Strata (5 page)

‘Two.’

‘All right, two. Good grief! That time on Plershoorr, wasn’t it, when we—’

‘Don’t dodge. Why a Watcher?’

The temperature fell like collapsium. Beyond the cabin windows Kingdom was turning from a landscape to a disc, sunlight driving the terminator ahead of it.

‘Uh. Life gets a bit stale. On treatment alone I’d never live as long as a Watcher: nice to see a new world grow; see what the future holds; it’ll be as good as visiting a new universe—’

‘You’re gabbling, Joel. I know you, remember? I’ve never known you bored. I recall you spending two years learning how to make a wooden cartwheel. You said you’d never rest till you had mastered every skill. You said you’d never learned to spear a seal, or cast copper. You said you were going to write the definitive work on robot pornography. You haven’t, yet.’

‘Okay. I’m ducking out because I’m a coward. Is that good enough? Things are going to happen soon, best place’ll be in a freeze box.’

‘Things?’

‘Trouble.’

‘Tro—’ She paused. ‘Chang said that.’

‘The big pioneer? I talked to him yesterday, when they were all in orbit. He’s getting out before the storm breaks too.’

‘
What are you talking about?
’

He told her. Kin had reported the visit of Jalo. She had also reported his ability to produce high-denomination Day notes.

‘The Company examined that methuselah bill you sent in, Kin.’

‘A forgery.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Wish it had been. It was – sort of genuine. Only we didn’t print it. The numbers were all wrong. All the codes were wrong. Not inaccurate, you understand. It was just that they aren’t our numbers. We haven’t issued those numbers yet.

‘Now think about it. There’s a process for duplicating Company currency. Think what that means, Kin.’

She thought about it.

Company scrip was subject to so many hidden checks and codes that any forgery would
have
to be a duplication. And you couldn’t duplicate a Day bill even by running it through the works of a strata machine, because the Company owned all the machines and one hidden key in every thick plastic note would fuse the whole thing.
No one
could duplicate Company currency. But if they could—

Multiple-centenarians would be the first to suffer. Company scrip was so reliable it was a wealth in its own right. But if Day bills were just bits of plastic, if the market was flooded with ten or twenty times the real amount – the Company wouldn’t exist. Its wealth was its credibility, and its credibility was the hardness of its currency.

Gene surgery merely stopped you dying. You could go on living without the additional treatments that Days would buy, but you would grow old. Immortal, but senile.

No wonder they were hiding out. Joel was grabbing a sort of immortality, Chang was at least escaping the crash. Probably the less levelheaded were doing things like taking a space walk without a suit.

There must be millions of us, Kin thought. We complain about never eating a dish we haven’t eaten before and the colours slowly draining out of life. We wonder if the short-lifers live more vividly, and dread learning that they do, because we gave up the chance of children. It would be so unfair. As if a man has only a certain allocation of things like elation and delight and contentment, and the longer he lives the more they must be diluted.

But life is still sweet and death is just mystery. It is age we dread. Oh hell.

‘Did they look for him?’ she said.

‘Everywhere. We know he’s been to Earth, because all the Terminus probe records in the Spaceflight Museum have been wiped clean.’

‘Then we know nothing about him at all?’

‘Right. Find a bolthole, Kin.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘At least Company policy was right. Our worlds will last.’

‘One man can’t bring down a civilization,’ said Kin.

‘Show me where it says that’s a universal rule,’ he snapped, and then relaxed. ‘This cloak …
really
invisible?’

‘We-ell, if you looked directly, I remember things behind it being just slightly blurred. But you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t expecting it.’

‘Useful for old-fashioned espionage, maybe,’ mused Joel. ‘Very odd, though. I don’t think we would make one. You have to have a pretty high technology for that sort of thing, and in a high technology invisibility wouldn’t be a very great asset. So many other things would detect you.’

‘I wondered about that,’ said Kin.

‘Then all this about matter transmission – all the theories say it isn’t quite possible. The Wasbile double effect almost does it, the same way you can always build an almost-perpetual motion machine.’

The satellite at the Line’s end was a bright star ahead. Joel glanced down the controls.

‘I’d have liked to have met him,’ he said. ‘I read about the Terminus probes when I was a wee lad. Then once when I was on New Earth I went to see Rip Van LeVine’s farm. He was the one who landed on the planet and found—’

‘I know about him,’ said Kin.

If Joel had noted the tone in her voice – and surely he must have done – he didn’t show it. He went on cheerfully. ‘Couple years ago I saw this film they made of the T4 and T6. They’re the ones who are still travelling. There’s a charity on New Earth, every ten years or so they put a couple of ships on a flick-orbit to build up acceleration and—’

‘I know about that, too,’ said Kin.

The ships built up acceleration by diving into New Earth’s sun, then making an Elsewhere jump back a few million miles, then diving, then jumping … and finally popping out of nowhere a few hundred light years away at a light-squashing speed and a few miles from the probes.

Terminus Four hadn’t decelerated at turnover point, and a fault in Six’s primitive computer had guided it precisely to a star that wasn’t there. In the normal course of events the pilots would have decomposed centuries ago. Suspended animation had been pretty primitive then, too. But the ailing machinery had long ago been piecemeal replaced, and the visiting crews added refinements every decade or so.

It wasn’t cheap. It would have been a lot easier to thaw out the pilots and bring them back to a life of luxury. But Rip Van LeVine, the death-and-glory Terminus pilot who after a thousand-year voyage landed on a world settled by Elsewhere-driven ships three hundred years previously, had been a rich man when he suicided. Rich enough to employ good lawyers, and to insist that his trust do everything that could be done for the last two pilots – except wake them.

