Galactic Milieu - Diamond Mask Part 38

NEELYA DEMIDOVA: [Image] This would be the first phase-a final recon of the southern side of the reservoir, done by Jim MacKelvie in the small driller. As chief CE geophysicist of Caledonia, he's best qualified to determine the optimal point for lateral drainage of the magma into the Sgeirean Dubha subduction region south of Clyde. The ancient island system a.s.sociated with the sinking oceanic plate there has the potential to form a back-arc basin if diverted magma interferes with the old arc structure and ruptures it. Once the small driller has established the optimum attack pattern-this might take a day or more-the rest of us in the four larger machines will join Jim for the diversion. The result will be a new slow-growing island arc. There would still be devastating volcanism over a period of decades, but it could be coped with, whereas the present situation is cataclysmic and quite hopeless.

TISHA ABAKA: I've never heard of such a thing. We've never tried anything like it on Okanagon, that's for d.a.m.n sure.

NEELYA DEMIDOVA: [cheerfully] Perhaps that's because Okanagon is an older and more stable world with relatively few island-arc situations. Our poor little Yakutia is filthy with them! Of course, we've never had such a large, deep magmatic reservoir to cope with. The ones we've diverted were continental-at a depth of seventy kloms at the most-and only a tenth as large.

JAMES MACKELVIE: I'm not sayin' I doubt ye, Neelya, and I agree your scheme seems to be our only chance ... but look again at the horizontal component of the diversion! It's nearly three hundred kloms under the sea from the south edge of the Clyde craton to the Sgeirean Dubha island arc. Ailsa and Tormod and I spent the day goin' over the convection patterns in the intervening asthenosphere. We're worried that we won't be able to keep the diverted magma in a coherent blob, pushin' it that far. Part of it's bound to get away from us- especially if we're not in metaconcert where we can react instantly to anomalies in the thin A/LM boundary zone beneath the oceanic plate.

TORU YORITA: My three colleagues and I did a similar a.n.a.lysis, also taking into consideration potential fracture zones in the intervening small piece of thin oceanic crust. Zannen desu! But in our opinion, the diverted magma is all too likely to ascend and break through the sea-floor before we can trap it beneath the more rigid island-arc structure.

MIDORI SAKAI: We're not prepared to predict the effect of a huge submarine diatrematic eruption, but it would certainly be very nearly as disastrous as a continental one, with the added effect of a ma.s.sive tsunami engulfing every continental sh.o.r.e.

AILSA GORDON: [looking up from hand-computer] It might even be worse if the erupting s.h.i.t is ultrapota.s.sic with a large water-soluble component. Then you might poison the sea as well as blotting out the sun with ash and vapor clouds.

NEELYA DEMIDOVA: [slightly huffy] Well, I offered the plan as a potentially workable hypothesis, that's all.

INTENDANT GENERAL CALUM SORLEY: And we deeply appreciate your desire to help us, Neelya Alexandrovna. All of you ... [looking around the table] ... willing to risk your reputations and even your lives to aid Caledonia in a situation that the Milieu Science Directorate has officially categorized as hopeless.

YOSHIFUMI MATSUI: We have had to cope with official skepticism on Satsuma as well, Intendant General. Our entire corps of geophysical CE operators would have volunteered to a.s.sist Caledonia if it had been possible. Since it was not, we drew lots-and Midori, Toru, and I were the winners. We are honored to be here.

DIRIGENT MACDONALD: Even if Caledonia must be abandoned and a new Scottish planet established elsewhere, we'll remember our friends.

NEELYA DEMIDOVA: We don't want a memorial or a footnote in a history text. We want to do something!

TORMOD MATHESON: The greatest difficulty, la.s.s, is our low level of creative strength. Even with Director Remillard's E18 super hats- JON REMILLARD: Call me Jack, for G.o.d's sake.

TORMOD MATHESON: [nods] Even with Jack's 300x CE helmets, our energy output exconcert is going to be too low to move the beastie with safety over that great distance. Now, if we could only tie all eight minds together in a new metaconcert config, Neelya's scheme just might work. It'd still be iffy, mind ye, but at least there'd be a fightin' chance.

TORU YORITA: How about it, Jack? Could you whip up a new program?

DIRIGENT MACDONALD: Toru, I don't think you appreciate the difficulties of metaconcert design. I never antic.i.p.ated asking CEREM for more than the loan of the new equipment. Jack volunteered to bring the hats when his brother reluctantly agreed to a.s.sist our experiment. But there was never any question of his doing a- JON REMILLARD: Yes.

DIRIGENT MACDONALD: [incredulously] Yes? ...

ROGATIEN REMILLARD: Hot d.a.m.n! You really think you can do it, Ti-Jean?

