Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

Vivian looked thoughtful. “So you don’t know how to be yourself, without letting other people down. That’s your problem. You feel like everyone’s looking, like they know more than you do about how you should act or what you should do. That’s our problem, both of us.”

He nodded. “All right, that seems a fair comparison.”

The smile she offered him then was self-conscious and self-deprecating, though not actually apologetic. “I suppose a lot of people feel that way. There’s probably nothing so special or unique about it. We all share the same neural architecture, right? Approximately? How embarrassing, to think my traumas and tragedies could be so banal.”

“Shocking indeed,” Bruno agreed, deciding that this girl was every bit as formidable as Tamra and the police seemed to think. “You’re beginning to understand. That’s what growing up means: a good understanding of one’s own banality. But of course, we’re all different and special, too.”

“Oh, joy.” She laughed.

He laughed with her. “Does that sound trite, Vivian? I don’t mean it that way. Whatever unique gifts we possess— things that can’t be had from any other source—those are things we should cultivate. Even if they’re absurd, even if they’re downright counterproductive , they’re the only true signs that we, our own unique selves, were ever here at all. I suppose that’s why crimes are committed; sometimes, that’s the only calling card a person knows how to leave.”

Vivian flung her arms out and tipped her head back inside its clear bubble. “Ah! Right! We should simply let people blow up their enemies and throw Ring Collapsiters into the sun. Thank you, Declarant. To think I’ve been wasting all this effort enforcing laws. Why, it’s all so clear to me now!”

“Ah, you’re a rotten child. I suppose we’re all rotten children, though. In a thousand years, you’ll look back on this conversation and laugh. A young de Towaji, presuming to lecture. On manners , no less!”

Her giggle was pleasant. “You’re funny. Did you know that?”

“Funny? Hrumph,” he replied, feeling a gate slam down suddenly on his good cheer. Tamra used to think he was funny, too, used to laugh along with his observations and suggestions and spontaneous displays of good cheer. What had happened to those days? Why had he found them unsustainable? So many of his archetypes were curmudgeons, or at least he imagined them that way; but was there anything as ridiculous as a curmudgeonly child‘ ? What a thing to look back on, a thousand years hence. A young de Towaji, presuming to curmudge.

Vivian eyed him and frowned, looking ready to scold. He deserved a scolding for letting his mood collapse like that, for being so damnably self-conscious that a simple compliment should shut him up. But what she said was, “I wonder if she did this, if she had a conversation like this one at this exact point in her life. I don’t see how she could have. It’s all very illuminating, very opinion shaping, and unfortunately that means I really am diverging, becoming a noticeably different person than her. Bruno, what if they do find her? What am I going to do then?”

For all its suppleness, the spacesuit didn’t seem to permit much of a shrug. Not one that she’d see, anyway. “I think you can decide that when it happens. Why worry now? There’s no need to be hasty, not when we’re going to live forever. Perhaps you could be her daughter, or her younger sister, and you could live together in Boston or Calcutta or Cairo, one of the Children’s Cities.”

“I already have a mother. Where do you think I live?”

“Ah. Well, perhaps you’ll find this woman is you, or the part of you that you feel is missing. You could even combine, the two of you, into a third distinct person, and all three go on with separate lives. The physical barriers to that sort of thing were all broken years ago; imagination really is the only limit.

“Hmm.” She mulled that over, nodding slowly. “You are wise, in a way. Nobody else has suggested any of this. I’ll consider it; I really will. And meanwhile, I do have my work to keep me busy.”

“Ah, yes. Your work.”

She thrust her chin out. “I do enjoy it, you know. Nobody will play games with me anymore, but an inspector’s role is a game. Even if everyone does insist on treating me like a grown-up, I find the mental challenges stimulating. Take that brick over there.” She pointed at one as it drifted through their beams a few meters ahead. “It tells a whole story, if you know how to read it. Marble, right? But it’s darkened; it looks foamy and waxy and brittle. Something’s happened to it.”

“To all the stone,” Bruno agreed, looking around. “It’s probably secondary radiation. The energy beam struck a channel through solid matter from one side of the house to the other, presumably vaporizing it, and the vaporized matter re-released some of that energy in a different form.”

“Different how?” she asked, her face growing more animated, more interested.

“I don’t know,” he said, attempting another shrug. “Something charged, I’d expect. That wreaks chemical havoc with most materials. There’s no measurable radiation now , so it’d have to be something with a very short half-life, like maybe pions. Actually, that makes sense: neutrons decaying into protons and pions would transmute some of the calcium to scandium, the oxygen to fluorine, and the carbon to nitrogen. Some of the protons, stripped away by the impact of high-energy pions, simply become hydrogen atoms, and finally the whole mess recombines at high temperature, creating… what? Fluoroapatite, scandium formates, and tar? Is that consistent with what we’re seeing?”

Vivian’s eyes glittered. “What would cause that? What would make those particles act that way?”

“A nasen beam,” Bruno answered, feeling the hairs prickle up on the back of his neck. “It’d have to be a powerful one; the overwhelming majority of neutrinos wouldn’t interact at all.”

“I see. And weren’t you looking for a nasen beam projector already?”

“Indeed,” he said. “Indeed. It needn’t be large , just an oblate, monocrystalline diamond with wellstone emitters at either end, and a very good heat sink attached. You could easily fit one in your police cruiser, although the energy to fire it would have to be stored somewhere. A superconducting battery holding… what? A petajoule? That would be substantial. Larger than this house, I think. A little larger. So you’d need a big ship, or a ground base somewhere. Tracing from Shiao’s reconstruction we might…”

He realized he was talking to a dead channel; Vivian had just jabbed the frequency controls on her forearm, and while she was nodding and looking right at him, she was suddenly speaking to someone else, in a voice Bruno couldn’t hear. After a moment, she took out a wellstone pad and studied it.

Bruno tried Police One. “Something interesting?”

She looked up and nodded. “Yeah. I’ve relayed your deduction to Shiao. He’s backtracking to the time of impact. Is there any way to know how far the beam traveled before arriving here?”

Bruno again tried to pinch his chin, and was frustrated by the invisible barrier of his helmet dome. “How far? Let’s see. Nasen beams focus tightly, but disperse over large distances. Six meters wide at the impact site? Is there a difference in diameter from one hole to the other? I suppose we don’t know which is the entrance wound and which the exit, but if one is wider than the other—by a very small amount, you understand—the resulting cone should point straight to the source. Well, coupled with the exact impact time and rotation rate.”