Worldmakers

by Gardner Dozois

  “Sorry to hear that.” He put his hand on hers, and found it was a muscular, callused, well-used hand that went with the rest of its owner’s body. He gave it a firm squeeze and let go.

  She gave him a lopsided smile. Clearly, Suwon’s approach to a setback was to challenge her fears and throw herself right back at it, immediately, passionately. Without another word, she checked out a personal evacuation unit and inspected it. Then they were ready.

  They emerged from the elevator terminal onto a maintenance balcony with a waffle grid floor and a severe functional guardrail. The view stunned Bik. The CMR was a fairyland forest of open trusses made of gray composite beams that somehow became shiny as they seemed to merge into a single ribbon toward the distant horizon. Occasionally a car on one of the upper tracks would silently flash by, pressed upward to the overhead rails by the centrifugal force from its higher-than-orbital velocity. Every so often a track would lift out like a stray fiber in a paintbrush, straightening to a zero-gravity trajectory and ending abruptly to wait for an outbound maglev spacecraft.

  There were still enough traces of atmosphere here to make the noses of the escaping cars glow as they left these tracks on trajectories leading to the rest of the solar system.

  The wide gray band of the CMR railbed dwarfed the elevator tower that helped tether it to the planet. The tower quickly shrank to a barely discernible thread under their perch that connected to a small island that was just barely visible in a vast blue-black sea. There was a trace of a blue-green land mass on the edge of their northern horizon, and a scattering of islands, but these were minor details of a vast cloud-flecked ocean, that, through some trick of perspective, seemed like a concave bowl.

  “Chao looks like that, from the dome top, except the water/land ratio is reversed. The dome top’s only fifty kilometers up, but you can’t tell the scale.”

  “Surprised you didn’t get a piece of that.”

  “I did. I let her have it, hoping that maybe she’d change her mind. I let her have everything.”

  “Too proud to fight, huh?” Suwon turned her gold-plated helmet face toward him, and he saw himself against the rising filtered sun, in miniature.

  “Something like that.” The sun had just risen below them and would take two weeks to reach local noon. Pride? Bik smiled; once Venus had taken the better part of a year to turn on its axis, but a millennium of launching out carbon dioxide frozen from the atmosphere, and volcanic sediment scraped from the low basaltic plains, and two centuries of bringing water in had given it a rotational period of about an Earth month. Human beings and their machines had done that, and Bik couldn’t help feeling a little pride. The crust was still adjusting through an abundance of volcanoes and quakes that would be part of Venusian life for something like ten million years, according to most projections. Below, they built for it.

  The sun was tiny by Bik’s Mercurian standards, and seemed to sparkle inside a broad, off-center ring of diffuse light. This, he realized, was the twenty-four-million-meter sunshield. His engineering imagination saw the vast structure balance gravity with constantly adjusted photon pressure the Lagrange point between Venus and the sun. A sun-sieve now, it let half the light get through to Venus and converted the other half to energy for starship ports and antimatter factories. His eyes saw a ghostly, sparkling disk, visibly larger and nearer than the sun, with edges that caught and reflected light in a grazing incidence that created the effect of the bright ring.

  “Finished sightseeing?” Suwon asked, gently.

  “I can see why you like living up here.”

  She laughed. “You should see a gigaton water freighter match cradle vee on the landing track; that’s the dark band in the middle. It lets you grab just how astro this operation is. Magnificent! Nothing due in today, though. Let’s check the equipment one more time.”

  Bik did, then checked Suwon’s gear as she checked his.

  “Ready. Now, Bik,” she continued in a low, stagily seductive voice, “do you ever have fantasies of sacrificing yourself? Being a human bomb for some cause? Letting a lover kill you? Falling on your sword? Taking Joan of Arc’s place at the stake?”

  Bik couldn’t see her eyes, but he imagined that they glowed. Yes, of course he had, but he couldn’t bring himself to say so; it wasn’t the sort of thing one shared in Mercurian society. On an airless planet, suicides sometimes took others with them, and even to fantasize about it where people could hear got a lot more attention than one wanted. Bik shivered.

