InterstellarNet: New Order

by Edward M. Lerner

  “Mi armada es su armada. It helps you’re now Chung’s favorite.”

  “And did you find anything?” The sensor array was Eva’s baby.

  “Only that everything’s per spec.”

  Eva had also been busy. Holographic blackness now obscured half the cabin. Four tiny yellow spheres defined a tetrahedron in the simulated space. Inside each sphere was the icon representing a UP ship, the icon representing Actium shining slightly brighter than the rest. A crimson dot at the heart of the pyramid marked the floating experimental module. To one side, in green, hung a K’vithian aux vessel. They were well off the ecliptic, far from traffic, and millions of klicks from any Jovian moon. Politics and prudence dictated that this experiment be performed privately.

  “Are all ships set?” Art asked her.

  “Yes, subject to fine-tuning. Sensors on-line, all ships. Display.” At Eva’s command, a virtual console materialized in a corner of the void, with readouts for each ship in the formation. She peered into the holo. “Hmm. Endeavor and Blaine aren’t exactly where I’d like them.”

  Keffah remained loath to use technology shunned at home, and the Foremost supported her. Instead, they asked to meet with UP experts on Himalia, to learn proven techniques for putting an antimatter BEC into containment, storing it indefinitely, transferring it between containers, and trickling it out. To inspect the equipment. The Snakes wanted, in short, the crown jewels of the deeply classified UP antimatter project. It would not be an easy decision.

  “Blaine, your position is now fine, but point your nose directly at the package.”

  “Changing orientation will tweak our position. This could take a while.”

  “Blaine, this is a hell of an expensive demo,” Eva said. If anything, that was an understatement. They were expecting a decigram of antihydrogen. “Our new friends are grumpy at us for insisting on this proof. We need to do it right the first time.”

  “Tough,” interjected Carlos. “Himalia isn’t Six Flags over Jupiter. They are not getting near Himalia or our real experts—no offense—until we know they have antimatter of their own.”

  “Assuming this demo goes as advertised, it will convince even you and Art.” Mutter, mutter. “Goshawk, maintain your position!”

  Art tuned out the bickering and nervous chatter. The Snakes refused to show the UP their containers. Keffah, when her superiors weren’t around, was smugly superior—which made it productive to spend time with her. Among her boasts were occasional hints and oblique clues to K’vithian technology. Their antimatter containment seemed to derive from the same underlying physics as their interstellar drive. More ambiguous was a clue Eva had picked up on: that the common denominator might involve tapping and manipulating zero point energy.

  Eva and Carlos had lapsed into Spanish. Cursing is always more satisfying in your native tongue. A glance at the holo showed Art that now Actium had drifted slightly off-station.

  Physicists had speculated since the twentieth century about a linkage between zero point energy, the quantum-mechanical fluctuation energy of a vacuum, and gravity or inertia. Common sense—and two centuries of frustrated theorists—suggested you couldn’t extract useful work from energy already at the lowest possible level. To find otherwise smacked of perpetual motion, of getting something for nothing. Still….

  Any asymmetric interaction with ZPE would be inherently propulsive. And plausibly, an asymmetric interaction could confine antimatter fuel. Few of the scientists on Himalia knew of this development, but the prospect of access to ZPE propulsion technology had those few salivating. Art thought he understood their interest: For too long, they had been all fueled up with no place to go. A technology deal with the Snakes could really be win-win.

  Finally, all ships were in position. “Set,” announced Eva to the ship’s captains. On a separate link, she contacted Keffah. “On my mark. Deactivate in ten, nine….”

  A fraction of a second past zero, Actium‘s readouts jumped on their virtual console. An instant later, slaved readouts from the other ships followed. Computer-corrected for ship positions and signaling delay, all measurements were simultaneous and consistent.

  Had the meters shown instantaneous rather than cumulative measurements, the counts would have plummeted to zero faster than the eye could see. But the brief squall of neutrinos and mesons and very specific frequencies of gamma rays was unambiguous.

