and the reason behind the enclosures.”
“The cost—” exclaimed the Vice President. She gave Nigel a quick guilty glance.
He ignored it; the SI had made things considerably simpler for him. “Yes, it would cost a lot to reach the Dyson Pair by conventional methods,” he said. “We’d have to locate at least seven H-congruous planets, stretched out between the Commonwealth and the Dyson Pair, and then build commercial-size wormhole generators on each of them. It would take decades, and there would be little economic benefit.”
“The Commonwealth treasury can hardly subsidize CST,” Crispin Goldreich said.
“You did for Far Away,” Nigel said mildly. “That was our last alien contact.”
“One station on Half Way!” the Senator said hotly. “And if nothing else, that convinced me we should never do such a thing again. Far Away has been a total waste of time and effort.”
Nigel resisted the impulse to comment directly. The Halgarths had direct allies around the table in addition to Rafael, and their family were the main beneficiaries of Far Away. Not, as they’d be the first to admit, that there were many benefits.
“I would like to propose something a little more practical than consecutive wormholes,” Nigel said. Everyone around the table looked at him expectantly, even Ozzie, which was quite an achievement. The Vice President’s expression of interest tightened at the simple demonstration of true political power.
“I’m in total agreement with the SI that we need to know exactly what has happened at the Dyson Pair,” Nigel continued. “And we can neither afford the cost nor the wait to build a chain of wormholes to take us there. So I suggest we build a starship instead.”
The idea was greeted with several nervous smiles. Ozzie simply laughed.
“You mean a faster-than-light ship?” Brewster Kumar asked. There was a strong note of excitement in his voice. “Can we actually do that?”
“Of course. It’s a relatively simple adaptation of our current wormhole generator system; instead of a stable fixed wormhole which you travel through, this will produce a permanent flowing wormhole that you travel inside of.”
“Oh, man,” Ozzie said. “That is so beautiful. Whaddayaknow, the space cadets won after all. Let’s press the red button and zoom off into hyperspace.”
“It’s not hyperspace,” Nigel answered, slightly too quickly. “That’s just a tabloid name for a very complex energy manipulation function, and you know it.”
“Hyperspace,” Ozzie said contentedly. “Everything we built our wormhole to avoid.”
“Except in cases like this, when it makes perfect sense,” Nigel said. “We can probably build this ship inside of a year. A crack exploratory team can go out there, take a look around and tell us what’s happening. It’s quick, and it’s cheap.”
“Cheap?” Crispin Goldreich queried.
“Relatively, yes.” The starship proposals had been sitting dormant in Nigel’s personal files for over a century. An exercise in wishful thinking, one he hadn’t managed to fully let go. He’d never quite forgotten (nor erased) his feeling of admiration when he watched the Eagle II fly gracefully out of the Martian horizon to settle on Arabia Terra. There was something noble about spacecraft voyaging through the vast and hostile void, carrying with them the pinnacle of the human spirit, everything good and worthwhile about the race. And he was probably the last human alive who remembered that. No, he corrected himself, not the last. “The CST corporation and Augusta Treasury would be prepared to fund up to thirty percent of the hardware costs.”
“In return for exclusivity,” Thompson Burnelli said scathingly.
Nigel smiled softly at him. “I believe that precedent was established during the Far Away venture.”
“Very well,” the Vice President said. “Unless there’s an alternative, we’ll take a vote on the proposal.”
Nobody was against it. But Nigel had known that from the start; even Burnelli raised his hand in approval. The ExoProtectorate Council was basically a rubber stamp for CST exploration and encounter strategy. With Nigel’s blessing, CST had started practical design work on the starship three days earlier. All that remained were the thousand interminable details of the project, its funding and management. Details they would all delegate to their deputies. This meeting was policy only.
“So are you going to captain this mission?” Rafael Columbia asked as they stood up to leave.
“No,” Nigel said. “Much as I’d like to, that position requires various qualities and experience which I simply don’t have, not even lurking in secure storage at my rejuve clinic. But I know a man who does.”
…
Oaktier was an early phase one planet, settled in 2089. Its longevity had produced a first-class economy and a rich and impressive cultural heritage. The crystal skyscrapers and marble condo-pyramids that comprised the center of the capital, Darklake City, made that quite obvious to any observer arriving fresh at the CST planetary station from Seattle.
Most of the original settlers had arrived from Canada and Hong Kong, with a goodly proportion of Seattle’s residents joining up with them. As such, its influences were memorably varied, with ultramodern trends sitting comfortably alongside carefully maintained old traditions. Given such roots, formality and hard work had seeped into the population’s genome over the centuries. As a people, they’d flourished and expanded; two hundred forty years after settlement, the population was just over one and a quarter billion, spread out over eight continents. The vast majority worked diligently and lived well.
With the Seattle legacy perhaps weighting the decision, Darklake City had been sited in a hilly area of the subtropics. With its slopes of rich soil, constant warm weather, and abundant water from rivers and lakes, the area was ideal for coffee growing. The lakeshore that made up the southeastern edge of the city now sprawled for thirty-five kilometers, incorporating marinas, civic parks, expensive apartment blocks, boatyards, leisure resorts, and commercial docks. At night, it was a gaudy neon rainbow of color as holographic adverts roofed the roads like luminescent storm clouds, while buildings competed against each other to emphasize their features in raw photonic energy. Bars, restaurants, and clubs used music, live acts, and semilegal pleasure-tingle emitters to entice the party people and it crowds in off the street.
