The Pilots of Borealis

by David Nabhan

  FOUR AND A HALF seconds after entering Rittener’s quarters, Yeshenko was dead, the life ripped from him even before the body hit the deck. Rittener’s hands weren’t up to the task of tackling Peerless’ amanuensis, but the shoulder-fired laser he strapped on from his security cabinet was. He made straight for the bridge and melted it in three successive blasts that sent the stunned and horrified crew ducking for cover against the molten slag into which it was converted. When everything shut down save vital functions and a cool green light bathed the now vacant space where virtual consoles had been, Rittener was sure Peerless’ amanuensis had joined Yeshenko as the second victim in this mutiny. He addressed his shocked and huddled crew quite diplomatically.

  “Engage emergency back-up control for all systems—all systems that can still respond anyway.”

  Just to let the crew know that he was still sane and had no intention of killing them most likely, he now grinned most incongruously, quite amicably even.

  “We’ll be flying bare-back from here on out,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HALO OF STEEL

  SHORTLY BEFORE THE REVOLT on the Asteroid Belt broke out, Sadhana Ramanujan wasn’t exactly persona non grata with the Terran Archonate, but neither was she invited to many of their holiday celebrations. Her views were too liberal and her mouth a little too open. But she was a descendant of that Ramanujan, which her father had never let her forget. And she had lived up to her illustrious Indian ancestor—Srinivasa Ramanujan, one of the great mathematical savants of the 20th century. Her ancestor was a genius who not only mastered higher mathematics as a child, but who was discovering new trigonometric theorems—by the age of twelve. Sadhana meant “long practiced.” With her father pushing relentlessly from a young age and the string of important postulates she’d discovered herself, she couldn’t have been more aptly named. Her breakthrough innovation of increasing the nanoscale cooling effect in graphene chips (only one atom thick!) catapulted nanocomputing into the next level and beyond. Heat had been the biggest obstacle in performance, a barrier which she hurdled in front of the astounded and grateful hundreds of billions from Earth to Titan. Sadhana Ramanujan had doubled the speed of the System at a stroke, changing history. It would be difficult to say then whether the Terran Archonate or Sadhana Ramanujan were honored more by the request the Archonate sent her, or by Ramanujan’s decision to drop everything and comply.

  She’d been here before, of course. Standing in the foyer in front of the Archonate’s massive portal, the same feeling as before came over her. It was meant to impress anyone with a pair of eyes and it rarely disappointed. Sadhana saw something else though in the outlandishly oversize set of solid steel doors. They reminded her of the images of the Second World War she’d seen, of the massive 20-foot-high mahogany and marble doors to the Fuhrer’s private office. There was little subtlety in Terran architecture. Beyond this threshold lay the greatest single power in the known universe.

  She was met by the highest ranking staffer of the Archonate, none other than Ethan Van Ulroy, and two security officers, all smiling and exchanging greetings, while forming a protective cocoon around her and whisking her through a beehive of activity. The Archonate was cavernous—the biggest single office space on the Ring. It went from Ground all the way up to the Exterior Decks, occupying an arc that stretched for miles. Her party commandeered an entire shuttle and was gently whisked toward the epicenter of the thousands of offices that kept the Terran Ring spinning. Every aspect on Terra—food, water, health, safety, security, economy, education, justice, diplomacy—everything was decided here. Keeping a metal ring that weighed as much as a decent fraction of the Moon in orbit around the Earth, while its massive sections themselves spun transversely for artificial gravity, with five billion passengers aboard, required a bit of maintenance from time to time. The Archonate did nothing else.

  Sadhana was in her early sixties, a very pleasant-looking woman with long dark hair streaked with grey. She wore it in a bun, under a silk sari used as a veil and then tucked around as a shoulder scarf. Here was a grand dame that nonetheless wore such an earthy and convivial face that its authenticity had to be genuine. She took a close look at the young man in charge of escorting her. They’d met before and although she disagreed with his politics, she, like almost everyone else on Terra, couldn’t help but like him.

