The Duke of Uranium

by John Barnes

  Coming straight from Alpha Draconis, the projectiles had pounded Earth's northernmost reaches hardest; wherever the Dragon's Eye had gazed steadily, as it did north of the twenty-first parallel, pocks were strewn thick across the Earth's face. Where the Rubahy's home system had risen and set, between the north and south twenty-first parallels, the pocks thinned until there were hardly any at 21° S. Below that, Earth had sheltered her children, and Antarctica, southern Australia, and large parts of South America remained untouched, except by the terrible tsunami that had pounded the coasts of the whole planet during the Bombardment.

  Jak tried to visualize what the view must have been like from orbit, a thousand years ago when a projectile had hit every half hour or so. He remembered the recordings from school: bright flashes on the night-dark ocean, the dark silvery waves spreading out in concentric circles; brighter flashes and visible dust clouds as the projectiles tore into the land. Arriving at 99.99 percent of light speed, the little projectiles, each a sphere of quartz smaller than your fist, had blasted holes a kilometer and a half wide in the Earth's crust, the equivalent of a good-sized fusion bomb, and they had struck the Earth and the other inner worlds at a rate of about fifty a day for more than fifty years, until the system of defense devised by Ralph Smith (or had it been Julius Caesar? Jak always had trouble remembering ancient names) had put an end to the attack.

  What remained now was beautiful—all of the northern and much of the southern hemispheres were dotted with clear, shining circular lakes, and when you crossed the noon line, the ones more or less directly under you all reflected the sun back into space, forming thousands of bright dots of lights wherever you looked. From here in geosynchronous orbit, each was just barely big enough to have a distinguishable shape, like a period in tiny print.

  The biggest problem with saying good-bye is that you always want a few more minutes of it, and you never have anything to say if you suddenly get them. Jak had shaken hands with Lewo, Pabrino, and Piaro, and hugged Phrysaba any number of times; they had all said "Well" and agreed that they must keep in touch. They had all agreed that there was no good reason for any of them to come visit him in Fermi, especially since he would probably be spending his time there under house arrest. They had all agreed that if the fates delivered the Spirit of Singing Port back into free-trading, Jak would be a very welcome applicant for a company member. Phrysaba had whispered, "I'll miss you," in his ear several times, and he in hers.

  Unfortunately, the descent launch that was forever about to come by and pick him up kept getting more pickups added on the way, and getting delayed. It was now about an hour past time, so they had all done all their good-byes thoroughly with some extra good-byes thrown in.

  This was perhaps a good thing after all, because when the descent launch, a small, old thirty-seater called the Vespertilio Tartan, finally appeared, the pilot only called Jak about twenty seconds before it nosed into the construction docks and pulled up to the passenger pickup. The launch was shaped like the lid of a teapot glued to the top of a shallow bowl, with its wings already tucked for descent forming an A shape over three battered old fins. The pilot's cabin in the top cupola bore, for some inexplicable reason, the ancient "Batman" emblem. The way it scraped the airlock suggested that its pilot was inexpert, its microcontrols needed adjusting, or very likely both.

  Jak hugged Phrysaba with one arm, Piaro with the other, and contented himself with a wave to everyone else as he scrambled to get in the airlock door, towing his net bag full of luggage and his jumpie behind him. He had no sooner gotten into the Vespertilio Tartari, tied down his bags, and taken his seat, than the automatic voice announced that departure for their next pickup would be in "three-two-one-now," giving each count much less than a full second.

  A hard shove of the cold jets, resonating in the old launch like snot going down a bad drain, cleared them from the construction docks at Singing Port. The launch shook for a few moments after the jet stopped firing. Since his ticket to the surface only specified first available transport, and no one else looked worried, Jak did his best to convince himself that this really was how things always were, but he was suddenly painfully aware of the way his crewie toves used "orbital" and "short hauler" as pejoratives.

