Chapter 21
The trip out from Kantano Skybase took just over nine hours. They spent most of that time trying to nap in the cramped flight seats. Ali’Maksam was motionless, lost in a meditative trance behind his visor. As the high-orbit shuttle approached the Port Grissondon Orbital City, Ruskin silently sipped juice and coffee, trying to revive himself, trying to take stock of the curious streams of thought that had been running through his sleep, and wondering what the devil Dax was doing to his head. Finally, crowding his face next to Tamika’s, he peered out the window at the sprawl of the space settlement.
Out here a few hundred thousand kilometers from Kantano’s World, Port Grissondon floated in a Lagrangian orbit trailing Kantano’s primary moon; it was a center for manufacturing as well as an interplanetary and interstellar transportation hub. A smog of dissipating gases surrounded the city, blotting out all but the brightest stars. The settlement was full of lights, like any city. Many of them were moving: it was astonishing how many spaceships there were around Port Grissondon. Hundreds were clustered around the trailing edge of the settlement; that was probably the spaceship factory. Traffic moved silently through the haze like ferryboats through a misty harbor.
Across the aisle, Max stirred to wakefulness and joined them in peering out.
The shuttle closed on the leading edge of the city and, as soon as a gate became available, moved in to dock. They began hauling their gear out of the storage bins again; but Ruskin went through it all with rising good cheer — even through customs. The real voyage was about to begin, and that thought was enough to give him hope.
Following the luxury of a good night’s sleep in a hotel room, they made their way first thing in the morning, station time, to the offices of the Yonupian Crafts Guild. There they were met by a fragile-looking humanoid named Farsil, who was the Yonupian sales representative handling Ruskin’s order. “Good-owner Ruskin.” Farsil extended a hand, palm up, and flicked it side to side between Ruskin and himself in a gesture of greeting.
“My companions,” Ruskin explained, introducing Max and Tamika. “You received the message that my ship must accommodate them, as well?”
“Indeed,” Farsil answered. “These late changes always are somewhat problematic, but I’m certain that our design will satisfy your needs.” The Yonupian gazed at them with large eyes that drooped at the outer corners, conveying a sense of inconsolable sadness. That was a fine irony, Ruskin thought. The Yonupians were the premier makers of starships throughout the Habitat of Humanity — and for all Ruskin knew, beyond. If they felt sadness it certainly wasn’t for lack of business.
“I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
Farsil dismissed his concern with a flick of his fingers.
“I don’t see how you could make a last-minute change like that at all,” Tamika confessed.
“If you would care to view our production line, perhaps that would help you understand,” Farsil said.
The Yonupian led them to a bubble-windowed lift-car. He touched a control, and the car began to rise through a wide shaft, passing other cars moving the opposite direction. Half a minute later, they glided out of the shaft into a vast enclosed factory space, studded with lights. Tamika gasped; Ruskin felt his blood stir with awe; even Max’s breath hissed out audibly. There were easily a hundred partially grown starships arrayed in the factory space; some were open to the air, with robots and workers swarming around them, but the majority were enclosed in huge, clear growth tanks.
Farsil noted their expressions with evident satisfaction. “Our growth tanks are the most sophisticated in the Habitat,” he said, pointing as he spoke. “Some you will see in hard vacuum and zero gravity, for assembly of certain critical components. Others contain liquid or vapors, and it is in those tanks that most of the actual structures are grown.” The tiny car accelerated, high above the factory floor. As his three visitors stared, Farsil pointed out spacecraft in various stages of production: small skeletons of packet couriers arrayed like seeds in pods; a large passenger liner emerging newborn from a tank, glistening; freighters whole and in pieces; shrouded military vessels; and several strangely contoured ships — only half formed — that Farsil identified as scientific vessels under construction for the Querayn Academies.
Ruskin was surprised. “Why would they need all of those research ships? I thought their work was theoretical.”
Farsil only smiled. It was not his place to comment on the activities of Yonupian clients, his expression suggested.
“Theory can only carry one so far before practical investigation is required,” Ali’Maksam remarked. “Even in such areas as the Querayn study.”
Ruskin raised his eyebrows. He felt a tingle somewhere in his forebrain. Were the Querayn moving out of the philosophical sciences, then? He shrugged finally and moved his gaze farther along.
“There you see the basic structural growth tanks,” Farsil said, pointing.
Ruskin glanced at Tamika, who was squinting in puzzlement at the tanks. “Nanoconstructors, naturally,” he said.
