The Goliath Stone (20 page)

“You can
raise the dead
?” Toby said.

“Lots of people can. Depends what you know and how dead they are.”

“But you do it by talking to them.”

“Don’t be silly, they can’t hear me. I quoted William Goldman to trigger
my
bots. Then they passed the word.”

Four guards had each been stabbed from behind, through a lung so they couldn’t call out, and left to drown in their own blood. May looked at the picture rather than look at the men. “Who put this one in Mecca, then?” she said, once he couldn’t detect any more fresh corpses.

He shook his head. “God knows. The casing is French, so it could have been anybody. Hang on.” The airport ambulances were just arriving, and he went to talk to the crews for a bit. He came back and said, “They’ll be looked after. They’re recent enough that the brain should still hold its connection settings pretty well. Let’s get to our bird, shall we?”

“What about the spooks?” said Toby.

“The crews will take their guns and ID, but then I’m giving them a second chance,” Yellowhorse said.

“Are you crazy? —Strike that.
Why?
”

“Because I am really, really pissed. Stone reminds me of the union rep at dear old William Golding High School, and his men weren’t drafted. In less than a day they’re going to be teenage girls who appear to have damn near no memory. Language and basic hygiene, and that’ll seem to be about it. In fact they’ll remember everything. They’ll just be unable to express it to anyone. New prints, altered DNA, no identity. They’ll be safe from abuse, but being taken seriously as human beings is a problem for another generation. Childhood is still its own punishment. I saved the men they killed, but it remains to be seen how much memory is restored. Karma’s such a bitch.”

“Yes,” Alice said, “but she swallows.”

Yellowhorse made a choking noise for a moment, then patted Alice very gently on the top of her head. He led them back into the hangar, loaded their four equipment packages in the back of a hauler, and said, “This way, folks.”

May got on, looked at the cluster of eight confused, frightened men, and didn’t look at them again.

*   *   *

The Rukh they’d be using was in another part of the airport, in a
big
hangar, this one with a lot more people around. Some of the people had tools, others had cameras and were bothering the ones with tools, some had weapons and were interfering with the ones with cameras. All were ignored by the four.

The 40-V had been mounted the night before.

After a while Toby looked at May. She was still looking at the orbiter.

It was exceedingly beautiful.

In addition to the elegance of its design, it had been completely covered in a pattern of brilliant feathers, in every color that flame has. Along the nose on the left side (and presumably the right) was the word
Firebird,
in fluorescent violet.

“Wow,” Alice said. “Mycroft … how did you know the bomb casing is French? Can you use your eyes like a spectrometer or something?”

“I could, but I didn’t. It’s too weird, and almost useless on any normal photograph anyway. —The numbers stenciled on it include two sevens, both of which have that superfluous little decorative line through them. This is on an object that’s intended to be vaporized. Nobody else would do that. Nobody else would sell an H-bomb, either. I blame the wine and cheese. Always be suspicious of a culture whose cuisine is based on ingredients with no expiration date.”

May, who detested wine and was at best lukewarm about cheese, turned her head to look at Yellowhorse. Then she looked at Toby.

“I said he had a position piece on everything,” Toby said.

“You didn’t say he was
right,
” she said. She looked at Yellowhorse again. “Why didn’t you ever write any science fiction?” she demanded.

“Good God, the same reason I never bought an elephant. As cool as it is, it still takes up all your time, and it absolutely cannot be justified by the return on investment. If I ever have to write again, I’ll stick to romance novels, thank you.”

“You who the what?”

He nodded. “It came to me when I was in prison. The only guy I ever saw shanked had torn a page in a romance novel. Shanked unfairly, I might add, as all the ones in the library were pretty worn out. —I was bored and broke, so I read a few and got the pattern down, then bartered some favors for time at a keyboard. —I had the advantage of having been sick for an incredibly long time, so I know work-arounds for all
kinds
of problems. As a side effect I became the go-to man inside. When I started to write … I need to tell you a somewhat obscure story. Let’s get going, it can wait a bit.”

They went to the elevator, waited for it to be rolled into place, and got in. Toby was fidgeting with impatience.

