“I don’t have anything against them, I mean,” she stammered. “It’s not like I’m some bigot from the Met. I just . . . am not around many of them.” She felt herself trying to conform to some sort of expectation that she couldn’t even put a name to, and this angered her a bit. If you want to truly impress him, she thought, follow your feelings. “I find them bit creepy,” Jennifer said, “to tell the truth. But I would never let my feelings stand in the way of treating them as free and autonomous members of society. You know the drill. I believe it, I guess, even though I have to admit I haven’t given much thought to it.”
That’s it—admit that you’re an idiot right in front of him, she thought.
“The point is . . . what was the point? Got a little lost there—”
Jennifer looked at Quench to see if she’d wholly alienated him, and she found him blushing slightly. Poor guy is embarrassed. For me, she thought. Jennifer sighed. And she had thought the thunderbolt was so close to striking.
“Well, I guess you’ve had enough of my ill-considered opinions for one night, huh, Cap’n?” She favored him with a halfhearted smile.
Quench looked at her—he stared at her. For a moment, the intensity of his gaze frightened Jennifer. Then she felt something like a cool wind blowing through her.
“I should like very much to share another dance with you,” Quench said. “And I’d very much like it if I might have your company for the rest of the evening.”
Kablam! Jennifer thought. She felt her heart give a funny little sideways jump.
“Sure.”
They waited for an AK groanfest to be done, and then went through another fifteen minutes of dancing. Quench began to question her more closely about her opinions on free converts. Jennifer did her best to answer as truthfully as she could—Quench seemed to like that—but she hadn’t really given the matter a great deal of thought. Free-convert rights were just something you were for if you were outer system. The second dance ended, and she and Quench took a lift up to the new pressure dome that had been hastily constructed over the site of the old Meet Hall. A few bushes and flowers had been planted, and various of the revelers were seated on benches or standing about. Jennifer and Quench found an unoccupied bench near the dome’s wall. It was Triton day outside, and Neptune was full and nearly directly overhead, but at the moment, the Blue Eye was turned to the other side of the planet. There was a muon-replacement fusion “hot spot” at the top of the dome, but it was turned off. Though it was day, and the sun and Neptune both in the sky outside, there was still a twilight feel beneath the dome. For the local plants, the “hot spot” was what was important, and not the feeble, distant sun.
“I wish I had more to say about free converts and all,” Jennifer said. “Do you have to deal with them as a part of your job?”
“They are a specialty of mine,” said Quench.
“Well, what do you think about them? Don’t you get tired of their chopstick logic and the way they are always counting everything, as if that would tell you something about the overall thing’s properties?”
“Fascinating,” said Quench. “I’ve never really considered it from that viewpoint. So you sort of picture them as sort of giant buckets of beans or something like that?”
“I picture them all as being, you know, sort of like my parents’ accountant. He’s like, out of India, or something. Small guy with this face like a screw. He’s always sighting in on crumbs or pieces of lint or anything that the cleaning grist missed, and picking away at them. He had these pudgy fingers, but he uses them like tiny pincers to pick up stuff that I wouldn’t even have noticed.”
“I see,” said Quench. “So you see free converts as screw-faced accountants with obsessive-compulsive tendencies?”
“I told you, I don’t really know any of them very well,” Jennifer answered. “Do you want to kiss me?”
Quench seemed shocked. “Are you sure you want me to?”
“Of course.”
He leaned over and took her in his arms. She tilted her head back and, after a bit too long of a moment, his lips met hers. She drew him to her fervently, felt resistance at first, but then his giving himself back to her. She tickled his lips with her tongue, then slid it into his mouth. Quench drew back sharply.
“What are you doing?”
“French kissing you, Captain.”
For a moment, Quench remained nonplussed, then something seemed to click, and he said, “Oh.”
“Do you like it?”
“Strange,” he said. “Meaty.”
“Meaty! What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Like bodies. A thing only aspects can do.”
“Well, of course.”
Quench considered further. “I do like it, however,” he said. “It has been so long since—well, I’m over her now. She was—she was the opposite of you. That’s for certain.”
And with those words, Quench strode off quickly, leaving Jennifer sitting on the bench with Neptune shining down and the sun blazing like a fire coal in the blue-black sky.
Eight
After two more e-days, by Aubry’s internal clock, they reached the end of the dendrite they’d been traveling out. The Integument started changing there, for this was a growing edge of the Met. Things started looking more incomplete, somehow, and the going became more difficult. There was no more sluice that they could travel in, and so they did a lot of walking.
“I wish I could show you all the stuff that’s out here,” Leo said. “This is one of the most fascinating areas in the Met. There’s lots of radiation, and so things mutate. The evolutionary selection algorithms sort them out and adopt the changes that work. Also, there is bioengineered life out here that is adapted for a hard vacuum.”
They descended a series of cliffs on ropes that were already attached, for the most part. In some places, Leo had to put lines in. He used part of the Integument itself for rope, and Aubry and Jill alternated belaying him while he fixed the way. By this time, Aubry had become so adept at rock climbing and rappelling that she felt she could probably do it in her sleep.
