Lost in Transmission

Chapter seventeen. The economics of hole

Half an hour later, Conrad and Money, Chang and the mine's vice-director, a woman named Mariella Fourleaf, were standing on the surface of the black hole's confinement tube like pins stuck into a cushion, pointing every which way. It was like the world's smallest, weirdest planette, and Conrad filed for future reference the notion that planettes could be made cylindrical as well as spherical. All you would need was a hollow diamond tube, much thinner than this one, holding the neubles in a straight line, so they couldn't roll over each other and slump into the spherical shape they would otherwise naturally seek. Tube worlds? Hell, you could twist them into pretzels if you wanted to!

“The thing is,” Conrad answered, “I can actually see it. You're telling me it's smaller than a proton, and I know a proton's much smaller than an atom, and an atom is much too small to see, and yet looking down between my feet I can see a little black dot.”

“Those are air molecules,” Chang answered. “When the accident first occurred, that thing sucked all the air out of this chamber. And there it still is, clinging to the hole in a film. We came back in here with space suits and grapples and magnetic bottles, catching the thing before it could hit the wall, which would have been bad. If we really wanted to we could pry those molecules off of there, but then they'd want to expand again. It would cause an explosion.”

“It would cause worse than that,” Money said, looking down warily between his feet. “Those aren't air molecules anymore, my friend. Up against the hole, the pressure is more than sufficient to collapse the molecules, collapse the atoms, squeeze the electrons and protons together into single, electrically neutral particles. What you've got there, I'm going to guess, is fifty megatons of liquid neutronium. And if you let it out of jail, the outrush of neutrons would be lethal for several kilometers in any direction. It's a good thing you haven't tried this.”

A decidedly unofficial, nongovernmental laugh escaped Conrad. “So you've succeeded after all, Mr. Chang. Wrap a diamond around it and you've got the very neuble you were trying to press. A little undersized, but what the heck.” ³

“Even if it's the right size, you still need to sheath the thing, sir,” Money said. “Wrap it in layers of monocrystalline diamond and woven nanotube. And brickmail, which is an allotrope of carbon, basically a chain mail of interlocked rings.”

“I know what brickmail is,” Conrad said.

From his funny vantage point on the other side of the tube, Money looked almost like he was lying down. Flashing an apologetic look and a horizontal shrug, he said, “Of course you do, sir. I forget your double life, sometimes. Anyway, brickmail is strong shit, and layered with the other stuff it's stronger still, and holds your neuble together.”

Conrad nodded absently, thinking that he understood at least the gist of that explanation. He wanted to crouch down, to lean over for a closer look at the hypermass beneath him, but the gravity up next to the tube was a lot stronger than it was a meter or two away, and he was reluctant to bring his center of mass too close to it. Funny gravity fields like this were common causes of injury and death. What he said was, “So, if we shoveled a gigaton of mine tailings on top of that thing, would we crush it into an atom of the appropriate size? A full neuble?”

At this point, probably bored with the sound of voices other than his own, Leonard Chang piped up. “We can negotiate terms for the sale of this thing, sir. Or you can accept it from me as a gift. . . .”

Chang was on the other side of the tube from Money—the two of them probably couldn't see each other at all, just as Conrad couldn't see any more of Mariella than the crazy image refracted around the rim of the tube, like a heat mirage. But Money made a mocking face at the question, and apparently Mariella could see it, because she laughed. Conrad fought down a smile of his own and said, “Mr. Chang, whether you're brought up on charges has nothing to do with whether I'm interested in the results of your accident. You understand this? Even if you hadn't murdered me twice, you would still be in a lot of potential trouble. What you really want to be is quiet, all right? Help me forget that you exist.”

“Er, I'll try, sir.”

“There's a good fellow.”

When Money had stopped sniggering, he resumed his lecture by saying, “To compress that gigaton of matter into neutronium, sir, you'd have to get it very, very close to the hole. I'm thinking you'd need an antimatter explosion anyway, though admittedly a smaller one.”

