by Scott Rhine
“At ten times the normal subspace rate, we could travel that distance in a month,” Kesh protested.
Roz shook her head. “We can’t hop straight there, and we’ll need frequent refueling.”
“Which adds overhead of at least three days at each space station.”
“More,” Roz insisted. “We have to pretend to be a normal ship, appearing and exiting near a known nexus. Otherwise, the Bankers will know about our abilities. That adds an average of fourteen days in each direction. With the roughly five days that pass while we’re in the subbasement, we’ll have a total of thirty-six days per hop.”
“Ouch,” Kesh said. “Doesn’t seem so fast when you put it like that. Can’t we shave that a little? Hop out early or load faster?”
“Say we cut it down to thirty-two days, a month.” Union members preferred common units of time to occur in powers of two. “After the two-week trip into Salizar station, we have about 6.5 months until the start of the Convocation. As there are no major issues scheduled for discussion, the session should only last a month.”
“Giving us time for seven jumps or less, if we want to keep our cover,” Kesh calculated.
Roz projected a star chart from her wrist unit. “Since the only system in the specified range is Babel, we’d need to backtrack through Bat space, over to Alpha Centauri, and up to Goat territory to reach Giragog. That’s thirteen jumps even without a stop for Ivy.”
Alyssa said, “We can’t make another appearance in Babel. They’ll believe we lied about visiting the prison and arrest us as frauds.”
“So we go hubward to Gate of Peace, the Magi border world,” Echo offered.
Reuben paced the room. “That’s the opposite direction of Laurelin.”
“There are no other systems within range,” Roz said. “The nearest Human system, Clarke’s Oasis, is ten parsecs away.”
“This is simple fractal math,” Reuben said. “The smaller the ruler, the longer the wavy coastline measures. Bigger hops would cut off a lot of wasted detours, like taking the hypotenuse of the triangle. How long would the trip take if we increased the granularity to ten parsecs each? Theoretically, that’s five hops. We’d have time to spare.”
“Depends on the route,” Roz replied.
Echo said, “If we vector through Magi space, we could reach the academy of sages in four shorter hops. I am confident they could help Ivy. They represent the best minds in my species and have unlimited funding from the government. With no Bankers or Saurian gangsters to worry about, it’s the safest route.”
Max cleared his throat. “I think Ivy would rather die than allow the academy to analyze her DNA.”
“Perhaps Llewellyns shouldn’t be given that choice,” Echo snapped.
Trouble in paradise? Reuben said, “The founding family of Anodyne is the closest ally the Magi have on the Union Council. I can’t recall a single vote you’ve disagreed on.” What could drive a wedge between them? Stewart Llewellyn, the first Human ambassador to the peaceful aliens, had practically been canonized.
Echo focused her glare on him. “When you find out how deeply you’ve been betrayed by their spies, you may side with me, young ram.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Now Reuben felt the need to crack Ivy’s computer and read her message buffers for some kind of clue.
Roz returned to the point. “Even if the academy allowed us to take Sphere after we told them the news about our drive, which I doubt, we’d require another six hops to reach Giragog from there. We’d miss the Convocation, and mimics would be slaughtered for another seven years.”
“A ten-parsec hop has only a 95 percent chance of zero side effects,” Echo said.
Reuben snorted. “I’d risk that for tens of thousands of lives.” Several partners murmured agreement.
Roz gave the hologram a definite “I told you so” look. “We’d even have the option of stopping at Laurelin on the way. That route would only take seven hops.”
“Talk about seven-league boots,” Max said, trying to grasp the math. “That’s half the time of the absolute safest route.”
“With two weeks spare until the end of the Convocation,” Echo said. “The margin of error is too thin. We couldn’t make any mistakes or encounter any surprises.”
“How about a compromise,” Max suggested, seeing his wives at odds with each other. “We try a single ten-parsec hop as our next experiment and time the Salizar refuel stop to the minute. After we have measurable results, we let science inform our decision on later options.”
