Vectors

by Charles Sheffield

  "Melos, you deny demonic possession. But what about that devil's engine that led to Afshar's death in the galley? Where did the knowledge come from, if not from the world of devils?"

  Melos smiled serenely. "From Alexandria, Lord. Afshar and I saw an engine using steam force there, soon after he bought me." He paused. "Alexandria may indeed be full of devils, Lord, but they behaved very like merchants to my eyes."

  The laughter was now out of control. Pale with rage, the thin priest returned defeated to his seat. After a few minutes of discussion in private among the group of priests, Cyrus and Melos were declared free, cleared of all charges.

  Cyrus was a popular figure. The city settled in to an evening of celebrations.

  * * *

  "I had a few bad minutes at the beginning, Darius, and I don't mind admitting it. I didn't know how the questions would go, or what you would say."

  Cyrus was holding his own private celebration. In his banquet room, Darius, Cyrus and Damon reclined at ease, while Thais served them with wine chilled with snow from the northern mountains.

  Darius laughed. "We were lucky. Nearly everybody was on your side anyway. They fortunately asked just the right questions for us, and I told them the exact truth—but not the whole truth—about Melos."

  "I was in the audience in the hall," said Damon, "and your statement sounded complete to me. What was missing from it?"

  "Oh, a number of things. I said that when Melos came to Susa he could not read or write. That was true. I did not tell them that he can now read and write with ease. He learned in days. I did not say that he learns everything at a rate that I have never seen before, or that he seems to forget nothing.

  "I did not tell them that he makes the mathematicians at Susa seem like children. That he computes areas and volumes using methods that no one yet understands. That geometry—especially the conic sections, which he had never seen before he came to Susa—filled him with such delight that he was sleepless for two nights, looking at all we know and adding discoveries of his own.

  "By the way, he says that our constraint of straight edge and compass for constructions is rigid and nonsensical. Not too modest, our Melos.

  "Shall I go on? There's plenty more. To the priests, these things would just be proof of demonic possession."

  "Then Melos is a philosopher?" asked Cyrus, leaning forward eagerly.

  Darius shook his head. "There's the paradox. No. Philosophy as we know it, the philosophy of the Greeks, of Socrates and Plato, do not interest him. His passion is all for the natural world. Lightning, the movements of the planets, the nature of light, the nature of heat, these are the things that absorb him completely.

  "Melos is not a philosopher. He is something new to my world, and I am very glad to see him free from the trial—to see both of you free."

  Cyrus leaned back again in his couch. "For what you did for us today, Darius, I can never thank you sufficiently. Money could not be enough, I can never repay you."

  Darius sipped his wine contentedly, a mischievous look on his old wrinkled face.

  "Repay me, Cyrus? You've repaid me already. Think, now, I've been here many times these last ten years. What have I left behind in Susa that I have always brought with me before? There's a riddle for you."

  "Darius, you know you never bring more than your clothes. There's no riddle because there's no answer."

  The old man chuckled with pleasure. "Wrong, Cyrus. There is an answer—my reader! He has accompanied me these last ten years, since my eyes began to fail for close work.

  "Now, thanks to your barbarian slave, I have this."

  He pulled a smooth oval of quartz from his robe.

  "Why, it's Afshar's firemaker!" said Damon.

  "More than that. Look through it, and letters seem to be five times as big. Melos explained how it works to us, but I think it's fair to say that none of us understood him." He fondled the lens lovingly. "I have eyes again. Now, could we let a slave like that be impaled or crucified for demon-raising?"

  "Slave!" Cyrus struck his brow. "I swore I'd free Melos the day of the trial. Thais, find him and bring him here."

  The tall slave came in as calm as ever. Neither the ordeal of the trial nor the free-flowing wine after it seemed to have had any effect on him.

  "Melos, I am ready to make good my promise. You will have your freedom, and I will apply for your citizenship tomorrow."

  Cyrus watched the slave expectantly but no reply came.

  "Melos, didn't you hear me? Have you no words of thanks?"

  Still the slave hesitated, looking for a way. At last he said, "Pardon me, Master, but my words will offend you. Even so, I must tell you the truth.

