The Duke of Uranium

by John Barnes

  A shudder ran through the launch, amplifying in seconds to violent shaking and deafening thunder. From the screams of the passengers around him, Jak knew that this couldn't be a normal landing.

  The noise stopped abruptly with a low boom, and the launch flipped over on its back, continuing into a roll that became a spiraling dive. The Rubahy looked up and said, "Hmm. This does look worse. We've lost a wing. Perhaps I shall have to comfort myself with your honorable company after all; I wonder if this craft is maneu-verable at all with just one wing."

  As if to answer his questions, there was a sharp bang and the cold jets came on, yanking the launch out of its spiral and turning it belly first into the line of its fall again. They were so low, now, probably not even twenty kilometers up, that Jak could still see a little horizon through the front window, a deep black streak, menacing and cold, below the safe, friendly stars. Earth reached up with her brutal gravity to pull them into a deadly hug; the cold jets pushed them forward, sputtering and whooshing out the last of the propellant.

  "Well, the machinery seems to think we can soft-land," the Rubahy said. "It's trying to get a little extra lift."

  The cold jets farted to a stop, leaving them with no sound but the praying of a passenger, in the front row, two seats ahead of Jak, who was running through the Short Litany of Terror, a traditional subset of the Principles of the Wager used when in fear of death.

  " '144: Death happens, anyway,'" he chanted. "Therefore '062: Since it doesn't change anything, go ahead and fear death if it makes you feel better,' because '009: Fear is an excellent way to pass the time when there's nothing else you can do,' but remember that '171: Courage is fear without consequences.'" The man, whoever he was, drew a deep shaking breath and began again, "'144: Death happens, anyway,' therefore '062

  Other passengers took up the chant, following him in it; Jak wanted to, but now, as he watched the dark horizon crawling up the sky, wiping the moon and the orbital cities and the stars and every other familiar and comfortable thing from his view, he realized that he had never really dakked the Wager at all. He looked around and the only other person not chanting was the Rubahy. Their eyes met.

  "I guess there wasn't enough in the cold jet tanks to back us all the way down," Jak said.

  "More likely the robot is saving a little for last-second maneuvers, to spin us around and try to brake down on whatever is left of the hot jets," the Rubahy said. "It will have to do that—if it can—just before we land. At least if I were flying such a miserable old ship, so badly damaged, that's what I'd try. So the robot's behavior is consistent with rationality, which is quite comforting in the circumstances."

  The chanting grew louder and Jak saw that the black horizon had now crawled up to halfway across the window.

  "One thing does worry me a bit," the Rubahy went on.

  To Jak's amusement, he found himself laughing. "Well, I'm glad that you're able to be worried."

  The Rubahy made that weird gargling sound, and Jak realized that they were sharing a joke like two toves. Being a few seconds from a wreck certainly did strange things to your mind.

  The whistling scream of air past the torn metal protruding from the launch almost drowned out the loud recitation of the Short Litany of Terror, so it was hard to hear. The Rubahy leaned over and said, loudly, in Jak's ear, "I don't know if the robot can actually do the job. It has a very long reaction time—probably they stinted it on memory and it takes far too long to think of what to do next. So if we are lucky, and it's smart enough, it's calculating the singing-on moment to spin us and turn on the hot jets, to try for an on-the-tail landing. It may just not be smart enough or fast enough, and of course if we're out of fuel for the hot jets, we're on entropy's bad side."

  "What do you think our chances are?" Jak shouted.

  "If the robot can do it, and there's enough fuel in the tanks, fifty percent. Otherwise, one percent."

  Jak was beginning to wish that he could bring himself to chant with the others, or at least to believe that if he did it would help, but that didn't seem to be part of his makeup, so he just watched the window as the dark Earth ate more and more of the night sky. They seemed to be leveling off, a little; perhaps they were moving fast enough so that the keel got more lift, or perhaps Jak's hopes were fooling him. At any rate, it now felt more like an uncomfortable full gravity and less like high acceleration, and that was a slight improvement.

