Not blinked his rheumy brown eyes, stroked his scraggly, greying beard as he thought back to that nasty day. He shook his head sadly at the memory—and instantly knew to call the headshake mistake as his head tried to snap itself off.
Double dose of damitol, the one time this year the head honcho declared a compulsory bender, and Notworthit hadda be on duty next A.M. No justice. And just no ice for the drinks last night, either. Nor now not much he could do about the headbanging throb in his noggin nohow. No one was getting any breaks. The hole car come-go team had been slogging twenty-four-hours-plus everydamn day, humping all this freight, trying to get it packed into anywhichwhere.
Irony slap, this permod wuz. Only reazon, wayback, that he had took thiz job wuz so’s he woodn’t hafta deal with people alltime. Also course cuz Earth never sent no freight nohow, so the workload didn’t make ya explode. Till now. More freight in last three daze than in the five years since the Charos did the Earthsnatch.
Never wooda signuped if heed knowed it half meant having to crack open cans with people in ’em. The smell alone was enough to drive a soul bendround. Plus besides—three daze inna can? Can’t be good. Would be enough to flip Notworthit’s brain, and even Not knew Not didn’t have all that much to flip in the first place. Stood to reazon big brain would git more scrambled than a leetle one.
Plain fact wuz he not much wanted to deal with whooever whazzin the permod. Unpurple flipped-out bigbrain offhabber who wuz gonna smell like last year’s recycle bin? Nohow.
Cept a job wuz a job, and Not knew the honcho would land like tunnabricks if he caught Not not doing.
Totally no justice putting him on thiz gig. No justice—just ice. Whatever that meant. Yeah. It sounded good, and that was all that really mattered.
Vaguely mollified by this sentiment for some reason, Not set to work opening up the permod. He checked the exterior read-outs. All scanned as cool on the inward side. He checked the seals, poppled the safeties, and braced himself for the smell as he undid the final latches.
The lid popped open and swung up about a centimeter or so, and the permod’s air whooshed out into the OpCent. The smell warn’t no better than Not’d figured it’d be, and then some. But that didn’t even register fullways on him. Something else was dawning on him, the thing what weren’t thar—noise. No hullbanging or muffle-shouts before he popped the hatch, and still no noiz now. Chick inside shoulda been cheering to get out, or cursing Not’s head for taking so slow, or some such. Somewhat alarmed, he got his hands under the lid and pulled it open. It swung away easily, up and over.
Not felt another kind of knot in his stomach as he looked inside the mod. There she was, the lettlest slip of a thing, lying still, so still. There was blood spattered all over the permod interior, and on her face. Her hair was a tangled, wadded mess, her clothes along ago sweated through.
At first, Canpopper Notworthit thought she was dead, that the trip had killed her. But no. There. Her chest was rising, falling. Her eyelids fluttered. She was alive, at least sumwut.
Well, wut wuz wrong with her? Unconscious? Sick? Comatose? No—leastwise, didn’t look like none of thoz. Just asleep, looked like.
Pretty lady, she wuz, even under alltha grime and stuff. Canpopper Notworthit at least knew he had no right to carp about someone else being a bit on the dirty side.
“Heavy dozer,” he muttered to himself in admiring tones. The first half of his name was derived from his job, but Canpopper Notworthit had earned the second half by being sure nothing was ever worth the effort required. He was, however, a big admirer of sleep, with real respect for anyone who knew how to do it right. And this chick knew, for sure.
Help. Get her some help. That wuz thing todo. No. Waitasec. Not get. Give. For wunz in life, do tha thing self, notdoa handoff.
Not knelt down by the permod, looked over the plumbing connections, and undid them with a minimum of fumbling. He shifted his weight, got his arms under her, and lifted her up. He turned and started carrying her toward the medfixer, moving carefully in the microgee of the Boredway, down the closest gangway to the docshop.
Even down in the hi-gee decks, she didn’t weight hardly nothing at all, nohow.