  "If you could give me freedom as I think of it, I would accept it gladly. But Master, what you have yourself is not freedom. To me, freedom is leisure. Leisure to think, simple food, a bed, shelter for my head.

  "Master, from morning until night you are busy with a thousand responsibilities. This household, city government, law-making, your duties to your friends and to your slaves. I have seen these eat up your days and your nights.

  "I am a slave. But when the given duties of the day are done, I can do as I choose. Even in Afshar's household, the most harried slave had four times the leisure that you have. To think, to eat, to sleep, to make love—but always, time of his own.

  "Master, I do not want freedom as you have freedom. Let me remain a slave and serve you as a slave."

  Melos stopped and stood motionless, the pale eyes troubled. There was a stunned and unbelieving silence in the firelit room. Cyrus felt disappointment and rage rising within him. Before he could release his anger on Melos, Darius put forward his hand between them.

  "Melos has had his say. Before you answer him, I demand my right as an old man to have my say also." He smiled. "It is often my lot to tell people things they know already, but bear with me.

  "First, Cyrus, remember that philosophy—and all creative activity—is a lonely, time-consuming toil. I assure you that great thoughts are conceived only in private, and only after long and exhausting preparation. It is very difficult to combine the great responsibilities of household and government with deep research. Melos, I have said, is not a philosopher. But he is something else that requires the same total concentration of effort if it is to be successful. The responsibilities of freedom and citizenship would hinder him on his lonely journey.

  "We scholars are a luxury, carried through the world on the shoulders of responsible and understanding people like you.

  "Second, Cyrus, you have said you want to be a philosopher. What is a philosopher? You are one already. Philosophy is a view of life and of the world. Following the work of Melos is just one small part of that, and it is a philosopher's duty to see all the different parts of life in their correct perspective and live accordingly.

  "Third, let me remind you of the old story of Ranos and the god Mitra. When Mitra was wounded and lost on Earth, Ranos helped him, cared for him and led him at last to the flame at the Gate of Heaven. Mitra went on through and assumed his godhood, but Ranos was mortal and could not enter. He remained in our world, to work, to suffer and at last to die a mortal.

  "Mitra is a household god, and has his feast days. But it is Ranos that we hold closest in our hearts. We tell our children about him at night, and set him as the pattern we would like to see in our sons."

  Darius leaned forward, his eyes bright in the flickering firelight.

  "Consider this well before you answer. Would you be Ranos or Mitra?"

  Cyrus was silent for a long time while the others looked on expectantly. Finally he shook his head and sighed.

  "Darius, there is only one Darius." He raised his goblet to the old man. "I drink to you."

  He smiled, but his eyes were full of sorrow. "We read that Socrates the Greek was irresistible in debate and reduced all his opponents to helplessness. It is clear that you are his disciple and inheritor of his skills.

  "I had hoped to be Mitr
a, you are right. But if the gods have chosen to make me play Ranos, that is more than I have any right to expect or hope for."

  He turned to the slave. "Melos, you will remain a slave, and I your Master. Now, I must give you your duties.

  "You will go with Darius to Susa and remain with him. Your time will be your own. You will have no other duties, except to preserve the honor of my household by your works. Each year, you will come back here and hold symposia in this house for one month.

  "Now go, Melos, with my blessing—and Melos, please, no weapons of war, and no more infernal machines!"

  A wistful look came over the face of the slave. Now he was thoughtful. In the pale eyes glowed the memory of the great cylinder, the hissing steam, the moving metal bars, the churning wheels. Then the look faded and he too sighed. He walked forward and knelt at Cyrus' feet.

  "Yes, Master."

  Afterword.

  I first sent this story to Jim Baen, at Galaxy. He said, "It's well-written and interesting, but I just don't have that much belief in the powers of the mind. Why don't you send it to Ben Bova at Analog? He's got faith."

  I sent it to Ben Bova at Analog. He said, "I like it very much, but I think it's not quite right for us. Why don't you send it to Ed Ferman at Fantasy and Science Fiction? He'll buy it in a hot minute."

