Far Thoughts and Pale Gods Page 3

  She shrugged this off and walked briskly across the steel bridge. She’d once told me that William, in his more tense and frustrated moments, enjoyed making love on the bridge. I wondered about harmonics. “Where’s the staff?” she asked.

  “William told me to let them go. He said we didn’t need them with the QL in control.” We had been working for the past three years with a team of young technicians chosen from several other families around Procellarum. William had informed me two days after the QL’s installation that these ten colleagues were no longer needed. He was coldly blunt about it, and he made no dust about the fact that I was the one who would have to arrange for their severance.

  His logic was strong; the QL would not need additional human support, and we could use the BM exchange for other purchases. Despite my instincts that this was bad manners between families, I could not stand alone against William; I had served the notices and tried to take or divert the brunt of the anger.

  Rho cringed as she sidled between the disorder pumps, whether in reaction to her husband’s blunt efficiency or the pumps’ effect on her body. She glanced over her shoulder sympathetically. “Poor Micko.”

  William opened the door, threw out his arms in a peremptory fashion, and enfolded Rho.

  I love my sister. I do not know whether it was some perverse jealousy or a sincere desire for her well-being that motivated my feeling of unease whenever I saw William embrace her.

  “I’ve got something for us,” Rho said, looking up at him with high-energy, complete-equality adoration.

  “Oh,” William said, eyes already wary. “What?”

  I lay in bed, unable to purge the noiseless suck of the pumps from my thoughts, from my body. After a restless time I began to slide into my usual lunar doze, made a half-awake comparison between seeing William embrace Rho and feeling the pumps embrace me; thought of William’s reaction to Rho’s news; smiled a little; slept.

  William had not been pleased. An unnecessary intrusion; yes there was excess cooling capacity; yes his arbeiters had the time to construct a secure facility for the heads in the Ice Pit; but he did not need the extra stress now nor any distractions because he was this close to his goal.

  Rho worked on him with that mix of guileless persuasion and unwavering determination that characterized my sister. I have always equated Rho with the nature-force shakers of history; folks who in their irrational stubbornness shift the course of human rivers, whether for good or ill perhaps not even future generations can decide.

  William had given in, of course. It was after all a small distraction, so he finally admitted; the raw materials would come out of the Sandoval BM contingency fund; he might even be able to squeeze in some mutually advantageous equipment denied him for purely fiscal reasons.

  “I’ll do it mostly for the sake of your honored ancestors, of course,” William had said.

  The heads came by shuttle from Port Yin five days later. Rho and I supervised the deposit at Pad Four, closest to the Ice Pit lift entrance. Packed in steel boxes with their own refrigerators, the heads were slightly bulkier than Rho had estimated. Six cartloads and seven hours after landing, we had them in the equipment lift.

  “I’ve had Nernst BM design an enclosure for William’s arbeiters to build,” Rho said. “These will keep for another week as they are.” She patted the closest box, peering through her helmet with a wide grin.

  “You could have chosen someone cheaper,” I groused. Nernst had gained unwarranted status in the past few years; I would have chosen the more reasonable, equally capable Twinning BM.

  “Nothing but the best for our progenitors,” Rho said. “Christ, Mickey. Think about it.” She turned to the boxes, mounted in a ring of two crowded stacks in the round lift, small refrigerators sticking from the inward-pointing sides of the boxes.

  We descended in the shaft. I could not see her face, but I heard the emotion in her voice. “Think of what it would mean to actually access them, talk to them …”

  I did not like that thought at all. I walked around and between the boxes. High quality, old-fashioned bright steel, beautifully shaped and welded. “A lot of garrulous old-timers,” I said, trying to sound calm.

  “Mickey.” Her chide was mild. She knew I was thinking.

  “Are they labelled?” I asked.

  “That’s one problem,” Rho said. “We have a list of names, and all the containers are numbered; but StarTime says it can’t guarantee a one-to-one match. Records were apparently jumbled after the closing date.”

