“‘The node'?”
“That's what we call it, sir. Node one.”
“Optimistic of you.”
Chang simpered. “Thank you, sir. With seven more nodes, at twice the mass of course, we hope one day to build a collapson and present it to His Majesty as a gift.”
“A noble sentiment, to be sure,” Conrad said, and while he fought to keep a tone of official sarcasm in his voice, he couldn't avoid a slight touch of admiration as well. A collapson was a stable cube of eight black holes, and in their dozens or hundreds or thousands they were the critical components of a telecom collapsiter. Such a gift would be worth . . . well, a lot. If you were going to fuck up, you might as well do it on a colossal scale, and with style. But at that moment his curiosity burned brighter than his sense of duty, and so, casting all further pleasantries aside, he ordered, “Turn off the gravity lasers in this part of the rock, please.”
“Sir,” Chang said, in tones of ritual objection, “that will cause problems—”
Conrad, who knew all about ritual objection, interrupted with, “Will it create a specific safety hazard, Mr. Chang? If people are properly warned and equipment is properly locked down, will anyone be hurt or anything broken?”
“Well, not that I specifically know of, but—”
“Then do as I ask. You may consider it an official order from His Majesty, in the person of myself, his voice here on Element Pit. More importantly, though, it's in your professional interest to keep me supplied with the information I seek. Or has my identity escaped your attention?”
“Eh? Commander C. E. Mursk, Royal Barnardean Navy. On my honor, sir, I'm not following your intent.”
“The C. E. stands for Conrad Ethel.”
“Does it?”
Though he hated any form of boasting, Conrad said, “I see my reputation has failed to precede me. I am, among other things, the First Architect of Barnard.”
Chang still looked baffled. “Are you? Truly? What the fuff would you be doing out here?”
This was an excellent question, because really, economic crisis or no, was this a good use of his time? Bullying weasels like Chang? What he said was, “At the moment, I'm taking a professional interest in your little accident up there.”
“And . . . what? You want to build something? You can have the thing, sir, if it'll be any use—”
“Oh, do shut up, Mr. Director, and try a bit of dignity on for size. I just want a look at it.”
Chang wrung his hands together. “If you are who you say, sir, I'll put my folks right on it.”
“You would anyway,” Conrad snapped. And then regretted it, not for Chang's sake but for his own. That was the sort of veiled threat he despised when it came from people like Ho Ng, so why was it popping out of his own mouth? When, exactly, had Maybel Mursk's little boy become such a Security thug? Still, the words had the desired effect; Chang quieted. “Just turn the grav lasers off, all right?”
The man just nodded, and scurried off to do his master's bidding.
Chapter seventeen.
The economics of hole
Half an hour later, Conrad and Money, Chang and the mine's vice-director, a woman named Mariella Fourleaf, were standing on the surface of the black hole's confinement tube like pins stuck into a cushion, pointing every which way. It was like the world's smallest, weirdest planette, and Conrad filed for future reference the notion that planettes could be made cylindrical as well as spherical. All you would need was a hollow diamond tube, much thinner than this one, holding the neubles in a straight line, so they couldn't roll over each other and slump into the spherical shape they would otherwise naturally seek. Tube worlds? Hell, you could twist them into pretzels if you wanted to!
“The thing is,” Conrad answered, “I can actually see it. You're telling me it's smaller than a proton, and I know a proton's much smaller than an atom, and an atom is much too small to see, and yet looking down between my feet I can see a little black dot.”
“Those are air molecules,” Chang answered. “When the accident first occurred, that thing sucked all the air out of this chamber. And there it still is, clinging to the hole in a film. We came back in here with space suits and grapples and magnetic bottles, catching the thing before it could hit the wall, which would have been bad. If we really wanted to we could pry those molecules off of there, but then they'd want to expand again. It would cause an explosion.”
“It would cause worse than that,” Money said, looking down warily between his feet. “Those aren't air molecules anymore, my friend. Up against the hole, the pressure is more than sufficient to collapse the molecules, collapse the atoms, squeeze the electrons and protons together into single, electrically neutral particles. What you've got there, I'm going to guess, is fifty megatons of liquid neutronium. And if you let it out of jail, the outrush of neutrons would be lethal for several kilometers in any direction. It's a good thing you haven't tried this.”
A decidedly unofficial, nongovernmental laugh escaped Conrad. “So you've succeeded after all, Mr. Chang. Wrap a diamond around it and you've got the very neuble you were trying to press. A little undersized, but what the heck.” 3
“Even if it's the right size, you still need to sheath the thing, sir,” Money said. “Wrap it in layers of monocrystalline diamond and woven nanotube. And brickmail, which is an allotrope of carbon, basically a chain mail of interlocked rings.”
“I know what brickmail is,” Conrad said.
From his funny vantage point on the other side of the tube, Money looked almost like he was lying down. Flashing an apologetic look and a horizontal shrug, he said, “Of course you do, sir. I forget your double life, sometimes. Anyway, brickmail is strong shit, and layered with the other stuff it's stronger still, and holds your neuble together.”
Conrad nodded absently, thinking that he understood at least the gist of that explanation. He wanted to crouch down, to lean over for a closer look at the hypermass beneath him, but the gravity up next to the tube was a lot stronger than it was a meter or two away, and he was reluctant to bring his center of mass too close to it. Funny gravity fields like this were common causes of injury and death. What he said was, “So, if we shoveled a gigaton of mine tailings on top of that thing, would we crush it into an atom of the appropriate size? A full neuble?”
At this point, probably bored with the sound of voices other than his own, Leonard Chang piped up. “We can negotiate terms for the sale of this thing, sir. Or you can accept it from me as a gift. . . .”
Chang was on the other side of the tube from Money—the two of them probably couldn't see each other at all, just as Conrad couldn't see any more of Mariella than the crazy image refracted around the rim of the tube, like a heat mirage. But Money made a mocking face at the question, and apparently Mariella could see it, because she laughed. Conrad fought down a smile of his own and said, “Mr. Chang, whether you're brought up on charges has nothing to do with whether I'm interested in the results of your accident. You understand this? Even if you hadn't murdered me twice, you would still be in a lot of potential trouble. What you really want to be is quiet, all right? Help me forget that you exist.”
“Er, I'll try, sir.”
“There's a good fellow.”
When Money had stopped sniggering, he resumed his lecture by saying, “To compress that gigaton of matter into neutronium, sir, you'd have to get it very, very close to the hole. I'm thinking you'd need an antimatter explosion anyway, though admittedly a smaller one.”