  Ethan Van Ulroy, only in his mid-thirties, his name soon to be infamously linked to the Belt’s uprising, was the aide-de-camp of the Chief Archon himself, Dante Michelson. No matter how harshly the miners were to judge him, he possessed a sharp mind, a quick wit, and offered sage advice unusual for a man his age. His high position was enough to mark him as the most eligible bachelor on Terra. Sadhana half smiled pensively, contemplating the irony of two people so unalike in so many ways and yet both of them meeting at the request of the most powerful man alive. While she was short, a bit rotund, and far past her prime, he was tall, as lean and hard as dried jerky, and just entering the peak of his powers. His thick auburn hair was combed to the side and was flawlessly coiffed. He wore a thicker leotard, one that modestly diverted attention from his admirable physique and emblazoned with just the proper amount of distinctive marks of his rank without being brassy. The real difference between them though, was that Van Ulroy, aide to the militantly hawkish Archon, was playing host to the leader of Terran’s doves.

  THE TECHNOLOGY OF ATTACK and defense between Terra and Borealis over the centuries had closely reflected each cutting-edge breakthrough in science. The two states had never come to blows, but tension between them was the never-ending impetus for developing attacks against which there could be no defense, and barriers which would render any assault powerless. In the early days Terra worried that Luna had the “high ground,” just as Earth said about Terra. What if Borealis were to send a chunk of the Moon crashing down on the Ring? This, of course, was nonsense, as all military analysts pointed out. Even Terra’s archaic lasers in Settlement Times would have made short work of such primitive tactics, and now even if Borealis were to catapult the Sea of Tranquility at Terra, it would never make it over the walls.

  Thankfully the reverse held for Borealis. Terra’s ferocious lasers couldn’t actually touch Borealis, the city tucked below the lunar horizon at the North Pole, situated at a blessed angle outside the range of Terra’s photonic guns. Warships though could, and did, patrol vast sectors of the Solar System and it would be a simple matter for a Terran man of war to take a position with a clear shot at the city. One blast at Borealis’ Dome would be devastating, ending any potential war in a millisecond. Borealis worked feverishly, and with supreme secrecy, to counter this peril, and the result changed the military calculus between the two sides: defense now reigned supreme.

  BOREALIS’ GRAVITONIC FORCE SHIELD bent the fabric of space, forming a cupola of discontinuities in space-time. It was best visualized by imagining space itself as water on the surface of a tranquil pond, with the force field as a ripple around Borealis that held at a steady distance. Matter passing through this barrier would be so violently scrambled at the subatomic level as to cause instant disintegration. Electromagnetic waves themselves—lasers or even benign radio—would also be diffused and scattered to the extent that beamed weapons were rendered useless and radio communication impossible. Sunlight too was scattered, and that was the reason Borealis gave out publicly for the creation of the Shield. It was touted as the next great step forward in Borealis’ never-ending battle to tame the Sun, even though the truth was that it neither helped nor hindered the final efficiency of the Goldilocks Array.

  As for the higher-energy ranges of light—from X-ray to gamma—they were absorbed into the shield itself, so a thermonuclear device detonated above it would only serve to help power it. Corridors in the shield were temporarily created as it was deftly turned on and off at selected localized coordinates so that shipments of helium-3 could be exported, and to allow in shuttles that had been scanned and deemed free of any potential th
reat to Borealis. Even communications had to be funneled through ever-changing millisecond-long apertures in the shield, after being relayed from Gatekeeper satellites that orbited the Moon. Terra, of course, immediately realized the shield’s true purpose; they’d been working on the same technology themselves.

  THE TERRAN RING ALSO had a gravitonic shield, but it needed to warp the astounding volume of space around the massive Ring and an incredible amount of energy was needed to accomplish that. An area on the Ring the size of Manhattan Island was devoted to creating and maintaining the Terran shield. It was never deployed though—as the peace party on Terra never stopped pointing out. This white elephant was the focus of a great political debate raging on Terra. First, how could such a monstrosity as this ever have been built when it sucked up more helium-3 then the Terrans could afford to feed it, especially now that the reserves were running very, very short? Secondly, was this not the best proof that the never-ending saber-rattling would end badly—for Terra and everyone in the Solar System? When would the simple, sane, mutually beneficial expedient of peaceful coexistence and cooperation take hold in the minds of the Terran Archonate—and if ever, would it be in time?