  Jak looked around. Mostly the other passengers were bored business people in coveralls with corporate logos, with a scattering of kids in their early teens trying to look bored and usually succeeding; there were three elderly passengers who were chatting loudly with each other about all the things they'd seen on their trip, and Jak gathered that they had just returned from the Big Circuit—that once-in-a-lifetime twenty-year voyage around all the major human settlements in the solar system that rich people took to celebrate their two hundredth birthday. All of them had descendants who were teenagers and who, they kept assuring each other, would be so thrilled to meet their far-voyaging adventurous ancestors, and to see all the photos, holos, vid, and viv that they had recorded. Jak imagined being one of those kids. He thought about Uncle Sib and how he had been everywhere but didn't like to talk about it. He realized how much he appreciated the old gwont.

  The only empty seat remaining was next to Jak; apparently it would be filled from somewhere else in the docks, because the little craft was maneuvering over toward other ranks of ships. At first Jak didn't speck what it must mean when the metal shape that grew large in the viewport in front of him was made up of strange, inhuman curves and angles; really, he didn't realize until the hatch opened and the Rubahy came in and sat down next to him.

  Well, after all, this would only be for an hour and a half, and they wouldn't even need to speak. Jak concentrated on the viewport, and the Rubahy made no effort to start a conversation.

  They drifted out of the shipyard bays on inertia, continuing through the huge opening with just occasional spurts and rumbles from the cold jets.

  Jak was sitting very near the nose, if you defined the nose as the part farthest from the rudder; the wallowing old Vespertilio Tartari was smoothly streamlined, as any space-to-atmosphere craft must be, but even new she hardly looked dashing or aggressive; if most launches in the intrigue-and-adventure stories Jak liked were described as "slim and deadly," then the Vespertilio Tartari would have to be described as "fat and harmless." This did, however, give her a great front window, and since it was Jak's first really good look at Earth, he was enjoying it. The reentry-surfaced belly of the launch was still pointed out into space, and they were flying backward, with the thrusters pointed toward their direction of motion. They would be for quite some time—from geosynchronous orbit, it was about a forty-five-minute flight down to the atmosphere, using the "direct drop" flight path.

  The hot jets cut in with a tremendous roar, starting the long drop, and they flashed past the shredded cablehead that had once joined Singing Port to the surface, in the pre-Bombardment days when skyhooks were practical because human beings thought they were the only species in the interstellar neighborhood. Supposedly from orbit you could still see the long straight scar, two kilometers wide and a half kilometer deep, that the cut cable had laid across the face of Africa and North America. In the first weeks of the bombardment, the cablehead on the ground had been destroyed, along with the first twenty kilometers of cable, and as Singing Port had begun to drift dangerously, the mayor had made a bold decision to drop the cable and maneuver back to geosynchronous position rather than evacuate her city. She had spoken the famous words, "Nothing will stop that cable from falling eventually. When it's us-and-them— or them—it's them," which Paj Nakasen had later accepted as Principle 38.

  It was one of the bits of history that Jak remembered vividly, because it had been one of the best scenes in No Truce with Terriers!, a terrific viv that he had played through several times before Uncle Sib had confiscated it. It had been so interesting that he had gone so far as to ask Teacher Fwidya about it, and been assured that "that or something enough like that to make no difference is what happened, or at least is widely believed to ha
ve happened." Which was as close as Fwidya ever got to saying "yes."

  Jak glanced to the side and forced himself to set aside the feeling of wrongness that was always his first reaction to the Rubahy. The bend in their legs, the short fluffy-feathered tail like a duster, the smallish floppy scent-gatherers that looked like ears, most of all the big round eyes and square jaw had all given them the name "terrier," but no one could have called them that name in any seriousness. Their coat of fine pin-feathers could be blotchy in white, black, and brown in any number of ways, some of which indicated hereditary castes; this one had the large brown spot of the warrior stretching over his right shoulder, running most of the way down his back. Confirming that, his jaws protruded slightly to make room for the extra slicers and fewer molars of that caste.

