Rift (40 page)

She perked up, hands on knees. “Well! That was fun. Talk therapy. How much do I owe you?”

Reeve spoke quietly. “Let us go, Brecca.”

She rose to her feet, slowly and gracefully, smoothing her jumper. “I’m
watched
, Reeve. Don’t you understand? I’m a prisoner here. I can’t help you, much as I’d like to.” She touched a screen on her desk and called for the guards. “We’ll go easy on you,” she told him. “No morphological deformities, no health impairments. I can’t promise it for all your friends. I’ll have to fight Gregor over each genetic plan.”

Reeve stood to face her. “Save the girl,” he said, “and the thin guy named Spar.”

Brecca only shook her head.

“Then put us together. We want to be together.”

“I’ll do what I can. But don’t get your hopes up.”

When the guards came, he asked, “How long do we have?”

She had turned away by now, activating the computer screen, which sprang to life in a half circle around her desk. It filled with mathematical equations and diagrams. “A few days.” She turned around then, gripping something small in her hand. “Hold him,” she said.

As the guards immobilized Reeve, she advanced on
him and drew a small blood sample with a retracting needle. She held the ampule up to the light, gazing at the glimmering red contents. “This is how we begin,” she said, lost in the wonder of blood secrets.

4

Captain Bonhert’s face was icy blue in the reflection from the display, as several of the modeling team gathered around Lieutenant Roarke’s data screen to watch the first simulation. Bonhert waved Mitya over to join them.

Mitya left the station where he’d been assigned to cross-check the calibrations on the geotherm, the planet’s interior heat gradient as a function of depth. He had to compare actual readings they’d already taken at the Rift with the output of the model, to check for discrepancies. The science team had worked these numbers many times already, but Mitya ran different progressions to hunt for anomalies. He supposed it was make-work, but he wouldn’t have passed by a chance to work on the processors, however menial his task.

As Mitya joined the group, Bonhert nodded at him, then turned his attention to the screen. “Take us through the sequence,” he told Roarke.

The lieutenant paused to organize his thoughts. “This is a composite simulation of some of the features the probe will have to negotiate on its way down. We’ve seen most of these features in our scans at one time or another, and I put them all in to see how our mole handles a few obstacles.”

On the screen appeared a broadly layered and minutely detailed cross-section of the globe. Color-enhanced for chemical makeup, heat, rocky structure, and magnetic lines, the display possessed an intricate beauty, like a profoundly complex agate cloven in half. As Roarke zeroed in on the great plume, Mitya saw an
inverted V berthed at the planet’s core-mantle boundary and crawling upward to break surface at the Rift Valley. On its way the plume penetrated the vast, solid lower mantle and the more shallow upper mantle, where at last it thrust into a region of partially molten rock, and then into the rigid lithosphere, a journey of two thousand miles.

Though the plume was their best path to the interior, it was only a hundred degrees hotter than the surrounding mantle rock. Like the rest of the mantle, it was hot enough to be molten, but enormous pressure kept it solid. Over geologic time it flowed—with the approximate viscosity of glass, which over hundreds of years can respond to the force of gravity, much like the windowpanes of medieval churches on ancient Earth were seen to be slightly thicker at the bottom than the top. The mole, a heat-borer, would use this slightly hotter corridor, generating enough heat at the front end to deform the rocks in its path, while the mantle pressure closed in the tunnel behind it. Station had spent a generation developing the industrial capability to process carbon nanotube for the reterraforming moles. Now that ultimate material would form a new kind of probe, would house a new payload.

Val Cody leaned in to point out a swirl in the outer core, just beneath the plume’s origination. “We’ve factored in the effects of this magnetic flux bundle. This one is rolling around like a tornado down there. We’ve also got the cooling effects of the subducting continental crust, plus the heat—that’s five degrees for every hundred yards we go down.”

“At fifty miles,” Roarke said, “we reach the melting point of rock, so you can imagine what the rest of the trip is going to do to our probe. Anyway, it’s all factored in.”

Mitya ventured, “If the heat increases that fast, the core must be hotter than a star.”

Bonhert patted him on the shoulder, an intensely annoying habit that brought Mitya’s jaw together in a vise. “No, radioactivity thins out the farther down you go, so that means less heat,” Bonhert said. “Or, less from that source anyway.” He smiled indulgently. “If the core were that hot, we wouldn’t be standing on solid ground, boy.”

Mitya flushed and resolved to shut up.

Roarke continued. “If we focus in”—here he selected a small section near the core-mantle boundary and enlarged it—“we can see that there are some reaction products built up on the boundary. Our bullet isn’t going to get that far, I wouldn’t think. But if it does, it’s going to meet up with a mountain taller than Woden—hanging upside down from the boundary.” He grinned and shook his head. “If it doesn’t detonate before then, that’ll be its last chance. Once in the core, it’s at melting point.” He looked up at Bonhert and shrugged. “Sometimes I’m sorry we’re going to blast the place apart. Scientifically, the interior’s an amazing place.”

Silence reigned for a moment. “Losing your nerve, Roarke?” Bonhert’s voice was friendly enough, but every eye was on Lieutenant Roarke.

He blinked, as though just waking up. “No sir.” He looked from face to face. “Ka-boom. Let ’er rip.” He smiled uncertainly.

After a few last adjustments in the program, Roarke launched the simulated mole. Under the initial firing from the geo cannon, and sustained by its onboard thrusters, the mole plunged, its course marked by an arrow as it slowly threaded its way into the skin of the planet. They estimated that at 340 miles the outer shell and thrusters would be either melted or otherwise inoperable. The simulation would tell whether it would get that far, and whether the explosion would do enough damage. It would be a several-hours wait to know the results.

