Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8) (12 page)

“Gar’, this whole thing is very complex but it all comes down to
… I don’t want to tell you or anyone else
how
I know that this works. Nonetheless, I can guarantee that it
does
work.” She stared intently at him, “I want you to ‘discover,’” she held her fingers up to make little air quotes, “these principles so we can attribute the invention to you. The ‘theory’ explaining how it works can be mine,
if
the theory pans out. You’ll share in the financial proceeds according to the file I just sent you. The deal isn’t a lot different from the one you already have with us for your graphene, just a little more weighted in D5R’s favor.”

Gary swallowed.
“So you’re going to send me a file with these ‘conditions’ you want me to try?”

Ell grinned, “Nope. I’m going to
tell
you some conditions that you’re going to try. You can write them down if you want but they should be in your handwriting. You can attribute them to a half-baked ‘theory’ of mine if you want. But I don’t want there to be any record of me giving you any settings.”

His eyes widened, “Gosh, you sound a little paranoid.” He grinned, “You didn’t steal this from someone
else did you? Someone who might come after me when I try to use it?”

“Nope,
” she snorted, “
nobody’s
going to come after you. Let me give you some numbers…”

***

Ell climbed on the saddle of her waldo controller at D5R and put on the gear. “Allan, give me video from Sigwald and let me talk to Shan… Hey Mr. Fiancé, how’s it been going with Querlak?” Her eyes narrowed as the video came on and she realized that they weren’t at the site where they’d been watching the constructor. Instead Sigwald was zooming down one of the ring-crossing roads toward the circle sea.

Shan’s voice came over the connection, “Keenar got confrontational and
demanded
we tell him how to get to the stars. I thought about poking him in the nose, but instead I backed away and left. I figured we want what they know about carbon, but they want what we know pretty badly too. I decided that just taking off would show them that we weren’t selling that particular bit of info. If you want to talk to them some more we can slow down and let them catch up. They’ve been following. Or if you’re as sick of Keenar as I am, we could go even faster. Leave them in the dust and find a friendlier sigma to talk to.”

Ell
snickered, “‘Poking him in the nose?’ My sweet Shan, instigator of the first interstellar incident?!”

“Hah, you wait, I’ll bet that if we keep hanging around those two
, Keenar takes a poke at Sigwald pretty soon.”

“I’m not taking that bet. You’d better head to your class. I’ll slow Sigwald down and see if their attitude has changed.”

Once Shan relinquished control, Ell slowed Sigwald’s pace while rapidly reviewing Shan’s interactions with the two sigmas. Then she slowed Sigwald further and came to a stop, turning back to face the direction Sigwald came from. She could see the two sigmas approaching, Keenar in front. She waited as they settled in to land.

Querlak had a sick feeling about how things were going with Sigwald. She recognized that a large part of her unease related to her clade’s quick acceptance of a union with Delnitch clade combined with her strong dislike of Keenar. Usually a union with another clade was considered at length because reproduction permits were so precious. But Osnak had been seduced by a free permit and the prestige of a large, powerful clade like Delnitch. Though a many in Osnak had been apprehensive, a majority had favored the union so it had been approved—Querlak thought far too quickly. It was a union that Querlak thought they were going to regret. She felt sure she was going to
hate
being in a TS with Keenar…

Keenar dropped to a landing
rudely
close to Sigwald. Querlak alighted behind and to the right of him. Keenar said with a disdainful tone, “Are you tired?”

Sigwald’s head rotated side to side like he did when signifying the negative. He said only, “No.”

Querlak got the feeling that Sigwald didn’t
get
tired. That maybe he
was
a machine.

Keenar asked in a peremptory tone, “Are you ready to tell us how you travel between the stars?”

Sigwald’s head rotated again. “No. Cannot say that,” he said in his pidgin sigman speech using Querlak’s voice as he always did. Then he rotated his entire body toward Querlak and slightly away from Keenar. “I prefer speaking of knowledge with Querlak. Can we speak without Keenar?”

“No!” Keenar shouted
stepping between Sigwald and Querlak. “Tell me how you got here or the full strength of Delnitch clade will be brought to bear. You
will
regret it if that becomes necessary.”

“Clade?” Sigwald
moved and again turned to Querlak. He said in sigman. “What is ‘clade’?”

Using h
er English so that Keenar would have difficulty following Querlak said, “Your mothers and fathers and children. Those who make connections.”

“Connections?”

“Yes those that not need to speak with we.”

Ell’s eyes flashed wide inside the waldo goggles.
Those that don’t need to speak…! What could that mean?
Aloud she said, “Don’t need speak?”

Querlak bobbed her head. “Yes, because
have connection in dimension five.”

“
In dimension five?” Ell said slowly.

“Yes,
like ports. Make think better. You comprehend?”

“Yes,” Ell whispered, desperately trying to come to grips with the concept. When they’d first seen the Teecees on Tau Ceti Dr. Norris had jokingly proposed that the Teecees might communicate
via PGR with a queen creature that entangled all her offspring as they were born. Norris had meant it as a joke but…
could something like that actually be present in the Sigmas? Some kind of naturally formed quantum entangled molecules in their brains? And could Querlak mean that combining minds through such a connection allowed them to think better? Raised their intelligence?

