Starquake

by Robert L. Forward

  "Is everything the way it was before, except younger?" asked Qui-Qui.

  "Everything except the brain-knot and the rest of the nerve tissue, since they are not touched by the animal-to-plant en-

  zymes. Except for a blank period during the rejuvenation process, the memory and brain function of the new body is identical to that of the old." He paused and deliberately looked off in the distance as he continued. "Since you are a professional holovid performer, I am sure you are interested in what your new body will look like. I can assure you and all your loyal holovid viewers that the rebuilt body will use the same genetic tri-string that made the original Qui-Qui, and the new Qui-Qui will take up just as much volume on the holovid as the old one."

  A directional call signal vibrated through the crust that tickled the outer edge of Qui-Qui's tread as it focused in on the position of Sabin-Salk.

  "An Elder from your clan has arrived to approve the final scrollwork," Sabin-Salk said. "If you will follow along behind, I will spread the way to my office."

  06:58:06 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

  Zero-Gauss had left the faculty dining compound after a nourishing turnfeast and headed for her underground magnetic-field-free laboratory. She passed by some students who stopped their conversation to allow their treads to listen to her. She seemed to be simultaneously talking to herself and emitting squeaks.

  "I have a delicious piece of baked Flow Slow egg for you. I wiped off most of the sauce so it shouldn't be too hot," she said as she formed a manipulator, reached into a holding pouch to extract the tasty morsel, then put the manipulator into another pouch. As the orifice of the pouch opened, a fuzzy little Slink hatchling tried to climb out, but was distracted by the sight of the food. It grabbed it eagerly and tried to stuff it all into its too-small eating pouch.

  "A little too big for you, Poofsie?" she asked. Her manipulator sliced the bit of egg into smaller pieces, which were greedily devoured by the hungry hatchling. She closed the orifice just enough to keep the animal inside while allowing a small hole so he could keep a few eyes waving about outside to see where they were going.

  She entered a small compound that was the,top of her unique research facility, which contained subcompounds for her office and those of her graduate students. A second com-

  pound a short distance away contained the machinery that operated the underground machinery and provided the cooling for the simulated sky hanging beneath the strong superconducting roof of the laboratory. The second compound had a very unusual structure in one corner—arectangular box made of thick metal with a door in one end and a covering over the top.

  She went to her office and glanced through her computer net mail. There was nothing important, so she paid a visit to a compound containing two of her graduate students.

  "How are the plants doing, Careful-Mover?" she asked one student.

  "We did have one fountain plant die," Careful-Mover replied. "It shot seeds all over the room as it did so. But it had lasted 46 turns, which is close to a record."

  "Did you get all the seeds picked up?" Zero-Gauss asked.

  "Yes. And in the process, Fuzzy-Crust and I found another 'hot spot' in one corner," said Careful-Mover.

  "Is it bad?" Zero-Gauss asked. "I'd hate to have to go through the process of pumping out the whole lab again so soon."

  "It was 100 gauss right on top of the hot spot," Careful-Mover answered. "But it's quite small, and a few millimeters away it fades into the background variations of a few gauss. There were a few plants near the corner so we just moved the containers to another part of the room."

  Zero-Gauss turned to Fuzzy-Crust.

  "I have a replacement for Peter," she said, pulling the tiny ball of fuzz and eyes from her pouch.

  "Poofsie, meet Fuzzy-Crust. He will be taking good care of you from now on," said the professor, forming a little nest on the floor with the edge of her tread and dropping the animal into it. The Slink tried to climb over the edge, but Zero-Gauss kept it in place by rippling her skin underneath the tiny tread. The Slink stopped and looked up at Fuzzy-Crust with all twelve of its dark red eyes. The student brought an eye down to look at it.

  "So now it will be Flopsie, Mopsie, Cottonball, and Poofsie," said Fuzzy-Crust. "You found an excellent replacement. It looks just like Peter."

  'These genetically pure strains of laboratory Slinks all look the same," said Zero-Gauss. "I just chose the one that looked the smartest."

