Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

“That sounds horrible, Muddy.”

“No.” He was shaking his head. “To me it was touching. Sweet. I suppose I’m crying because it should have been horrible, because I’ve come so far from where I started. Ah, Bruno, if only you could know him. He admires you so very much. He’s not such a bad man, in some ways.-Just very, very driven.”

“How sad for him,” Bruno said, then loosened his straps a little and raised his seat back. “Muddy, you don’t have to play his games anymore.”

The tears ran freely down Muddy’s face. “Perhaps I do, sir. These things aren’t so easily undone as you seem to imagine. Perhaps they can’t be undone at all, except in death, but he’s made such an obedient little coward of me I doubt even that is an option. There’s little doubt I’m doing his work right now, one way or another. You should lock me in this chair and drug me for the duration, sir. I would, in your place.”

“Yes? Well, that’s precisely where you and I differ. I’m very sorry for all that’s happened to you, but enough already. Right? You’ve made a fine ship to fly against him, and you’re using it. Revel in that. Have we turned around yet?”

“Indeed,” Muddy said, in sour imitation of Bruno’s own voice. Or perhaps the “imitation” was literal, and his voice really was that growling and brusque. “We’ve been decelerating for hours. We’ll reach the station in eleven minutes.”

He pointed to a diagram on the instrument console, a little brass plaque engraved with black letters and symbols, which showed the arrow-straight trajectory of the station and the slightly curvier path of the Sabadell-Andorra intersecting it. Curvy because the ship’s only means of propulsion was the runaway station itself, the electromagnetic anchor they’d tied to it. There was nothing else to anchor to out here in the so-called Kuiper Belt, a space so huge and empty around them that the nearest other object was probably the planetary debris field they’d left behind, or perhaps a flake or two of very lonely methane ice.

At any rate, since they couldn’t aim for where the station ivould be, but only where it was , their path was a classic “stern chase.” Actually, it was worse than that, because they’d had to place themselves directly between the station and the sun, so the latter could be used as a deceleration anchor. Their final rendezvous—indicated in miniature on the little brass plaque—involved a lot of flip-flopping toward the station and back, for course correction, while Sol, on the other side, did all the heavy lifting. Bruno had been awakened by just such a flip-flop. It was hardly an optimal arrangement, but it did seem to be getting the job done. As Bruno watched, the little black indentations labeled SHIP and STATION inched forward in their tracks, dotted lines turning solid in their wake. And indeed, if the display was accurate then rendezvous was very nearly at hand.

“Have you made radio contact?” he asked Muddy.

“With the’s-s-station?”

“With Deliah, yes.”

“I hadn’t thought of it. Shall I?”

“Allow me. Ship? Hello?”

A hypercomputer earpiece appeared on the hull beside him.

“Ship here,” was the immediate—though somewhat tentative—reply. The poor thing was probably growing a consciousness emulator for the first time, opening its metaphorical eyes and ears, the demands of an impatient de Towaji being its first-ever experience of experience . The ship itself wouldn’t mind, of course; it would be eager for any task, but still Bruno found the idea depressing. This week had been filled to bursting with depressing ideas.

“Can you make radio contact with that grapple station?”

“The object ahead of us? Certainly, sir. Can you recommend a frequency?”

Bruno gave it one—the one he and Deliah had used in their conversation at closest approach. “Analog,” he added, “not digital.”

“Very well, sir. Receiving reply.”

“Play it.”

“Bruno!” Deliah van Skettering’s voice said. “ Malo e lelei , it’s about time you answered. I’ve had you on radar for over an hour. Hello?”

“I’m here,” he acknowledged. “Two of me, actually, though one would deny it. How are you holding up?”

“Splendidly,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not. He supposed not; he’d certainly be delighted at the prospect of rescue after a week of lonely terror out here, the sun shrinking steadily behind him. The light-lag and vocal distortions, at least, had dropped almost to zero.

“Right. Well, we’ll be there in a couple of minutes. I’m not sure that we have an actual rendezvous plan, but we’ll work something out.”

“What is the condition of the station?” Muddy interjected, in a voice less sour than before.

“Condition? Why, it’s a mess. Every non-wellstone component has been smashed out of true, and there are lots of those components. Big, too. I feel I’m in some carnival funhouse. I’m actually amazed the hull’s held up so well: I’ve got leaks, but they’re about eighth on my hierarchy of problems to worry about. The floor here is neutronium filled, for local gravity. My biggest fear is losing cohesion in the diamond cladding— I’d survive about a microsecond.”

“Is the station functional?” Muddy pressed. “Can you produce a grapple beam with it?”

Deliah paused. “Bruno? Is that still you? You sound funny.”

“I’m Muddy. A de Towaji relative on the Quisling’s-s-side of the family.”

Quisling: traitor. Deliah didn’t appear to catch the reference. “Attitude control is out,” she said evenly. “Power distribution is out. I’ve got hypercomputers running in several locations, but there isn’t a lot for them to do . The emitter cavities are wellstone lined, so it’s possible the revpics still have full range of motion. If I can route power to them, I could probably get enough vibration out to muster some measurable gravitation. Not enough to save me or anything. Why? What did you have in mind?”

Muddy shrugged, then seemed to realize she couldn’t see that. “I, uh, thought we might simply take it with us. The whole thing. I thought it might come in handy.”

“It might at that,” Bruno said, impressed with the idea. “Goodness.” He turned to the nearest hypercomputer and tapped in some quick calculations. “Hmmph. Not feasible. The ertial shield’s wake is essentially cone shaped, and could only accommodate the station if it were more than a kilometer behind. But at that range, most of the zpf has filled in again. It’s like digging a hole in water—it doesn’t last long at all.”

Muddy looked ready to cry again. “It was just an idea,” he whined, cringing back in his couch as if expecting violence.

“A good idea,” Bruno agreed quickly, “just not a workable one. At best, we’d yank a core sample out through the station’s middle.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Deliah complained. “If you can think of towing something this size through space, then you’re either crazy or… Well, we’ve got some talking to do when you get here.”

A gentle but very solid whump came up through the floor, and suddenly all the sensations of inertialess motion vanished. They weren’t accelerating any longer, so the aft deck was no longer “down.” But they weren’t weightless, either. Instead, the di-clad neutronium deck liners inside the grapple station tugged at them sidewise. The deck seemed to tilt beneath them now, as on an ocean ship that was sinking.

“Huh. I believe we are here,” Muddy said.