Analog SFF, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Yeah, well, it would be enough to start the impactor,” Dagger said. “Maybe we'll think of something else in the meantime."

  “Yes, and maybe pigs will fly,” Weaver said.

  We went around this way for another three hours without coming up with anything better. With the Admiral's help and another brainstorming session, we somehow managed to convince ourselves that if we could get started, maybe something would come up.

  Soon everything was again in the hands of the automated systems. At best, it would be the better part of a quarter century before an attempt was made again. And at some point, we would have to admit failure and warn the project that our impactor would be late. But everyone was still trying to come up with a scheme to save the situation.

  Three weeks after the “Inconstant Moon” flare, Weaver left a message for me. “New colt's a beaut. Come over Tuesday evening after my exercise, and we'll trade horse stories."

  Weaver's third colt—a young filly—had lately put a little sparkle in his eye again. Meanwhile, Star had grown big enough to ride, and Weaver liked to go out among the sculpted crags and streams of the south end of Asgard, where the artificial land curved up toward its spin axis.

  Trading horse stories was Weaver-speak for getting us updated on the colts and getting him updated on what we were all doing. Tuesday, I took myself off the net to enjoy a walk and arrived shortly before our “sun” set behind the north end hills.

  “Hi, Bruce.” It was Dagger, leaning up against the rail and petting the jet-black new arrival.

  “Weaver still out?"

  He nodded. I had a flask of ersatz Talisker with me, which I passed to him.

  “Asked Davra out yet?” he asked, after a swig.

  I laughed and shook my head. “I don't know. I don't think she's my type...."

  Laughter as clear as a bell rang out. “Don't you guys ever learn anything?"

  Davra sauntered into view wearing a cowboy hat, jeans and a bright blue halter with two big red stars on the only place big enough for big red stars.

  “I'll decide who's my type.... “Davra held up a hand as if listening on her neural net. Her smile vanished and her face turned into one of shock.

  I put myself back on the net and instantly got an urgent incoming. I could see Dagger had one too.

  It was Jill. Not good news, everyone. I'm at the clinic. G. P. is dead.

  Dead! I sent, How can anyone be dead anymore?

  They think it was a riding accident. He was off the net. When he didn't show up for our date, I sent an emergency message. He didn't respond. I called public safety, and they found him with the survey cameras up in the rocks up by the north pole with his head bashed in and the colt nuzzling him. They had him in the clinic in ten minutes, but it was too late.

  “I've got a car coming,” Dagger said. “Five minutes."

  How are you doing? I asked Jill.

  There was a pause. I feel awful. The horses aren't used to the low gravity up there. The trails aren't maintained as much. It's the sort of thing G. P. does to clear his mind when the burdens become overwhelming and he isn't careful. I should have said something to him. If I'd only called earlier...

  Jill, don't blame yourself, I sent.

  “Damn!” Davra said. “He was awfully down. You don't think he arranged..."

  Dagger shook his head. “Not Weaver! He'd think that was a coward's way out."

  “Aye,” I said. “But people with problems who would never think of killing themselves still might give death more of an opportunity to solve their problems than it would normally have. In the First World War, Churchill, fired from the Admiralty because of the Gallipoli disaster, went into the army and exposed himself to fire on the western front. He survived. Tchaikovsky, failing in personal relationships with women and men, drank tainted water. He died. An American President, Nixon, about to be forced from office, went on a strenuous foreign mission with blood clots in his leg. No such luck, mind you, he lived to be disgraced."

  People stared at me.

  “On the other hand, maybe it was just an accident,” I said, but I wondered.

  Then the fan car arrived and set down in a swirl of leaves. Everyone piled in.

  * * * *

  Whether by intention or premonition, Weaver had left final instructions only a few days old. He wished his remains to fertilize the soil of the uplands he loved, so we buried him on a rise of ground with a fine view of Asgard spread out below. Jill planted flowers from the same pot I'd seen in his quarters over the years. I played “Amazing Grace” on the pipes.