  "You should have chosen the dumbest one," said Careful-

  Mover. "Peter was smart and look what happened to him. He figured out how to open his cage and died of overeating. Set my zero-gauss horticulture thesis back half a great."

  "I'll make sure the cage is locked this time," Zero-Gauss promised. "Do you have anything else for me to take down?"

  "A batch of seedlings," said Careful-Mover. "They are waiting in the storage pen next to the elevator."

  Zero-Gauss checked the video monitors that showed every corner of the underground nursery and animal pens, made a mental note to check a few plants that looked like they needed attention, then made her way to the elevator in the facilities compound.

  Next to the elevator was a dressing subcompound with high walls. She stripped off her six metal professor badges, took off her jewelry, wiped off all her body paint, and emptied out all her pouches, even her heritage pouch containing her clan totem. The totem was made of clay fired in the ancient manner and had a baked-in magnetic field. She rolled the totem in a wiper and put it into a drawer with a combination lock. Now, as naked as the day she was hatched, she opened the door to the dressing room and looked out. Electron-Pusher, the facilities operator, was waiting discreetly at the operations console around the corner.

  She moved softly to the holding pens and loaded up her pouches. Poofsie went into a small pouch and the plastic pots containing the seedlings sprouting in non-magnetic soil went into her carry-all pouch. Now quite bulky, she faced the open door of the elevator. The elevator did not have a cooled ceiling, and it took all her nerve to make her tread move her body under the heavy metal roof. Once inside, she forced her eyes to look at the floor and calmed down. She activated the audio channel of the video link.

  "You may shut the door, Electron-Pusher," she said.

  "Door shutting, Professor," said Electron-Pusher. "What is the biggest diameter you're carrying?"

  "Nothing bigger than my brain-knot," she said.

  "We only need three pump-walls then," said Electron-Pusher. There was a whining noise, and the back wall of the elevator moved toward Zero-Gauss.

  "Here comes the first wall," he said. "Let me know when everything is through."

  The heavy superconducting metal wall stopped in the middle of the room, and a small circular orifice opened in the door a

  little way off the floor. First, Zero-Gauss emptied out her pouches and arranged the seedling pots near the wall. Then she stuck a manipulator through the tiny hole, grabbed a handle on the other side, narrowed herself down as small as she could, and slipped herself through the hole. The iris on the hole followed the outlines of her body, dilating as the brain-knot went through, then finally shrinking down to the diameter of the trailing manipulator that held the squirming Poofsie firmly in its grip.

  While her body resumed its normal flattened shape, her manipulator was busy transferring plants from one side of the wall to the other. That done, the orifice closed tightly and the superconducting wall continued across the elevator to the door, compressing all the magnetic field lines in front of it. The elevator door opened briefly, and the field was pushed to the outside. A second wall approached from the back of the elevator and the process was repeated. The only difference now was that the first wall was made non-superconducting before the final expulsion stroke. After the third wall had passed, Zero-Gauss went over to a control plate in the floor and pressed in a code. A probe rose out of the floor into the middle of the room.

  "A good pump," she said over the audio link. "It only re
gisters 2800 gauss."

  "Close enough to zero for the chamber lock to handle," said Electron-Pusher. "Ready to fall?"

  Her eye-wave pattern developed an annoyed twitch at his stale attempt at a joke. He had probably gotten a squeal out of one of her graduate students sometime in the past at the thought of falling down under the ground. Now he repeated it every time they went down.

  "I am ready to descend," she said, her tread firmly rapping the metal plating of the floor. She didn't quite get the right "Senior Professor" tone in the 'trum. It is a little hard to sound authoritative when you are naked.

  "Yes, Professor," said Electron-Pusher, and the elevator began its slow descent beneath the crust.

  At the bottom, the magnetic pumping procedure was carried out again using the pump-walls in the lock leading to the low-field chamber. All the residual magnetic fields possible were pumped into the elevator, which used barriers that alternated between normal conducting and superconducting states to trap

  the fields. The elevator then rose again to the surface where the trapped fields were expelled to the outside.

