Cosmonaut Keep (28 page)

"Very well," Chumakova said. "Let's look at what is on the agenda. You now suggest building obviously dangerous devices, the plans for which have been brought here by an American agent and a renegade! Why not just blow us all up and be done with it?"

The one in three who seemed to agree with her probably just nodded and "hear, hear!"ed in real life, but the VR translated their response as before.

"This could get old real fast," Camila said under her breath. Avakian glanced at her and frowned, but thereafter the responses were less tumultuous.

A man called Angel Pestaña stood up, leaning on the butt of his long rifle. His avatar's black burnoose looked North African.

"I think my colleague Chumakova exaggerates a little. Comrade Driver is not urging us to build the machines, he is asking us to discuss it. Very well, then, let us discuss it! First, the issue of safety is a diversion, as is the notion that this is some kind of American sabotage operation. Those of us who've taken the trouble to check have confirmed that the science data did indeed originate in the interface with the aliens. I can give you the references, Aleksandra!

"What's far more important is for us to understand why the aliens gave out this information, and why they bypassed us to do it. Once we understand that, we can decide whether or not to prioritize building the machines."

"That might delay the construction for a few million years," said Driver. "I take it that's not what you propose?"

Pestaña shook his head. "I suggest asking them."

Laughter.

"Hmm, yes, there's always that," said Driver. He looked around for someone else waiting to speak. Louis Sembat rose next.

"I've been running some calc overnight," he announced, waving what looked to everyone else like a scroll covered with curlicued calligraphy but was probably a hand reader, "based on the work begun by Mr. Cairns here. It looks feasible -- we aren't making much use of the fabs for the information campaign, after all. The basic inputs and materials are available. We have enough transplutonics in the labs to build at least prototypes of the craft and the engine. It really is not a big deal. I say go for it. Going by the Cairns documentation the first construction should only take a couple of weeks. The engine might take a bit longer, but the experience gained in building the craft could even speed it up."

I signaled frantically to Avakian, who gave me the floor. A few hastily keyed macro commands got my avatar clunking over in its tall riding-boots to stand in front of the table.

"I just want to make one point following the last speaker. I'm not a scientist or technician, I'm a systems manager, and I know for a fact that any time-estimate you may have found in the documentation will be worthless. So please don't count on getting this thing flying in a fortnight."

My avatar delivered this modest contribution as though addressing troops from an armored train. As it strode or staggered back I told Avakian to stop messing around. He just grinned.

More arguments followed, some of them quite technical, and by the end the two obvious groups in the meeting were themselves divided: Some of those who'd supported Chumakova were in favor of going ahead, perhaps because it was at least something to do other than the information war; some of Driver's supporters opposed it explicitly, for that same reason. The division was looking very close indeed when Driver beckoned Camila. She shot me a surprised glance and strolled over to stand behind the table, looking skinny and vulnerable and fierce.

"Friends," she said, "I'm just a commercial test pilot. I don't know much about politics but I do know about aircraft. If these machines do what Mr. Avakian thinks they do, then you can change the world from right here. You can make it available to anyone you choose, or no one. Above all, you can win a lot of respect if you're visibly handling the most advanced technology we've ever seen. This could break a lot of logjams; it could make space an attractive prospect again -- even the stars! You could hold out the promise of the stars! Okay, okay, maybe the cometary minds already own most of the real estate, but we can work something out. I mean, come on, guys, you're scientists! You can do it, and you ... you know ... I think you should."

She returned to the edge of the stage in an eerie silence. Avakian, master manipulator, was letting this response take its course.

"God," Camila whispered, "I blew that one, I just let it run into the sand."

"You were great," I told her.

The vote went three-to-one in favor.

"God is great," said Camila.

The delegates brandished their weapons.

As soon as they'd dispersed into the heat haze Avakian shut the display down, and once more I was hooking a leg around an angle-bracket in Driver's crowded office. He, Lemieux, Avakian and Camila and I all looked at each other, blinking and shaking our heads -- the usual uncertain moment after coming out of full-immersion VR.

