The implications overwhelmed her. She blinked and found herself kneeling on the floor. She stood up and closed the door, anxious not to have anyone interrupt her train of thought.
With the laser filamentation technique, she could make a strand that was, for all practical purposes, an infinite line of infinite strength and infinite thinness.
Karen Langelier hugged her knees and began to laugh to herself. No matter what, Ray’s caseload tonight could never compare with this!
Eventually, the single-molecular fiber, woven in one and a half dimensions with its own potential, became known as weave wire. Karen would have preferred something more elegant, but the name stuck.
L-4: AGUINALDO—Day 1 Minus 3 Years
Being at the Aguinaldo’s Jumpoff was like standing at the bottom of a gargantuan well. Ramis floated at one end of the zero-G core; he squinted along the lightaxis to the other end, ten kilometers away. Clusters of children played in the core, punctuated by sail-creature nymphs darting in and out, genetically programmed to keep the youngsters away from the central column of fiberoptic threads. Adults navigated the rim, leaping from bouncer to bouncer in a race around the circumferential Sibuyan Sea.
Living areas curled around the cylindrical side, snaking through the fields of taro and abaca, rice paddies, stadiums, and streams. Experimental sectors of wall-kelp covered most of the remainder of the Aguinaldo’s metallic structure.
As Ramis revolved around the lightaxis, it seemed as though his whole world might collapse and fall to the center. The sight always made him dizzy. But he smiled.
Ramis Barrera was thirteen, though smaller than others his age, and he fiercely fought against the perception that he was younger. He tried to keep aloof, avoiding others to make himself seem more independent.
Even three years before, back on Earth in the Baguio resort on the Philippines, Ramis had tried to be tough and snub his mother when she came to see him and his brother in the Sari-Sari store. Ramis’s parents owned the store, but they spent most of their time at the Scripps Institute with Dr. Sandovaal. Ramis and his older brother Salita often minded the store, and occasionally their mother dropped in to check on them. Salita would hide his newly opened bottle of San Miguel and the blue-seal cigarettes he had been sneaking; Ramis would jump down from the counter and pretend to be businesslike, to impress his mother with how mature he could act. The room would grow quiet, and they would be able to hear the sounds from outside. With only a stern look, his mother would send them back to work …
But now, up in the Aguinaldo and floating at Jumpoff, he wished she were here. The exciting but frightening vertigo waited for him above.
Ramis leaped straight up. His momentum bore him high into the zero-G core. Below, Jumpoff grew farther away as he drifted parallel to the lightaxis.
One of the sail-creature nymphs flapped gracefully by as it traversed the core. Ramis fumbled with his pouch and withdrew a hand-sized canister of compressed air. Sending out a quick jet, he changed his direction slightly.
Though it was early in the subjective day, other children had been playing for hours already. As he drifted away from a congregation of them, Ramis twisted himself around and gave a shot of air from the container, slowing his motion. Another burst ensured that he drifted back. The cluster of children showed no sign of noticing him, but he knew he was implicitly included in their game.
Half a dozen sail-creature nymphs moved around the vast core, looking like brownish-green balloons with stubby, finlike “wings.” The creatures swam through the air with an eerie and seemingly effortless grace, their flowing wing-strokes calling to mind Earth’s giant manta rays. The younger ones frolicked about, some playing with the children and being treated as pets, but most of them were content just to nudge stray children back toward the core.
Ramis played floater-tag with some of the other children. After one breathless chase, he managed to escape being caught by shooting a massive burst of air from his container and flying faster than the girl pursuing him could catch up.
He let himself fly unguided, feeling the breeze rippling his hair as he traveled across the core. Here, his small size didn’t hinder him—he was the equal of any of the other children.
He watched the rimbouncing race around the Sibuyan Sea, wishing he had been picked for one of the adult teams. His friend Dobo Daeng had tried out, too, but had withdrawn his application when his work with Dr. Sandovaal had taken a sudden new direction.
Ramis heard faint, distant cheering as the rimbouncing match became more heated. He watched the children playing; bored, he turned to the rimbouncing again, and then looked down.
His heart froze. The rotating wall of the Aguinaldo seemed to pull at him as it rushed past. Though it was still meters away, he had drifted much too close to the rim. The Coriolis winds buffeted him.
He pushed down on the compressed-air container. It hissed, then went silent. He had exhausted the air in his rush to win in floater-tag.
One of the colony buildings was rotating toward him. The squat building contained some of the electronics-maintenance equipment. It was only two levels high, but Ramis drifted helpless, unable to get out of the way as the wall swept toward him like a giant flyswatter moving at fifty kilometers per hour.
Ramis tossed the can away, hoping for even a little momentum transfer, and frantically fumbled through his pouch for another container.
Nothing.
He went through his pockets—again, nothing.
He shouted, waving his hands wildly. It would do nothing to change his direction, but he desperately hoped the other players might be able to do something—if he could attract their attention. He had hardly any time. If only he had worn his sandals, he could have hurled them away and caused himself to drift to the side, perhaps enough to let the building slash by without crushing him. But his feet were bare and he wore only loose shorts, a light shirt—not enough mass for any kind of maneuvering.
The sharp corners came closer. Ramis seemed to be falling toward the building. His heart pounded. He felt giddy, helpless. The other children had noticed now. Some pointed at him, some began to move; a scream reached his ears. But it was too late—
Suddenly something firm rammed him from below. He let out a gasp, and then he was struck again, moving away. Ramis whirled in the air, twisting his body. It was a young sail-creature, one with a dark Z-shaped mark on its back. The creature held itself rigid as the broad expanse of the building swept by silently beneath them. Through one of the skylights, Ramis caught a glimpse of several techs working at a table. They didn’t even notice him rushing by.
The sail-creature nymph butted him one last time and knocked him toward the center of the core.
Still terrified and shuddering, Ramis drifted as some of the excited children moved in his direction. Only when one of them tossed him an extra container did he fully relax. Twisting, Ramis looked to see the young sail-creature frolicking nearby as if pleased with itself. As it spun in the air, the “Z” marking became visible again.
“Salamat po, Sarat,” Ramis whispered in the Filipino dialect of Tagalog: “Thank you, Timely One!”
Part One
Isolation
Chapter 1
AGUINALDO—Day 1
The thrill outweighed the consequences—it was as simple as that. He didn’t need to show off for anyone but himself.
If Ramis was caught Jumping at night, he’d be barred from the Aguinaldo’s zero-G core for a year—until he turned seventeen. But flying across the colony’s diameter in the dark made the rush of adrenaline worth the risk.