  * * * *

  “We need a leader,” Dagger announced as we stared at each other across the circular table.

  One chair had been left empty, not by any design; it had just happened that way, and no one had come to fill it. Dagger had become acting director on Weaver's death, but made it clear that was temporary.

  “There seems to be a consensus among the project people that it be one of us early birds,” he continued. “In fairness, whoever it's going to be will probably have to tell the universe we failed."

  “Isn't that a wee bit premature?” I asked. “We haven't tackled this one yet. Every time we do, we come up with something."

  “Someone has to preside,” Davra said.

  “It just isn't my thing,” Dagger answered. “I do better kibitzing. Anyone here have any management experience? Emma, you led the astronomy team."

  She shook her head. “And my reputation hasn't suffered enough, has it?"

  I thought to object, but held my tongue. She had a point.

  “Davra?” Dagger asked.

  She looked around the table at a number of frowns, then shook her head, too. “I have enough to worry about with the robotics. And besides,” she lowered her voice, “it might interfere with my social life."

  Though the remark was clearly meant for the laughs it got, she had a point also.

  Jill stood up. “What we need is a generalist, someone who has an overall view of everything. The department heads already have their hands full. Bruce Macready is such a person."

  My jaw dropped. I looked at Dagger, who raised an eyebrow; at Emma, who seemed to be looking somewhere else; then at Davra, who smiled as if she'd just swallowed the canary.

  Jill continued. “He has personally chronicled every event from the time we left Earth. He has interviewed everyone here, and he has a good working knowledge of our overall mission. At Broadford College, he chaired his department twenty-three times and served as chancellor for a decade. He's also been three times president of the International Science Historians Guild."

  “Now wait a minute,” I objected. “Yes, I've had a wee bit of what you might call management experience, but none of it at this level of responsibility."

  They looked at me again. How had this happened? I asked myself. I'd come along to report on this thing, not to run it. Bruce, I told myself, they do not want a leader as much as a scapegoat. But I met Davra's eyes, and those eyes seemed to say yes, in several ways. Are you going to go for it, Macready? For once in your life, are you going to go for it?

  Of course, maybe if I had fully appreciated the impossibility of completing the mission with success at that time, I would have shied away too. So I don't know. But either for Davra's eyes or out of ignorance and hope for something of significance to show for my time out at Epsilon Eridani, I decided to pick up this caber and try to stick it upright.

  “Very well, I'll ride point for you—but not to be throwing in the towel just yet. We have almost a year, do we not, before we run out of power to push the impactor on its designated profile?"

  The Admiral confirmed this.

  “Then we shall meet again tomorrow with our thinking caps on, aye?"

  They all nodded.

  “Weel, I'm feeling a bit dry just now. Those who want, come over to my house and we'll lift a glass to the late Dr. Weaver."

  * * * *

  The wake was all that it should have been. Everyone brought
a bottle of his or her favorite replicated liquor or drink and shared it around. One of Davra's people wailed away on an Irish fiddle while his wife dragged all the men to the center and taught them how to do an Irish jig. By and by, we were all dancing and singing and having what Dagger called a whale of a wake.

  Very late into the evening, Davra jigged into my arms. We danced until I needed a wee breath, and so I took her hand and led her out to the edge of my garden. She looked me straight in the eye.

  “Something on your mind, lass?"

  She laughed softly. “I've got to come up with some entirely new strategy for getting the project back on target tomorrow and you ask if I've got something on my mind? Well, besides that what I've got on my mind right now is I'm horny as hell."

  Call it a death wish, but there is something about me that will not even walk through an open door to my dreams. “I dinna know if I have a cure for that, lass."

  She laughed again, took my hand and led me away from the house and the commotion of the party.

  About halfway on the path, surrounded by trees and singing birds, she stopped. “Bruce, Bruce. Look at me. The real me."

  I stared into her eyes. “You're a beautiful lass, a lot more than I could..."

