“The corporation,” Massimo says. “Which is controlled by EnergyWest. Which is controlled by NoAm Congress. From that you could say SciCom, but with SciCom, who knows?”
“SciCom? Did you say SciCom?”
“Ah, but who knows with them, whether they run anything or not?”
“SciCom.”
“Rawley, my friend, good luck. Until we see one another—LasVenus, ah, fantastico. Ciao, my friend, ciao. Drink to poor Italy.”
“Patching in.”
“This is traffic. How did you…”
“Do you have an open line?”
“Iden, please.” Another voice crackles: “He can use 363.” First voice: “I’ll need an authorization figure, or do you want this through control? I can give you a circuit in the console dome.”
“No, patch me through this terminal, identify as deadheading. What you can do instead of an authorization figure is give me a line through Guam SciCom.”
“That’s like Sunday at the zoo—uh, look, use 363, it’ll be open. How long do you want it?”
“Indef. Let’s say a ten-day parameter.”
“It’s yours. I’ll just vacate. That’s a big ship—you’ve got a downangle, LasVenus arrival in less than an hour. Look, when you touch down, you’re going to have to loop the channel through ground.”
“Affirmative. And in the meantime, how about a sixty-second display on PT/coord. 1427-82, location map LASVENUS, then sixty more, personnel write on Steiner, Eva B., codex 1819-79, passenger PT class one.”
“Eva Steiner? The EnergyWest VP, a Director, that one?”
“Eva B.”
“Roger and out. Traffic series 300.”
PART II:
SCHWARZCHILD SOLUTION[2]
Chapter 5
Welcome to LasVenus
I sit at the oblong window of this pale green cushiony room, my head throbbing. I am watching the ships being serviced on concrete pads and the light traffic on the trans-port runways. Shuttles sail in on the long glide path on seagull wings past this thick, tinted glass; I watch yet another offload then towed to a pad for dismemberment into units by the cranes. Behind me the wall screen displays the single readout I have been able to punch through. Even with my sign key, every query I make comes to the same thing, the computer’s wink for computation and the identical display I have been sitting with for more than two hours. The pale green figures pain my eyes. I can’t shake a strange feeling that I’ve sat here before, waiting, just this way, waiting.
LasVenus DataBase Information Service/7
Current DataBase Information//
Voorst, Rawley//
your local residence is ------------
SectorGold Casa del Sol 202//Suite 3
your local program instructs you to -------
YOU ARE RESTRICTED
PLEASE REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE
PLEASE REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE
PLEASE REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE
Program LasVenus DataBase//"We serve your need to know"// thePleasureTube corp.
And so I sit staring in the other direction, wondering what part of my headache I owe to this morning, what part to last night, watching one ship in particular, which could only be our ship. Massive, dull silver, wings barely wings in retraction, its fuselage apart in sections now, sections from which units protrude for service, the area a forest of cranes and hydraulics. How similar and much simpler by comparison the Daedalus was—an even larger ship, but one whose mass was formed by the circular clarity of a single propulsion system, one hull to these three, each dome a dragonfly’s eye—and how much simpler it was to fly straight out.
Something nibbles at the edge of my mind, that sense of having been here before. I want to get in touch with Werhner, I know that is my right.
The shock of seeing Taylor clears my head. In the past week I’ve been surprised more than once, but I had not prepared myself to see him here, his bushy eyebrows rising as I enter this cold conference room, the air sweet with the odor of his pipe tobacco. My chemistry had been shifting back to Guam, and this settles it. Sitting at the far edge of the long, transparent table, his elbows on its surface, his hands resting on amber SciCom files, Taylor nods, smiles at another man I only now notice standing by the other door. He is someone I have never seen, a brown-haired man with a farmer’s build. Taylor rises from his chair and points the stem of his pipe at a seat midway down the table, says to me, “That’s quite a chase you led us on.”
I feel my palms becoming clammy and the atmosphere acquiring the weight of Guam between Taylor and myself. Taylor here; yet this is just like Guam, him standing up as he sits me down, the mechanics of his practiced insecurity. I sit, shifting my feet apart on the rug. I know where my center is, anyhow; I lean back in the chair.
“It’d be a chase only if I were running,” I suggest. “I had the right to leave time under military procedure and I exercised it.”
“That’s under review,” replies Taylor, packing his pipe with a blunt finger. “For the moment, you’re coming back with me to Pacific SciCom. The sooner we start back the better. Where are your things? Your ticket will say. Show it to Mancek, he’ll get them for you.” Taylor looks at me as he relights his pipe, his gold lighter tight in his hand, hissing.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I say evenly, “unless you have a criminal arrest warrant and he’s got status to serve it. In that case, I want to see a local attorney.”
“No, now, I…” Taylor murmurs, the faint smile that had shaped his thick lips fading.
“Then show me the orders you have. I’d like to see the authority flow on this one.”
“I make the orders,” Taylor says, setting his lighter down, his face reddening.
“Not for me you don’t,” I say evenly. “I have military status and I’m exercising my leave time.”
“That’s a technicality, Voorst.”
“I’m staying here,” I say.
“For the life of me,” Taylor sighs, “I can’t find out why the military office let you go. I’ll concede the technical grounds of your presence here, but we’ve lost a week already. Let’s get on with it.” Taylor’s bushy eyebrows come together, he punches something through a table console and calls Mancek over. “SectorGold. Casa del… Christ, Voorst, what are you doing with a local residence in SectorGold? I’m in Green, what are you doing in SectorGold?”
It is a nice moment. Taylor sucks on his pipe, glaring at the screen.
“I was with a woman,” I say. “She was taken away from me. What do you know about that?’
“…well, I’m in Green,” Taylor says, expelling a breath. “Christ, Voorst.” He looks at me and his expression twists another way. “That black girl, West Indian? She was working for us.”
“She was?” I ask, my heart sinking. “She was working for you?”
“I’m not saying,” Taylor tells me, beginning to drum his fingers on the table, “that she was doing a very good job. Look, Voorst, SciCom takes precedence over military, let’s not press it. They obviously resent that fact, they’re always splitting hairs over authority flows. We don’t like to abuse our prerogative.”
“Well, you have been,” I say, thinking, She lied—straight-faced lied.
“I’m going to insist on your cooperation. This is an important enough project, a project everyone, even the military, eventually benefits from….”
2
=df special solution to general relativity which describes the distance between event horizon and naked singularity.