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progressives?" "'The enemy of our enemy,' " Farley told him. Mason reached for the bottle but didn't drink from it. "Who've you been talking to, Farley? I mean, just how reliable's your information?" She hesitated, then said, "I have contacts in the Quantum College." Mason blinked once, then laughed long and hard. The Quantum College. He associated the phrase with everything from stale party jokes to ominous questions and warnings in security oath documents. It was invoked by would-be mystics trying to get laid, paranoids in locked wards, blood-chilling modern myths that said the QC was the mask and mantle worn by certain surviving Cyberviruses. There were abundant ways to enroll. An applicant often wound up supplying complaint data to consumer fraud investigators or experiencing a much less auspicious interface with internal security investigators. At its low end the Quantum College was lumped in with cybergeist trickster fables such as Obetron, fAIries, and Hackey Puck. At the high end Mason knew of at least two independent studies LAW and Lyceum that had investigated allegations that the QC was a vehicle for Roke incursion into the Periapt computational and communications TechPlex. Farley clamped a hand on his upper arm. "After the things we witnessed on Aquamarine, you're going to doubt me?" She had his attention now and began to fill him in while she walked him through sobering circles in the station's communal room. She explained how Dextra Haven fit into the plan, how the Exts did, and how Mason would. As she ran it down for him, one part of his mind veered off onto the tormenting need to know whether his wife and child were alive on Aquamarine. But Mason was yanked back when she got to the part about the Exts' landing on Periapt and about the ocean. "Farley, I can't," he interrupted. "You weren't at Styx Strait when the Oceanic got Marlon and the rest. You didn't see it kill Boon. You don't know what you're asking of me!" She nodded once more, all sympathy and understanding. "You're right; I didn't see it get Boon. But I do know that the Oceanic's six light-years from here, Claude. And here's another calculation for you: Let's say Haven manages to get an A-LAW mission launched in a year. Using the second-generation zero-point-energy drive, that's still seven years objective in transit." Page 76 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html Mason ran the figures automatically; by that point he could do it in his sleep. "Almost nineteen years old, baseline." Merely saying the words hurt him. "By the time you get there," Farley agreed. "You can't raise your child if he or she survived but you could be there for a marriage or maybe even the birth of a grandchild. Make what you can of your fatherhood that way. As for what we're asking of you regarding Periapt's ocean and all " "Don't say it," Mason cut her off. "I'll cross that when I come to it." Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Twenty Twenty Twenty Twenty The proverb etched into a white and blue marble wall of the Periapt Naval Museum read grande nao, gran cuidado. Chaz Quant, executive officer of the SWATHship Matsya , did not know much Spanish, but he knew this one by heart and could vouch for it personally: "Great ship, great anxiety." Even so, a certain measure of anxiety aboard the Matsya would have been preferable to the decline and moribundity that had taken hold of her. It was a terrible thing when a vessel came to an ignominious finish, especially a vessel of distinction. Now the mighty Mats , from flight deck to trimaran keels, was a caretaker operation, a glorified test barge with a skeleton crew and dozens of embarked second-rate science types. He found himself increasingly inclined to hold guilty just about anything or anybody else who presented a target. Better, then, to pay his respects to the naval museum, an institution whose days were also numbered. He rose from the bench to drift among displays he'd first seen in his boyhood, decades earlier. The weather being hot and clear, the place was almost empty. Quant followed a route he knew well to look upon what he regarded as sacred objects. He passed the mangled and bashed-open submersible, once superstrong, from the epic PN Solaris submarine rescue, and lingered at a plaque that had come from Old Earth itself: Sea captain : Upon his first popping up, the lieutena nts sheer off to the other side, as if he were a ghost indeed; for 'tis impuden ce for any to approach him within the length of a boathoo k. The quote dated back to 1707 baseline and Plain Ned Ward's The Wooden World; it brought a smile to Quant's lips, his first in days. The smile faded as he gazed at the flat photo taken on the boatwell deck of the marifortress McMurdo Sound , a group shot of the young, hard-bitten skippers from her amphib assault Page 77 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html force. Six men and two women in salt-silvered fabric body armor, all staring directly into the camera, leaning against one another or with an arm propped on a comrade's shoulder. In the thirty-odd hours after the taking of the still, they had carried out a series of riverine raids and amphibious attacks that had stunned the world and virtually ended the Turnback War, in effect eliminating any need for the use of strategic weapons. The squadron commander was a man with a teak-dark somber face and wiry, short-cropped, graying black hair. He stood 180 centimeters tall and looked as if he could bench-press a capital ship's anchor. Quant confronted his younger self. He had been nine kilos lighter in those days, twenty years younger, and he would go on to a kind of heroic infamy commanding the frigate Hornet . But nobody could take the McMurdo Sound away from him. A sea captain, by God. He gazed at the face and the nonreflective captain's insignia on the body armor collar for as long as he could bear to, then strode off quickly for the museum's huge main doors. "Commander Quant." Quant looked back the way he'd come, recognizing the gravelly voice and wondering why Valentin Maksheyeva was being so formal. Quant had precious few friends, but the curator was one of long standing. Then he saw that a stranger was slouching along lackadaisically in the wake of the old man. The stranger wore a uniform Quant couldn't place, an ill-fitting one that would have looked a good deal worse if it had not been wrinkle- and stain-resistant Then he recognized it as some kind of Hierarchate civil service flunky getup. Maksheyeva's ugly old puss composed itself into a grin. Quant approved of the curator's unaugmented looks, having nothing but scorn for cosmetic treatments and enhancements. Changes that counted couldn't be bought. "This young man has been sent with an air diligence to return you ASAP to the Matsya , Commander," Maksheyeva said. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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