Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake

‘So how did you—oh.’

‘I didn’t. I died there. Gives me claustrophobia just thinking about it.’ He thumped his chest. ‘I’m the backup.’

‘How did you die?’ she asked.

‘Suicide, I’m pleased to say. Webster bolt to the head. Good to know I have the balls for it. Though considering it was the first symptoms of radiation sickness that made me do it—puking up in the suit and all that, very messy—maybe “balls” isn’t quite the mot juste.’

‘Somehow,’ Carlyle said, ‘I get the impression you’re not telling me all this to show how tough you are. You think there’s a way to get the thing out.’

‘Oh, I know there is,’ said Johnstone. ‘Think about it. The Raptured may have been as gods, but they couldn’t work miracles. How did the receiver get into a closed cave? There must be another gate, in the second cave.’

‘Leading to God knows where.’

‘Well, yes.’ He grinned. ‘Exciting, isn’t it?’

‘What about the transmitter?’

‘I’m afraid there’s no way around that one. There’s simply no way to get it to the gate. So forget about gates. You’d have to land a starship as near to the entrance as possible and load it on. Come to think of it, you could do the same with the other one. Use a bunker-buster to break into the cave—the receiver’s shielded, like I said, so it’s pretty robust—and carry it out.’

‘Why hasn’t that been done?’

‘The pulsar beam is like a nuclear bomb going off nearby in vacuum every two point seven seconds. You’ll recall what a radiation burst like that does to a starship main drive.’

‘I do indeed,’ said Carlyle. ‘But you could protect the drive by cladding it with enough lead. Hundreds of tons.’

Johnstone leaned back. ‘You could,’ he said. ‘And why isn’t that done routinely, I ask, given the low but unfortunately not zero frequency of nuclear skirmishes?’

‘Because if you did that, you wouldn’t have enough power to shift anything much else.’

‘Exactly,’ said Johnstone. ‘It isn’t just the added weight—shielding the drive against radiation weakens the field’s grip on the spacetime manifold. And don’t forget, we’re talking about loading another hundred-plus tons of lead-cladded object on board.’

Carlyle ran through some mental calculations. ‘It could still be done,’ she said. ‘Cutting it very fine, leaving out every scrap of mass you didn’t need … shit. And some that you would. There’d be nowhere near enough for the team’s protective suits, or extra armour for the search engine. Or a search engine at all, come to that. The team and the crew would have to stay in the same shelter as the drive … yeah, that’s possible, but when they went out …’

‘How clearly you see the problem,’ said Johnstone. ‘Believe me, I’ve done the math. Factored in all the equipment you’d need—a crane and a truck, principally—and whichever way you cut it, you’re right at the margin. You can’t get the ship there safely and have the safety gear for a surface team. We’re not talking suits, anyway. That pulsar beam is fierce . You’d need a search engine with so much armour it can barely move, like we had. The solution, of course, positively jumps out at you.’

‘Do it in two trips. Or two ships. Or a really big KE ship, or one of those AO arks …’

‘Can you afford that? Any of that?’

‘If I could get the investment in advance … but not for this, no. Just a standard AO truck.’

‘Well, then.’

Carlyle stared at him. His fixed-pupil eyes stared back.

‘Oh, fuck,’ she said. ‘One-way.’

‘Dying’s not so hard,’ said Johnstone. ‘Take it from me.’

A

lot of things could go through your mind at a moment like this. The first thing that Carlyle thought about was robots. She dismissed the thought. She couldn’t afford robots. Robots autonomous and smart enough to do that kind of job were more expensive and harder to hire than humans, and less easily replaced. The second thing she thought about was dying. She’d never done it before, and there was a certain pride in that, an existential security in knowing for sure that you were who you thought you were. It felt clean. On the other hand, a lot of people, most of whom she knew and had trusted her, had lost that innocence because she had fucked up. Maybe it was time for her to show she could take it, so that she could look them in the eye again. The third, and oddly enough the most conclusive, was the thought of more dreary trudging or phoning around the exchanges and more scornful looks from freelancers. This was the first person she’d met who thought one of the jobs was feasible and wanted to take it on.

‘All right,’ she said, her mind suddenly made up and immediately quailing, ‘let’s do it or die trying.’

‘It’s “and” not “or,” my dear,’ said Johnstone. He raised his drink. ‘Good health.’

After they clinked glasses he became instantly businesslike. ‘Who else do you have on the team?’

‘You’re the first,’ Carlyle admitted.

‘That’s good,’ he said, to her surprise. ‘It means we’re not cluttered up with artillerymen, grunts, scientists, and such, all quite redundant on this exercise. You’d have had to stand them down anyway. You, me … the pilot comes with the ship, fine, I presume you can hire one for a quick in-and-out’—Carlyle nodded—‘and one more person. A heavy-duty crane operator with archaeology experience and a death wish.’

‘A tall order.’

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Johnstone. ‘I know someone who’s just the ticket. You’ve come to the right place.’

He stood up, quite steadily considering how much he’d drunk, and threaded his way among the tables. He returned with the silver-haired woman from the window. Her face too was silvery, as though coated with aluminium powder. Her eyes were cameras, but more cosmetically effective and emotionally responsive than Johnstone’s.

‘Morag Higgins,’ she introduced herself, shaking hands and smiling. Teeth like steel. She sat down and helped herself to the single malt.

‘I know who you are,’ she added, raising a glass. ‘Well met, Carlyle. Your reputation precedes you.’

‘Not a very good one, at the moment.’

‘It is to me,’ said Higgins. Her metallic teeth glinted again. ‘I’m well up for a suicide mission. It’s the only way I can afford a backup and a resurrection.’

‘Why do you need one? If you don’t mind me—’

Higgins waved away the apology. She drew a finger across her throat, at the line between the silvery skin and the rest.

‘Last mission I was on—another pulsar planet as it happens, PSR B1257+12 c, the one in Virgo—I wandered off on my own.’ She tossed her silver hair back; it made a hissing noise as it settled. ‘All right, all right, I’m a lightning-chaser. I admit it.’ She swallowed some whisky, smiled wryly at Johnstone. ‘ “My name is Morag Higgins, and I’m a Rapture-fucker.” I got … infected. Optic-nerve hack, absolute classic, should never have fallen for… . Anyway. Then it makes me open up, some kind of needle gets in, right. Hours later I wander back sounding very strange. Team leader—one of your lot, Jody Carlyle her name was—she blows my fucking head off. End of story. Except it isn’t. Whatever it was had taken a backup of me, and stored it outside my head. Which it also had a memory of.’ She tapped her face with the glass. It rang. ‘ This grows back. It’s a crawling mass of steel nanobots. Most of it’s machinery for the meat—hormones, blood circulation, that kind of thing. My actual mind’s on a chip describing my brain, just like a backup, except it’s running in real time. I’m still me, memories and everything, but my emotions are kind of raw, as you might expect. Mostly frustration, in that I can’t get drunk and nobody will give me a job. Until you came along. Thanks, sweetie.’