His Majesty's Starship (12 page)

[Interrogative] <>

<>

[Amused interrogative] <> Tree Bright asked.

<>

[Amusement] <> Tree Bright said.

Arm Wild [agreement]

*

A formal reception on a World Administration ship! R.V. Krishnamurthy always relished irony and this was as ironic as one could get. He wondered if David Sorhindo, the WA’s delegate, had considered not inviting him to this reception, even though it was meant for all the delegates. Krishnamurthy smiled as he strolled into
U Thant
’s saloon, hands behind his back, to mingle with the others. Ah, to be a liberal! To have to be nice to everyone! It was not a problem Krishnamurthy had ever had.

Sorhindo and
U Thant
’s captain were waiting to greet guests as they came in.

“Mr Krishnamurthy.” Sorhindo’s tone could have frozen warts. “Delighted you could come.” They shook hands and Krishnamurthy deliberately held on long past the handshake had run its natural course.

“I’m very glad to be here,” he said. “It is so important that we delegates mix together and get to know one another, wouldn’t you say? I do so admire you for your work in remaining neutral-”

Sorhindo managed to extract his hand. “You’re very kind,” he said. “Excuse me-” He turned to the next delegate in line and Krishnamurthy sauntered on in. He took a glass from a steward and looked around. Not bad, he thought, not bad.
U Thant
wasn’t a luxury ship but she could run to a reasonable degree of hospitality.

Then his gaze settled on a knot of three delegates together: two men and a woman. He sensed more sport and wandered over to join them. The woman was a smartly dressed blonde and the man whose face he could see had dark hair that was largely grey, and a permanent shadow on his jowls. The other, smaller man had his back turned but Krishnamurthy knew who he was. He clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Your Royal Highness!” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.” He relished the ways the expressions of the three froze as Prince James turned to meet him.

The prince did it best, Krishnamurthy had to admit. An eyebrow went up and a look of polite disdain settled on his face. “No, I don’t believe we have,” he said. “Mr Krishnamurthy, isn’t it?”

“The same. Your obedient servant.” As we were your obedient servants for three hundred years, while you bled our country dry, turned us into second-class Englishmen and denied us our proper heritage.

“Charmed,” said the prince.

Krishnamurthy turned to the others. “And you are ... don’t tell me ... Ms duPont of the North American Federation? And Mr Ganschow of Starward. Do tell me: what is a space company doing on this delegation? I never really gathered.”

Paul Ganschow couldn’t quite managed the prince’s hauteur. “We have our reasons for being here.”

“Of course, of course. And you, Your Royal Highness? Planning to rebuild your empire on the Roving?”

“The UK will submit its own plan for the Rusties’ consideration, in due course,” the prince said.

Krishnamurthy stayed jovial. “And make them all Christians? Dictate their culture? Rename their places for them?”

The prince grew even colder in contrast to Krishnamurthy’s smile. “Since their place names are all unpronounceable and mostly untranslatable, very probably,” he said. “As to your other points, I really couldn’t say. I like to think we’ve grown out of that kind of behaviour.”

“Let us hope so.”
And much good may it do you
, he thought, remembering the lodge in the Himalayas again,
because I know what they’re up to and you don’t, ha ha ha
. Krishnamurthy could have stayed and continued to annoy them, but apart from the satisfaction to be gained there were other things he could be doing more profitably. “Well, excuse me. Business calls.”

He wandered away from them, singing inside. So, those three were allies. Alliances would be bubbling up and bursting throughout this whole business: though the invitation suggested the Rusties would only deal with one nation, that one nation would find things far easier for itself if it had friends among the other humans. He wondered who else would-

The delegate for the United Slavic Federation drifted over to their group and was absorbed into the circle. Fascinating. Didn’t they realise they were broadcasting their togetherness to the world at large? So much better to keep secrets, to keep people guessing.

A snatch of conversation drifted across his hearing. His presence really was being felt-

“I’m amazed he has the nerve to show himself here.”

“The WA dropped the charges.”

“I know. I never could see why, though.”

“It was something like, the Burmese had voted in an open election to remain part of the Confederation-”

“Sure!”

