A Larger Universe (27 page)

"There is something to what you say," she agreed,
"but if you suggest we free our slaves, even one of The People by birth
could not make that happen.  You should enjoy the privileges you have been
given and not worry about the other humans on this ship.  You are not of their
kind, anyway.  You are a feral human and as different from our slaves as it is
possible to be and still be of the same species.  Enjoy the wealth that comes
with your new status.  You cannot help them.

"Repair the ship.  Your contract with me is now with
The People on this ship.  If you want to return to Earth, I will make it so. 
Meanwhile, a healthy ship makes for better trading.  Better trading means more
wealth for all of us."

"Since I am one of The People, is one of those
privileges that I can bring my cat up here?"

"You can when I am ship's commander.  The others may
not like an Earth animal underfoot.  Besides you, of course."  Her whistle
echoed off the low roof.

As Ull turned to go up the stairs, Tommy held up the cylinder. 
"Wait!  Why should I be careful with this?"

"That is how we control the warriors."

"What!"

She took it from him and held it in the light.  "Why do
you think the warriors fight for us?  Because we are physically stronger?  We
are not.  Twist the top to the right until it clicks once, and the two ends
will slide slightly apart.  Press the two ends together, and every warrior's
necklace within 100 meters will explode.  Twist until it clicks again, then
press the two ends together and every necklace within two thousand meters will
explode.  To disarm it, twist the top to the left until it is closed."

Tommy was horrified.  "I cannot carry this!"

"You must.  Every adult carries this cylinder.  You
would not be considered one of The People if you did not.  Of course, you are
not obligated to use it should the need arise."

"I could not!” Tommy replied.  “I would not!"

"That is your choice," she said, and turned again
to go up the stairs.

Tommy shook his head.  His mind was already buzzing with
possibilities. 
This is just too much for now.  I'll worry about the
consequences of all this later.  Maybe doing the work I came up here for will
settle my mind.

Each of the computers he had to replace was one of an
original two.  Every backup computer had been cannibalized for parts. 
It
would be nice, just once, to have a working computer to experiment with.
  
When he had located all of the backup circuitry blocks, he turned to the
intercom near the navigation computer.  "Seth, this is Tommy, are you
there?" 

"Yes, Lord Tommy, I'm here,

Tommy stood frozen by the intercom.  "Seth, we'll talk
about the lord stuff later.  For now I need some more printouts of circuitry
blocks.  Since I have the run of the ship now, maybe you could just tell me
where the printer is, and I'll take care of it."

"I would be happy to do it for you, Lord Tommy, or tell
you where the printer is, either one."

"Humph," Tommy said.  "I tell you what.  I'll
send one of my apprentices over to you.  You give him instructions and send him
on to me."

"Yes, Lord Tommy."

This could be bad.

The apprentice who manned the intercom in the guildhall gave
no indication that he knew Tommy's new status.  He addressed Tommy as Master
Tommy and said he would send someone.  A few minutes later, a different
apprentice came for the circuitry blocks, and Tommy went with him to the
printer.  By the end of the hour, Tommy had replaced the blocks in their
compartments and returned to the guildhall, printouts in hand.

That was enough time for word to spread throughout the human
decks of the ship.  In his walk from the elevator, no one would meet his eyes. 
If he spoke to someone he knew, the response he got was.  "Yes, Lord
Tommy."  In the guildhall, he found everyone crowded in one corner,
talking, not working.  His entry brought silence. 

This will never do.  I'll never fulfill my side of this
contract if everyone treats me like a lord.  I wouldn't like having to do all
of this alone.

He stood for a moment in front of his guild members. 
"I want you to know I didn't ask for this," Tommy said.  "As far
as I'm concerned, everything is the same in this guild.  I'm still the
guildmaster, the youngest guildmaster ever, and you are my journeymen and
apprentices, learning something new and different.  With that knowledge, we are
making the ship better for everyone, not just the lords."

He filled the continued silence following his speech with,
"That means it's all right for you to speak, for starters."

