“I’ve been examining the data from the GLIS,” Reya said in a voice pitched so only Julian could hear. “Trying to figure out how Silver’s supplies got rerouted without our seeing it. But I came across something else.” She handed the pad to Julian, and he looked at the supplies tracking tables displayed on it. She used her pinky to point out individual cells on the tables, which she had already highlighted in yellow. “It seems the GLIS has been stockpiling all kinds of things in the last month… not just Silver’s quantum-thingy.”
Julian looked at her with a slight smile. “You don’t like to call it the Silver Drive?” he asked, using the name that had begun to be bandied about among the senior CnC staff.
“I’d rather call it the bane of my existence,” Reya retorted lightly. “But enough about my pet peeves. Jules, look at these. These supplies levels are considerably higher than our standard usage procedures dictate. Apparently, supplies orders have been undergoing a creative method of rounding figures up or down, in such a way that we’ve been taking in more supplies than we’ve been using. In a lot of areas.”
“Basic atmospheric chemicals,” Julian said aloud as he read the tables. “Fertilizers. Manufacturing carbon. Vitamin supplements.” After a moment, Julian shook his head. “This is odd. Who’s behind it?”
“That’s the part that makes it doubly odd,” Reya told him. “There’s no sign that these orders were manipulated by Aaron, any of his staff, or any of the departments on the receiving end of these orders. They were all handled automatically, as they always have been, by the GLIS.”
Julian met Reya’s eyes in puzzlement. “All of these are things that would benefit Verdant to have during an extended cessation of supplies deliveries from Earth.”
“Right,” Reya nodded. “And according to this, they’ve been in the process of being hoarded for the past month.”
“But by the GLIS? No,” Julian shook his head more insistently this time. “I don’t suppose you asked the GLIS about the orders?”
“Sure,” Reya replied. “It gives me dates and times for every order. But when I ask about the amounts and surpluses, it just starts throwing dates and numbers at me, that it knows I can’t keep track of. Like it’s trying to confuse me!”
“You’re anthropomorphizing,” Julian said. “The Governing Logistics Intelligence System is just a big intelligence system… that’s all. You must have missed something. It must have been someone on Silver’s staff. Or maybe Aaron really is that good at his job.”
“No one’s this good,” Reya maintained. “Look at the time stamps. Those orders were placed, edited, and processed, in milliseconds of each other. Even a specially-written program input into the GLIS would take longer than that to process each order, because of the anti-tampering protocols it would have to clear. I’m telling you, the GLIS itself has been independently stockpiling supplies for us.”
Julian stared hard at the datapad, looking for an alternative to her conclusions… but seeing none. After a few moments, he let the datapad fall to his side, and he stared at Reya. “That’s just impossible.”
Reya shot him a wry look. “We’re over Mars, Jules. You tell me what’s impossible.”
~
“What do you think, Doctor?”
Calvin glanced again at the data Julian had forwarded, then looked dubiously at Julian’s image on his com screen. “Sir, this isn’t a nineteen-hundreds movie. Unlike the early days of buggy computer processors, people nowadays know that intelligence systems can’t do things that weren’t programmed into them in the first place. There’s nothing conscious or spontaneous about ISes. I can only assume someone managed to get into the GLIS and reprogram its supplies protocols in such a clever way as to have that reprogramming escape your ability to locate it. And now that we know how long Dr. Silver has had this drive of hers working in the background, I can’t imagine it being anyone other than someone on her staff… or Dr. Silver herself.”
“Those were my thoughts, too,” Julian said, “but it’s better to hear you say them.”
“At least,” Calvin pointed out, “if it’s true, it means that much more of a supplies buffer, keeping us farther from a level two conservation state. I’m thinking of an old saying about gift horses.”
Julian smiled. “Good point. We can always look into that mystery later. You’re going to do your reports on the workings of the Silver drive today, right?”
