Next to me, Chih-Hsien Chien stared at Pham’s back in disgust.
“Vietnamese barbarian,” he said. “And drunk, too.”
Rosler hung up a microphone and gave Pham an appraising look. Priscilla Bates raised an eyebrow in my direction.
“Probably an infiltrator,” I said, knowing it wasn’t what she meant. “Thought we wouldn’t fire during the fair.”
I turned back to Chih-Hsien.
“Forgive the interruption, Excellency. But as you see, we do have reasons for concern.” Uncalled for as it was, Pham’s attack would serve its purpose. “You were saying, I believe, that the approaches to the tunnel are well defended. Surely such measures aren’t necessary.”
“Well, perhaps you are right. Nevertheless, my colleagues worry. You see, there are so many excellent Chinese scholars and scientists who are eminently qualified for this journey but who have not been able to join us, that we fear they may try to secure their places—and the tunnel—by force. This would be a great misfortune, don’t you agree?”
“And do you suppose,” I said, “that there might be a way to appease these very eminent Chinese scholars and scientists, and thus ensure our safe passage?”
“Well, it is possible—since you mention it—that these eminent persons and the expedition alike would benefit were they to be provided their most deserved passage along with the rest of us.” He offered a very small bow.
“So if we were to provide the Greater Chinese Peoples’ Committee with one more ship—at the expense, of course, of the other committees—then we would no longer have this difficulty, in your opinion?”
Chih-Hsien’s face took on a look of pained reluctance to offer bad news. He wrung his hands.
“I am afraid that the Committee might not be sufficiently motivated to make certain the extra seats went to exactly the right eminent persons, Mr. Torres. They are less, ah, reasonable than I am. Five ships.”
“I see. Allow me to ask a question, Excellency. Why have you made this proposal to me, and not to Mr. Polaski?”
“Pah! I cannot deal with this self-appointed emperor of yours, Polaski. You are a much more sensible man.”
More and more often I found myself asking other people what Polaski was doing.
“Very well,” I said. “I will direct that one ship be delivered as you wish and placed at your disposal so that you can sell the seats at whatever price you can get. With certain conditions:
“First, the passage of the drone ships and all of the colonists’ ships to the tunnel will be unimpeded.” He nodded carefully.
“Second, the launch of the drone ships in a few days’ time will be protected by the air forces of the PRC—”
“We have nothing to do with the PRC! We have no control—”
“Drop it, Chien. Your ships will be filled with PRC cadres, and it will be very much in their interest to protect the drones from launch to translation.
“Third. Those colony ships are designed to carry one hundred people. Every person you sell a seat to in excess of that means someone will die. If you sell one seat more than those ships can hold, Chien, I will kill you.”
His eyes widened, then he leaned closer as though to see me better.
“I cannot be responsible—”
“Fourth. You’re coming with us.” His mouth opened in disbelief. Then, when he recovered, he drew himself up to his full five feet.
“Three ships.”
“One.”
“Aieee!” He hissed and turned for the door. “Sleep lightly, Mr. Torres.”
“Your escort, Excellency.”
He stiffened and waited for the armed guards.
Pick your enemies carefully, Patel had said. But had I?
B
ang, you’re dead.” Polaski sat behind a desk with a pistol aimed at the door where I stood.
I’d found him on 40-deck of Hull Zero-Zero. He no longer kept a fixed office, but moved from place to place. He wore a plain grey uniform.
Chan had come with me, walking out to the giant colony ship along a clattering catwalk over the dark assembly chamber. Arc welders and annealers in the distance provided the only light, reflecting from the white, pencil-thin ships. Six hundred feet tall but only twenty-six in diameter, they floated in the darkness like threads hanging from the ceiling.
The ships had the proportions of 450-story buildings. Yet instead of resting on their bases at one G like buildings, they were designed to “rest” on their engines under thrust at six Gs. Any flaw and they would vibrate and shatter like glass.
The catwalk ended at a seamless airlock marked “30-W”. A pair of recessed handles spun in opposite directions to open it, one of the few stable movements possible in free-fall.
30-deck was empty except for coils of fiber and tools. There was a panel that curved out to encircle a lift running down through the floor and up through the ceiling. An emergency ladder ran next to it. 30-deck, half way up the ship, was the ship’s lowest usable level. Below were the big induction coil, the batteries and fuel mass, and the equipment and shuttle bays.
From 30-deck we’d ridden the lift up to 40.
“Put it down, Polaski.”
“Yes, sir.” He set the pistol on the desk, still pointing at the door.
“The Chinese have tested the tunnel,” I said. “The drones go in nine days.”
“I know,” he said. I glanced at Chan.
“I don’t like not knowing how Miller’s programmed them,” I said. “We could shoot all forty thousand of them through the tunnel, and for all I know they can’t even count to three. We’d wait for years for one to come back without knowing if it was the tunnel or the drones that had gone wrong. How much do you know, Polaski?”
He toyed with the gun. “Ask your friend here. She’s the priest.”