“Hmm,” Conrad said, considering that. Now he did crouch down, with little effort but considerable care, to examine the dark speck down inside the tube. It was a difficult object to see, because the light waves coming off it were so incredibly distorted, but if his eyes could not be trusted, his sense of touch, the feeling of the gravity field as a physical entity, was much stronger down here. He fancied he could even sense the pinpoint shape of the object generating that field. And around it, his imagination whirled, envisioning tiny pumps and other machineries of unimaginable power. “We need a conveyor belt, then. Metaphorically, of course; the actual hardware would be completely different. But there will be some sort of physical drip line around this hole, right? Some distance past which the neutrons will refuse to condense. So we shovel matter in until that perimeter is filled, and then we slurp away the liquid neutronium into a reservoir somewhere, and fill the space up again. If you keep doing that, eventually you'll fill your reservoir with the gigaton of neutronium you need, to be stable enough to wrap as a neuble.”

“You'd have to do it awfully fast,” Money said skeptically.

“So do it awfully fast. What's stopping you? I didn't do the grav-field engineering for the Gravittoir, but I had a hand in the design of the physical machinery, as well as the structures that housed it. It seems to me you can do something similar here, using grav lasers to move and hold and compress the material while you're working it. It's a hard problem, but those are always the interesting ones. Right?”

“True,” Money said thoughtfully. “I can't think of anything physically impossible about the idea. When we get back to the ship we can run some numbers and see what we come up with. But you may have just invented a cheap way of mass-producing neutronium. You could be famous!”

Conrad snorted. “To invent something, wouldn't I have to understand it? I couldn't build a machine like that if my life depended on it.”

“Proposer and co-inventor, then,” Money said with growing enthusiasm. “We could split the credit or something. Bring in others if we have to. Do the details matter? If it can be built, I can build it. This could mean big value on the Instelnet's intellectual property market. You could be rich.”

Conrad snorted again, and it became a laugh. “So we sell the blueprints to the Queendom. For what, cookie recipes? We need physical objects, Mr. Izolo. More than anything, we need print plates. Without a surplus of those, being rich seems rather a moot point. Come to think of it, I am rich.”

“Yah, maybe,” Money said, with a laugh of his own. “But I'm not.”

“I've got to get out of this business,” Conrad said half a shift later as he settled into his first mate's chair, back onboard Newhope.

“Where have I heard that before?” said Yinebeb Fecre, the only other person on the bridge. Conrad suppressed a flicker of irritation. To the people who knew him in Denver, this was Feck the Facilitator, a major figure in the Revolt, though part of Conrad still remembered him by the less flattering nickname he'd received at camp. Which was foolish, because at the moment Feck was his Astrogation officer, his Information and Systems Awareness, and also his Helm.

Even with hypercomputers to support him it was quite a workload, and Feck had once done a tour of duty as the ship's engineer as well. After Xmary, he probably knew more about running this old tub than any four other people combined. Between the two of them, the captain and the crew-unto-himself third officer, they practically ran the ship themselves. Leaving Conrad to play—badly—at diplomacy and labor relations.

“No,” he said, “I mean it this time. I don't like who I'm becoming out here, in the wilds of Security Space. Anyway, if my only bargaining power stems from the threat of Ho Ng, then we might as well cut out the middleman and send in Ho directly. I got killed again today—twice!—and the hell of it is, I deserved it. Truly. If I had to listen to the news I deliver to these people, I'd kill me too. It isn't their fault things have got this bad.”

“Economic downturns happened even in the Queendom,” Feck pointed out reasonably. “Sometimes all you can do is just ride it out. At least we're immorbid, true? It's not like you're asking people to work themselves to death. A few decades and we're over the hump, and then it's smooth sailing for the rest of eternity.”

“Sure,” Conrad said, unconvinced. Then, feeling a strong urge to shift the subject: “You've changed a lot since we were kids.”

“Is that good?”

“Certainly,” Conrad said. “Why wouldn't it be?”

“Because I was a shithead back then?” Feck laughed. “You've changed, too. What I'm saying is, the old Conrad is still there—you've got the same basic character. You always were one to agonize over the status quo. But you're wiser now, and more . . . I don't know. More thoughtful? More reflective? I suppose we all are.”

