by Mark Wandrey
“The kid is sneaky,” Doc said. “Come on, you’ll want to see this.” She looked suspiciously at the hand the man held out but took it anyway. Terry took her other hand, and they led her upstairs to one of the Tri-V galleries.
“I thought these didn’t work for us,” she said.
“Come on,” Terry urged her. The look of suspicion changed to confusion as they walked into the entry area. Terry took a computer chip from his pocket and slid it into the kiosk. It beeped, and a price of 25 credits popped up. He inserted the money, and the doors opened.
“You may enter,” a voice said in English. “Welcome, Madison Clark.”
She looked at Terry in open-mouthed astonishment as they walked in. The floor felt slightly bumpy, but only a little. The lighting was dim, just enough to see there were walls a few dozen meters away, and the room was circular, with a domed ceiling as far away as the walls. “What’s going to...woah!” She stopped as the light disappeared, and a complex maze of three-dimensional grids appeared. It almost instantly resolved into Kapukahehu Beach at sunrise. She gasped.
“Happy birthday, Mom,” Terry whispered.
“Oh, my God,” she said. The air was filled with the sound of Pacific Ocean waves lapping up a few meters away. Seagulls cried their mournful wails. There was a hint of salt in the air, and a breeze suddenly wafted across them. Somewhere down the beach, a dog barked and ran into the surf after a frisbee. Terry realized she was crying.
“Mom, are you okay?”
She turned to face him, and despite the tears, she looked as happy as he’d seen her in months. “I’m fine,” she sobbed, and then grabbed him in a rib-creaking hug. “How?”
“Your incredibly brilliant son,” Doc said. She gestured him over, and he joined the hug.
Terry sighed himself. It felt right.
After a minute, she let them go and turned around. The cliffs behind them were full of the same expensive houses as before. She took a couple steps, marveling at how the beach felt. “I don’t understand,” she said. “This isn’t real, of course.”
“No,” Terry said, “it’s just a really impressive Tri-V.”
“Yeah, I understand what you did, but not how you did it.”
“I just figured out how to set it up.”
“Your son is far too modest,” Doc said and put an arm around Terry’s shoulder. “He learned how the Union’s image processing software works, adapted it to use our software, and fed in a few thousand primitive Human images. A bunch I had from our diving trips, and even a few from publicity shots of Molokai.”
“The alien systems are intuitive,” Terry said, and shrugged. “It wasn’t all that hard.”
“As I said, overly modest.”
“Terry,” she said. “My brilliant son.”
“You like it,” he said, blushing despite himself.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever gotten for my birthday.” She leaned over slightly, not too far because he was getting taller, and kissed him. “Thank you.” He was smiling so hard his face hurt.
His 25 credits bought them an hour in the Tri-V gallery. When the time was running down, the sunset flashed green as a warning. Terry offered to buy another hour. The sun was falling below the horizon and appeared to match the end of the hour. They sat on the edge of the surf. The Tri-V couldn’t simulate water.
“No,” she said, “this is perfect.” As the sun dropped out of sight, Earth faded into fractal patterns and was gone. “Perfect,” she said. Another tear ran down her cheek. “Time to get back to work.”
As they left, Terry caught Doc’s attention. “I think I screwed up,” he said.
“No,” the man assured him. “You freaking nailed it.”
“But she looked so sad.”
“Women’s hearts are a deep sea of emotions,” he said. Terry looked confused. “Don’t worry, kiddo, you’ll understand one day.”
“Excuse me,” a voice said by the door.
Terry turned and saw a Maki waiting patiently. “Yes?”
“I am Esckyl, Primus of Entertainment on Second Octal.”
“Terry Clark,” he said.
“Dr. Madison Clark,” his mom said.
“Just Doc,” Doc said.
“I viewed a corollary image of your Tri-V program.”
“You guarantee those are private,” Terry said, his eyes narrowing. He’d read the contract carefully.
