow both of us to sleep.”
“Okay.” Roz winced as the automated pod began removing the damaged skin from the burned areas. The sensation conjured images of spiders crawling over her flesh, eating selectively. “Oh. Ivy is burned. Can we treat her this way, too?”
“No.”
Roz gritted her teeth, wishing she could stomp her foot, but both were firmly encased. “Why not? Because the hand of the uplifter must not be seen?”
“Several good reasons. First, no one is available to donate blood for her. She has a rare type. Your mother gave enough for you when she heard about your injury. Ivy has no one this side of Laurelin. Second, her personnel file forbids analysis on her genomes to replicate plasma. I’m sure the Llewellyns don’t want anyone discovering they stole from our DNA. Third, she’s not a Magi. The ship had to be reprogrammed to accept you as a member of our species, which only worked because we’re married.”
“Couldn’t you lie to the ship?”
“No, dearest. By their nature, our medical pods can only ever accept patterns from three individuals. This one has treated my deceased wife, me, and now you. Even if Max became injured on the surface, I couldn’t heal him.”
Roz had a moment of anguish for her husband’s safety. “You shouldn’t have wasted it on me.”
“Max insisted. He’s the one who told me what protocols to use.” Echo read over the extended treatment plan on the screen. “Next, you will be encouraged to exercise your calves to regain elasticity. Your yoga should help with that.”
“Forget that. I want to know what’s going on right now in the shuttle bay.”
Echo suppressed a smile. “Yes, Generala.” She rigged a communications console beside the pod.
As an experienced pilot, Deke had already snapped the large cargo pod onto his blade. The crew loaded him up with donated medical supplies, blankets, food, and the spare nanofabricator. Due to the crisis, Roz sent the medical professionals in the first wave, plus Grady to distribute the supplies and to handle any shuttle repairs.
Deke touched down at the main prison intake facility to avoid an armed response. A few minutes later, Grady radioed back, “We’re being mobbed.”
“People who want to escape?” asked Roz, already planning contingencies.
“No. They’re welcoming our Bats as heroes. They lifted Deke up on their shoulders. No one has ever come here voluntarily before, let alone with gifts.” When the noise of the crowd died down, the old navy repairman said, “The folks have formed a bucket brigade now, and they’re unloading everything themselves, peaceful-like. I don’t have to lift a finger.”
Reuben had already posted a proposed flight schedule for the remaining supplies. Roz scanned over the list to take her mind off how much her legs hurt. “Since you have nothing better to do, ask the prince if you can jumpstart a few of their dead reactors. Tell him it will take us five days until we can start with the big stuff, the living modules and whatnot.” She paused. “If I send down the steel spinner, maybe I can tie them together into a hospital complex or something.”
Echo objected, “You can’t be risking yourself again so soon.”
“You told me I’d need to exercise. Construction is exercise.”
“I meant in a sterile environment.”
“I’ll mostly be supervising. I’ll wear my high boots.”
Grady shook his head. “Boss, these folks are living in caves. You want to bring them back into the atomic age overnight?”
“Tell them the Magi are here. No fellow sentient is going to suffer while we can do something to stop it.”
“Yes, sir,” Grady replied, signing off.
Echo wouldn’t meet her eyes. “We’ll see what Max has to say.”
An hour later, the prince insisted on talking to Roz over Deke’s comm. The Bats refused to accept the aid as pure charity. “As a society that wants to be recognized for its independence, we can’t just take all this without trading something in return.”
“You’d better learn to accept it,” Roz said. “Using our Niisham children’s charity, you’ll be able to order and pay for humanitarian supplies over the ansible for the normal Saurian transports to deliver.”
The prince stammered, “An-anything? Mrs. Ellison, you’ve just changed our world.”
The two haggled for a bit, and Roz pulled Kesh in on the call. In fact, Kesh was still negotiating when Deke returned with a sample load of artwork, copper, and rare isotopes.
Per kilogram, the most valuable commodity on the ship turned out to be garden soil with earthworms. On the planet, every cubic meter of dirt had to be manufactured by hand. In exchange, the inmates offered a moderate amount of fuel, everything they had managed to produce since the annual Saurian ship had departed.
“Real dirt,” muttered the prince. “Is there any part of our lives your aren’t planning to improve?”
Echo replied, “Your ecosystem is broken beyond our expertise. We can, however, ship biosamples and survey maps to Anodyne on your behalf so skilled terraformers can analyze them.”
“The Llewellyns would do this for us?” the prince asked.
Roz cleared her throat. “I can’t promise anything, but our company enjoys a good relationship with the founding family.”
Echo reached for the off switch. “If you will excuse us, my mate needs to recover from her injuries.”
After the screen went dark, Roz said, “We made a difference.”
