Five Planes

by Melissa Scott

  After securing her quarters—ensuring that Milos and the children, as well as Al-Ghazali, were situated nearby—Nalani chose a vacant room for her office. Sapnara had a desk and some more comfortable furniture moved in immediately.

  Al-Ghazali surveyed the drab, off-off-white space with a wrinkled nose. “Well this is depressing. I’ll get some plants in here for you. And maybe a little art to brighten things.”

  Nalani squeezed her hand. “Don’t bother. I’ll decide what I want over the next few days. Right now, I’d appreciate it more if you’d make sure the security is adequate. Any special equipment you need should be in my luggage.”

  “If your luggage made it here,” Al-Ghazali said. “The crew said Quintile Illumination’s cargo was being locked down. Impounded against repair fees, would be my guess.”

  “Go find out, then. When you come back, don’t mind me; I’m going to be deep en counsel. I won’t even hear you.”

  Al-Ghazali bowed. “As you wish, Thurgood.”

  Nalani folded herself into lotus seat on a small couch. She closed her eyes and felt her codex assisting her into the calm, meditative state that was best for serious mind-machine interface. Her breath slowed, her eyeballs turned upward, and her awareness of the room receded.

  (“What do you know?”) she asked.

  (“Where do you want me to start?”)

  (“Here is as good a place as any.”)

  Her codex answered in data mode. (“Perbaikan Rock is unaffiliated with any of the five conglomerates. It’s the largest independent facility on the Fourth Plane.”)

  (“You can call it ‘the Perb,’”) she offered.

  (“No I can’t. And you can’t make me. Continuing: By law and custom, anything gravitationally attached to the dwarf planet is part of the independency. The main industry is construction, maintenance, and repair of starships. A secondary economy of supporting industries has developed over centuries.”)

  (“How do the conglomerates react to the lost revenue?”) In Nalani’s experience, the conglomerates didn’t like competition—fully half the Judiciary’s business on Fourth related to the contracts that enforced truces between them.

  (“The current theory is that transport is so fundamental to each party, it benefits each of them to deal with a neutral entity. Also, Perbaikan Rock pays substantial licensing fees to each conglomerate.”)

  She raised an eyebrow. (“Protection money.”)

  (“Essentially. The system’s been stable for centuries. Simma II wrote a fascinating monograph about it that you’ll be interested in reading.”)

  (“Put it on my list. What about Ocampo and this militarization he mentioned?”)

  Since her codex worked on nanosecond time scales, she knew that its pause was for dramatic effect. (“He’s got a coterie of supporters among the Judiciary and conglomerates. Outside that, he’s not well-liked.”)

  Nalani frowned. (“You hinted that he might be causing the military build-up, rather than trying to handle it.”)

  The pause was even longer. (“The evidence is ambiguous. His actions—at least on the record—are consistent with both interpretations.”)

  Now it was Nalani who paused, for the space of several breaths. (“I’m going to have to look into this, aren’t I?”)

  (“Several lower Judiciars have initiated investigations, most recently last year. None were able to conclude before moving on to the Third Plane.”)

  (“Let’s suppose he is maneuvering the conglomerates toward war. Give me speculations on his motives.”)

  (“Working from guarded comments from the codices of Judiciars who don’t favor him, there are four major theories. Money, power—”)

  (“Easier ways to get both.”)

  (“—Working for one or more conglomerates—")

  (“Possible.”)

  (“—Or he’s an agent of some other power.”)

  (“That’s not a theory, it’s ‘none of the above.’ I don’t like this one bit.”)

  (“Remember that pirate boss who was pulling strings eighty years ago? Could be an analogous situation.”)

  Nalani was distantly aware of a throbbing in her temples. She was more concerned with one particular pirate who was too far under her skin. (“What about Bhagwati?”)

  (“Ocampo’s at least cooperating. He’s got Judiciars, police, and military all over the Plane on the lookout. Three Justices from Judicial Seat are pursuing investigations. You couldn’t be doing more yourself.”)

