Authors: John Barnes
Mother of Storms (58 page)
The IntelliTracker waits a while, and then, poor idiot that it is, unable to interpret his tone, it says to him, “Inadvisable to carry passengers along that route in present conditions. Risk of serious accident seventeen per cent.”
It’s a lot higher than that, Manuel thinks. He looks over his six passengers; they all look drawn and frightened, and the way he feels himself, he’s just as glad to have the bus to worry about, because if he didn’t he’d be scared out of his mind.
“Well, as a temporary refuge, can we make it to the farm?”
“Which farm?” the stupid bus asks him.
“IntelliTracker—identify as base primary—close IntelliTracker,” Manuel answers, putting it in the crude communications language that came with the IntelliTracker. The bus has only a limited ability to understand natural language, so it really does clarify things, but Manuel also has a gut feeling that the IntelliTracker, somehow or other, will feel just a little insulted when he resorts to it, the way he feels when Korean sailors out of Subic Bay or American retirees in Manila speak to him in pidgin.
The IntelliTracker considers and then answers in its flat mechanical voice. “Chance of success is high. Some risk of subsequent trespassing charges.”
Manuel shrugs eloquently; why buy insurance for it if they aren’t going
to haul you into court every so often? “Divert and execute,” he says, and they turn off the road and begin to climb the hillside.
to haul you into court every so often? “Divert and execute,” he says, and they turn off the road and begin to climb the hillside.
“I’m taking you all home with me,” he explains to his passengers. “There’s no ferry right now, and my farm is on high ground. If you need to call home, there’s a working phone in the back of the bus.”
Three hours later, around the time for sunset but it’s much too dark to tell, they are on the one-lane macadam track that winds up past his farm, having cut through half a dozen fields—not that, after this hurricane rips through, anyone is going to notice what the bus did. Twice they’ve had to take half-hour detours around big areas of fallen trees and once a mudslide forced them to backtrack. By common consent, the passengers are now all sitting up close to him; Manuel doesn’t care, this is sort of a chance to show off.
When the lightning hits close, at first he laughs it off—“Don’t jump, people, if it had hit us we wouldn’t have heard it”—but then he feels the IntelliTracker slowing to a stop. A quick look at the board shows that the brain has gone dead on him; probably a couple of two-peso parts have cooked somewhere, normally he’d just phone for a recovery whistler, one of those little delivery robots, to come out with a parts basket, and he’d be rolling again in an hour at worst, but right now, any spare parts might as well be on the moon for all the good they do him.
Well, there’s an obvious solution, and he can hardly stay here—already water is beginning to swirl around the tires. If he sits here, in half an hour it will erode the shoulder around the left tires, leaving them stuck on this empty stretch of road. He flips it over to full manual control—it’s a relief to find out that that still works, and that he still seems to know what to do, even though it’s been at least twenty years since he’s had to.
The next three hours are more interesting than anything he’s done in a long while; it’s a lot like back when he was learning from his old man. The old man had learned on an old GM schoolbus that had no more controls than the wheel, brake, gas, shift, and clutch; but Manuel doesn’t think the old man could have done better than this, skittering down the mountainside, occasionally even getting up enough speed so that you feel a little g toward the outside of a turn. He can tell, though he hasn’t time to look behind him, that his passengers are trying not to show him how frightened they are.
Nothing to it, really. Anyone could do this; in the old days, they used to do it all the time. Of course, Manuel is putting a little more style and flare into it.
Still, he’s never been quite so glad to pull into the front yard of his house before. And if he had known that thanks to Clem 114, the young couple will be settling just over the hill, the Chinese insurance agents will have to stay here for a whole season as not-quite-necessary field hands until their families
get out of refugee camps less than a hundred kilometers away—or that after burying Mama for her, he will be marrying that plump daughter and starting another family at his age—well, he might not have done anything differently, except perhaps worn his best shirt and taken a few corners a little tighter. A man likes to make an impression on his friends, and he’s going to be telling this story—with his six passengers as his witnesses—for a long, long time.
get out of refugee camps less than a hundred kilometers away—or that after burying Mama for her, he will be marrying that plump daughter and starting another family at his age—well, he might not have done anything differently, except perhaps worn his best shirt and taken a few corners a little tighter. A man likes to make an impression on his friends, and he’s going to be telling this story—with his six passengers as his witnesses—for a long, long time.
On July 28, eight days after he pulled away from Earth orbit on the way out, Louie Tynan decides to take a vacation in his body.
There seems to be so much of him in the machine these days that everything will run fine without him, at least for these routine tasks. His health monitors have been telling him bad things for a while, and thus he thinks he’d better get some exercise and regular sleep, and most of all, he wants to see a package go all the way through the funnel with naked eye observation.
