Ken MacLeod - Learning the World

That sounds a little cantankerous. The fact is, I like it here. Even after two days—

That phrase again. OK, now for the hard part:

Even after two days, I can’t understand or forgive the Council. I can hardly believe it.

They tried to nuke us!

It may have been “only” an BMP hit, but the effects of that could still have killed people. Suppose some critical systems had gone down? Suppose the nuke had gone off a fraction of a second too soon or too late? I can’t believe that the founders would risk killing people just to get their way. This will not be forgotten or forgiven.

I’m almost as shocked, in a way, with what Constantine and his scientist clique have done. They used us (obviously — lots of fusion plants, huh). They went behind the backs of the Council. They’ve left us no choice but to make some kind of intervention. I can see why the Council members were furious. But how anyone on the Council could have thought that the crew would allow Constantine to be detained I don’t know. Maybe what I now see of the crew, and the crew quarters, helps to explain it. The founders just didn’t understand how different and strange the crew are. Only people as clannish and devious as the crew could have come up with the scheme to enlighten the slaves and translate the languages. Giving them speech and then reverse engineering from the language module! I ask you. Not to mention using as amplifiers, of all things, the underground bodies of fungi and lichens: fairy rings.

But, you know, kudos for the panache.

Horrocks Mathematical’s viewpoint hung in space, looking down at ruins. Even though he was safe inside crew quarters, guiding a tiny telemetry probe, it helped to think of himself as looking down, and not as looking straight ahead — or worse, up — at a vast unstable cliff. Most of the rock at the base of the reserve tank had remained trapped by the web of buckyrope cables. The mesh had been devised to hold the asteroid and cometary chunks in place under normal acceleration and manoeuvres. Under the five or six gravities of the cone’s headlong flight from the nukes, the entire content of the tank had slammed against the base, the impact cushioned somewhat by the gigantic elastic cables. As soon as the drive had been turned off, the cables had recoiled. Most of the larger rocks had remained trapped, but broken-off masses of rock had been catapulted against the sides of the tank. The fragile material from carbonaceous chondrites and cometary ice had been smashed and partly melted. Smaller fragments had ricocheted around, their gradual ablation under repeated collisions pitting the interior walls and filling the space with drifting dust and granules.

As for the habitats and machinery, everything that had not been salvaged to crew quarters had been flung about or crushed. Dust-covered diamond bubbles bulged from the wreckage, but anything inside might as well be written off. The original plan had been for the separation to be prepared in clandestinity and to be sprung as a surprise. A gentle acceleration would have left the habitats and fabrication units intact, for later release into the asteroid belt or among the gas-giant moons. Now colonization would have to proceed from scratch. At least the ship kids now had some real experience under their belts, but their disappointment would be deep, and their financial losses severe.

“Compensation claims,” Awlin Halegap said when Horrocks backed out of the view and gave him his assessment of the disaster. “No problem.”

“What?” said Horrocks. “It could be years before we get compensation out of the founders.”

“Assuming the legal software even agrees,” added Genome. “The issue of who broke the Contract, or if anyone did, is so complex—”

Halegap looked at both of them and shook his head. “You’re so naive,” he said. “We start a market in compensation claims. The ship kids can sell their claims for ready cash. They’ll lose out on the discount, but they’ll still raise enough capital for start-ups.”

“Oh yes?” said Genome. “And who will they sell their claims to?”

“Me, for a start,” said Halegap. “I hope nobody has thought of it already. Excuse me…”

His virtual presence vanished with a sound effect of rubbing hands. Over the next seconds Horrocks watched with his inner eye and virtual vision an entire financial sector flare out of nowhere like a nuclear explosion in the void. He grinned at Genome and turned to the crowd of ship kids behind him. The telemetry room was an irregular shape and strung with lianas. Water bubbled through transparent piping. A score or so of former settlers hung in the organic mesh at all angles. Others were no doubt watching from elsewhere, or following other probes.

“What was all that about?” asked a young fellow with a cockatoo-crest of blue plumes. They had seen the devastation on their own interfaces, but most of them hadn’t been able to follow the swift spectral byplay with Halegap.

“Speculation,” said Horrocks. “The guy’s a friend, and I’m no adviser, but… I’d advise you to keep your options open if somebody offers to buy your compensation claims any time in the next, oh, week or so. By then you might get a good price for them.”

“I don’t want compensation!” somebody else shouted. “I want my habitat back!”

Rattlings of lianas, drummings on the bulkhead, shouts.

“Yeah, everything’s ruined!”

“We should go back and kick out the Council!”

“Rip some stuff off the old ship!”

“What about the crew? It’s all their fault in the first place!”

Horrocks blinked and shrank back from the hubbub. Genome pushed forward.

“Shut up!” she yelled above the din. Her pitch and volume made Horrocks flinch. A startled silence fell. “That’s better,” she went on. “I know you’re upset. I’m upset. Horrocks is upset. We helped build these habitats. We don’t like seeing them wrecked any more than you do. It’s terrible. But the fact is that they are badly damaged and there’s no easy way to get them back. We can salvage some of what’s down there, but it’s going to be hard, heartbreaking work. And we’re millions of kilometres away from the old ship. We’re not going anywhere near it until we’ve struck enough deals to make ourselves safe. One of these deals will be compensation, OK? There are people willing to give you money now, or next week as Horrocks says, just on the off chance that we’ll make these deals — who knows when! That’s your good fortune. We’re heading for the asteroid belt and when we get there you can get busy on some real settlement, right out in free space. That’s what you all want, right? And until then, don’t let me hear anyone talking about ‘the crew’ as if the crew are some other group of people. When you agreed to carry out the Order of the Day, you joined the crew. You’re all crew now, as long as you’re in this ship. And for the moment, this cone is the ship. We’re all in it together — literally. So rocking well grow up, OK?”

Her gaze swept the room like a spotlight, stopping here and there. “Everybody happy?” she asked.

Silence.

“Anybody not happy?”

More silence.

“Good,” said Genome. “See you around, crewmates.”

She arrowed to the exit hatch. Horrocks followed, looking straight ahead. Outside in the corridor and out of earshot he caught her ankle and pulled up to face her. “Where did you learn to do that?” he asked.

“I guess I’ve had younger trainees than you in the past,” she said.

“That yell—”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s the training-habitat voice.”

“How do you know we’re going to the asteroid belt?”

“Aren’t we?”