  “Can’t admit it, can you? Well, they’re normal. Everyone has them, and someday, when I’ve had enough of this immortal body that our genetic engineers have given me, I think I’m going to do this dive without any equipment. Oh, maybe a pressure suit so I can experience a little more of it—the burning part for instance—but nothing else. I’ll just run out and throw myself off and let nature take its course. End my life as a shooting star!”

  She straddled the rail, reached and grabbed his hand and laughed demonically. “Like I said, we all have these fantasies … and the time to indulge them is now! Come on!”

  Almost in a trance, he swung one leg over the rail and then the other and stood on his toes hanging onto the rail, three hundred kilometers above the sea.

  Suwon’s chest rose and fell with each excited breath. “Now,” she shouted, “push off and die!” Then she did it, with a bloodcurdling yell, falling rapidly away below him.

  Bik craned his neck to see her, and in doing so started to slip. What the hell? Go, something inside said, do it! He pushed hard and was in free fall; the CMR dwindled to a dark ribbon far above him, the Devana Sea waited below. Soon he seemed to stop moving; there was nothing still near enough by which to judge his falling. Suwon’s manic laughter filled his helmet. Finally she stopped.

  “One hundred fifty kilometers, buddy. Time to get serious.”

  Below him, a crystalline lady slipper bloomed, tumbling and glinting in the sun. Bik remembered the sled cord and found it. There was a temptation not to pull it, to delay a little, to enjoy zero gravity and flirt with that ecstasy of self-destruction. He was beginning to get warm.

  “Pull the red ring, Bik!” Suwon shouted. He jerked it open automatically, and quickly found himself surrounded by a huge, triangular, transparent pillow. It pressed against him gently in the tenuous slipstream, turning and righting itself so that he lay prone. It began to vibrate slightly as the pressure gradually began to increase, and he could hear a low, eerie moan.

  “I’m over here,” Suwon called. “Shift your weight left.”

  He leaned left, and the transparent lifting body began a long, steady curve in that direction. “I’m going to wiggle a little,” Suwon said. “Do you see me?”

  Bik scanned ahead, right and left, and saw nothing.

  “You’re below me a bit, but right behind me now. Shift your weight right a bit, then steady.”

  He did it. “Okay.”

  “Now look up.”

  Far, far ahead of him in the vast black distance above the thin glowing band of atmosphere, he caught a sparkle. He stared at it for several seconds, then began to pick out the transparent envelope and the tiny white figure inside. The front of the envelope had begun to glow.

  “I found you.”

  “Good. Now we’re going to have to do things together as much as possible. We’re building up a fair amount of northward velocity, but we need more, so I’m going to dive a bit. Follow me by shifting your weight forward, but be ready to shift back when I do. We don’t want to get too hot.”

  “Okay.”

  She started to pull ahead, and he pulled himself forward on the hand-holds. He shot forward, passing her underneath. In a near panic, he pushed himself back again.

  “Whoa. Hold it right there. I’ll catch up,” she said, and scooted smoothly back into view above and in front of him. “Now edge forward just a bit. There. Hold that.”

  He was back at full weight again and there was a definite, diffuse glow in front of him.<
br />
  “Your boyfriend. Are you sure it was an accident?”

  Silence.

  He waited.

  Finally she answered, in measured tones. “No. But I think so; I mean there was no note to grab or anything. That’s a pretty drastic way of breaking up and I don’t think I’m that scary. But you can never be sure with people. Let’s change the subject, huh?”

  It really wasn’t any of his business. “This must be spectacular at night,” he finally remarked.

  “Yeah. When I go, it’ll be at night. I’ll become a comet, a Valkyrie pyre in the sky. It’ll burn the guilt right out of me.”

  “You sound like you’re looking forward to it.”

  “I am …” She laughed. “ … in a thousand years or so. The anticipation will keep me going. Right now, we’re down to thirty kilometers and it’s time to back off a bit. Edge back just a little, bring your nose up. We’ve got another thousand klicks to go. Okay. Now a little more. Okay.”