  “How could that happen?” I was shocked by the lack of professionalism more than by the obvious ramifications.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if StarTime goofed in other ways, and they really are just cold meat?” I asked.

  Rho shrugged with a casualness that made me cringe, as if, after all her efforts and the expenditure of hard-earned Sandoval capital, such a thing might not be disastrous. “Then we’re out of some money,” she said. “But I don’t think they made that big a goof.”

  We slowly pressurized at the bottom of the shaft. Rho watched the containers for buckling. There was none; they had been expertly packed. “Nernst BM says it will take two days for William’s machines to make their enclosure. Can you supervise? William refuses …”

  I pulled off my helmet, kicked some surface dust from my boots into a vacuum nozzle, and grinned miserably. “Sure. I have nothing better to do.”

  Rho put her gloved hands on my shoulders. “Mickey. Brother.”

  I looked at the boxes, my spooky intrigue growing alarmingly. What if they were alive inside there, and could—in their own deceased way—tell us of their lives? That would be extraordinary; historic. Sandoval BM could gain an enormous amount of publicity, and that would reflect on our net worth in the Triple. “I’ll supervise,” I said. “But you get Nernst BM to send a human over here and not just an engineering arbeiter. It should be in the contract; on completion, I want someone to personally inspect.”

  “No fear,” Rho said. Gloves removed but skinsuit still on, she gave me a quick hug. “Let’s roll!” She guided the first cartload of stacked boxes through the gate into the Ice Pit storage warren, where they’d be kept for the time being.

  The first sign of trouble came quickly. Barely six hours after the unloading of the heads, Janis Granger, assistant to Fiona Task-Felder, requested a formal visit to the Ice Pit. Janis, like her boss and “sister” Fiona, was a member of Task-Felder BM. Fiona’s election to president of the Multiple Council was a political move I would have thought impossible just a year before.

  Task-Felder had been founded five decades ago, on Earth, as a lunar BM, an unorthodox procedure that had raised eyebrows on both worlds. Membership was allegedly limited to Logologists—nobody knew of any exceptions, at any rate—which made it the only lunar BM founded on religious principles. For these reasons, Task-Felder had for years been comparatively powerless in lunar politics, if such could be called politics: a weave of mutual advantage, politeness, and small-community cooperation in the face of clear financial pressures.

  The Task-Felder Logologists had tended their businesses carefully, played their parts with scrupulous attention to detail and quality, and had carefully distributed favors and loans to other BMs and the council, working their way slowly and deliberately up the ladder of lunar acceptance, all at the same time they believed six impossible things before breakfast.

  And then—Fiona had won their first big prize.

  I didn’t have the slightest idea what Granger wanted to talk about, but I could hardly refuse to speak with a council representative. Her private bus arrived at Pad Three seven hours after we spoke. I received her in my spare but spacious formal office in the farm management warrens.

  Granger was twenty-seven, black-haired, with Eurasian features and Amerindian skin—all genetically designed and tailored. She wore trim flag-blue denims and a white ruffled-neck blouse, the ruffles projecting a changing and delicate geometric pattern o
f white-on-white.

  I did not receive her behind a desk; that was reserved for contract talks or financial dealings.

  Granger sat gracefully, knees together, legs cocked at a prim angle, in the chair across from mine. “I’ve brought the status report on Ice Pit projects from the BM council,” she said. “I wanted to discuss it with you, since you’re project manager. We’ve got a consensus of the founding BMs to agree to consult on projects which could affect lunar standing in the Triple.”

  I had heard something about this council report, in its early drafts. It had seemed innocuous enough—just another BM mutual consent agreement. Why come all this way? Why hadn’t she gone to the family syndics in Port Yin?

  “Very good,” I said. “I assume Sandoval’s representative has looked over the report and the agreement.”

  “She has. She told me there might be a conflict with one current project—not your primary project. She advised me to send a representative of the president to talk with you; I decided this was important enough I would come myself.”