“As I said, it was a corollary image. All I could see was what was projected, not who was inside. You’ll see the contract guarantees the merchant this, as a means of protecting against any liability we might incur.”
“What can we do for you, Esckyl?” his mom asked.
“The program you wrote is of excellent quality. We’ve tried to create simulations for your race and have largely failed. Many adjectives were used to describe them, none of them complementary.”
“I didn’t write the program,” she said and touched Terry on the shoulder. “My son here did.”
“Son?” the alien tried the strange word. “Offspring?”
“Close enough,” Doc said.
“I see. Well, even more impressive then. I was wondering if I might have a copy of the program, for instructional purposes?”
Terry was flattered and halfway to saying, ‘Sure, why not?’ when he felt Doc’s gentle but firm hand on his shoulder.
“How much?” Doc asked.
“Sorry?”
“What’s it worth to you?”
“It is just a simple program,” the Maki said, effecting a convincing shrug. “I merely hoped to see it for some insight.”
“Insight?” Doc said, nodding slowly. “Sounds like you need a lot of insight if all the Humans you tried your programs on thought they sucked.”
“An exaggeration,” Esckyl complained.
“No complementary adjectives,” Terry repeated the alien’s own words. While Terry was only 12, he was still five or six centimeters taller than the bipedal Maki. He rather enjoyed looking down on him. He also now knew from Doc’s lead he had something. “Like the man said, what’s it worth to you?”
Esckyl spluttered, his tiny eyes darting between the three Humans with what Terry now realized was obvious nervousness. They might be a merc race, but this particular Maki was no merc. He wondered why the alien hadn’t just taken a copy from the computer. In fact, when he’d loaded it, the data was all there. His mind went back to the contract. Of course, it didn’t copy the actual program, it merely took the data from the program he’d written on the chip! They wanted the program.
“I’ll offer you a refund on your hour of time, and another 100 credits!” Esckyl tried hard to make it sound like a generous offer. Now with a good sense of what a credit could buy in space, Terry knew otherwise.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“It really isn’t as important as you think,” Esckyl said. Terry took out his slate. The alien’s eyes widened slightly when he saw it. “That’s a good model.”
“I know,” Terry said without looking up. He quickly accessed the GalNet info on Maki and looked up Primus. A senior leader with a Maki clan, often empowered with financial or military power, he read. Ah hah, gotcha. “Not as important? Funny they sent a Primus, then.”
The alien’s eyes darted around as if looking for help. Of course, there were only the three Humans. “Okay, 500 credits.”
“Five hundred,” Terry said. The Maki grinned. “Thousand.” His voice held a little quaver and he hoped the alien didn’t catch it.
Esckyl blanched, the fur on his strange split tail stood up on end, and his entire body quivered as if Terry had delivered his offer at the end of a taser. He said several words in his clan’s special language before he realized it and switched to one their translators would understand. “Ridiculous!”
“Fine,” Doc said. “Bye.”
Terry nodded, and they headed for the Pavilion exit. He was afraid he’d severely overplayed his hand when they got to the bottom floor and halfwa
y across the Pavilion. The complex was nearly deserted since they were due to exit hyperspace in a few hours. Esckyl’s feet made little flapping sounds as he ran up and around them to block the way.
“Wait, wait, gentle Humans. Will you negotiate?”
The three glanced at each other. Terry looked amused; his mom had a somewhat surprised and amazed expression on her face. Doc smiled like a grinning crocodile.
“Sure,” Terry said. “I’ll go down to 475,000.”
* * *
The three climbed down from Second Octal together, the Teddy Roosevelt’s crewman dogging the hatch behind them and sealing the airlock in preparation for undocking. Safely back in their own ship, Terry took out the little fabric bag and opened it. He removed one of the three 100 thousand-credit chits. The red diamond inside was the size of his little fingernail. Each one of them was worth $3 billion dollars on Earth, making the whole pile $9 billion.
“Did that really just happen?” he asked.
“Yeah, it did,” Doc said.