Windbag Central (Command Center) NaPurHab
Eyeballer Maximus Lock-on had the fear sweats, and no surprise. There was trouble abubble, no doubt. There was a perfect torrent of cargo headed toward the hab, and every can of it carried a little bit of trouble.
Prob was simple. Every arriving cargo that was incoming at more than zero speed—which was all of them, of course—gave the hab a leetle goose. To put it a bit more formally, every arriving cargo unit added a microscropic velocity vector to the hab. Plus, were lots of cargo craft arriving, all from about the same direction, which meant that there were a lot of microvectors coming in and adding up. Plusmore, each time the Ghoul Mods tweaked the grav systems on the Moonpoint Ring, that perturbed the hab’s orbit as well. Norm-time, such tiny perturbs wouldn’t matter—but no such thing as minor orbital perturbs this close to a singularity.
Sooner or later, Eyeball knew she was gonna hafta light the maneuvering engines on this mother and tidy up the hab’s orbit—if she could. She had a nasty feeling that the cargo teams were not making her job easier. Couldn’t light the engine with unsecured cargo floating allways about.
Eyeball decided to head on down to cargo and get a peek for herself, live up to her name. There wasn’t much she could do about the SCOREs just now, and the hab orbit wouldn’t destabilize for a while yet.
She powered down her station, got up, and moved out into the labyrinthine, and rather grotty, corridors of the hab. Put plain, the place wasn’t looking so good these days—and the hab expecting guests, too. Those eggheads from MRI, coming in on permods. Strange thought, that: the idea they should spruce up because company was coming. Was that one of the pointless counteract instincts the Pointless Cause was supposed to whack out of the Purpfolk? Or was it a good thing, a “Troo Way,” however the term was being spelled this week? The bigshot Purpthinkers were forever pronouncing contradictory Noo Ways and Troo Ways. What was part of firm and unswerving policy last week was out the window next. That wuz the Purpthinkers job—to keep the rules changing so’s no one got too comfortable. It was hard to keep up, and that wuz the idea. Keep you on edge, alert, awake, thinking.
Eyeball threaded her way along the mazeways, the rat’s nest of corridors and detours and vertical ways that made up the hab. Somewhere underneath the dark, Purple-built squatter’s boxes and pseudo-art and dayclubs was the straight-out, linear, geometric corridors and passages laid out by the original architect of the hab. Prob if they cleared away all the Purpbuilt add-ons it would take half as long to get anywhere, and there would be more room in the place to boot. But no, that would spoil everything. Efficiency was not the be-all and end-all. People did not join the Purple so’s they could do things the sensible way.
Eyeball spotted someone—closer to something, maybe—coming her way. It took her a moment, but then she had it locked: Canpopper Notworthit, repped as one of heaviest goofers on the whole damn can. You wanted a job not done, you sent the Popper to do it. A very popular fellow during official work stoppages. But the Popper was carrying something, something big and heavy, an event about as common as nudists wearing tuxedoes to bed. Whatthehey was he up to?
Eyeball moved toward Canpopper and realized he was carrying a who, not a what—and a who that was in no good shape. Eyeball hurried down the corridor. “Jeeks, Pop. Who-the-hell?” she asked. Young kid, a pretty girl in a bad way.
“Outta a can,” Popper replied, looking down on his burden. “One of the science jaspers up from Earth. Just a baby, huh?”
“Just a baby for sure,” Eyeball agreed. “Where to?”
“Nearmost docshop,” Popper said. “I think she’s core okay, just burned out. Gonna make sure.”
Eyeball reached out, touched the young one’s face. This was whut the Earthside eggheads sent? Was that a real special br
ain in there or was she just a lamb to the slaughter? Her skin was warm, felt okay, not cold clammy or burning. Eyeball moved her hand down, found a strong pulse under her jaw. Maybe would be okay. But nothing she could do doc couldn’t do better. Her job was getting the cargo untangled, else they all in bad shape. “Get her down pronto to doc,” Eyeball said. “Good way, Popper.”
“On it, Eyeball,” Canpopper said, and went on his way.
