Peter Hamilton - Pandora's Star

Twice in the last eighty years he’d been chairman of Farndale. It was a position that took up twenty-five hours in the day, leaving no time for anything other than dealmaking and politicking. His old traits of discipline and ease of command served as excellent foundations for his tenures, enabling him to score several notable victories against rival companies during those heady decades. Shareholders and fellow board members alike were satisfied with his performance; and everyone knew that within a century he’d be rotated into Los Vada’s chief executive chair. But board leadership came with a cost, the constant stress acted like an accelerated aging mechanism. Both times, he had to seek rejuvenation years earlier than he normally would, due to the strain that running the company placed on his body.

That was one of the reasons he’d decided to take a sabbatical this time around. For once he was going to sit back and enjoy the worlds and wealth he’d created. So far it had been a success. He’d even surprised himself with the enthusiasm he’d shown for the vineyards and general estate management. The current batch of children produced by his huge extended family loved having him around. It was details again, he concentrated on details, using his abilities to solve every problem the family threw up; only the scale was different from before. He had plans to extend and refurbish the château. There were lots of places he would like to visit just as a tourist, cities with their unique festivals and carnivals to experience, different landscapes, exotic species. He was also open-minded about marrying again, perhaps this time finding a wife in a way that didn’t seem too much like negotiating a company deal. All these events were out there waiting for him, a swift taxi ride from any CST station. He’d even started drawing up an itinerary, a grand tour that would take over eight years to complete. Not even Bose’s discovery of Dyson Alpha’s envelopment event had distracted him; he had faith that Farndale’s current board was capable of dealing with any problems and opportunities it created. Although the news that a starship was to be constructed had given him a momentary twinge of nostalgia.

The children emerged from the vine rows to race along the gravel road again. Wilson didn’t try to stop them. They were happy. He would have given a lot to have had a childhood like theirs. His main concern was that they grew up with some sense of dignity and responsibility. An environment like the château could give any kid a very messed up sense of his or her own importance. Rich kids were notorious brats at the best of time, a situation not helped by York5, where they were all heirs to the throne. At the same time, he didn’t want to send them away to school.

Above the western mountains, a lone contrail streaked across the open sky. He stood to watch it go, impressed as ever by the speed and the lack of any sonic boom. Everybody used hypersonics to reach their estates from the CST gateway. But the velocity that the modern planes could reach in the atmosphere was imposing, even to him. To go any faster you’d have to use a semiballistic hop, actually skimming above the upper atmosphere. The designs for such craft had been around for a long time, it was just a question of development funding. After all, the demand was very small. Planes were used on standard Commonwealth worlds, but normal commercial passenger jets flew at around Mach three, which was good enough for airlines. It was only the residents of worlds like York5 who were impatient with that speed.

Wilson heard a low whoosh of air behind him as if a phantom had just rushed by. Leaves on the nearest vines fluttered. He frowned, and turned. The sight that greeted him sent a cold shock running down his nerves. A wormhole had opened not five meters away, perfectly circular, four meters in diameter, its base holding steady a few centimeters above the gravel. A man in an expensive lavender business suit stepped out. He gave Wilson a tenuous, apologetic smile and then said, “Yo, dude, how’s it hanging?”

Wilson took three quick steps, bringing him right up to the interloper, and swung a fist. His knuckles connected with a satisfactory crunch and a burst of pain.

“Fuck!” Nigel Sheldon tumbled backward, landing on his ass in the dry grass. Two CST security personnel stepped smartly out of the wormhole, arms pointing at Wilson. Their suit sleeves rippled slightly. An annoyed Nigel Sheldon waved them back. “It’s okay,” he said, then grimaced and brought a hand up to his jaw. “Damn, that hurt.”

Wilson glowered down. “It was supposed to, you little shit.” The children came running up, stopping in confusion at the tableaux.

“Wilson!” Victor yelled. “That’s…”

“I know who it is,” Wilson said sharply.

“Oh, this is great,” Nigel grunted indignantly as he struggled to his feet. “Three hundred and thirty goddamn years, and you’re still pissed at me?”

“Three hundred. Three thousand. Nothing changes what you did.”

Nigel was poking a forefinger into his mouth. “Ouch. I think you loosened a tooth.”

“You hurt my knuckles.” Wilson shook his hand; the damn thing was, it really did hurt. He hadn’t been in a brawl since his Air Force Academy days; the streetwise how-to had evaporated over the intervening centuries.

“Are you going to do that again?” Nigel asked.

“Are you?”

“Okay, okay, so this entrance isn’t supremely tactful of me.” Nigel eyed Wilson’s grazed hand warily. “But I wanted to make an impression.”

“You did that back at Schiaparelli.”

“This is important, damnit.”

“What is?” Wilson was having to work hard at not being impressed. The fact was, he hadn’t heard of a wormhole being used like this before, not to touch base with an individual—unless you counted the rumors about Ozzie. Gateways were hugely expensive links between worlds with a very long payback time, not personal transport machines, even if that person was Nigel Sheldon. Wilson supposed he was using the CST exploratory division gateway back on Augusta to open this tunnel across interstellar space. He didn’t like to think of the cost. “I do have an e-butler address code if there’s anything urgent, you know. You could use the unisphere like the rest of the human race.”

“We both know I’m not on your e-butler acceptance list, and I needed to talk to you urgently.”

“Why? What the hell is all this about?”

“I need a favor.”

Wilson started laughing.

“Yeah, all right,” Nigel said sourly. “Very funny. Now try this on for size. We’re building a starship to go to Dyson Alpha.”

“I heard. There’s been nothing else in the unisphere news for over a month.”

“So, but you didn’t join the dots too well, did you? We can build a ship, but the kind of experienced astronauts we need to crew it, and especially captain it, are kind of in short supply in this era.”

Wilson abruptly stopped laughing. “Son of a bitch.”

“Oh. Do I have your attention now?”

“Why me?” Wilson was surprised by how weak his voice had become.

“There’s no one else left, Captain Kime. You’re the last space cadet left in the galaxy. We need you.”

“This is bullshit. You’ve got tens of thousands of people in your exploratory division.”

“We do indeed. Good kids; great, even. Not one of which has ever been out of contact with the unisphere in their first, second, or even sixth life. You, on the other hand, you know what it’s like to be shut up in a metal bubble for months on end, you can handle the isolation, the stress; you can keep command of people under those circumstances. It’s a lot different from issuing orders down the corporate chain, and having some middle management jerk leap to it. Experience is always valuable, you know that. No false modesty, Wilson, we both know how successful you’ve been. I mean, look where we’re standing right now. There aren’t many of us even today who can re-create an eight-thousand-square-kilometer chunk of a France that never really existed outside romantic literature. You’ve got that, what did you used to call it: the Right Stuff?”