  “Oh, stop putting me on an unreachable pedestal. I'm a real woman who loves to love and I've always wanted to love you as much as anyone. Leave me on the ground where I belong."

  “The ground is it?” I looked around; there was a small grassy clearing just a few feet from the path.

  “Yes, oh yes!"

  Summoning up nerve from I dinna know where, I took her hand. Her eyes glowed as she followed me through the brush, laughing. In the clearing, she kicked her sandals off and with one smooth motion, she pulled her long black dress over her head and stood before me naked.

  She was beautiful, no doubt about it. This was a Davra I'd never seen before. Quiet, but excited, watching me, as I was her. Was she as nervous on the inside as I was, I wondered. I stepped to her and she grabbed my tunic and pulled it over my head, pressing her firm breasts against me as she did. The tunic fell to the ground, as in a moment did we. There, in the cool grass and soft leaves, we made love.

  * * * *

  The next day was all business. I have a degree of stubbornness in me, and an analyst's bent. Up until now I'd put all my work into historical studies of what people did and why. Now it was a star I was trying to figure out, a star that seemed to consciously fight our every effort.

  Well, what was this star's pattern, this opponent of mine? I looked up the history of the entire project from the first robotic presence to the present day, and made graphs of its activity and ours. A correlation was no great surprise, but indeed ... A chill went down my spine.

  I called Emma. “If ye look at this, it seems that when we throw something big at the star, it throws something back a few days later."

  Her image on my wall screen shrugged. “It's always throwing stuff out. So it's always throwing stuff out when we throw stuff at it."

  “But it happens when other stuff hits it, too. Natural stuff. If ye look at the correlation."

  She frowned. “You're saying it's not random?"

  “So does the Admiral, Emma."

  There was a long silence. Finally, she said. “Bruce, you might get a paper out of this when we get back. Astronomy is probably friendlier to contributions by amateurs than most sciences."

  She was trying to let me down gently, but I was not to be deterred. “But don't you see it, Emma? It's us that have been making the star flare. Us! By dumping our waste on it."

  She paused for a bit, then shook her head. “Possibly. But how? The material doesn't penetrate, really; it just sort of splatters on the photosphere."

  “But it's all kinds of metal, heavy ions, current paths..."

  She gave me a wan smile. “Well, maybe. I'll suggest to Davra that she direct the waste elsewhere. I don't suppose it could hurt. Not that anything's going to help now."

  Were there tears in her eyes?

  “I dinna want to make you feel bad, Emma."

  The look she gave me was unreadable. “No, I don't suppose you did."

  * * * *

  There were long faces at Camelot. We all had a bit of a toast as our impactor, that billion-ton iron caber, started its journey to the implosion vertex. But we had to acknowledge a larger sobering thought. We would ultimately call it quits if we didn't find more power in another hundred and thirty days.

  “Almost twenty percent more,” Dagger said, “We could actually use one of those big flares now."

  “Huh?” we all said simultaneously.

  “Sure,” he said. “Photovoltaics like light. It's particle radiation that hurts them, but that's all down in the magnetosphere. They'll take as much as double the illumination."

  “So why don't we just build bigger concentrating reflectors?” I asked.

  “That's how we're keeping up,” Davra said. “Can't build ‘em any faster. We've got the surface of Skrymir II covered with robots, and it's getting noticeably smaller as we take stuff away. That's a bottleneck. To get more light, you'll need to make Epsilon Eridani brighter."

  My eyes met Emma's. Come on, Lassie, I thought. You say it. Make it your idea and get back some of your self-respect.

  “There may ... may be a way of doing that,” Emma said. “If we could dump a lot of mass in at the right time, it seems that flares should follow in a few days. Metallic ions affect currents beneath the photosphere, destabilizing it..."

  “We've got plenty of slag to push,” Davra said.

  Emma nodded, then shut her eyes. She'd be in a silent, furious conversation with the Admiral, I thought.