“Yes, beloved, but the mountain will still be there tomorrow.” Echo tapped the medical pad to release the painkillers into Roz’s system. She fell asleep soon after Echo covered her with a blanket.
****
Over the next several days, Kesh handled the cargo runs. As their ship slowly emptied of supplies and personnel, Roz bent herself to the task of deciphering the professor’s notes. Echo watched his drift-adaptation presentation several times. “I have enough information to plot the special-case jump through the subbasement to a particular star—Salizar B. I think I can make the adjustments with brute-force computation.” That was an understatement. The complex transformations were virtually one-way, the sort governments used to encrypt messages because they were almost impossible to reverse.
“That could take years,” said Roz.
“We have resources enough for two years.” Magi took the long view. “You work on a more elegant, general-case solution. If our answers are close enough, we can present the options to the other partners for a vote.”
“Sure, but why the change in destination?”
“It’s the closest star to the Magi frontier we can reach with the available fuel. Magi can be the first responders if we … activate our distress beacon. Even if we all die, the academy might l
earn from our remains.”
“That gives me confidence,” Roz said sarcastically.
“I was certain our first test of the drive would be successful. I don’t want the secret of the Enigma to perish with us.” She sighed. “Plus, this jump will take us as far as possible toward Laurelin, the only place where your friend can receive the treatment she needs.”
Roz wrapped her in a hug. “Thank you. The Llewellyns could also continue Herb’s life-extension treatments, and Max might consent to the treatments he is eligible for.”
“One goal at a time, beloved.”
“I do have one worry. That’s only a jump away from Babel.”
“So?” Echo didn’t see the connection.
“If anyone from Babel gets wind of our arrival there, they’ll think we conned all the charity donors out of their money and never went to Niisham. The authorities will arrest us.”
Echo frowned. “Your Goat can invent a convincing story for us. I’m more worried someone will deduce the truth. To make sure no one suspects, our destination will be the normal nexus point. We need to look like a normal starship arriving.”
Not only did they need to fly through the equivalent of a hurricane to reach their destination, but they had to land on the head of a moving pin at a precise microsecond.
While Roz spent every waking moment trying to mathematically formalize the professor’s suggestions, the ship’s Bats fell in love with the colony. Each day, more glowing reports about the relief effort and the charming natives came in, and the cloud of formulas in virtual space grew thicker. Half came from Echo’s amulet and known astronomical libraries, while the others came from the professor’s papers. The two hemispheres were supposed to be saying the same thing but couldn’t agree on the language.
Checking a guess could take ten hours of computer time away from Echo, but the slightest error would land her in the vast tranquil areas of space between stars. Too bad nobody wanted to go there. That would be easy.
Her first step was to translate the Enigma cubes into Crakik’s language. She had to broaden the alphabet to account for probability and quantum patterns she had observed in her own attempts to restate and simplify the ship’s design. She also had to simplify the question to its core. Pretend the ship is a cannon ball. How do we hit our target when all we can control is the firing angle and the amount of gun powder?
On the fourth morning, Deke contacted Roz over the shuttle link, visuals included. “Sir, I would like your permission to remain on this planet when Sphere leaves.”
Roz smiled. “Anything to do with the fact that they have civil wedding ceremonies here with no need for spousal dispensations?”
“More than that. The atmosphere of freedom, encouragement, and innovation inspires us all.”
“Of course. We were hoping you might find a new home here. Why would you need my permission?”
Deke paused and then rattled off his next request. “The stateroom I slept in was a modular unit that can be flown to the surface the same as any other cargo pod. It would save us from building a home and provide templates for others here. Your mother has agreed to purchase my shares in the company. I can pay for the stateroom out of the profits.”
“Fine. That’s less we’ll need to haul. What’s going on here? Why are you so nervous?”
Deke couldn’t meet her gaze through the communications device. “I want to keep my blade. I inherited it, and the people here need it so much.”
Roz nodded. “Again, that’s less for us to carry. Kesh will determine a fair price for what we’ve invested in it. I’ll make certain he itemizes and doesn’t pick a value suspiciously close to what you’ve got left in your account.”
“Your kindness is the stuff of legends, Mrs. Ellison.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something important?” Roz asked. “When we’re gone, who will place the ansible orders for the charity? It can’t be any of the residents because they’re criminals. Mother planned all along to make you the official administrator.”
“Me?”
“You’re a knight, a war hero, and recognized by the church for your piety,” Roz said. “Your close relationship to the doctors makes your uniquely qualified for this job. We’ll sign documents tomorrow to make your post official. The salary will need to be negotiated.”
Deke was flabbergasted. “Salary?”
