The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (34 page)

“My dear chap, neither do I. And thank you for agreeing to this. I know how it conflicts with your own goals. Don’t give up on them. You will live to see a socially just world.”

“Like a priest will see heaven.”

Bradley’s soft smile was understanding and sympathetic.

“What are you going to hit first?” Adam asked.

“The
Second Chance
is my primary target right now. Part of your task is going to be assembling a crew to obliterate it.”

“Old folly; you can never destroy knowledge. Even if we were to succeed and blow the
Second Chance
to pieces, they’ll build another, and another, and another until one is finally completed. They know how to build them, therefore they will be built.”

“I expect you’re right, unfortunately. But destroying the
Second Chance
will be a severe blow to the Starflyer. It wanted the starship built, you know.”

“I know. I received the shotgun message.” Adam stared out at Castle Mount for some time. “You know, castles once had a purpose other than symbolism; they used to hold the invaders at bay and keep the kingdom safe. We don’t build them anymore.”

“We need them, though, now more than ever.”

“What a pair we make,” Adam said. “The optimist and the pessimist.”

“Which do you claim to be?”

“I think you know.”

....

To the mild dismay of his staff, Wilson always arrived in the office at around half past seven in the morning. With management meetings, training sessions, interviews, engineering assessments, media reports, a one-hour gym workout, and a dozen other items scheduled every day he didn’t leave until after nine most evenings. He took lunch at his desk rather than waste time going to the excellent canteen on the ground floor. His influence began to percolate through the whole starship project, and with it his enthusiasm. Procedures were tightened under his relentless directives, policy became clear-cut and effective. Pride settled around the complex, driving the crews onward.

Every week, Wilson met up with Nigel Sheldon to perform their ritual inspection tour of
Second Chance
. They arrived at the gateway, and kicked off into the assembly platform. Both of them pointing at and gossiping about some new section of the huge ship, acting like a pair of school kids.

All of the plasma rockets were installed now, along with their turbopumps and power injectors. Big reaction mass tanks were being eased into cavities along the ship’s central engineering superstructure, dark gray ellipsoids whose internal structure was a honeycomb maze of tiny sacs.

“It’s the ultimate slosh-baffle design,” Wilson explained as the two of them glided along the assembly grid above the central cylinder. “The sacs can squeeze out their contents no matter what acceleration maneuver we’re pulling, and while we’re coasting, they hold the fluid stable. If only we’d had that on the old
Ulysses
we’d have saved ourselves a lot of mechanical trouble, but materials technology has come a long way since those days.”

Nigel held on to one of the platform grids, pausing directly above an egg-shaped tank that was being gently eased into position by robot arms. Construction crew and remote mobile sensors were swarming around it like bees to their queen. “How come we’re not using hydrogen? I thought that gives the best specific impulse for rocket exhausts.”

“When you’re talking chemical reactions, sure. But the plasma rockets operate at such a high energy level they break their working fluid down into subatomic particles. The niling d-sinks we’re carrying pump so much power in, this plasma is actually hotter than a fusion generator’s exhaust. With that kind of efficiency, cryogenics is a waste of time. Of course, in an ideal world we’d be using mercury as the propellant fluid, but even that has handling problems, not to mention cost and sourcing for the kind of volume we’re looking at. So what we’ve wound up with is a very dense hydrocarbon, it’s almost pure crude oil, but the chemists have tweaked the molecular structure so it remains liquid over a huge temperature range. Given the type of near-perfect insulation we’ve got cloaking the tanks, the thermal support we have to provide for the fuel is minimal.”

Nigel gave the tank a thoughtful look. “I always used to think rockets were dead simple.”

“The principle is as simple as you can get, it’s just the engineering which is complex. But we’re doing our best to reduce that; modern techniques allow us to do away with whole layers of ancillary systems.”

“I heard you’ve instigated a design review board.”

“Final design approval, yeah. I prefer that method to the multiple steering committees you’d set up.” Wilson let go of the grid, and pushed off so he was drifting along the length of the starship toward the life-support wheel. “It gives the project an overall architecture policy.”