  The Snakes had, and could control, antimatter.

  Art methodically emptied the peanut basket, the dark lager before him scarcely touched. Those priorities seemed reversed, but events were confusing enough sober.

  “It doesn’t add up.” He shook his head when the bartender glanced his way. What was he missing?

  Fact: The Snakes had antimatter. That was now indisputable.

  Fact: Victorious finished its deceleration on fusion drive. Why? Did its drive not work properly deep in a gravity well?

  Hypothesis: Snake technology tapped ZPE. As a test, Eva had casually mentioned the Casimir Effect—a demonstration of, but not a way to extract energy from—ZPE. In the surveillance tape, Keffah startled, and for the rest of that meeting there had been none of her usual condescending double eye blinks. Casimir Effect was a very obscure term to have encountered on the infosphere … unless you were looking for human ZPE research.

  The heck with it. Art took a deep swig.

  If Snake antimatter containment relied on ZPE, their ZPE technology worked just fine in a gravity well. Very dependably, too, or they would not dare keep antimatter in-system. So why not decelerate the whole way by ZPE drive?

  And even more of a head-scratcher: If they tapped ZPE, why bother with antimatter at all? The attraction of antimatter was its density of energy storage. Matter and antimatter convert to energy at one hundred percent efficiency, making antimatter great fuel. But that transformation was the tail end of the process. Antimatter had to be created first, by accelerating normal particles to very high energies and smacking them into each other, and then capturing the antimatter bits that sometimes flew out. End to end, the process was grossly inefficient. If the Snakes could access the energy of the vacuum, why not just use that?

  He was missing something. But what?

  Mashkith paced in his cabin, an excursion possible only in this unique vessel. A harmless indulgence? Or a weakness? On no other ship of his experience would even a Foremost’s cabin accommodate such overt physical manifestation of doubt.

  And as though the enormity of Victorious were not still, after so many years, humbling enough, now he had seen Earth.

  Ambassador Chung had personally escorted the shore party: Mashkith himself and his chosen officers. There had been endless motorcades, winding through cities too vast to grasp. London. Mexico City. Beijing. Cairo. Lagos. New Delhi. New Jakarta. Rio de Janeiro. There were parades in New York City and Washington, although as far as Mashkith could see, the two were contiguous, and in the niche of Greater Honshu called Tokyo. The glow of the megalopolises drove the stars from the night sky, where space-based factories, arriving and departing interplanetary vessels, and glittering rings of habitats took their places. And the moon overhead, in its crescent phase during much of their whirlwind visit, was ablaze with its own cities.

  Mashkith had known before ever setting out on this voyage that humans outnumbered Hunters thousands to one. Now, he felt it.

  Perhaps, ultimately, twenty humbling Earth years aboard Victorious had been for the best. Perhaps two generations before that of maneuvering for the scraps left by the Great Clans, contriving and competing with a hundred other lesser clans for every possible advantage, had been vital preparation. He and his handpicked companions had known how to keep their own counsel, act unimpressed, observe unobtrusively, appear harmless, feign good intentions, simulate trustworthiness.

  The humans had a phrase, Pashwah-qith had told him, long out of use, that described the clan’s tour of Earth: charm offensive.

  And their “attack” had been effective. Polls, inc
redibly freely available to the public, showed broad and growing support for some sort of technology swap. Before the sheer immensity of the human home world could overawe them, Mashkith had declared it necessary to return to Victorious to oversee “repairs.”

  In truth, Lothwer had done well in his absence. Supplies had begun arriving. Minor overhauls were getting done. Consultations had started on refueling.

  Mashkith continued his pacing, having convinced himself it was a harmless indulgence.

  Everything continued to unfold according to plan.

  CHAPTER 12

  K’Choi Gwu ka was old and tired and insane, and she knew it.

  She dug in the moist loam, the dirt that clung to her fur honest and comforting and somehow cleansing. The bright, yellow light overhead warmed her weary bones.

