The New Space Opera

by Gardner Dozois

  In the Galactic Center novels such as Great Sky River, Tides of Light, and Sailing Bright Eternity, Benford’s best-known contributions to the New Space Opera canon, he takes us to the core of the galaxy, where the dwindled remnants of humanity struggle to survive against hostile machine intelligences of immense power. Here, in a story much closer to the present day, at the beginning of humanity’s expansion into space (and a direct sequel to his well-known story “A Worm in the Well”), he demonstrates that capturing a black hole is only half of the problem—then you have to hang on to it!

  She was about to get whirled into a puree, and all because of tricky accountants.

  “Give me infrared,” Claire called.

  Erma murmured brightly, I can give you full spectrum, in Claire’s headset and showed a sprawl of color that hurt the eyes.

  “You keep trying to get me to look at the world that way, damn it!” Maybe I’m just a touch irritated, Claire thought, under pressure. But software didn’t take offense, or so Claire thought. “Uh, I’m just a primate. One spectrum slice at a time. Please.”

  As you say . . .

  Was there an irritated sniff after the words? No matter—Erma obliged.

  There were several theorists’ terms for the object hovering on her screens: wormring, ringhole. This wormring looked like a blurry reddish doughnut. It spun in a frenzied halo of skating brilliance. Sullen red snakes coiled around its skin. Lightning forked yellow and blue down the northern doughnut hole, but didn’t come out on the other side, from this angle. The same fizzing flashes worked around the southern hole too, but there was no answering lightning to the north. Somewhere along that axis lay trouble. And that’s where they had to go.

  “What’s the best trajectory, in theory?”

  There is no adequate theory. The best mathematics says there are several entrances, but they all involve acquiring considerable angular momentum.

  “Yeah, but there’s got to be a best educated guess—”

  I do have the latest numerical simulations, which you ordered from Earthside.

  “Oh, good. I always feel better after a nice refreshing computer simulation.”

  It is best to address our safety without stressful sarcasm.

  “Sarcasm is just one more service we offer here at Silver Metal Lugger Salvage and Loan.”

  Sarcasm is stressful.

  “Stressful for who?”

  For us both.

  “Do I look like a people person?”

  You look anxious.

  “I thought you understood rhetorical questions.”

  You are stalling for time.

  “Damn right I am. Look at that wormring on the mass detector.”

  Erma did. All virtual images that popped up on the screens had a glossy sheen to them that even Erma’s teraprocessor couldn’t erase. They looked too good to be real. Pristine geometries snarled and knotted into surf around the spinning doughnut. Whorls of spacetime spun away and radiated waves in angry red hisses.

  “Does that look safe to you?”

  I would point out that I am backed up to Luna every half hour by laser link.

  “Yeah, you’re immortal as long as I pay your computer fees.”

  I can find other work—

  Claire smiled. Erma didn’t often get into a sentence without seeing how it would turn out. Maybe her conversational program was competing with the huge sensor net strung around Silver Metal Lugger’s hull. They were measuring everything possible as they gingerly edged closer to the whirling wormring.

  “You were saying . . . ?”

  I was distracted. And I do have a high opinion of this enterprise. I do not like our probabilities if we hang near this strange object, however.

  Could software also get jumpy? Erma hadn’t seemed so last time, five years ago, when they had snagged this same wormhole. After that, the astro guys started tinkering with it, trying to expand it so a ship could pass through—and they literally screwed it up. They had nudged and probed and somehow added angular momentum to it. Accidentally, they transformed the entire spacetime around what had been, apparently, a somewhat predictable wormhole. Not that anybody knew what routine was for wormholes. After all, they only had one—this whirling dervish that had already eaten many probes, spitting nothing back out.

  We need to go closer, to resolve the possible entrances.

  Along the axis of the dervish was a shimmering lump that apparently held some exotic matter. The lump looked to be spinning too. Claire had been warned many times not to touch that lump, or else. Previous probes that had, had got broken down into elementary particles, and not particularly nice ones at that.

  “There are basically two ways in, right? North and south poles of this general relativistic merry-go-round. But stay away from that axis.”

  True. I think our spin matters too. The earlier probes tried varying angular momenta and a few managed to send back coherent signals for a while.

  “Sure, for maybe ten seconds. I was kinda counting on my shoot-and-scoot strategy taking about that much time. Our contract says just make some readings and come on home. Didn’t one probe get back out?”

  If one counts granules of carbon, yes.

  “From a ceramic ship?”

  Yes, not promising.

  In her immersion-work environment, touch controls gave her an abstract distance from the wormring, hovering in space in magnetic clamps a hundred meters away. Whorls of wrenched spacetime slammed into their metallic ship’s skin, rattling her teeth, and, on the screens, spraying yellow-white froth of gravitational turbulence around them.

  Perhaps the theoretical view would help.

  “Doughnuts are doughnuts, Erma. Let’s just stick our nose in, real quick.”

  And all because of tricky accountants.

  The thin Luny guys with briefcases got to her before she had even unpacked. She had counted on some ribald bar cruising to rub away the memory of a two-year comet-vectoring job too. She was just about ready to get into the foam shower and run the water a shameful hour or two, to feel really human again, to yammer at somebody other than Erma—and then they rang her door chimes, which played a Bach opening.

