The Duke of Uranium

by John Barnes

  "Sorry, my mistake," Jak said, "I just plain misjudged. I hope you're not hurt."

  "Not badly. You pulled it most of the way. And at least after the Exchange Dance, when everyone's sneaking into corners, I can offer to show someone my celebrity bruises." He breathed deeply a couple more times. "What the hell was that poor little gweetz's name? I can't remember. Anyway, I had to watch him a few times, and as far as I could tell he really did think the whole world was some weird game that we were all playing to exclude and hurt him, and he seemed to think that all of us could just change it for him, but we were refusing out of pure nastiness.

  "I don't think he ever dakked that his environment was dangerous—and that's the sort of problem that the environment is really good at fixing, unfortunately." He bent forward over his crossed legs, pushing down to stretch his back and hamstrings, and added, "And if nothing else it makes a good story to tell to other kids and to CUPVs. We might lose a crew member every other year to accidental death, and we get a serious injury more often than that, just due to people being on en-tropy's bad side, and that's bad enough, without adding stupidity and mulishness to the mix."

  "I wouldn't think that people who were so careful would worry about getting caught on the bad side of entropy."

  "Oh, there is such a thing as pure bad luck and unfortunate coincidence and all that. But, if we thought or talked about it too much we'd all be too afraid to work, masen? Pabrino's dad got killed when a hidden defect in a propulsion tube gave him a burst of ultrahard alpha. No way anyone could have known that would happen. It's just that mostly what luck you have, you make, and that's important to remember, so that you keep making it."

  "Just now I don't think I could forget." Jak shook his head. "You know, I realize it was for good reasons, but you all probably really did dislike that poor kid, after a while, since he fit in so badly."

  "I suppose we did. And he might have sensed that. But we were also trying to keep him from dying the way he did. Look, I didn't mean to bring up anything so gloomy; I just wanted to make sure you don't get too enthusiastic and become careless. Since you seem to really like working shipboard, Lewo deputized me to talk with you about it. Really, he's doing it because he's impressed, and because he specks you might stick with it and become a crewie, and you need to be a good one."

  "I appreciate that, but I haven't been careless yet, I don't think—at least he hasn't said a word about it—"

  "I guess he was looking through your vita and he found the thing about you climbing the light shaft, and started to think maybe you were more reckless than you looked."

  "Well, I have to admit it was pretty stupid of me to get involved in that, so I can understand his concern." Jak smiled, hoping to get the subject changed; he had a feeling that the light shaft incident would be with him for a long time. "All the same, I have to say that dangers and gloominess and all, I like being a CUPV. It's better than just being a passenger—I don't know what I'd have done with all that time if you and your friends hadn't gotten me into this."

  Piaro seemed to hesitate for a moment and then said, "I should probably confess. There's something I didn't tell you about because I was afraid of scaring you off. Nothing awful, we all live with it regularly, but in all fairness you should have known before you decided to sign up, and I guess now, as we've gotten to be better friends, I'm starting to think you probably do have a right to know, right now, while there's still plenty of time to just go back to being a passenger. Have you heard everyone grumbling about the cargo switch at Mercury?"

  "Once or twice. Since there seemed to be need for general labor, and since I don't have anything like enough points to stay out of the pool for the jobs nobody wants, I just signed up for GL for that whole period. Lewo says I'll really learn what being a crewie is all about."

  "Oh, no! Well, you'll certainly learn that. But I didn't tell you, and I should have, and now you're going to hate me."

  "How much am I going to hate you?" Jak was think-ing that he could always suggest that they do some more sparring, depending on just what he was about to hear.