The very possibility made Ell’s hair stand on end. Querlak had been learning English at an astonishing rate without the use of any AI assistance that Ell could see. Ell had Allan to remember words for her and reproduce them when
Ell spoke, but Querlak
seemed
to be doing it biologically. In fact, the sigmas didn’t seem to understand computing, nor to have any great desire for such technology. Ell had been thinking that they just didn’t understand what a computer
could
do. Now she wondered if several sigmas, as a group, could function like a biological computer?
Just how smart are they? Or could they be? Don’t they need computers to prop up their thinking like we humans do? Is this why sometimes she seems smarter than at others? Because sometimes she’s connected to other sigmans?

Suddenly Keenar shouted in his pidgin
English, “Speak, us, stars!” He stepped toward Sigwald, turned slightly and kicked the waldo in the head with one of his front feet.

Since the waldo’s head didn’t have sensors or the ability to transmit motion to Ell’s head she didn’t feel anything
though her vision jerked a little. It was hard to read the sigman’s expression but she would have sworn Keenar looked surprised. Since Keenar was a flying animal Ell thought he must be much more lightly built than Sigwald who was made of metal and structured for a full earth gravity. Likely Keenar was surprised at how little effect the kick had produced.  Perhaps, kicking Sigwald’s hard magnesium structure had hurt as well?

For a moment Ell won
dered what Keenar would do next. After a brief pause he began kicking Sigwald repeatedly, still having little effect. She thought about hitting him back, but doubted it would get them anywhere. Instead she backed away and started Sigwald down the road again. This time she boosted his speed up to about 250 kilometers per hour, thinking it unlikely that the sigmas could fly that fast. A glance back over Sigwald’s shoulder showed them fading back into the distance.

For a moment she wondered if
they would get a car or plane or some other device to allow them to pursue her. Probably by the time they got it Sigwald would be far enough away to be lost in this bland environment. However, they may have access to a sensor system that could find her. She had Sigwald glance up at the cables that ran from one side of the ring to the other like bicycle spokes. If the sigmas had some kind of video viewing apparatus mounted up there on the cables, they might be able to use it to follow Sigwald. On the other hand, without computerized video storage and image analysis they might not be able to sort through whatever data they had.

Ell wondered if
she should slow Sigwald down again and let them catch up, she liked Querlak.
No,
she decided,
we’ll just check out more of the ringworld and meet some other sigmas. Maybe I’ll see Querlak again, maybe not.

“Allan,” she said to her AI
as she got off the waldo controller, “Keep Sigwald going at this speed for an hour, then, if you’re sure Keenar is out of sight, slow back down and fly spinward around the ring about a hundred miles, just high enough that we don’t leave a trail in the dust. Then resume traveling toward the middle of the ring for a look at that central circle sea. Let me know if you see anything but crops. Otherwise, just tell me when we get to the sea.”

She headed for the machine shop to see how Manuel and his team were coming on some of her many requests.

***

“Well, Michael, it’s great to have you here with me at the IAAF World Indoor Championships. I’ve been reporting on track and field events for decades now but I personally only competed at the college level.” Roger Larbach turned to the cameras. “It will be a real treat having Mr. Fentis here with us to give us the perspective of someone who not only competed in the Indoor Championships but won eight medals in these events.”

“Thank you Roger. It’s my pleasure to be here. Looking out across the inside of this stadium brings back a lot of memories.”

“Well, let me take you back to those days. Tell me about the sixty meter sprint we’re about to watch. Significantly shorter than your signature hundred meter dash, the sixty relies more on acceleration than it does on a sustained top speed. Tell us what it takes to get up to the world’s fastest speed in so little distance?”

Fentis, who had seemed amiable a moment before, now looked at Larbach with an expression of deepest loathing. He said nothing

A wrinkle of concern between his brows, Larbach said, “Mr. Fentis?”

A muscle twitched on Fentis’ temple a couple of times, then he growled, “I told you I wouldn’t stand for this!”

With astonishment written
large on his face Larbach said, “What…?”

“I told you I didn’t want to talk about that bitch Donsaii or her ridiculous claims. Yet your very first question focuses on her asinine contention that she reached a higher top speed in 25 meters than anyone else in history has in sixty or a hundred!”

Larbach tried to interrupt with, “I never said…”

Fentis rode over him, “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If she really thinks she can run, she should enter a track meet. I for one am sick to death of her nattering assertions that she’s some kind of great athlete just because she turned the heads of a few
gymnastic judges eight years ago.”

Larbach said, “I don’t think she said…”

Fentis slammed a hand down on the desk and stood, “She might be pretty, she might be graceful, she might even run pretty fast, but there is no way that smug little twit could compete in any of today’s
real
sports.” He ripped off the head mounted microphone, tossed it on the floor and walked away.

Larbach stared after him uncomprehendingly, then turned to the cameras, “Well folks, I’m sorry about that. I knew Mr. Fentis was sensitive about Ell Donsaii and
the claims—made by others, not her, I must point out—that she ran very fast going in to her vault. I didn’t think I said anything about her, but I guess I’ll have to go back over this vid to see if I somehow implied it…”

***

Gary stopped Ell in the hall at D5R. “Hey, you know some of those pressures you’re wanting me to use just aren’t achievable? Any chamber we might use would just blow out if we tried to reach those levels.”

Ell grinned at him, “So you’re saying that
the chamber would have to be wrapped in something with really high tensile strength?”

“Uh…”

“’cause we’ve got someone here at D5R who makes really high tensile strength stuff. I think it’s called ‘graphene.’ Maybe I could put you in touch with him?”

Gary blushed and snorted, “What about the pump?”

“Hmmm, maybe the cylinder of a piston pump would have to be wrapped in graphene too? And it might need a long, solid piston with a diamond coating?”