  She didn’t answer. They came right on in, anyway.

  “Hey! I’m renting this ’partment.”

  The taller of them didn’t even blink. “We could put you on a perfectly legal formal secure-lock right now.”

  “The last guy who tried that ended up nearly getting frozen.”

  The short one, apparently fond of his food, said smugly, “We checked. You didn’t prong him at all, just threatened to.”

  “I could make an exception in your case.”

  She smiled slowly, slit-eyeing the fat guy—who blinked nervously and took a step backward despite himself. She chided herself for taking on such an easy mark, but hell, she needed a little recreation. It would be fun to deck these two, and, as a bonus, stimulating to a cardiovascular system that had spent too much time in centri-g.

  “You are in debt again. Deeply so.” Tall Guy’s smile was broad but utterly without warmth. “We are a legal officer”—a bow to Fat Guy—“and I am the project accountant. We have orders to duly confiscate your ship.”

  “The last guy said that too. I dug myself out.”

  “Yes, very admirable. But your comet-towing business has fallen upon sad times,” the tall guy said.

  “Look, Second World Corp will vouch for me.” I think . . .

  Fat Guy was still blinking, getting his self-image back in order. It took a fair amount of work for this Horseman of the Esophagus. Tall Guy smiled without a gram of humor and without invitation folded himself into a grav chair. She watched him do this, legs angling like demonstrations of the principle of the lever, and—startled—felt herself moisten. I’ve been gone a loooong time.

  “I believe that maneuver will fail,” Tall Guy said smoothly.

  “Let’s try it, shall we?” she said cheerfully. Freezing these guys was getting more attractive. She was tir
ed, still adjusting from their inflight standard Mars grav of 0.38. Their nominals had risen to 1.4 in the comet debacle. Though Moon Standard 0.18 felt great, her reflexes would be off with these two. She might just be getting a bit rickety for this line of work, though sixty-four wasn’t all that damn far into middle age anymore.

  For the moment, she had better use deflection while she remembered where she had kept her stunner. And maybe just shut down Fat Guy, while she worked her wiles on Tall Guy? The thought intrigued. Pleasure Before Business, her fundamental rule.

  “Do not presume to push us.” Getting icy now.

  Okay, give them lip in return. “How come you can just walk in here?”

  Fat Guy launched into a stumbling rendition of how they had used some law that said Financials could access property rights of those with outstanding debt, and at that point she stopped listening. These guys were dead serious. They were used to delivering trouble to people, did it for a living. They probably had other slices of bad news to serve up today.

  “. . . we trust some accommodation might be arrived at before we are forced to—” Fat Guy was saying.

  “Before your heavies come calling?” she asked.

  Tall Guy smoothly came in with, “We do hope such methods are not necessary, and had not even considered them.”

  They were all clichés, straight from business school. And they had probably never been off Luna.

  “Look, it wasn’t my fault that damn comet nucleus came unglued before we could get it into Lunar orbit. You need all the light elements you can get down here! And tow operations like mine keep you alive, right?”

  Tall Guy nodded and with some effort got a diplomatic expression onto his face. “I know you feel that accountants and lawyers are annoying, but—”

  “Not all lawyers are annoying. Some are dead.”

  “My colleague and I are not questioning why you failed—”

  “I wasn’t in charge of screening the comet ices against that solar flare. We used standard reflecting coating to keep the ice from subliming, routine methods. But that big flare blew off the shadow coating. Not my department! That storm made the whole damn iceberg start boiling off. It developed expansion fractures inside an hour, killed two women who—”

  “We are well aware of that.” Tall Guy’s voice came sliding in like a snake. He had probably laid this conversation out in advance, getting his pitch in shape. To prove his point, he waved a hand and punched a few buttons on his belt. An air display of her account ledgers hung in the air between them, shimmering like a waterfall, the numbers all color-coded so that her debt glared forth in scarlet. A gaudy avalanche of debt. She scowled.

  Tall Guy said languidly, “But there . . . may . . . be a way out for you.”

  She smiled prettily, arched an eyebrow, said nothing. She had learned that if you let people talk, their love of their own voices could lead them into overplaying their hands. They would babble on, and in the course of relating whatever story or moral lesson they imparted, tell you useful things.

  She had seen this work before, but the idea came from her famously laconic grandfather. He had squinted at her while she went on at a grand family dinner with a tale that ended in no particular point. Everybody smiled politely and general talk resumed but a few moments later Grandfather leaned over and whispered in his round burr, “Never pass by a chance to shut up.” She had blinked and thought furiously about that and learned a lesson that became quite useful.

  Tall Guy said with a thin smile, “We can either talk of possibilities or we can seize your ship.”

  She let out a long breath. “Oh, goody.”

  “Our offer is quite generous.”

  “They always are.” She was busy looking at his hands. Long fingers too . . .

  “Cosmo Corp has asked if you are interested in another expedition?”

  “Let me guess. Another wormhole has turned up, stuck in a solar coronal arch? And Cosmo needs somebody to go fetch it. Just like last time.”

