Year's Best Scifi 2 Part 11

"So it looks like a negative ma.s.s?"

IT MUST. THUS IT REPULSES MATTER. JUST AS THE OTHER END ACTS LIKE A.

POSITIVE, ORDINARY Ma.s.s AND ATTRACTS MATTER.

"Why didn't it shoot out from the Sun, then?"

IT WOULD, AND BE LOST IN INTERSTELLAR s.p.a.cE. BUT THE MAGNETIC ARCH.

HOLDS IT.

"How come we know it's got negative ma.s.s? All I saw was-" Enna popped an image into the wall screen.

NEGATIVE Ma.s.s ACTS AS A DIVERGING LENS, FOR LIGHT Pa.s.sING NEARBY. THAT.

WAS WHY IT APPEARED TO SHRINK AS WE FLEW OVER IT.

Ordinary matter focused light, Claire knew, like a converging lens. In a glance she saw that a negative-ended wormhole refracted light oppositely. Incoming beams were shoved aside, leaving a dark tunnel downstream. They had flown across that tunnel, swooping down into it so that the apparent size of the wormhole got smaller.

"But it takes a whole star to focus light very much."

TRUE. WORMHOLES ARE HELD TOGETHER BY EXOTIC MATTER, HOWEVER, WHICH.

HAS PROPERTIES FAR BEYOND OUR EXPERIENCE.

Claire disliked lectures, even high-speed ones. But an idea was tickling the back of her mind.... "So this worm, it won't fall back into the Sun?"

IT CANNOT. I WOULD VENTURE TO GUESS THAT IT CAME TO BE SNAGGED HERE.

WHILE WORKING ITS WAY UPWARD, AFTER COLLIDING WITH THE SUN.

"The scientists are going to be happy. The worm won't gobble up the core."TRUE-WHICH MAKES OUR RESULTS ALL THE MORE IMPORTANT.

"More important, but not more valuable." Working on a fixed fee had always grated on her. You could excel, fine-but you got the same as if you'd just sleep-walked through the job.

WE ARE EXTREMELY LUCKY TO HAVE SUCH A RARE OBJECT COME TO OUR.

ATTENTION. WORMHOLES MUST BE RARE, AND THIS ONE HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY.

SUSPENDED HERE. MAGNETIC ARCHES LAST ONLY MONTHS BEFORE THEY-.

"Wait a sec. How big is that thing?"

I CALCULATE THAT IT IS PERHAPS TEN METERS ACROSS.

"SolWatch was wrong-it's small."

THEY DID NOT KNOW OF THIS REFRACTION EFFECT. THEY INTERPRETED THEIR.

DATA USING CONVENTIONAL METHODS.

"We're lucky we ever saw it."

IT IS UNIQUE, A RELIC OF THE FIRST SECOND IN THE LIFE OF OUR UNIVERSE. AS A.

CONDUIT TO ELSEWHERE, IT COULD BE&mdas; "Worth a fortune."

Claire thought quickly. Erma was probably right-the seventy-five million wasn't going to save her and the ship. But now she knew something that n.o.body else did. And she would only be here once.

"Abort the shield separation."

I DO NOT SO ADVISE. THERMAL LOADING WOULD RISE RAPIDLY-.

"You're a program, not an officer. Do it."

She had acted on impulse, point conceded.

That was the difference between engineers and pilots. Engineers would still fret and calculate after they were already committed. Pilots, never. The way through this was to fly the orbit and not sweat the numbers.

Sweat. She tried not to smell herself.

Think of cooler things. Theory.

Lounging on a leather couch, Claire recalled the scientific officer's briefing. Graphics, squiggly equations, the works. Wormholes as fossils of the Big Blossoming. Wormholes as ducts to the whole rest of the Universe. Wormholes as potentially devastating, if they got into a star and ate it up.

She tried to imagine a mouth a few meters across sucking away a star, dumping its hot ma.s.ses somewhere in deep s.p.a.ce. To make a wormhole which could do that, it had be held together with exotic material, some kind of matter that had "negative average energy density." Whatever that was, it had to be born in the Blossoming. It threaded wormholes, stem to stern. Great construction material, if you could get it. And just maybe she could.

So wormholes could kill us or make us G.o.ds. Humanity had to know, the beanpole scientific officer hadsaid.

"So be it." Elaborately, she toasted the wall screens. On them the full, virulent glory of hydrogen fusion worked its violences.

Claire had never gone in for the austere metal boxes most ore haulers and freighters were. Hers was a rough business, with hefty wads of cash involved. Profit margin was low, lately, and sometimes negative-which was how she came to be hocked to the Isataku for so much. Toting megatons of ma.s.s up the gravity gradient was long, slow work. Might as well go in style. Her Fresnel coatings, ordered when she had made a killing on commodity markets for ore, helped keep the ship cool, so she didn't burn herself crawling down inspection conduits. The added ma.s.s for her deep pile carpeting, tinkling waterfall, and pool table was inconsequential. So was the water liner around the living quarters, which now was busily saving her life.

She had two hours left, skimming like a flat stone over the solar corona. Silver Metal Lugger had separated from the shield, which went arcing away on the long parabola to infinity, its skin shimmering with melt.

Claire had fired the ship's mixmotor then for the first time in weeks. Antimatter came streaming out of its magneto-traps, struck the reaction ma.s.s, and holy h.e.l.l broke loose. The drive chamber focused the snarling, annihilating ma.s.s into a thrust throat, and the silvery ship arced into a new, tight orbit.

