Hammer and Crucible

by Cameron Cooper

  “You’ve been in that junk park for eighty-three years?” I asked.

  “Eighty-two years, six months, two weeks and two days,” Lyth said. “Terran Standard, that is.”

  No wonder the empathetic thing pined for company and was running about making sure we were happy, to ensure we wouldn’t want to leave.

  Lyth sat up. “Major Dalton is finished and is asking to speak to you,” he told me.

  “He can’t come here?”

  “He is receiving treatment,” Lyth replied.

  “You’d better show me the way to the infirmary,” I told him. “And don’t do that splitting thing, huh? It makes me feel like I’ve had one too many cocktails.”

  Lyth pouted, but obeyed.

  13

  Dalton sat in a comfortable chair in a large room with subdued color on the wall. The color extended to cupboard fronts, drawers and counters. The light was low. Dalton even had his feet up on a hassock. His long coat laid over the back of the chair and his sleeve was rolled up. His arm was extended, with a cuff around the thickest part of his forearm.

  Lyth moved a matching armchair over in front of Dalton and patted the back of it, indicating I should sit.

  The cushions were very soft.

  Then I tried to get up again. “The chair wasn’t here just now, when I came in.” Even the fastest printer known couldn’t print and grow a chair in seconds.

  Dalton smiled grimly. “It gets even weirder,” he assured me. “The walls move.”

  “Major Dalton is mildly claustrophobic,” Lyth said. “I made adjustments.”

  “Lyth is the most advanced ship Girish Wedekind ever designed,” I told Dalton. “You’re really claustrophobic? How’d you get in the Rangers?” Rangers had to squeeze into pods, crawl through tunnels, and breath each others’ body odor for days at a time while on missions—claustrophobia should have bounced him right out the recruiting center door.

  “I wasn’t, then,” Dalton said. “There was a thing a few years ago…” He scowled. “Doesn’t matter,” he growled.

  I looked at the cuff on his arm. “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” Dalton said, in the same tone. “Every time I try to say no to something, the AI parrots at me about how advanced it is, and how the treatment it can provide me is the very best available outside the most exclusive clinics anywhere in the empire.” His scowl deepened. “You primed the damn thing.”

  “Lyth did, I suspect,” I replied. “I’ve never spoken to the AI. So, what is the problem then? Can it fix your crush status?”

  “Not here,” Dalton said.

  I looked at Lyth. “The AI can’t administer crush juice, even in an emergency?”

  Most shipboard medical AIs could supervise crush shots—it was a basic function, as everyone on a ship needed high level crush status at all times.

  “I have crush juice in my system, still,” Dalton said. “The problem is…” He trailed off, looking disgusted.

  Lyth tilted his head, as if he was listening to something I couldn’t hear. “Ah!” he said. “Major Dalton underwent rejuvenation eleven years ago. The therapy did not properly extend his telomeres.”

  I looked at Dalton, surprised.

  He shrugged. “What can I say? Bootleg rejuvenation is expensive. I got what I paid for.”

  I felt a touch of…something. I squashed it. “Your cells are too old for the crush juice to work, and you can’t have another shot because the nanobots in that shot will fight with the ones you already have.”

  “Yeah, that’s about what the doc said,” Dalton drawled.

  How fucking ironic.

  “You don’t have to look like that,” Dalton growled.

  “You’ve been on the run for forty years, Gabriel,” I told him. “You’ve defied the odds. No one runs that long. Everyone gets caught eventually.”

  “In case it isn’t obvious, I’m not exactly thriving.” He lifted his arm with the hard cuff around it. “In fact, I was pretty close to rock bottom when Lyth found me.” He looked away from me.

  Lyth had the sense to keep his mouth shut.

  “When we hit station side, we’ll do something about the rejuvenation,” I told Dalton.

  He looked at me once more. “No. No favors.”

  “I need you fully functional.”

  “I’m not your junior officer anymore.”

