The Duke Of Uranium

The Duke of Uranium

John Barnes

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Steve Leon

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Ted Eisenstein

because they stayed in touch, and in memory of Elmer Rungate.

“Of course, I’ve been asked about him a great deal. You might say he’s the only thing I’ve ever been asked about. I suppose it’s understandable. No one has the courage and the forthrightness to blame the parents anymore, so now we blame the teacher, so you come and bother me again.

“All right, I confess. Yes, I was the person who was supposed to teach Jak Jinnaka about the Wager; that was the class I taught, and he was in it. Oh, by Nakasen’s furry pink bottom, yes, yes, yes, I remember jinnaka.

“That’s always the question they ask; do they think it’s clever? No, he does not appear to have learned very much; his behavior across the past century indicates that he never understood a word that Paj Nakasen wrote, nor a single one of the ideas that has so advanced and ennobled our species. He always acted as if the Wager were some kind of obscure joke being pulled on him by society, rather than the fundamental approach to the universe adopted by all of humanity. Or maybe he just thought it was a good idea for other people, but not for him; wolves probably think sheep should believe in meekness, you know, and con men probably regard being very trusting as a virtue. But in any case, I can’t teach the un

teachable, no teacher can, and with Jak jinnaka it was doubly unteachable—trying to explain a subject that is so basic that most people don’t require an explanation at all, to a person who had no interest in knowing it. It would have been more rewarding trying to teach polypsychronic dipsolodies to a cageful of monkeys.

“Frankly, I’m sick of people blaming teachers and I wish that our union had the guts to take-it up with the Journalists’ Brotherhood. Why don’t you blame the cafeteria workers or something?”

—From “Fwidya at Age 300, Was Jinnaka’s Teacher, Disavows All Responsibility,” Reasonably True News. vol. 1042, Story 398, page 22, open distribution at standard terms, stillpic of Fwidya at additional charge, see catalog for over 1 million Jinnaka stillpix Chapter 1

The Dullest Lecture in the History of the Universe

Teacher Fwidya said you couldn’t not dak the idea, because it was so central to the way everyone thought about the world, so naturally Jak Jinnaka tried not to even understand the idea. Jak was that way—tell him he couldn’t and he’d try. Uncle Sib always said it was a good thing nobody’d ever told him you can’t breathe vacuum.

Jak always responded that even if he did precess a little when people said “You can’t

” he was at least smart enough to do his challenging mostly in situations where that did not matter. And it could hardly have mattered less than it did in this situation. Philosophy and Religion Fundamentals Review was a class that you had to take, but you could be graded only on attendance. Theoretically it could help your application to the Academy but not hurt you. Jak specked it was a sinecure for teachers who really enjoyed hassling younger people with statements of the obvious.

Right now Fwidya was trying hard to get them to see that the Wager was important. Dujuv, sitting next to Jak, objected, “Teacher, isn’t this kind of like saying that space travel, or fire, or the wheel, were important? I mean, we know that the whole solar system daks the Wager, it’s about the only thing that holds the whole human race together, and we all know that the Hive is the center of the true version of the Wager, masen?”

“Everyone believes that they live in the true center of the Wager,” Fwidya said, primly. He paced back and forth. This far up in the Hive, 650km above the black hole, the gravity was at 0.4. Fwidya probably didn’t intend to bounce as much as he did, but he was a kobold, and the genies had never specked the singingon ratio between control muscles and main muscle masses for that breed, so his overpowered, squatty leg muscles were always bouncing him too high in this classroom.

“Everyone, everyone, everyone,” he repeated. Teacher Fwidya didn’t have that habit of repetition because he was a kobold; he had it because he was pedantic, even if he wasn’t a bad old gwont on the personal level. “Everyone thinks that they live at the center of the only true version of the Wager. If they thought

elsewise, they’d move. Remember the Wager’s very own Nineteenth Principle, the one that Nakasen always stressed as essential to success in life: ‘Whenever possible, agree with those in power.’ Now, nonetheless, the Wager, despite its many, many interpretations, has allowed unprecedented peace through the simple application of the Two Hundred Thirty-four Principles. By now you surely must at least have learned that—”

They had, so they ignored Fwidya’s ten-minute summary of the last thousand years of solar system history, and all the interpolated commentary about the Wager and about what Paj Nakasen had meant by it originally and what it had become. Jak drew a caricature of Fwidya, and showed it to Dujuv, who mimed dying of some horrible disease. The students nearby shifted their balance to make it clear that they had nothing to do with them.

It was their last twenty minutes of gen school. Because the grade was all attendance they had to sit through Fwidya’s excruciatingly dull review of everything.

Fwidya talked about the Rubahy, and although everyone in the room had probably not had an hour since the age of two without being reminded that the war with the Rubahy had shaped human civilization, or that the aliens resembled a cross between a terrier and a feathered lizard but were in fact utterly different internally, or that their settlement on Pluto was always a matter of dispute and that many wars had erupted within the solar system over it

Fwidya had to tell them all of that yet again. And of course he finished off by piously reminding them that though the Rubahy were very bad, it was bad form and ill-mannered to call them by epithets like “terrier” or to express the hope that they might all be genocided sometime soon, either in a war with humans or because the Galactic Court would sooner or later—probably within a few centuries—be ruling on the continuation of both species.

