At first, nothing would be noticed at the destination. The payloads were transported to the Inner System at only a fraction of a g acceleration, so they took a long time to get there. There would be food in the pipeline of the delivery system for at least ten years, even if the supply from the harvesters were cut off at once. But then the Inner System would be in real trouble—as much trouble as the Cloud would suffer if the Inner System were one day to cut off the supply of power kernels or refuse to ship out manufactured goods. With such total interdependency of the two groups, any talk of war or of breakdown of commerce between them seemed ludicrous. And yet Bey knew that such talk was growing more and more common, more and more strident.
He had followed the local gravity vector downward and was almost back at his quarters. But the thought of the Kernel Ring led him to keep going, descending a steep staircase that dropped toward the kernel itself. Within fifteen meters he found himself on a black, seamless sphere with no visible entry points. He was standing in a thirtieth of a g field on the first of the three kernel shields. Nothing organic would survive for a millisecond on the other side of it. Twenty meters or less beneath his feet was the kernel itself, a rapidly rotating black hole held in position by its own electric charge. This one would mass a couple of billion tons. It served as the power source for one whole sphere of the harvester. Streams of subnuclear particles passed through the kernel’s ergosphere, slightly slowed the kernel’s rotation, and emerged with their own energy vastly increased.
The power provided by a kernel was large but finite. After maybe twenty years, its angular momentum and rotational energy would be depleted. A “spun-down” black hole with no rotation would continue to radiate according to the Hawking evaporative process, but that energy was far less controlled and useful. It was even a nuisance, since the monitor sensors within the shield needed multiple signal redundancy to assure error-free messages to the outside. A spent kernel was a useless kernel. It had to be “spun up” again to high angular momentum from some other source, or replaced by a new one from the Kernel Ring.
And if the Kernel Ring became inaccessible? Then the Cloudlanders would starve for energy, as surely as the Inner System would starve for lack of Cloudland food supplies. And yet the Kernel Ring was the least controlled part of the whole system, and it was not clear who had the most rights to it. Was it the Podders, the Halo’s migrant spacefarers who lived within their spacesuits? Or maybe it was Black Ransome, waging war against both Cloudlanders and Sunhuggers from the mystery hideaway of Ransome’s Hole.
Bey found the train of thought leading him again to Mary. Was she in the Kernel Ring, as Leo Manx insisted? Or was she to be found somewhere here, in the unthinkably big volume of the Cloud? If so, the Cloud’s central library system might help him locate her. Assuming that he wanted to.
“Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part. Nay, I have done, you get no more of me.” Mary’s last message had asked him not to look for her, but in typically Mary terms. She had left an opening for ambiguity. Bey turned to head back for the stairs, thinking that if he started to learn the library access system, he would never get to sleep.
He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he almost walked into the three strangers.
There were two men and a woman. Wolf had time for no more than a quick look at them—again, no eyebrows, and suddenly that made sense; perspiration would not trickle down foreheads in zero g—then they were advancing on him.
“What the devil are you doing here?” The shorter of the men spoke loudly and angrily. He came close and glared down from his superior height.
“I’m sorry,” Bey began. “I didn’t know the kernel level was restricted territory. I was about to—”
“The kernel level!” The man turned to his companions. “Just like a Snugger, he doesn’t understand what you say to him.”
The woman stepped forward. “We’re not talking about the kernel. You don’t belong on the harvester—or anywhere in our system. You get back to your own stinking kind.”
The other man did not speak, but he stepped to Wolf’s side and jabbed him painfully in the ribs with a bony elbow. At the same moment the woman trod on Bey’s bare instep with a hard-soled shoe.
“Hold it, now—” Bey took a step backward. They were in a low-g field, which favored the Cloudlanders, but Bey was sure that if he had to defend himself he could do it very well. He could break any of those thin limbs between his hands, and their feeble muscles had probably done as much as they could to hurt him. But he did not want to fight back—not when he had no idea who or why. He lifted his arm as though to strike at the man in front of him, then lunged for the staircase instead.
He was all the way up before they had even turned to pursue. At the top he slammed the door in position and raced off along the corridor. On the threshold of his own quarters, he ran into a tall figure coming out. Bey braked as hard as he could, but there was still contact. The man gave a grunt of surprise and went sailing away through the air, bouncing off the wall and then falling face down across the bed.
“Hey! What the hell!”
Bey recognized the complaining voice. It was Apollo Belvedere Smith. He went across and helped him sit up.
Aybee rubbed his midriff. “What’s all that about?”
“I was going to ask you the same. I was running away from three of your people. I’ve no idea who they are, but they tried to start a fight.”
“Oh, yeah. I came here to warn you not to leave your quarters. Close the door, Wolfman, and lock it.”
“Why? What the devil’s going on here?”
“You’re the man they love to hate.” Aybee stood up and began to wander around the room. “You didn’t hear the newscast, right?”
“I’ve been looking at the inside of the harvester.”
“Yeah.” Aybee was still scowling, but that was apparently his natural expression. “You know something? Most people are real idiots.”
“Not true. By definition, most people are average.”
That earned a quick grin. “Y’know what I mean. They’re animals. Last few days there’s been more growling and scowling between government here and government in the Inner System than you’d believe. So in comes news a couple of hours ago from the far side of the Cloud. Bad deal. A whole harvester destroyed, blown apart, thirty thousand people dead. Power plant went blooey. And newsword is that you Sunhuggers did it.”
“Nonsense. The Inner System would never destroy a harvester. We need that food.”
“Hey, I never said I believed it, did I? It’s like I said—people here are dumb. They see somebody looks like you—” Aybee paused to give Bey a detailed inspection, then shook his head and went on “—they hate him. You’re not safe here now.”
“That’s Cinnabar Baker’s problem. If she wants me to be useful, she’ll have to find a way to give me working space.”
The answering grin was even less pleasant than usual. “No worries. You’ll get work space, Wolfman. The other thing on the news is just your line. Form-change foul-ups on the Sagdeyev space farm, a day from here. You and Sylv’ll be heading there, see what you can sort out.”
“You won’t be going?” Bey wanted to know how important the problem was in Cinnabar Baker’s mind.
“Don’t think so. Not ’less you need me. Sylv can handle it. She’s no dummy, and she’s reliable. You’ll like working with her.”
It was probably the highest level of praise that Aybee offered to anyone. Bey nodded. “I have the same feeling. We’ll get on together.”