Furious Gulf (3 page)

Very well, caution. But how?

A trap.

Far Antiquity

T
oby had barely gotten back inside the air lock and was shedding his suit when Cermo showed up. Toby wore nothing but shorts
under his vacuum suit, and the ship felt colder than outside. He rummaged in his locker for his overalls, shivering, and Cermo
said, “Where you been?”

“Where’s it look?”

The big man towered over Toby. Cermo had been called Cermo-the-Slow in years past, but now was leaner and quicker. A broad
grin seemed to divide his face in half with delighted anticipation. “Heard all the ruckus. Cap’n found us somethin’ to eat,
right?”

“We’ll see.”

“Doesn’t change anything for you, though,” Cermo said with a sly chuckle. He was a big man with a soft-eyed, mirthful face,
so the chuckle carried no malice.

“What’s that mean?”

“You’re on maintenance detail today.”

“So? Okay, I’ll check the biotanks, the usual.”

“Today’s not usual.” Again the sly grin.

“What’s wrong?”

“Sewage seals broke.”

“
Again?
No fair! They went out
last
time I was on maintenance, too.”

“Well then, you’re an expert.” Cermo handed Toby a mop. “Apply your know-how.”

The seals were always popping, because the pressure regulators had to be tuned just exactly right. Human waste was a vital
ingredient in the biotanks. It had to be pressurized, filtered, and the final product flattened into squishy mats—which the
farm teams spread around among the big bowl-shaped crop zones. The
Argo
was a long-voyage ship, designed to keep every drop of water, every sigh of air sealed tight inside its skin.

Easy to understand, hard to do. Most of the
Argo
crew were relatives, all that remained of Family Bishop. They came from Snowglade, a bleak world Toby remembered rather fondly.
Toby was of the youngest generation of Family Bishop. That gave him the flexibility of being fresh and green, but the sour
fact of the matter was that Bishops had few skills to help them run the
Argo
.

All Families had been techno-nomads, learning just enough to survive while they were on the move. Always running, dodging,
staying ahead of mechs. Not that most mechs paid them any special attention. Humans at Galactic Center were more like rats
in the walls, not major players in anything.

Argo
was as friendly to its passengers as a ship could be, a fine artifact from the High Arcology Era. Trouble was, its systems
assumed the passengers had educations that Family Bishop could only guess at.

Example: the sewage. Neither Cap’n Killeen nor Cermo nor anybody else had been able to make head or tail of the instructions
for the pressure system.

It assumed something called the Perfect Gas Law, the instructions said. The foul stuff that actually flowed through the smooth,
clear pipes was certainly not perfect, and it obeyed no law anybody ever heard of. It spewed out without provocation and often
with what seemed to be insulting timing. Last week, a howling brown leak sprayed the Family when it was assembled for a wedding.
That took a certain fine edge off the celebration.

Toby joined the other poor souls who had drawn maintenance this week. He breathed through his mouth but that helped only a
while, until the smell got up into his head. His teacher Aspect, Isaac, spoke to him in his mind while he bent over, pushing
the foul stuff with a sponge brush.

I have conferred with the most ancient records you carry in your chip-library. Interestingly, the term you use is actually
derived from the name of the man on Old Earth who invented the flush toilet. An Englishman, legend has it, he made a fortune
and benefited all humankind. His name, Thomas Crapper, has come to be—

“Hey, give me a break.”

I thought perhaps some distraction would make your task easier.

“Look, I want distraction, I’ll play one of the old Mose Art musics.”

You mistake the name, I fear. That should be Wolfgang Ama—

Toby mentally pushed the sputtering Aspect back into its storage hole. Aspects were recorded personalities out of Family Bishop’s
past, some quite old, like Isaac. They were really interactive information bases written on small chips, which Toby carried
in his neck slots. Isaac was only a shrunken slice of a real, long-dead human personality, of course, mostly just old lore
that might come in handy. Isaac had tried and tried to explain that Perfect Gas Law, but Toby never really got it.

Knowing about Thomas Crapper wasn’t going to be any use to Toby, but he got a smile out of it; so maybe that was some purpose,
after all. The Family used Aspects to help them get through troubles, carrying the masses of knowledge they needed to survive
while living amid technology that was far beyond them.