“Right, I’ll be leaving in a few minutes,” Calvin said. “The plan is still to do a presentation that stops short of providing essential details about the system… something for general consumption. That’s still right, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Julian confirmed. “Something for the masses, the politicians and the media… everyone but the scientists, basically. Until we decide on the future of this drive system, we’ll keep the essential details to ourselves.”
“No problem for me,” Calvin said wryly. “If they captured me, drugged me, and threatened to turn my guts into guitar strings, I still couldn’t give them any essential details!”
Julian signed off, and Calvin went back to assembling his wardrobe for the studio sessions, which he would take with him and change when he arrived. He glanced up when he realized Maria was at the door.
“Please tell me you didn’t hear that,” Calvin said.
“That our Ceo thinks an IS is conscious?” Maria smiled. “No. I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Good,” Calvin nodded. “And make sure none of your friends hear about it, either. A silly rumor like that would just upset people.”
“If it didn’t make them keel over laughing,” Maria said. She watched him as he collected his clothing and folded it into a bag, having seen him prepare for studio sessions before. “How long do you think you’ll be?”
“I should be home by dinner,” Calvin replied. “Possibly sooner. But this is pretty new, and we may have some back and forth figuring out how to best present some of it. Are you going to be okay?”
“Sure, I’ll be fine,” Maria said. “Go get your work done. I have some shopping to do, myself.”
Calvin gathered up his suit bag and headed for the door. On his way, he gave Maria a kiss. “See you tonight, honey. Be good.”
“I will,” she said as he headed for the front door.
~
“All right, cut, cut! Cut!”
Calvin stopped walking and speaking, and mentally kicked himself. He didn’t have to ask his director what he’d done wrong… he’d screwed up his pacing. Again. He turned about to face his director, Pete Bell, as he shuffled over to him in frustration.
“Cal, come on, that’s six times today! What’s wrong with you? You’re stumbling around the set like a blind-deaf rookie with club feet! You’d think you’d never been on a set!”
Calvin, in response, looked around at the room he was standing in, essentially an open-sided and empty space with bright green walls, floor and ceiling, decorated only with tape that demarcated the objects that would be added in later by the special effects teams. Pete was right, he’d worked in a thousand stages like this, and it was second-nature to him to be able to imagine his surroundings well enough to move naturally through them, to properly time his pace and motions to the IS-generated backgrounds, and to present the impression that he was in actual surroundings.
But today, it was just a big green room.
Calvin raised his hand to scratch his head… then refrained, mindful of getting dandruff flakes on his dark jacket. “I know, Pete, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? You’re catatonic!” Pete and Calvin had worked many times before, and they knew how to talk to each other. Though Pete’s words were harsh, Calvin knew the kind of words Pete used when he was really mad, so he didn’t take the abuse personally. “I mean, six times! You are not in this game! Where are you?”
Calvin immediately thought of Maria. Pete couldn’t miss the change in his expression, and he closed his mouth and took a harder look at Calvin. After a moment, he turned a
round and said, “Okay, shut it down. We’re done here today.” Calvin looked up in dismay as the crews began shutting down the lights and scanners around the stage, and started to protest to Pete. But before he could speak, Pete said, “There’s no point continuing the stage work today, you’re just not getting it. Tell you what, though: Let’s try the location. Maybe if you can walk around real objects, it’ll help your focus.”
Calvin paused only a moment before nodding. “Sure, Pete. I’m game.”
“Good,” Pete said. “Okay, remote unit, pack up. Let’s hit the freighter.”
The crews assembled their remote gear, as Calvin removed his jacket to keep it wrinkle-free, and an aid brought him his suit bag to slip it into. Pete appeared again at his side, and said, “Let’s go. We’ll scope out the space before the guys get set up.”
~
The engine bays of the Makalu were still abuzz with people and equipment, constantly coming in and out… it seemed to Roy that the activity had not stopped, even for sleep. As Verdant security guards constantly looked on, lab-coated technicians and engineers swarmed over the strange apparatus and its attendant plumbing, in the bay next to the main engine control bay.