A killing orbit, if they held to it more than a few hours.

I AM PUMPING MORE WATER INTO YOUR BAFFLES.

"Good idea."

Silver Metal Lugger was already as silvered as technology allowed, rejecting all but a tiny fraction of the Sun's glare. She carried narrow-band Fresnel filters in multilayered skins. Top of the line.

Without the shield, it would take over ten hours to make Silver Metal Lugger as hot as the wall of blaring light booming up at them at six thousand degrees. To get through even two hours of that, they would have to boil off most of the water reserve. Claire had bought it at steep Mercury prices, for the voyage Lunaside. Now she listened thoughtfully to it gurgle through her walls.

She toasted water with champagne, the only bottle aboard. If she didn't make it through this, at least she would have no regrets about that detail.

I BELIEVE THIS COURSE OF ACTION TO BE HIGHLY-.

"Shut up."

WITH OUR MISSION COMPLETE, THE DATA SQUIRTED TO SOLWATCH, WE SHOULD.

COUNT OURSELVES LUCKY AND FOLLOW OUR CAREFULLY MADE PLANS-.

"Stuff it."

HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED THE ELABORATE MENTAL ARCHITECTURE.

NECESSARY TO AN ADVANCED PERSONALITY SIMULATION LIKE MYSELF? WE, TOO,.

EXPERIENCE HUMAN-LIKE MOTIVATIONS, RESPONSES-AND FEARS.

"You simulate them."HOW CAN ONE TELL THE DIFFERENCE? A GOOD SIMULATION IS AS EXACT, AS POWERFUL AS-.

"I don't have time for a debate." Claire felt uncom-fortable with the whole subject, and she was d.a.m.ned if she spent what might be her last hour feeling guilty. Or having second thoughts. She was committed.

Her wall screens flickered and there was the scien-tific officer, frowning. "Ship Command! We could not acquire your tightbeam until now. You orbited around. Are you disabled? Explain."

Claire toasted him, too. The taste was lovely. Of course she had taken an anti-alcohol tab before, to keep her reflexes sharp, mind clear. Erma had recommended some other tabs, too, and a vapor to keep Claire calm; the consolations of chemistry, in the face of brute physics. "I'm going to bring home the worm."

"That is impossible. Your data transmission suggests that this is the negative ma.s.s end, and that is very good news, fascinating, but-"

"It's also small. I might be able to haul it away."

He shook his head gravely. "Very risky, very-"

"How much will you pay for it?"

"What?" He blinked. It was an interesting effect, with such long eyelids. "You can't sell an astronomical object-"

"Whatever my grapplers hold, that's mine. Law of s.p.a.ce, Code 64.3."

"You would quote laws to me when a scientific find of such magnitude is-"

"Want it or not?"

He glanced off camera, plainly yearning for somebody to consult. No time to talk to Luna or Isataku, though. He was on his own. "All... all right. You understand that this is a foolish mission? And that we are in no way responsible for-"

"Save the chatter. I need estimates of the field strength down inside that arch. Put your crew to work on that."

"We will of course provide technical a.s.sistance." He gave her a very thin smile. "I am sure we can negotiate price, too, if you survive."

At least he had the honesty to say if, not when. Claire poured another pale column into the shapely gla.s.s.

Best crystal, of course. When you only need one, you can have the best. "Send me-or rather, Erma-the data squirt."

"We're having trouble transmitting through the dense plasma columns above you-"

"Erma is getting SolWatch. Pipe through them."

"The problems of doing what you plan are-why, they're enormous."

"So's my debt to Isataku."

"This should've been thought through, negotiated-""I have to negotiate with some champagne right now."

YOU HAVE NO PLAN.

Erma's tinkling voice definitely had an accusing edge. A good sim, with a feminine archness to it. Claire ignored that and stripped away the last of her clothes. "It's hot."

OF COURSE. I CALCULATED THE RISE EARLY IN OUR ORBIT. IT FITS THE.

STEFAN-BOLTZ-MANN LAW PERFECTLY.

"Bravo." She shook sweat from her hair. "Stefan-Boltzmann, do yo' stuff."

WE ARE DECELERATING IN SEQUENCE. ARRIVAL TIME: 4.87 MINUTES. ANTIMATTER.

RESERVES HOLDING. THERE COULD BE DIFFICULTY WITH THE MAGNETIC BOTTLES.

The ship thrummed as it slowed. Claire had been busy testing her ship inboards, sitting in a cozy recliner.

It helped make the minutes crawl by a bit faster. She had kept glancing nervously at the screens, where t.i.tanic blazes steepled up from incandescent plains. Flames, licking up at her.

She felt thick, loggy. Her air was getting uncomfortably warm. Her heart was thudding faster, working.

She roused herself, spat back at Erma, "And I do have a plan."

YOU HAVE NOT SEEN FIT TO CONFIDE IN ME?.

She rolled her eyes. A personality sim in a snit-just the thing she needed. "I was afraid you'd laugh."

I HAVE NEVER LAUGHED.

"That's my point."

She ignored multiple red warnings winking at her. Systems were OK, though stressed by the heat. So why did she feel so slow? You're not up for the game, girl.

She tossed her data board aside. The effort the simple gesture took surprised her. I hope that alcohol tab worked. I'll get another.

She got up to go fetch one-and fell to the floor. She banged her knee. "Uh! d.a.m.n." Erma said nothing.

It was labor getting on hands and knees and she barely managed to struggle back into the recliner. She weighed a ton-and then she understood.

"We're decelerating-so I'm feeling more of local gravity."