awake.
And all this rather makes me the Clown of Clowns.Fleet Manager Vinh called the meeting to order. You’d think that being fraudulent toadies would at least make these meetings quick. But no, they often dragged on for many Ksecs, dribbling off into pickle-headed assignments for individual members.I hope you enjoy eavesdropping on this, Nau scum.
The first order of business was the putrefaction in the bactry. That was under control. The widespread stench should be flushed by their next meeting time. There remained some out-of-control gene lines in the bactry itself (good!) but they posed no danger to the temp. Vinh avoided looking at Jimmy Diem as he listened to the report. He’d met Diem in the bactry three times now. The conversations had been brief and one-sided. The things Vinh was most curious to know were just what he absolutely must not know: How many Qeng Ho were in on Diem’s operation? Who? Was there any concrete plan to smash the Emergents, to rescue the hostages?
The second item was more contentious. The Emergents wanted their own time units used in all fleet work. “I don’t understand,” Vinh said to the unhappy looks. “The Emergent second is the same as ours—and for local operations, the rest is just calendar frippery. Our software deals with Customer calendars all the time.” Certainly, there was little problem in casual conversation. The Balacrean day wasn’t far off the 100Ksec shift “day” the Qeng Ho used. And their year was close enough to 30Msec that most of the year-stem words caused no confusion.
“Sure, we can handle weird calendars, but that’s in front-end applications.” Arlo Dinh had been an apprentice programmer; now he was in charge of software mods. “Our new, um, employers are using Qeng Ho internal tools. ‘There will be side effects’.” Arlo intoned the mantra ominously.
“Okay, okay. I’ll take—” Ezr paused, experiencing a burst of administrative insight. “Arlo, why don’t you take this up with Reynolt? Explain the problems to her.”
Ezr looked down at his agenda, avoiding Arlo’s annoyed gaze. “Next item. We’re getting more new tenants. The Podmaster says to expect at least another three hundred Emergents, and after that another fifty Qeng Ho. It looks like life-support can tolerate this. What about our other systems? Gonle?”
When their ranks had been real, Gonle Fong had been a junior quartermaster on theInvisible Hand. Fong’s mind still hadn’t caught up with the changes. She was of indeterminate age, and if not for the ambush she might have lived out her life a junior quartermaster. Maybe she was one of those people whose career paths had stopped at just the right place, where their abilities precisely matched what was asked of them. But now…
Fong nodded at his question. “Yeah, I have some numbers to show you.” She plinked away at the Emergent keyboard in front of her, made some mistakes, tried to correct. On the window across the room, various error messages reported on her flailings. “How do you turn those off?” Fong muttered, swearing to herself. She made another typo and her rage became very public. “Goddamn it to hell, I can’t stand these fucking things!” She grabbed the keyboard and smashed it down onto the polished wood table. The wood veneer cracked, but the keyboard was unharmed. She smashed it again; the error display across the room shimmered in iridescent protest and vanished. Fong half rose from her seat and waved the oddly bent keyboard in Ezr’s face. “Those Emergent fuckers have taken away all the I/O that works. I can’t use voice, I can’t use head-up displays. All we have are windows and these mother-damned things!” She threw the keyboard at the table. It bounced up, spinning into the ceiling.
There was a chorus of agreement, though not quite so manic. “You can’t do everything through a keyboard. We need huds…. We’re crippled even when the underlying systems are okay.”
Ezr held up his hands, waiting for the mutiny to die down. “You all know the reason for this. The Emergents simply don’t trust our systems; they feel they need to control the periphery.”
“Sure! They want spies on every interaction. I wouldn’t trust captured automation either. But this is impossible! I’ll use their I/O, but make ’em give us head-up displays and eye-pointers and—”
“I’ll tell you, there are some people who are just going on using their old gear,” said Gonle Fong.
“Stop!” This was the part of being a toady that hurt the most. Ezr did his best to glare at Fong. “Understand what you are saying, Miss Fong. Yes. This is a major inconvenience, but Podmaster Nau regards disobedience on this point as treason. It’s something the Emergents see as a direct threat.” So keep your old I/O gear but understand the risk. He didn’t say that out loud.