  “You were never a junior officer,” I assured him.

  “Why exactly were you dodging the Rangers, anyway?”

  I sat back, startled. It wasn’t the change of subject it appeared to be, but it was an unexpected direction. I had forgotten how Dalton’s mind sometimes tore off on strange tangents, seeing oblique connections and bizarre associations.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Dalton said. “We know why I want to avoid Rangers—”

  “I know the external reason, but I need to know the motive behind it,” I replied.

  “You, first,” Dalton said, then shut up. His eyes narrowed as he studied me, seeing if I would meet him halfway.

  He was right. He was no longer a Ranger officer reporting to me.

  And I was no longer the Colonel he had reported to. I had to shift to match the changed circumstances. “I diverted my family corporation’s annual dividends payment and bought a rejuvenation and crush juice with some of it,” I told him. “The family CEO informed the police battalions, who are now looking for me.”

  Dalton’s eyes grew very wide. “You stole money?” He started to smile. “Damn, you actually have changed, haven’t you?”

  “I haven’t changed. But I am adapting to the circumstances,” I replied as calmly as I could, even though my pulse had jumped. I didn’t like being called a thief, even though that was exactly what I was—at least for now. I pushed the concern aside. “Why did you desert your post, Dalton?”

  “Why did you steal the money and rejuvenate?” he shot back. “Rumor said you were sitting on your stellar barge, waiting for the end.”

  “I was,” I replied as calmly as I could. We could go around and around all day, trading I-dare-you’s. I cut through it, instead. “Juliyana found orders transferring Noam to the Imperial Shield, a year before he died. They carried my chop.”

  Dalton grew still. “Your chop…”

  “I found the real orders, the ones with your signature.”

  He sat back. “That’s why you were looking for me. You’re looking into Noam’s death.”

  “There’s something odd about it,” I told him. “At least, Juliyana thinks so, and she has a lot of documents that suggest it.”

  “Suggest it, or you just want them to suggest it?” Dalton asked. His voice held none of the usual harsh notes.

  “So why did you bolt, Dalton?”

  His expression closed over. “I got a message that said it would be a smart move to fade over the horizon. It was a source I trusted…so I faded.”

  And he had been fading ever since.

  “Just like that?” I asked. “No questions?”

  “Just like that.” He gazed back at me, unwavering.

  I recognized that I would not get anything more out of him right now. “Lyth, how long are we in the hole, for?”

  “There are another eighteen hours, thirty-three minutes and forty-seven seconds remaining before we emerge,” Lyth said smoothly, his tone polite and impartial.

  I nodded and got to my feet. “Finish your treatment. We can talk later,” I told Dalton. He needed time to unclench. “Lyth, you mentioned staterooms. Show me one of them.”

  “Good luck with that,” Dalton said, as I left.

  I found out what he meant very quickly, for Lyth walked me along the corridor we had followed when we first arrived. It ran down the flank of the ship and only jigged to the center to lead directly to the bridge deck.

  “You may choose any door,” Lyth told me.

  I peered at the half dozen security doors along the corridor and frowned. “I don’t remember seeing all these doors before.”
I had never fully lost the habit of mentally mapping doors and routes and exits through strange environments. I would have remembered these.

  “They were not here the last time you traversed the corridor,” Lyth told me.

  I glared at him.

  “They’re just doors,” Lyth added, his voice soft. “Here.” He moved over to the nearest one and waved his hand over the keyplate, as if he had biometrics it could scan. The door opened. Only in the back of my mind did I process that he had just opened the door for his own avatar.

  I stepped up to the open doorway, curious.

  The room beyond was blank, featureless, and huge. “Who uses this place? The fucking Emperor?”

  “Too large?” Lyth said.

  The walls moved and shifted.

  I staggered back a step or two. “What the…” I moved back to the doorway and would have propped myself up against the frame, except I suddenly remembered that the door hadn’t been here a while ago, either. I made myself stand there, my arms crossed, watching the walls…flow.