"That went well," said Driver. "No thanks to you, Armen. I'm surprised there wasn't a complete walkout by Aleksandra's mob about the way you were stacking the deck."

"Hey, I cooled it later on, and I'll tread lightly in future, okay?"

"Fine. Matt, how much more work do you need before you can turn the project plan over to production?"

I tried to give an honest estimate. "Couple of days at the most. But I can't promise there won't be bugs cropping up when we actually try it."

"Yeah, sure, no plan ever survives ... et cetera. Okay. Go for it. Get a material-requirements list -- even crude aggregates -- together as fast as you can. If we're missing any actual
elements,
we're buggered, but components can be cobbled up in the fabs and there's still a fair bit of raw stuff, from volatiles on up to iron, that we can dig up and refine if we have to. I don't want to find a bottleneck after we've started. If there are any, I want to know about them ASAP."

He turned to Lemieux. "Paul, you get a team together, liaise with Matt and the scientists, pull in Sembat, keep Chumakova's lot on board, get Volkov and Telesnikov to keep the cosmonauts up to speed, and make sure you get their input -- the craft won't be much bloody use if the controls are for, I dunno,
tentacles
or something."

Avakian laughed, and interjected: "It's okay, I've seen the panels, they're for hands. Maybe not
our
-- Ah, forget it. But definitely, no tentacles."

"All right," said Driver, as though thinking his joke had been taken too literally. "Maybe you could help Matt with systems integration and science data, okay?"

"Yup."

"You square with all that, Paul?"

Lemieux nodded.

"Fine. Camila ... " Driver studied her for a moment, frowning. "Can you keep us in touch with Nevada, and maybe work with our engineers on your own, uh, flying saucer? I'm sure it needs a bit of turnaround maintenance. No security problems there?"

"It's open tech," Camila said. "Yeah, that's warm."

"Great!" Driver gave a most uncharacteristic wide grin and a clenched-fist salute.
"Per ardua ad astra,
then. Latin for 'Get off your arse.' " We did.

My first task was the mundane and tedious one of porting most of my software from storage in American hard tech to implementation in European wet tech, and integrating the lot with my reader and the American spex. Fortunately, the station's intranet had an entire library of hacks and kludges for doing just that, but I could have done with an old geek at my elbow. When the crossover had been completed, my sense of triumph was muted by the thought that already half a day's slippage had thus been added to our notional schedule. But worrying about that would only lose more minutes, so --

I sucked a coffee, keyed the spex, and got busy on the real job.

In Avakian's Baku Congress scenario my reflexes, already adapting to microgravity, had been thrown off balance by an environment where virtual objects behaved as though they had weight and my real body didn't. It was a pleasure to get back into my own VR, where everything meshed. I'd never thought of it before, but the dataspace in which I usually worked had zero-g virtual physics. My viewpoint darted about in it like a minnow, now that it wasn't subconsciously contending with my inner ear.

Furthermore, the entire project was now embedded in its original context, from which the ESA documentation sent to me had been abstracted. Concepts and details and reasons that had been leaden and flat the first time, now twanged with resonance. Understanding far more of what I was doing, I did it faster. The AIs also brightened, their suggested solutions often surprising me, going beyond the bounds of their conceptual thesauri. Didn't make some of their suggestions any less stupid, of course, but weeding these out was where I came in, and I was doing it better. You can do a lot with a good dataset, but there's nothing to beat on-site, hands-on problem-solving.

After I'd got the first-cut list of raw material inputs completed and zapped off to the relevant departments I called up Avakian, who merged his workspace with mine and then, increasingly, with the scientists who'd taken an interest in the project. Hours passed, fast -- it was like my earlier experience of moving from the hobbled environment of E.U. dataspaces to the U.S., but with even greater freedom because everybody was free to share. It was a style of collaborative work I'd not encountered before, and it was as addictive as a well-designed game.

Eventually Avakian noticed that our rate of errors, misunderstandings, and frictions was creeping up.