Every now and then, Roy had the chance to peek inside the bay when the others parted enough to permit a view. But his view told him nothing. He had no idea what the two main objects, the rectangular assembly and the cable-infested globe, were supposed to do, and he couldn’t begin to imagine what the three new workstations were needed for. But just by the looks of it, the frightening number of interconnected modules throughout the bay, and the heavy-duty supporting beams being punched through his bulkheads and anchored to the ship’s very framework, he could tell it all meant business.
He became aware of a new group of voices, approaching from outside, and turned about. He immediately recognized Dr. Calvin Rios, and his eyes popped a bit as he came over to him and the man walking in with him.
“Dr. Rios? I’m Captain Roy Grand of the Makalu. It’s a pleasure to meet you! I loved Universe Three!”
Calvin accepted his hand graciously. “Nice to meet you, Captain. So, you’re the one who’s getting his ship outfitted to make history!”
Roy looked over his shoulder, and smiled. “I guess so. Trust me, I couldn’t tell you if all that stuff back there is going to fly me back to Earth, or make me ice cream.”
“No ice cream out of this, I’m afraid.” Everyone looked back at the bay, to see Dr. Silver step out. “I thought that was you I heard, Doctor.”
“How’s everything going down here?” Calvin asked.
“About as we expected, fortunately,” Silver replied. “The assembly is almost done, and we still have the translation calculations to nail down, but we expect to be ready for the test-flight in two more days. We’ve also had a few instances of people trying to sneak in here and get a better look at things, but Captain Grand and our security boys have managed to keep them out…” She paused when she saw the first of Pete’s camera crew stepping into the bays, and glanced at Calvin in confusion. “I thought you wouldn’t be down here until tomorrow?”
“That was the plan,” Pete admitted, and looked at Calvin.
Calvin, in turn, rolled his eyes apologetically. “My fault. Studio shooting wasn’t going well. We were hoping we could get some of our scenes done here now, so as not to waste the day. Can your people work as we record?”
“To an extent,” Dr. Silver replied. “But the idea was to keep anyone from seeing sensitive details of the equipment, wasn’t it?”
“It still is,” Calvin replied. “If you want to cover things up, Pete’s guys can clean it up in post.”
“Oh, thank you for telling me how to do my job,” Pete said sarcastically.
Calvin noted the remark, then added to Dr. Silver, “You can watch and make sure we don’t get into anything we shouldn’t. We’ll defer to you.”
Dr. Silver considered a moment, glancing back into the bay. Finally, she nodded. “All right. Let me get some things under wraps, first, all right?”
“Sure,” Calvin said, following her into the bay as Pete turned to converse with his remote crew. Calvin took in the bay, now looking like a miniature of the storage space that he had translated an entire satellite. “It scales down nicely, I see,” he commented. “The power requirements are a proportionate step-down from the large set-up, right?”
“Yes,” Dr. Silver confirmed. “Otherwise, we would have needed to figure out how to squeeze one of those gigacapacitors in here.” She turned and eyed Calvin appreciatively. “You seem to be getting a good grasp of the system, Doctor.”
“I’m doing my best,” Calvin smiled. Something occurred to him. “Like your adjustments to the GLIS. Very clean programming. We almost didn’t see it for what it was.”
Dr. Silver looked at Calvin. “I’m not following.”
“I think you under-estimated your nitrogen levels, though… they seem way too low. Or did you mean to start sooner, and work your way up to more suitable levels?”
There was a long pause as Dr. Silver regarded Calvin. Finally, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The GLIS doesn’t control any part of this process. Don’t you remember how it shut down over the inconsistencies in its time-coordinate subroutines?”
“No: I mean your use of the GLIS in advance to arrange and transfer the supplies you needed for your quantum system,” Calvin stated more than asked.
“Yes,” Dr. Silver replied.
“And,” he added, “for other supplies, too.”
Dr. Silver stared at Calvin for a moment, before she said: “Nitrogen? Dr. Rios, what are you getting at?”
