Charles Sheffield - The Mind Pool

“Which means you win your bet,” said Tatty bitterly. “I guess that’s all you care about.”

Mondrian stared at her with a surprised expression. “That’s not true, Princess, and you know it. We can talk about all that later. I called to say that I’ve arranged for us to have dinner tonight, and you’ll have the chance to meet an old friend.”

“I have no friends on Ceres — unless it’s Chan and Kubo.”

“Wait and see.” Mondrian was smiling again. “I’ll come over there and pick you up at seven. Dinner will be just the four of us: you, me, Luther Brachis — and Godiva Lomberd.”

“Godiva!” But before she could do more than say the name, Mondrian vanished from the screen. In his place were the swirling dust-clouds and umber sky of Barchan. Tatty stared at them, her fists tight-clenched.

“Damn you, Esro Mondrian.” She swung to Flammarion. “Damn that man. He ignores me for months. Then he thinks he can call up and suggest dinner, just like that, as though nothing has happened. Well, no way. I’ll see him in hell before I’ll see him at dinner.”

Tatty paused in her outburst. She had been talking to Flammarion, and so she had only just noticed Chan’s face. It was white and staring. “Chan! Are you all right?”

“Who was that man?” His voice was a whisper. “Who?”

“Him?” Flammarion, concentrated on Tatty, had not noticed the change in Chan. “He’s my boss, that’s who. Commander Esro Mondrian, head of the whole Morgan Construct operation. You want to meet him? You will, soon as your training program gets going.”

Chan was nodding. “Yes,” he said softly. His hands were clasped as tightly as Tatty’s. “I would like to meet Commander Mondrian — very much.” He glanced over to Tatty. “He wants you to go to dinner.”

“I know. I’m not going. Damn the man.”

Chan’s stare at her was more probing, an alien expression overwriting his mouth and innocent eyes. “I think you will, Tatty, he said at last. He nodded. “Yes, I think that you will.”

These are the Seven Wonders of the Solar System:

• The Vulcan Nexus

• The Oort Harvester

• The Sea-farms of Europa

• The Uranian Lift System

• The Mattin First Link

• The Venus Superdome

• The Tortugas’ Tetrahedra

• The Persephone Fusion Network

• The Vault of Hyperion

• Oberon Station

• The Jupiter Bubble

• Marslake

There are a dozen items on the Seven Wonders list. That is not an error. For although everyone agrees on the first four, all the rest are a source of argument. Is the Hyperion Vault more impressive than Oberon Station, merely because it is bigger? Is the Jupiter Bubble more deserving of inclusion than the Venus Superdome, because it is far more difficult to maintain? How does technical sophistication trade off against beauty or elegance — or, for that matter, against importance to the human race? Why are visiting aliens all so taken with the Harvester, and so bored by the Sea-farms? And is it at all fair to include the metal tetrahedra of the Dry

Tortugas on such a list, since they are not the result of human efforts?

For some reason no one ever puts the reconstruction of Ceres anywhere on a catalog of marvels. Yet a minor planet, less than one thousand kilometers across, has become the most populous and influential body in the solar system. Should not that be regarded as a major miracle?

Ah, but the work was done long ago, using the same simple and ages-old technology that built the Earth-warrens and tunneled out the Gallimaufries. No one is impressed by that. And whatever the technology, the results are too familiar. Ceres is on no one’s list.

But it should be. After centuries of steady work, modern Ceres possesses less than half the mass of the original. Instead of a body of solid rock with minor intrusions of organic material, Ceres is now a sculptured set of concentric spherical shells. One within another, varying in roof height from less than four meters to nearly a kilometer, the internal chambers extend from the center of the planetoid all the way to the surface.

The original body offered less than two million square kilometers of available surface area. The honeycomb of modern Ceres provides a thousand times as much — more than ten times the original land area of Earth. And if Ceres itself does not qualify as a major wonder, then what about its transportation system? It had to be designed to carry people and goods efficiently through the three-dimensional spherical labyrinth of tunnels and chambers. It is a topological nightmare, a complex interlocking set of high-speed railcars, walkways, drop-shafts, escalators, elevators, and pressure chutes. A trip from any point to any other can be made in less than one hour — if you have the help of a computer route guide. And few people would attempt any trip without such assistance. An unguided journey, if it could be done at all, would take days.

After a few sessions of coaching by Kubo Flammarion, Tatty had reached the point where she could handle the route instructions provided by the transit computer. She always went cautiously, checking each interchange that she had to make on the way.

Now it was time to introduce Chan to the system. On their first brief visit, before they went to Horus, she had been obliged to lead him everywhere. This time he took one look at the overall plan, listened impatiently to Flammarion’s lecture on route selection strategy, and disappeared as soon as he was free to leave.

He was gone for many hours. When he came back he seemed to have been all over the planetoid, and he knew the internal layout of Ceres in far more detail than either Tatty or Kubo Flammarion. The next morning, as soon as the training session was over, he was off again.

He seemed to be avoiding Tatty. It was a surprise to her when he came wandering into her living-quarters as she was dressing before going off for dinner with Esro Mondrian.

Chan flopped into a seat in the middle of the room. Tatty looked at him warily. On Horus, before the change in Chan, she had been quite casual. She had thought of him as a child, and allowed him to see her in a nightgown and in random stages of partial undress. Now she closed her bedroom door firmly as she went in and locked it behind her.

She was gone for half an hour. Uncharacteristically, Chan stayed. She could hear him pottering about in the kitchen while she was bathing and dressing, and he was still there when she came out.

Tatty walked to the full-length mirror near the door. Chan came to stand behind her, examining her appearance closely. She was wearing a white dress, sleeveless and off the shoulder, with pale mauve accessories. The purple marks of old Paradox shots were slowly fading from her arms, a curiously apt match to the clothes that she wore.

Chan caught her eye in the mirror as she studied the sweep of her hair. “Very — elegant. Is that the right word to use?”

“It is. Thank you.”

“You look very beautiful. I thought you would rather go to hell than to dinner with Esro Mondrian.”

“All right, Chan.” She turned to look at him directly. “That does it. What do you want? I’ve got enough on my mind without you adding to my worries.”

He shook his head and said nothing. But shortly before Mondrian was due to arrive, Chan left the apartment.

Tatty continued her careful application of makeup. At one minute to seven she went to the apartment door and opened it. She smiled in satisfaction. As she had expected, Mondrian was in the corridor, walking toward the apartment. Whatever his faults, he was precisely punctual. As though they had planned it together, he was dressed in a formal uniform, a plain black that was trimmed with just the same pale mauve that she was wearing.