Bonhert watched a few more minutes, his eyes milky blue, like snowmelt.

Mitya turned away, sickened by the little white arrow and what it represented—what it
would
represent in just five weeks’ time. He faced the hulking form of the geo cannon occupying the center of the room. Its bulging cylindrical mass of some six tons was shrouded in a white tarp, making it look even more sinister than when crew had been crawling all over it, putting the final touches on its external housing. To get this monster to the fissure would take three shuttle trips, and hours of reassembling once transported. But for now, it was finished. One mole was ready, and two more were being assembled. They’d fire three shots—three chances to kill Lithia.

Bonhert’s voice came from behind him. “We’ve worked like dogs to get this far, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a great accomplishment. We’re not done yet by any means, but we have, by the Lord of Worlds, begun our first full-model run to test our enterprise. Our goal, my friends, is in view. Nothing can stop us now.”

One of the techs motioned from the doorway to the main dome. Bonhert nodded. “Crew is assembling in the main room. I have a treat in store.” As he gestured them to proceed him to the assembly, Mitya stepped to his side.

“Sir,” Mitya said, voice lowered.

“What is it, Mitya?”

“Something I heard, sir.”

Bonhert watched as the rest of the science team left the clean room. “Well?”

In his nervousness, Mitya’s voice broke, but he said, “Someone’s been coming in here late at night. Into this room. Some of the crew saw it. But it’s just a rumor; I don’t know if it’s true, or if I should repeat it.” He tried to look confused and worried.

“Someone comes here?”

“The guards allow it.”

“Who is he?”

“She.”

“Well, she then—who is it?”

“Lieutenant Cody, sir.” He looked up at the Captain. “Probably it’s nothing. But you asked me to tell you things like that. I hope I haven’t got her in trouble.”

There was a longish pause as Bonhert’s high forehead wrinkled as if thoughts were churning behind it. Mitya hoped he’d lose plenty of sleep over this tidbit, one suggested by Stepan.

“Have I, sir?”

“Hmm?”

“Got her in trouble? Because it’s probably just a rumor.”

One of the techs was watching from the doorway. He caught Bonhert’s eye.

“You don’t say anything about this to anyone but me, you understand, Mitya?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

Bonhert, for the first time since Mitya had known him, looked a little lost. Mitya almost pitied him. If Val Cody was against him, Bonhert had lost his biggest ally, perhaps even a friend. He turned to go, then turned back to Mitya. “I … appreciate it, Mitya. Good lad.”

In the main room, crew had gathered in a semicircle in front of the Captain. They were a bedraggled group—wan, greasy-haired, and rumpled. They had been pressing hard for a week, cleaning vents and filtration systems, repairing equipment and welding the superstructure that would help position the geo cannon over the fissure. A group of them had been on duty all night guarding the shuttle. They stood now, leaning on rifles, watching Bonhert with wary eyes. Some, like Koichi and Tenzin Tsamchoe, looked at him with a less charitable stare. Mitya took his place among them.

“I think we’ve all earned a few moments’ rest,” Bonhert began. “Lord knows we’ve been pushing hard, harder than we thought possible. Let me take this opportunity to remind you of the end toward which all our labor is bent.” When he had every eye and ear, he continued: “Last night this message came in from the captain of the
Quo Vadis
. Most of my communications with the ship are administrative details, but this message is meant for
you
, the future crew of the great ship. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Captain Nicholas Kitcher.”

A holo sprang to life at Bonhert’s side. Before them stood a florid-complected man with great muttonchop sideburns sweeping onto a broad face. He wore an impressive gold and black jacket adorned with brocade along the shoulders and lapels. Mitya guessed him for a very hale seventy-five years. Crew had heard of this Captain Kitcher, but no one had seen his image except Bonhert and his close advisors until now. The comparison with the Captain he stood next to was inescapable. Kitcher was an old man, tending to fat. Bonhert was in young middle age, all muscle and drive.

“Station Lithia,” Kitcher began. “We are about to meet at last, and I do look forward to our … reunion, one might say. Our paths took divergent courses many generations ago, but we come from a common mother, and I count you as my fellow Terrans.” He had been standing, but now sat down in a chair. Around him was a small cabin, sparsely decorated except for a fine model replica behind him of what Mitya took to be the
Quo Vadis
. The ship was, as they had heard, enormous, much larger than earlier ships of the type. Three biome spheres bulged from its profound horizontal planes. Mitya tried to listen to Kitcher, but his eyes were fixed on the replica—its bright cabin windows, the polished metal skin, the complex yet unified body of the vast starship. He shivered.
In this powerful construct people lived with the highest technology ever achieved by humanity. He thought its wonders would take him the rest of his life to fathom. Like many in the dome that day, Mitya began to fall in love with the
Quo Vadis
.

“… a little tour of our ship home,” Captain Kitcher was saying. The view switched to the forest biome, with its lake, and to the grassland and agricultural biomes. Then there was a grand corridor where crew in black and gold uniforms milled for shopping and passed by on their unknowable errands. Storefronts pulsed with lights, strobing the faces of crew with flickering expressions that Mitya took for joy. In other views they saw a stupefying control room, where crew, Captain Kitcher said, interfaced with the smart ship through their body nets, using subvocal voice commands. Everyone wore the black and gold, handsome and, Mitya thought, masculine colors that he would wear someday when he had earned a fine position—perhaps even on the bridge.… And then they saw a sparkling mess hall, empty and gleaming, vid emporiums with single- and double-seat sense environments, an infirmary of dizzying complexity, and finally a common crew cabin—not as big as Mitya had fantasized, but neat and cozy, complete with its portal to the stars, but oddly curtained with a bit of floral cloth. That would be the first change Mitya would make, were it his cabin: The portal would be bare to the stars.