Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (20 page)

“Wow,” Tyler muttered. “I've got to get rid of my Google stock.”

As he examined particular bits of information, more would become accessible. He delved,
for a while, into Horvath reproduction habits and cultural implications. Horvath had two
sexes, male/female, more or less corresponding to standard Terran form even if their basic
physiology was completely different. They did look a bit like squids, though. The females
laid a single egg in a nest which was then fertilized by a selected male. Gestation was
six months. The nest was kept by the male, the female laid and left. After birth the young
were moved to a cr�che where they went through a series of moltings over twenty years and
then were released as adults. Males, almost invariably unrelated biologically, did most of
the rearing. Robots were replacing them as the Horvath advanced. Child-rearing was not
high on the list of Horvath jobs.

Interested, he jumped over to the Glatun and received the shock of his life. One of the
big questions on earth about the Glatun was pronouns. Generally, the Glatun were referred
to by male pronouns. But it had been noted, quietly, that they didn't seem to have
appropriate reproductive parts. And they responded perfectly well to neutral gender terms
such as 'it.'

What he found out, quickly, was that they were all three. Or, rather, the Glatun with
which people dealt were hosts to both. Male and female Glatun were non-sentient parasites
that existed within a brood pouch on the Glatun sentient neuters. More or less on command
they would reproduce, the female releasing an egg and the male fertilizing it. Then the
offspring would be raised in the pouch. If it was male or female it would stay there, more
or less turned off, until a ceremony where it would be transferred to a young neuter. If a
neuter it would be raised to a certain size, released from the pouch, then raised to
adulthood by its 'parent' neuter.

“Okay, that's bizarre,” Tyler muttered.

He decided to examine the Glatun a bit more and received another shock.

The Glatun were one of the older species in the area having been contacted by the Ormatur
through the new Glatun gate nearly thirty thousand years ago. At the time there were very
few sophont races in the immediate star systems and over a period of about six thousand
years the Glatun had spread out and absorbed the thirty-two systems that made up the
Glatun Federation. Along the way they had encountered four other sophont races and more or
less absorbed them into the Federation. They also had encountered some that resisted
absorption but had become trade partners.

At this point, the Glatun Federation sat as the nexus of trade between fourteen different
races, some of them having, in turn, expanded widely. They were rich even by Galactic
standards and with riches comes problems. They had a permanent unemployed underclass
approaching thirty percent, their military was paltry for their size absorbing less than
point zero three percent of their GDP and their trade imbalance was becoming astronomical.

“They're eating their seed corn,” Tyler muttered. “You can afford to be the French if
you've got a great big buddy to take care of you, but...”

Tyler took a look at their strategic situation and nearly had a heart attack. They were
bordered by nine 'expansionistic' groups. Of course, Earth and the Horvath, neither
actually strategically dangerous, were included. But the Rangora, Ogut, Barche and
Ananancauimor each had military forces that, in sheer number, dwarfed the Glatun. They
were all technologically inferior, but...

“Quantity has a quality of its own,” Tyler muttered. He wasn't sure that Earth hadn't
hitched itself to a falling star.

Speaking of military technology...

Primary ship weapons were fusion pumped visible light, X-ray and gamma ray lasers.
Secondary weapons were high-acceleration missiles using either kinetic or fusion pumped
laser warheads. A relatively new weapon on the scene was the gravity gun which could
disrupt ship's shields and cause massive damage. However, it was relatively short range
and of limited utility. It also required truly massive amounts of power so it was only
found in capital ships.

“No unobtainium,” Tyler said. “Good. And speaking of power and drive systems...”

He got confused almost immediately. The primary power system was a helium3 driven... Well,
it was a matter conversion plant not a fusion plant. Still required H3 to keep it from
producing radiation. It converted matter to plasma and electricity. And then it did...
something with the plasma and got more electricity and less plasma, somehow converting the
neutrons and protons of the plasma to
electrons
?
How?
The last of the plasma could be used for...