  It was the same type of movement Lyth had used when he turned into a finger and pressed the navigation table power-on button.

  “You mean, this entire ship is made of nanobots?” I breathed, awe stealing all the strength from my voice.

  “The exterior walls are hardened carbide metal, to withstand the rigors of space.”

  “And they’re rusty,” I added, my tone dry.

  “Not for much longer,” Lyth replied serenely. “I’m restoring the outer epidermis as we speak.”

  He meant it literally. “Right now?” I asked. “Out there?”

  “How do you scratch an itch?” he asked me, his tone curious.

  “I just scratch. I don’t think about it.” I nodded. “Okay, got it. The epidermis is just you. But these inner walls…even the corridor wall, they’re made up of your nanobots?”

  “No. My nanobots are smarter and have inbuilt sensory and communications functions. The bots that the walls and everything in the living section of the ship is made of are pure construction bots. They move, grip and hold still when they’re told to.”

  “By you.”

  “Yes.” Lyth smiled. “So…is the room of sufficient dimensions to suit you?”

  I looked again. The walls, still blank and featureless, were considerably closer together, yet the space was still larger than my apartment on the Judeste. “I could learn to live with it,” I said cautiously. “You created an armchair…” I added. A thought struck me. “Was the galley even there before we got there?”

  “It was there before you got there,” Lyth replied. “For a few minutes, at least.”

  I had an even more horrible thought. “Was my curry made of nanobots, then?”

  “The printer is a perfectly normal printer,” Lyth replied. “The bots just move it with them, as required.”

  “The energy needed for something like this…” I murmured.

  “Every time the nanobots move, they create kinetic energy, which is drained from them to avoid damaging them, and stored for future use. I never run out of internal energy.” He was very proud of that. “So…what furniture would you like in your room?”

  “A bed, for now,” I told him. I was just about to add that I needed pillows and sheets and a thick eiderdown over the top to snuggle beneath, when a bed rose up from the floor, looking unformed and lumpy. The surfaces smoothed out, developed details, grew flat and colored themselves in, until finally, a bed stood there. It was large enough for at least two people, with lots of pillows and a thick comforter.

  “I could get to enjoy this,” I said. “Once you’ve made something like the bed, can you change it?”

  “It is easier to scrap it, disperse the nanobots, and start again,” Lyth admitted. “But changes are certainly possible whenever you want them. Do you want me to change anything now?” The comforter on the bed shifted through patterns and rainbow colors.

  “As long as it is warm and soft, I’m fine,” I said quickly. “I had a sack with me on the deck...”

  “Fetching it,” Lyth replied, his tone remote. “It’ll be here in a moment. I’ve added a concierge printer, there.” He nodded. One of the walls now featured the dark face of a concierge and the maw of a printer beneath. “The concierge is not me, so you may deal with it with complete privacy.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said honestly.

  “If you require any changes, the concierge can arrange them. Ask for whatever you need.”

  A semicircular hole a meter high appeared at the bottom of one of the walls, next to the bed. A platform on wheels rolled out of the hole. My sack was on top of it.

  I pushed my surprise aside. Why wouldn’t the ship just push aside nanobots and take the quickest route to where it needed to go?

  “I’m never going to sleep, wondering if a wall is suddenly going to shift or open up and let something through.” I glared at Lyth. “Humans like stability,” I added.

  Lyth pressed a finger to his temple, as if he was thinking hard. “I have settled the matter with the concierge,” he told me. “If you tell the concierge to lock your room settings, no one else may change them—not even me. Then you will be assured that nothing will move unless you wish it to.”

  “That works for now,” I said, although I was going to have to contemplate how one related to a space that could change to anything in an instant.

  But right now, the bed beckoned.

  “Juliyana is asking for you,” Lyth said.

