She watched him to the last mouthful before she said, "Not bad for a first go, though I don't know if I could have swallowed any of it. Don't worry. You'll improve fast."
"It's called a synthesizer, but it must start from something. What does it start with'?"
Grace opened her mouth, closed it again, and at last said, "Don't ask. Not yet. Come on. It's time to go to work."
"What do you mean, work?"
"While you were snoring your head off Doobie and I did you a big favor. Last night Muv had in mind that you should work and be paid a salary. This morning we persuaded her that wasn't too smart. We said you'd be a lot more motivated and productive if you were on the same basis as everybody else. The crew are all in for a share of the profits that the Harvest Moon makes from the voyage—even me and Doobie get some, though Muv just tucks it away for us 'til we're older.
Anyway, she agreed, even if she thinks that until your head clears you'll be crazy as a dust-cloud devil. So you'll be getting a share, too."
"For working? But I've never worked—"
"—in my whole life. Don't you think this is getting a bit monotonous? What have you done in your whole life? Anyway, if you can learn to use a food synthesizer, you can learn to work as part of a corry team."
"Quarry team?"
"Not quarry. Corry."
"I've never so much as seen a corry. I don't even know what it is."
"You've not only seen one, you've been in one. It was a corry—a harvester coracle, to be formal—that saved you from dying in space and brought you to the Harvest Moon."
Shelby recalled the birdcage ship. "Oh, that thing. That's a corry? You mean that humans as well as machines go outside in those?"
"Why not? You were outside in one. I suppose you don't consider yourself human. I can understand that." But the way that Grace was smiling at him took away the sting from her words. It made Shelby wonder why she and Doobie had gone to bat for him with Lana Trask. He couldn't recall any of his friends on Earth going out of their way to do anything for anybody except themselves. On the other hand, Grace Trask, with her casually trimmed hair, easy smile, and slightly grubby hands, was far different from anyone in the socially approved circle of girls of Shelby's age. Definitely NOCD. Constance Cheever would have a fit if she caught Shelby so much as talking to Grace. But the class structure in the Messina Dust Cloud, if one existed at all, must be like nothing on Earth.
He followed Grace as she led the way back along the winding corridor that he remembered as leading to the outer cargo regions of the Harvest Moon.
"Logan again?"
"You've got it." If Grace recalled his first reaction to Logan she showed no sign of it. "We have five corries, but we normally use only three of them. The rest are reserves in case we were ever to lose a couple. Uncle Thurgood and Scrimshander Limes operate one of them. Wait 'til you see them in action! Doobie and Logan and I operate another. It's not fair, but Muv will let Logan operate without us and not us without Logan. Maybe she'll change her mind now that you're here. Jilter Clute—you'll meet him later—runs the other corry. He likes to work alone, except for Ace. Ace is another machine, pretty much like Logan—but you'd better not ever say that to either of them."
"Your mother"—Shelby, even if invited to do so, would never in a million years call Lana Trask Muv—"doesn't she work?"
"Not in the corries. Muv's the brains of the Harvest Moon, as well as the captain. She sits and sniffs." Grace must have realized that was less than clear, for she went on, "You see, most people think of the Messina Dust Cloud—if they think of it at all—as some sort of great uniform blob of gas and dust sitting in space. It's not like that at all. There's a detailed and complicated structure to it. Also it's in continuous movement, responding to gravitational and electromagnetic forces. Muv says you should think of it as great rolling dust rivers, merging and separating and sometimes overflowing their usual bounds. The dust rivers have never been fully mapped, not even the biggest ones. But that's not the worst part. The materials we're after—the pockets of stable transuranics—wander around in the dust rivers according to their own rules. The geometry is never the same twice. The hardest job for the captain of each harvester is sniffing—that's figuring out how the pockets are moving, and where they are likely to show up next. Muv's the fleet's master sniffer, the other harvesters all know it even if they don't admit it. Not even Muv can explain how she does it."
"You mean that you know the other harvesters and their captains, personally?"
"Sure. I mean, we're deadly rivals, but at the same time we have more in common with each other than with anybody else in the universe. We'll all meet in about six more weeks, when we get to the Confluence. That's a place on the other side of the Messina Dust Cloud from the node, where all the major currents meet. You'll see all the ships—the Southern Cross, and the Dancing Lady, and Balaclava and Hope and Glory and Coruscation and Sweet Chariot, and a couple of dozen others. Get to know their crews, too, because there'll be parties." Grace gave Shelby a funny sideways look, almost of embarrassment. "Those parties are important, because they're our main meeting place. Harvester people mostly marry other harvester people, but once they're back through the node in the solar system the ships all go their own separate ways."
They had finally reached the outer cargo holds, and Shelby suspected that if anyone ought to be embarrassed it was his turn. He had excuses—he had been exhausted the previous night, and still partly hungover, and after all it was only a machine. But he didn't feel comfortable. Grace and Doobie had acted as though he had insulted them, personally, when he had taken one look at the weird object in front of him and said, "That's Logan? You must be kidding. Meeting a stupid machine doesn't count as meeting someone." He had turned and blundered off in a rage, convinced that Grace had deliberately tricked him.