Tyler realized his basic science background was kicking out information that was
contradictory to background and gave up. Let the big brains figure it out. But it
needed... Ah, hah! Heavy metals, primarily in the platinum group! That was the reason the
Horvath were so hot for platinums. The power systems were thick spheres composed entirely
of metals from the platinum groups. The drive system of a freighter the size of Wathaet's
was... half a terawatt? That couldn't be right. He checked. That was right.

Earth produced four terawatts a year of power worldwide. The entire eastern US power grid
could be driven by a ball of osmium six feet across.

Inertial control was induced by spinning plates of... Brain lock. Brain lock. These people
obviously had some theory that contradicted most of what he thought he knew. The grav
plates looked doable. They required some exotic metals but that was what orbital mining
was for. Scratch that. Basically beryllium bronze with a touch of lanthanides and
platinums. Pretty much all of that was available on earth. You needed grav plates to make
grav plates, though. How'd somebody make the first ones?

The drive system was a function of grav plates. Drives generated... pressor beams? That
pushed on what? Generated mass points?

“SAN check,” Tyler muttered, sitting up and pulling out of the welter of information. “I
feel like the WWII Air Force general that said that jets couldn't work because they didn't
have anything to push. I think these guys have rediscovered Newton's aether. I need to get
somebody smarter than me a set of plants and some free time.”

For right now, though, what he wanted was a
ship
. The problem being, then he'd need a captain and an engineer. And one ship wasn't going
to do.

What he needed was Boeing able to
make
ships.

He'd brought a laptop with 400 petabytes of atacirc installed. Surely that would be enough
to fill in the basics?

Barely. And he needed a fabber to make grav plates so you could make a larger factory to
make bigger grav plates. And he was going to need people who actually understood this
stuff.

And a ship drive. They looked tough to make.

Did this place have eBay? He spotted a reference in the grav plate system information to a
vender called Pangalactic Nihukow, which produced grav fabbers, and probed on that.

"PANGALACTIC NIHUKOW! PANGALACTIC NIHUKOW!

PANGALACTIC NIHUKOW! PANGALACTIC NIHUKOW!"

“OW!” Tyler muttered. The answer was: Yes. You could go shopping. If you could figure out
how to ignore the commercials. Flashing banner ads on a screen were bad enough. Flashing,
screaming, banner ads in your brain were another matter. He just rode the tide for a
while, trying not to whimper.

“Right,” he said, pulling out of the ad flood. “I'm going to need more blood sugar to
handle this. AI?”

“Mr. Vernon?” a voice said.

“Do you have a name that is less than five syllables?”

“You may call me Isna, Mr. Vernon.”

“Isna, I had some Terra foodstuffs sent along,” Tyler said. “Is the serverbot really
programmed to produce terran foods? And what's available?”

“Over six hundred and twenty-eight thousand recipes have been obtained from the Terran
information net,” Isna said. “With the available foodstuffs, using substitutions, two
hundred and forty-seven thousand possible combinations are available.”

“I didn't bring
that
large a range of materials,” Tyler protested.

“Yes, you did,” Isna said. “You even brought a full range of spices.”

“Damn,” Tyler said, thinking about it. He'd delegated the foodstuffs to one of his
assistants.
Find a chef and tell him to send along everything he'd want if he was going to be stuck
on an alien planet for three months.
“Do you think the bot could lower itself to doing some spaghetti? We'll start there.”

“There are six thousand...”

“Spaghetti with meat sauce,” Tyler said.

“Four hundred and...”

“Spaghetti with meat sauce,” Tyler said, his mouth starting to salivate. “Bit more tangy
than sweet. Heavy on the meat. Heavy on the oregano. Pick a recipe that's along those
lines. Thin spaghetti noodles. Chianti or the closest approximation to accompany. And can
I get a Coke?”

“Your supply of Coca-Cola, since it is toxic to Glatun systems, is still in customs hold.
It should be released in a few days time.”

“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”

“Coming right up.” There was a 'ding' and a compartment on the wall opened. There was a
steaming cup of tea in it. “Sugar? Cream? Lemon? Lime? Orange... ?”