  “Tell her to get some sleep,” I replied, moving toward the bed. “I’ll talk to her in eight hours.” I frowned. “What is the ship time, right now?”

  “Whatever you want it to be,” Lyth replied.

  Of course.

  “Then in nine hours, it will be six in the morning. Tell the others, please.”

  “Goodnight, Colonel.”

  “Danny,” I growled. “I haven’t been Colonel Andela for a long time.”

  “Good night, then, Captain Danny,” Lyth said.

  I gave up.

  Lyth went away, the door closed behind him with a soft hiss, then gave a tiny chirp to indicate it was locked.

  The bed was perfectly soft and snuggle-inducing. I was woken by the light in the room shifting toward dawn, until the sun rose, blazing, up one wall and roused me to full wakefulness.

  Yeah, I could get very used to this.

  14

  The galley wasn’t where I left it.

  I was positive the door had moved a few meters up the passage from where it had been. But the door looked the same and when I approached it, it opened as it had before.

  I stopped on the sill for a moment, to absorb the differences. Last night, the galley had been adequately functional, with the table and two benches, the printer maw and some recessed cupboards and drawers on one wall.

  I wasn’t sure where the printer was anymore, but for a moment, that wasn’t my concern.

  I stood in an antique edifice I could vaguely remember having seen before, but only in images. Where I stood was approximately in the middle of it. To either side was a row of tables with padded benches on either side of them, with a clear space running down the middle. On the other side of the corridor was a high counter with round stools in front of it, screwed to the floor at regular intervals. The counter was clear in places, but there were islands of things—in my surprise, I didn’t absorb the details, only that there were glass domes and cylinders displaying what was inside.

  From somewhere in the room, music was playing very quietly. A muted voice sang too softly for me to hear the lyrics. I was positive I’d never heard the song before, yet it seemed familiar, anyway.

  The wall that the corridor behind me had in common with this place was dazzlingly bright. I took another step forward to inspect the wall.

  It looked like a glass window, running the length of the long room, with metal supports spaced across it. On the pane immediately next to the door, words had been painted in a rainbow arc, but t
hey were in reverse, a display for whoever might read them on the other side. My brain said there was no “other side” to the illusion, but damn it, there were people out there in the sunshine, walking by. And there were ground vehicles that looked nothing like anything I had ever seen before. The only reason I knew they were ground vehicles was because a woman in very odd clothes settled behind the controls of one of them, started it, and steered it away from where it had been parked. The vehicle would be forced to follow the paved road because it had inflated wheels.

  The sound of people walking by, the vehicles, and even further away, birds and high childish voices calling to each came through the “window”.

  Overriding all that, though, was the smell of brewed coffee…and hot food. I thought I could detect the scent of maple syrup.

  “Danny,” Juliyana called.

  I had been aware of her and Dalton sitting to the left, when I stepped in. I pulled myself away from the fascinating view through the window and walked along the corridor to where they were sitting and settled on the bench beside Juliyana.

  Dalton held out a thick piece of card toward me, with text and decorations on it.

  “An analogue menu,” I murmured.

  “Not exactly,” Dalton said. “If you double tap what you want, that orders it.”

  “I told it what I wanted and it wrote it there for me to tap and confirm,” Juliyana said. “Now we’re just waiting for it to arrive.”

  I tapped on the eggs. Then I added waffles because the smell of warm syrup was making my mouth water. And coffee, because that smell was divine, too. The menu wrote a big green check mark next to each item I tapped.

  I handed the menu back to Dalton. “Is this place your idea?”

  “I asked the concierge if it had seen images of old Terran diners,” he said. “Apparently, it has.”

  Juliyana smothered her laugh.

  I just stared at Dalton.

  He gave a defensive shrug. “I like history, okay?”

  “Military history, sure,” I said, for I remembered his interest from the days when I had known him on Annatarr.

  “History, period,” Dalton said. “I’ve branched out. Time can stretch when you’re hiding from everyone.”