by Wil McCarthy
Given the small size of this system I've also abandoned the Earth-centric AU in favor of the light-minute as a planetary measuring stick. Note that P2, with its thick greenhouse atmosphere, falls just outside the habitable zone defined by Kurster for Earthlike planets. A comparison of the Sol and Barnard systems follows.
The radius of Barnard is 0.4 light-seconds. Coincidentally, this makes the star appear 1.00 degree wide in the skies of Sorrow—almost exactly twice the size of Sol in the skies of Earth. Since people tend to overestimate the size of the sun anyway, I suspect this difference would go largely unnoticed.
Planets so close to their parent stars are generally presumed to be “tidally locked,” with rotation rates synchronized to their orbital period, so that the planet always presents the same face toward the star (just as Luna does toward Earth). However, this is not always the case. Mercury is an example of a planet in “3:2 resonance,” completing two revolutions per three orbits. In a similar way, Sorrow takes 1036.8 hours to revolve around its axis, and 691.2 hours to complete an orbit around Barnard. If the planet didn't rotate at all, Barnard would assume the same position in Sorrow's sky at the same point in every orbit, and the day would be 691.2 hours long. However, the rotation has the effect of shortening this to 460.8 hours.
Barnardeans consistently refer to the day as being 460 hours long, reflecting the fact that a “Barnardean hour” is 3593.75 seconds long—6.25 seconds shorter than a standard hour. Technically speaking, the 0.8 hour day-length difference should be rounded up rather than down, but since 461 is a prime number, no convenient clock could ever be constructed around it!
I'll note that these numbers are no invention of mine; if a truly habitable planet exists around Barnard's Star, it needs to be near or just beyond the outer edge of the star's liquid water band—as far from the star's flares as possible—with a thick greenhouse atmosphere to keep things warm and protect against radiation. And preferably, yes, it should have some sort of day-night cycle rather than a pure tidal lock. Also, given the scarcity of heavy metals, it must be larger than Earth or its gravity won't hold the atmosphere down. In other words, it needs to look very much like Sorrow, or it couldn't be there at all.
notes on the tongan language
All the Tongan words used in this book are authentic. However, with hundreds of years of history between ourselves and the events of the story, I've taken some slight liberties with the meanings and nuances of certain phrases. Therefore, any use of this book as a language reference may get you some puzzled looks from native Tongans. Next time you're in the Friendly Islands, do please keep this in mind.
appendix D
mursk in lalande, act two
Lalande was another metal-deprived dwarf, with three gas giants and one tidally locked terrestrial—the half-frozen world of Gammon. Allegedly it was named after a historical person of some sort, but Conrad had always figured it was really because, as in a well-won game of backgammon, all the black was on one side and all the white on the other. It might also have been named “eyeball,” for the frosty whites extending just beyond the terminator, the coal-colored iris beyond it in the daylight, and the clear blue “pupil” of tidally raised ocean.
Conrad's image found itself appearing on the front porch of a brick-veneer ranch house, beneath an awning of translucent gray wellstone. A woman stood before him, out on the grass beyond the porch's concrete. She was barefoot and whipped by a strong steady wind, so that her hair and the hem of her long dress flailed out beside her. She didn't appear cold, but from the look of things Conrad would be if he were actually standing here in front of her.
Behind her, in the distance, was an ocean shrouded in fog.
“Hi, Benny,” he said. “Nice to see you again. It was windy like this the last time I was here.”
“It's always windy here, Conrad Mursk of the Kingdom of Barnard.”
“And always three in the afternoon,” he said, looking up through the awning at the sun, resting motionless in the sky. It was difficult to say for sure, with no landmarks around it for reference, but it seemed to Conrad that it was both wider and dimmer than the sun of P2's own sky. Certainly it was much redder.
She laughed. “Always, yes, but not forever. The planet is locked, but the snow and ice builds up on the Darkside, bleeding off the Brightside Ocean. The water gets shallower and shallower, and the Darkside gets heavier and heavier, and every eight hundred years the planet flips.”
“I'll bet that's a fun ride.”
“We'll evacuate the planet,” she said, flashing a don't-be-daft look in his direction. “We're actually due for a flip in just two centuries. Which is good, because the melting glaciers will expose all kinds of fresh ore, which we can really use.”
“So the shore is farther away than it used to be.”
“Yup. It retreats about twenty meters every standard year.”
Conscious of the time, Conrad looked around the immediate area. The house was large, and it was up on a hill overlooking the city of Moll. And the hill was grassy where most of the landscape beyond it was bare slate or shale. He hadn't noticed this on his previous visit, but it didn't surprise him now. Finding a pen pal here on Gammon had taken decades of back-and-forth prowling on the Instelnet's low-bandwidth message boards, and anyone who could afford to take him up on the offer was, almost by definition, a member of the planet's upper-crust palasa. Wealthy, at least by colonial standards.
“Benny N.,” Conrad mused, now looking over the woman herself. “You must think I'm an idiot.”
“For what?”
“This doesn't look like a palace,” he offered, by way of excuse.