“Fine,” said Roz and Echo, although neither meant that word in the purest sense.
“I vote for Clarke’s Oasis,” Reuben said. “It’s less populated, which is better for keeping our secrets. Gates of Peace is a major trade base visited by several species.”
The motion passed unanimously.
Kesh said, “If this is the last Bat outpost, we may need to cash in the deed to the property that the high priest at Veerkat Cathedral sold us.” The lands came with a minor title and a small stipend for exemplary service to the church. The team had traded five million in gold for the papers, but any number of Bats would pay a premium for the honor and air of respectability. “The Humans at Clarke’s Oasis will pay more for the radioactives, so I’ll trade copper for most of the fuel. We’ll keep the art in reserve until we reach a populated world with more money than sense.”
Shaking her head, Roz said, “If we’re posing as a vessel from Magi space, only Goats and Magi should interact with the space station.”
“Fine, but do a straight swap for the fuel. Nothing should go through the bank accounts, or someone will know it’s us. I’ll stay off the radio but help with the haggling.” Kesh stood to stretch. “When we’re in range, I’ll still need access to the data banks to check our financials.”
“That’ll be about ten days from now,” Roz said.
“I’ll arrange it,” Reuben promised. He would have to hack the station computers to read the information without leaving an audit trail. He had learned how while tracking war criminals in Turtle Special Forces with Max. “We have a lot of repair work to accomplish before then. Right now, I need sleep.” In truth, his desire to climb under the covers came more from depression than exhaustion.
“Be careful, everyone,” Max warned. “Border stations like this have been heavily armed since the Phib armada threatened Mnamnabo. Salizar B Station has beam weapons for certain and may have missiles.”
To Reuben this only meant he should not break into the Bat computers until the sphere was so close that use of defensive weapons would blow up the station as well.
Kesh interpreted the information a different way. “We’ll need our own missile defenses and a shuttlecraft long before we reach the Convocation. I’m not sure I can get someone to sell us either between here and Giragog.” The Magi sphere couldn’t land on a planet because gravity would deform its precision configuration too much.
“You’re the best,” said Roz. “You’ll find a way.”
Before going to bed that night, Reuben attached a cracking device to Ivy’s personal data-storage cube. Although Llewellyn encryption would be difficult to break, he needed ammunition to force her family to give her back and clues to decipher the Magi’s ominous hints.
Chapter 4 – Withdrawal
Reuben spent most of his waking hours cleaning up the mess from the mysterious interactions with the subbasement. Ironically, one task was to mop up the leaky still, which posed a fire hazard. In the process of dismantling the distillery, he collected a few bulbs of the vile paint thinner in case he developed a thirst later. He hid the drinking bulbs behind the air duct in his room so the other partners would not worry. This time, he intended to drink responsibly—perhaps just a little to help him sleep. Ivy’s scent on the sheets prevented him from sleeping well, but he couldn’t bring himself to launder them.
His next assignment would be preventative measures in case systems failed in similar ways on the six-day t
en-parsec jump. How weird was that to say? He was already taking the incredible speed for granted.
Each night, he checked the progress on the hacking hardware attached to Ivy’s data cube. Nothing had been gleaned so far other than the type of each file. Most were audio recordings. He cross-referenced the items in the songs directory with digital copies of her favorite tunes to help crack the code. This peeled back the first layer of protection, leaving a second, more robust encryption on the folder called Eval. Fortunately, he could read the metadata now. The biggest files had been recorded in his or Ivy’s staterooms, during times he was on duty. With little hope of success, he left the device to grind away on the Eval files.
A few evenings later when Reuben finally had free time, he confirmed the lack of progress on the decryption. Then he packed away all Ivy’s other personal belongings. He took special care to wrap the bracelet he had purchased for her on Babel. He realized he would have given the newfound millions in his bank account just to hear her say his name again in that husky, irreverent voice.