‘The LeVine Trust has us tied in knots,’ said Joel. ‘The first thing the Company thought of was to wake the T4 pilot and ask her about Jalo. They all trained together, so she might know something. But apparently the whole of New Earth would raise hell if we tried it.’

‘Joel, what do you think of that idea?’ said Kin.

He met her gaze. ‘I think it’s despicable, what else?’

‘So do I.’

She stayed at the satellite until Joel had finished setting the system, and watched while he activated the circuit that broke the long-chain artificial molecule that was the Line. Now Kingdom was on its own.

She didn’t stay to watch him ready the freeze room.

Her private boat had been left in orbit near Up. Technically she was on leave until she joined the rest of the team at Trenchert, where the advance parties had already cleaned the atmosphere and strengthened the crust. Months ago she had planned to stop off at Momremonn-Spitz for a look at the new Spindle excavations there. There had been rumours of another working strata machine.

Right now it seemed less than important. She slammed the airlock’s inner door shut behind her.

‘Salutations, lady,’ said the ship. ‘The sheets are aired. We are fully fuelled. Shall we run you a bath?’

‘Uhuh.’

‘We have the course computed. Do you wish a countdown?’

‘I think we can dispense with all that excitement,’ said Kin wearily. ‘Just run that bath.’

When the ship boosted the bath water slopped gently against the edge of the tub, but did not spill. Kin, who had been brought up to be polite to machines, said: ‘Neat.’

‘Thank you. Five hours and three minutes to flickover.’

Kin soaped an arm thoughtfully. After a few minutes she said: ‘Ship?’ ‘Yes, lady?’

‘Where the hell are we going? I don’t recall giving you any instructions.’

‘To Kung, lady, as per your esteemed order of 338 hours ago.’

Kin rose like a well-soaped Venus Anadyomene and ran through the ship until she dropped into the pilot chair.

‘That order,’ she said softly, ‘repeat it.’ She watched the screen intently, one hand poised over the panel that would open a line back to Kingdom Up. Joel wouldn’t have frozen himself yet, the process took hours. Anyway, a machine could just unfreeze him. The important thing was that the station had a big enough transmitter to punch a message through to the Company. She recognized the touch of Jago.

The transmitted order had been simple enough, prefaced by the ship’s call sign and Kin’s own code. It had come over the normal ground-to-orbit channels. It could have come from a dozen transmitters while work on Kingdom was being completed.

It had ended: ‘A flat world. You, Kin Arad, are a very curious person. Cheat me and you will forever wonder what sights you missed.’

Kin’s hand dropped – and didn’t touch the message switch.

You
couldn’t
build a flat world.

But then, you couldn’t come back if you were a Terminus pilot.

And you
couldn’t
duplicate Company scrip.

‘Ship?’

‘Lady?’

‘Continue to Kung. Oh, and open a channel to the screen in my study.’

‘Done, lady.’

It was wrong. It was probably foolish. It would certainly get her fired.

Be there or forever wonder.

She filled the hours by relearning Primary Ekung and reading the supplements to the planetary digest. It appeared the kung now had a Line, but no one had got around to banning ship landings on the world itself. Nothing much was banned on Kung, even murder. She checked and found it was now the only world in local space that actually allowed ships to land under power. Was that relevant?

Kung was hungry for alien currency. There wasn’t a great deal Kung could produce that humans could use, except a whole variety of pneumonia-type illnesses, but there was a lot Kung wanted. It was trying to start a tourist industry …

Kin had been there. She recalled rain. The kung had forty-two different words for rain, but that just wasn’t enough words to encompass the great symphony of water that fell for fifty-five minutes in every hour. There were no mountains. The light gravity had allowed plenty to rise, but it allowed lots of ocean spray into the wind to wash them down. The nubs that remained had a dispirited, back-turned look.

Of course, sometimes they became islands. Kin remembered about the tides.

An over-large moon and a cool, close sun meant nightmare tides. Vegetation was either fungal, able to spring up and fruit hurriedly at low tides, or it was resigned to a semi-submerged life.

And tourists came. Even though they had to wear float-jackets most of the time in case of flash tides, the tourists came. They were fishermen and mist enthusiasts, microphiles and
wanderjahr
biology students. As for the kung themselves …

She switched off and sat back.

‘You should have told the Company,’ she said silently. ‘There’s still time.’

She answered: ‘You know what will happen. He might be mad, but he’s no fool. He’ll be prepared for any trap. Besides, Kung isn’t a human world. Company writ runs thin down there. He’ll duck and weave and we’ll lose him.’

She said: ‘You have a duty. You can’t let a menace like him run around loose just to satisfy your curiosity.’

She answered: ‘Why not?’

* * *

How rich is Kin Arad, daughter of the genuine Earth and author of
Continuous Creation (q.v.)
? The Company paid its servants in Days, but since they could earn far more than a Day in a day, they often sold surplus time for more traditional currencies. Temporally, then, her account showed that she had another three hundred and sixty-eight years, five weeks and two days in hand, plus one hundred and eighty thousand credits – and a credit is worth a credit these days.

In any case, credits were backed by Days. The galaxy had rare elements in plenty. The transmuter at the heart of every strata machine or dumbwaiter could make anything. What else but longevity itself could back a currency? Kin could buy life. Could Solomon have done it? Could Cloritty have done it? Could Hughes have done it?

She was rich.