  “Optimum glide path?” he asked. He knew she was linked to the terminal computer and had everything calculated to the nth degree, but he wanted the reassurance. The ocean was very big and blue below him.

  “Feels right,” she responded. “I think we hit it pretty good.”

  “What’s the range projection?” he inquired.

  “Range projection?” She laughed. “We just go as far as we can. Never tried to make Beta Regio from the elevator head before.”

  He began to have a sinking feeling. “What do the cybes say?”

  “Cybes? Grab this, Bik. We’re out of contact—on our own. These radios are only good for a few kilometers unless we’re talking to a big directional antenna. Frequency management. This is strictly by feel from here on; that’s the fun of it. Besides, the last few hundred kilometers all depend on air currents, and that’s weather. No telling. Hold on there, you’re shifting your weight. Shift forward again, just a little and catch up. You really have to watch body position.”

  Bik got Suwon in sight again and kept her there. Silently. Any fantasies about casting himself into oblivion were long ago and far away. Now, he was very, very scared. And excited—he understood why people did this—to challenge real danger, with their own muscles, reflexes, and brains, without relying on some cybernetic safety net. It would be a great feeling, if you survived. And maybe, even, in the last moments, if you didn’t.

  “Bik, do you know an asshole by the name of Deccar Brunt?”

  A chill colder than anything his suit could fix went through Bik. “Too well. He’s a lawyer working for the space jock that took Kai—my ex. Brunt is hellishly well connected and thinks that I’m some kind of monster. He’s determined to keep Junior away from me. How’d you run into him?”

  “He came asking questions after I put you in the computer for an elevator cab reservation. I’d say he didn’t want you to get down to the surface—thought I was working too hard on your behalf. You say you had problems getting on the transport here in the first place?”

  Of course, Bik thought. “Yes. What did he offer?”

  “He hinted that he could do things for me if I didn’t help you. Not clearly enough for me to hand him to the cybes, but clearly enough. Look, is there money involved in this?” Her voice showed she shared his contempt for the stuff, Bik thought. With robot factories all through the solar system, manufactured things were either free or not allowed. Scarce necessities, such as habitable land or electromagnetic frequencies, were allocated fairly by need or lot. Money, he felt, was a game for people who wanted things they’d be better off without, but for which they were willing to trade.

  “Kai liked having the stuff. She’d trade, uh, favors, for it. It was a game to her—but I think that’s how she met Thor.” It was appropriate, in a way—as legend went, the underground “economy” had started within months of the official elimination of money when some enterprising prostitute had started issuing promissory notes. Since money proved impossible to repress and didn’t threaten anyone’s welfare, the governments, cybes, and Bik generally ignored it. When he could.

  Bik’s sled started to vibrate and hum with ever-increasing loudness, matching his mood. Why, Kai? “Why?”

  “Going transsonic. Just stay centered and ride through; you’re inherently stable. Bik, you put up with all that?” She meant Kai’s adventures, he realized—smiling at the metaphorical coincidence.

  “I didn’t own her, I was away a lot, and up until she left, things were fine, uh, more than fine.”

  “Sounds like a good actress. So she had money, and your rights in that dome on Mercury, and Bikki. Now this Thor has it all and wants to keep it all. Some big male thing with him, I bet. But how the hell can he threaten me?”

  Bik felt miserable. “He’s got an ethics problem, I think. Smart, competent, used to having his own way. Big stud, except he’s never been given a repro permit. As for threats, all it takes is having someone on a board or having some authority that wants something money can buy. Maybe one of your bosses.”

  “Crap.” The bitterness in Suwon’s voice was understandable; real jobs were scarce and hers was in jeopardy. “Well, I didn’t listen to it. Just made me want to help you. Hey, grab on, we’re subsonic, down to thirty kilometers, beginning to lose lift. Time to pop the wings. Orange ring, on three. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “One … two … Now.”