After he piled all vestiges of Ivy next to her stasis chamber in a corner of the cargo section, he turned up the music so loud that he could not hear his own thoughts. Staring at her face through the window on her unit, Reuben drank himself unconscious.
****
The cold water splashed on Reuben’s face, and he woke cursing in three languages. Max stood over him with an empty plastic bucket. The cargo bay was so quiet Reuben could hear the drips splattering the deck and his own racing heart. He glanced up in panic when he saw the blank space on the wall. “Ivy’s gone. Where is she?”
“Someplace safe,” Max said, deadpan, setting the bucket down. “This is your second strike. Don’t do this again.”
Next time, Reuben knew he would be publicly humiliated, forcibly detoxified, or worse. “Sorry, sir.”
“If you need to talk, you can contact me or Herb any time day or night. You won’t pull a Xerxes on my watch.” The famous ram had taken an enormous overdose of recreational drugs. Goats were notoriously hard to poison, but with a liver weakened by years of abuse, Reuben’s ancestor had managed it. Banker influence was suspected.
“Yes, sir. I just wanted to hear Ivy again.”
“Minder can give you access to audio from any public areas, or your own stateroom.”
Reuben blinked. Of course, as a partner he had complete access to the ship’s AI as long as it didn’t violate another partner’s privacy. How had he missed such a simple solution? If he wanted to find the content for the Eval audio files, he could ask ship’s security for a copy during the designated times. With the original content from the recording done from his room, he could find the cryptographic key he needed to unlock the others.
Because Max had not offered a towel, Reuben dripped all the way back to his room.
Once Reuben was warm and dry, he contacted the ship’s AI. “Minder, how long do you preserve the audio surveillance for my quarters?”
“There are no absolute measurements. I retain twenty-seven hours worth of voice recording from each zone.”
“Copy all of the audio from my room to my personal data sphere, one file per incident. Filter out any period where Ivy is not present.” Reuben watched as a dozen files popped into existence in his computing sandbox.
Idly, he clicked replay on the first, startled to hear sounds of sex. He slapped his hand against the Stop icon, breathing hard. This way led to madness. Their final argument would be in one of these files. “Minder, place all recordings containing my voice into a secure folder marked double-aught. Block all access to this folder for … three months.”
“All includes your own. Confirm?”
“Yes.”
All but four of the recordings on his screen vanished. One file contained a brief call to Roz, which he placed into the folder called Memories where he kept pictures of her. As a spy, she had allowed very few to be taken.
Next, he trimmed the three snippets to match the exact time stamps found on Ivy’s secret files and fed the pairs to his military decoding software. The complexity analyzer estimated a one-month wait using only his personal computing resources. He missed the Turtle hardware and the ability to co-opt machines around the world to do his bidding.
Holding his breath, he hit Play on the first file. Ivy’s voice filled the room. “His mother was a minor talent, an empath variant. She could touch people and give them energy through the Collective Unconscious. Rillia wasn’t much to look at. MI-23 assigned her to Black Ram Diogenes because of his history of severe depression and suicidal tendencies. This happens to a surprising number of rams.”
Ivy was discussing his family, things even Reuben didn’t know. Was the Eval folder his psych evaluation for the Llewellyns? With morbid curiosity, he continued to listen. “However she could give encouragement with a touch. Diogenes became so dependent on this assistance that he never went anywhere without her. Against regulations, she became involved, encouraging him in other ways. His siring four children with her became the closest thing I’ve ever seen to monogamy with a ram.”
I have siblings? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me? Rams owed it to the species to spread their talent to as many mates as possible, ensuring both continuation and diversity.
“This mutation makes Reuben both more considerate and needier. Unfortunately, the first two offspring were female, and the final child perished with the mother during the Therikmar offensive. We suspect Diogenes ended his life in a blaze of glory because of her loss. Restrict this information from Reuben at all costs to keep him alive.”