“Ah,” she said. “No, it doesn't. So you've found me out, have you?”
“Bethany Nichols, the Queen of Lalande.”
She smiled sheepishly. “Guilty. We can still flirt, though, can't we?”
“I don't know,” Conrad answered seriously. “Your philander might have something to say about it.”
“I don't have philanders,” she said. “I have old-fashioned boyfriends. And right now, I'm in between.”
“Oh, I see,” Conrad told her, then made a show of eyeing her even more appraisingly. “If only I had a body. And some time.”
Her giggle was pleasant, unhurried. “Maybe someday, Architect. But if I'm going telefuff, I'd rather pick someone closer to home. Lalande is less than five light-years from Wolf system and only six and a half from Ross. We have our own little club: we can actually trade fashions quicker than they go out of style. Whereas Sol is a round trip of seventeen years, and all the other colonies—including yours—are twenty or more. Wolf has an ocean, too, and a biosphere, and a mean case of tidal lock. So really we have a lot in common.”
“You can't see Wolf from here, though. Can't see Ross, either. Right? Not with the naked eye, not even on Darkside.”
“We can see Wolf when it flares. God, they have lovely flares. You think you've got radiation troubles, try living on Pup!”
“I've visited there in message form,” he said. “Stay out of the water, is my advice.”
She snorted regally. “And the air. There's a reason the capital is under a mile of rock, along with most of the population. King Eddie is many things, but stupid is not one of them.”
“Ah,” Conrad said, “so it's Edward Bascal you have your eye on, is it? It wouldn't be the first time he and I crossed swords over a woman.”
“Well,” she admitted, “he is kind of cute. Younger and more charming than his so-called cousin. A girl could do worse.”
Running through what little he knew of her bio, Conrad asked, “Aren't you a playwright or something?”
Her smile grew pained. “Used to be. I fear my muse has fled, and anyway the bitch only ever gave me one solid hit. If you're looking for the next Rodenbeck, I'm afraid it's not me.”
“Well,” he said, “life is long. You never know.” And then a chime sounded through his virtual bones, and he added, “I'm done here.”
“Already? I haven't even shown you my tattoo. Ah well, see you in twenty.”
“God willing,” Conrad agreed, and vanished.
And while it may be true that the digital summary of these experiences was lost in transmission, they were thoughtfully archived in the Brick Palace Library, and moved off the planet's surface in the Turnabout Evac, there to find their way into a letters archive which survived intact for nearly twenty thousand years.
In a quantum universe, as they say, almost nothing is ever truly lost.
about the author
Engineer/novelist/journalist Wil McCarthy is a contributing editor for Wired magazine and the science columnist for the SciFi Channel, where his popular “Lab Notes” column has been running since 1999. A lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, AnLab and Theodore Sturgeon awards. His short fiction has graced the pages of Analog, Asimov's, Wired, SF Age, and other major magazines and anthologies, and his novels include the New York Times Notable Book Bloom, Amazon.com's “Best of Y2K” The Collapsium (a national bestseller) and, most recently, The Wellstone.
Previously one of those “guidance is go” people for Lockheed Martin Space Launch Systems, and later an engineering manager for Omnitech Robotics, McCarthy is currently the Chief Technology Officer for Galileo Shipyards, an aerospace research corporation with projects ranging from rockets to high-altitude balloons to quantum nanoelectronics. He can be found online at www.wilmccarthy.com.
By Wil McCarthy
Aggressor Six
Flies from the Amber
The Fall of Sirius
Murder in the Solid State
Bloom
The Collapsium
The Wellstone
Lost in Transmission
Praise for WIL McCARTHY
THE WELLSTONE
“An ideal blend of wit and superscience, set in a brilliant future age when wealth and immortality just aren't enough. McCarthy gives an adventurous new spin to the ongoing rebellion of the young.” —David Brin
“Wil McCarthy is one of the best hard SF writers in the business.” —Jack McDevitt
“Wil McCarthy asks a question for the first immortals: if their children do not know or fear death, might death become an exciting adventure?” —Sean McMullen
“The Wellstone has a madcap, inventive energy that proves irresistible. Wil McCarthy's previous book, The Collapsium, was dazzling in its ingenuity, and The Wellstone—a deranged take on a boys' adventure tale, with its log cabin flying through the Kuyper Belt on its programmable matter sails—is a sequel worthy of its predecessor.” —Walter Jon Williams
“Everything I've seen of McCarthy's work is worthwhile, and this is no exception.” —San Diego Union Tribune
“A good combination of adventure and hard sci-fi.”