A slight tremor shook the ship, and checking his board, Feck twiddled a couple of controls and said, “Center of gravity shifts. The ertial shield is feeling ticklish today. We'll need to shift some water ballast before we unmoor.”

And this was amazing, too. A statement like that had a lot of knowledge backing it up, and Conrad had a hard time reconciling that with the clueless, rather fruity kid Feck had been. He still looked the same, or nearly so.

Conrad said, “When did you become such a grade-A spaceman? You've been on Newhope a long time, I know, but so have a few others. I can tell you firsthand, people don't absorb everything by osmosis. To know everything—really everything—takes a lot of work. What made you decide . . . to be that person?”

Feck laughed. “You have to ask? You boys got to play space pirate, while I was stuck on the ground babysitting.”

“You organized a revolution,” Conrad observed.

But Feck just waved that off. “I organized a small riot. We knew what we were doing, but the odds were against us from the beginning. Obviously. The chaos lasted barely an hour, and we were lucky to have that much. Whereas you guys were running riot through the Kuiper Belt for months. You think I wasn't jealous? Hell, I still am. And when it was over, you guys got all the best training slots. Because you already had space experience, see? And of course that meant you got to be the crew of Newhope, and then the first to explore the planet, to carve the streets there. By the time you woke me up, there was nothing really raw left to do. I've been playing catch-up ever since. If I can't be a pioneer, I figure I'll at least be the best goddamn space jockey you ever saw.”

“There was nothing romantic about the pirate's life,” Conrad told him darkly. “I fall into that trap myself sometimes, but when I really think back . . . Ugh. There was a lot of violence, a lot of death. It wasn't fun at all. We were terrified, every day.”

“But you were standing up for what you believed in. That's a very powerful thing. It's possible you don't realize how fortunate you are. Or were. But I do.”

That thought just deepened Conrad's sour mood. “What are we standing up for now? You and I are the exact opposite of space pirates, Feck. We are the enforcers of an ugly little police state.”

Feck smiled again, though this time it was bittersweet. “Well, that's not without its own sort of romance. Ugly or not, the colony needs us. What would happen if we weren't doing this? If nobody was? What I'm saying is, there really is a kind of nobility in doing the things that need doing, even when they're personally distasteful. Especially then, I guess.”

But Conrad was having none of that. If there was truth in what Feck was saying, it just made him angry. “There are other ways to serve. We've got people who like to play the heavy. Who've always played the heavy. Just send them in, and leave decent people out of it. If it needs to be done, put it against the immortal souls of the people who can't be corrupted, because they're already corrupt.”

“Do you need your soul?” Feck said, trying for a joke. “Aren't you immorbid? Judgment day is a long way off if you never stop to die.”

“Thanks. That's helpful. Look, I've been out here almost ten years, and I don't feel like I've made a difference. Not for the better.”

“Ten years is nothing, Conrad.”

“No? It is to me.” But Conrad felt the lie in the words even as he was saying them. He just didn't like what he was doing. It was as simple as that. He'd been bored as an architect those last few decades, though he hadn't realized it until the very end. But was boredom any worse than doing something you actually hated?

“Forget it,” he said. “When we get back to P2, I'm resigning my commission. There are a lot of jobs down there I haven't tried yet.”

That might've sounded like selfish whining, but Conrad was pleased to hear, in his voice, a quiet resolve that was empty of bitterness. Finally. But he added, “If I stay out here any longer, I'll be less valuable in the long run. I've got to keep my self-respect. We all do, or what's the purpose of our lives?”

“Good point,” Feck said, affably enough.

Conrad looked out the virtual window again, eyeing the stationary glints of orange-white sunlight on the surface of Element Pit. “You're a good man, Feck,” he said absently, with his brain halfway unplugged. “Probably one of the best I've ever known. Little gods, when did that happen?”

Money Izolo was both the engineer and the fourth mate, and when he came to the bridge to relieve Conrad, Conrad took the opportunity to catch the tail end of Xmary's sleep shift. Her cabin door knew to let him in, and he shrugged off his clothes and crawled into the bunk with her.

“Hi,” she said sleepily.