  The sky dwindled to a small upper part of the window. Now Jak could see individual hills and clumps of trees that dotted the grassland. They streaked over a herd of animals who were wandering across the plain, on their way to some purpose that made sense to them, and despite the feeling that he would be dead in a moment—or because of it—Jak was glad, just once, to have seen so many animals all out wandering free.

  At just the point where Jak had decided that either the robot was too slow, or there was no fuel for the hot jets, or both, the cold jets spewed a stream of white vapor across the view, the launch whirled 180 degrees, and the hot jets cut in at full power. An instant later, the pile of corpses by the forward bulkhead flew back down the cabin, caroming over the seats to smash against the aft bulkhead. Jak had just time to bend forward and hug his knees when he saw a corporate type, coverall still impeccable and briefcase still clutched in his dead hand, but with his slightly dented head hanging at an unworkable angle, fly from the forward bulkhead. One dragging shoe ticked the seat in front of Jak and scraped his bent back, stinging.

  Sounding exactly as bored, in exactly the same way as it had before, the robot pilot said, "You see what happens when you don't wear your seat belt?"

  The hot jets roared against their direction of flight, pushing back against Mother Earth as she tried to crush them to her breast, and the thunder seemed to go on forever, though it could not have been as much as a minute. The Rubahy shouted to Jak, "This is all very well done by the robot! His designers should be proud! If it is possible for us to survive, the robot will see that we do! If not, thank you for the honor of your company!"

  "And thank you for the honor of yours!" Jak shouted. In all the intrigue-and-adventure stories that he had been gobbling down ever since he could remember, they had always said that only when you faced death did you find out what sort of person you really were. Apparently, what I really am is really polite. Even to a terrier. Though he is about the only person around here not behaving like a gweetz.

  The chanting continued, unable to match the full-on blasting of the hot jets for volume, but making up for it with pure intense passion.

  With a loud thump and one last hard shove at their backs, the hot jets cut out. Jak had just an instant to hear the wild unison shout of "—an excellent way to pass the time—" before the loud smash and grind of impact; acceleration must have been high enough for him to black out because he recalled nothing more of the crash after that.

  Jak returned to consciousness as if he were swimming up from deep, cold water that became warmer as he rose; then as if imperceptibly the warm water became a fog through which he flew; then finally as if a veil fell away from the world. When his eyes opened, he saw a white-haired man who might be a hundred or so, and a plain-faced, muscular young woman, perhaps five years older than himself, bending over him. "He's back with us," the young woman said. "Probably just blacked out from the acceleration; from the way the cabin whipped around, I bet he took the worst of it."

  "From the way my head feels, I bet you're right," Jak said. It felt as if he were talking over a long radio connection to someone a few seconds' lag away. He sat up very slowly and looked around.

  About a half kilometer to his right, the launch lay burning, lighting up the trees near it with a wobbly orange glow whenever the inky smoke blew out of the way.

  "As far as we can tell, we're the survivors," the older man explained. "All the people in the first three rows. We landed flying backward, and the crash rammed the engines up into the passenger compartment, to just behind where you and the terrier were
sitting; everyone sitting further back than you were was torn to pieces or crushed."

  Two more faces joined the circle; a much older, badly overweight man, and the Rubahy. "I am glad that you are alive," the Rubahy said. "I sat apart till you awoke because I did not want you to wake up and see me; I can tell my appearance disturbs you."

  "Thank you," Jak said, feeling absurd, but trying to go along with the Rubahy's formal, courteous way of speaking, "and the fault is entirely mine. No doubt I'll become used to your appearance soon."

  The woman said, "He carried you out here; me and the preacher dragged this heet." She nodded at the older, heavy man.

  "And I appreciate it," the older man said. "So everyone who could be gotten at, and was in a seat, got out. I take it we were all traveling alone and we don't need to go back and search for any friends or loved ones?"

  They all looked at each other.

  The one that the woman had said was a preacher took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. " 'Principle 112: It is human to love some neighbors more than others and few more than yourself.' Or in other, shorter words, I don't think we need to."