  The hawks on Terra had good answers. The shield was a back-up, that’s all, and one that most probably wouldn’t ever be necessary. They quite rightly pointed out that Earth below, in the end, even in the hands of the maniacs that supposedly ran the planet, realized that they had no option but to live with what Terra dictated. What alternative had they? Even if they could, even in worst-case scenarios, everyone on Earth knew what bringing down the Terran Ring would mean. For “bringing down” meant just that. Terra crashing to Earth would make the end of the dinosaurs at the K/T boundary sixty-five million years ago seem like a hiccup in the planet’s history. As for attacks from other quarters, the Ring was massive enough to take incredible blows from Borealis or anyone else while barely flinching. If such madness ever were to take place, the shield could be deployed before any irreparable damage was done. So the Terrans built their shield—and, incredibly, never switched it on.

  For the hawks, the shield meant something else though—something which churned a visceral anger in them. It was one thing to have to compromise with the couple hundred billion remnants of Earth’s population beneath them. To have policies dictated to Terra by the insignificant mosquito bite festering on the Moon’s North Pole, imperiously delivered by a couple hundred thousand of the most arrogant humans alive, was quite another. There would be a reckoning in store for these overconfident egotists, and it couldn’t be far on the horizon. Challenging the Terran Ring was going to turn out to be the last chapter in Borelian history. They said as much openly, and they meant it categorically.

  While the shuttle whirred along smoothly, the initial pleasantries faded and were replaced by an uncomfortable silence. Sadhana was not without her social graces but was actually somewhat shy. Conversation, though, rarely flagged in Van Ulroy’s presence and he immediately saw to the discomfiture.

  “By the way, you’re absolutely right, Doctor. 1729 is quite an interesting number after all.”

  Sadhana’s face brightened. He’d said the right thing—as usual. “I asked my amanuensis about it. Amazing story,” he said.

  “But that was almost two years ago,” Sadhana remarked, her eyes widened by his sharp memory.

  Van Ulroy smiled sheepishly. “Well, I looked again this morning.” He shook his head disparagingly. “I hope it’s not age creeping up. I just don’t remember things like I used to,” he admitted.

  Sadhana had seen Van Ulroy’s amanuensis a few times. She remembered asking herself what his choice implied. There were a few ways to look at it. He’d opted for Alcibiades, the exemplar Athenian bad boy. The last time they’d met, at an award ceremony for Sadhana presided over by Dante Michelson himself, Van Ulroy had asked Alcibiades what the reference to 1729 had meant.

  Alcibiades pointed an omniscient finger and clicked open a virtual board from the early 1900s. Srinivasa Ramanujan was lying in bed in a London hospital room. The surroundings were quite Spartan and morose. Ramanujan was a young man, just thirty-two, but dying of tuberculosis. G. H. Hardy, the eminent British mathematician and Ramanujan’s great friend, entered the room. A strained conversation ensued between the two, Hardy clearly at a loss for words seeing Ramanujan slowly expiring in front of his eyes.

  “You know,” Hardy said, trying to make chitchat, “I noticed the cab that brought me here was number 1729. I got to thinking and strangely started brooding about the amazingly nondescript and random nature of that number. Isn’t it odd that some numbers aren’t interesting in the least?” One could tell Hardy was only trying to fill the silence, but Ramanujan’s reply was startling. Without the slightest pause the great savant gave a surprising rebuttal.

  “Not at all, Hardy. Not at all. 1729 is the lowest integer which can be expressed as the sum of two cubed numbers, two different ways: 1 cubed plus 12 cubed equals 1729 and so does 9 cubed plus 10 cubed.”

  The expression on the virtual Hardy’s face said that he wasn’t just awe-struck that his comrade could do such calculations in his head, but that he could have seen the algorithm in his mind in the first place, and all within the space of a few seconds, seemed simply beyond the capacity of any human being.