“I only program the little ones,” said Chan, “and the fleet. All I’ve seen of the real drones is what she’s let me see. But what I’ve seen is good. Almost scary, it’s so good. But I agree with Eddie. We need to know more.”
Polaski pursed his lips.
“And do something about Pham,” I said. “She’s drunk half the time.”
“You do something.”
It was the inevitable answer.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “You got the hots for her like everybody else?”
Chan walked around the desk. Polaski had once said something to her about her having conceived without first being tested in the centrifuge, and she’d never let him forget it. She leaned down now and said something in his ear, then turned and left. Polaski stroked the gun and watched her go.
P
ham’s not so bad, Eddie.”
Chan and I had stopped on the catwalk, and now stood watching the pale ships off in the dark chamber. “It’s Polaski you should be watching,” she said.
“I watch him. So what about Pham?”
“We talk sometimes. She’s a little like you, you know. Couldn’t stand the way things were, wants to leave no matter what it takes. Hated her father. Lonely.”
“I didn’t hate him.”
“You sound like it, sometimes. You were only ten, Eddie, it’s hard to remember.”
* * *
P
atel was visiting Chan when I returned to our quarters on the ship that night. He sat half-buried in a pile of duffel bags on the bed, with Kip asleep next to him. Cards were spread out on the floor.
Patel peered out at me from under bushy eyebrows, then set Kip’s flute down on the bed.
“Did you know, Eduardo,” he said, “that this is an enchanted flute? It should be perfectly easy to play, but only our young friend here can do so.”
C
harlie Peters, our logistics chief, joined Chan and me for breakfast the next morning. He carried a wrapped parcel and a piece of bread.
“Forgive me, Charlie” said Chan, “but how did you get to be the size you are by eating little pieces of bread for breakfast?”
“Young Miss,” h
e said, “you are truly a delight and a wonder, but you’d do better to ask if I came to be eating little pieces of bread by being the size I am.”
Shouts from across the mess. A tiny spider drone had flown in with a message tube clipped to its back, and the inevitable target practice had begun. A buttered roll finally slapped into its side to send it sluing off course, to the accompaniment of much cheering.
Chan clapped her hands sharply. The spider drone—which despite its name had no legs at all—dove down and stopped in front of her. Chan nursed it closer and spoke to it, too quietly for us to hear.
The drone leapt back into the air with a chirp and began bobbing and weaving along its course. Boos from across the room.
“I keep telling them that,” said Chan. “I don’t understand why they forget.”
“My Lord,” said Peters. He watched the drone go and ran a hand across his balding head. “So! How are you this morning, Eddie? I’m told you want that little fellow’s frozen kin taken up on the lifts to the airport. You don’t think that’s asking a bit much? Four hundred ships in nine days?”
“Six days. Be glad they fit in the elevators at all, Charlie. Small miracles are all we get.”
“My word! ‘Miracles,’ he says! Have you seen them fit in the elevators? No, you haven’t, and neither have I. You are one of these godless drudges who believes the little numbers he writes on the backs of envelopes. Ah, there she is. Tuyet! Come and sit. I’ve got something for you.”
Pham dumped her tray, and with only the briefest glance at Peters picked up a piece of fish in her hand.
Peters pushed the parcel across. “I couldn’t help but hear you say to Katherine the other day that you liked to read poems—though I’m sure you didn’t think anyone was listening.” Pham paid him no attention.
“And so I thought to myself, ‘Now there’s a fine thing—here we are just filled with machines, but no poems at all.’ So I sent for this little book. I’m sure you’ll find it delightful.”
Pham paused in her eating and blinked at the book, then turned to Chan.
“So, China-Girl. What for you want baby, hah?”
Chan glanced at Peters, who seemed completely unoffended.
“I don’t think life would mean much without children, Tuyet. What about you?”
“Nah. Everybody grow up, get dead. Someday kids get dead, too. So what good this meaning do for you then, hah? More important have a good time, I think.” She took another bite. “But I think you lucky lady, maybe. Sometimes I wish, me too.”
“Why? Have you spent time with children?”
“Nah. I tell you about shithead father. No mother. Father got junk he treat like kid, not me.”
She dropped the fish, then turned to me as she reached for Peters’ napkin.
“So, Mr. Torres, how much time we got before we shoot up Ice-Lady’s drones, hah?”
“Nine days.”
“Ah—no good. They not ready. Everybody get killed up there.”
“Why?”
“Nobody practice. Pretty-Boy Bolton say no time, too dangerous. I say if too dangerous now, too dangerous later when everybody got cold foot. Pretty-Boy got weakness like that. He take big risk himself easy, but don’t let other people take risk so they find out if they okay, too.”
A chair scraped and laughter came from across the room, followed by David Rosler’s voice and a plate banging against the table. Pham whipped around to look, then immediately turned back just as I spoke.
“Have you told Priscilla that?” I said. “She’s launch safety officer.”
“Hah! Shit no, Torres. I do you favor. I let you tell Miss Priscilla yourself. She pretty girl, and you got hard-on I bet, now China-Girl here all fat, hah? I know you pretty good.”
I stared at her. Peters started to get up.