“I can’t believe it,” Terry’s mom said. “Son, you really caught him off guard. You had a great-uncle who was a used car salesman. Maybe some of his genes rubbed off on you!”
“Well played, kiddo,” Doc said. He removed a pistol from his pocket Terry hadn’t even noticed he had. He set the safety back on and made it disappear again.
“Do you think we were in danger?” she asked.
“Probably not,” Doc said. “Three hundred K isn’t exactly killing money, but the Maki looked like he’d been filleted alive. Probably trying to think of how he was going to explain it to his captain and hoping it paid off.” He looked at Terry. “You might have given him millions of credits in profit, you know?”
“I don’t mind,” Terry said, holding up one of the chits to see how the ship’s light shone through the red diamond. He’d seen red diamonds before. All credits had one. Only the diamond in a one credit chit was nothing more than a grain of sand. Even the 1,000-credit chit Doc had given him wasn’t more than the size of a grain of rice. The fingernail-sized one seemed enormous, and it really was beautiful in the light. “It only took me a few days to code.”
Terry examined all three chits for a moment, then took two and handed them to his mom.
“Terry, why are you giving me these?”
“To help out,” he said.
“No,” she said and tried to hand them back to him. He moved away and held up a hand. “Terry, you earned these.”
“And you’ve worked like crazy for months on end. If this helps us, helps the cetaceans, then that’s cool.” He held up one and looked at it. “I don’t know what to do with 100,000 credits; what the heck am I going to do with 300,000?”
“Hire a merc unit?” Doc said with a chuckle.
“No, you keep it, Mom. If you want, call it one hell of a birthday gift.”
“You’re the best birthday gift a mom could ever have,” she said and folded him into her arms. “I’ll keep it just in case you change your mind.”
Terry sighed. In a dingy starship corridor, racing through another dimension, for a minute, he was content. Doc gave him a wink, making Terry smile even bigger. With a credit chit worth $3 billion dollars, he was also the richest Human kid in the galaxy!
* * * * *
Chapter 14
Teddy Roosevelt, Lupasha System, Coro Region, Tolo Arm
December 12th, 2037
Shortly after emerging from hyperspace, Teddy Roosevelt and her two accompanying ships were cast free from Second Octal one at a time, conveniently hurled in the direction of their destination. As was the way of the Behemoths, her arrival was timed so she was coasting toward the stargate.
The orcas were awoken from their chemically-induced slumber and rebreathers were affixed. It was the second time they’d undergone the procedure, and the first time they were ready for it. They came out much less disoriented than the previous time, showing no signs of stress or illness. Moloko reunited with her calf, and all was good.
Terry watched their ship detach from the observation dome on Teddy Roosevelt, now configured once again for standard operations. Captain Baker seemed happy her ship was no longer spinning around upside down.
“Welcome to the Lupasha system,” she said.
Terry couldn’t see much. The star was more orange than Sol was yellow, and it seemed dimmer or smaller, he couldn’t make up his mind which. “Doesn’t look like the kind of place we’d find a world the cetaceans can live on,” he remarked.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Doc said as he floated into the observation dome, his mom right behind.
“You’ve been here?” Captain Baker asked. Doc nodded. “Dead end, if you ask me.”
“What’s here?” Terry asked.
“Lupasha was supposed to be a massive trade hub,” Doc said. “The star’s an orange dwarf, or K-class, as the astronomers called it. On Earth, astronomers had it tagged as a possible exoplanet system.”
Terry nodded. “We learned about those. We also learned, after we got stellar data from the Union, most of our guesses were less than accurate.”
“Correct,” the captain said. “There weren’t any inhabitable planets here. At least, sort of.” She touched a control and a low-resolution Tri-V came up. Terry saw it was far lower resolution than the miniature one on his slate. Displayed was the Lupasha star system, primary in the center, and planets projecting white rings to show their orbits. There were only three.
