Between the Stars (16 page)

An uproar began that not even Ulric's leather-lunged orders could silence. After half an hour, Nadia signaled and the outcry finally died down.

"I add my recommendation to Sieglinde's. You must all talk this over with your families, of course, but you must waste no time. Sieglinde will put at your disposal this new superluminal communication device to facilitate your conferences. She assures us that it is totally secure, and knowing Sieglinde, I believe it."

"That is the overwhelmingly important part of what I came here to say," Sieglinde told them. "Now, for those of you who have questions of a more technical nature, I'll answer them as best I can in the blue lounge."

A good third of the assembly flocked to follow her and Derek turned to Valentina. "Come on, let's go find our quarters. The real fun will start tomorrow, at the
Althing
."

She followed him through several labyrinthine corridors until they came to a suite that was much smaller than the Kuroda quarters, and decidedly odder. Valentina looked at the polished copper floor of the main room, the hollow, transparent furniture filled with colored smoke, the long tank full of live reptiles. "I think I recognize the decor. This must be where the Cianos live."

"Right again. The quarters are small, because there have never been very many Cianos, which is probably just as well for humanity. Right now my cousin Antigone is in residence. I saw her at the meeting, but she's a physicist, like most of the Cianos, so she'll probably be badgering Linde for a while."

Cautiously, Valentina lowered herself into a chair that seemed to be made of purple smoke. "Is that really how things get done out here? Family meetings where everybody has a say?"

"More or less. Avalon's a little concentrated, but really, the Belt culture is extremely dispersed. It was found that the family unit still works best in a frontier environment. Once the news gets spread, there'll be family meetings all over, then there'll be multi-clan meetings. The Roalstad clan, for instance, is closely allied with ours. They're mostly freighters, and the whole family practically lives full-time in their ships, but I saw Odin Roalstad at the meeting. He'll be on the horn to the family's ships right now and we'll have a joint get-together soon. Then individual colony and republic assemblies will thrash things out and tell their representatives at the
Althing
how they want to vote. It works pretty well, most of the time."

"It sounds inefficient to me, but when did anybody ever have an efficient—what the hell is that?" She pointed to a bizarre little figure that came through the door disguised as a Nootka totem pole. It was a small, humanoid robot, a stick figure with a featureless doorknob for a head. Over its head it held a tray of drinks and refreshments and beneath this burden it struggled and staggered as if bearing a great load under intense gravity. Occasionally it staggered sideways, but always it kept its balance and the tray stayed level. Finally it crossed the room and knelt abjectly before them, proffering the tray like a worshipper offering a sacrifice to the gods.

"This atrocity was designed by Stanislaus Ciano, one of Ugo's sons. He was rumored to be the only Ciano who possessed a sense of humor. He claimed he made it to test out a new gyroscope he'd designed." He selected a huge, skewered shrimp and bit into it. "Personally, I think he was crazy, like all the Cianos."

"I heard that!" said a voice from the entrance. The woman who came in wore a chin-to-floor cloak the exact color of fresh blood. Valentina remembered the amazing cloak from the meeting. It seemed to be made of some kind of watered silk that shimmered so luridly that she half-expected to see a spreading scarlet pool radiate from where the woman sat on the great hall's reed mats.

"Hello, Antigone," Derek said. "We've been quartered on you for the duration."

"Good," she said. "It'll be nice to have company. The rest never come to this part of the complex. I don't know why. And this is Valentina. Welcome to Castle Ciano." The two women gripped hands. Antigone had long, black hair, a white complexion and green eyes that showed white all around the irises. She took off her cloak and cast it across the room, collapsed into a chair and grabbed a bulb of Wild Turkey from the tray, holding it aloft. "To Ugo Ciano, wherever he is!"

"To Ugo," the other two chorused. The woman's slightly demented manner was so easy and natural that it took Valentina a moment to notice that she had been wearing nothing underneath the cloak. Derek seemed to notice nothing unusual, and Valentina did another of her numerous reassessments of the outworlders.

"Ugo Ciano has been dead for a long time, hasn't he?" she asked.