Finally, they came to a thick, mucus membrane that stretched up and up until Aubry lost sight of it. You could put your hand into it as far is you could reach, but it didn’t come out the other side. Leo said you could actually walk into it for a little ways and still be able to breathe, but that it got harder and harder, and after a few meters, you could go no farther.
“This is the e-mix-space boundary,” he said. “On the other side of that membrane is the vacuum.”
They walked along the membrane for what seemed miles to Aubry. Finally, they came to what looked like a notch in it, a split. It formed a cave that went back as far as Aubry could see. The space was not wide, but it was tall, and would fit Tod, as long as he bent his neck a little at the extra joint he had.
“Where we’re going,” Leo said, “is to a transmitter pod. We’ll all pile into it, and that will take us to Nirvana.”
“Nirvana?” said Aubry. “As in the state of nonbeing?”
Leo laughed. “Or being,” he said. “But actually it’s one of the mycelia, the disconnected islands of Met-like cables that—”
“I know what a mycelium is,” said Aubry.
“Sorry,” said Leo. “I’m getting stuck in guidebook mode lately. I made my living that way for a few years, you know.”
They wandered onward, and the green bioluminescence of the Integument began to die down. Soon they could barely see in front of them, and several times Aubry stumbled against Tod, who was ahead of her. He was bracing his arms against either wall. When she grabbed him, he held steady. But each time she touched him, he let out a little shout, and said something like “Hallelujah, mustard and quicksand!” So she tried to keep her balance as much as possible and stay a little distance back.
Finally, they arrived at the end of the tunnel,
and the walls began to glow again, this time a pale blue that flashed and sparked.
“Cherenkov radiation,” Leo said. He began feeling the wall. “Now right around here,” he said. “Yes. Here.” He ran his hand over a bump, and part of the wall drew itself back like a curtain—or a puckering set of lips. In the space beyond, Aubry saw what looked like the inside of a pumpkin, minus the seeds. It was very stringy, and looked very sticky. “Our own personal transmitter pod,” said Leo. “Made to order. Sort of.”
“People ride in this thing?” said Aubry.
“Well, they can, and we will,” answered Leo. “But most people visit the mycelia using transport ships, or just wait for a conjugation with the Met. But Nirvana is one of those places that never conjoins—by design. You can’t get there from here.”
“But we’re going?”
They stepped inside the transmitter. It was just as sticky as it had appeared, and Aubry soon found herself coated with orange fibers. She had to pull up hard on her feet to keep them from sticking to the floor. She was very glad she had ordered the Tromperstomper boots she wore. They stayed firmly on her feet no matter how hard she pulled. They walked a long way into the transmitter pod, and it got darker. Leo had broken off a piece of glowing pulp from the tunnel, however, and he held it up and led the way.
“Where are we going?” Aubry asked.
“All the way to the other end,” said Leo. “And then we’ll activate this thing.”
“Activate it?”
“There are some control sacs up front,” said Leo. “You break both of them, and when the chemicals inside mix together, the whole transmitter pod activates.”
“And then what does it do?”
“Then we get shot out like a watermelon seed between two squeezing fingers,” said Leo. “Or don’t you have watermelon on Mercury?”
“Of course we have watermelons,” Aubry said. “They’re Sint’s favorite food.”
“Sint?”
“My brother.”
“Oh,” said Leo. “Oh, yeah.”
They pushed through more gooey strands and finally made it to the other side of the transmitter pod.
“Now normally,” Leo said, standing in the last fading light from his piece of pulp, “if you got shot out at the speed we’ll be traveling, the initial acceleration would kill you. But instead of getting smashed, we’re going to sort of fall back through all those strings and inner meat, and by the time we hit the back wall, we will have been cushioned enough to survive.”
“Wow,” said Aubry. “Are you sure it works?”
“I’ve done it before, kid,” said Leo. “Lots of times.”
Aubry resolved to get ahold of herself and face whatever lay ahead. “Sounds like fun,” she said, as brightly as she could.
“Oh, it is,” said Leo. “And a little bit dangerous. You and I and Jill will want to sort of ball up and hold our knees to our chins before I activate the thing.” Leo glanced at Tod. He was standing, looking away from them, great tendrils of gooey strings dangling from his head and shoulders. “Tod will have to take his chances. But that old tower is made of tough stuff, I think.”
“But if it’s so dangerous, why were these things invented in the first place?” Aubry asked.
“They weren’t invented,” Leo said. “They evolved. Very quickly, actually. And they started out in the mycelia and then were adopted by the Met Integument.”
“But why did they evolve?”
“To exchange gases and other stuff. We’re surrounded by a sluice reservoir, as a matter of fact. It serves the double purpose of filtering out cosmic rays and other nasty stuff, like micrometeorites. If we hit a big enough chunk of rock, though . . . well, let’s just hope we don’t. I never have, obviously.”
“So people aren’t actually meant to travel in these things?” Aubry said.
Leo didn’t answer. He set the glowing pulp on the floor and searched with his hands until he found the two activating sacs he was looking for. They looked sort of like long cow udders—with no cow.