  Others labored all around her: weeding, hoeing, pruning, harvesting. A steady stream of crew-kindred moved about the vast chamber. Most walked, but some—the youngest, mainly—still swung from time to time from tree branches and ceiling rails. They stopped, or at least slowed, when they passed her, in subtle expressions of support or respect. Each acknowledgement made her feel worse.

  She dug in the moist loam, but her thoughts were in the stars.

  No two InterstellarNet species were alike. There were authoritarian societies, both dynastic and ruthlessly Darwinian. There were representative governments, with a dizzying array of selection methods. One far-off world was home to a scattering of continent-sized hive minds.

  A clot of mud and twigs had blocked a small irrigation channel. She gently lifted the obstruction, crumbled it, spread the sludge evenly on a bare patch of soil.

  Among the Unity, consensus ruled. But what if circumstances required action faster than a consensus process could accommodate? Consensus had been reached on that, too. At every level of Gwu’s society—family, kindred, bond, and reliance—there was recognized a coordinator, the ka, who, when needed, decided for the group. The ka neither volunteered nor was overtly selected, but rather emerged. The ka was the member of the group most recognized for his or her or its wisdom, for having, in the normal group deliberations, most often arrived early at the decision eventually reached by the whole.

  Sweat matted the fur of her torso. Thirst tickled her throat. A vine redolent with ripe, fuzz-covered bluefruit was just within reach. She broke loose one of the globes and bit, letting tart juice trickle down her throat. Sudden waves traveled from the tips of Gwu’s eight tentacles to her torso and reflected back: a self-mocking laugh. Which fruit to eat … that was the type of decision that might safely have been entrusted to her.

  She was old and tired and insane. That insanity had brought them here. If there were to be any hope of redemption, any chance of saving her crew-kindred, any prospect of ever seeing home again, now was the time to nurture and embrace that insanity.

  The shakedown cruise had been a triumph.

  Part of that, K’Choi Gwu ka knew, was simple astronomical good fortune. The interstellar drive could not be operated safely deep within the gravity well of the Double Suns, but nature had provided. Some said the Double Suns was a misnomer, that they and the Red Companion formed a trinary system. Others asserted that precise observations of that red dwarf covered so brief a time period that its course was uncertain. It might distantly orbit the Double Suns; it might be moving too fast, passing in a brief celestial encounter. To Gwu, that discussion missed the point: The Red Companion was a mere fraction of a light-year away! A more convenient destination for the test flight could not have been imagined.

  But the Red Companion had no planets, hence no life and limited resources, hence was of little long-term interest. Beckoning from a scant few light-years away was the human solar system, its yellow sun a near-twin of Primary. Next closest, the K’vithians were half again more distant. The nearest neighbors thereafter were more than twice the distance to Earth. None considered a next step farther than that, with the prodigious investments in time and antimatter such trips would entail.

  For twenty years, the Unity sought consensus. Should the next voyage be to Earth or K’vith? Trade agents mined the infospheres at both candidate destinations, speculating how humans or K’vithians would respond to visitors. Or, respectful of the ongoing unease many within the Unity felt for their interstellar neighbors, it was also debated: should all further use of the technology be reconsidered?

  At times, Gwu despaired. These incompatible points of view were not new. She had politely debated the same issues when theory first hinted at the feasibility of an interstellar drive, and again when it seemed possible to generate enough antimatter to make such a drive practical. Both times, the ultimate outcome had been the same: Research had proceeded in secret, in theory invisible to other species’ InterstellarNet agents, while the Unity’s own agents continued to explore distant data networks.

  And, as always—as data trickled in, as once novel perspectives became, if not compelling, at least familiar—points of concurrence emerged. The K’vithians showed no signs of an antimatter capability, unlike the humans who tried to hide one. Neither group exhibited significant progress towards an interstellar drive, nor of physical theory supportive of one. No recent attempts to undermine InterstellarNet came to light.