Eyeball watched him go, and then recommenced toward Boredway. She walked through the zones and turfs and operations sections and rand centers, her mind much more on cargo handling than her route. She knew this part of the hab by heart. She could still get lost in the Downways zone, or Old High Bagdad, but then why would she ever wanna go those place? She went through Looparound, took the shortcut across Doubleback turf, up three levels to get around the blockage caused by the Funway, through hydroponics control, past two or three childcare bars, and then up the accessway to the low-gee and no-gee sections at the axis of the ship.
Eyeball came out onto Boredway, the huge long-axis passageway that would have been called Broadway on any other ship, an enormous, enclosed cylindrical space that ran the whole length of the hab. It was a bright, gleaming place, very much in contrast to most of the hab. Even the Purps knew to keep this sector nice and tidy and clean and linear, if they wanted to stay alive. A wise Purp knew there were limits to chaos, just as there were limits to order. And there had best be no chaos at all hereabouts.
Back before the Purps has started rerouting corridors into more aesthetically pleasing forms, you could get to any point on the hab just by taking a vertical passageway to Broadway, moving to the vertiway nearest your destination, and heading back down. Too simple. Too easy. Too boring, and hence the name.
But still and all, Boredway was a pretty exciting locale just at the moment. All the conveyors and tow-ways were crammed with containers moving this way and that as the cargo jockeys struggled to get everything to where it belonged, and any number of cargo-container clusters were just floating free, tethered in most haphazard fashion and hanging in mid-air until someone thought of what to do with them.
Eyeball shook her head worriedly. She had been sweating this possibility. There was no way she could do any sort of course-correction burn until all the unsecured cargo was lashed down properly and stored in such a way as to retain the hab’s center of gravity somewhere within shouting distance of its centerline.
The hab’s cargo crews hadn’t ever had to handle this much in the way of incoming gear and supplies, even back in the unweird old daze before the Abduction. Cargo ops had been down to skeleton crews for years—and those skeleton crews hadn’t been worth much. There had been near no inbound traffic and total no outbound traf whasoev for years. Meantime, allthetime, bigtime great deal of work needed doing elsewhere in the hab if the place was to hang in there. Lotsa Purps had turned into big swinging engineers the last few years, improvising their way outta a zillion shortages and hardware drop-deads.
With so little demand here, and so much otherplace, twas understandable in the circs that cargo ops had become a haven for the real dreggers of Purple society—and Purple dregs were about as dreggy as they came, yabbos what barely came up to the min standards for being losers. Now the Maximum Windbag was staffing the cargo ops teams any way he could, yanking in teams from every other part of the station who didn’t know a thing about cargo. The Maxbag had been forced to find retired cargo oldfogies, put the oldfarts in charge to keep things running. But plain to scope, oldies weren’t whipping the losers into shape.
Eyeball swore to herself and moved along against the stream of cargo, toward the aft-end air lock complex. Time to bust some heads if she didn’t want the hab busting up when she lit the engines.
Multisystem Research Institute
New York City
EARTH
CORE destroyed, Ursula Gruber read. Probability of renewed attacks high, probability of surviving same low. Ursula shook her head. Captain Steiger was not much for excessive optimism. The woman won a great victory, and yet her report states she expects to be defeated next time.
Steiger was only partly right. A lot of COREs were still out there, but now people knew they were vulnerable, that they could he killed. The Terra Nova had taught Earth that its enemies were not utterly invincible. That knowledge would give people some backbone. Battles are not won by people who are certain they will lose.
Of course, a whole Multisystem full of high morale was not going to be much use against a CORE that managed to dodge the exploding decoys and kill the TN. The Terra Nova would have to win every time in order to survive. The odds against that were long, to put it mildly. For that matter, hope would not be much use against a Breeding Binge, should such occur. Ursula was more and more convinced that there would be no Binge—but try telling that to anyone. Word had gotten out, of course, and every imaginable official and private preparation was being made. Troops were being called up, attack forces prepared. People were getting instructions on shelters and evacuation. Of course, any number of end-of-the-world groups were springing up, and a few of the Sphere-worship cults had gotten into trouble. Suicides were up sharply—but so were marriages.