“Hey, you sleepwalking?”

Toby came alert. Besen was standing beside him, neat and trim, her part of the cleanup done. Toby still had half a hallway
to sponge up. “Uh, I was thinking deep thoughts.”

Besen rolled her eyes. “Oh sure.”

He gestured with his mop at the brown-stained deck. “Bet you don’t know who this stuff is named for.”

Besen looked skeptical when he told her. “Honest truth,” he said.

Besen gave him a grin and he marveled at how wonderful she looked lately. Fitted out in overalls, auburn hair tied back, spattered
and grimy, to his eyes she still had a radiance. Girls bloomed just once, like flowers, before turning into women—but that
was enough. Besen seemed impossibly fresh, alive, fun.

“I was just remembering some of those plays we had to listen to,” he said. “They apply here.”

“Oh?” she said skeptically.

“Sure, you recall. ‘Good night, good night! Farting is such sweet sorrow.’ Great romantic stuff.”

“That’s ‘
Parting
is such sweet sorrow.’ Some romantic you are!”

One of their private games came from a truly ancient chip that Besen carried. It had actual texts from Old Earth, including
a gray geezer named Shake-Spear. A great poet from some kind of primitive hunter-gatherer society, Besen thought. This Shake-Spear
was one of the scraps humans had retained across the Great Gulf that separated them from the Old Earth cultures, and Besen
liked to quote frags of such stuff, just to show off.

“Well, I got it nearly right.” He grinned. “Wait’ll I finish here, we’ll go have some fun in the weightless gym.”

Toby liked the zones of
Argo
at zero-g. Most of the ship’s sections spun, creating an artificial centrifugal “gravity.” In the weightless gym, they could
bounce off trampoline-walls, make carom shots, cannonball into shimmering spheres of water.

Besen shook her head. “That’s what I came to get you for. There’s another seal break.”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes. And we’re elected to help tidy up.”

“Where?” He hoped it wasn’t in a weightless zone. What made them fun also made them horrible to clean up. Gunk stuck to every
conceivable surface, and some inconceivable ones.

“The Bridge. Come on, hustle!”

When they got to the ample, softly lighted Bridge, Toby was appalled at the sewage leak. Thick scum ran down one whole wall—luckily,
one bare of electronics or display screens. It stank. He knew all the uniformed officers by first name, of course, as Family
members—but they carefully ignored him, Besen, and the fragrant brown stain. They stood with hands firmly clasped behind their
backs, frowning sternly, concentrating on tasks that did not offend their lofty officers’ dignity.

The Bridge was a hallowed part of
Argo
, where momentous decisions about the whole future of Family Bishop were made, often in split seconds. To have it invaded
by smelly waste seemed a deliberate affront of the mocking Sewage God.

The Bridge data screens flickered and swam with views, sliding slabs of information, estimates and four-color projections
made automatically by the
Argo
’s ever-vigilant computers. Without this level of control, Family Bishop would be reduced to what it was—a gang of barely
literate nomads who had lucked into a comfortable ship.

Still, even here the years they had occupied
Argo
showed their toll. The carpet had a big yellow stain and scuff marks. Here somebody had gouged the wall, and over there a
repair team must have thought they could help by cutting a sawtooth gap and then abandoning it. Random chunks of servos and
electronics gear cluttered the working surfaces. As nomads, their lifelong habits made them carve up and strip away, haul
off and make do. Clearing up didn’t come naturally.

Toby and Besen tried to eavesdrop on the cross-talk conversations of the Bridge as they worked. The ship was indeed diving
deeply into the molecular cloud. A low tone was gathering, a long bass note sounded by the dust of the cloud rubbing against
the ship’s balloonlike lifezones. It was as though the interstellar gas outside was playing
Argo
like an instrument, sending through her a mournful call.

“Kinda spooky, isn’t it?” Besen asked.

“Like a funeral dirge,” Toby whispered.

“The rub of reality,” Besen said theatrically. “A symphony of space.”

On the viewscreens he saw mottled lanes of dust. Here and there, rays from nearby stars shot through the murky banks, splashing
blues and burnt-oranges across the cinder-dark fogs.

A shout from an officer. “There it is!”

