Adiamante (8 page)
Authors: Jr. L. E. Modesitt
We slipped down the corridor in gentle and near-effortless movements, our lightened steps whisper-echoing on the hard permaplast that coated the smoothed metallic ore beneath. The walls were similarly coated, and our words echoed as well as our steps, almost like ghosts of a far-distant past.
I tried not to move too quickly. Weight might be twenty percent of normal, but mass and inertia remained, and trying to stop in low gee had broken all too many limbs throughout the history of satellite installations. Plastic-coated nickel-iron remained hard in low gee.
“Are they still cybs?” asked Elanstan. Her voice sounded preternaturally loud in the silence, and she lowered it as she added, “The way the legends say?”
I shrugged and, not being quite reaccustomed to low gee, nearly lost my balance and careened toward the corridor wall.
“Careful,” warned Lieza with a touch of concern in her voice.
“Hard to say,” I answered as I straightened. “I have this feeling that they aren't going to see much besides what they want to see.”
“Oh ⦠that could be difficult.”
That was the understatement of the millennium.
“Here's where I leave you two.” With a raised hand in half-salute, Lieza took a smaller side tunnel that slanted at an angle of thirty degrees to the right off toward one of
the quarters sections. While there were several hundred almost luxurious apartments there, not to mention the thousands of bunks in the lower-level caserns, only a handful had been used in centuries, although all were maintained.
the quarters sections. While there were several hundred almost luxurious apartments there, not to mention the thousands of bunks in the lower-level caserns, only a handful had been used in centuries, although all were maintained.
Elanstan and I continued moving along the main corridor toward the control center, past the closed doors that contained who knew what. I'd studied the layouts for quarters and systems, not the plans for the entire station. Finally, I asked.
“Are all those rooms empty?”
“Mostly. There are several dozen storerooms with enough dried and sealed food to feed a fleet for a decade, if you want to call fortified and enriched sawdust dating from five millennia back âfood.'”
“It's still nourishing?”
“The ancients were good at preserving just about anything, except taste and themselves.” Elanstan tossed her head and her short niellen hair sprayed away from her face.
Ahead, I could see an area of brighter lights.
“That's the central hub,” Elanstan pointed toward the increased illumination. “We're stopping here.” She touched the lockplate for a hatch on the left side of the corridor, and I followed her through the adiamante-armored double locks.
“I thought you'd be here.” Rhetoral rose from the central console as we entered and the inner door hissed shut behind us. “Do you want the board? Or do you want something to eat first?”
“Both. A quick scan of the board, then some food, and then an in-depth immersion.”
“Typical intuit,” laughed Rhetoral, through the net, his amusement enhanced by Elanstan, and even by Lieza, from wherever she was.
“Damned comps,” I complained, even as I eased into the control chair and spread my senses through the local net.
The upper channels and the outer beam guides felt chill, sluggish, but that was to be expected. We couldn't heat the unused components too quickly, not with decades or more between power-ups.
My mental fingers flipped through the maintenance files. A minimum of another two days before all the systems were close to optimalityâexcept for Delta and Kappa. Even for the online systems, a week or more would be better. I'd suspected as much. We just didn't use the old systems that much.
Even through the multiple links, I could smell the age of the massive, web-linked, not-quite-in-real-space systems, and I wondered how long before we would again have to rebuild and reconfigure them.
My head swam, and little white spots danced across my mental screens.
“Ecktor!”
I broke the connection and looked up at Elanstan and Rhetoral. “How about some food?”
“It's about time you had something to eat. You look like a cyb ghost.”
“That good?”
At least they grinned. But I worried. Twelve big adiamante-hulled warships was a lot for an ancient systemâeven one as well-designed and redundant as this relic of the Rebuilt Hegemonyâand we needed every station, one to match each of the Vereal ships. I still wanted to do an in-depth, comp-like analysis, but that needed to wait for bodily maintenance.
“Once there was a complete recycled hydroponic biosphere here,” said Elanstan, “but it would have taken so much effort to get it back in place that we didn't bother. What we have is pretty limited.”
“Not so limited as starving,” I quipped back as I stood.
My eyes watered, and a few more white spots danced across my field of vision.
My eyes watered, and a few more white spots danced across my field of vision.
“I'm not sure,” groused Rhetoral, his blue eyes glum. “Goat cheese as solid as nickel-iron, dried fruits with the consistency of antique synthetic rubberâ”
“Please,” I said. I didn't want to hear his lecture about how the ancients had actually sweetened and flavored synthetic rubber and chewed it. Chewing the same stuff that you put on groundcar tires?
“We've got the old mess room operating,” Elanstan said. “The hardest part was defrosting the water supplies.”
She turned right when she left the control center, toward the central hub. I followed. Rhetoral sealed the hatches behind us. Despite the innate shielding provided by the bulk of a nickel-iron asteroid, the Rebuilt Hegemony had also encased the control center, the broadcast and reception nets, and the power and defense systems themselves in a double layer of adiamanteâabout twice the protection provided by the hulls of the Vereal Union's fleet. I could feel both Rhetoral's and Elanstan's links to the center, and their apprehension.
“Does one of you want to stay on the board?” I finally asked.
“No ⦠so long as we're both in the hub area,” she answered.
“Not so long as we've got the Coordinator with us,” quipped Rhetoral.
“Thank you.”
Fifty meters farther along we reached the circular chamber that represented the center of the station's main level. Eight corridors angled from that point.
I paused to study the diorama displayed in the arched dome. The holoed reality left me looking up at snow-covered peaks, and firs and pines that moved in the winds under a deep blue sky, as if I were in a deep mountain canyon.