JON REMILLARD: [apologetically] Not following Neelya's plan, I'm afraid. There really is too great a probability that the volume of magma would escape if we tried to divert it metacreatively.

AILSA GORDON: What the devil else could you do but divert it?

JON REMILLARD: Alter its composition.

AILSA GORDON: Jack, pardon me if I seem rude. But you're not a geophysicist. The magmatic components of the reservoir can't be altered in any useful way. Not unless you can design us a metaconcert for the trans.m.u.tation of elements- JON REMILLARD: If the extremely volatile materials-the CO2 and water-are segregated at the top of the reservoir, what's left will be denser than the asthenosphere immediately below the cratonic root.

JAMES MACKELVIE: [awed] The laddie's right. Dega.s.sed, it'd sink right back into the mantle!

AILSA GORDON: How the devil do you plan to effect the separation? We're talking sixty kilobars of pressure, for Christ's sake! And given that you do figure out how to perform the miracle-do you realize what would happen as soon as the volatiles began to bubble out?

MIDORI SAKAI: [mildly] The cork would fly out of the champagne bottle.

TORMOD MATHESON: [to Jack] Both Ailsa and Midori are right, you know.

JON REMILLARD: We would need not one metaconcert, but two. One to effect the separation, and another to delay the eruption until the process is complete. Then we allow the volatiles to outgas through a diatreme vent. There would be a rather powerful temblor, but the volatile ejecta would almost surely be essentially harmless to the atmosphere and the land.

DIRIGENT MACDONALD: Two metaconcerts. Of course! The eight grandmasters working together to effect the separation- JON REMILLARD: And two paramounts in tandem to hold down the lid until the volatiles are allowed to blow. You and I, Diamond.

DIRIGENT MACDONALD: [inscrutably] I'd do it willingly. But I know nothing about CE operation and very little of metaconcert.

JON REMILLARD: I could teach you enough ... and act as the executive [image] in the concert. You would handle the focus.

ROGATIEN REMILLARD: But-that's the way Marc nearly got himself killed! Doing focus!

JON REMILLARD: Yes. But his mind hadn't been accurately calibrated to fit the dual configuration. I checked with Orb last night: Diamond's mind was calibrated by the Lylmik before they named her paramount.

DIRIGENT MACDONALD: Yes. [She smiles ruefully.] It was quite an experience.

INTENDANT GENERAL SORLEY: [beside himself with excitement] But, that means ... if you two joined in ... then Caledonia- DIRIGENT MACDONALD: Might be spared after all.

TISHA ABAKA: Jack, how long will it take you to get everything ready?

JON REMILLARD: Two days should do it. I'll need an in situ a.n.a.lysis of the magma to complete the calculations. I'm afraid I can't use the old figures. I need to know what the composition is right now.

JAMES MACKELVIE: Tormod and Ailsa and I will take the small driller down at once. We'll have the beastie vetted inside of fourteen hours.

JON REMILLARD: Training the lot of you-and the Dirigent- will take most of two days. [Rises from the table.] I'd like you to excuse me now. It would be a good thing if I got just a bit of sleep and studied up on igneous petrogenesis at the same time. I'll get started on the preliminary metaconcert designs in the morning. If you all agree, we can start training when Jim and the others come back with the magma specs.

DIRIGENT MACDONALD: [also rising] Let me show you and Uncle Rogi to your rooms.

[Verbal adieux and expressions of enthusiasm as Macdonald and the two Remillards exit.]

NEELYA DEMIDOVA: [worriedly] I know Jack is the greatest mind in the Human Polity ... but I hope he knows what the h.e.l.l he's doing. Genius or not, one can't learn everything there is to know about magma dynamics overnight.

TORU YORITA: [sighing] Nor can a group of Grand Master Creators, and one brilliant young female Paramount, learn to perform perfectly in a novel metaconcert without long months of practice. But I think we are all going to have to try.

The rain was over, watery morning sun shone through the high cirrus veil, and quasi-Mesozoic birds with pink plumage squawked in the exotic heather as they gathered bits of vegetation to pad their subterranean nests. It was spring on Windlestrow Muir and the Dirigent asked Rogi to go for a walk with her to calm her nerves before the return of the small deep-driller.

The old man was suitably impressed with the multicolored foliage of the rolling moorland-mostly baby-blue and peach, softened by generous amounts of dark green. Large flowers resembling b.u.t.tercups bloomed among the rocks and were visited by insectile fliers with transparent wings. The ground beneath the gnarled bushes was coa.r.s.e, yellowish in color, and nearly dried out in spite of last night's downpour. In the gullies and other eroded areas were drifts of wine-colored sand and heaps of light green and garnet stones. Sixty kilometers to the northwest, the Lothian Range loomed on the skyline as a saw-toothed shadow.

