“What about it?”
“You should not let them take it from you.”
“Shouldn’t,” she corrected, the old urge coming back. Caznal had picked up the convoy’s English much more thoroughly than her father—poor Ephenza had learned it as a dead language, after all—but Caznal’s aversion to contractions and abbreviations when using it had always annoyed Esper. She was trying to keep herself from falling into RDCL, Esper knew that, but it was still irritating.
Esper didn’t care if the sentence was grammatically correct. She should use contractions, damn it.
Caznal the girl would have blushed and repeated the correction. Caznal the woman clearly knew letting Esper dictate her usage would curry no favors in the long run. “This is serious,” she said.
“Fine—why shouldn’t I let them replace me? I don’t want the damn job. Never did.” What does she care, anyway? Defending her position as a diplomat wasn’t going to earn Caznal any sisterly endearments.
“Something is happening in the research division.”
Caznal was one of the few earthlings working aboard Ship City. The convoy needed them—science and engineering had advanced by orders of magnitude while the crew members had been away, and if they wanted to understand the Web and the Nest, they needed Earth’s input. They’d received a fair few offers of help, but the majority of Earth scientists refused to come to Antarctica to do the job, either insisting the convoy hand over the samples, or proposing they work remotely by robot.
The board had rejected all such offers. Only scientists and engineers willing to work side-by-side with the crew, willing to communicate with them in meat-space, were allowed access to the specimens.
Which narrowed the pool considerably, leaving Caznal ideally situated.
While her father had been a diplomat, obsessed with the people and history of the convoy, Caznal was an engineer obsessed with the Web. She was proof that even in such a vast, isolationist society, those with a sense of wonder and exploration still remained—however few.
But her presence in Ship City didn’t make her a crew member. She was still an outsider. And she, like Esper, was intimately acquainted with the difficulties of having one foot in two worlds.
“My supervisor is moving me from project to project,” she elaborated. “I think he would have cut me out of the team completely if he was not worried it would raise suspicion.”
Esper toyed with the seven drawer pulls in her box while Caznal spoke, rolling them around like ill-shaped marbles.
“He thinks he is keeping me from understanding the implications of . . . Esper? Esper, please look at me while I talk.”
“Caznal . . .” she grumbled, reluctantly looking up from the box.
“You used to call me Caz,” she said bluntly.
That had been years ago. When they were friends. Before Ephenza had betrayed Esper. She took a deep breath. “What’s happening in the research division?”
Caz glanced around, as though afraid someone might be hiding in the tight corners of the room. “Can we . . . can we mind-to-mind instead of speaking?”
“Why?” she asked slowly, suspiciously.
“I do not trust that our conversation will be private.”
Esper turned to her fully and raised an eyebrow. “You’re worried about I.C.C. eavesdropping? Our brains could be hacked at any time by Earth governments, but you’re worried about the convoy computer? You’re a little late on the Big Brother paranoia. And what could be so—”
“The board is hiding something from you. It is why they are so adamant about removing you now instead of years ago. They think if you knew you would ruin their chances.”
“Chances of what?”
“Getting the resources they need. There is a reason your people want to go back to the stars now. An explicit purpose, and they do not want you to know, and they do not want me or any other outsider to know. Especially not the Node. This is why you cannot let them take your job.”
“Too late,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Informed me of my replacement about an hour ago. It’s a done deal.”
Caz opened her mouth, but nothing came out. After a moment, she sank into the desk chair like all of the life had gone out of her. “They have made a terrible decision,” she said quietly.
“Why?”
Once again, her gaze fell ambiguously over the room.
Esper rolled her eyes. No, I am not giving in. She can use her words or she can get out. “I.C.C., Caznal believes there is some kind of conspiracy happening in Ship City. That there are ‘things’—” she used air quotes, knowing it was childish but feeling spiteful regardless “—her superiors don’t want her to know.”
“Caznal is not a crew member, and therefore does not have free access to Ship City information,” I.C.C. said.
“Yeah, okay,” she dismissed. “But, please assure her that this security clearance issue is nothing new, and that I, as the envoy for the city, had full and immediate access to all information regarding the Nest, the Web, and the board’s decisions. Up until, you know, an hour ago.” She let smugness lift the corners of her mouth.
“I cannot.”
It what? Her expression crumbled, her breath stuttered. “You what?”
“As you are incorrect, I cannot reassure her. You have not been thoroughly informed of the research division’s progress for the past fifty-seven reports.”
Her fingers wiggled through the air as she did the math. “Almost nine months? Why?”
“I have been instructed not to discuss this with you. And my parameters for overriding such a command have not yet been met.”
Caz butted in. “Meaning it believes like them. It thinks you might do the convoy damage if you had the information.”
Anger made the tips of Esper’s nose and fingers go cold, warmth flooding her cheeks and neck instead. She hadn’t felt betrayed when I.C.C. had spied on her in private. But this hurt. She’d always thought of the AI as neutral in her Me vs. Them cage fight. But now she knew that when it was commanded to pick a side, it had chosen them.
