Part 3 (1/2)
He knelt, picked up a trowel (carefully-it was a bladed instrument!), and resumed his task. When he had worked long enough, and hard enough, sometimes he lost himself in the rhythm of the task and forgot to think.
Thinking was the root of his problems. Thinking about impregnable hulls that weren't quite. About how to manufacture neutronium without exploding a star into a supernova. About the great sealed drives purchased from the Outsiders that moved whole worlds, and the all-but-complete mystery of the drives' operation, and of the stupendous energies involved, and- No!
With grim determination, Baedeker refocused on gathering weeds to add to his pile. After a while, when not a single weed remained within his reach, he stood, joints cracking, to shuffle to a new spot. The sky was nearly dark now. He would have to stop soon.
The breeze hesitated, then returned from a new direction. He caught a whiff of something foul. The wind stiffened: a sea breeze.
His nostrils wrinkled at the stench. The coastal ecology had all but vanished, killed by the lack of tides.
As Nature Preserve Four, as a part of the Fleet, this world had been one of six worlds...o...b..ting about their common center of ma.s.s. It had experienced ten tides a day. As New Terra, this world traveled alone. It had no tides.
Imminent nightfall and the reek of long-dead ... whatever... that had drifted ash.o.r.e to rot. Baedeker sighed, with undertunes plaintive in his throats. He would get no more relief from thought this day.
His examinations of an Outsider drive had not been entirely in vain. The mechanism somehow accessed the zero-point energy of the vacuum. Tapping the energy asymmetrically was inherently propulsive, enough so to move whole worlds. What if, he mused, one somehow superimposed the slightest of vibrations into the propulsive fields, applied a bit of a torque? Perhaps waves could be induced in the oceans, slos.h.i.+ng back and forth, to simulate tides.
And then? The force would not limit its effects to the oceans. A bit too much stress might topple buildings. And more than a bit too much? The strain could unleash seismic faults. An unintended resonance might build the surges higher and higher, until tsunamis crashed across the continents and washed away entire cities.
Baedeker trembled with the mad hubris his years of exile had yet to purge.
Perhaps, in these modern and perilous times, cowardice was overrated. When danger is everywhere, you cannot escape it. Except- Quivering in shock and fear, Baedeker collapsed to the ground. His heads darted between his front legs, beneath his belly, into a Citizen's refuge of last resort: a tightly curled wall of his own flesh.
BAEDEKER COWERED IN HIS APARTMENT, picking disinterestedly at a bowl of grain mush and mixed gra.s.ses, still shaking from his latest panic attack. A holo played in the background, the ballet troupe surrogates for the companions.h.i.+p he craved but remained too shattered to handle. He would eat first, and comb the tangles and burrs from his mane, and bathe, and sleep. Then, perhaps, he would be fit to see and be seen.
From the pocket with his comm unit, a glissando sounded, cycling up and down the scale. He ignored the music until it stopped. Moments later a fanfare rang out, louder and more insistent, denoting a higher priority call. He ignored that, too. Before it could interrupt a third time, he dipped a head into the pocket and powered off the unit, averting his eye from the display. He did not want to know who had called. The matter could wait, or it was beyond his present ability to cope.
More tones, harsh and discordant, and from a new source: an emergencyoverride alert from his in-home stepping disc. Who? Why? Baedeker sidled away in fear. tones, harsh and discordant, and from a new source: an emergencyoverride alert from his in-home stepping disc. Who? Why? Baedeker sidled away in fear.
A human stepped off, short and thickset with a round face. He was entirely unimposing-until those dark, intense eyes impaled you. Baedeker knew those eyes. He dreaded those eyes. He flinched and looked away.
It was Sigmund Ausfaller!
”Don't be alarmed,” Ausfaller said.
Baedeker backed off farther, ready to bolt in any direction. Instinctively, he spread his heads warily, one high, one low.
”Do you know who I am?” Ausfaller asked.
