'Would you explain?' I finally asked.
'They're from the days of the ancients,' the redhead said. 'We've lost a lot of that technology, although we're slowly regaining some of it. They're just about invulnerable to almost all mite technology, except a bank of high-powered lasers, and they can move fast enough that no one could keep the focus on them.'
'To be so young for so long ... so powerful ...'
'What do you think you'll look like in a century or two?' I hadn't thought about it.
'You'll look like they do. Have you seen any old-looking Rykashans?'
'No,' I answered after a moment. 'I don't know about this ... immortality, isn't it?'
'Not for most of us. Tomas and Alicia are the exceptions. They're close to five thousand years old. Things fell apart before the ancients could modify nanites on a personal basis for more than a handful of individuals. Theirs are intertwined with their gene structure.'
'I thought you said—'
'No. Yours, mine - they have to be compatible, but there's a difference between actual link-ties and compatibility. We don't have to worry about growing old or disease, but we're not immortal'
'Accidents?'
'Usually. Or starvation or asphyxiation.'
Starvation? I couldn't see any of these people getting trapped in a mite stone cell.
'From accidents. Say there's a malfunction on a needle ship. Your nanites will protect you so long as there's any oxygen anywhere and so long as you have any food or fat cells left to cannibalize. But space is big. We've had the same thing happen to people exploring. Once in a while, some needle jockey ends up mistranslating and the ship goes into a stellar mass. Nanites won't protect you from that. The probabilities are low ... but they mount up over several millennia.'
I was supposed to become a needle jockey, a Web-ship pilot. My thoughts scrambled back through my information bank.
'Don't bother,' said Cerrelle. 'We all die of accidents - or suicide. The only question is when.'
I pursed my lips, wanting to shake my head but not wanting to enough to endure any more comments from Cerrelle.
'It's time for me to go,' she said. 'You need to get settled so that you can get on with your training.'
We stood, and I wondered if I would regret her departure.
19
To the work alone are you entitled, never to its fruit.
Beginning the next morning, things got harder.
I followed Cerrelle's instructions and appeared in the logistics building at 0855 the next morning. One thing I had learned was that Rykashans didn't repeat themselves - not often, anyway, from what I'd seen.
You're Tyndel,' observed the round-cheeked and hollow-eyed woman who met me in the corridor. 'I'm Andra. Along with long-range logistics planning, I also handle preliminary indoc and training.'
I wondered how many needle jockeys there were.
'Not just potential needle jockeys, but everything from the basics of maintenance to muscle-powered cargo lugs. Especially with nanites, the human body is the most adaptable equipment there is, and we try not to waste it' She offered a flat smile, a smile that should have told me more than it did. 'In here.'
I followed her into a small room flooded with light from windowed walls on two sides. There were half a dozen wooden chairs with upholstered cushions. Each cushion had a different design. I sat on a bluebell.
Andra sat backward on the chair across from me, her trousered legs curled around the chair back, her arms crossed and resting on the squared off wooden frame. The mid-toned green tunic and trousers set off her strawberry hair and pale freckled complexion.
'If you were one of our youngsters, I wouldn't bother with the verbal part, just start you on the education and let it run, but... you're not. Your payback for being reclaimed is ten years of being a needle jockey. That's ten years personally experienced elapsed time, not earth standard objective time.'
I still wanted to wince at the thought of being an interstellar cargo pilot. The ancients had gone to the stars, and the result had been total disaster.
'Forget that business about the ancients and the stars. We know what you're thinking, Tyndel. You've got enough telemetered nanites in your gray cells to let me - and Cerrelle - know what your inclinations are before you know. The ancients barely got to the gas giants. They had to invest too much in capital structures for those who didn't pay their way. You'll get more information on that as you go along. What you need to know is that we have colonies in the dozen or so systems with habitable or potentially habitable planets that we can reach through the overspace Web. They're all out from Galactic Center - we're pushing to reach the rim and cross the void, but that may be a while, and it's hard to do it all in weightlessness. All of this requires transporting infrastructure goods - essentially power systems and basic nanite equipment and structures, as well as specialized biologic templates. That's where you and the other needle jockeys come in.'
'Aren't the ships infrastructure, too?' I asked, trying to elicit more information or statements that would tie to what had been poured into me.
'You're right. They're the most expensive and hardest to replace. That's why good and motivated needle jockeys are important. That's why your payback is only ten years if you make it to be a needle jockey.'
Only ten years?
'Cargo handlers or ship support types - that would be fifteen years, at times more.'
'What about regular demons?' I asked.
'Everyone has an initial obligation. It's twenty to forty years for someone born here in Runswi. Forty years if you stay planetside. Then there's an additional obligation every century of personal elapsed time. You don't think we just dumped this on you because you're an outsider, do you?'
That was exactly what I had thought. I looked down at the polished and shimmering golden oak planks.
You former mites don't like to think through anything that's unpleasant or at variance with your belief systems.' Andra looked at me without compassion, without anger. You're going to have to get over that.'
Easier said than done, I thought.
A needle ship,' continued the strawberry blonde, 'what is it? It's basically a long chunk of composite filled with stored energy that jockeys thread through the Web of overspace. Overspace isn't, but it can be thought to be, the magnification of normspace to the degree necessary to magnify natural and artificial wormholes and quantum chinks to the size where a needle can be threaded through such passages.' She smiled dryly. 'Or, I suppose, the analogy could be that overspace shrinks needle ships enough to let them penetrate such quantum passages. Either way, the effect is the same.'
Some of it I understood. Composite was used as much as possible because metal tended to make the control fields that drove the ships unstable or less controllable or both. The same was true for operating fusactor power plants.
Some of it I didn't, even after scrambling through the still-disorganized information piled in the corners of my brain.
'Any questions?'
I had lots, and scarcely knew where to begin. Finally, I sputtered out some words, as much to keep things going as anything.
'You seem to imply that a lot of cargo needs to be carried. Why so much, when nanotechnology can create materials—'
'Nanites are very good at rearranging existing materials, but not every place in the universe holds the diversity of elements that earth and our solar system do - or in places that can be easily reached.' She shrugged. 'As for transmutation, that doesn't work. Quantum mechanics still applies. To locate and move a lepton precisely enough to rearrange a subatomic structure does horrendous things to its velocity, not to mention a few other properties ... and you don't want to do that, especially if a top quark's involved.'