  I sent it to Ed Ferman. He rejected it in a hot minute.

  I sent it to George Scithers, at Isaac Asimov's Magazine. He said, "You couldn't build a steam engine with the technology available at the time of which you write. And anyway, ancient Persia wasn't like that."

  (I disagree with both those comments, and I've spent a lot of time in Persia, but that's another subject.)

  I finally sold it to Ted White, who published it in Fantastic Stories.

  So how do I view it after that checkered history? I'm very fond of it. To me, it makes a fundamental point, not about steam engines, but about the meaning of freedom; namely, freedom is not an absolute concept. One man's freedom is another man's bondage.

  Chronologically, this is the first story I wrote that sold (not the first story I sold or published, but the one that was written earliest). Reading it now, I have to resist the temptation to change it here and there. But I'd probably make it worse—better to leave it alone and write another story.

  SKYSTALK

  Finlay's Law: Trouble comes at three a.m.

  That's always been my experience, and I've learned to dread the hand on my shoulder that shakes me to wakefulness. My dreams had been bad enough, blasting off into orbit on top of an old chemical rocket, riding the torch, up there on a couple of thousand tons of volatile explosives. I'll never understand the nerve of the old-timers, willing to sit up there on one of those monsters.

  I shuddered, forced my eyes open, and looked up at Marston's anxious face. I was already sitting up.

  "Trouble?" It was a stupid question, but you're allowed a couple of those when you first wake up.

  His voice was shaky. "There's a bomb on the Beanstalk."

  I was off the bunk, pulling on my undershirt and groping around for my shoes. Larry Marston's words pulled me bolt upright.

  "What do you mean, on the Beanstalk?"

  "That's what Velasquez told me. He won't say more until you get on the line. They're holding a coded circuit open to Earth."

  I gave up my search for shoes and went barefoot after Marston. If Arnold Velasquez were right—and I didn't see how he could be—then one of my old horrors was coming true. The Beanstalk had been designed to withstand most natural events, but sabotage was one thing that could never be fully ruled out. At any moment, we had nearly four hundred buckets climbing the Stalk and the same number going down. With the best screening in the world, with hefty rewards for information even of rumors of sabotage, there was always the small chance that something could be sneaked through on an outbound bucket. I had less worries about the buckets that went down to Earth. Sabotage from the space end had little to offer its perpetrators, and the Colonies would provide an unpleasant form of death to anyone who tried it, with no questions asked.

  Arnold Velasquez was sitting in front of his screen door at Tether Control in Quito. Next to him stood a man I recognized only from news pictures: Otto Panosky, a top aide to the President. Neither man seemed to be looking at the screen. I wondered what they were seeing on their inward eye.

  "Jack Finlay here," I said. "What's the story, Arnold?"

  There was a perceptible lag before his head came up to stare at the screen, the quarter of a second that it took the video signal to go down to Earth, then back up to synchronous orbit.

  "It's best if I read it to you, Jack," he said. At least his voice was under control, even though I could see his hands shaking as they held the paper. "The President's Office got this in over the telecopier about twenty minutes ago."

  He rubbed at the side of his face, in the nervous gesture that I had seen during most major stages of the Beanstalk's construction. "It's addressed to us, here in Sky Stalk Control. It's quite short. 'To the Head of Space Transportation Systems. A fusion bomb has been placed in one of the out-going buckets. It is of four megaton capacity, and was armed prior to placement. The secondary activation command can be given at any time by a coded radio signal. Unless terms are met by the President and World Congress on or before 02.00 U.T., seventy-two hours from now, we will give the command to explode the device. Our terms are set out in the following four paragraphs. One— ' "

  "Never mind those, Arnold." I waved my hand, impatient at the signal delay. "Just tell me one thing. Will Congress meet their demands?"

  He shook his head. "They can't. What's being asked for is preposterous in the time available. You know how much red tape there is in inter-governmental relationships."

  "You told them that?"

  "Of course. We sent out a general broadcast." He shrugged. "It was no good. We're dealing with fanatics, with madmen. I need to know what you can do at your end."

  "How much time do we have now?"