—Kansas City Star
“This fun read is packed with weird but believable technology, and paints a possible picture of life in the distant future.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“A standout job . . . full of action, humor, top-notch speculation and intriguing characters . . . Such ambition and creative playfulness should serve this book well when award lists are made up. . . . McCarthy's tale summons up echoes of a number of classics. The rudimentary power politics recalls William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954). The lost-boys aspect rings changes on J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904). And certainly the theme of ‘lighting out for the territories' harks back to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (1884) . . . All these potent riffs are fleshed out in a comprehensive portrait of humanity transformed by advanced technologies. What more could any SF reader ask for? Next year will see the publication of the third volume in this fascinating series, Lost in Transmission. I, for one, wish it were to hand right now.” —Paul di Filippo, scifi.com
“If Robert Heinlein had written Lord of the Flies, he probably would have come up with something like
The Wellstone.” —Rocky Mountain News
“Wil McCarthy considers post-scarcity economics, leadership politics and immortality—all in an adventure that would have made Robert A. Heinlein proud.” —BookPage
“McCarthy's satirical humor and mastery of the hardest of hard science—he actually is a rocket scientist—are just as much in evidence here as in his earlier novels. It's lots
of fun.” —Netsurfer Digest
THE COLLAPSIUM
“Wil McCarthy is a certified science fiction treasure, a real-life rocket scientist with a gorgeous writing style and rapier wit to boot. [While his] high-concept physics ideas . . . are deft and fascinating, it's his characters and story that make The Collapsium a book to savor, a complex and layered story in the grand tradition of science fiction's masters.” —Therese Littleton, Amazon.com
“Ingenious and witty . . . as if Terry Pratchett at his zaniest and Larry Niven at his best had collaborated.”
—Roland Green, Booklist
“Fresh and imaginative. From a plausible yet startling invention, McCarthy follows the logical lines of sight, building in parallel the technological and societal innovations. ‘Our Pick.' I wanted to visit this Queendom and meet these people.”
—Mark Wilson, Science Fiction Weekly
“The future as [McCarthy] sees it is a wondrous place. . . . While there are amusing attributes and quirks to McCarthy's characters, the greater pleasures of this novel lie in its hard science extrapolations. McCarthy plays us his technical strengths by providing a useful appendix and glossary for the mathematically inclined reader.” —Publishers Weekly
“A fairy tale [with] . . . the most delicious superscience since Larry Niven's Ringworld. Stylistic diversity and hard scientific rigor blended with panache and striking imagination. McCarthy works hard to draw out pathos and character development. Genuinely exciting—a wonderful hoot.” —Damien Broderick, The New York Review of Science Fiction
“The author of Bloom once again demonstrates his talent for mind-expanding sf. Vibrant with humor, drama, and quirky ideas. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal
“McCarthy has pushed his work to a new level. A very deft storytelling touch added to his engineering experience makes The Collapsium a standout novel. McCarthy has added a lyricism reminiscent of Roger Zelazny to cutting-edge hard science in the manner of Robert L. Forward.”
—Fred Cleaver, The Denver Post
“[McCarthy] studs his narrative with far-out scientific concepts that he defends in a series of appendices. He certainly has a sense of humor. [Protagonist] Bruno de Towaji . . . is surely speaking for his creator when he assures another character, ‘Imagination really is the only limit.'” —Gerald Jonas, The New York Times
“[A] comedy of manners about High Physics, immortality, mad scientists, and murder. Great fun [with a] Wodehouse-meets-Doc-Smith aesthetic. As ingenious as the physics and special effects are, it is their juxtaposition to the wit and comedy that gives the novel its particular flavor. [A] playful, thoughtful book.” —Russell Letson, Locus
“Top notch. Terribly good fun. This very funny book has something for everyone.”
—Niko Silvester, Entertainment Tomorrow
“McCarthy knows his physics, and makes it extremely easy to suspend disbelief. He creates a world that is both foreign and amazing . . . but in McCarthy's hands it appears all but inevitable.” —J.M. Frank, Mindjack Magazine
“Quite entertaining. The science is larger-than-life, and so are the characters.” —Rich Horton, SF Site
“I don't recall the last time a book made me laugh out loud. I did so here on page 146, and at the book's end I did so again . . . though my eyes were moist as well. McCarthy has created a story here that is distinctly Asimovian in flavor, though his voice is very much his own.” —Ernest Lilley, SFRevu
“Prepare to use your grey matter. [McCarthy] fills his pages with lovingly rendered descriptions . . . but it is the strength of his scientific imagination that really shines through.”
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br /> —Rob Williams, SFX Magazine (UK)
“A most dazzling future. What follows is a mind-spinning struggle that recalls a Henry Fielding novel of manners, Michael Moorcock's epic sagas and the cosmic free-for-alls of Doc Smith. There's fascinating science aplenty, mad scientists, robots running amok . . . What more could you want?”
—Terry Dowling, The Weekly Australian
“A decidedly odd but enjoyable mix of mannered, decadent comedy and far-out physics. I liked and was even prepared to believe in [it].” —David Langford, Ansible (UK)
“A wonderfully off-kilter space operetta, best described as a sophisticated version of those golden-age serials of the '30s populated with slightly mad scientists who happen to have total mastery of nanotechnology and black hole physics.”
—Netsurfer Digest
BLOOM
“Bloom is tense, dynamic, intelligent, offering a terrifyingly vivid view of how technology can rocket out of our control.”
—David Brin
“What clever and compelling science fiction! The Bloom future is all too believable.” —James Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science