M. Planck - The Kassa Gambit

“You found Baharain, from a sliver of glass. Can you find her world from this?” Prudence didn’t dare hope, but she had to ask.

“No,” Jandi said. He put a data cube on the table. “I was going to trade you this, for your sliver. It is a copy of the university’s star compendium; every fact, observation, and rumor we’ve collected over the last hundred years. To buy it would cost a fortune, and undoubtedly break a law in the process. So I thought it would be a fair trade, but now I am in your debt again. The most I can tell you is that nothing vaguely like your artifact is described in that cube. I cannot guess how the medallion came to you, yet no other technology followed.”

Prudence had thought long and hard on the problem. “Maybe a node failed. Maybe we’re cut off now, the okimune split in half. Or still connected, but by a roundabout way, and it’s just taking this long for knowledge and tech to work its way through node-space.”

Jandi shook his head sadly. “There are a thousand maybes, Prudence. War, disease, stellar collapse, or even aliens could have nipped this flowering in the bud. Or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe the gods are jealous. Prometheus is still bound to his rock; perhaps no other chose to join him.”

“I thought Hercules set him free.”

A twinkle of dark humor in Jandi’s eyes. “You believe in heroes? But of course. You are full of hope, as the young should be. Even a tired old man like myself can look at the edge of your knife and see possibilities. Take this cube, Prudence, and continue your quest. I lay only this charge upon you. When you find another university that has not heard of Altair, share the contents of the cube with them, even if they refuse to share theirs with you. We academics have learned to overlook petty stumbles in the march of knowledge. When you’re so far away from here you can’t gain any profit from it, then give it away, as I gave it to you.”

Prudence probably couldn’t gain any profit from it now. She already had a database of the local stars, and it was undoubtedly more up-to-date on current commercial issues. Kassa’s sudden change in buying patterns, for example.

But for a person intent on traveling beyond common knowledge, it might be of considerable value.

“Thank you,” she said. “I will.”

“If you can bear it,” he added softly, “you might update the entry on Strattenburg. We chose not to slander based on rumors. But you know the truth.”

She would have to think before she made that promise. Carrying his data cube like pollen to a distant flower was one thing. Bleeding her heart into it to make it richer was something else.

“I’m going to update the entry on Baharain first. By going there.”

“I advise differently, my dear. I advise you to run without looking back. You cannot materially affect the collapse of this world, and why should you try? Your fate does not lie with us, child. We strangers cannot ask this of you.”

Coming from a man who had just announced his intention to commit state-sponsored suicide, this paean to self-interest was unconvincing.

“It’s what I must do,” she parroted at him. “For my own sake, Jandi. I can’t flee without at least trying to help.”

He sighed. “You should. You would serve us better as a pollinating bee, not a warring wasp. One sting more or less will not matter to the bear who raids our honeyed chambers. At least promise me you won’t surrender completely to vainglory, to the point of thinking your death will matter. I know mine won’t; I offer it only because it is already so immediate. The advantages of decrepitude—one has nothing left to lose.”

More lies. It was obvious that Jandi would have picked a fight with the League at any age. Courage was as integral to his character as the sharp eyes and deft fingers.

But would he have endangered a wife and children? Would he have stood up to the authorities if he had a family that depended on him, children who needed him, innocents they could threaten with destruction?

There was a reason the heroes of legend were never married. There was a reason so many people on Altair stood by silently and did nothing. It was the same reason that so many on Strattenburg had done nothing, until it was too late. Only the people without attachments could afford to risk everything. And if they weren’t attached to the world, why would they care what happened in it? Prudence had kept herself free of attachments since the day Strattenburg had burned them all. Or tried to; people kept creeping inside her defenses, like Jorgun and Jelly and Kyle and now Jandi. She had been running away out of self-protection, but now she found herself too detached to fear and too attached to flee.

Jandi pushed the cube into her hands. “I can give you two days’ head start. Go and see, but don’t touch. And don’t come back! The danger that they linked us together will be too great. On that cube is a list of scholars you can trust. Send them the results of your investigation by parcel post, and then abandon us to our fate. It is no more than we deserve.”

She left that night. No point in trying to find a cargo. Altair had stopped all outgoing shipping. The planet had become a black hole of commerce. Goods poured in, but the only thing that could escape the pull of the government’s gravity was that mass-less, ephemeral substance known as debt. Theoretically it was self-regulating. The physicist Hawking had proven that the virtual particles that leaked out of the event horizon of a black hole would eventually evaporate it. But physicists were not known for their financial acumen.

She had to kick a dent in Garcia’s door to wake him. He was too drunk to understand the dangerous course she was setting, but he refused to leave the ship. It was a choice, of sorts. As much as she could give him at the moment.

Melvin’s network contact was now listed as “unregistered.” When she went to his stateroom, intending to pack his belongings into storage at the spaceport, she discovered it was already empty.

“Yeah,” Garcia mumbled, when she confronted him again. “I forgot. Melvin bailed on us. Bastard didn’t have the guts to face you. He waited for days for you to leave the ship so he could clean out his locker. Don’t know why. He won’t need any of those surfer clothes now.”

“Why not?” she asked, wondering what terrible fate she had consigned her crewman to when she had chosen to land on Kassa, instead of running away.

“He enlisted. Can you believe it? Fleet took him. Him! Earth-fire, he even tried to get me to enlist.”

This war was sucking her clean. Credits, crew, cargo—everything she had that wasn’t nailed to the deck. They only left her with the broken bits, the simpleminded Jorgun and the incurably dishonest Garcia.

No, she thought, not even the broken were hers to keep. Kyle Daspar had been something she might have repaired, an old cracked vase that she might have found value in, but the League had taken him too.

In the early hours of the morning, when Fleet finally gave her clearance to approach the node, she felt something warm on her feet. The shoes had melted, turning dull gray and soft. They were no longer pretty.

He exploited the kid shamelessly.

The company gave Kyle a few days off to recover. He spent the time hatching a plan. To get outside the dome, you needed official documents. To do anything on this cursed planet required documents, because then they could charge a fee for it. Kyle began to miss simple bribery. At least it generated less paperwork.

The only open ticket for wandering around the planet’s surface was a prospector’s license. Money wasn’t enough, though: you had to pass exams to qualify. Kyle’s employment card got him past the pressure-suit exam, and his Altair documents let him waive the driving test for an explorer buggy, but there was no way he was going to learn enough about mining in the next few days to get a prospector’s license.