They plugged in their gear, put on their helmets, and found their seats, May and Toby in front. The cabin was cramped. “I left the controls the way you designed them,” Yellowhorse said.

“Toby did say you planned for me to fly it,” May said, powering up the screen for the checklist.

“Who else?”

“What if I’d turned you down?” she said.

“Well, the mission
is
dangerous, possibly foolhardy, and conceivably insane. And you’re a test pilot. So it never crossed my mind.”

Toby hurt his lips a little, biting them to keep his mouth shut. Fortunately May just snorted and continued her work without noticing him.

“The U.S. model was changed back to standard instrumentation,” Alice said.

“That’s going to slow them down,” May said absently. “Is our cargo loaded?”

“It’s in my pocket,” Yellowhorse said.

All three of them turned to look at him.

“It was an idea I got from Josie Bartlett,” he began.

Toby burst out laughing. “You’re bringing them
broads
?” he said.

“Well, there goes that surprise. Yeah, they’ll develop faster if they exchange modifications when they reproduce. These have the same kernel as your original design, iridium.”

“Hey, that reminds me. What does Goat Flu use in the buckyball?” Toby said.

“Twenty atoms of carbon-13 framing a dodecahedron, linked to twenty of the shell atoms. It’s very stable.” Diamond. It certainly was stable.

“Why … oh, of course, you have so much left over anyway.” Minority isotopes were left out of nanos because they screwed up the balance.

“Yeah. —Oh, and the new ones get iridium-191 instead of 193. Rarer isotope. That way the guys will have to compete for attention. Tough selection, only about half will get partners.”

“Not necessarily,” said Alice, with a prim look that really didn’t suit her manner.

“Cough cough,” said Yellowhorse. “You set up, May?”

“Let me jack in. —Cosmos Traffic Control, this is
Firebird
. You ready to light this candle?” Only she heard the reply, but they all heard the Rukh powering up. “—Okay, crew, we’ll be in the air in twenty minutes, then it’ll be an hour to fill the LOX tank. Start talking.”

“Wait,” Alice said. “I never got this part. Why isn’t it full now?” When they all looked at her, she was defensive. “I had other stuff on my mind growing up.”

“It’s not— Okay, it
is
rocket science,” May said. “But it’s not the really hard part. Without the liquid oxygen in it, the 40-V weighs as much as a fueled Rukh can carry. The LOX weighs substantially more than the fuel that’s needed to get us to altitude and make the LOX. If we didn’t make the liquid oxygen in flight, the orbiter would have to be a lot smaller. We could have made the 40-V even bigger if we had the Rukh start off almost empty and get refueled in flight, but the nose attachment would have cut the top speed of the Rukh, so all the extra weight would have to be solid fuel for the orbiter anyway.”

“At more than twice the launch cost,” Toby said.

“I was wondering when someone would mention money,” Alice laughed. “Wherever two or more are gathered in the name of private space travel—”

“This ain’t Need Another Seven Astronauts,” Yellowhorse cut in, in a remarkably mild tone considering how Toby had heard him speak on the subject before. “We’re not attention whores, we’re not making the Universe safe for robots, and we’re not boldly entrenching where no bureaucrat has entrenched before. The only reason to walk into the jaws of Death is so’s you can steal his gold teeth.”

“Is
what
?” Alice said, and started laughing again.

“Good God, you’ve never read Terry Pratchett either? Why are you here again?”

“Um, because I can get a knot out of a rubber band with my tongue?” she said.

Toby started getting a little worried after May had been laughing for five minutes or so. It was only when she calmed down that he noticed that Alice was looking ostentatiously innocent. And Yellowhorse hadn’t said another word.

Guys need to stick together sometimes. “So what was the story you have to tell?” he said.

