Meewee swore and began to jog up the bank to the cart, but he knew he would never make it back to the office in five minutes. “Arrow,” he said, addressing his mentar, “you’ll have to project the launch here.”
The cart at the top of the bank lurched forward half a meter in order to turn away from the sun. Then a patch of eastern sky above Meewee’s head darkened until it was pitch-black and spangled with stars. A voice was counting down the seconds, and Meewee craned his neck to stare at the far reaches of space projected above him. He couldn’t distinguish the launch facility from the starry background. The view was from the Aria space yards at Mezzoluna several tens of thousands of kilometers from the actual blast site. At the end of the countdown there was a beat, and then the star field disappeared in a blossoming ball of nuclear fire. Meewee shut his eyes and turned away, dazzled. When he could see again he searched the star field. “Well?” he said. “Was it successful?”
Arrow said,
Of course not, even robotic ships needed time to recover from a nuclear blast. These ships carried a complete set of repair bots and nanofabs to constantly rebuild themselves during their centuries-long journey. They were designed to arrive at their destination star systems at least two hundred years before their assigned Oships. They would spend the time gained preparing the way for the colonists: scouting target planets, performing terraforming tasks, laying infrastructure, constructing cities so that when the Oships arrived and the colonists were roused from their millennial slumber, whole, viable new worlds awaited them, ready to inhabit.
A new, faint star appeared in the holoscape above Meewee. “Is that — ?” he said, and another appeared, and a third and fourth. The robotic ships that had come through the atomic boost were firing their main chemical rockets, to correct their course and to boost their speed even more.
Aria launch control counted the ships as they reported in. Six, seven, fourteen ships. Twenty, twenty-eight, fifty, seventy-six. Meewee cheered, literally jumping up and down on the bank of the fishpond. Seventy-six out of a possible two hundred advance ships reported in. It was more than he had been told to expect. The launch was a solid success!
“Arrow, name the Oships they belong to.”
The
Excellent, excellent, excellent — it was all excellent. It was superlative. Meewee felt like celebrating. If only Wee Hunk were still around. How he missed the annoying little caveman. Meewee turned his pocket inside out and flung the last bits of gravel into the pond. The splashes made a gurgling sound that resembled a word, someone saying, “Galloway,” or maybe “Go away.” Meewee often heard words in running water, in the wind, in squeaky hinges.
“I’m going, I’m going,” he replied merrily and climbed the rest of the way to the cart.
An Unwelcome Offer
No sooner had Meewee returned to his office than Lyra called and asked him to join Ellen Starke in an ongoing meeting at the Starke Manse. Lyra was Ellen Starke’s new mentar, the replacement for Wee Hunk, her former mentar. Meewee had not yet found the courage to inform Ellen that it was Arrow who had killed Wee Hunk or that it was he, Meewee, who had ordered Arrow to do so. But now was not the time. This was a time for celebrating their successful launch.
“By all means!” he exclaimed to the mentar. “Tell Ellen I’ll be right there.” He sat in his favorite chair and told Arrow to take him to the Manse. A moment later he was sitting opposite Ellen’s desk in the Map Room. The room was brightly lit by a single window that stretched the entire length of the wall. Ellen Starke’s persona sat behind her desk. She appeared to be the same young woman she had been before the space yacht crash that had taken her mother’s life. In a chair next to Meewee sat the holo of another young woman, Andrea Tiekel, who had replaced her aunt, Andie Tiekel, on the GEP board. Andie Tiekel and Eleanor Starke had been murdered only days apart.
Bracketing Ellen’s desk were the personas of the mentars Cabinet and Lyra.
“It was a complete success!” Meewee announced, pumping the air with his fist. He turned to the corner of the room, where he knew the realbody Ellen would be sitting with her evangeline companion. And though he couldn’t see her, he gave her a triumphant thumbs-up.
“Over here, Bishop,” Ellen said. Her holo persona at the desk waited for him to turn back to her. “What was a complete success?”
“Why, the launch of the first advance ships. We’re on our way!” Ellen gave him a look of incomprehension. “The advance ships for the Oships,” he explained. “Aria had to push up the atomic boost to today. I thought that was why you summoned me.” Meewee’s elation began to leak away. “Why did you summon me?”
“We have received an unexpected offer from Myr Tiekel here. Since you are titular head of Heliostream, I thought you’d want to sit in on this meeting.”
Titular head? Meewee didn’t like the sound of that. He turned to the Tiekel woman. “Hello, Andrea. What offer?”
Andrea smiled disarmingly. “Don’t worry, your excellency, my offer will have little effect on your position at Heliostream. And, by the way, congratulations on the successful launch. I think that’s marvelous.”
Being told not to worry always made Meewee worry. He shot a questioning glance at Ellen, who said, “Andrea wants to buy Heliostream.”
“Excuse me?”
“Heliostream,” Andrea said. “I’m in the process of retooling my investment portfolio. Except for E-Pluribus, Auntie’s investments are, frankly, a bit outdated. A space-based energy company like Heliostream would make an ideal core holding.”
Alarmed, Meewee said to Ellen, “Why don’t you sell her our fish farms instead? The aquaculture sector is just as important as energy.” But these were only the surface words. Embedded in them was a hidden statement in another language.
Ellen made no sign of understanding him in either language. Since her crash, she had repeatedly refused to speak the secret family metalanguage with him. Sometimes he wondered if she even remembered it.
Meewee turned to Cabinet, who was standing on one side of Ellen’s desk, and challenged its ID in Starkese. <What do you say, mentar? You can appreciate fish culture, can’t you?>
The mentar, once Eleanor Starke’s power house, did not answer his ID challenge. It hadn’t done so since it had been forced to pass through probate after Eleanor’s death. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, it was an outsider and not to be trusted with family security. For about the thousandth time, Meewee questioned his decision not to kill the mentar when he had had the chance. But not even Wee Hunk had been sure at the time whether Cabinet had been contaminated or not. And besides, some family mentar had been necessary to manage Eleanor’s far-flung empire until Ellen could take charge of it. Cabinet had seemed capable of doing that at least.
Meewee didn’t even bother challenging the young mentar Lyra. It had never given any indication of knowing Starkese at all. That meant that neither Starke mentar was completely trustworthy.
Andrea, watching him with a puzzled expression, said, “While aquaculture is indeed an important industry, Bishop Meewee, I am more inclined toward energy at this time.”
Meewee threw off all attempts at appealing to Ellen in Starkese. He leaned over the desk and said, “You
Before Ellen could reply, Andrea said, “I repeat; there’s no need to worry about that, excellency. When I buy