Fong was hunched down over the table. She looked up at him and nodded grimly.
“Look,” Ezr continued, “I’ve asked Nau and Reynolt for other devices. We may get a few. But remember, we’re stuck light-years from the nearest industrial civilization. Any new gadgets have to be made with just what the Emergents have here at L1.” Ezr doubted that very much would be forthcoming. “It is deadly important for you to make the I/O ban clear to your people. For their own safety.”
He looked from face to face. Almost everyone glared back at him. But Vinh saw their secret sense of relief. When they went back to their friends, the committee members would have Ezr Vinh to point at as the spineless fellow who was ramrodding the Emergent demands—and their own unpopular position would be a little easier.
Ezr sat silent a moment more, feeling impotent.Please let this be whatCrewleader Diem wants of me. But Jimmy’s eyes were as blank and hard as the others. Outside of the bactry, he played his role well. Finally, Ezr leaned forward and said quietly to Fong, “You were going to tell me about the newcomers. What are the problems?”
Fong grunted, remembering what they’d been discussing before she blew up. But surprisingly, she said, “Ah, forget the numbers. The short answer is, we can handle more people. Hell, if we could control our automation properly we could house three thousand in this balloon. As for the people themselves?” She shrugged, but without any great anger. “They’re typical Chumps. The sort I’ve seen in a lot of tyrannies. They call themselves ‘managers,’ but they’re peons. The fact is, behind some bluster they’re kind of nervous aboutus. “ A sneaky smile spread across her heavy features. “We got people who know how to handle Customers like these. Some of us are making friends. There’s lots they’re not supposed to talk about—like how bad this ‘mindrot’ crap really is. But I’ll tell you, if their big bosses don’t come clean soon, we’ll find out for ourselves.”
Ezr didn’t smile back.Are you listening, Podmaster Nau? Whateveryour desires, soon we will know the truth. And what they discovered, Jimmy Diem could use. Coming in to this meeting, Ezr had been totally wrapped up in one item, the last on the agenda. Now he was beginning to see that everything fit together. And maybe he wasn’t doing such a bad job after all.
That last agenda item was the upcoming explosion of the sun. And Jimmy had a fool—surely an unknowing fool—to front for them on this: Pham Trinli. The armsman made a big show of moving to the front of the table. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I’ve got the pictures here. Just a second.” A dozen engineering graphics appeared on the windows around the room. Trinli launched himself to the podium, and lectured them on Lagrange stability points. Funny, the man actually had a voice and style that bespoke command, but the ideas that came out were tendentious commonplaces.
Vinh let him ramble for a hundred seconds. Then, “I believe your agenda item is ‘Preparations for Relight,’ Mr. Trinli. What is it the Emergents are asking us to do?”
The old man fixed Ezr with a stare as intimidating as any crewleader’s: “That’s Armsman Trinli, if you please, Fleet Manager.” The stare continued a second longer. “Very well, to the heart of the matter. Here we have some five billion tonnes of diamond.” A red pointer lit on the window behind him, pointing at the slowly turning pile of rocks, all the loose material that Captain Park had found in this solar system. The ice and ore that had been lifted from Arachna were smaller mountains wedged in the corners and creases of the asteroidal blocks. “The rocks are in a classic contact jumble. At the present time, our fleets are moored to this jumble or in orbit around it. Now, as I was trying to explain a few seconds ago, the Emergents want us to emplace and manage a system of electric jets on the core blocks of the jumble.”
Diem: “Before the Relight?”
“Indeed.”
“They want to maintain contact stability during the Relight?”
“That’s exactly right.”
Uneasy looks passed around the table. Stationkeeping was a common and ancient practice. If done properly, an orbit about L1 cost very little fuel. They would be less than a million and a half kilometers from Arachna, and almost directly between the planet and its sun. In the coming bright years, they would be effectively hidden in its glare. But the Emergents didn’t think small; they already had built various structures, including their “Hammerfest,” down on the rockpile. So now they wanted the stationkeeping jets in place before Relight. OnOff would shine at fifty to one hundred sols before it settled down. The Chumps wanted to use the stationkeeping jets to keep the big rocks from shifting around during that time. It was dangerous foolishness, but the Emergents were boss.And this will