  Another cold, calculating smile. Why did she like guys like this? Okay, it had been a long time, and technology can only do so much for the lonely gal. But still—

  “No, alas. Though I might say I thought that an admirably brave and daring act. I heard someone made a 3D about it.”

  “In case you’re wondering, I spent that money too.”

  His veneer slipped a bit, but he recovered in an eyeblink. “I’m sure for a worthy cause.”

  “Yeah, spent it all on me. What’s the deal?”

  Tall Guy looked a bit rushed, as though he liked a lot of foreplay before getting down to business. Well, so did she, but a different kind of business than this character meant.

  “It is the same wormhole. But it has changed.”

  “Escaped?”

  “No, it is secured in magnetic fields in free space, held in high Lunar orbit. But Cosmo Corp’s experiments to expand its mouth, and thus to bring interstellar travel to mankind, has—”

  “Wait, how did Cosmo get the worm?”

  “Uh, they exerted stock override options on the holding company consortium that by interplanetary rights had further—”

  “Skip the jargon. They bought it?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “I always mind my manners when I speak. What’s up?”

  Tall Guy was now ignoring Fat Guy, who had found a seat on the other side of the ’partment living room. Claire stayed standing. With guys, who routinely used height to intimidate women, it was just about her only advantage here.

  “I am not a technical person.” Tall Guy collapsed the glaring account ledger and arched an eyebrow at her. Damn! Even that got her moist. She really had to get out of here, go barhopping, blow off two years’ worth of steam—

  “But the wormhole you captured has . . . changed, I do know that. Cosmo Corp was attempting to expand its, ah, mouth size. This is a delicate operation, apparently. I am unsure precisely what the difficulty was, but in making the wormhole mouth large enough to accommodate a substantial ship—such as yours, for example—they somehow added angular momentum to the wormhole. It became another sort of wormhole entirely.”

  Claire said cautiously, “What sort?”

  “One with enough rotation to change the very nature of the spacetime geometry.” Tall Guy shrugged, as if altering wormholes were something like the weather. What could one do, after all? Yawn.

  “Hey, I’m a contract hauler. I grabbed that wormhole off its perch on the top of a magnetic arch, dragged it back to Earthside. That’s what I know, period.”

  “Yes, but you do have some talent for the unexpected. That is apparently what Cosmo Corp needs. And soon.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  “Because certain governmental entities wish to possess the wormhole.”

  “The Earthside scientists.”

  Another What can one do? shrug. Very expressive. This guy should have gone on the stage, she thought. “They went through the Planetary Nations.”

  She let a silence build. This was a critical point. In many negotiations, subtle silences did most of the work. Let the silence run . . . then . . . “Must be tough, dancing around on strings pulled all the way from Earth.”

  Tall Guy shrugged, not denying it. Lean and muscular, he was the best man she had seen in years. Also the only man she had seen in years. That is, not counting Fat Guy, who might as well be on Pluto. She eyed Tall Guy and wondered if he was an all-business type, or if he was attuned to social signals better than his fat friend. She was wearing slickskin tiger pants and neither of these guys had given that a glance. The oldtime gal rule was that no guy was going to notice what shoes you’re wearing, and if he does, he’s the wrong guy. Tall Guy was giving nothing away. Poker face, no eye contact, nothing.

  Tall Guy said carefully, “The Planetary Nations Scientific Council got a binding injunction which begins in—” Tall Guy gazed off to the side, probably consulting a clock in his inboard vision. “Seventeen hours.”

&nb
sp; “Seventeen hours—”

  “And forty-eight minutes.”

  “Nobody can—”

  “You can,” he said, abruptly urgent. “You have experience with it. And the technical people have tried all they can, without success.”

  “Anybody get killed?”

  He went deadpan. “I can’t discuss that. Legal matters—”

  “Okay, okay.” She felt the fight go out of her. What the hell, she had slept most of the way to Luna, coming back from the comet fiasco. She was rested, well fed. Other hungers, though . . .

  She could cut short the shower. Get out to the bars, find a guy, get some sack time in, then back up to Silver Metal Lugger—

  “Okay, I’m interested.” She put both hands on her hips, a commanding stance. “But we have to negotiate.”

  “There’s little time, but we are prepared—”

  She sliced a hand through the air, pointed at Fat Guy—who had developed a pout. “No. He goes, you stay. We two negotiate the deal, my fee. And fast. Cosmo Corp needs this done pronto, right?”

  “Uh, right.” A gleam in Tall Guy’s eye? Was she that obvious?

  Well, maybe. And that could save them both some time too. Skip cruising the bars, yes. Not the shower, though. She said quickly, “Let’s, well, let’s do it.”

  Maybe a shower for two?

  We must either go in or out. The ringhole is frame-dragging spacetime itself in its vicinity. Theory predicted this. I can feel its tug. This is not a safe place.

  “No place is, when you think about it.” She recalled Tall Guy. Some things are better than they look. Maybe this wormring was okay, once you dove through. None of their probes was really savvy, after all. Artificial intelligences had plenty of craft, but little intuition. No animal instincts.