Now he was not so sure. Grace and Doobie spoke of Logan exactly as though the bottle-shaped robot was a real person, with its own feelings and emotions. Lana Trask had the same attitude, except maybe more so—Muv will let Logan operate without us, and not us without Logan. That sure sounded like Lana Trask thought of Logan as a person. And according to Captain Lana it was Logan who had saved his life.
Shelby had met Lana Trask only once, but already he was deeply impressed. In some inexplicable way she reminded him of his own father. He resolved to be on his best behavior as he allowed himself to be led forward by Grace to a deep circular pit. It was partly filled with silvery sand, and squatting motionless in the middle of it like an ancient gilded Indian statue was the eight-armed Logan. When Grace called down, the machine changed at once to a giant spider that went swarming up the other side of the pit and vanished into the gloom.
"Oops," said Grace. "Vocal adapter, for a bet. Just a moment."
Before Shelby had time to ask what she was talking about, Logan came skittering back and circled the pit to stand upright in front of them on its bottom two arms.
The wire tendrils writhed. "All right now," said a deep voice. "I didn't think I would need it this morning."
"You can speak!" exclaimed Shelby. "Why didn't you do it when I talked to you?"
"You mean, when you first awakened in the corry?" Logan's speech was articulated with the tiniest pause between words, but it was clear and precise. "For an excellent reason: I could not. I was on a routine harvest collection and knew I would be alone in the corry. There seemed not the remotest possibility that I would have need of a vocal adapter." Logan raised one arm, to indicate where a small silver box sat below the writhing metallic snakes of its head. "How was I to know that a human would appear from nowhere at extreme speed? I was barely able to match velocities and bring you on board the corry. And when you spoke to me I did my best. I transmitted a signal indicating the frequencies on which I am capable of radio communication. But you ignored it."
"Not his fault," said Grace. "He was wearing a crummy Earth-designed suit without any encode/decode feature. He didn't even know you were sending him a si
gnal. Anyway, you can talk to each other now. Do you have time to show him around a bit, Logan? He's going to be working as part of our corry team, and the refining pit work isn't urgent. I'd do it myself, but I've got Doobie waiting for me and I'm late already."
"The pleasure will be mine." The wire mop wriggled and turned in Shelby's direction.
Pleasure? Shelby wondered if the robot was capable of pleasure—or of sarcasm. If Logan was as smart a machine as it seemed to be, Shelby's disdain the previous night must have registered.
He decided to reserve judgment. Grace had left rapidly without waiting for anyone's reaction, and he and Logan now stood alone at the edge of the pit.
"I think we ought to begin outside," Logan said, "and work our way inward. In my experience that is the most effective method with newcomers."
"You've done this sort of thing before?" Shelby allowed himself to be led away from the pit and up a spiraling stairway onto a new level above the cargo holds. He could see an airlock, and on the wall hung an array of suits.
"Several times. I provided the initial tour to Thurgood Trask and Scrimshander Limes, when they came here five years ago."
"You mean they have only been here that long?" It seemed to Shelby that Uncle Thurgood acted as though he owned the whole harvester and probably the Messina Cloud as well. "Where were they before that?"
"Mining in the Kuiper Belt. Even if you know nothing of operations here, you will, I suspect, find it easier to adapt than they did. They had much to unlearn. Mining the Belt and harvesting the dust cloud may sound similar in objectives, but they are actually grossly different in procedures. Or so I am told. All my own experience is with the Harvest Moon. Although I was fabricated in the solar system, I was not initialized until I arrived here."
The ruby-tipped tendrils that formed Logan's eyes had been watching as Shelby carefully worked his way into and sealed the suit. The design was roughly the same as the one he had arrived in, but there were enough additions and variations to require full concentration. Shelby was relieved and unnaturally pleased when the monitor lights all went out to indicate that the suit was correctly sealed and operating.
Logan approached and placed one spidery arm on the side of the suit helmet. "Channel eight. Although you will not need the circuit until we are outside, I suggest that you change to it now."
Shelby nodded and selected the right channel. Logan's voice, unchanged in either tone or timbre, came over the suit radio: "If you can hear me, then let us proceed through the airlock. Be prepared."
Logan did not say for what. Shelby did not ask, and when the outer door of the airlock opened he did not need to. They were emerging onto the flat outer hull of the Harvest Moon's disk. The Messina Dust Cloud occupied the whole hemisphere above them. Its full glory, which he had been in no state to appreciate when waking in the corry, hit him for the first time like a physical force.
The great blue and purple haze was shot through with streaks and swirls of brighter colors, greens and yellows and glowing crimsons. The rainbow lines and curves defined small currents and whirlpools, which taken together made the outline of a set of broader patterns. These must be the sluggish space rivers that Grace had described, carrying their invisible pockets of valuable transuranics around some unseen center of the Cloud. This was the giant canvas on which Lana Trask practiced her mysterious art.