“Of course,” Farsil said. “All components, including hulls, are assembled from raw elements, atom by atom, by molecule-sized assembly units — trillions of them — at speeds that to us would be blinding if we could see them at all.” He turned his sad eyes toward Tamika. “This is why we were able to make your structural alterations on short notice. It required reprogramming and one reimmersion, but the request came in time to avoid serious complications.” He nodded. “The total growth time for a ship can be as short as four days. The cost, of course, is a consideration for most clients.”
Farsil appeared to ignore Tamika’s piercing gaze at Ruskin, who was thinking, as the Yonupian talked,Yes, the same things that are in me; isn’t it wonderful? Farsil continued, “… which accounts for atomic-scale precision, combined with low cost.” Ruskin cleared his throat at that last assertion — “low cost” was definitely a relative term — but Farsil paid no attention. “The diamond-foam structures give our ships high strength with low mass …”
Ruskin shook his head at the thought that he was being remanufactured from the inside out by machines just like those being manipulated by the Yonupians to build spaceships. And who, he wondered, was controllinghis machines? He shivered, recalling for the first time in a long while the terror and bewilderment he’d felt when he’d first seen his body changing, when he’d realized that someone seemed to want very badly to kill him.
Was all that over now? He thought of how exposed he was, touring the factory, moving about in a strange city. If they were going to try again, they could easily do it here.
Or they could sabotage his spaceship. He made a mental note to speak to Farsil about a final security check before he took delivery on his ship.
“Up here,” Farsil said, “is a bare skeleton emerging from its growth bath.” They were approaching a huge tank in the process of being drained of a milky fluid. Remaining in the tank was a long, iridescent structure that looked more like an enormous fish skeleton than a spaceship. “What you see there is composed entirely of our own porous diamond material, doped with certain proprietary materials. Of course, it’s the precise crystalline structure that makes our materials superior in quality.”
“Of course,” Ruskin murmured.
“The fluid carries both raw materials and the nanoassemblers themselves, including the intelligence units. Rather like blood …”
Ruskin closed his eyes, wishing Farsil would change the subject.
They were moving into a more confined area now. “This is our engine plant, where stardrives are grown separately — for sale to other manufacturers. Our own ships have their engines grown integrally with the hulls.”
Ruskin nodded dutifully. Despite the sales talk, he was fascinated by the tanks. Some were filled with milky fluids, some with clear fluids with intriguing shapes half-visible, some with swirling vapors. Several were being flushed clear, offering glimpses of the gleaming curved surfaces on the stardrive generators that would distort space-time itself, allowing ships to slip quickly between the stars. Nearby stars, anyway. Though Ruskin well understood the principles of stardrive, he could only wonder at the machinery that actually made it possible.
Farsil turned the car around and sent it speeding back the way they had come. “That is all that we can show you, for reasons of security.”
“You mean the security of your trade secrets?”
“That, and the security of our clients, whose activities are their business and no one else’s.” Farsil gazed at Ruskin intently. “Be assured, Good-owner Ruskin, the security of your ship is guaranteed. That is a matter of strictest guild policy.” Farsil stood ramrod straight then and seemed to give all his attention to the steering of the car.
Had Farsil been reading his mind, or were many of his customers concerned about the same thing? Ruskin wondered. He asked Farsil where his ship was now.
“In space, on its final inspection and shakedown, Good-owner. By tomorrow, it will be ready for you to take delivery.” The Yonupian’s sad eyes were strangely reassuring. “If you like, we can arrange for fueling and provisioning during the night.”
Ruskin felt Tamika reaching to take his hand. He squeezed back, glanced at her and Ali’Maksam both. “That would be excellent. We’d like to be under way tomorrow, if possible.”
Farsil nodded. “Then under way you shall be.”
With departure time so close, he might well have begun to think that the danger was past, and that once they were in flight, he could put some of his fears behind him. Hemight have thought that way, if it hadn’t been for a chance encounter that night while he and Tamika were downtown shopping for additional supplies. It was a momentary thing — just a meeting of eyes across a crowded concourse — and then the other person was gone. Ruskin had scarcely seen the other’s face; nevertheless, he was left with an unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach.Who was that …? Not quite Human …
Tamika caught his arm. “What’s wrong, Rus’lem? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“What? Oh, nothing really. I mean — I don’t know, maybe I did.”
Her eyes sharpened. “Try that again, Willard.”
“For a second there, I thought I saw someone I knew.”A tall figure, looming over him. He blinked dizzily. That memory, welling up from —
((Don’t you remember, Willard?))
A cold ripple went up his spine.(The one who attackedme?)
((Let’s just say, that was my first thought, too.))