  There was a burst of light as one of the trees by the burning launch went up. "I'm surprised there was no explosion," the old fat one said.

  "Nothing to cause it," the Rubahy said. "Cold jet fuel doesn't burn and all the hot jet fuel was used up trying for a soft landing. Probably the only things burning there are some of the cabin furnishings and the luggage."

  "Well, now we know," the older man said, and sighed. "The moon's mostly full and it's all the way down to the horizon, so dawn is coming soon, right?"

  Everyone shrugged and looked at him. "I speck you're the only one here from a planetary surface," Jak said.

  "Well, I'm sure I'm right. Sun should be up soon. And the moon is setting, so that means that the direction away from it is east, so I'm going to start walking in that direction."

  "Why not just wait for the rescue copters? They should be here in an hour or two, I would think," the woman said, reasonably.

  "Because we might have guests before they get here, or the rescue copters might not be rescue copters," the older man said, getting to his feet and dusting off his tunic. "My name is Alo Fairrara, and you probably have never heard of me unless you stay up with the financial news, but if you do, then I probably don't have to explain any more." He looked around expectantly. Apparently none of them read the financial news. "Okay, I'll stop being coy. I'm going to walk to somewhere so that I don't return home by a too-predictable route, and so that I can get my own security people to pick me up. If someone deliberately set off the sandgun, I think I'm very possibly what they were aiming for. There's a seven-hundred-gigautil deal that could happen if I wasn't there to block it—and I have a real good reason to block it—so I have a feeling somebody decided to simplify the investment environment."

  "Fascinating," the Rubahy said. Jak was getting used to the whistle in his voice. "My name is Shadow on the Frost—most humans seem to prefer to call me Shadow, which is fine with me—and I had been about to say that I am on the outs with my blade-sworn sister-cousin, and that this was just the sort of crude thing I would have expected of her oath-bound children, who might show up any minute, and since from such a quarrel I can retreat without loss of honor, and I do have an important message to deliver to our embassy in Fermi, I am honor-bound to try to live and therefore not to give them too easy an opportunity to kill me. I was about to say that I was going to walk, myself."

  Jak laughed, and sketched out his own situation in a few sentences, giving the primary cover story immediately. "And I would suppose the Duke of Uranium would have more than enough resources to have me eliminated, and if I were dead, he'd get an extra couple of months at least before he had to talk to any envoy from Green-world—and the main thing he needs is time. So it might be me that the attack was aimed at. I hadn't gotten as far as specking it all the way, but if it's possible that someone is trying to kill me—and I guess it is—then by the same logic, I should be trying to walk away from the wreck, too."

  The woman smiled and said, "None of you watches women's slamball, do you?"

  They all shook their heads, embarrassed.

  "Well, I'm Vara Cathana, and I'm the goalie for the Borneo Molybdenum Tigers, which is expected to be first or second in the league next year, and the season bets—the ones where you bet on the team's total record—just went down; the window closed as of nine hours ago. So if someone had enough bets down on Pepsi-Lockheed or on Brazil National, and BMT were to be suddenly out of it… they could make a pile. There were four gambling-related player assassinations last year, so I'm not just being paranoid. So, skipping all the familiar steps in the logic, it sounds to me like we're starting a walking party."

  They all turned to look at the thinner of the older men, expectantly; he shook his head and said, "I'll be very happy to walk with you all, for the company, and because as a spiritual leader it's my job to be there to comfort and assist you spiritually after this traumatic experience, and of course if any of you is targeted, as any of you might be, it would be good to have you properly prepared in case the, um, eventually unavoidable should happen. Just in case. But all I am is a teacher of the orthodox version of the Wager—that is, the version taught on the Hive, which is of course the center of the Wager—just down here on Earth to give a few lectures at several conferences while my wife sees the sights, you know—and I don't have an enemy on the planet. Or any other planet. Or anywhere else. But I shall be happy to walk with you."

  "What's your name, preach?" Alo asked.