  Presently, the launch flat-spun end for end, hitting its timing singing-on according to the setback monitor. The Earth stayed in the front window, and Jak concentrated on that. He might not like Rubahy but it was rude to stare at anyone. The blue and white whorls of the Pacific passed below, and the great glaciers of Alaska; Jak tried to imagine the world during the later part of the Bombardment, when the planet froze under a pall of dust and water vapor, and thought again how little you could see from any window; after all, to look at the Hive from this distance, it would seem nothing but a big, thin-tired, spinning spoked wheel with a very thick hub. The clouds over the Pacific today were very ordinary clouds; if there had been many more of them and they had lasted a much longer time, and dropped much more snow on high elevations, the world would be utterly different, but Jak could not have perceived the difference from orbit.

  The Earth grew bigger and closer steadily; they were making a fast descent, something launches almost always had to do, being routed through literally millions of satellites, short haulers, and debris, so that the launch had to stay very close to its appointed point in its reentry track or risk the explosive results of a collision at orbital velocities.

  North America, the terminator line just reaching for its western coast, loomed huge in the window, taking up almost all of it, when Jak saw the bright flash in the ocean from somewhere just off California.

  Half a minute later, the window became pitch-black and it was too dark to see inside the cabin. A many-g force rammed him against his seat belt.

  In the darkness, shrieking people sailed over Jak's head and made a flurry of horrible thuds against the forward window.

  The darkness cleared as suddenly as it had appeared; it had been no more than two seconds all told. Jak saw the tangle of bodies along the bulkhead under the forward window; more than half the passengers had not been wearing their belts.

  Through the strangely unclear, as if dirty, window, he saw the Earth loop madly away and return from the other side—the launch was rolling and pitching.

  Jak looked up and behind him to see what the pilot was doing, and saw that the automatic emergency hatch to the pilot's cupola was sealed; beside the emergency hatch, the windows that provided a view of the outside of the cupola were dirty like the front window, but he could see clearly enough—the pilot's cupola was gone, leaving only some bits and pieces of metal like crumpled, shredded aluminum foil.

  He looked down to find he was looking into the eyes of the Rubahy warrior. "A sandgun," the Rubahy said, his voice a piercing whistle over the wails and moaning of the other passengers. He said it as calmly as if he were announcing the lunch menu. "Someone or something caused the Los Angeles sandgun to fire on us. I wonder if there's enough automatic control left to bring us to a safe landing? It would be a very good thing if there were, I do think."

  The Earth rolled by again, no more slowly than the last time. "I don't know either," Jak said, "but if the automatics are going to try to land us, I wish they'd get started."

  The Rubahy made a strange, burbling noise, like bubbles rising in a very deep metal bucket, which Jak remembered from school was supposed to be the sound of laughter. "Just so," he said, "just so. Well, if it happens it will be good, and if not, I am in the company of a fine humorist, one with such a kidney of quartz that I must say I am certain I am in company honorable enough to die in, so there is not a thing to worry about."

  The Earth crossed the window again; now they were looking down into night over North America. Jak wished he could be quite that sure that there was nothing to worry about.

  The Rubahy made the bucket-bubble noise again, harder this time. "I must remember that to tell my friends, if I should survive. 'I wish they'd get started.'" He continued to make the laugh-noise off and on as the Earth rolled past the window again and again; all around, other passengers wept and prayed.

  "You see what happens when you don't wear your seat belt?" a bored voice said.

  Chapter 8

  Thank You for the Honor of Your Company

  l'titer a long instant, during which there was an audible hum from the speakers in the cabin, a voice said, "Please, everyone, make sure you are belted in. High-acceleration maneuvers are about to begin, in seconds ten nine eight…"

  Jak realized after an instant that the voice was not really bored—it was merely the mechanical voice of the ship's automatic recovery system, and doubtless it had been programmed to issue reminders about safety precautions, but not to have any judgment about human context. Still, he had to admit, he was making sure his belts were snug, looking at the heap of shattered bodies along the forward bulkhead. Mostly they seemed to be in business coveralls—probably frequent travelers who had heard all the announcements one too many times and didn't see any reason to bother with administrative nonsense anymore.

