Kelvin yellow light of the simulated late-afternoon sun. Aaron nodded in passing to those he knew well, but even after two years together, most of the people on board were still strangers to him.
This beach was not patterned after any particular real one, but rather represented some of the finest features of various seashores on Earth. The cliffs rising high above the sands were the chalk white of those at Dover; the sands themselves were the finely ground beige of those of Malibu; the waters, the frothy aquamarine of Acapulco. Sandpipers ran to and fro, gulls wheeled and soared overhead, parrots sat contentedly in the coconut trees.
The first 150 meters of beach, including live birds, was genuine. The rest, stretching to a hazy horizon, was me: a constantly updated real-time hologram. Sometimes, as now, far up the beach I painted a lone, small figure, a youngster playing by himself, building a sand castle. To me, he was real, as real as the others, a boy named Jason; but he could never enter their world and they could never enter his.
Aaron was almost to the beginning of the simulacrum. He passed through the pressure curtain that warned the birds away from the invisible bulkhead. A doorway opened in the wall, a rectangular aperture just above the holographic sands, revealing a metallic stairwell beyond. He banged down the steps and entered the level beneath. The ceiling was sculpted in deep relief, irregular with the geography of the shoreline, bowing deeply at the middle of the lake. Beads of condensation clung to the cold metal. Among the buttresses and conduits were workbenches and cabinets, an expansion of the engineering shops. Far off, clad in dirty coveralls, was Chief Engineer I-Shin “Great Wall of China” Chang, working on a large cylindrical device.
“Ho, Wall,” Aaron called, and the other man looked up. “JASON said you wanted to see me.”
Chang, a giant in any room, seemed particularly large in this cramped space, his excess of limbs exacerbating the problem. “That’s right.” He extended his upper right hand toward Aaron, saw that it was greasy, withdrew it, and tried again with his lower right. Little time was given to formal greetings aboard
“You have a gift for understatement, Wall. I was furious. I’m still trying to decide whether I should go rearrange Koenig’s face.”
Chang tilted his head toward my camera pair. “Be careful about what you say in front of witnesses.”
Aaron snorted.
“Are you upset with me for participating?” asked Chang.
Aaron shook his head. “I was at first, but I listened to the recording again. All you did was describe the technical procedure we used to bring Diana—to bring the
“That little Japanese man asked many other questions, but I tried to respect your privacy.”
“Thank you. Actually, I was flattered by what you said. ‘The Rossman Maneuver,’ eh?”
“Oh, indeed. What you did with the magnetic field was one for the textbooks. It never would have occurred to me. So there are no hard feelings?”
Aaron smiled. “None about the broadcast, as long as there are none about the football game. I understand my boys whupped you good.”
“The Hangar Deck Stevedores are an admirable team. But my Engineering Rams are getting better, yes? Next time we will be victorious.”
Aaron smiled again. “We’ll see.”
Quiet, except for the regular
“You’re not busy?” said Chang at last. “I’m not inconveniencing you?”
Aaron laughed. “Of course not. There hasn’t been a lot for me to do these last couple of years.”
Chang chuckled politely at the tired joke. “And you are well?”
“Yes. You?”
“Fine.”
“And Kirsten?”
“Bright and beautiful, as always.”
Chang nodded. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”
“Yes.”
There was silence between them for six seconds. “I’m sorry about Diana,” Chang said at last.
“Me, too.”
“But you say you’re okay?” said Chang. His great round face creased in sympathy, an invitation to talk about it.
“Yes.” Aaron declined the invitation. “Was there something specific you wanted to see me about?”
Chang looked at him for three seconds more, apparently trying to decide whether to pursue his friend’s pain. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do have something to discuss. First, though, how are you going to vote tomorrow?”
“I thought I’d use my thumb.”
Chang rolled his eyes. “Everybody’s a comedian. I mean, do you favor Proposition Three?”
“It is a secret ballot for a reason, Wall.”
“Very well. Very well. I personally do favor the proposition. If it does pass, well, then, I won’t be needing your help. But if the people don’t take that chance for salvation, I have an alternative. Come.”
He led Aaron over to his workbench, its plastiwood surface nicked by hacksaw blades and marred by welding burns. With a proud sweep of his upper left hand, Chang indicated a cylindrical object that was mounted on the top of the bench. It was a metallic casing, 117 centimeters long and 50 centimeters in diameter—a section of reinforced plumbing conduit, cut to length with a laser. Its ends were closed off by thick disks of red plastic. On its side was an open access panel. Although at this moment I couldn’t see within, six days ago I had got a good look at the interior when Chang had rotated the cylinder to do some work through another, smaller access plate that was located ninety degrees around from this one. It had been filled with a grab bag of components, many only loosely mounted by electrician’s tape, a collection of circuitry breadboards stuffed with chips scavenged from all sorts of equipment, and a thick bundle of fiber-optic strands, looking like glassy muscle. The whole thing had a rough, unfinished look to it—not the smooth, clean lines technology is supposed to have. I had had no trouble determining what the device was, but I doubted Aaron would be able to figure it out.
“Impressive, yes?” asked Chang.
“Indeed,” said Aaron. Then, a moment later: “What is it?”
Chang smiled expansively, the grin a great arc across the globe of his face. “It’s a bomb.”
“A bomb?!” For a brief moment, Aaron’s telemetry underscored the shock in his voice. “You mean someone planted a bomb on board? My God, Wall! Have you told Gorlov—”
“Eh?” Chang’s grin faded fast, a curving rope pulled tight. “No. Don’t be a mystic. I built it.”
Aaron backed away from Wall. “Is it armed?”
“No, of course not.” Bending, the engineer gently prized another access panel off the curved surface. “I don’t have any fissionables to—”
“You mean it’s a
“Not yet,” said Wall, pointing into the newly revealed opening in the casing, presumably the place where he intended the radioactive material to go. “That’s what I need you for.” He stepped closer, one of his giant strides being enough to narrow the gap Aaron had opened between them. “There are no fissionables within the Starcology. Doubtless you’ve heard that garbage about reducing radiation exposure.” He made an unusual sound deep in his throat that might have been a laugh. “But once we get to Colchis, we can mine for uranium.”
Aaron took back the lead in their little dance, circling around to the other side of the workbench, interposing its bulk between him and the big man. “Forgive me, I-Shin. I must be missing the obvious.” He met the other man’s gaze, but after holding it for several seconds, blinked and looked away. “What do we need a bomb for?”
“Not just one, my friend. Many. I plan to make scores before we return home.”
Aaron swung his eyes back on I-Shin’s watery brown orbs. They had yet to blink or move since Aaron had first tried to make contact with them. “Why?”
“Assuming Proposition three is defeated, and my deepest fear is that it will be, a hundred and four years will pass on Earth before we get back. Relativity, damn it all. What will the world be like then? A lot can happen in a century, yes? Think of what’s happened in the last hundred-odd years. True artificial intelligence, like our friend