“-and so the Confederation was justified in taking whatever action they felt necessary to put down the undemocratic rebels. Rangoon was India’s so they could do what they wanted with it.”

Precisely, Krishnamurthy thought, and we did. He considered turning round and congratulating the speaker defending him for his grasp of politics, but then one of his circle of allies caught his eye and began to wander over. Krishnamurthy gave an imperceptible shake of his head. No, don’t advertise yet. Keep them in suspense; they’ll find out about us in due course.

- 10 -

31 April-17 May 2149

A sphere, a strange blurry nothingness in spherical form, blossomed out of nothing ahead of the ships. Gilmore winced as he tried to make his eyes focus on it.

“Aagh!” Samad said, puncturing the tension on the flight deck, and Gilmore knew he was feeling the same thing. How do you focus on nothing?

He noticed he was gripping the edges of his desk, and deliberately let go, one finger at a time. But this, finally, was the unknown. They were about to do what no human had ever done before.

The fleet was holding position at the step-through point, 11 light minutes away from the sun. All ships were on orders to stand by for boost at a moment’s notice, and Gilmore had passed the time checking with the briefing pack on what was about to happen.

The pack assured him that these passageways in space were nothing new: humans had used the theory of Quantum Gravity to predict them for two hundred years, as if that was meant to be a comfort. Humans called them wormholes. The Rusties called them tubules and they were constantly appearing and vanishing on very small scales: tiny tunnels through the dimensions of space-time, far too small to let anything substantial pass through and existing only for tiny fractions of a picosecond. The prideship had scanned for one such that connected to the Roving system, caught it and inflated it to millions of times its normal size. Through that sphere, Roving space was just a step away.

The command came from the prideship and one by one, in the designated order, the Earth ships – not without a small amount of trepidation – fired their thrusters and advanced into the sphere. And vanished.

Ark Royal
’s orders came through.

“Proceed,” Gilmore said. His voice was steady but he had decided that if he mopped his brow the action would only call attention to the fact that he was sweating. Everyone else, perhaps using the same logic, was carefully studying their instruments.

Adrian Nichol fired the thrusters and the ship moved forward. There was no sense of transition. One moment the sphere was dead ahead, almost touching the ship, and the next there was only the black of space around them again. Space a thousand lightyears from Earth. The ships that had gone through ahead of them were there, waiting.

On the flight deck there was the sound of several people suddenly starting to breath again.

“Take up our designated position,” Gilmore said. “Don’t want anyone ramming up the stern tubes.”

Ark Royal
moved aside to let the next ship, the Vatican’s
Christopher
, through. Another ten minutes and the last of the Earth ships had appeared. Behind it loomed the prideship, and then the sphere had vanished and the step-through was completed.

The Roving’s sun was a bright marble ahead of them. They were roughly the same distance from it as they were from Earth’s sun: the briefing pack said step-throughs started and ended at the same gravitational potential, which in this case – since the two suns had roughly the same mass – meant roughly the same distance from each. And for the first time ever in space, Gilmore had a flash of agoraphobia. Even in deep space in the Sol system, he was still home – he was where he belonged – but now he was light years from home in a solar system to which humanity had a claim only by invitation of the inhabitants. One tiny human in an infinite amount of someone else’s space.

He bit his tongue and ordered a status report.

*

The prince was on the bicycle in the ship’s gym, flushed and sweating, legs pumping. Gilmore opened his mouth to speak and the prince held up a hand to silence him.

The figures on the display read 9.7, and climbing. When they reached 10 the prince stopped and let the bicycle’s mechanism whirr to a standstill. Then he started peddling again at a reduced, more leisurely rate. He grinned at Gilmore. “Ten miles every day without fail, Captain. Highly recommended. What can I do for you?”

“You asked to see me when I came off watch, sir,” Gilmore said.

“I did?” The prince paused with an element of theatre – just enough that Gilmore wasn’t sure if he was being wound up. “I did, yes. Thank you for coming. I want to use that software officer of yours, if you can spare him.”

“Mr Kirton?”