  Finally, she said, “It will take about a hundred and thirty two billion tons, if my model is right. Spread over several days with impacts maybe three hours apart."

  “Well,” Dagger added, “there's that much and more floating around this place. Let's get going.” Then he looked at me with a curious expression on his face, as if he just remembered who was in charge.

  I smiled and nodded. “Aye, let's do it."

  As we left Camelot, Davra grabbed my hand. And Dagger took Emma's.

  * * * *

  Weeks later, with the pellets all safely on their way to the accelerating impactor, I walked out with Davra to the rise where we buried G. P. Weaver. He and I had been confidants of sorts over the years, and it seemed right to give his headstone an update, if nothing else but to clarify some of those details every once in a while.

  I also needed to prepare a message to the Vertex facility concerning what we'd done. They'd get it a few weeks before the impactors all arrived. I sat on a rock and brought up my notes. Davra sat beside me, looking out over this vast inside-out green, white, and blue Easter egg we lived in. In spite of everything, people were going to found an Epsilon Eridani colony. Davra and I had other plans, though. We were going with Captain Lee to Vertex to see how this all turned out, and then on to the Solar System and Skye—my whisky cache was about gone.

  “You've sent the report?” Davra asked. “Emma's calculations were a bit conservative; a thousand massive bodies impacting the photosphere will..."

  “Aye, I know. We need to let the Vertex facility know that, in spite of what they see, our impactor will arrive on time and with the right velocity. As for the rest of the galaxy, well, we can have a few days of fun with them.” Galaxy was a wee exaggeration—only about a hundred settled star systems were involved.

  Davra took my hand. “Oh, yes. I wonder what they'll think on Earth when, all of a sudden, Epsilon Eridani becomes one of the brightest stars in the sky."

  Copyright (c) 2007 C. Sanford Lowe & G. David Nordley

  (EDITOR'S NOTE: Earlier stories of the Black Hole Project were “Kremer's Limit” [July/August 2006], “Imperfect Gods” [December 2006], and “The Small Pond” [March 2007].)

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME

&
nbsp; by BUD WEBSTER

  * * * *

  Illustrated by William Warren

  Any job needs the right people to do it, and conventional qualifications are not necessarily the best way to pick them.

  * * * *

  So what's the verdict, Bubba?” The voice, although not unquestionably electronic, had a distinctly nonhuman timbre. It emanated from a small, flat box, rather like an Etch A Sketch, propped up against a particularly ugly lamp made from a small stuffed alligator. “Are we going to be on television?"

  “Don't look like it, Mike.” Sixtyish but still burly rather than fat, Bubba Pritchert brushed his hand through his short, salt-and-pepper hair and sighed as he looked at the letter in front of him. “Jamie and Adam went to bat for us, but that wasn't enough to make the cable suits change their minds.” He shrugged. “Oh, well, we'd have had to relocate to California, and I been there once. Didn't care for it. I don't suppose it's changed all that much in the past forty-five years or so."

  “I'd have thought that an experienced jackleg mechanic, an artificial intelligence, and an abnormally strong alien would have been a powerful asset to the Mythbusters, Bubba."

  “Me too,” he shrugged, “but I think it was that ‘alien’ thing that got to them.” Bubba shook his head. “Damn. Hoss is gonna be real disappointed. He loves that show.” Hoss, the alien in question, was a Thunt, a humanoid alien with more in common with a Shar-Pei than a terrestrial from the neck up; Bubba had befriended him several years before and had been adopted into his clan.[1] He laced his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “I was looking forward to building a faster-than-light drive at M-5, too."

  [FOOTNOTE 1: See “The Three Labors of Bubba” in the June 1996 Analog.]

  “Dream on, future-boy. It would be easier to build a time machine from stone knives and bearskins."

  “There you go with that pop-culture stuff again. Don't you have anything better to do than watch reruns on TV?"

  “Until we come up with a way to make me a lot more mobile than I am now, it's about all I can do,” the Nishian artificial intelligence said.