  So Gwu was unsurprised when, after many years, consensus was fully achieved. A voyage would be undertaken, as she had for so long advocated. The K’vithian solar system would be its destination. Harmony, the Unity’s starship, would go unannounced. From the fringes of K’vithian space, the mission would consult with the Unity’s trade agent before making contact. The ship would bring fuel for the return trip; it would not carry antimatter-production equipment that might prove too tempting.

  No, Gwu was not surprised that a course of action was finally decided. Its outlines, she thought, had long been evident.

  She was surprised, if only a little, to emerge as ka of the mission.

  Working the soil was calming, but it is not always a ka’s fate to be calm. It was not these plants’ fate to remain healthy.

  Gwu returned from the serenity of the farm to the small cabin given her by the K’vithians. Showered and dried, she pressed the vidphone control. “We have problems,” she told the K’vithian junior officer who answered. Gwu felt little need for courtesy to her captors, nor had they interest in any non-utilitarian communication with their captives.

  A translator AI converted Firh Glithwah’s short answering warble. “Explanation?”

  “Eco-malfunction. The farm, hydroponics, biorecycling—they all suffer increasingly from sulfur-dioxide contamination.” In such close proximity with K’vithians, contamination was unavoidable. Gwu trusted familiarity with the phenomenon would make the latest flare-up appear routine. All it took was carelessness in decontamination after maintenance trips into K’vithian-occupied parts of the ship.

  “Repairable?”

  That was mildly unexpected. Most crew would just order her to fix it. “Not this time. We need to flush and recharge parts of the system. We need new supplies.”

  Gwu had never been told Harmony—in her thoughts, this ship would never be Victorious—had arrived, let alone its current location. But the laws of physics cannot be denied. The drive operated along the ship’s major axis; coasting between the stars, the ship’s simulated gravity depended upon spin around that same axis. There could be no disguising the preparatory times between, when there was no gravity, when chambers throughout the vast structure of the ship were turned in their gimbaled mountings to prepare for the coming acceleration. Given the years between, the capabilities of Harmony, and the arrangement of nearby stars, the result was clear. The ship could have arrived at one of but three possible destinations.

  Would those who had stolen Harmony return it with its crew captive, with no way to refuel, to the Double Suns? Inconceivable. What of the planetless red dwarf star at a similar distance from K’vith? There could be no hope of refueling there; such a trip would be only an epic exile. That left the h
uman solar system.

  All Gwu cared about now was the opportunity to obtain supplies—and the chance, however remote, that the composition of the supplies ordered would itself send a message.

  Silence stretched. “Notification to the Foremost, with priority,” Firh Glithwah finally decided.

  The screen blanked midway through Gwu’s still-reflexive, “Thank you.”

  T’choi Swee qwo had entered the cabin during the conversation, staying discreetly out of the camera’s field of vision. The visible camera’s field of vision. “Is it bad?” he asked.

  They had never bonded with a child-bearer; one’s absence, and the subsequent lack of children in their family, had made the two of them that much closer. And Swee was more than her husband; as qwo, he was also the ship’s chief facilitator. On every level, she owed him honesty. That was impossible in their quarters, which were certainly bugged. “Walk with me?”

  They spoke of minutiae: assignments for upcoming work schedules, team standings in games whose sole purpose was to help while away the time, liaisons among the crew. She admired his quiet strength as they strode. The green of his fur was paling with age, the once bold contrast of his stripe pattern sadly faded. Lovingly, she lifted a tentacle to trace a lone, idiosyncratic lightning-bolt streak. She would miss it when it was gone.

  In the farm, in the quiet privacy of a secluded copse of trees, he asked again, “Is it bad?”

  Only there could be no certain privacy in a ship controlled by K’vithians, and her thoughts were too dangerous to share. “Time will tell.”

  They both knew that meant she dare not talk about it.

  “Come.”

  The K’vithian escorts in their dark goggles faced outward from the entrance to Gwu’s quarters, scanning watchfully in all directions. Why, she had no idea. The deaths from the initial, failed attempt to recapture the ship still saddened and sickened her. There would be no further physical assault on their captors.