“What’s gotten into you?” I said.
“Not you get into me, hah, Torres? I think maybe you like to sometime, but you too chickenshit. You afraid I break it off, hah?”
She shoved her chair back and knocked her plate aside so that the fish slid across the table.
“Piece of shit food!” She pushed past Peters and hurried out of the mess. But not, I noticed as I looked down at the table, before picking up the book of poems.
SEVEN
And Their Walls
Will Crumble To Dust
N
ine days later the drones’ launch window arrived.
I glanced for a last time at Anne Miller, then nodded to Rosler across the operations room. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth and flipped down his microphone.
“All stations, final checkpoint clear, no holds. Systems have timing. Personnel clear the rails now. Fire crews, start your engines. Tanker crews, mark your pressure, recheck on decouple. Airlifters, respond—rails one through four.”
“One through four.”
Forty-ton airlifters moved into position on the screen, dangling grappling clamps like fists. Below them, eight pairs of rails ran the length of the airfield. The drone ships on their acceleration sleds filled the mile and a half closest to the elevators, while the helicopters moved into position over the empty mile and a half beyond, down which the sleds would race for the opening.
“Rails five through eight.”
A pause.
“Five through eight.”
“Too slow to respond, crew. When the time comes, you’re only going to have ninety-six seconds to clear a bad launch before the next one comes down that rail.
“ExComm, advise PRC Air Defense we have a commit on six minutes.” Our deal with the Chinese—they would protect the island during launch, and the drones on their way up. “Mr. Bolton, launch-override is local.”
Instrumentation monitors changed from green to amber. Bolton’s crews on the runways had control of the overrides.
“Reports. Insertion.”
“Winds aloft and pressures down range, no change. Icing negative. I have four hundred orbital insertions active. Looks good.”
“Translation.”
“Kerr projector systems report launch and tunnel motion synchronized. 2,006 hours plus and counting.”
“Engines and Boosters.”
“Induction engines idling across the board. Fan-booster spin-up on number eighty-three is below the curve but recovering. All others are go.”
“Mr. Elliot, get a paint bomb on number eighty-three. Airlifter north, keep an eye on that hull. It’ll be number eleven on rail three. Defense.”
“All weapons, full release.” Pham’s voice, out by the opening.
“Range officer.”
“Go.”
“DataComm.”
“Scanning data-links on all drones. Ms. Miller has function switch-over on loss.”
Rosler hesitated. “InComm, take reports on the ground systems for a moment. Off.”
He glanced at me and gestured toward Miller.
“Anne,” I said, “I have to say this again. We’re going lose ships—maybe a lot of them. You’re going to need help reloading their missions to the survivors.”
Silver earrings glittered.
“Thank you, Mr. Torres, but it will be quite simple.”
I sighed. We’d had this discussion before, and there wasn’t time to have it again. “All right, fine.”
Rosler stuffed his shirt into his pants. “Three minutes now with shit to do.”
“The checklist was well done,” I said.
He ignored me.
Charlie Peters squinted at the screens. As logistics chief he’d had to get the ships up to the airfield, then off their cradles and onto the sleds. He was biting the nails of one hand and gripping a telephone in the other.
“I still say they’ll fall off the edge,” he said. “No wings. You people should know that. And space is up. Why do you insist on shooting things out sideways when you mean them to go up?”
Rosler blew his nose.
“Near-Earth orbit isn’t up,” I said. “It’s out. In this case you’re right, tho
ugh—these things are so un-streamlined we’re going to run them straight up on the boosters till the air’s thin enough, and only then tip them over and blow the fans off. The induction engines will throw them into orbit. As for falling off the edge—they will. See that screen there? It’s the range officer’s, a side-view of the launch area after the ships come off the rails. Watch it. Here we go.”
Another view showed on the main screen, from above the elevators looking toward the opening. The airfield cavern looked like a train station, with eight rows of fifty cars each, all eight tracks leading out into the sky.
“One released.”
The first ship on the left-hand rails slid forward with deceptive grace—a closer look showed its giant fan buffeting the ship behind it, hammering it against the next sled back. The first ship accelerated at two thirds of a G, from zero to sixty in four seconds; twelve seconds later it had covered a fifth of the distance to the opening.
The first ship on track six moved.
“Two released.”
They were released in a staggered sequence to provide the greatest lateral spacing among them. Twelve more seconds and track three released a ship.
“Three released.”
Like a bullet from a gun, Number One burst from the ledge at over four hundred miles per hour. Its sled tumbled away furiously in the wind, to be caught by a parachute. The ship itself nosed gracefully over toward the shelf below and fell for a second, then for another—and then it was replaced by a searing white cloud.
“Number One rotation failure, manual destruct.” The range officer’s voice, calm.
“Four released.”
Three more seconds and Number Two burst from the ledge. It sank toward the shelf and began to rotate nose-up, then twisted sharply and tumbled. It, too, disappeared in a flash of white.
“Number Two rotation failure, manual destruct.”
“Data on Number One, steering vane coupling failure.”
“Five released.”
I felt sick.
A Grey Moon Over China Page 11