  Granger had an intensity that reminded me of Rho. She did not take her eyes off mine. She did not smile. She leaned forward, elbows still on the chair rests, and said, “Rhosalind Sandoval has signed a contract to receive terrestrial corpsicles.”

  “It’s no secret. She’s my direct sister, by the way.”

  Granger blinked. With any family-oriented BM member, such a comment would have elicited a polite “Oh, and how is your branch?” She neglected the pleasantry.

  “Are you planning resuscitation?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. Not yet. “We’re speculating on future value.”

  “If they’re not resuscitated, they have no future value.”

  I disagreed with a mild shake of my head. “That’s our worry, nobody else’s.”

  “The Council has expressed concern that your precedent could lead to a flood of corpsicle dumping. The Moon can’t possibly receive a hundred thousand dead. It would be a major financial drain.”

  “I don’t see how precedent is established,” I said, wondering where she was going to take this.

  “Sandoval BM is a major family group. You influence new and offshoot families. We’ve already had word that two other families are considering similar deals, in case you’re on to something. And all of them have contacted Cailetet BM. I believe Rhosalind Sandoval-Pierce has tried to get a formal exclusion contract with Cailetet. Have you approved all this?”

  I hadn’t; Rho hadn’t told me she’d be moving so quickly, but it didn’t surprise me. It was a logical step in her scheme. “I haven’t discussed it with her. She has Sandoval priority approval.”

  This seemed to take Granger by surprise. “BM charter priority?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I saw no reason to divulge family secrets. If she didn’t already know, my instincts told me, she didn’t need to know. “Family privilege, ma’am.”

  Granger looked to one side and thought this over for an uncomfortably long time, then returned her gaze to me. “Cailetet is asking for Council advice. On behalf of the president, I’ve issued a chair statement of disapproval. We think it might adversely affect our currency ratings in the Triple. There are strong moral and religious feelings on Earth now about corpsicles; revival has been outlawed in seven nations. We feel you’ve been taken advantage of.”

  “Really?” I said. “We don’t think so.”

  “Nevertheless, the Council is considering issuing a restraining order against any storage or possible use of the corpsicles.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. I reached across to the desk and took hold of my manager’s slate. “Auto counselor, please,” I requested aloud, then keyed in instructions I didn’t want Granger to hear, asking for a legal opinion on this possible action.

  The auto counselor quickly reported: “Not legal at this time,” and gave a long list of citations.

  “You can’t restrain an autonomous chartered BM,” I said. I read one of the citations, the one most on point. “Mutual benefit agreement 35 stroke 2111, reference to charter family agreements, 2102.”

  “If sufficient BMs can be convinced of the unwisdom of your actions, and if the financial result could be ruinous to any original charter BM, our council thinker has issued an opinion that you can be restrained.”

  It was my turn to pause and consider.

  “Then it seems we might be heading for council debate,” I said.

  “I’d regret causing so much fuss,” Granger said. “Perhaps we can reach an agreement outside of council.”

  “Our syndics can discuss it,” I allowed. My backbone was becoming stubbornly stiff. “But I think it should be openly debated in council.”

  She smiled. If, as was alleged by the Logologists, their philosophy removed all human limitations, judging by Janis Granger, I opposed such benefits. There was a control about her that suggested she had nothing to control, neither stray whim nor dangerous passion; automatonous. She chilled me.

  “As you wish,” she said. “This is really not a large matter. It’s not worth a lot of trouble.”

  Then why bother?

  “I agree,” I said. “I believe the BMs can resolve it among themselves.”

  “The council represents the BMs,” Granger said.

  I nodded polite agreement. I wanted nothing more than to have her out of my office, and out of the Ice Pit Station.

  “Thank you for your time,” she said, rising. I escorted her to the lift. She did not say good-bye; merely smiled her unrevealing mannequin smile.

  Back in my office, I put through a request for an appointment with Thomas Sandoval-Rice at Port Yin. Then I called Rho and William. Rho answered. “Mickey! Cailetet has just accepted our contract.”