  Zero-Gauss stopped by the dressing alcove, slapped on some neutral body paint, plugged in six professor badges made of metal-colored plastic, and, now decent, moved out in view of the video cameras scanning the chamber. The ceiling was a comforting black. She, Poofsie, and the plants were all glad to be out of the stifling closeness of the elevator and locks.

  She started with the animals. Three of the nine segments of the field-free room held multiple breeding pairs of all the major animals on Egg with the exception of the two that were larger than a mature cheela, the ponderous Flow Slow and the carnivorous Swift. These were represented by miniature genetic hybrids about the size of a Slink.

  She had a number of different types of Slinks. In addition to three sets of brightly colored but stupid food Slinks bred with flesh of different flavors, there were some highly trained herding Slinks bred for intelligence. Now, with the addition of Poofsie, she had two sets of a laboratory strain especially bred with bodies that responded like the body of a cheela to environmental changes.

  She had a lot to check in the laboratory. After having gone through the long, laborious task of getting into the laboratory, she was in no hurry to leave. There was at least two turns of work to do, what with taking the animals through physical checkups as well as intelligence tests. They had restocked the food lockers in the dressing alcove the last time they had pumped out the room, so she would just refuel at turnfeast from them. Besides, someone had to check the quality of the nuts and fruits on the food plants.

  Steel-Slicer was looking forward to his return to the Polar Orbiting Space Station. Many things had happened since his last visit there. He had retired from active duty, was elected to the Legislature of the Combined Clans, and had been selected for rejuvenation. He was still entitled to wear his two-star Admiral cluster badges, so he put them on for his visit.

  Far-Ranger had also just finished her rejuvenation and was about to warp back out into interstellar space. She had invited him up to attend her "warpfeast" before she left.

  The robotic glide-car hummed through the run-down east side of Bright's Heaven and slid to a stop in front of the entrance to the Jump Loop terminal. Steel-Slicer slid his

  magnecard into the payslot, and the glide-car released him. As he flowed to the walkway he noticed a small, wiry, scarred, and badgeless youngling slumped against the wall nearby. The youngling's eyes were casually, but attentively, watching everything going on around him, especially the traffic in and out of the automatic doors to the terminal. The terminal was in a rough section of town, so Steel-Slicer moved quickly across the street and through the IN door.

  Once inside, he relaxed a little and headed for the baggage queue, where he unpouched his small traveling kit. There was a little time left before the jump so he moved through the crowded terminal toward the pulp-bar. He started to circle around a small, heavily speckled female who had all eyes on the tough-looking male to whom she was talking. Suddenly, without seeming to look where she was going, the female backed away from the tough, and Admiral Steel-Slicer found himself half-enveloped with speckled female flesh.

  "Excuse me," Steel-Slicer said as he tried to move away.

  "I don't mind if you don't," said the nubile female as she brought a number of her eyes around and draped a few speckled eye-flaps on his topside. "Besides, you're a lot handsomer than that rough-tread over there." She flicked her eye-stubs at the tough, who glared at them. Steel-Slicer noticed that the speckled pattern on the female extended to her eye-balls. Some of them were pink instead of the normal dark-red.

  The Admiral tried to extract himself, but found that the female had formed a number of tendrils and was holding him by his two-star Admiral's badges. Other tendrils, hidden by their bodies, started tickling him.

  "Want to have a little fun?" she said in an electronic whisper that sent tingles through his body. "I know a nice quiet little pad-place nearby."

  Steel-Slicer started to turn down the offer when he was jolted by a slap from a heavy manipulator.

  "Leave my flapper alone!" said the tough, glaring at him.

  Stunned by the shock, Steel-Slicer didn't notice the loss of two of his star-cluster badges as the freckled female pulled away.

  "I got them!" she hollered, and started for the IN door at full tread ripple. The tough was right behind her.

  "Stop!" shouted Steel-Slicer as he finally noticed his loss. He started after them. The tough pulled a sticker from a pouch in his rapidly retreating trailing edge and waved it menacingly.

  "Go suck your eye-balls, Spacer!" yelled tne tougn.