“I’m not arguing. This is your show now.”

They passed over the wheel section. The internal decks were clearly visible now, with decking and wall paneling fixed to the stress structure, showing the internal layout.

“We should start fixing the hull in place by the end of next month,” Wilson said.

“Not too much slippage, then.”

“No. You gave me a good team. And the unlimited funding helps.”

“Actually, it’s not unlimited, and I’ve noticed it’s still rising.”

“That was inevitable, but it really should have plateaued now we’re entering the final design freeze. We’ve already started to make a few modifications to the central cylinder to accommodate the expanded stand-off observation period of the mission. The upgraded sensor suite is finishing its alpha-analysis stage, it should be out to tender soon. And we already have the engineering mock-ups of the class three and four remote probe satellites. They’re being assembled for us at High Angel by Bayfoss—we’re up to capacity here, and they are the experts. Most of your exploratory division geosurvey satellites are built by them.”

“Sure.” Nigel took another look at the crew accommodation decks, where an atmospheric processor had been secured in place, still wrapped in its silver packaging. “Man, I still can’t get over how big this beauty is. You’d think … I don’t know, we could build something neater by now.”

“A one-man starship?” Wilson asked in amusement. He waved a hand at the front of the cylinder. “You helped design the hyperdrive engine. I’ve owned smaller houses than that monster.”

“Yeah yeah, I know. I ought to go back and take another look at the basic equations.”

“You do that, but I’m telling you a car-sized starship will never catch on. I want something big and powerful around me when I go exploring the unknown.”

“Man, oh, man, Freud would have had a field day with you. Now, how’s it going with the crew selection?”

“Hoo boy.” Wilson grimaced at the memory. “The actual crew squad has been finalized. We’ve got two hundred and twenty who’ll start their second phase training next week. We’ll select the final fifty a month before launch. The science team is a little tougher; we’ve passed seventy so far, and Oscar’s office is trying to sort out the rest of the applications. It’s the interviews that are taking up so much time; the Commonwealth has an awful lot of highly qualified people out there, and we need to put them all through assessment and psych profiling. What I’d like is a pool of about three hundred to choose from.”

“Ah.” Nigel stopped himself above the rim of the life-support wheel, watching a constructionbot fixing a decking plate into place. “Have you considered taking Dr. Bose with you?”

“Bose? Oh, the astronomer who saw the envelopment. I think I remember Oscar mentioning he’d applied; he’s certainly got a lot of sponsors. Do you want me to check if he got through the assessment?”

“Not as such, no. The thing is, my office is getting a lot of inquiries about him, as is the Vice President.”

For a moment Wilson thought he meant the vice president of CST. “You mean Elaine Doi?”

“Yes. It’s a bit awkward. Every time the media want a comment on the envelopment they turn to Bose, which is understandable. The trouble is, he cooperates with them. All of them. When the guy sleeps, I’ve no idea. But anyway, in the public eye he’s most strongly associated with the project. It’s a position he’s exploited superbly.”

“Wait a minute here, are you telling me I’ve got to take him?”

“All I’m saying is that if you were planning on taking an astronomer, you could do worse. For an obscure professor from a back-of-beyond planet, he’s certainly a goddamn expert self-publicist.”

“I’ll tell Oscar to review the file, if that’s what’s bugging you.”

“That’s good. And I hope there won’t be any ageism in the selection process?”

“What?”

“It’s just that the professor is, er, kind of closer to his time for rejuvenation than you or I … or anyone else you’re considering. That’s all.”

“Oh, Jesus wept.”

....

The plantation where Tara Jennifer Shaheef lived was on the far side of the mountains that rose up out of the northern districts of Darklake City. Even with a modern highway leading through them, it took the car carrying Paula and Detective Hoshe Finn a good three hours to drive there. They turned off the junction at the start of a wide valley, the car snaking along a winding local road. The slopes on either side were heavily cultivated with coffee bushes; every row seemed to have an agriculturebot of some kind trundling along, tending the verdant plants. Humans and buildings were less prominent within this landscape.