Some forty years before Dudley Bose made his vital discovery, the night she was due to be murdered, Tara Jennifer Shaheef could see it all laid out before her from the lounge balcony of her twenty-fifth-floor apartment in the center of the city. The shoreline was like the glimmering edge of the galaxy, falling off into complete blackness beyond. That was where life and civilization ended. Beyond were only a few sparkling cruise ships that slid across the deep water like rogue star clusters lost in the deep night.
A gentle evening breeze stirred her hair and robe and she leaned against the balcony rail. There was a sugary scent of blossom in the air, which she relished as she inhaled. Oaktier had long ago banned combustion engines and fossil fuel power stations from the planet; local politicians boasted that its atmosphere was cleaner than Earth’s. So she breathed in the air contentedly. There was no noise, at this height she was insulated from the low buzz of electric vehicles on the streets below. And the bustling shoreline three kilometers away was too far for its racket to carry.
If she turned her head left, she could see the bright grid of city lights stretch out into the foothills. A pale light cast by the gray-blue crescent of Oaktier’s low moon was just strong enough to reveal the mountains behind them that formed a low wall across the night sky. In the daytime, long terrace lines of coffee bushes curved along the slopes. White plantation mansions nestled in lush groves of trees, set back from the narrow roads that snaked up to the summits.
Two rejuvenations ago, she’d made her life out there, away from the more frenetic urban existence. Sometimes, she dreamed of reverting, heading back into the countryside for a quieter, slower existence. An existence away from her intense, driven husband, Morton. After a couple more rejuvenations, she would probably do it, just to recharge herself. But not just yet, she still enjoyed the faster mainstream life.
She went back into the apartment, and the balcony doors slid shut behind her. Her bare feet padded quietly on the lounge’s hard teakwood floor as she made her way across to the bathroom.
In the apartment tower’s basement, her killer entered the power utility room. He removed the cover from one of the building management array cabinets, and took a handheld array from his pocket. The unit spooled out a length of fiber-optic cable with a standard v-jack on the end, which he plugged into the cabinet’s exposed maintenance socket. Several new programs were downloaded, and quickly piggybacked their way onto the existing software. When it was done, he pulled the v-jack out and replaced the cover with the correct locking tool.
Tara Jennifer Shaheef’s bathroom was decorated in marble, while the ceiling was a single giant mirror. Recessed lighting around the rim of the bath cast a warm rose-pink glow across the room, flickering in an imitation of candlelight. The bath itself was a sunken affair big enough for two, which she’d filled to the brim and added a variety of salts to. When she got in, the spar nozzles came on, churning the water against her skin. She sank into the sculpted seat, and rested her head back on the cushion. Her e-butler called up some music from the household array. Tara listened to the melody in a pleasant semidoze.
Morton was away for a week at Talansee on the other side of the planet, attending a conference with a housing developer group he was trying to negotiate a deal with. AquaState, the company he and Tara had set up together, manufactured semiorganic moisture extractor leaves that provided water for remote buildings, and was finally starting to take off. Morton was eager to capitalize on their growing success, moving the company toward a public flotation that would bring in a huge amount of money for further expansion. But his devotion to his work meant that for seven whole days she didn’t have to produce any excuses about where she’d been or what she’d been doing. She could spend the whole time with Wyobie Cotal, the rather delectable young man she’d snagged for herself. It was mainly for what he did to her in bed, but they also traveled around the city and enjoyed its places and events as well. That’s what made this affair so special. Wyobie paid attention to all those areas that Morton either ignored or had simply forgotten in his eternal obsession to advance their company. These seven days were going to be a truly wonderful break, she was determined about that. Then maybe afterward… After all, they’d been married for thirteen years. What more did Morton want? Marriages always went stale in the end. You just shook hands and moved on.
Her killer walked across the ground-floor lobby, and his e-butler requested an elevator to take him up to the twenty-fifth floor. He stood underneath the discreet security sensor above the doors as he waited. He didn’t care, after all, it wasn’t his face he was wearing.
Tara was still deliberating about what to wear that evening when the hauntingly powerful orchestral chorus vanished abruptly. The bathroom lights died. The spar jets shut down. Tara opened her eyes resentfully. A power failure was so boring. She thought the apartment was supposed to be immune from such things. It had certainly never happened before.
After a few seconds, the lights still hadn’t come back on. She told her e-butler to ask the household array what was happening. It told her it couldn’t get a reply, nothing seemed to be working. Now she frowned in annoyance. This simply couldn’t happen, that’s what backups and duplicated systems were for.
She waited for a little while longer. The bath was such a tranquil place, and she wanted her skin to be just perfect for her lover that night. But no matter how hard she wished and cursed, the power stayed off. Eventually, she struggled to her feet and stepped out. That was when she realized just how dark the apartment was. She really couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Using irritation to cover any bud of genuine concern, she decided not to feel around for a towel. Instead she cautiously made her way out into the corridor. There was a glimmer of light available there, at least. It came from the broad archway leading into the lounge.
Tara hurried through into the big room, only mildly concerned what her soaking wet feet would do to the wooden floor. Light from the illuminated city washed in through the balcony windows. It gave the room a dark monochrome perspective. Her lips hardened in annoyance as she looked out at the twinkling lights. This was the