It had been years since they last spoke, but of course course Baedeker knew the human. Even if they had never met, he would have known. Ausfaller was the planet's lone Earthman, and the minister of defense. Baedeker knew the human. Even if they had never met, he would have known. Ausfaller was the planet's lone Earthman, and the minister of defense.
The question made Baedeker wonder: How deranged do I look? He dared a sideways glance, and the mirror disclosed a slumped and disheveled figure. Despite himself, he plucked at his tangled mane. ”Yes-s. Why have you come?”
Ausfaller looked for a place to sit, and settled for a mound of overstuffed pillows. If he had hoped to make himself seem less threatening, he had failed. ”Baedeker, I need your help.”
”You don't.” Baedeker s.h.i.+vered. ”I am a simple gardener.”
Ausfaller leaned forward. ”I know, and I'm sorry. You were once much more than that, a brilliant engineer. I need you to be one again.”
Because who shares their best technology with their servants? Only fools, and Citizens were anything but.
Baedeker looked himself in the eyes. He remembered the c.o.c.ky engineer he had been-and cringed at the memory. ”I'm sorry. I can't do that.”
Lips pressed thin, Ausfaller considered. ”There is a serious danger... .”
Once again, one of Baedeker's heads had plunged itself deep into his mane. He pulled it out to fix the human with a frank, two-headed stare. ”The old Baedeker you seek? He He is a serious danger. It is for the best-for everyone-that no one sees him again.” is a serious danger. It is for the best-for everyone-that no one sees him again.”
”And if a whole world is at risk? Perhaps many worlds? What then?”
His necks shook from the struggle not to plunge between his legs. Cowardice was overrated, he thought. All he said was, ”Perhaps, Sigmund, you should tell me more.”
Ausfaller shook his head. ”Join a crucial, off-world mission or return to Hearth.” When Baedeker said nothing, the human added, ”Sanctuary is a privilege, not a right.”
Many worlds at risk? That was no choice at all.
7.
Hurtling through s.p.a.ce on parallel courses a thousand miles apart, two s.h.i.+ps prepared to swap crews. Cargoes had already been exchanged. Fuel had been transferred.
”Ready on this end,” Kirsten Quinn-Kovacs called over an encrypted radio link from Don Quixote Don Quixote.
”After you, Eric.” Sigmund gestured at the stepping disc inset on the relax-room floor. He was sweating. The s.h.i.+p-to-s.h.i.+p jump scared the c.r.a.p out of him.
A stepping disc could absorb only so much kinetic energy. The velocity match had to be all but exact: within two hundred feet per second. That limit wasn't a problem when the velocity differences arose from planetary rotation. Then it was straightforward geometry to calculate the velocity difference between start and end discs. As necessary, the system relayed you through intervening discs.
The void held no intervening discs.
As a safeguard, send and receive discs were built to suppress transmission if they sensed a velocity mismatch approaching the threshold. The odds were all but infinitesimal that his two s.h.i.+ps would cross the mismatch threshold during the light-speed-limited, under-a-millisecond interval between send and receive.
Maybe if Sigmund had trained as a physicist rather than an accountant he would have been rea.s.sured. He settled for the simple truth that the bigger risk was delay. To rendezvous and dock would take time they might not have.
”On my way,” Eric replied. He stepped forward and disappeared. ”Nothing to it,” he radioed back.
Sigmund's mouth was dry. He cleared his throat. ”Send them from your end, Kirsten.”
One of Don Quixote Don Quixote's crew popped over, and then a second. Both did double takes at seeing Sigmund. ”Minister,” one began.
Sigmund returned a too-slow, self-conscious salute. ”You didn't see me. Captain Tanaka-Singh is on the bridge. He'll explain.” Omar would keep these two hidden until Don Quixote Don Quixote returned from its upcoming, unannounced mission. returned from its upcoming, unannounced mission.
”Yes, sir,” they chorused.
Alert clicks came over the comm link, then Eric's voice. ”Sigmund, are you coming?”
”In a minute.” Sigmund waited for the footsteps to fade. He muted the inter-s.h.i.+p link before connecting the intercom to Baedeker's cabin. ”It's time.”
Silence.