  Piaro sighed. "It's just that when we do cargo switch at Mercury, we do it on the loop. It takes the whole crew working to do it—about twenty-four hours to set up, three hours of pure screaming madness for the switch, and then another four hours for safe shutdown. Mercury needs everything and they export stuff that everyone needs, and the ship only earns money when stuff transfers, so at Mercury we practically empty the hold and refill it. Most of the crew gets very little sleep and only occasional meals during that time, but the GLs—like you're going to be—usually get no sleep at all and never eat when they aren't in motion. It's about the most exhausting thing you can do. In fact, it's such a strain on ship's resources that we generally just lock the passenger side of the Spirit down, keep the passengers all in their cabins with food delivered, tell'em that unless it's the air we aren't fixing anything, until it's all over. They all get cranky and complain constantly, but it's the only way we ever make cargo switch on schedule."

  Jak shrugged. "So if I weren't doing GL as a CUPV, I'd be sitting alone in my stateroom with my thumb up wherever, with everything locked down so that even what amusements you have wouldn't be available. I'd be wondering what was going on, and trying to see things on the onboard cameras and having no idea what they were. Whereas, as a CUPV, I might be overworked and precessed and so on, but I do get to work."

  Piaro laughed. "Oh, do you get to work. Oh, oh, do you."

  As the days went by, Jak found that he liked his life as a CUPV more and more. It took away the need to pass the time, and gave him toves, and something to talk about with them. Once Lewo and the other supervisors realized that he wasn't just trying it out, but would actually be working for the rest of the voyage, they put more effort and attention into training him, and held him to a higher standard, and so it became more interesting and challenging.

  He occasionally wondered why Duj hadn't written, but maybe writing was just not a male thing, or maybe it wasn't a panth thing. He saw Phrysaba almost daily and their romance, friendship, or whatever it was settled into a comfortable routine—something he had never had with Sesh, and wouldn't have wanted for the rest of his life, but for the voyage, it was pleasant. They saw recorded plays and movies together, played viv games (shipboard morals being what they were, they stayed away from the ones that involved sex—Jak was quietly amused that he had acquired a demmy that he had yet even to kiss, and that they hadn't even checked each other out on viv), and played mixed doubles at various sports with other people their age.

  Once, when they were having coffee together in the evening, Phrysaba was saying, "I don't know, it seems like I've been everywhere but I've never visited anywhere. I mean, I've seen all the inhabited worlds up close at least once, most of them twice, and the busy lower ones like Earth and Mars more times than I can count. I've seen them all from orbit and picked out the features and seen the cities glowing on their night sides, but you know, I've never once put foot down on any of them. Now partly that's because they're stricter with girls than they are with boys, but most of the boys here never want to get off the ship, either."

  Jak nodded. "I've always dreamed of traveling. It just seems to me that with four planets, two big stations, dozens of inhabited moons around the gas giants and hundreds of inhabited asteroids, and all the rest of it, there's too much to see to get it all seen in one lifetime, and it would be so light to just get started, masen?"

  "Once," Phrysaba said, "when Piaro and I were nine years old, we dropped off a load of cargo at Pluto. And I got to be on helm during part of the close approach. That was about the most exotic thing I've done—and it was all from the cockpit of the ship, anyway."

  "It would've been kind of hard to have taken surface leave there, even if you'd been old enough."

  "Not that hard. There is a little human settlement there, Ultima, to service the Rubahy trade. Most ships unload stuff to the humans in Ultima, and then the Ulti-mans
are the ones who deal with the Rubahy. It tends to make everyone else comfortable and the Ultimans rich. So there are humans there, and there's a human settlement available to live in. But I don't know if you can even get surface leave there—the Rubahy try to restrict the number of humans coming in or out of Ultima, for security reasons I think."

  "Hah. I thought Pluto and Charon were still officially ours, even if the Rubahy have been squatting on them for a thousand years. We ought to be able to make regular inspections, the way a landlord can. After all, we won the war. Wanged them, toktru. That should count for something."

  Phrysaba shrugged. 'That was a thousand years ago. Besides, the Rubahy, and the Ultimans, were nice enough to the ship—all the communications were models of courtesy—and they paid huge bonuses all around. And like everyone always says, it's possible that someday we're going to need them. If the decision in Galactic Court goes against us both, it'll be us against the galaxy, and we'll need anything that will fight on our side. And say anything else about them, they're fighters."