  That took me back for a second. “I’m sorry,” I said, confused. “What?”

  “What are you sorry about? It’s good news. They think they can manage it. They say it’s a challenge. They’re willing to sign an exclusive.”

  “I just had a conversation with Janis Granger.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Task-Felder. Aide to the president of the council,” I said. “I think they’re going to try to shut us down.”

  “Shut down Sandoval BM?” Rho laughed. She thought I was joking.

  “No. Shut down your heads project.”

  “They can’t do that,” she said, still amused.

  “Probably not. At any rate, I have a call in to the director.” I was thinking over what Rho had told me. If Cailetet had accepted our contract, then they were either not worried about the council debate, or …

  Granger had lied to me.

  “Mickey, what’s this all about?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll find out. The new Council president is a Task-Felder. You should keep up on these things, Rho.”

  “Who gives a rille? We haven’t had any complaints from other BMs. We keep to our boundaries. Task-Felder, huh? Dust them, they’re not even a lunar-chartered BM. Aren’t they Logologists?”

  “They have the talk seat in Council,” I said.

  “Oh, for the love of,” Rho said. “They’re crazier than mud. When did they get the seat?”

  “Two months ago.”

  “How did they get it?”

  “Careful attention to the social niceties,” I said, tapping my palm with a finger.

  Rho considered. “Did you record your meeting?”

  “Of course.” I filed an automatic BM-priority request for Rho and transferred the record to her slate.

  “I’ll get back to you, Mickey. Or better yet, come on down to the Ice Pit. William needs someone besides me to talk to, I think. He’s having trouble with the QL again, and he’s still a little irritated about our heads.”

  My brother-in-law was in a contemplative mood. “On Earth,” he said, “in India and Egypt, centuries before they had refrigerators, they had ice, cold drinks. Air conditioning. All because they had dry air and clear night s
kies.”

  I sat across the metal table from him in the laboratory’s first room. William sat in a tattered metal sling chair, leaving me the guest’s cushioned armchair. Outside, William’s arbeiters were busily, noisily constructing an enclosure for Rho’s heads, using the Nernst BM design.

  “You mean, they used storage batteries or solar power or something,” I said, biting on his nascent anecdote.

  He smiled pleasantly, relaxing into the story. “Nothing so obvious,” he said. “Pharaoh’s servants could have used flat, broad, porous earthenware trays. Filled them with a few centimeters of water, hoping for a particularly dry evening with clear air.”

  “Cold air?” I suggested.

  “Not particularly important. Egypt was seldom cold. Just dry air and a clear night. Voila. Ice.”

  I looked incredulous.

  “No kidding,” he said, leaning forward. “All done by evaporation and radiation into empty space. Under totally cloudless, black, starry skies, and given almost no humidity, evaporation cools the tray and the water, temperature of the liquid drops, and the water in the tray freezes solid. Harvest the ice in the morning, fill the tray again for the next night. You could have had air conditioning, if you laid out enough surface area, filled enough trays, and used caves to store the ice.”

  “It would have worked?”

  “Hell, Micko, it did work. Before there was electricity, that’s how they made ice. Anyplace dry, with clear night skies …”

  “Lose a lot of water through evaporation, wouldn’t you?”

  William shook his head. “You haven’t a gram of romance in you, Micko. Not at all tempted by the thought of a frosty mug of beer for the Pharaoh.”

  “Beer,” I said. “Think of all the beer you could store in Rho’s annex.” Beer was a precious commodity in a small lunar station.

  He made a face. “I saw the CV of that Granger woman. Is she going to give Rho trouble?”

  I shook my head.

  “Serves Rho right,” William said. “Sometimes …” He stood and wiped his face with his hands, then squeezed thumb and pointing finger together, squinting at them. “You were right. A new problem, Micko, a new effect. The QL says the disorder pumps have to be retuned. It’ll take a week. Then we’ll hit the zeroth state of matter. Nothing like it since before we were all a twinkle in God’s eye.”