Now he sits in the observation bubble and watches. He’s tied down, thoroughly, because the acceleration that’s going to hit is going to rise up to almost four g’s pretty fast. Just as the physicists define speed as change in position over time, and acceleration as change in speed over time, Nemtin and other engineers back in the 1930s realized that change in acceleration over time also mattered, and named it “jerk.” What Louie is about to be subjected to is more jerk than he’s ever encountered before.
Even after several days of this, he’s worried a lot more about the
Good Luck
than he is about himself. Strapped to the back wall of the observation bubble—which will presently momentarily become the “ceiling”—he will be thrown against the webs that he now comfortably floats in, his head will feel a bit squeezed in the retaining ring through which he looks, and he may feel blood rushing to his face, but everything holding him up and holding the observation bubble together is more than strong enough for the job. Besides, healthy human bodies have withstood much more than this.
Good Luck
than he is about himself. Strapped to the back wall of the observation bubble—which will presently momentarily become the “ceiling”—he will be thrown against the webs that he now comfortably floats in, his head will feel a bit squeezed in the retaining ring through which he looks, and he may feel blood rushing to his face, but everything holding him up and holding the observation bubble together is more than strong enough for the job. Besides, healthy human bodies have withstood much more than this.
He can’t be sure till each try that the whole of
Good Luck
is ready to take the jerk. Things have broken, now and then, in these first few days, as packages went through, and just yesterday he lost two antennas off his communications equipment. If he were still plugged in, he would be able to do a lot of last-minute checks, which would at least keep him busy in the middle of all this, and he faintly resents how slow and stupid he feels when he isn’t plugged in.
Good Luck
is ready to take the jerk. Things have broken, now and then, in these first few days, as packages went through, and just yesterday he lost two antennas off his communications equipment. If he were still plugged in, he would be able to do a lot of last-minute checks, which would at least keep him busy in the middle of all this, and he faintly resents how slow and stupid he feels when he isn’t plugged in.
There was a time when the view through the observation bubble was a large part of why he stayed on board the
Constitution
for so long. Moreover, unlike the always-fascinating but now familiar view of Earth from
orbit, this is a view he hasn’t had since the Mars expedition. Earth and Luna in the same sky, exhibiting the same crescent shape seemingly close together; his viewing position is perfect with the Earth and moon almost lined up with each other, the sun slightly to one side. At the moment he is about sixty-five times as far from the Earth as the moon is.
Constitution
for so long. Moreover, unlike the always-fascinating but now familiar view of Earth from
orbit, this is a view he hasn’t had since the Mars expedition. Earth and Luna in the same sky, exhibiting the same crescent shape seemingly close together; his viewing position is perfect with the Earth and moon almost lined up with each other, the sun slightly to one side. At the moment he is about sixty-five times as far from the Earth as the moon is.
Earth is not as impressive as it once was, now a mere speck showing a crescent if he peers at it hard enough, and the moon is more and more beginning to resemble a bright star, though he can still make out that it’s a comma rather than a period if he focuses on it carefully.
He tries to recall how he would have felt back when this body was all he had, tries to summon the feelings he might have known had he been on this voyage only in this body.
It’s no good. Though he knows intellectually that this is one of the most impressive sights he has ever seen with the eyes he was born with, those eyes are just not good enough anymore; the little swatch of the spectrum from red to violet that they can perceive, the bare 165-degree cone of vision, the narrow bandwidth of signal that can pass through a human optic nerve, the fact that only two independent sensors that differ by only a few inches’ position are being compared—and that his brain needs so much space to do even that—all these things, unchanged since the Paleolithic, leave him feeling crippled.
If he could see it in all his radars, across every wavelength from radio up through hard X-ray,
then
it would be glorious … and he sees that all the time, with one small part of his mind, appreciating it fully while having the time to enjoy other things. To have this tiny, one-person brain is not merely to live more slowly and stupidly; because it cannot absorb the requisite data flows, it is also to feel blind and deaf.
then
it would be glorious … and he sees that all the time, with one small part of his mind, appreciating it fully while having the time to enjoy other things. To have this tiny, one-person brain is not merely to live more slowly and stupidly; because it cannot absorb the requisite data flows, it is also to feel blind and deaf.
Apparently one can be stupid with a large brain too, for he had thought a package passing through would be more impressive with just his own organic brain and eyes. There isn’t time to unstrap and go get plugged back in, either, before the package comes through, so now he’s stuck here. He tries to make the best of it; who’d have thought you could find the view in space limited and dull?