“How’s that working for you?” Reuben asked the air.
“Empathy could be the key element. He could be the one, the ram we’ve been searching for.”
The one for what?
Ivy’s recording snorted in amusement. “He thinks he’s an aberration because plump women excite him. He doesn’t realize rams are genetically predisposed to that. Only plump ewes are fertile, and his gift wants to propagate—sometimes so much it leaves me sore.”
He stifled amusement of his own, forgetting, for a moment, Ivy’s critical injury. She was there in the room with him, in all her glory. “I can’t distract him forever. He’s going to need one of his own kind for the initiation into the mysteries. Until he does, we won’t know for certain if he has the traditional Black Ram talent as well.”
What? I might be able to tap the computational power of the herd mind and use an entire planet to solve problems?
“There’s no reason to suspect he won’t. If he passes that test, his compassion will make him a better Goat leader than Xerxes. We’re laying the groundwork the best we can. I can’t ask Reuben to read books on philosophy the way we want in a leader, but I drop hints to Max. When Max reads them, he encourages Reuben to read the books or at least shares the highlights.”
That bitch has been grooming me for the worst job in the universe—the office of The Black Ram. Aghast, he didn’t know whether to be relieved or hate her. Tax payers provided for the Black Ram’s every need, and he could press individuals into reasonable service for the greater good. In return, any Goat who served could ask him to examine a problem that couldn’t be solved inside the traditional governmental framework. The ram’s solutions were sometimes so convoluted or immoral that no one would implement them, but anyone could ask. A variation of the boon was that any healthy ewe could ask to bear his child. He had to oblige because the talent belonged to the flock, and they had a duty to preserve it. Popular rams had many siring requests, but only the first from each world had to be honored by law. MI-23 handled the complex implementation with an iron hand.
The second file analyzed his every flaw, preference, and peccadillo—even describing the sexual positions he liked—everything that could influence and explain a future leader of worlds. “Reuben wanted to be a musician so he could fit in with Humans. However, he was barely adequate at drumming. The only thing real bands kept him around for was programming the synthesizer. He studied p
oetry and voice to woo Goat women, but he never succeeded. They laughed at him behind his back. He’ll never have the life of wine, women, and song he wanted.”
Reuben gripped his bedsheet, twisting it in anger as she laid out his life like a bad joke. “Break this to him gently, but he’s destined for one of two ends: dead in a gutter or political service for life. If we can get MI-23 to take him seriously, we’ll still have to surround him with a dedicated entourage to protect him. He’s far too trusting. He didn’t have the slightest clue I slept with other men while I was observing him. He’s so fragile, Roz is afraid he would’ve killed himself if he knew about Deke. It’s probably the only reason she didn’t out me.”
He couldn’t see for a moment. He couldn’t breathe. The lies were suffocating him. When he could move again, he picked up the neural staff from his exercise bag. He beat Ivy’s data cube to smithereens. No one would use this information against him or laugh at his shame. He stormed off to the cargo area, determined to destroy everything Ivy owned.
Grady had moved another stasis unit into the shielded core. The immobile Bat from Niisham prison was last in line. They would need Reuben’s help to move the prisoner without risk of waking, and no one trusted him with access to Ivy yet.
Good call. Reuben cranked the music again. He pretended to be a drummer as he smashed his ex-lover’s treasured possessions with the heavy staff. Using the butt, he pulverized her bracelet. After he shattered the wooden weapon with his furious blows, he used the ragged end to slice and puncture clothes.
In the end, nothing was left unharmed. His voice was hoarse from screaming, and his right hand was bloody. The cut on his palm stung less than his pride.
A stocky man with graying hair clapped his hands in a sarcastic ovation. Herb Greenberg, Roz’s stepfather, wore crisp, navy-blue pajamas and tan slippers. “That proved something.”
“I’m not drunk!” Reuben said, panicked that Max would get the wrong idea.