  "Here comes a clanker!" warned the speckled female as they approached the door. The door was opened by their confederate outside, and it almost shut before the peace officer arrived; but he squeezed through the crack and took up the chase.

  Steel-Slicer halted when the peace officer took off after them. He stopped, a little embarrassed, and shifted a star cluster partially to cover the bare place on his hide. It was doubtful the officer would catch the thieves. Since it was time for his jumpcraft to leave, he turned and headed for the boarding area.

  "That egg-eating clanker got through!" shouted Speckle-Top. "Scatter! We'll sell the stuff later!"

  She pushed down a side street that led toward the old temple grounds, where she knew there were plenty of places to hide. Luckily the clanker had followed Crumpled-Tread. She was the one with the stolen badges so even if the clanker caught him, they would have to let him go.

  Her street-trained tread heard the rapid movement of two other clankers coming, so she hurried, trying to keep the noise of her tread-ripple down. At the entrance to the old temple grounds she squeezed her skinny body through a quake-crack in the ancient outer perimeter fence. Dodging some workers carrying out restoration work, she rushed past one of the newly restored "eyes" of the ancient monument and made her way to a small crust-rock at a point where the base of the "eye-stub" met the wall that formed the "body" of the temple. Behind that rock was an ancient tunnel that she discovered a few turns ago. She had noticed a tiny hole in the wall after the huge crust-moving machines had passed. Looking for a safe place to hide stolen stuff until it could be sold, she had found that the hole opened into an underground tunnel heavily lined with an old-fashioned type of thick metal superconductor.

  When originally built in the days of Pink-Eyes the prophet, the superconductor had kept the magnetic field of Egg out of the tunnel so the High Priests of Bright could travel quickly from the outer sanctuary to the top of the Inner Eye mound, where they would miraculously appear to the crowds below. The tunnel was now clogged with pinned magnetic flux that was strongly coupled to the walls.

  Speckle-Top pushed her way through the flux lines until she was inside, whereupon she rolled the rock back to hide the entrance. She relaxed as the magnetic field pinned her body sol-

  idly to the surrounding crust. She was a little apprehen
sive about being underground, but felt sure that the clankers would never find her in her secret hideout.

  The end of the shift finally turned around, and Heavy-Egg dismissed his crew. He watched them crowd onto the lifts and head for the surface of Egg and the pulp-bars with more speed than he had seen out of them all turn.

  "Last lift, boss." Hungry-Pouch was holding the lift steady.

  "Wait for me," said Heavy-Egg. "Got to see the chief."

  He took the elevator to the upper deck of Topside Platform and made his way to the compound that was the office of the chief engineer of Topside Platform. His crew had barely made their quota today, and he finally had to take some action. He didn't mind a little squeeze and tickle during the shift, it helped make the turns go by; but when he had found Yellow-Rock treading Easy-Row behind the elevator shaft, that was the pod that toppled the plant. He wanted them replaced.

  The door to the chief engineer's compound was open. Heavy-Egg flowed in with a determined tread, then stopped. A young stranger was in the office, and the chief engineer was listening to him deferentially. The youngling had badges bigger than the chief engineer's badges.

  "Shift Supervisor Heavy-Egg," said the stranger. "It's good to see you again." Seeing the bewilderment in Heavy-Egg's eye-wave pattern, he added, "I'm your boss, Cliff-Web. I've been 'rejuved'—I think they call it now. Do you have a problem?"

  "It can wait until next shift," Heavy-Egg said, reversing his tread-ripple. He moved back out the door in a daze and made his way to the bottom deck. Yellow-Rock avoided his glance as Heavy-Egg flowed onto the lift, took over the controls from Hungry-Pouch and started the long trip down the Space Fountain to the surface.

  Time-Circle was feeling lonely again and was looking for someone to talk to. Another of the channels in his time machine had become clogged with noise. He wandered over to the other side of the Inner Eye Institute and visited the Crustallography compound; but Neutron-Drip wasn't at her computer, so he went looking for her in the laboratory. All he found was Eager-Eyes, busy treading a touch-and-taste console. On either side of the console were two highly flattened