Out beyond the
Constitution
, there are many other silvery, glowing objects, in mad variety of shapes and glosses, and at first glance with the naked eye, in the total darkness of the vacuum and with the sun all but due astern, it appears that there is nothing holding them in place. But then the eye begins to catch the telltale sharp black lines that flit occasionally across the crescent Earth and moon, the black lines that sometimes cut across one of the shiny objects that seems to be flying in perfect formation with the
Constitution
, and then the more distant glints where the great coil, four hundred meters at its narrow point by
Constitution
, funnels out to a full
kilometer, and abruptly the eye connects those bright patches and shadows across the black vacuum to form the image of a gigantic coil spring in space, six kilometers through the center, wide at the end pointed toward the sun, with all the other parts of the ship clinging to it.
Constitution
, there are many other silvery, glowing objects, in mad variety of shapes and glosses, and at first glance with the naked eye, in the total darkness of the vacuum and with the sun all but due astern, it appears that there is nothing holding them in place. But then the eye begins to catch the telltale sharp black lines that flit occasionally across the crescent Earth and moon, the black lines that sometimes cut across one of the shiny objects that seems to be flying in perfect formation with the
Constitution
, and then the more distant glints where the great coil, four hundred meters at its narrow point by
Constitution
, funnels out to a full
kilometer, and abruptly the eye connects those bright patches and shadows across the black vacuum to form the image of a gigantic coil spring in space, six kilometers through the center, wide at the end pointed toward the sun, with all the other parts of the ship clinging to it.
The arriving package is a mere bright dot. Moreover, it’s only about a hundred meters in diameter, so it has to get within twelve kilometers before it’s even as big as the moon in the night sky on Earth, and since it is only about six hundred meters long, it takes less than a heartbeat to pass through the coil of the
Good Luck
and continue on its way into space ahead. If he’d blinked or sneezed he might not have seen it at all.
Good Luck
and continue on its way into space ahead. If he’d blinked or sneezed he might not have seen it at all.
And since it is moving almost ten times as fast as the ship, what Louie sees with his own eyes is merely a bright streak; the human eye cannot resolve something moving that fast.
His chief impression of it is only of being thrown against the web. The package passes through the coil, the superconducting magnets on its surface interact with the powerful field set up in the coil by electricity from the
Good Luck’s
plants and collectors, which causes the package to slow down by about twenty percent in that brief instant—and transfer all of that momentum to the
Good Luck
. The great coils contract and pulse back out, all of
Constitution
and the other modules are shaken like the tops of palm trees in a hurricane, and then the package is gone, hurrying on toward 2026RU ahead of him.
Good Luck’s
plants and collectors, which causes the package to slow down by about twenty percent in that brief instant—and transfer all of that momentum to the
Good Luck
. The great coils contract and pulse back out, all of
Constitution
and the other modules are shaken like the tops of palm trees in a hurricane, and then the package is gone, hurrying on toward 2026RU ahead of him.
He will catch up with it again sometime on the other side of Jupiter, strip it for parts, and throw the rest backward as reaction mass.
Captain Musharaf is painfully aware that no one cares much about the town of Khulna. It’s another one of those cities in the world that nobody goes to for fun, but where the world’s work gets done. As far as he knows, there is no one in this city of two and a half million who is even jacked for XV; when the blow falls, no one will record it.
Just now he’s supervising as much evacuation as can be managed; civil government collapsed a while ago here, and Musharaf’s colonel and major cut and ran three days ago, during the rioting. The other captains in the regiment elected him, and to the extent that he gets any orders from Dhaka, they seem perfectly willing to send them to him.
After all, what difference does it make what they tell him? How could they possibly enforce their will?
The regiment hasn’t been able to pacify the whole city; things have gotten too berserk for that. As in so many other parts of Asia, the international corporations’ use of mindslavery for factory labor has resulted in a population with no particular loyalties and nothing except a desire to get
their hands on what they think of as the good things in life; a million people of both sexes, from age six to eighty, have been toiling in the big skyscraper plants built where Garden Park and the stadium used to be.
their hands on what they think of as the good things in life; a million people of both sexes, from age six to eighty, have been toiling in the big skyscraper plants built where Garden Park and the stadium used to be.
Musharaf grew up here, and it’s never really occurred to him before how much he resented the Koreans for buying out the whole public part of the town to put their three-hundred-story assembly works there, let alone for turning so many of his neighbors into zombies who barely even know they’re Bangala.
Well, if there was ever a time to do anything about it, that was a long time ago. Right now Musharaf and his company are only trying to hold the
ghat,
the steps leading down to the River Rupsa, with a perimeter wide enough to allow some kind of orderly boarding of the hovercraft that are going to try to make the dash for high ground in Assam Province of India, as others have been doing for three days since it became apparent that Clem 114 was going to burst into the Bay of Bengal.
ghat,
the steps leading down to the River Rupsa, with a perimeter wide enough to allow some kind of orderly boarding of the hovercraft that are going to try to make the dash for high ground in Assam Province of India, as others have been doing for three days since it became apparent that Clem 114 was going to burst into the Bay of Bengal.
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