The captain continued her description, “The planet furthest out is a rock ball, gathered up from the system’s Kuiper belt over billions of years. Not much there, and too hard to mine. Too unstable. The next is in the middle zone, and should have been one of those so-called Goldilocks planets. Only it turned out to be a dwarf planet. It does have an oxygen atmosphere, but because Lupasha is so dim, what water it has is frozen, and there’s no active core.” She shrugged. “Some minerals, but again, not worth it.
“The surprise turned out to be the last planet, closest to the sun.” The Tri-V’s grainy image centered on a gas giant. It somewhat resembled Jupiter, with numerous titanic gaseous vortexes raging in its atmosphere. It also had a prominent ring like Saturn. “It’s big, too. A little bigger, and Lupasha might have been a binary system. Instead, we were left with this big-ass gas ball.
“Like gas giants in Sol, this one has multiple moons. Jupiter has 79, Saturn 53, Uranus 27, and Neptune 13. Some big, some small. Lupasha 1 here only has 11. But one of those 11 proved interesting.” She looked at Terry. “Did you study Jupiter’s moons?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Excellent. Can you tell me which one turned out to have life?”
“Trick question,” Terry said and smiled. “Two of them did; Ganymede has a strange spongiform life.”
“An exotic,” the captain said. “Even the Union doesn’t understand it.”
“Then you mean Europa.” The captain nodded. “They’re just tiny multi-celled organisms, and some plants living off the volcanic sulfur vents.”
“Elegant little closed system,” Captain Baker agreed. “Still, it was life, and it proved you didn’t need sunlight for life to evolve. One of the moons here is just like Europa, only larger.”
The Tri-V view moved to show a white planet in the foreground, the surface a latticework of cracks and impact craters. Data appeared next to the image, showing orbital speed, albedo, gravity, and surface temperature.
“Surface temp?” Terry’s mom asked.
“Yes,” Doc said.
“Insane,” she said.
Terry examined the display. “52 degrees isn’t cold,” he said, “it’s hot!” All the adults looked at him with the expressions they used when he’d missed something. “What?”
“Fifty-two kelvin,” his mom said.
“Oh, hell,” he said, both amazed and feeling embarrassed. He wasn’t sure, but thought 52 kelvin was around 300 degrees below zero. Barely above the temperature of liquid nitrogen.
“Froze
n hell,” his mom said.
“It might be frozen, but it also had potential,” Doc said. “It all has to do with the Izlians. They had an interest in Lupasha 1, the gas giant. It showed potential as a home for them.”
“What race could live on a gas giant?” Terry asked.
The captain smiled and touched the Tri-V controls. The gas giant was replaced by what Terry thought was a fuzzy image of a Humboldt squid. “This is as good an image as we have of them,” she explained. “Like the life forms on Ganymede, the Izlians are exotic. Their lifecycle isn’t based on carbon, like ours. They live inside gas giants and would find our atmosphere just as lethal as we find theirs.”
“The Izlians are starship builders,” Doc said. “Some people say they basically wrote the manual on space combat. They’ve got huge fleets of ships, shipyards, and industrial operations. This moon was ideal to provide the elements needed to construct some parts of starships, right next door to a gas giant they could live in.”
“So, what happened?” Terry’s mom asked.
“I’m getting to that,” Doc said. “The moon has the same liquid oceans under the ice as Europa, if deeper. They also have a much richer variety of life, as well. More than a few surprises. Well, the Izlians contracted with the Selroth, who would do the mining of the moon while they built their little colony. The problem arose when the Selroth backed out; they didn’t like the chemical composition of the moon’s oceans. Apparently there weren’t enough minerals to make it worth it for the Izlians to perform remote or robotic mining. They gave up.”
“But not until after they had the stargate installed,” Captain Baker said. “Also a space station.” She laughed. “Must have cost them a fortune.”
“How do we factor in?” Terry’s mom asked.
“The Izlians still want some of those resources and were willing to pay for a quiet exam. The leasehold is open on the planet/moon, but if they made a big show over interest, it might turn into a contested situation.”
“How do you get these leaseholds?” she asked.