  Jak was about to make the standard retort that since, if Galactic Court ruled against the two species, the odds were terrible no matter what, one might as well die in good human company, except that he remembered what Uncle Sib had told him about the views of Triangle One, and it seemed uncomfortably like that. "Well," Jak said, "I guess there's some truth in all that, and I can dak the idea that we're in the same capsule and breathing the same air so it's better not to fart. But after all they're the ones that put us in our present predicament, and they're vicious and evil and gross to look at. I wouldn't use the word 'terrier' around one, because I'm not that kind of rude, and if it comes down to humans and Rubahy against the galaxy then I guess I'll fight side by side with them, but I don't have to like them. Have you ever seen one? It's a sight to turn your stomach."

  She shook her head. "We haven't carried a Rubahy passenger in my lifetime. I've seen pictures, of course."

  Jak nodded. "The pictures are accurate enough but somehow they don't give you the feeling of how terrifying it is to dak that something that looks like that is alive—let alone that it's looking back at you. Anyway, because the traveling section of the Galactic Court meets in the Hive, and because so much of the trade with the Rubahy goes through the big corporations that tend to have headquarters on the Hive, around the Hive we always have a lot of Rubahy on board—though 'a lot' means 'around three thousand,' which isn't all that many to compare with the billion-plus humans.

  "Sometimes, for some reason or other, they invite the Rubahy to come out and speak to school classes. That's where I've seen them. The thing is, there's not any great number of things to talk about—it's a very simple story. They tried to conquer us. It didn't work out. They smashed up a lot of our home system. We made Alpha Draconis flare up and baked their home system. Suddenly, in the middle of all that, a galactic authority that neither civilization knew even existed ran in blowing a whistle and handing out penalties to both sides. That's all there is, and repeating it doesn't make it more complicated, or interesting, and toktru it doesn't make either side like the other one better or dak the other point of view. We have excellent reasons to hate each other, and they're so alien that we can't even be sure that they have the concept of hate."

  Phrysaba looked straight into his eyes and said, "I just can't believe hate is a good thing, ever."

  "Well, I can dak that much." Jak sighed. "Anyway, since the history took two minutes or less to cover, and it was inflammatory, they'd usually just say 'Any ques-tions for our guest?' and then we'd ask our questions, and after each question, the Rubahy guests would explain why the question was meaningless in their culture, and then they'd try to explain what would be meaningful, and we wouldn't get it.

  "So like for example we'd ask, 'What's a Rubahy family like?' and, in this weird whistling tone, but pretty good Standard if you listened carefully, he'd say, 'We don't have families, we have…' and then he'd make a strange noise. Which would turn out to translate as the 'oath-sworn uncles club,' or some such. We're just never going to dak them, not ever, nor they us."

  Phrysaba shrugged and said, "Well, I suppose if you take in enough anti-Rubahy prejudice when you're growing up—and the Hive is really the place to get a big dose of it—then what you're saying probably all specks singing-on. But out here, we know that Rubahy traders trade fair, and we know that if you're in trouble in the upper system and send a help call, like as not it'll be a Rubahy ship that answers and they'll do whatever it takes to help you. And a lot of us, human and Rubahy spaceborn alike, speck it won't be for a war that we'll need the Rubahy. We'll need them for the getaway."

  "The getaway?"

  "Well, despite the school you went to and the way you went through it—"

  "Hey, we had championships in six sports and one viv program rated us 'most promiscuous.' Don't knock my school."

  "Despite, as I was saying, the school you went to—I do suppose you've heard about the possibility of the Extermination Order?"

  "Yeah, people are always using it as an excuse to be nice to the Rubahy, because if the Galactic Court does issue an Extermination Order, it's possible that both species will be ordered exterminated, and if that happens we'll need allies—especially since it will be us and the Rubahy against the galaxy. But that won't happen. First of all, we're a nice species and they're not. And secondly, given what kind of armed forces the Galactic Court probably has behind it, anyway the war will be over and everyone, human and Rubahy, will be dead, before the different presidents and kings can even phone each other."