"Never proven!" said Antigone. "He tried out his new drive, there was a flash, and nothing was ever seen of him or his ship again. There are some of us who think he's still wandering around hyperspace somewhere." She sucked at the bulb of high-proof bourbon. "It's probably where he'd be happiest anyway."

"What do you think, Annie?" Derek asked. "Did Linde convince you?"

"It was a short session," she said. "Linde only answered a few questions before Nadia and Ulric hauled her off somewhere. Everything I heard her say checks out, though. I'm ready to head out. My bags are packed."

That, Valentina thought, probably didn't require much packing, given the woman's taste in attire. "Even if it means years cooped up in a ship headed for an unknown destination?"

"We live cooped up in ships all our lives," Antigone said. "Do you think I'd rather spend the next few years in a research lab dreaming up newer and better ways to kill Earthies? Be serious. The fact is, our lives won't change all that much, if we head out in big enough numbers. We've pretty well exhausted the possibilities of the asteroids."

"But to leave the solar system behind," Valentina said. "It's so final."

"Most of us," Antigone said, "never visit the planets or moons, just as most Earthies never visit other continents or countries. Almost anyone on Earth can live for years in a major city and never feel any great need to go anywhere else. You've seen the kind of facilities we have available to us in the major islands. There'll be plenty of work for everybody. ''

"That's another question," Valentina said. "Just what will you do? Mining has always been the major industry here, but you're leaving your biggest customer behind."

"We'll diversify," Derek said. "Earth never paid what our minerals were worth anyway. We'll be gearing up for planetary exploration. We'll have to start educating a lot of people in biological sciences since we hope to find life-bearing worlds. I'll need to go back to school for that. Oceanic studies, things like that."

"And," Antigone added, "we have to start doing some serious theoretical work on xenobiology and alien contact scenarios."

"What?" Valentina said.

"
Somebody
left those power packs behind."

"Oh."

"We'll stay busy," Derek said. "If the haul gets too dull for some people, we may develop a cold sleep process to cut the boredom."

"You people aren't afraid to think in big terms, are you?" Valentina said, disbelievingly.

"That situation on Earth," Derek said, "was brought about by people who refused to think ahead, or in any but small terms. If a lot of people were hungry, it was easier and quicker to take a surplus from the producers and give it away than to try to make the hungry ones productive. Why bother to educate people when it was so much easier to pander to their prejudice and ignorance and religious fanaticisms?"

"Not everyone is non-productive," Valentina protested.

"Just the vast majority," Antigone said. "And have the industrialists and the capitalists been any better? There was a time when they were willing to undertake long-term projects at a marginal profit, even operate at a loss for years, for the sake of accomplishing something great. For the last century, short-term, high-profit projects had been the rule. This year's annual dividend is all that counts. Few companies would be willing to wait two years for their money. Five years? Forget it.

"They fight the competition through more aggressive advertising, or government action, or cheap gimmickry. Anything but lowering prices, providing a better service or producing a superior product. The ideal is still monopoly. Supply and demand means nothing. If there is a surplus, the suppliers will conspire to create an artificial shortage to keep prices up."

"Carstairs crushed a lot of those conspiracies," Valentina said.

"He drove off a lot of honest businessmen as well," Derek told her. "Anyway, a system that requires the force and personality of one man at its head is no good. Now there are even more people, doing even less and demanding more. So, along comes Shevket. He's going to create some sort of slave state with perpetual war as its basis of prosperity."

"There's an old saying," Antigone said, "about people getting the government they deserve. I guess Carstairs' Earth First world-state wasn't bad enough for them. They'll deserve what they get this time, but I don't think I'll hang around to watch the final act."

Abruptly, she switched tracks. "We're going to have some work to do getting Sieglinde's drive units installed. Not only will the units be fairly large, but the accelerating thrust has to go directly through the center of mass of the asteroid. Any work going on in the rock during the journey is going to shift the center of mass, so there are going to have to be booster units to compensate."

Derek grinned. "I'm glad it's not my problem. Exploration is my specialty."