Keeping a friendly silence, they followed a game trail along the broken perimeter of the cup-shaped depression that held Windlestrow Loch. After they had walked a couple of kilometers the Dirigent gave a little triumphant cry and stooped to pick up something from the side of the path.

"Look, Uncle Rogi-a diamond."

"You're kidding."

She dropped the crystal into his open palm. It was a pea-sized dodecahedron with rounded edges, oddly greasy-looking and faintly blue in the diffused sunlight.

"If this operation is successfully concluded, I'll have it cut and polished for you as a keepsake. We'll call it the Star of Windlestrow." She peered closely at it for a moment. "My deepsight shows it's a VVS blue-white-with only tiny flaws. Diamonds are very common on Callie." She indicated the surrounding area. "That little lake is right on top of a very ancient kimberlite pipe. You know-the material diamonds are found in. The old pipe goes clear through the Clyde craton right down to the magma. Millions of years ago, there was another, much smaller diatreme on this site."

"Batege! It's been a long time since anyone gave me a diamond." Rogi fished in the pocket of his chino pants and came up with the key-ring fob known to three generations of Remillard youngsters as the Great Carbuncle. "When I first got hold of this, it was worth millions. I suppose you could buy another for only a few thousand dollars nowadays. It's been my lucky charm for G.o.d knows how many years."

She examined it with interest. "But it's gorgeous! That unusual clear red color-and polished into a perfect sphere. Where in the world did you ever get it?"

"From a Lylmik," the old man said playfully. And when she eyed him askance, he said, "Oh, all right. I found it in a gutter in Hanover. Very mysterious. But I swear it's saved my life a couple of times." His face lit with sudden inspiration. He detached the fob from the key ring and pressed the glowing little silver-caged gem into her hand. "Let's trade, Dorothee. You keep the Great Carbuncle for luck during this operation, and I'll hang on to the Star of Windlestrow."

She froze, and for a moment it seemed as though she had stopped looking out of her eyes and had turned instead to some somber inner vision. Then her face lost its haunted aspect and she smiled.

"I'd love to carry the Carbuncle, Uncle Rogi." She pulled a gold chain out the neck of her sweater. A glittering little mask-charm hung on it. "There. Your good-luck piece can hang next to my own talisman."

She tucked the chain back into its hiding place. Then her gaze met that of the tall old man and she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, not making a sound.

Rogi felt his heart plummet. She was twenty years old and she might very well die within the next few days, consumed in a split second by the fires inside her world. Last night, after they had left the others, Jack had confessed to him and Dorothee that even using the double metaconcert, there was only a fifty-fifty chance of the new plan succeeding. The Dirigent had nodded calmly. She had not asked Jack why he was willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of a rather ordinary colonial planet.

Do you know why, Dorothee? Rogi asked her. Would you like me to tell you?

But she pulled away from him, not answering, and stood staring down at the little lake.

"Look," she said.

The waters were suddenly roiled and bubbling. At the same moment Rogi felt a faint tremor underfoot. In the survey camp on the other side of the depression, people were running out of the buildings and down the steep embankment to the sh.o.r.e, where they waited expectantly. A few minutes later a vast eructation of steam broke the water's surface. A bullet-shaped black machine the size of a bus thrust up vertically in the middle of it like a broaching leviathan, then fell back with a resounding splash that echoed over the heath. A pair of frightened pink birds burst out of the shrubs and took wing, squawking. The humans down on the lakesh.o.r.e jumped up and down and their faint cheers reached Rogi and Dorothee on the ridge.

Still steaming gently, the driller floated sedately toward land, deployed its treads, and crawled ash.o.r.e. It halted next to the four larger machines parked there, and in a few minutes its ventral hatch opened and three people emerged.

The Dirigent watched them with narrowed eyes. "They have the a.n.a.lysis. It's time for me to go back and learn how to boost my brain. Pray for me, Uncle Rogi!" She turned and ran off along the path.

"I'll d.a.m.n well do more than that," the old man growled to himself. He waited until the Dirigent was far away, then looked around furtively and addressed the open sky. "Ghost! You hear me? ... Do something! You can't let those two young people die. Help them!"

He stood with his head c.o.c.ked, listening. The pearly sky glowed, the spring wind blew softly over the moor, and the archaic pink birds uttered relieved clucks and returned to their nursery hole.

"Don't play coy! I know you're watching, mon fantome."

The breeze seemed to sigh in resignation.

The old man smiled then and set off for the survey camp, fingering the slippery little diamond in his jacket pocket and muttering to himself in French.

24.

SECTOR 12: STAR 12-337-010 [GRIAN].