“Are we ready?”
Everyone spread out a ways.
“What about light?” Aubry asked. “After?”
“You’ll see,” Leo replied. “Now tuck your head between your legs and kiss your ass good-bye!”
Aubry was trying to figure out if he meant this literally when Leo squeezed the activation sacs. The entire world lurched.
Aubry was immediately and forcefully thrown backwards, very hard. She smashed into a clump of tendrils. She was pressed against them. They stretched, stretched, then gave.
Back again, into another thick rope of them. She couldn’t keep her legs held tight, couldn’t do anything, the force pushing her back was so strong. The rope gave.
She smashed into another clump, and another. Every time she hit, she felt as if her teeth might jar out of their sockets. She was sure she felt the fluid in her eyeballs sloshing up against her retinas. There was a reddish light that must have come from this pressure, for it was not completely dark in the transmitter.
Another clump.
Splat!
Another. She felt herself near to blacking out, fought it. But that wouldn’t work. She couldn’t help it if all the blood in her body was rushing in one direction only, like a tide coming in. Goo, falling, goo, goo, goo.
And then she slammed into the back wall, felt herself sink into its pulpy mass. But the pressure was lessening. She was no longer in any danger of blacking out. That is, if she could breathe!
She forced air out of her mouth, sucked in. It worked. She did it again, and again, fighting for each breath. But she could breathe! And suddenly, all the fear left her, and she began to get into this wild ride. It was fun, and nobody she knew—not one of the kids at school—had ever done anything like this before.
Then, quickly, the pressure subsided and Aubry was floating in free fall. If the sticky pulp hadn’t held her to it, she thought she might go flying about if she moved.
“We’ve reached maximum acceleration!” she heard Leo call out. “It’s all speed now!”
And Aubry could see. The red had not been within her eyes—or within her eyes alone. Falling through the mass seemed to have activated some luminescence mechanism in the pulp. The entire transmitter pod glowed with a low red-orange light, exactly as if they were inside a Halloween pumpkin. But a pumpkin from which the goo hadn’t been removed.
Leo maneuvered over to her, floating in the air. “Is everyone all right?” he asked.
“I’m here,” said Jill. “Wherever here is.”
“Hair of the dog that bit you!” yelled Tod. “Slice an apple and out comes a worm!”
“By the way, Leo,” Aubry said. “How do we stop?”
“Same as we started, only backwards,” answered Leo. “But we have a ways to go yet.”
Nine
They met in the virtuality, in a construct of an oceangoing ship deck sailing under a fine blue morning sky and upon a calm sea. The two men met, shook hands, and took seats forward, where a cooling breeze was blowing. A white-jacketed attendant got them refreshment: ice tea for Tacitus, water for Sherman. Tacitus lit a cigar and offered one to Sherman, who declined. He quickly got to the point of the meeting.
“What I want to know,” Sherman said, “is how the cloudships stand.”
Tacitus chuckled and examined his cigar to be sure it was evenly burning. He appeared in the virtuality as a man of medium build, somewhere in his late sixties or early seventies, with long gray hair that fell to his shoulders. He wore a simple gray-brown robe of a stiff material. Sherman wondered if this convert avatar bore any real resemblance to what Sherman had looked like when he’d been only a bodily human being.
“The cloudships can be a pretty inbred and petty lot,” Tacitus said. “They have a rather complicated social order set up out there among the Oorts.
It’s anarchy, and at the same time, it’s pure incestuous self-involvement with one another.”
“Do they even know there’s a war going on?”
“Oh, trade has been disrupted. They are aware of it in a general way.” Tacitus took a sip of his tea and a puff of his smoke. “But they think it can’t come to them personally. They figure they’re too powerful for Amés to attack.”
“From what I understand of them, they may be right about that,” said Sherman sourly. “I suppose they could remain neutral.”
“Now think about that a moment,” Tacitus said. “You’ve been making energy here around Neptune for nearly ten years now. Saturn and Jupiter have been selling themselves to the Met as building material. Uranus . . . well, Uranus is kind of a backwater still. But my point is: Where do the proceeds from all this go? Into the bank. And who is the bank in the outer system?”
“The cloudships, of course,” said Sherman. “There’s nothing like a safe in interstellar space if you want security, and there’s nothing like a traveling entrepreneur who gets around the entire system if you want investment.”
“Exactly,” Tacitus replied. “The cloudships are in direct economic competition with the Met. The market on Ganymede is just a front for a cloudship consortium. Everybody knows it if they think about it. That’s who the ultimate enemy is in this war, and Amés knows it, I can assure you. I’m not so sure that my peers are completely aware of the fact yet. In fact, there’s talk of reaching a separate peace with him.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Sherman.
“A few of my friends and I have been stirring up sentiment against such a thing,” Tacitus continued. He chewed his cigar for a moment, then stood up and faced Sherman, his back to the sea. “While I’ve got you here, I wanted to run a little idea past you, to tell the truth.”
“What would that be?”
“I believe that the only way to oppose Amés’s political attempt to divide the outer system successfully is for us to get together in a way we never have before.”
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