"Do you really plan to take some of the larger Island Worlds on this insane journey?" Valentina asked.

"Only the ones that vote to go," Derek said.

"I mean, isn't size a consideration? Surely only some of the smaller ones can be transported, like the ones that went out under antimatter drive."

"Linde wants to take Avalon," Antigone said.

"But Avalon's the largest of the inhabited asteroids!"

"It'll take a big engine," Antigone agreed.

I can't believe this, Valentina thought. I truly can't believe I'm sitting here with a boy barely out of his teens who seems to have developed a crush on me and a naked, whiskey-drinking woman seriously talking about taking an inhabited hunk of rock many kilometers in extent clear to another star system. It was as if she had suddenly been cast among an alien race.

"Let's see," Antigone said, reaching for a holo handset. "Here's Avalon." She called up a meter-long image of the rock, dotted with the lights of the ports, exterior operations and occasional windows. Near the narrower end Valentina could see the long window of the museum she had visited earlier in the day.

"Let's have a cutaway of the interior." A three-dimensional map of Avalon appeared, color-coded to display open spaces, tubes and tunnels, residential areas, industrial or agricultural areas, mining operations, ports and support facilities. As extensively worked as it had been, the vast bulk of the asteroid was still solid rock.

"Let me do a few calculations for a rough placement of the drive unit," Antigone said.

"Will it be internal or external?" Derek asked.

"Partially internal. It might simplify things if we installed it at the leading end of the rock and let the thrust blast back the whole length of the place, but that would take too long to install. Here we are." There was now an oblong outline of red and green dotted lines defining the shape of the drive unit. It took a large bite of rock near the South Polar port.

"Hey!" Derek protested. "We can't put it there!"

"Why not?" Antigone asked.

"That'll obliterate the Rabid Rockbuster. It's my favorite bar."

"This project is going to demand a lot of sacrifices, Derek," his cousin assured him.

The next day they got ready for what promised to be an uproarious session of the
Althing
. As they were about to leave the Ciano quarters, Valentina turned to Antigone. "Don't forget your clothes."

"Oh. Thanks for reminding me." She took a dazzling rainbow cloak that draped a stuffed lion and wrapped it in graceful, low-grav folds.

The
Althing
was held in a huge, worked-out mine surrounded by rows of stands. When the
Althing
was not in session, which was most of the time, it was used as a sports arena. When they arrived, the spectator area was already jammed. All the delegates were present, at least in holographic form.

"What are those?" Valentina said, nodding toward a group of bizarre figures rigged with glittering instruments.

"Aeaeans," Derek said. "They rarely deign to show here, even in holo. They must figure this is serious. Their usual delegate is a little old character who looks normal."

"Here comes Linde," Antigone said.

Sieglinde was accompanied by a number of officials of the
Althing
. While they went through a brief ceremonial opening, Valentina studied the delegates and spectators. They were as colorful and polyglot as a U.N. meeting, but she noticed one major difference: nearly every one of them looked as if he was anxious to get away and go somewhere else. Unlike U.N. delegates, she thought, these people figure they have something better to do.

Magnus Roalstad, the blond-bearded Speaker of the Month, opened the session. "You will now hear a historic announcement from our illustrious Sieglinde Kornfeld-Taggart. No violence, please."

The uproar began immediately when Sieglinde reached into a bag and drew out her Rhea Object. The Aeaeans began to squall frantically. "Where did you get that!" yelled their senior delegate, a person of indeterminate gender whose head was encased in a lattice of silver rods and minute crystals. "We were supposed to have the only one!"

"From the same place you got yours," she said reasonably, "Derek Kuroda."

"Kuroda!" The Aeaean shrieked across the width of the chamber, "You said you found just one!"

"You told us the same thing!" yelled the McNaughton delegate, a man who closely resembled a gorilla.

Instantly, hundreds of holo projectors turned toward Derek and he stood isolated in a blinding beam of light. Renown at last, he thought, terrified. What historic words can I give them? Why didn't I anticipate this and rehearse something? He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and tossed his long hair back gallantly.