Eventually the car turned into the plantation through a wide gated entrance with a white stone arch. Cherry trees lined the long driveway, leading up to a low white house with a bright red clay tile roof.

“All very traditional,” Paula commented.

Hoshe glanced out at the arch. “You’ll find that a lot on this world. We do tend to idolize the past. Most of us had settler ancestors who were successful even before they arrived, and the ethos lingers on. As a planet, we’ve done rather well from it.”

“If it works, don’t try and fix it.”

“Yeah.” He showed no sign that he’d picked up on any irony.

The car halted on the gravel in front of the house’s main door. Paula climbed out, looking around the large formal gardens. A lot of time and effort had gone into the big lawn with its palisade of trees.

Tara Jennifer Shaheef was standing in front of the double acmwood doors underneath the portico. Her husband, Matthew deSavoel, stood beside her, an arm resting protectively around her shoulders. He was older than she by a couple of decades, Paula noticed; thick dark hair turning to silver, his midriff starting to spread.

The car drove off around to the stable block. Paula walked forward. “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” she said.

“That’s all right,” Tara said with a nervous smile. She nodded tightly at Detective Finn. “Hello again.”

“I trust this won’t be too upsetting,” Matthew deSavoel said. “My wife had put her re-life ordeal behind her.”

“It’s all right, Matthew,” Tara said, patting him.

“I won’t deliberately make this difficult,” Paula said. “It was your wife’s family who wanted this investigation kept open.”

Matthew deSavoel grunted in dissatisfaction and opened the front door. “I feel like we should have a lawyer present,” he said as he walked them through the cool reception hall.

“That is your prerogative,” Paula said neutrally. If deSavoel thought his wife was fully recovered he was fooling himself badly. Nobody with three lifetimes behind them was as twitchy as Tara seemed to be. In Paula’s experience, anyone who had been killed, accidentally or otherwise, took at least one regeneration post re-life to get over the psychological trauma.

They were shown into a large lounge with a stone tile floor; a grand fireplace dominated one wall, with a real grate and logs sitting at the center of it. The walls had various hunting trophies hanging up, along with the stuffed heads of alien animals, their teeth and claws prominently displayed to portray them as savage monsters.

“Yours?” Hoshe asked.

“I bagged every one of them,” Matthew deSavoel said proudly. “There’s a lot of hostile wildlife still living up in the hills.”

“I’ve never seen a gorall that big before,” Hoshe said, standing underneath one of the heads.

“I wasn’t aware Oaktier had a guns and hunting culture,” Paula said.

“They don’t in the cities,” deSavoel said. “They think those of us who tend the land are barbaric savages who do it purely for sport. None of them live out here; none of them realize what sort of danger the goralls and vidies pose if they get down to the human communities. There are several political campaigns to ban landowners from shooting outside cultivated lands, as if the goralls will respect that. It’s exactly the kind of oppressive crap I came here to get away from.”

“So guns are quite easy to get hold of on this planet?”

“Not a bit of it,” Tara said. She made a big show of flopping into one of the broad couches. “You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to get a license, even for a hunting rifle.”

Paula sat opposite her. “Did you ever hold a license?”

“No.” Tara shook her head, smiling softly at some private joke. She took a cigarette out of her case, and pressed it on the lighting pad at the bottom. It gave off the sweet mint smell of high-quality GM majane. “Do you mind? It helps me relax.”

Hoshe Finn frowned, but didn’t say anything.

“Did you ever possess a gun?” Paula asked.

Tara laughed. “No. Or if I did, I never kept the memory. I don’t think I would, though. Guns have no place in a civilized society.”

“Most commendable,” Paula said. She wondered if Tara was really that unsophisticated, or if that was something she wanted to believe post-death. But then, most citizens chose to overlook how easy it was to get hold of a weapon. “I’d like to talk about Wyobie Cotal.”

“Certainly. But like I told Detective Finn last time, I only have a couple of weeks’ memory of him.”

“You were having an affair with him?”

Tara took a deep drag, exhaling slowly. “Certainly was. God, what a body that kid had. I don’t think I’d ever forget that.”

“So your marriage to Morton was over?”