Ruskin twisted around to peer across the concourse, but whoever it was had long since vanished into the mass of people.A tall figure … a noliHuman? Perhaps; he couldn’t be sure. He’d caught the gaze, all right, but not the whole person. But the silhouette …(Dax, are you saying that wasthe person who attacked me?)
((I wasn’t in the game at the time, if you recall. But let’s say that the association was striking.))
Ruskin realized that Tamika was staring at him. “Someone you knew,” she asked. “Who? Someone good or someone bad?”
He shook his head. “I wish I could be sure.”
Tamika scowled, her golden cat eyes narrowing to thin slits. “I’m notasking you to be sure, you stubborn oaf. Who did youthink it was?”
He reflected before answering. Was it better for her to know? Or would it just worry her needlessly? He sighed. “Ithought … that it might have been the person who tried to kill me.”
Tamika looked unsurprised. “All right,” she said in a sensible tone of voice. “Let’s finish and get the hell back to the hotel. We’ll alert the security there.”
Ruskin scratched his head. “I’m not sure, Twig. I just caught the eyes, really, and that’s —” he shook his head — “well, anyway, it wasn’t a proper Human. Maybe a noliHuman. I’m not sure.”
Tamika was in no mood for discussion. She towed him by the arm down the concourse. Left to himself, he probably would have wandered around in a daze. As it was, his mind spun in circles, thinking: NoliHuman? A connection to the Querayn? Surely not. But who else?
By the time they were back at the hotel, the memory of the encounter had subsided to the intensity of mere curiosity, like a powerful dream half-remembered. But like some other dreams lately, he knew that it had not gone away; it had merely sunk into the abyss of subconscious consideration, a disturbance deep in his mind. A disturbance deep and silent.
Silent and slow.
The night passed with no further ripples.
Before taking them to the ship the next morning, Farsil handed Ruskin a small wafer. “This is a sealed transmission from Kantano’s, Good-owner Ruskin. It was received by our office for forwarding to you.” Ruskin looked at the wafer in puzzlement, as Farsil explained, “It will play back on your ship’s control console, with proper identity verification.”
Ruskin shrugged. “Thank you.”
“Also, we received a software transmission from your home office, coded for loading into your ship’s console.” As Ruskin raised a startled eyebrow, Farsil added, “Since the identifications were in order and the ship’s title is held by Associative Frontiers Institute, we followed the required legal procedure and loaded the transmission as instructed.”
“I see. Can you tell me the nature of the software?”
Farsil leveled his hand in a palm-up gesture, flicking it side to side from the wrist. “We are not privy to content, Good-owner. We merely follow the letter of the law.”
“Of course,” Ruskin murmured with a scowl. He was far from satisfied. But it must have been from Judith or Ankas. If so, what the dickens were they up to? Of course, he had left the planet rather abruptly. Maybe they thought he’d forgotten some essential piece of business; maybe hehad forgotten something. In any case, he would check once they were aboard. He pocketed the wafer and bowed slightly.
Farsil turned and led the way to the ship.
From the viewing area, it looked like a sort of melted, mutated peanut, shimmering pearl in color. It was a small ship by interstellar standards, smaller than the shuttle that had brought them here from Kantano Skybase. Most of the vessel was power plant and fuel storage; the living quarters and flight deck occupied a nodule near its nose. It looked sturdy; it didn’t necessarily look as though it could cross a hundred light-years in a matter of days or weeks.
“Can we board?” Ruskin asked.
Farsil took them down a snaking tube to the main spacelock and on into the ship, demonstrating various controls along the way. The tour of the bridge, living quarters, and power section took no more than an hour, including a briefing on the ship’s main operational systems. “All of the information you might need is in the ship’s console, with duplicates in your cabin and on the power-deck,” Farsil said as they paused back on the bridge. “In the event of emergency, it’s all there where you can reach it. Normally, you can just ask the ship to do what you want it to do.” He gazed at them with drooping eyes and a sad smile. “Do you have any questions?”
“I’m sure we will have —” Tamika remarked “— when we’re ten light-years out.”
Farsil bowed, acknowledging the humor. “Then you can ask your ship,” he replied. “It knows far more about itself than I do. Is there anything else?”
Ruskin shook his head. “As soon as we’re loaded, we’ll be ready to go.” He stepped to the control console, running his fingers lightly across its new face. He turned to Farsil with a grin, and felt Dax putting a puzzling question at the tip of his tongue. “Does this thing come with road maps?” he asked.
The others looked startled. “Sir?” Farsil asked.
Ruskin felt Dax laughing inside him.
((Forget it. I’ll explain later.))
“Never mind,” Ruskin said with a sigh. “How soon can we launch?”
Farsil relaxed. “Whenever you like, sir. She’s ready, and she’s yours.”