  (“That’s positive news.”) She sighed. (“I need to find out what’s going on with Ocampo. I also want to start ramping down tensions between the conglomerates. We don’t need the Fourth Plane at war. And I’ve got to do something about Quintile Illumination’s crew and cargo.”)

  (“Put Al-Ghazali in charge of the ship. She can handle it. I’ll stay in contact with her codex and give what support they need.”)

  (“That’s a fine idea. It’ll also keep her from hovering over me like a nurse.”)

  (“She’s concerned. So’s Milos. Now wake up, they both want you to eat and reassure them you’re relaxing, but they’re afraid to bother you.”)

  (“What would I do without them?”) Her breath quickened, and she felt the deep link fading away. (“Or without you, my very dear?”)

  Nalani opened her eyes, greeted her friends, and headed for dinner.

  Artur pushed his plate away and banged his spoon down on the table.

  “Trouble, boss?” Shang-yang Pandita, his chief assistant, looked up from her own bowl. The smile lines that usually creased her face were morphed into worry.

  Artur shook his head. “I’m sick of roast kid.” He made a disdainful gesture at his tumbler. “I’m sick of goat’s milk.” Standing, he looked around the workshop. “And I’m beyond sick of adapting stasis units.”

  Pandita’s face softened. “Poor boss. Maybe you need to get away for a while.”

  “Sure,” he snorted. “There’s too much to do.” It was true. For the past few months, Artur and the whole Engineering department had been working far overtime on the infrastructure challenges involved in transforming Coquimbo to a goat-based economy.

  The goats themselves weren’t much trouble. They could live anywhere and would eat just about anything. Barns, support structures for goatherds, thousands of kilometers of fencing—all were easily autofabbed.

  Even transportation could scale up gradually. As embryos came out of stasis, a few aircars sufficed to take them to their destinations, and the colony already had enough fast-gestation tanks to keep up. As the goats grew and multiplied, there would be time to add transport.

  No, the real trouble was the products that those goats soon began to produce: wool, meat, and a definite deluge of goat milk. Some went for the colony’s immediate needs, but the rest was for trade…and had to be stored. And that meant industrial-size stasis chambers. Thousands of them.

  Coquimbo had about three hundred, most already spoken for.

  Fortunately, the goat embryos supplied their own answer. By design, the container that carried them was equipped with thousands of small stasis boxes, each with its own independent mechanism. In half a day, a competent engineering team could unship a unit, reset its field radius, and install it in a barn or warehouse. Inside the field, fresh milk and meat would keep for decades—or at least until the next trade ship showed up.

  In Artur’s department, there were perhaps half a dozen competent teams. He had no choice but to call for helpers, anyone who showed any trace of mechanical aptitude. Splitting his teams to put at least one experienced engineer with several rookies, he was able to field enough teams to produce ten or twelve working stasis chambers on a good day. On a bad day, they were lucky to get one finished.

  He'd set up a workshop complex near the cabin, and had spent most of his time there recently.

  “Look,” Pandita said, consulting her datapad. “The Aussicht farmstead requested three units. They’re ready to go—why don’t you deliver them? Then you can stop a
t the Chicken Ranch and visit Dermot’s boys. You know you’d like that.”

  “I’m not comfortable leaving some of these louts unsupervised.”

  “Go, boss. I’ll keep them under control.”

  Artur shrugged. “All right, you’ve convinced me. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  On the way to pick up the stasis units, Artur grimaced as he passed the heat shield generator. The thing had been behaving recently, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was just biding its time before pulling its next unpleasant trick.

  By the time he reached the Aussicht farmstead, about twenty kilometers outside the colony proper, Artur felt better. Julieta Aussicht had her three barns all prepared; he finished installing the stasis units shortly after noon. Julieta invited him for lunch, which was a raucous meal with her enormous brood of children, spouses, and field hands. Best of all, there was no trace of goat on the menu.

  Well-fed and much relaxed, Artur followed the winding north fork of the Plata Fria past several sweeping ranches and into the foothills of the northern range. The Chicken Ranch was a rustic many-room structure on the shore of a small wooded lake in a green valley. He hopped out of the car, slung his rucksack across his good shoulder, and told the vehicle to go home.