"Knock off," he said, "Call it a day shift. See you all in eight hours."

After we'd dropped out of the shared space I hung in the VR for a while, channel-hopping the station's news-servers. In Europe the crisis seemed to be easing off a little, the street demonstrations hanging fire while assorted commissions and committees attempted to hammer out compromises. At the same time, high-level scandals and low-level protests had erupted in the United States. The governments of India and China had lodged with the U.N. some unspecified complaints about allegedly unfraternal dealings by the E.U., putting some strain on the great anti-imperialist alliance. In the background to it all, in both blocs and in the independents, leaks and rumors and speculation about the scale of the alien presence in the Solar System was spreading.

Of Jadey's plight there was no news at all. I sent her a message, care of the Sheriff Court, but without much hope that she'd see it anytime soon. Then I went to the refectory and ate mashed potatoes, grilled carrots, and curried rabbit.

Yum.

I rattled back the curtain of the place where we'd slept, to meet Camila's glare as she wiped her naked body with a damp cloth.

"Jeez! What
is
this, Privacy Central?"

"Sorry," I said, moving to slide the curtain back.

She beckoned. "Hey's warm, come on in."

I looped in and hung opposite her as she hung herself out to dry. She didn't look as skinny in microgravity as she had in the space-suit, her breasts full above the bony cage of her ribs. She looked back at me in that shamelessly direct American way that, like the accent, had always excited me.

"Do you want me to find somewhere else?"

She shook her head. "It's as bad everywhere. I'd still have to share with someone, and I'd rather share with you than with one of the commies. Especially the women."

"They're not commies."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Russkis, French -- same thing. Weird. Wacko. Not like us."

"Us Anglos, Ms. Hernandez?"

"Like I said. You know what I mean." She dismissed the question. "You look tired."

"Knackered. But we're making progress." I told her about it, briefly. "What have you been doing yourself?"

"Oh, talking to engineers. Wandering about in the real world. Checking over the old
Blasphemous.
Raiding the commissary."

She rummaged in a bundle of clutter behind her.

"Managed to score some dope," she said. "Want to try some?"

"How do you get
that
on a space station?"

"All that hydroponics, someone's gotta put it to good use. And it's hardly like there's a fire risk."

She busied herself with a ten-centimeter roll of plastic and a battery-powered steam-pipe.

"Oh, all right, thanks. My head's buzzing anyway."

She sucked in the fragrant steam and passed me the apparatus. I inhaled gratefully and passed it back, riding the rush. Her dark eyes shone.

"Buzzing with what?"

"When I shut my eyes," I said, shutting them, "I can still see the data structures, the critical paths, the exploded views, the lot, and the craft and the engine at the end of it all, sort of glowing in the dark."

My eyes snapped open. "And the news from home."

"Ah." She pumped the steamer until it hissed and bubbled again. "Jadey. No news of her?"

"Nope."

"Sorry about that." Her pupils widened, her eyelids narrowed. "Really. You and her. Shit. Bad luck for -- "

She laughed and passed me the pipe. The air-conditioning roared in my ears.

"Bad luck for who?"

"Ah, for her." She closed her eyes, drifting. "No, to be honest, I meant for you and me both."

I could see where this was going, I hadn't been born yesterday.

"Why?" I asked, as though I didn't know.

She stared at me, drifting closer, her breasts and eyes looming like approaching ships.

"We were real close on the flight," she said. "Talked about everything. Never talked to anybody like that."

I dizzily recalled our conversations. They hadn't seemed so intimate to me -- more like ... I didn't know ... finding a friend you could talk to about anything that took your fancy. She'd talked about childhood, her grandparents' voyage from Cuba on an inner tube, her education, her training. She had talked about guys, with nostalgia, even sentimentality, sometimes crudity. With both of us clad in shock-gel, it had seemed like time-out from sexuality.

The loneliness of her rare talent and reckless courage hit me.

"I never knew," I said.

"Ah shit, you did -- you were listening. Hell, when you were asleep it was all I could do not to kiss you."