Calvin started to respond, then stopped, reconsidering. He remembered how Ceo Lenz had asked her whether she had considered Verdant’s lower solar power intake before moving them to Mars, and she had reacted as if she had either not thought about it, or dismissed the issue. And if she hadn’t bothered about that… why expect her to have organized the hoarding of supplies?
But if she hadn’t… who had?
“Doctor,” he said presently, “I think I was making a false assumption. I apologize.”
“That’s all right,” Silver replied, but her face reflected her curiosity. It took her a moment before she finally turned about and started directing her people to cover up certain components of the quantum system.
~
“And here it is.”
Calvin said those words as he stepped into the bay, as if he’d only just arrived. The recording crew zoomed back to get more of the bay into view, then panned left until the largest components of the quantum translation system were in view. Calvin walked casually over to it, patting the spherical component gently as he went on.
“This is an appropriately scaled down version of the system that moved Verdant, but it does exactly the same job. Fortunately, the amount of energy needed to move individual craft is smaller by a few factors of magnitude, so we expect most spacecraft can be equipped with the Silver drive with only a minor boosting of their standard power output.
“As I described earlier,” he went on, pointedly ignoring Pete’s wide grin, and Dr. Silver’s rolling her eyes in mortification, “that power is processed by this specially-designed laser, and fired into the components inside the sphere. That creates the effect that moves the craft instantaneously, from one point to another. The system is primarily controlled by one workstation, with two others for subsystems monitoring. With this smaller system, the additional workstations needed to balance the incredible amounts of power needed to move Verdant aren’t needed here.”
Calvin gestured at a panel on the wall, just beyond a strut that bored right into the wall, which contained numerous cable and hose pass-throughs. “Through there is the main engine control bay, which required very little modification to accommodate the system, other than power rerouting and rebalancing. Considering the system’s sophistication, it is relatively easy to incorporate into existing systems, and just needs to b
e properly configured for the craft in order to function. Once we’re a bit more experienced with the installation procedure, we hope to be able to install the Silver drive into any type of ship we desire.”
“Cut,” Pete said, coming around the lead camera. Dr. Silver followed him. “That was better than the second one, Cal. We’ll go with that take.”
“Worked for me, too,” Calvin replied, glad that he had managed to get himself together enough to get some recording done.
“I’d like to know,” Dr. Silver said as she approached, “whose bright idea it was to call this the Silver drive?”
Calvin shrugged amiably. “I’d suggest you talk to Aaron… don’t look at me! Besides, why wouldn’t you want what will surely be the most fantastic invention of the twenty-third century named after you?”
“For one thing,” Dr. Silver replied, “because it’s not a drive! And for another, because it wasn’t my work alone. Half of my staff worked on it at one point or another… so did you, Dr. Rios. The credit shouldn’t be mine alone.”
“Well,” Pete asked, her, “what would you call it?”
Dr. Silver looked at Pete and said, “The Verdant system.”
~
On his way out of the Makalu, Calvin glanced back at the freighter, musing over the role such a nondescript craft would soon be playing in the future of human transportation. Pete and his crew were still finishing up and taking additional recordings, under Dr. Silver’s supervision, but Calvin was no longer needed, so Pete had let him go for the day.
As he headed for the lifts out of the bay, he noticed a rather attractive woman approaching him, and he slowed as she approached. “Excuse me,” she said, “You’re Doctor Calvin Rios, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am,” Calvin replied. “And you are?”
“Oh, I’m Emily,” the woman replied quickly. “I just wanted to come over to tell you that my daughter absolutely loved your show! I could even say that you helped inspire her to study the sciences when she starts college!”
“Well, that’s great! I’m sure you’re very proud.”
“Oh, yes, I am… and so grateful to men like you!” As she spoke, she reached into a severe-looking shoulder bag and pulled out a small workpad. Holding it out to Calvin, she said, “I wonder, could I get an autograph I could give to her? Her name is Karen. She would be so thrilled!”
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