Yet even as she groused, I.C.C. itself seemed to take offense at Caz’s characterization. It offered a correction. “Meaning I have very specific instructions for countering direct orders. A threshold of possible harm, possible collapse or failure, must be met. There are very few times in the history of Convoy Seven that I have acted in human interest against human will. There are many things I would change about our current society if I was in sole command of these ships. I am not. I am not in command of any ships. Nor do I seek command of any ships.”
Both Esper and Caz fell quiet. They even shared a look.
“I cannot give you information that I was directed to withhold from you, Ms. Straifer,” the AI said bluntly. “But no one instructed me to keep you from interacting with your family members.”
It took a moment for that to sink in, what I.C.C. was actually saying. “I.C.C.,” she said, “Will you tell the board about this conversation, between Caz and me?”
“Not unless explicitly asked for the content.”
“That does not mean it is on our side,” Caz said.
“You don’t know your convoy history very well,” she said. “That’s exactly what it means. Tell me what you came to tell me.”
Caz stood, skepticism still keeping her jaw tight and her posture guarded. “It would be better to show you,” she said softly, as though volume would make the difference in terms of I.C.C.’s loyalty. “Do you have diagrams of the Nest?”
“Of course.” Esper drew them up on the wall screen. Layered schematics, with cross sections upon cross sections, fanned out before them.
“This would be easier with a three-dimensional projection,” Caz said, manipulating the diagrams by hand.
“Sorry, not what this room was designed for. Bring your own next time.”
Caz sighed. “All right, you see all of these external filaments?” She circled the portions that dangled around and beneath the shi
p, the parts that looked like haphazardly woven sticks and reeds, from which the Nest’s name had been derived. “They are filled with compressed hydrogen, and there are large reserves of hydrogen throughout the ship.” She tapped its belly.
“Yeah, that’s not news,” Esper said, unimpressed. “We used to think the aliens must have used some kind of fusion reactor, but there’s no evidence of that.”
“Yes.” Caznal pulled up an internal cross-section. “Then you are also familiar with the ship’s complete lack of wiring? There is no insulation in the walls, just hydrogen film.”
“Right,” she said slowly. “Which is why we’ve yet to figure out how this thing could actually function as a freaking space ship. It’s like finding a sailboat in orbit.”
Caznal nodded. “My job has been to decipher the purpose of these outer filaments. I have run model simulation after model simulation, and after my last simulation, I was moved off the project.”
“Because . . . you found something?” Esper prompted.
“I found—” she said excitedly, pulling a marker from her pocket to draw directly onto the screen. If it had still been her office, Esper would have yelled at her. As it was, she didn’t care if Ceren wondered why there were scribbles all over her vid screen. “—that the composition of the filaments indicates they were designed to harvest gravitons from the natural environment, like a graviton cycler—but more like a graviton supercycler. I believe they can retrieve far more than the ship could use for artificial gravity or takeoff and landing alone. And the presence of hydrogen within the filaments leads me to believe the excess gravity was intended to act upon the reserves.”
“This is fascinating, Caz, but—”
Caznal pressed on, undeterred by Esper’s interruption. “If the hydrogen were further compressed and cooled—right now it is in a liquid state as parahydrogen isomer—you could turn it into metallic hydrogen. In its liquid metallic state, hydrogen is a special kind of quantum fluid: a superconducting superfluid. Meaning electrons can move freely through it with no resistance, and the atoms themselves are frictionless. That makes it an electrically perfect and mechanically perfect material. If my calculations are correct, this ship is filled with the potential to use its gravitons to create wires and circuits out of the hydrogen itself.”
Esper said nothing this time, mentally connecting the dots as Caz droned on.
“We have been able to create metallic hydrogen on Earth for centuries,” Caz continued, “but we have never been able to make enough of it, or been able to maintain the metallic state for long enough, for it to be used in electrical engineering. It takes roughly five hundred gigapascals of pressure, you understand. That is almost five million atmospheres. But it appears these beings were able to do what we cannot, using gravitons, which we have—to my knowledge—never applied in such a fashion: not only could they produce that pressure by harnessing gravity, they could also control the gravitons with enough nuance to create temporary circuitry wherever it was needed.” She gestured grandly at the circles and arrows she’d drawn over the screen.
Caznal was throwing so much at Esper so fast, it was difficult to digest. She ran a hand over her eyes. “Whoa. Okay. Say you explain it to me like I’m a diplomat instead of an engineer, yeah?”
Caznal frowned, lowering her hand. “Uh, okay. You know what a transistor is, right? On-off switch, essentially. When not metallic, hydrogen is an insulator—an off. Got it? But when it is compressed into its quantum superfluidity, it is an on. If we could control gravitons with enough precision, we could choose which exact atoms of hydrogen were on and which were off. Create circuitry out of a single element.”
“Okay,” Esper said again. “Now explain it to me like I’m five.”
She was just messing with her, and Caz knew it. But she set her jaw and said, “If we figure out how to turn on the ship’s gravity cycler, I think wires could pop into existence.”
“That’s—that’s pretty cool,” Esper admitted. “Not exactly the earth-shattering revelation I was expecting, seeing as how this was kept from me.”