“This is a serious charity. We can only afford one person right now, but we want it to be a permanent position. When it’s time for you to retire, you’ll need to pick a successor. If that’s all, I have a math problem to return to that’s kicking my butt.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I’m sure once the problem gets to know you, it’ll see reason and surrender. Speaking of successors … Since Max vetoed your return to the planet during your convalescence, we appointed Grady as the foreman for the hospital project.”
“That’s fine. I would have delegated him to the task sooner, but he’ll need an intermediary. I speak fluent Banker, and the translators can go back and forth from that to Bat with ease. Grady prefers English. Without a common language, letting him direct could be disastrous.”
Deke laughed. “Always so concerned with control. Sometimes you have to relax and allow the universe to take you where it wants you to go. With dozens of builders heading toward the same goal, we’ll converge on the right solution.”
“That’s it!” Roz disconnected so she wouldn’t reveal secrets over the link as she talked to herself.
The language of the subbasement was simple when viewed from the hub of the galaxy. No matter how turbulent, the swirls appeared natural and reasonable from the center. There were many areas that the universe didn’t mind them reaching. Those resonant points were easy to predict. She had a list of a dozen around Salizar already. People, however, viewed the world in three right-angled dimensions centered on themselves. Crakik’s shorthand had been a way to bridge this gap so subbasement flows could be stated in terms that people could recognize. She just didn’t know enough to control the outcome or reverse the engineering to choose the inputs. What if she didn’t try?
Computers didn’t find square roots by any reasonable way. They looked up the closest answer on a table or used Newton’s approximation for the first pass, calculated the error, and adjusted about a dozen times to obtain the desired accuracy. Old artillery men did the same thing to range their targets. She could do that with her problem. She examined the list of natural destinations and picked the four closest to Salizar that formed a three-dimensional box around the star. Roz used those points to estimate what it would take to arrive at the desired destination inside. By wiggling her inputs, she could find another cluster of exit vectors in Salizar’s neighborhood. Then she could use the four closest results to feed the next refinement.
Shortly after bedtime, Echo knocked on her door. “Max wants to know if you’re angry. You didn’t call him tonight.” When she pushed inside, she paled. “You left the pod.”
“Yeah. I needed my computer pad and some actual paper. I stayed sterile and climbed back in.” Roz stared at the hologram, trying to find other ways to make the search faster. “I’m sorry I’m hogging the main processors. I’ll be done with this experimental run in a few minutes.”
“This isn’t a generalized solution.”
Roz winced. “Yeah. I wasn’t smart enough for that. I settled for an engineering solution for now—close enough is good enough and all that. If I don’t change any of the settings, I can run a probability cloud of a dozen inputs through at once. That way, all the answers for an iteration come out at the same time. We step about halfway toward the solution with each cluster. To reach the desired accuracy will take about thirty steps.”
“That’s ten days!”
Roz sighed. “I know. I’m working on shortcuts to improve that. I’ve fed the Crakik equation back through itself to combine two steps and eliminated 10 percent of the math operations. Much more than that and I can’t fit everything on one screen.”
&n
bsp; Tears streamed down Echo’s face. Roz immediately apologized. “I’m sorry I took the easy way out. I’ll do better.”
Echo practically tackled her with a hug, unheard-of physical affection from a Magi. “You solved the Enigma!”
“Not exactly. I cheated. A dozen builders with half the instructions are as good as one who has them all.”
“What?”
“Never mind. It’s a Bat-philosophy thing.”
Echo kissed her. “My mate cracked the subbasement! Tell me how everything works.”
Roz was breathless after the kiss and had trouble thinking. Her neck and spine tingled. “In a little bit.” Max needed to come home soon.
Chapter 39 – Farewells
When Echo announced their destination and route a week later, Roz and her mother approved immediately. Reuben agreed once they gave him a high-level view of the successive-approximation trick. Kesh abstained. “We’ll be too close to Babel for my liking, but if Max votes in favor, I won’t fight it.”
With a majority in favor, Roz prepared to make the jump the day her husband returned. They battened down the hatches, secured the cargo, and prepared everyone for stasis.
After almost two weeks of medical service, Max was exhausted and desperate to see another Human face. Deke brought him back to the ship with the final payment from the colony. Alyssa had planned a combination welcome-home party for Max and a farewell for Deke.
When Max appeared in the outer ring, Roz hopped into his arms. “Ugh. You stink.”
He inhaled deeply. “You smell fantastic. God, I’ve missed you.”
“You need a shower,” Roz insisted.
“Okay. Come with me to supervise.” He practically dragged her to the showers.
The others congregated in the common area, pretending not to hear the giggling, squealing reunion echoing off the metallic walls.
Soon after, the couple sat at the dining-room table, clean and highly polished. Max demolished his second piece of cake as Alyssa asked, “So how are my daughter’s calves healing? She won’t show us.”