“Right,” said Yellowhorse. “Early in the nineteenth century a young writer, living on his wife’s inheritance due to his lack of success, was criticizing her taste in reading, asserting that she was damaging her standards of judgment with the novels she bought. Her view was that the books had merit or they could not have attracted a publisher’s interest or the public’s money. He replied that he was perfectly capable of writing a book that was complete rubbish, but which people would buy because it was exciting to read. She told him to go ahead. He sat down with paper and quill pen and wrote an inflammatory document filled with blood, dramatic speeches, and every error of fact, logic, and consistency he could cram into it. He spent the rest of his life writing sequels. Died fairly rich, and I imagine somewhat bitter. The title of the book was
The Last of the Mohicans
.” He waited for any response, got none, and added, “Mark Twain, who had lived for decades on the frontier, went to his grave trying to get people to notice.”

After it became apparent that neither of the women had anything to say, Toby said, “I got partway through that in junior high. I believe it.”

“I never read it—except the parts Twain quoted,” Yellowhorse said. “But I knew the James Fenimore Cooper story. So I set out to write a romance novel with plenty of horses and chocolate in it, and as little sense as I could stomach. Basically as a practical joke. Prison is
boring
. A guy who was getting out after thirty years took the manuscript with him and got it to an agent, and it hit the stands inside of six months. That’s very fast for dead-tree publishing. I called it
For the Virgin in Mind
.”

“
You’re
Narya Farthingsworth?”

It took Toby a moment to realize that both women had said it. He stared at each in turn.

May, at least, had the advantage of having a face that was already much redder than Alice’s; but neither would make eye contact.

Yellowhorse had gone on talking. “I split the take three ways: me, my courier, and the woman who showed up for signings. She’d done one porn film, hated it, and had the misfortune of being unforgettable. She got plastic surgery, claimed to be the daughter of a retired Russian mobster and his British mistress, and did a wonderful job. There’s an awful lot of really good actresses in porn. Or there were. Haven’t checked lately.”

“How did you make contact with her?” Toby said.

“Oh, I knew her before I went to work at Littlemeade. You meet the most interesting people at conventions. She did the author picture on all six books, too. Tremendous camera presence, worked great.”

“Six?” Toby said.

“
For the Virgin in Mind, Love is a Pineapple, Hallelujah, Bitter Fruit, America’s Last Top Model,
and
Where You Find It
. I wrote them like Mad Libs. Use the same plot framework, then plug in nouns, verbs, and adjectives as needed. Losing the family property, tropical island with missionaries, persecuted early Christians, disaffected superhero in jail, post-Apocalypse, and Gold Rush. I squeezed out two a year. Susan got burned out and wanted to retire after number six, and I was glad of the excuse. I was getting cynical even for me.”

Toby noticed Alice was wooden-faced. Yellowhorse saw him looking, turned, and said, “Oh dear.”

“I
grew up
wanting to be Penny Dreadful,” said Alice. “I took martial arts and data analysis.”

Yellowhorse was nodding. “
Model
is still the poorest seller. Actually has some literary merit. You’ll recall there weren’t the usual armadas of motor vehicles. Cars need serious infrastructure, and even in full-on Jonathan Winters smart-ass mode I have my limits. Hence the horses. —After a while, when I saw how the other cons responded to the books, I realized they were potato chips for the soul. Not very nutritious, but something to chew on, and salty. Felt better about taking the money after that.”

“They let you have the money in prison?” Alice said.

“Oh, no, my courier set up an investment account for me.”

“You trusted him?”

“He was a professional hit man.” After a moment he added, “Sorry, you don’t know about convicts. As a significant percentage of the U.S. population, they’ve been developing their own culture. This phenomenon is unique to the United States, because in other countries these are the people who end up working for the government. So: Sexual abusers of any sort are the enemy—most cons have been abused. Molesters tend to have ‘accidents’ pretty quick, but rapists are mostly just shunned—which in prison is worse than it sounds. Associating only with each other eats away at them. Hit men—as distinct from an ordinary hired killer, who is simply avoided—are so reliable they’re sometimes asked to arbitrate disputes. They’re in there because they wouldn’t rat out their employers. Honorable. Target killers—that is, people who murdered someone and were then done—are often respected but always watched. Since I was a killer who’d targeted a couple of serial rapists, cons treated me about the way freed slaves would treat Lincoln if he showed up. Attentive but not clingy.”

Toby thought of something. “Is that where you got the money to get JNAIT set up?”