  “So you see, it’s quite a unique number after all,” the dying Ramanujan said.

  TERRANS WERE PARTICULARLY ADDICTED to the use of their amanuenses and hardly ever closed them down. Psychologists proclaimed the more extreme cases a form of mental illness, and rightly so. There were many cases of people falling in love with their amanuensis, or whose best friend was virtual, or who refused to take a breath or step in life without their counsel, or who battled an amanuensis that was “out to get them.” There were five billion people on the Terran Ring, but ten billion entities counting both human and virtual. Here was a closer mechanical bond than many humans shared with other individuals. According to many experts in ethics, this was far past the beginning of the end. No matter who preached what though, nothing could get people to turn their amanuenses off.

  Truly alarming though was what else they could read about the people in the wearer’s vicinity, and the dramatic changes this caused in society. An amanuensis could also scan the blood pressure, perspiration levels, and changes in voice patterns that indicated stress—or deception—of anyone within effective range. This played havoc with every aspect of human interaction in society, because the great shock was that there was very little that people did that was free of deception.

  To dare to interact in public without one’s amanuensis on “block” was inconceivable. Aside from having one’s veracity verified at every step, one’s identity, health status, state of sexual arousal, and many other personal secrets were open to anyone with the desire to scan them. Only excepting the saintly with nothing to hide, or the scandalous with nothing left to expose, the rest of humanity went about its business with their amanuenses most assuredly blinking red on block.

  THE SHUTTLE SLOWED TO a stop and without saying a word the security officers exited. Simultaneously a leather-faced man in his mid-forties entered. He had an Earth tan, a deep one. The dark brown brow was framed by jet black hair combed back over the shoulders and falling almost to his belt. And, just as if stepping out of a time capsule of some sort, he was wearing a belt, and trousers too. They were denim; as a materials specialist, Sadhana knew the antique fabric. Around his neck was clasped a silver and turquoise choker. To say this fellow was dressed “old style” was an understatement. If he had been wearing a cape he wouldn’t have looked any stranger. Sadhana recognized him immediately, but then anyone would have. Nonetheless, Van Ulroy made the introductions.

  Roland Lighthorse was one of the last full-blooded Creek Indians alive. He was a prolific writer—everything from philosophy and history to anthropology and linguistics. He was known though for one audacious theory that he’d proposed that put him clearly and irretrievably outside the ma
instream. His interpretations of the Pre-Mayan glyphs discovered in the Yucatan Peninsula superseded everything he’d published, and then some. Those postulations had catapulted him into the realm of one of the most famous kooks in existence.

  Lighthorse had ruined quite a promising career. He studied under the very archaeologists who’d uncovered the stelae and scrolls in their youths, and who even now in old age were locked in strident academic disputes about this translation and that one. Still no one could read all the inscriptions and about the only thing agreed on by all was that they were very, very old. The ancient folios had changed, nonetheless, the very foundation of human pre-history, and few doubted that they didn’t contain a few bombshells. Lighthorse’s hypothesis though was simply a bridge too far.

  When a thorough ground-penetrating radar survey of the mounds around the Yucatan indicated that they were anything but hills, the scientific community had gone wild with enthusiasm. Half a dozen pyramids were unearthed and a treasure trove of thousands of inscriptions and codices came with them. Immediately, though, the firestorm exploded. These weren’t Maya glyphs, or Zapotec, or Olmec, or anything else known. What was uncovered were the remains of a civilization far, far older, and completely unknown heretofore. Many names had been proposed for the lost people but even a common name couldn’t be agreed upon. The culture was simply called “Pre-Mayan,” and it was confidently dated sometime around . . . 12,000 BC.

  What was surprising about this sea change in human history was how quickly it was accepted. The Fertile Crescent lost its preeminent position as the cradle of civilization. After the initial astonishment wore off, everyone just seemed to shrug their collective shoulders and gave in to the idea that Earth was home to a great civilization—thousands of years before the date previously held as the birth of agriculture itself.