The faint sound of falling water caught my ear, and I turned to study the line of silver that sprang from the dark rock. A hawk of some sort I had not seenânot that many hawks were left on Old Earthâcircled a white throne peak plateau.
The heat of the sun beat down on me, and the scent of a river and pines wafted across me.
After a moment, Rhetoral said softly, “Amazing, isn't it?”
It was amazing, on two counts. First was the technical skill involved in creating such a vivid representation, and second was the ancient arrogance that full-body reality could be duplicated through mere technology.
“Yes, it is amazing.” But I shook my head.
We continued straight through the hub another hundred meters along the corridor, where Elanstan paused and asked, “You haven't been into the mess here, have you?”
“No,” I admitted. “This part was closed off the times I worked on the net antenna and the power systems.”
She smiled and pressed the lockplate. “You might find this interesting, then.”
Rhetoral smiled back at her, and I caught a shared sense of amusement that passed between them.
Again, after stepping through the locks, I swallowed. The walls of the mess were apparently paneled in polished dark wood, and rich green velvet hangings surrounded the windows that displayed a hillside vista of a cityâbut no city I had ever seen. Three tables were actually placed within bay windows that seemed to display a continuation of the city view.
Each of the dozen tables was preserved and polished wood, and the chairs were upholstered in the velvet-like fabric. I looked back at the lock, but from within, it appeared as a thick wooden door. My eyes traversed the room, taking in the hundreds of details: the pressed pale
green linen tablecloths, the real silver utensils on the single table set for eatingâthe one in the middle bay window.
green linen tablecloths, the real silver utensils on the single table set for eatingâthe one in the middle bay window.
After stepping toward the table, I picked up a knife. It was cool, heavy, and felt like real silver. I fingered the cloth. Not cotton or linen, but something smoother, yet still woven.
“How?” I asked.
“Inert pressgas,” said Elanstan. “The physics are complex, but it uses a convection system where the cooling of the gas to close to absolute zero creates heat and circulation ⦠. I can't say I understand it, but all you have to do is seal the place, and start the system. Once it's sealed, it's good for twenty or thirty millennia.”
My eyes drifted back to the center bay window that displayed the city and the harbor below.
“Sit down,” said Elanstan. “You don't have to worry. There's a full-circuit net repeater here. We've checked it out.”
At that moment, as I sank into the chair with the velvet-like cushioned armrests, I hadn't even considered the net repeater. My eyes went back to the window across the table from me, where a huge watership slipped out toward the sea toward a massive cable-supported bridge that crossed the mouth of the bay.
I recognized that ancient sceneâpreâcollapse Sfriscoâbut only because of some holos of the great bridge that had been buried in the locial records. It had been years ago, before I'd even met Morgen, and I'd wondered then at the need for such a massive bridge. The bridge and the city were long gone. Between the faults, the small stars, and the sledges of death, the area's topography only faintly resembled what it had been.
Then the music began, and, once more, the sounds were something I had not heard before. Oh, we have pianos, and strings, and woodwindsâbut no one put them together
like that, and few play so well, and not in such unison.
like that, and few play so well, and not in such unison.
My eyes watered.
“It's dangerous to experience this,” Elanstan said dryly, seating herself in the chair to my right. “We might actually want to return to the high-tech days of the ancients.”
I'd forgotten she was there, but shields don't glitter and shimmer, only protect.
“The sustenance doesn't measure up to the setting,” Rhetoral added, setting two loaves of bread, a large wedge of cheese, and a bowl of mixed dried fruit in the center of the table. He turned back toward the dark wood counter on one side of the room, returning with three crystalline goblets and a pitcher of water and sitting on my left.
“Impressive, isn't it?” he asked after he sat down.
“I think dangerous is more appropriate,” I said after I cleared my throat. “Luxuries are always dangerous.”
The two exchanged glances.
“Ecktor, these weren't particularly luxurious. Millions of people could hear that kind of music or purchase furnishings like these,” said Elanstan.
It was my turn to feel patronizing, but I tried not to sound that way. “I meant societal luxuries. What is the total resource bill if everyone, or even millions of people out of billions, can purchase hundreds of small luxuries?”
“Ecktor ⦠this music was laser-printed on a plastic disc ten centimeters across. That's scarcely a huge resource bill.”
I thought for a minute, but I had to access the net for the calculations, and I could see them both frowning as the silence drew out. “Let's say ⦠one disc per year for every person on the globe. Before the collapse, there were eight billion people. If we assume that one of those discs weighs 25 grams, one disc per person per year requires two hundred thousand tonnes of plastic. That's a million tonnes of plastic every five yearsâjust for a little music.” I lifted the
synthetic cloth. “How about one of these every two years for a family groupânearly one billion family groups getting a half kilogram of synthetic fabric annually ⦔
synthetic cloth. “How about one of these every two years for a family groupânearly one billion family groups getting a half kilogram of synthetic fabric annually ⦔
“Ecktor, it wasn't the luxuries that led to the chaos years and the collapse and flight,” pointed out Elanstan. “It was necessities. Taking your own mathâif you give everyone just one set of clothes a year, they would have needed to produce more than four million tonnes of fabric annually.”
“But they didn't do it that way,” I had to counter. “In NorAm, most people had ten to twenty sets of clothes, and with five percent of the world's people, NorAm and the IndBloc were using almost eighty percent of the world's raw materials at the end. That's the problem with luxuries. That's why we weight comptime so heavily for goods above midline.”
“Something got lost here,” Rhetoral said dryly. “I'm missing the point.”
I had to think. What had my point been? Then I shrugged. “I can't think. I need to eat.” I cut off a chunk of cheese and a thick slice of the heavy bread and took a bite of each.
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