“That’s him. I’ve looked through your crew records. Seems he’s quite a whiz with the electrons.”

Gilmore held back a laugh. Quite a whiz? Electrons? “What would you like him for, sir?”

The prince told him and Gilmore raised an eyebrow.

“Any objections, Captain?” the prince said.

“None at all, sir.” Indeed, Gilmore was delighted that for once the prince had thought of asking for something. “I think he’s still on the flight deck.”

Peter Kirton was indeed on the flight deck, carrying out a task on one of the auxiliary desks. Adrian Nichol was also there, at the main console, and unfortunately for Kirton they were alone.

“-and the Father says to the Rabbi, sir, I know the prohibitions of your religion, but there’s something I must ask you.” Nichol was leaning forward eagerly, awaiting every nuance of reaction. Kirton looked resigned. “Have you ever lapsed and eaten pork? And the Rabbi says, yes, yes, may the Lord forgive me, I once lapsed. But tell me, Father, I know of your own prohibitions, so do tell me, have you ever lapsed and ... you know? And the Father says, well, I must confess that I once did, yes.

“And the Rabbi grins, and says-” Nichol saw Gilmore and Prince James waiting in the hatch. “Sir!”

“The Rabbi says, better than pork, isn’t it?” Gilmore said. Joel had told him that one once, and had been both surprised and impressed that his father already knew it. “Mr Kirton, a word please.”

The prince insisted that the three of them return to his cabin, where he got straight to the point. “Lieutenant, I want to be able to understand the Rusties.”

Kirton frowned. “But we can, sir.”

“Everything they say is filtered through their own translators, which is thoroughly unsatisfactory,” the prince said. “They could be saying anything and we’d never know. Could you manage something which would do our own translating?”

Kirton rubbed his chin, eyes slightly glazed as he pondered the problem. “Well, in theory, sir,” he said. “Neural technology might help ... throw enough examples at it and it works out its own rules. So if we knew roughly what a Rustie had said from its own translation, bit by bit we could make our own translator. But then the problem is hearing a Rustie speak in its own language. Arm Wild demonstrated his translator unit for me – they subvocalise so we don’t hear their original words. Mr Loonat may be able to devise a microphone that could hear them-”

“Good, good.” The prince’s cutting gesture indicated that Kirton should stop talking. “That’s all I wanted to know. Actually, they have two languages. Normally they use a mixture of vocal speech and body language and even smells, but they do have what they call mouthtalk as well, which is just vocal, and that’s what they use for their translators.” He took out his aide. “Plantagenet, please copy to Lieutenant Kirton’s archive file ‘Enigma’, password ‘Bletchley’.”

“Complying,” said the AI’s voice.

“Play file ‘Enigma’,” said the prince, and a noise that Gilmore for a moment had trouble placing filled the cabin. Immediately, however, a familiar bland voice spoke. It could have been Arm Wild or any other Rustie but the voice came from a translator unit.

“-impressive achievement,” it said. “This vessel is larger than any belonging to the First Breed.”

“Thank you, you honour me.” It was a human male voice now which Gilmore recognised as belonging to King Richard.

More Rustie-speak, which translated as: “Its power consumption must be-”

“Cease play,” Prince James said. He looked at the other two. “They were impressed by UK-1 when they came to see us,” he added conversationally, with a hint of pride.

“You could hear them speak!” Kirton said.

“Not at the time. We recorded as many conversations as we could and we enhanced the noise they made. What you have here, Lieutenant, is over fifty hours of the Rustie’s own language plus their own translation into Standard, as supplied during their stay on UK-1. Will this suffice as raw data?”

Kirton’s eyebrows were almost up above his fringe. “I dare say, sir. But-”

“But?”

“I can’t believe we’re the first to try, sir! In fact, I’d heard people already have, and just haven’t been able-”

“Just try it yourself, that’s all I ask. Will it take long?”

“Long?” It was only Kirton’s nervous respect in speaking to the prince that stopped him from laughing out loud. He had been given a task that many others had been given, and which no one else had been able to accomplish, and asked if it would take long. “Well, sir, it might have helped if we’d got this-”