“Hi yourself,” he returned.

“What's wrong?” she asked right away, hearing something in his tone. She sounded more awake, and her body stiffened as if preparing to sit up.

“Just a bad day,” he told her.

She rolled over to embrace him, and as the wellcloth sheets pulled aside he could feel that she wasn't wearing anything either. She seldom did, when she was expecting him.

She had gone with a few spacemen in her time—had gone with all of them, really. But once Conrad had come back aboard, those temps and fill-ins had fallen away like dry leaves in a breeze. Or so it seemed to him now; he supposed the process had taken a couple of years. But when they had finally settled back into each other's arms again, they had fit perfectly, like the two halves of something broken, melding together again. Their early time together had been formative; she was a part of his character, and he imagined the reverse must be true as well.

This was a minor detail which had slipped his mind, briefly, during that conversation on the bridge. He had left her once, with consequences he didn't particularly care to repeat. Could he leave her again, knowing that the same thing would probably happen?

“You're all tense,” she said, feeling his back.

He nodded, agreeing with that. “I know. I just . . . I just hate this job. Nothing about you, nothing about the ship. It was good to get into space again. I think I needed that, deep down in my soul.”

Now she did sit up, pulling the sheets after her in the darkness. “You're speaking in the past tense. What's wrong?”

“I don't know. I'm not sure.”

“You're thinking of going back to P2?”

“Yeah.”

She digested that in silence for a while. When she finally spoke, what she said was, “I don't know that human memories were really designed for these long spans of time. I don't feel as though I've forgotten anything, though I'm sure the details of childhood fade as they move farther into the past. But I feel my life—I don't know—breaking up into portraits and vignettes. Time begins to seem less linear, more like a book of stationary pictures than a single long movie. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Conrad answered, because Bascal had told him much the same thing. Supposedly, this view was closer to the physical truth than the errant concept of “movement” through time. But then he followed with, “No. I dunno.” Because he couldn't see a connection with the things that were bothering him, and he vaguely resented her going off on a tangent like this.

But she continued. “You've been back onboard the ship for, what, about a decade? That seems like a continuous stretch of time, but when you're gone—not if, but when—it will all compress down to a couple of incidents. Whenever a period of time passes with nothing changing, nothing important, it goes into the log as one long incident. We remember it like a spring afternoon, or anyway I do.”

And here Conrad began to get the gist of what she was saying. But only the gist, the outlines, so he stroked her neck and waited for her to continue.

“When you left the first time, it seemed intolerable. In a good year, we would see each other for at most a few weeks, and I didn't want to live my life that way. But I don't think I understood. I don't think I really grasped how long life can be. We've had a spring afternoon together, yes, and perhaps we'll have a spring evening apart, and then a morning together, and then separate business again for a while. If we're going to live forever—and I don't think anyone really knows what that means on a personal level—we need to stop running our lives like morbid little tribesmen who'll be dead in ten years.”

“You're giving me your blessing to leave? Do I understand you correctly?”

She paused. “I think so. Yes.”

“You'll wait for me? For years, if necessary?”

She thought that one over, and said, “It depends what you mean by wait. I've never stopped loving you, though I haven't always liked you, or had you conveniently at hand when I needed you. When I see you again, none of that will be different. Age has its pleasant side, I would say. When next I see you, I won't really have to ask what you've been doing. It won't really matter. You won't have changed.”

“We'll fit like two halves of a broken plate,” he suggested, although the implications were rather sobering. Were they so inflexible?

“Yes! Good. But while we're apart, the edges may need to be covered. Our bodies require a certain amount of attention, and so do our spirits. And that's okay, because at the end of the day we'll still fit. Friendships of convenience may come and go, but the arc of our romance stretches on forever.”

For the second time in his life, Conrad contemplated this notion uneasily. “Forever” was an easy word to say, but living it was another matter. Didn't everything have an end, sooner or later? But Xmary seemed so earnest in the darkness, so pleased with her observation—with him and with the universe in general—that he couldn't bear to disappoint her.

“Forever,” he agreed, hooking his pinkie to hers to cement the promise.

And thus was sealed the fate of a ship.