  Artur took a deep breath. The clean air smelled of wood and pure water, with an undertone of granite from the hills. The sun, high in the sky, was warm on his skin, and the lake glimmered with invitation.

  The engineers’ cabin, heat shield generator, and stasis chambers were up in the mountains, only a handful of kilometers away—but Artur felt almost as if he were on another planet.

  From the building, half a dozen of Dermot’s young men ran toward him. Different heights and builds, hair and skin colors, each was more handsome than the next. Artur held out his arms, a broad smile on his lips. He could always count on a good welcome here.

  After he’d greeted Dermot and traded gossip over iced chai, Artur joined the boys in the lake. His prosthetics were fully waterproof; a few of the boys had mechanical and electronic enhancements of their own to show off. A new lad, Efrain, stole the show with his ornate bronze-and-obsidian hand…he explained that he’d lost his natural one to an overzealous thresher during his first month on Coquimbo.

  When streaks of pink touched the western sky, Dermot set up a smorgasbord of delicious tidbits and popped several bottles of fizzwine. Artur and the boys took turns feeding each other, and soon the party was in full swing.

  Efrain was on his lap, artificial fingers entwined with Artur’s, when the lights blinked. Artur sat up, frowning.

  Dermot looked over at him. “I’m sure it was nothing.”

  “I have to check.” Artur pulled out a small datapad and tapped. His frown deepened.

  He swung Efrain off his lap and stood. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” A few steps away, he activated his comm. “Call Shang-yang Pandita.” Slow seconds ticked by, then the unit said, “No response.”

  He glanced again at his board. The power grid was under enormous strain, its semi-intelligent system struggling to damp out wild oscillations. “Call Power Control.”

  This time a voice answered at once—Oleta Silva, his power chief. “Artur, I’m running analysis right now.” She took a breath. “Looks like everything off trunk D-12 stopped drawing power.”

  “D-12?” That was the power line that fed the cabin, workshops, and heat shield generator. “Is there a break?”

  “Unclear. I could send out—”

  “No, don’t. I’ve got another call, hold on.” He touched the new call. “Herrerra.”

  “Sen Herrerra, this is Ines up at the cabin. I was landing my car, and there was a flash from the workshop—now nothing’s moving in there. I think they spiked one of the stasis units, and now it’s got the whole site in stasis.”

  “Get out of there.” He switched back to power control. “Silva, cut current to D-12. Now.” A spiked stasis field would only hold for microseconds…inside the field. Minutes outside. When the field dropped, a power surge would hit the shield generator, and there was no telling—

  The lights brightened, dimmed, then went out entirely. In the few seconds before they came back, Artur already saw the glow from the northwest, and his throat tightened.

  “Ines? Are you there?”

  The answer was slow. “I’m…okay, boss. Th-the shield generator…isn’t. It’s on fire.”

  “Casualties?”

  “People are moving. I’m going to land and see what I can do.”

  Windows were popping open from his pad, lining up in the air before him. “Emergency crew is on the way. Be careful.”

  “I see their lights. Gotta go.”

  The next morning, Artur stumbled into the Governor’s office. Dilma looked up from her desk and wordlessly held out a glass. Artur took it and, without pausing, gulped down the fiery amber liquid. With a shiver, he sat down.

  “Is it bad?”

  He squared his shoulders and took a deep, slow breath. “No one died. Injuries were minor, thank physics. We lost about half the remaining stasis units and maybe two million embryos.” He held her eyes. “The heat shield generator is done for. There’s no way I can get it working again.”

  Dilma nodded. “You did your best, Artur.”

  He gripped the edge of her desk, metal fingers digging into the wood. “The spring rains are going to be late. Meteorology can’t say how long, or even if they’ll come.” He forced a laugh. “Good thing we’ve been storing up meat.”

  “It could be worse.”