“Just sugar, please,” Tyler said. “One teaspoon to each five ounces.”

“That is very close to solubility,” the AI pointed out. There was a rushing sound and the
tea cup floated out of the compartment. “Your tea, sir.”

“Thank you,” Tyler said, taking the cup. It was a tiny little thing. “Next time could you
put it in a bigger mug? Say about sixteen ounces? I drink this stuff by the gallon, but
gallons are hard to hold.”

“Of course, sir,” the AI said. “Your spaghetti is being prepared. The robochef assumed
standard accompaniments. A balanced diet seems to be important to maintaining regularity
of the Terran digestive tract and balance of trace nutrients.”

“Uhm...” Tyler said. “Okay. Just the spaghetti would have been fine. I'll eat an apple or
something. Are there apples?”

“Yes, sir,” the AI said. “Would you like an apple?”

“Not right now,” Tyler said. “I'm just going to pick around on the net for a bit.”

“I'll leave you alone, then.”

“Oh,” Tyler said, looking at his cup. “And I need another cup...
mug
... of tea. And maybe some bottles of water to just, have around.”

“Coming right up.”

Tyler lay back down and, with more information, started to ponder on the central subject
that had been occupying his mind ever since the end of the aborted Maple Syrup War: How to
get the Terran system up to Glatun standards in the shortest possible period.

'Rome wasn't built in a day.' This was most certainly true. But part of that was that Rome
spent much of its history getting hammered in wars. Wars are waste. There were times when
war was the only practical answer, there
were
things worth fighting and dying for, but infrastructure didn't get built during wars.
While the Glatun were still sufficiently interested in the Terran system to keep the
Horvath off Terra's back, mostly, Terra needed to build orbital infrastructure. Fast.

The problems were... immense. All of Terra's industry was earth-side. Just being able to
smelt metal in space wasn't enough. There were way too many things that had to get made in
places like China and Bangladesh. Eventually, systems would have to be self-supporting
off-planet. Building all that infrastructure, though, was going to mean, in the meantime,
getting stuff out of the gravity well. Which meant ships.

Then there was the problem of doing anything in space. Space was an unforgiving bitch. And
to do all the work that was going to need doing meant that taking six months to practice a
five minute space walk was right out. Space suits. He'd completely forgotten the problem
of space suits!

Then there was the personnel problem. Tyler had gone on a hiring binge before leaving
earth. He figured that anything that was normal and regular you could get MBAs and PhDs to
handle. He was only interested in the new and odd. Once it was making money, there were
little people to handle it. Which was why he no longer had to go tap maple syrup himself.

But doing stuff in space was going to require people with special abilities and training.
Of which there were maybe two or three hundred on the whole planet. Much of the work could
be done with robots, but robots couldn't think their way out of new problems. Tyler was
going to need
thousands
of people handling tens of thousands of robots. And they were going to have to be people
who could think on their feet. People who understood space without being afraid of it.
They didn't need PhDs. He could get them trained in the basics pretty easily using implant
technology. They just needed to be smart and able to handle implants. Which meant people
familiar with information technology.

The last problem being that even the solar array system was costing him like crazy to set
up and run. He had a lot of money but eventually it was going to run out. Getting a couple
of thousand people who were what NASA would consider qualified, and thus extremely
expensive, was just
out
.

“Where in hell am I going to get a couple of thousand geeks willing to work in dangerous,
and at least at first horrible, conditions for low pay
just
to be able to work in space?”

Put that way, the answer was simple.

“Your spaghetti, sir,” Isna said.

It smelled wonderful and came with an attractive selection of grilled mixed vegetables and
a bottle of wine, one glass already poured.

“Ah,” Tyler said, “ambrosia.” He tucked up to the table and had a taste...

“I have limited experience dealing with human facial expressions,” Isna said, “but from
your reaction this was not the most perfect gustatory experience possible?”

“Isna...” Tyler said as soon as he'd finished the glass of wine. “Make a note to the chef.
Bit lighter on the cayenne in the future? Especially if he's using a hot style of dried
tomato. And by a bit lighter I mean none.”