Officers crowded around the screens to see the sail-snake. It glistened and writhed, plainly trying to get away from
Argo
. The hunter was now the hunted. Toby stood on tiptoe to get a good look but the crowd was too thick. Nearly everybody here,
being older, was quite a bit taller. A Lieutenant saw him and Besen craning their necks, yanked them both by the collar, and
set them back to work.

There were enormous perspectives on the viewscreens, brimming with light, shrouded by the great cloaking dust. Beauty. Wonder.
Awe. Vast spectacles that brought a trembling reverence to the human soul.

Meanwhile, Toby bent over to mop up the scummy sewage. Rank. Smelly. Squishy.

“Crap and cosmos,” he muttered.

“What?” Besen asked.

“Just trying to keep things in perspective.”

T
oby got to see the sail-snake up close the next day. Not because he was going out with one of the hunting crews, of course.
When Toby and Besen asked, Cermo had said officiously, “Hunting’s for full grown, not kids.”

Besen’s mouth twisted. “Get off it!”

“We’re better at zero-g work than you are,” Toby said.

“And quicker,” Besen added.

“Experience is what counts here,” Cermo said, keeping his face blank—which meant he was going to follow orders, whether he
agreed with them or not. Cap’n Killeen’s orders.

“Experience doing what?” Toby asked irritably, seeing that Cermo wouldn’t budge. Nobody had ever done space hunting.

“Surviving,” Cermo said mildly.

Toby and Besen had been in tough places before, same as anybody in Family Bishop—but he had to admit Cermo had a point. Seniority
stood for something when to get up in age meant you’d dodged plenty of trouble.

But even adult crew members, men and women alike, hesitated. The only hunting Family Bishop had done had been back on the
home world, Snowglade, with firm ground underfoot and game they knew. They had run down mechs that carried organic food-fuels,
pillaged them. And that had been a long time ago.

Outside loomed daunting, mysterious spaces. Family Bishop was hungry, tired of lean rations, but still wily. They sized up
risks with a practiced eye. They had survived while other Families in the Grand Ensemble—the Rooks, Knights, Pawns, and more—had
withered. Bishops muttered and fretted about venturing into such vast expanses, to drift among shrouded mountains of dust
and gas in frail little shuttlecraft.

So they sent a message to their only possible consultant, the alien Quath. But Quath was a moody sort, and didn’t answer.
Maybe this meant Quath didn’t know anything useful. Or maybe she did. That was Quath’s way. The point about aliens, as Cap’n
Killeen always said, was that they’re
alien
. You not only couldn’t be sure about what they said, you couldn’t even be sure about what they didn’t.

Quath wouldn’t talk to just anybody, either. Toby had a reasonably close relationship with the big, insectlike thing—as nearly
as anybody really could be sure. Ideas like friendship just didn’t easily apply to Quath.

Cermo sent Toby to talk to Quath, since the alien didn’t respond on comm or any other line. Which meant suiting up and going
out to the hull, where the hunting teams were busy assembling the shuttlecraft.

Because Quath didn’t live in the ship at all. She lived
on
it—attached to the hull, inside a strange warren of rooms and spires the alien had shaped from waste and debris yielded up
by
Argo
. There was even human waste in it, Toby knew, because he had seen Quath carefully pat the stuff into shit-bricks. Baked by
vacuum and ultraviolet starlight, the gunk hardened fast and made good building material. Not to human taste, of course, but
that was hardly the point. Besides, things didn’t smell in space—to humans. Quath, though, went into space without a suit,
so maybe to it the bricks did have a scent. To Quath it could be perfume, for all anybody knew.

Toby cycled outside through the personnel lock and stood on the hull. It took a moment for his inner ear to make the change
to zero-gravs, to stop sending out alarms that he was hanging above an infinite drop. His head had to get used to the idea
that “up” and “down” were useful ways to orient himself, but didn’t really mean anything.

His magnetic boots kept him secure and he let his skinsuit readjust itself, sorting out pressure imbalances and its own wrinkles.
The suit was alive, in a way. It had its own nerve net to sense problems. Thin organic muscles and computer chips set into
the armpits made it all work. As engineering it was a marvel, but Toby by now took it for granted, and just griped when a
pesky fold didn’t straighten itself out.