  He pulled and his translucent white wings, astoundingly long and thin, rolled out of his backpack to the sides and a long, stiff tube with a triangular duct canard shot out in front of him, bent alarmingly, and began to vibrate like a bassoon reed.

  “What—” He was really shaking. The sims hadn’t been like this.

  “Bistable polymorphon. Sometimes takes a second to lock into its deployed shape. Don’t worry, you look good.”

  As if at Suwon’s command, the loud hum quickly softened to a gentle whoosh as he accelerated upward with breathtaking force. He remembered to shift forward to lower his angle of attack before he lost too much air speed, and saw the canard structure bend down slightly as he did it; its smart materials almost anticipated what he wanted to do. When he got himself straightened out, he searched for Suwon.

  “I’m pretty far ahead and above you,” she called out, as if reading his mind. “Deflate your lifting body now. It will remember its folds and repack itself. That will cut your drag.”

  “How?” he asked.

  “Green ring on your chest; Venturi suction tube. Keep pulling until it’s in.”

  He did so, and felt his airspeed increase as the transparent envelope collapsed into a stiff aerodynamic sled. When he caught up to Suwon, she did the same and made an S-turn to take station off his right wing.

  “We’re a couple of kilometers lower than I’d like to be for the range we need, but with some luck on the air currents, we’ll make it. Just now, you need to practice gliding. We’re heading for the shadow line.”

  By fifteen hundred, they’d passed into night. Earth and its L1 sunshield lit the sky like a close pair of distant arc lights, glinting off waves that were getting entirely too close. But they had reached the archipelago; here and there a single light or campfire showed where people had already spread to the islands.

  Suwon caught an updraft on the windward side of a ghostly volcanic island and slipped off to the east to avoid the trailing downdraft. The couple of kilometers they gained helped them almost reach the next island, but that was all. It was a long, faint green wall on the horizon, with what looked to be a geodesic dome glowing from inside lights on the east end.

  “We’re going in,” Suwon said. “Reinflate your entry sled.”

  “Huh?”

  “Now. It’ll float. Your wings are buoyant, too, and will help keep you upright. Watch me.” She shot ahead of him in a shallow dive, squandering her remaining energy.

  “I flare—” She seemed to hang in the air over the dark sparkling waves like some ghostly albatross. “—inflate and drop in. Now you do it. Use the red
ring.”

  He’d gotten used to following her instructions and did it, but it was easier watched than done. Bik stalled before he got the sled inflated again, dropped through the waves and popped up again with water spilling from the top of the sled. It was embarrassing, but since he was still in his vacuum suit, he didn’t get wet. The water was quite warm.

  “You all right?” Suwon called. Her voice seemed tinny and distant, and it took him a couple of seconds to realize that he was hearing her acoustically, instead of on radio. He looked around and found her helmet flashing about thirty meters to his left; their wingtip beacons were almost touching.

  He opened his faceplate and took a deep breath of sea air. Childhood memories. He’d been five when his father had taken him on a walk by the sea near their home in Victoria, B.C., and told him that, sometimes, people can’t live together anymore, and that he would be going away. Did Bik know the way home? Bik had nodded yes. His father had nodded gravely, turned, and walked away. Forever.

  “Bik?”

  “All right physically. Feeling a little silly and disappointed. I suppose it was worth the shot. Great fun, anyway. Haven’t smelled the sea since I was a kid.”

  “You’ve still got a couple of hours to register.”

  “But we’ve got to be a couple of hundred kilometers short of Port Tannhauser.”

  “There’s a homesite on this island in front of us.”

  “The dome?”

  “You grabbed it. That’s Mabel Beautaux’s place; Mabel and I go way back.”

  “I thought this wasn’t open to settlement yet.”

  “It’s an old terraforming station; she’s been squatting since oxygen hit fifteen percent. She probably got to be first in line to register it when they opened up.”

  “Does she have transportation?”

  “Float plane—she’ll be out to pick us up in a bit.”

  “Huh?”

  Suwon pointed to her head and smiled. “My brain is is part radio, remember? We’re in range.”