  The acceleration was abrupt and severe; in a series of bursts, the launch whipped around to get headed down into the atmosphere at as steep an attitude of attack as it could stand. Probably, Jak thought, its priorities were simply to get everyone safely to the ground as soon as possible, and let all the niceties sort out later. The view through the front window was once again nothing but the black of space. Jak's chair rotated under him to support his back directly against the acceleration, and the terrible force became greater and greater until the dark ring began to close around his vision and he felt himself drifting away; the glare on the window blacked out the stars, so that it might as well have been a painted black wall.

  Through the center of the dark ring, where he still had some perception, he became aware of glaring flames dancing across the window; they must be coming into the middle part of the reentry. Or since he'd never been here before, was it just "entry"? He felt like the question was a very interesting one to consider in the abstract but he couldn't seem to give it the emotional focus it demanded.

  The crushing acceleration lessened, and he drew big gasps of air, unaware until that moment that he had been having trouble breathing. The flames across the front window vanished. The sky was now a very deep blue. They had made it through what was supposed to be the worst part—though given how badly damaged the launch was, that could be no more than a guess.

  The sky gradually lightened. The launch fired cold jets a couple of times, coming around to flying nose forward rather than falling belly forward. The Earth below still showed a distinct curvature, but far off in the distance; as Jak watched, the glaring white glaciers of Europe and the deep green of Africa rolled up into his field of vision.

  They were still far above the Earth, streaking along at many times the speed of sound, but nowhere near the orbital velocity and altitude they'd begun with; if they weren't safe yet, they were at least safer.

  The sky became the bright blue that Jak had seen in pictures, and the Earth lost its curvature, and still they raced on. Horrible as the accident had been—or was it an accident? Jak had never heard of a sandgun firing by accident; they were part of the old defense system for Earth, put in back during the Bombardment, left in place ever since in case of war or attack, but he couldn't imagine that they fired automatically often, surely not into the busiest space in the solar system.

  The launch was now ra
cing in from the sea to cross the northwest coast of Africa, and Jak could see the whole landscape dotted with pocks; the Bombardment-induced changes in the weather had poured water upon the old Sahara, and the nightland below Jak was dark and lush with plant life, spattered everywhere with little, almost perfectly circular lakes, each with its ring of ejecta, a few with peaked central islands or a ring of islands parallel to their shores, and with dark quarter-moon circles formed by crater walls. They lay in the bright light from the moon and from the belt of equatorial orbiting cities, shining like silver. If he hadn't known what they were or how they got there, Jak might have found them breath-takingly beautiful; he glanced sideways at the Rubahy, whose expression never changed because they don't have expressions.

  "My ancestors have much to answer for," the Rubahy said, as if reading Jak's thoughts, "and yet for all the suf-fering it involved, this part of your world has become very beautiful."

  "I've never been here before," Jak said, "and it is singing-on beautiful."

  After all, he reflected, the Rubahy homeworld was a sterile nightmare that they were still waiting to re-gaiatize, because of what Jak's species had done to it. Not for lack of trying, but the Rubahy had left humanity in considerably better shape than we had left the Rubahy. And besides, the night landscape of white and blue mirrors of the circular lakes and the deep blue-green of the forests, cut by big lighted roads and dotted with towns and buildings, was very beautiful, even if it was not the desert that had been here before.

  The wing deployment began with a creak and a smash, but given how old the Vespertilio Tartan was, for all Jak knew that was normal. The wings gripped air for a moment, and Jak felt the craft bank, a sensation he'd read about and seen pictures of all his life, but had never actually felt before. He felt the strangeness of a full g pulling down and a half g pulling sideways as if the launch had tilted on its side, but the front window showed him the world at the wrong angle; it was disorienting and sickening, though he knew Earth people would think of this as ordinary, normal flying.