"How can everything be the same?" Vent asked. 
"They made you a lord."

"Am I seven feet tall?  Do I eat raw fish?  Do I have a
tail and prefer to swim rather than walk?”  He looked around the room.  No one
spoke.  “They can call me a lord, but that doesn't make me one.  Will I have
you killed if you speak up to me or look me in the eye?  I won't.  I'm not one
of their species.  I'm as human as you are.

"There is a good side to this.  lords get all sorts of
privileges.  The members of my guild will have unlimited access to the ship. 
As a lord, I'll make it so.  Any resource we need, I should be able to get.  We
have a lot to do, and this will make our work easier and faster.

“But the best reason is, I'm not going to act like a lord. 
I can't keep you in this guild, but I hope you will all stay.  Talk it over. 
Let me know what you decide." 

Tommy picked up the printouts and went to his quarters.

Potter met him at the door with his "You've been gone
all day and left me cooped up in here" meow. 

Tommy sat cross-legged on the floor and dumped the paper to
the side.  "I'm sure you won't desert me.  Not for this reason, anyway. 
Giving someone a different label matters to humans and Nesu, not cats.  You
aren't fooled, are you Potter?"  Potter butted Tommy's hand with his
head.  "You know what's important," Tommy said as he scratched behind
Potter's ears.

He picked up the attitude control printout and sat at his
desk.  The code offered no surprises at first:  the same separation of
operating system, drivers, execution space, and application programs.  The
console sent the ship's new attitude along with a rotational velocity to the
computer.  The main application program calculated a new attitude for the ship
as variations along x-, y-, and z-axes with the starting attitude for each
movement defined as the zero point for each axis.  That was straightforward. 
That program's output was sent to a device driver.  Another program received
information from the same device driver and passed the information along to the
console. 

None of the parameters sent in either direction had anything
to do with the ship's mass.  That should matter, shouldn't it?  What kind of
attitude thrusters did the ship use, anyway?  The device driver that created
the final output was the first real surprise.  He had seen that series of ten-dimensional
arrays filled with base twelve numbers before.

He found the insystem drive control printout.  The listing
included an application that almost duplicated the attitude control program--it
would have to--and a program that calculated vectors and acceleration for the
ship to follow.  The printout also contained a device driver that created
ten-dimensional arrays filled with base twelve numbers.

He pushed the first two paper stacks to one side and picked
up the gravity control printout.  Now that he knew what to look for, he could
practically turn to the page.  How was gravity related to ten-dimensional
arrays filled with base twelve numbers?  He hummed to himself.  What he should
be asking was how a spherical spaceship could have identical gravity from the
upper deck to the lower deck and from one end of each deck to the other.  Why
hadn't that occurred to him before?  What laws of physics besides traveling
faster than light had the lords repealed?  What were those device drivers
talking to?

His stomach growled with a rumble loud enough to chase
Potter off his perch on the edge of Tommy's desk.  The last time he had eaten
was early that morning, before all this happened. 

I've got to quit causing this
, Tommy decided, as his
entry into the meal room brought complete silence.  Finally, someone, Valin,
stood up from his table and met Tommy at the door.

Valin kept his gaze lowered.  "Will you be eating in
our meal room today, Lord Tommy?"

"Yes, I will, damn it.  Do I look like someone who
likes raw fish?"

Valin cowered away from him.

He grabbed Valin's arm and pulled him up, then raised his
voice so everyone in the room could hear.  "You know.  I've been a
so-called lord for less than a day, and I'm already sick of it.  You have no
reason to be afraid of me.  I'm human, like you.  I'll make a deal with you. 
You can treat me like a lord if real lords are present; otherwise, I want it
the way it was before.  Does anyone have a problem with that?"

"What if a warrior is present?" Valin asked after
a long pause.

"If it matters, you can treat me like a lord when a
warrior is present.  Now, can we get on with dinner?"