“Not earth-shattering?” Caz asked, incredulous. “Do you have any idea what kind of engineering it would take to create pressure that rivals that at the center of a gas giant, while—”
“Okay, okay,” Esper conceded. “I get it. It’s a big deal.”
“Yes. It is.” Caz capped her pen, apparently satisfied with Esper’s attrition. “After I came to this conclusion I ran new scans of the Nest for the umpteenth time, and asked I.C.C. to make note of all hydrogen on board. A silly sounding request, of course, seeing as how it is the most abundant element in the universe. It is everywhere.”
“But you expected to find it in concentrated areas outside the reserves . . . You were looking for a residue pattern?” Esper asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And the highest saturation of hydrogen outside of the walls and filaments was in the device we call the Babbage Engine.”
“Which could mean a dense concentration of this hydrogen circuitry?”
“Yes.”
“Which means you might have figured out how to work their ship’s computer.”
She grinned from ear to ear. “Yes! It only seemed small and primitive because we were not looking at its complete makeup. And if we can get it working, which I believe is possible, I think your convoy will soon have a history of the Nest’s navigation. You will know where it has been—”
Esper’s heart fluttered against her ribs. “But, more importantly, where it originated.”
“I think so. But—” her face fell “—it does not matter what I think. It matters what your board thinks. I have not been allowed near my models or the Babbage Engine itself since reporting my new theories—they have moved me onto the life-support reconstruction team—so I do not know what kind of progress they have made with the hydrogen circuits in these last few months. But I am certain they have taken my theories seriously. I can think of no other reason for them to cut me off.”
“Okay. But . . . so what? The board is getting its panties in a twist now because of this? They’re abandoning the Web because they might be able to chase after a long-dead civilization?”
“That assumes they agree that the aliens no longer exist, and that the two endeavors are not related.” She shrugged. “But, I have told you everything I know.”
“And why . . .” Esper swallowed dryly. “Why didn’t anyone want me to know? I mean, I get why they kept you in the dark, but me?”
“Say you drank too much and let slip the idea that an alien civilization could be coexisting with us right now—maybe your board has evidence that this is true, I do not know—and that is why the convoy wants to relaunch. That their new mission is to make contact. I know my people, I know my world. They would do everything in their power to keep you here—they might even take the Nest by force, to prevent you from unlocking its secrets. Above all, Earth wants to be left alone.”
“Earth wants to be comfortable,” Esper spat. “The more comfortable someone is, a society is, the less likely they are to seek change, even positive change. That’s been true throughout human history.”
“Exactly.”
“I.C.C.,” Esper demanded, “does Ceren know about this?”
“No. Her inexpert control of her neural implants is a similar liability to your substance abuse. Though the board believes her eagerness a boon that balances the risk.”
Rolling her tongue over the front of her teeth, Esper looked Caznal straight in the eye. “We’re fucked, aren’t we?”
She held up her hands imploringly. “Only if you do nothing.”
[Ceren? Yo, Ceren Kaya, you reading me?]
Esper had waited long enough. Even though Ceren had supported the implants before, and really only needed a few physical neural-rejoinders to get them working again, she still needed time to heal and flex her brain’s reach before being inundated with mind-to-mind communiqués. The talks had been postponed
another month to allow for the transition. Esper had a week left to metaphorically shove her fingers back in the pie.
[Ceren? Are you awake?]
There was no need to use RDCL with the implants, even though it was easier. Quicker. To the point. But Esper’s goal wasn’t ease. She wanted to make sure Ceren knew she was talking to a convoy member, that this wasn’t some trick. If Caznal couldn’t perfectly mimic Ship City dialects, then no one could.
[Come on, answer me.]
[He-hello?] came the tentative reply.
Oh, look. Girl knows how to keep her emotive walls up and everything. Good sign. [Ceren, I know they’ve got Dr. Fatio training you on diplomatic techniques, but he doesn’t know shit about negotiations, okay?]
[It’s three in the morning.] Exactly. Guaranteed to be dark, with minimal external stimulation. [Who are you?]
[Who do you think? I’m the person they don’t want training you.]
[You aren’t supposed to be contacting me.]
[You aren’t supposed to have this stupid job, so let’s call the waters muddy and move on.]
Esper received an unintentional flash of sensation: Ceren rubbed at her eyes. [Move on with what?]
[Your education. Dr. Fatio has no idea how to deal with the Node. No one does except me.]
Ceren laughed. [Oh really? I’m supposed to take diplomacy tips from the person who was fired for her inability to behave diplomatically? Why’s that?]
Esper blinked in the dark, staring up at the ceiling she could not see. She imagined it was Toya’s ceiling, with the swirls and mandalas. [Because I’m the only friend you have in this world. I know what it’s like. When you screw this up—and you will screw this up if you don’t listen to me—no one is going to pat you on the back for trying. When you fail, they won’t admit it’s because they forced you into a job you were unprepared for, they won’t admit it’s because you were given a difficult task, they won’t admit everything went wrong because they ignored good sense. You know what they will say? It’s because you’re a white-suit, so of course you failed. Never mind you were filling a hole no one else could. They will pick at the one thing they’re good at picking on.]
Noumenon Page 36