PLANET 4 [CALEDONIA].

17-18 AN GIBLEAN [28-29 NOVEMBER] 2077.

The ten of them a.s.sembled at dawn, dressed in silvery Nomex suits as a partial precaution against creative flashback and carrying the matte black CE helmets under their arms. The drill-rigs had been equipped with every piece of safety equipment the CE operators could think of.

It was raining again, and rather than waste mindpower erecting an umbrella they stood together beneath the belly of one of the huge machines listening to Jack's final instructions.

"If everything goes according to plan, the job should be completed in approximately fifty hours, including the fourteen needed for ascent and descent. This is well within the safety margin for our four full-sized drill-rigs. Keep in mind, however, that the only possible way we can abort is for the Dirigent and I to hold the lid in place until the volatile components return to solution in the magma. I must warn you that the reabsorption process might take over twice as much time as the separation did, and she and I might find ourselves unable to contain the pressure. So we'd d.a.m.n well better not abort."

"We understand, Jack," said Jim MacKelvie. "We do the job right the first time or risk complete disaster."

The others murmured in acknowledgment. Unspoken was the fact that every settlement on Clyde was now on full seismic-alert status, ready to deal as best they could with the catastrophic results of failure.

"Let's get on with it, then," Jack said. As they all went off to the different vehicles, his mind reached out to his great-granduncle, who had withdrawn with the other survey personnel to a safety bunker 20 kilometers away.

Goodbye Uncle Rogi.

Bonne chance Ti-Jean et Dorothee et dieu vous benisse.

"After you, Madame Dirigent," Jack said, gesturing to the ladder of the drill-rig he would share with Dorothea Macdonald. Tight-lipped, she climbed into the machine without a word and went immediately to the control room, where she halted in sudden consternation.

Before the command-console was a single chair. Beside it stood a pedestal bearing what looked like an open-topped spherical fishbowl.

"Sorry," said Jack, coming up behind her. "I forgot to warn you that I'll have to do this job bodiless to conserve my mental energy. I don't usually say too much about this aspect of my life to people I work with. It distracts them."

"I ... see." She sank into the chair and watched, blank-faced, as he set his CE helmet aside, slipped off his boots, and began to remove the rest of his clothing. The deep-driller, which like the other three was temporarily under the command of Jim MacKelvie for the descent below the planetary crust, suddenly came to life.

"Attention," it said in a Scots-accented voice. "This vehicle, designated D-4, is now being activated via remote control from D-l. Checklisting of operating and environmental systems will proceed silently unless a verbal override is given."

Jack said nothing as he unzipped the fireproof coverall, stepped out of it, and tossed it aside. His PK folded the suit in mid-air before it hit the deck, and stowed it tidily in an open locker. He stripped off his boots, socks, and air-conditioned underwear and disposed of them in the same way. The Dirigent waited in some apprehension for him to remove the last white formfitting garment.

Reading her thoughts, Jack shrugged. And she knew then with sickening certainty that he was already naked.

Except for his normal-looking hands, head, and neck, his body was smooth, hairless, and completely without wrinkle, crease, or blemish. He had no genitals, umbilical scar, or toes. His appearance was that of a man-sized doll made of pla.s.s, with human parts inexplicably grafted on. Involuntarily, she gave a low cry of pity.

"It's all right," he said with casual rea.s.surance. "I don't usually bother with body-construction details if it's not absolutely necessary. But all the usual humanoid equipment is optionally available. And then some!"

She gasped. For the merest instant his body had grown an astonishing coat of light brown fur, curled ivory horns, and membranous wings that stretched between his wrists and ankles. The fantastic embellishments disappeared almost as soon as they were created, and Jack's pale pseudoflesh began to dissolve, flowing to the deck like heavy smoke and gathering in a grayish-pink puddle. The fluid contracted into a gelatinous lump the size of a large melon, then bounced into the locker where the clothes were. The door slammed behind it.

Hovering in mid-air was a glistening silvery brain.

The driller said: "Checklist completed. Prepare for inertialess descent."

As the Dirigent continued to watch, stunned and disbelieving, the thing that was Jack floated to the crystal fishbowl and fitted itself neatly inside. Outside the forward viewport, the rainy landscape seemed to be in motion as the driller entered Windlestrow Loch.

"But ... your physical form isn't disgusting at all!" she blurted at last.

There was a disembodied laugh. "I hope not. But aesthetic standards vary quite a lot, don't they? When I was very young and just getting the hang of living with the mutation, I made my share of social errors cooking up weird bodies to nauseate my elders. Marc and Uncle Rogi made me-er-shape up rather quickly."

She could not take her fascinated eyes off the brain. "Does- does it hurt when you come all apart?"