He leaned back against the doorjamb, his stomach still
rumbling. 
We have to get past this.  Give them a while to work it out.

Valin returned to his table and joined a low-pitched debate
that went on for several minutes.  Other conversations at other tables were
interrupted by frequent glances in his direction.  With a flurry of activity,
the groups sent a member to other groups.  These new groups talked, and then
more people scurried from table to table.  The noise died down, and someone at
a small table--Tommy recognized him as the guildmaster of the Electricians
Guild--stood up.  "We would be pleased to have you join us, Master
Tommy"

The next morning, his journeymen and apprentices tried to
greet him as if nothing had happened.  They didn't entirely succeed, of course,
but Tommy appreciated their effort.  He told Vent and Sanos to continue working
on ponds and lakes with every available apprentice except one, whom he needed
to help carry his printouts to the bridge.

"Make it someone who doesn't mind climbing and getting
dirty," he said.

That brought blank stares from both of them, until Vent
recommended Dals.  "I almost transferred him to the electricians, he spent
so much time in the wiring shafts."

"He's perfect."

A half-hour later, he and Dals stood beside the attitude
controller, examining the wires emerging from its rear.  He separated a single
cable from the rest.  "Here's what I propose to do.  I want to follow this
cable wherever it goes in this ship.  I already know it extends to the central
column.  From there, we will climb down the wiring shaft.  I don't know how
far."

Dals went into the wiring shaft first.  "Your cable
goes into a box at the top of the shaft along with other cables just like
it."

"Let me in," Tommy said.  He moved past Dals to
stand on a small platform beside the box.  "This is another
computer." 
Now what is this for?

All of the cables but three led back to computers on the
bridge sub-deck.  The other cables disappeared into the darkness below.

Tommy attached a light to his belt and led the way down the
ladder.  The mystery of one of the cables ended on the deck with the targeting
computer.  Outside the central column wall, Tommy found the tag he had used to
mark the cable for controlling the ship's attitude from that console.

The second cable stretched to the computer below the track
control room and was also tagged as controlling the ship's attitude.

Markings on the wall indicated they were just above the Commons'
roof, when the last cable disappeared through the wall toward the axis of the
central column.  They had spent the entire morning descending that far, and
Tommy considered taking a break for lunch.  The cable's new direction drove
food completely out of his mind.

"We just passed an access door," Tommy shouted up
to Dals.  "See if the cable emerges inside.  I'm going down to the next
door."

Tommy watched Dals feet move back up the ladder, and then
continued down.  He found the next hatch a few feet below. 
If the cable
goes through at ceiling level, this must be it. 

The hatch was difficult to open, as if no one had been
through it in a long time.  The seals at the edge peeled back with a tearing
noise, releasing a puff of stale, metallic-smelling air.   His lamp revealed a
passageway leading toward the axis of the central column.  The cable they had
been following continued along the ceiling.

"The cable didn't go through the room above," Dals
said from above him, "so I came down."  

"It's here."  Tommy swung into the low
passageway.  "At least we won't be climbing for a while."

Tommy followed the cable to a gap in the ceiling.  The cable
crossed the gap and disappeared into a dark green wall.  He had leaned forward
to see where the cable disappeared when he felt Dals grab him by the back of
his tunic.

"Watch out, Master Tommy.  The gap goes all the way
around the passage.  You could fall through the floor."

Tommy held out his light, and kneeled down to peer over the
edge.  The gap was approximately two feet wide and stretched as far down as he
could see.  To the left and right, the fissure curved until the near wall met
the green wall on the opposite side of the gap.  Above where the wire met the
wall, his light reflected on a ceiling.  The wall's top edge was some distance
below the ceiling. 

With his feet pressed against opposite edges of the passage,
and with Dals to steady him, he climbed enough to see over the edge.  Rather
than the top of a wall, he found a surface extending into the distance about
two feet below the ceiling.  In every direction he looked, the green object
seemed to float away from the chamber surface.  The single contact between the
containing wall of the ship and the object was the cable.