But all of it for nothing. There would be no Breeding Binge—at least not now. The SCOREs did not make sense as Breeders, and they were heading for the Moonpoint Ring, not Earth. But who the devil would believe that it was a false alarm, when Gruber could offer no plausible alternative?
Never mind. People would learn soon enough. But Terra Nova and NaPurHab were, as Captain Steiger knew, the ones up against the real long odds.
All right then. It was time to change the odds. But how? Ursula stood up and walked to the window, looked down at the absurd, underground, inward-looking bubble-in-the-stone headquarters of MRI. She slipped open the window and leaned out into the air-conditioned simulated fresh air. The ducks were on the pond, the drake flapping his wings, rearing up out of the water. She could hear his quacking from here, faint in the distance, announcing to all the world that he ruled this patch of water against all comers. As if he had built the cavern, and commanded the humans to come down to the water and bring stale buns to his flock.
Compared to how much say humans had in the running of the Multisystem, it didn’t seem quite so absurd. But if the drake failed in caring for his flock, only the ducks would die. If the humans failed, then all the Earth would suffer.
Steiger was right. The odds against her ship were high and getting higher. There was no hope—and no point—in the Terra Nova battling endlessly against COREs. That was playing the Charonian’s game, playing to their strengths.
So what game could mere human beings play, and beat the Charonians at?
Ursula had the feeling the answers were just out of reach, just beyond the questions she was asking. Something else had to happen before she would understand.
The SCOREs. That had to be it. They weren’t going to do what everyone expected them to do. She was sure of that now. She had not the slightest idea what they were going to do instead—but when she did, it would be time to change the game.
Kourou Spaceport
Earth
Joanne Beadle—and every other person in the ops center—watched as SCORE X001 made its closest approach to the Moonpoint Ring.
The Charonians had never bothered with closest-approach gravity-well maneuvers, but if the SCOREs were indeed headed for Earth, they would have to make their moves there. Whatever they were going to do, closest approach was the moment to do it.
X001 was the vanguard SCORE, the first to arrive. The betting was that whatever it did, the follow-on SCOREs would imitate. And whatever it was going to do, it was going to do now. It could do almost anything by maneuvering at peripoint—but which way would it jump?
“What’s it doing, Beadle?” Bernhardt demanded, leaning over his chair, as if Beadle had some special knowledge, could see something in the display screen that Bernhardt could not.
“I
can’t quite say,” she replied, her mind far more on the display tank than on the director’s question. “There’s no way to guess. This one is no simulation.”
“Yah,” Bernhardt agreed. “We’re through with those for a while, thank the heavens. I was beginning to forget things could be real.”
Joanne didn’t see how it could be a good thing that the alien craft approaching Earth were real. It would have suited her just fine if the whole fleet of them were imaginary. Still, there was something to be said for getting on with it all.
She stared at the screen, tense, waiting.
It would, of course, have been sheerest folly to try and read a human craft’s intent from this range. The distances were too great. Even the fastest of human vehicles would be moving too slowly for a course change to be observable at this distance.
But not the Charonians. They could accelerate at hundreds of gees if it suited them.
She leaned closer to the screen, willing it to give up the secrets. “Peripoint in ten seconds,” she announced, quite needlessly. “In five. Four. Three. Two. One—”
And then X00l’s flight path snapped neatly around in a perfect ninety-degree turn—and set itself on an arrow-straight course straight for the Moonpoint Black Hole.
“What the devil is that?” Bernhardt demanded. “Why is it doing this thing? Beadle—time to impact on black hole, if you please.”
“Ah, ah, yes sir. Stand by. Just a moment.” What the hell was that thing doing aiming direct for the black hole? It was the one possibility they hadn’t considered. Well, why should they have? Why consider the possibility of the SCOREs traveling tens of millions of kilometers just to commit a highly energetic form of suicide? Unless… unless… Yes, it made sense. Beadle ran the numbers on time to impact—they would be the same no matter what happened. But if she was right—
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