  He looked at his watch. "Seventy-one and a half hours, if they mean what they say. You understand that we have no idea which bucket might be carrying the bomb. It could have been planted there days ago, and still be on the way up."

  He was right. The buckets—there were three hundred and eighty-four of them each way—moved at a steady five kilometers a minute, up or down. That's a respectable speed, but it still took almost five days for each one of them to climb the cable of the Beanstalk out to our position in synchronous orbit.

  Then I thought a bit more, and decided he wasn't quite right.

  "It's not that vague, Arnold. You can bet the bomb wasn't placed on a bucket that started out more than two days ago. Otherwise, we could wait for it to get here and disarm it, and still be inside their deadline. It must still be fairly close to Earth, I'd guess."

  "Well, even if you're right, that deduction doesn't help us." He was chewing a pen to bits between sentences. "We don't have anything here that could be ready in time to fly out and take a look, even if it's only a couple of thousand kilometers. Even if we did, and even if we could spot the bomb, we couldn't rendezvous with a bucket on the Stalk. That's why I need to know what you can do from your end. Can you handle it from there?"

  I took a deep breath and swung my chair to face Larry Marston.

  "Larry, four megatons would vaporize a few kilometers of the main cable. How hard would it be for us to release ballast at the top end of the cable, above us here, enough to leave this station in position?"

  "Well . . ." He hesitated. "We could do that, Jack. But then we'd lose the power satellite. It's right out at the end there, by the ballast. Without it, we'd lose all the power at the station here, and all the buckets too"—there isn't enough reserve power to keep the magnetic fields going. We'd need all our spare power to keep the recycling going here."

  That was the moment when I finally came fully awake. I realized the implications of what he was saying, and was nodding before he'd finishe
d speaking. Without adequate power, we'd be looking at a very messy situation.

  "And it wouldn't only be us," I said to Velasquez and Panosky, sitting there tense in front of their screen. "Everybody on the Colonies will run low on air and water if the supply through the Stalk breaks down. Dammit, we've been warning Congress how vulnerable we are for years. All the time, there've been fewer and fewer rocket launches, and nothing but foot-dragging on getting the second Stalk started with a Kenya tether. Now you want miracles from us at short notice."

  If I sounded bitter, that's because I was bitter. Panosky was nodding his head in a conciliatory way.

  "We know, Jack. And if you can pull us through this one, I think you'll see changes in the future. But right now, we can't debate that. We have to know what you can do for us now, this minute."

  I couldn't argue with that. I swung my chair again to face Larry Marston.

  "Get Hasse and Kano over here to the Control Room as soon as you can." I turned back to Velasquez. "Give us a few minutes here, while we get organized. I'm bringing in the rest of my top engineering staff."

  * * *

  While Larry was rounding up the others, I sat back and let the full dimensions of the problem sink in. Sure, if we had to we could release the ballast at the outward end of the Stalk. If the Beanstalk below us were severed we'd have to do that, or be whipped out past the Moon like a stone from a slingshot, as the tension in the cable suddenly dropped.

  But if we did that, what would happen to the piece of the Beanstalk that was still tethered to Earth, anchored down there in Quito? There might be as much as thirty thousand kilometers of it, and as soon as the break occurred it would begin to fall. Not in a straight line. That wasn't the way that the dynamics went. It would begin to curl around the Earth, accelerating as it went, cracking into the atmosphere along the equator like a billion-ton whip stretching half-way around the planet. Forget the carrier buckets, and the superconducting cables that carried electricity down to the drive train from the solar power satellite seventy thousand kilometers above us. The piece that would do the real damage would be the central, load-bearing cable itself. It was only a couple of meters across at the bottom end, but it widened steadily as it went up. Made of bonded and doped silicon whiskers, with a tensile strength of two hundred million Newtons per square centimeter, it could handle an incredible load—almost two-thirds of a billion tons at its thinnest point. When that stored energy hit the atmosphere, there was going to be a fair amount of excitement down there on the surface. Not that we'd be watching it—the loss of the power satellite would make us look at our own survival problems; and as for the Colonies, a century of development would be ended.