  Artur cocked his head. “Can you tell me precisely how? No, I’m curious, what exactly do you think could be worse than losing the next growing season? If I know what it is, maybe I can arrange to hasten it along and put all of us out of our misery.”

  She held up a datapad. “The new generator is on its way. It left the Fifth Plane, oh, two weeks ago. High-priority rush cargo, red-tagged—as soon as it gets to Fourth, it’ll be transferred to the next multiplanar and Dropped to us immediately. The thing will be here before we know it.”

  In Artur’s heart, a tiny pale green shoot of hope raised its head. He did his best to strangle it. “With our luck, it’ll get routed to some obscure mining station on the Fourth Plane.”

  “No, the company even paid special handling charges—they don’t call them bribes—to the purser and cargo crew to make sure it’s safe. I have a personal report from the purser right here.”

  She tapped the screen and held it out to Artur. He took it, frowning as he read. “The ship will probably break down.”

  She patted his arm. “Artur, there’s nothing to worry about. I looked it up. Brand new ship, state of the art engines. Experienced crew.” She smiled. “Our generator is safe and sound in the hold of the good ship Quintile Illumination.”

  He returned the pad. “Dilma, you’d better be right.”

  1.21 Many Meetings

  Another conference room, another delegation.

  As she prepared, Nalani queried her codex, (“Just how many conference rooms have I been in during my career?”)

  (“You’ve revisited some of the same rooms on different circuits. How do you want me to count them?”)

  (“Count each room only once per circuit.”)

  (“This is the 4,923rd.”)

  (“I’m getting too old for this.”)

  (“Perhaps you should consider retirement. No, wait—”)

  She turned to Al-Ghazali, her faithful shadow these days. “Are you ready?”

  Al-Ghazali’s brow wrinkled. “I am. If you’re not feeling up to this, Thurgood, I can take it.”

  Nalani smiled. “No, I’m fine. If we’re both ready, you can let them in.”

  There are four in the delegation: one woman, two men, and one indeterminate.

  According to her codex, all were members of the Intra-Planar Merchant Captains Collective. The tall, fat person with shaved head and too much jewelry was Rin Bae Sanxing, Chair of the Collective. The
woman, Setiawati Iosua Hina, whose hair was as white as her skin and gown were black, represented the BD-IOC Kaporeihana conglomerate. Pedros Costa Sanrosa, the taller of the two men, was allied with Empresa NeSH-PI; Dimitris Kotnik Themis, the shorter, was from CANAS Etaireia.

  Nalani stood and bowed; Al-Ghazali did the same; the other four executed a simultaneous bow that was obviously well-practiced. A half-second after Nalani sat down, the four delegation posteriors touched their own seats. Al-Ghazali, face frozen in genial smile #2, plopped herself down.

  “Welcome, gentlesens,” Nalani said. “I see that HEMGI Kaisha and Gongsi P3WO are not represented here.” She raised an eyebrow. “I hope I haven’t managed to offend them this soon?”

  Rin Bae Sanxing nodded once. “A question of professional ethics, I fear. The stewards from those conglomerates are not able to participate in this discussion.”

  “Because the two are both threatening war, I suppose?”

  Rin Bae’s lips formed a smile, but the rest of the face apparently did not get the memo and remained emotionless. “You fingered the crux of the matter, Supreme Justice. You are astute as ever.”

  “It’s only been thirty years, Rin Bae. I’m sure you’ll remember that I have about as much patience for pointless conglomerate politics as you do. Or did.”

  Now the rest of the face caught up, and the disciplined eyes twinkled...once. “I have no more patience, but perhaps a bit more restraint than when we last met.” Rin Bae took a breath. “Thus we come before you. This looming war is bad, very bad, for our business.” A glance toward the white-haired woman.

  Setiawati Iosua cleared her throat. “Shipping is becoming disrupted. All our Captains are wary of entering disputed space. Thirty days ago, IMS Sky Ranger was hit and destroyed.”

  Dimitris Kotnik said, “A full quarter of merchant transports are in orbit around Perbaikan Rock. Their cargoes are being delayed.”