Shelby could see now that the stars were not in the Cloud; they shone through it from much farther away. It was an irresistible urge to turn and scan the sky for one particular object.
"The Sun, and the solar system . . ." He turned to Logan.
"That way." The robot, for whatever reason, had remained silent for a few minutes while Shelby stared spellbound at the heavens. Now it raised one thin arm and pointed. "Invisible, I am afraid, without enhancement to human sight. Even though twenty-seven light-years is no small distance, Sol still appears as a fourth-magnitude star. Normally you would be able to see it, but there is too much scattering and absorption of light by the cloud."
Shelby looked anyway. Over there, unimaginably far away, was the Bellatrix and his mother. His father, J. P. Cheever, would be down on Earth, controlling his empires of industry. From this distance both his parents were equally remote.
"You cannot see it, either, but in that direction"—Logan pointed again, through the heart of the Messina Dust Cloud—"lies the Confluence, where all the harvesters will meet in a few weeks' time. The rakehells, too, though Captain Trask prefers that the crew of the Harvest Moon should not consort with them."
Confluence, yes. But rakehells? There was an incredible amount to learn, and he was only just beginning. Shelby felt a surge of rebellion—why should he bother to learn any of this stupid stuff? It was useless knowledge that he would never need in his whole life once he returned to Earth. But then Grace's voice, slightly mocking, rose in his mind. What have you done in your whole life?
"Rakehells? What are they?"
"Ships and people who like to live dangerously and take big chances. Harvesting is too dull for them. Most of the rakehell crews start out as harvester folk, but once they're on the rakehells they become secretive and paranoid and suspicious of everyone—even of the other rakehells. They are treasure hunters. There are more things to be found in the Messina Cloud than stable transuranics, and more places to go than the great dust rivers. There are regions where Captain Trask will never take the Harvest Moon, no matter how the currents are running: dense glowing clots of dust and gas that the rakehells call the hunting grounds. But the harvesters, they call them the reefs."
Logan's mechanical voice was totally without emotion. The nearly superstitious dread that Shelby was feeling had to arise from the bare words and his own imagination.
"What do the rakehells do in the hunting grounds?"
"They seek a rare gemstone with a curious internal structure. It is called a Cauthen starfire, after the woman, Miriam Cauthen, who first found one. Each starfire is as big as a human fist, possesses unworldly clarity and brilliance, and because of its rarity has enormous value throughout the solar system. The rakehells seek the stone constantly. Sometimes they find a starfire, hurry back at once to Sol, and become wealthy. But just as often their ships never return from the reefs. The nearest reef lies in that direction, no more than a day's flight from here."
Logan pointed. Then the robot stood frozen. "One moment, please," it said at last. "I must go to maximum aperture."
As Shelby watched, the tangle of wires on the end of the body widened and stiffened to form a kind of inverted umbrella almost a meter across. The robot stood motionless.
"Ah," Logan said finally. "Not what I suspected, but in some ways even more interesting."
"What?" Shelby had seen nothing.
"I thought at first that I was seeing a rakehell, which could mean that we are nearer to a reef than we suspected. But the object in question is in fact one of the harvesters. Over there."
The robot pointed, and Shelby looked again. "I can't see it."
"That is not surprising. At maximum extension my optical system approaches the performance of a diffraction-limited telescope of one-meter aperture. The other harvester is invisible to you, but believe me, it is there. Come along. We must return inside."
Shelby was all set to refuse—he was finding the experience fascinating, and anyway, since when did humans take orders from machines? Then he had another thought. "Is it dangerous to us?"
"Not at all. But we must inform Captain Trask that we are being observed. Undoubtedly, the other harvester is spying on our movements and hopes to find out where we will go next. Lana Trask finds transuranics when no one else can. I would also like to have access to the Harvest Moon's big telescope. It would be useful to know which harvester that is, and that I cannot determine using my own equipment. Let us proceed inside, if you please."
Shelby followed Logan, but before they could enter the airlock there was another moment of excitement.
"Scrimshander! Scrimshander
Limes." Thurgood Trask's voice, loud and exasperated, sounded suddenly over the radio. "Drill and blast it, where are you? I've tried every channel and you're not on any one of them. I need docking help. I hit tar again! I'm blind, and scraping my glove over my visor only makes it worse. Scrimshander!"
There was a crackling sound as Thurgood Trask switched channels.
"There are pockets of hydrocarbon fog within the currents," Logan said quietly. "They are extremely useful, because they provide a source of valuable petrochemicals and they also serve as base materials for the food synthesizers."
Hydrocarbons! There was one of Shelby's earlier questions about food sources answered. He had suspected far worse.
"However," Logan went on, "it is the lighter hydrocarbons that are prized. The heavier ones, thick tars and fuel oils, are a nuisance. They clog faceplates, and coat the outside and inside of the corry, and stick to everything. Regrettably, Thurgood Trask exhibits a positive genius for hitting the densest and most glutinous hydrocarbon fogs. Wait here, if you please, while I determine his receiving channel. I must guide his corry in."
The Billion Dollar Boy Page 6