Fwidya went on to describe the fragmentation of planet-surface societies, the complexity of the aristocratic system, and the differences between the Hive and the Aerie,T)Utsaid absolutely nothing that would surprise anyone.

Dujuv raised his hand. ‘Teacher Fwidya, you just told us the position of the Hive and the Aerie. You do that every time you mention them.”

“That’s right.”

“You always tell us that the Aerie is at the L4 point, two months ahead of Earth in its orbit, and the hive is at the L5 point, two months behind. Right?”

“That’s correct. Is there some point to this question?”

“Well, shouldn’t all that be classified information? What if the Rubahy use it to target us?”

Fwidya gaped at him. Dujuv was a panth, and among the hundreds of genied breeds of human, panths had

never exactly had a reputation for brilliance, but this was

the kobold drew himself up with his full dignity. “By any chance,” he asked, “do you have a bet down with your friend Jak Jinnaka as to which one of you can get me to explain the most trivial possible point?”

‘“Principle 122,’” Dujuv quoted, ‘“Consider what use those in authority may make of the truth, and speak accordingly.’”

“Well,” Fwidya said, mollified a little, “at least you know one of the Principles, and that’s more than I would have bet. But on the off chance that the question was serious, the Rubahy have known exactly where both giant stations are for many centuries, and could hardly help it. The construction process that built a black hole here, at the center of the Hive, would be detectable at ranges of five thousand lightyears, easily—”

Time crawled by. Jak couldn’t make himself care about anything Fwidya said. Twelve more minutes of gen school. Then, at long last, they’d get their feets, and after a vacation, if they were lucky, the Public Service Academy, and a successful, adventurous life, and if they weren’t so lucky, then at least a job and a chance to be a little independent. Dujuv was now miming a snake eating his head, or maybe a man who couldn’t get back out of a drainpipe—Dujuv wasn’t very good at mime, but Jak still found it much more interesting than Fwidya.

More minutes crept by. Fwidya branched off from the history of the solar system to give a history of science since Einstein and the whole human cultural tradition since Bach. Who could Fwidya imagine wouldn’t already know this?

Fwidya began his concluding comments, “And so the key to understanding your own culture, and all the great changes of the past few centuries, is—” The period bell rang and the whole class bolted through the door.

“Could that have been the dullest lecture in the history of the universe?” Dujuv asked his friend as they stood at the Pertrans station. They had already requested a Pertrans car and at any moment one should emerge from the metal doors in front of them, glide onto the boarding track, and let them in. Meanwhile they stood with their backs to the station, enjoying the sight of a girls’ slamball team jogging by in the wide corridor.

“Naw.” Jak was emphatic. “He’s what, a bit under two hundred years old? And he’s probably given exactly that lecture three times a year for the last hundred seventy years, masen? What are the odds that that was even Fwidya’s dullest lecture?”

“One in five hundred ten. People buy lottery tickets with worse odds.”

“Good job, old tove. Ybifie-using those math skills they told us were so important, masen?”

Dujuv held up his right hand, then looked down at his left palm, where he wore his purse, the supercomputer in a fingerless glove that was as basic to modern life as a wallet or trousers had been. “Is there a record for the dullest lecture in the history of the universe?”

“I only have access to records for the solar system,” the purse said. “Do you want me to check those?”

“Please.”

“Well,” the purse said, “over sixty ways of measuring dullness have been invented, and for each way, a different lecture wins.”

“Were any of the dullest lectures by any of those measures ever given by Teacher Fwidya?”

“No,” the purse said. “No speeches of his are even ranked.”

“That’ll be all, you can go off-line,” Dujuv said, and the purse said “G’night” and did. Dujuv squeezed his left palm, a little trick that many people did—having programmed the purse to like being hugged, they could reinforce it silently all the time, encouraging it to become a better and better purse. He dropped his left hand to his side. “Well, not only is Fwidya dull, he’s also an amateur at it.”

Jak shook his head. “So a failure all around. Speaking of that—let’s think about ourselves. Do you want to check our scores now, or wait until we’re at Entrepot?”

“Let’s get to Entrepot, find a good place to sit down and eat, order food, and then check. Are you scared, Jak?”

“Toktru, yeah. Terrified.”

“Me too.”

“Good thing we never get too scared to eat.”

The Pertrans car glided silently into position behind them, a face-to-face two-seater. The canopy popped open and the two toves climbed in, their knees almost touching. Dujuv said, “We want to go to Entrepot, what’s the price for less than five?”

“Less than five minutes?” the car asked. This one had a warm, motherly voice.

“Toktru.”

“Which end of Entrepot?”

“Wherever there’s the most food places.”

“Southeast terminal, then. It will be two utils.”

“Authorized,” Jak said, before Dujuv could, so that the trip would be billed to him. Uncle Sib always seemed to just throw utils in Jak’s direction, so Jak might as well spend them on his less-well-off friends.

“Please speak long enough to verify that the speaker-customer was Jak Jinnaka.”

“Mary had a little duck,