  "Paj Priuleter. Actually I was born Rif Priuleter, but after ten years of preaching, as an honor for my record of perfect orthodoxy, I was given the name—"

  "You can tell us while we walk," Vara suggested, and got up and headed east; everyone immediately fell in behind her, the preacher trailing along last.

  After half an hour of walking, Jak began to question the wisdom of the djeste. He was getting to know what the surface of a planet was like, and the answer, for this particular part of this planet, was "rough." On the Spirit of Singing Port, he had diligently alternated days walking a simulated five miles and running a simulated two miles in full gravity, trying to ensure that he would be fully mobile on Earth. It had seemed like endless hours of work, but as preparations for this, it had been far too light. The treadmill surface had been just the right combination of smooth and sticky so that he neither bumped his feet against anything nor slid for a single instant. The motion of the treadmill had told him at what pace to keep walking. And though for the last twenty days or so he had always made his workouts continuous, he had always known that whenever he wanted, he was just seconds away from a hot bath, a cold drink, and the comfort of microgravity.

  Here, he was stumbling along in the predawn cool, tripping and slipping continually, and his only choices were more of the same or to sit down in completely unknown country. He was wondering, too, about all the things that showed up in intrigue-and-adventure novels; in school they had said that the Sahara had restablized, postBombardment, as a mix of grassland, scrubland, and forest, and that all sorts of animals were moving into it, their populations exploding in all the open country, but he had no idea what animals… tigers? cobras? if he saw an elephant, would it be dangerous and what should he do about it if it was? He was beginning to realize that although there was probably some useful information somewhere or other in the intrigue-and-adventure stories that he loved, he had never paid any attention to it. In the stories, the hero just knew things; it was part of his job; perhaps Jak should have paid more attention to whatever it was you were supposed to know.

  Oh, well, it was as useless as wishing that he'd paid attention to Uncle Sib; really you just couldn't. If he had paid attention to the information in the stories, he'd have found the stories boring, and not read them.

  Eventually, they settled into a pattern of Vara walking on point, Shadow and Jak walking side by side at the
rear, with the two older men in the middle, with everyone two or three meters apart. At least the way they were proceeding, Jak thought, if Vara steps on a deadly stone-fish and dies of poisoning before our eyes, like in African Maelstrom, it will be her and not me. Except that it probably wasn't going to be a stonefish or any kind of fish… those were aquatic… maybe some kind of snake?

  The way his luck was going, they'd be set on by a pack of wildebeests and all eaten, anyway.

  As the moon sank into the distant horizon, everyone found more interesting ways for rocks, clumps of grass, and bits of fallen tree to grab their feet, so that they all stumbled along as if they were drunk or exhausted. Every so often Paj Pruileter would helpfully remind them that Principle 155 said that "If you stumble often, watch your feet and look for patient friends," and that Principle 138 was "Mistakes in an unfamiliar environment are still mistakes and no discount is awarded." After he had been reminded of each principle three times, Jak said, very quietly, "I really liked it better when he was reciting the Short Litany of terror, and I'm starting to have an idea about how to get him to go back to it."

  Even more expressionless than usual, in the dim light, the Rubahy beside him asked, "That's human humor, isn't it? You're expressing a purely ironic intention, not one you intend to carry out?"

  "Yeah, Shadow, that's right."

  "I thought so. Pity."

  It was darker for the few minutes after the moon set, when the light mainly came from the dozen or so orbiting cities above the horizon, but Jak could still see. He had specked that the strange little knobs that popped up and whistled and went away into recesses again were little animals going in and out of holes; perhaps they were what was drawing the attention of the big winged creatures circling above the little party.

  Jak kept thinking about a more immediate question; he hated to second-guess leadership. After all, Principle 88 was "Ostentatiously obey, and quietly disobey, anyone with power." Nonetheless, as they came to the top of a ridge, and he looked back to see that the wreck was still in sight and still burning, he specked that they could have covered no more than three kilometers so far, and they had been at this more than an hour.