  "If you're talking about fighting, and you're talking about the space stations, you might be right. But human and Rubahy crewies see things differently. We aren't looking for allies to fight beside us because none of us are planning to fight. Free merchants aren't fighters, to begin with, and our ships are so vulnerable that they might as well have bull's-eyes painted on them. We can't contribute a thing to the war, which probably will be about as long as you say. But nobody knows how an Extermination Order would be carried out, and maybe they can't hit everyone everywhere all at once. Maybe they hit the planets and the big stations first, masen? That would make sense.

  "Now, space is big, and all sunclippers can be self-sufficient indefinitely. If suddenly there are bright flashes all over the solar system, from where the settlements used to be, and nothing on the radio but static, then human and Rubahy alike, we'll all furl sails, run black, coast up into the dark away from Sol, and then set out for Canaan."

  "Canaan? Where's that?"

  "I think every crewie knows the story; since you're turning crewie, you might as well hear it, too. Somewhere out there, within fifty light-years, supposedly, there's a solar system that would work as a new home for us and the Rubahy, though everyone seems to know, somehow, that the only habitable zone planet is pretty nasty and desolate. At least that's the news that came back on Titan's Dancer—are you all right?"

  "You just startled me. I'd heard of it before."

  "Well, of course, you've heard of it, silly. Even a completely illiterate gweetz who never follows the news will have heard of Titan's Dancer. It was the biggest thing in the news when it happened, and even though it was half a generation before we were born, people are still talking about it all the time. It was practically made to order for vid and viv dramatizations, masen? A ship missing for centuries radio-hailed Earth, came in for its approach, matched orbits with Singing Port, millions of people saw it with their own eyes and radar recorded it, and then it vanished completely in a time interval too short to measure. Having heard of Titan's Dancer is like having heard of Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, the Sea of Crises Flood, or Captain Breeko's Gate."

  Jak had no idea what any of those were, though he was pretty sure someone had mentioned something about them in school. He had recognized Titan's Dancer only from what he was supposed to say to Bex Riveroma. He didn't like to admit it, but he was beginning to see that the way the crewies took their schooling se
riously was probably a help to them—it gave them something to talk about when life was really boring. Oh, well, he'd just have to avoid boring situations.

  Phrysaba was still talking, he realized, and he had not been paying attention, and once again missing his chance to learn something. "—seven or eight senior captains, so we'd meet up at some point in empty space and go from there. It has lots of names, Canaan, Shangri-la, Over Jordan, Mount BRC, New Masada, Ghostworld, Prestojon, but it's all the same story."

  Jak specked that if ever the Galactic Court gave the extermination order, he'd either be on a sunclipper, which would go to Canaan, whatever that was, or he'd be killed here in the solar system, so there was no special reason to ask her to repeat anything, and reveal that mostly he'd been thinking about how much he hated school, how nice Phrysaba looked, what a waste of time history was, and how much he'd like to get Phrysaba alone and naked. No doubt Uncle Sib was right, and any attempt to educate him was a waste.

  Before the Exchange Dance, he got a thorough briefing from Piaro about every aspect of the tradition. Like most traditions ranging from funerals to Christmas, it had evolved until it largely attacked what it was supposed to support; rather than mixing up the couples, it tended to confirm them by requiring everyone, always, to get permission from the other member of the couple before any contact of any kind. Jak graciously granted permission all night for Phrysaba to dance and talk with everyone; she did the same. But except during their brief dances with others, they were seldom more than a meter apart all night.

  Not that Jak minded. Phrysaba had chosen a very conservative asymmetrical dress, off the shoulder on the left with a raked hem high on the right, in a solid burgundy, that, for all its stodginess to Jak's eyes, did reveal that she had a very fine figure. When he walked her back to Unmarried Women's Quarters, they stole a minute in the corridor, between couples and cameras and all, to kiss and touch; Jak discovered that there was at least one way in which she wasn't shy at all.