Old Man's War Boxed Set 1 (3 page)

“Belief,” I said. “You believe that it won’t fall and it won’t. Try not to think about it too much or we’re all in trouble.”

“What I believe,” Jesse said, “is that I want to get something to eat. Care to join me?”

“Belief,” Harry Wilson said, and laughed. “Well, maybe belief
is
holding up this cable. Because it sure as hell isn’t fundamental physics.”

Harry Wilson had joined Jesse and me at a booth where we were eating. “You two look like you know each other, and that’s one up on everyone else here,” he said to us as he came up. We invited him to join us and he accepted gratefully. He had taught physics at a Bloomington, Indiana, high school for twenty years, he said, and the beanstalk had been intriguing him the entire time we had been riding it.

“What do you mean physics isn’t holding it up?” Jesse said. “Believe me, this is not what I want to hear right at this moment.”

Harry smiled. “Sorry. Let me rephrase. Physics
is
involved in holding up this beanstalk, certainly. But the physics involved aren’t of the garden variety. There’s a lot going on here that doesn’t make sense on the surface.”

“I feel a physics lecture coming on,” I said.

“I taught physics to teenagers for years,” Harry said, and dug out a small notepad and a pen. “It’ll be painless, trust me. Okay, now look.” Harry began drawing a circle at the bottom of the page. “This is the Earth. And this”—he drew a smaller circle halfway up the page—“is Colonial Station. It’s in geosynchronous orbit, which means it stays put relative to the Earth’s rotation. It’s always hanging above Nairobi. With me so far?”

We nodded.

“Okay. Now, the idea behind the beanstalk is that you connect Colonial Station with the Earth through a ‘beanstalk’—a bunch of cables, like those out the window—and a bunch of elevator platforms, like the one we’re on now, that can travel back and forth.” Harry drew a line signifying the cable, and a small square, signifying our platform. “The idea here is that elevators on these cables don’t have to reach escape velocity to get to Earth orbit, like a rocket payload would. This is good for us, because we don’t have to go to Colonial Station feeling like an elephant had its foot on our chests. Simple enough.

“The thing is, this beanstalk doesn’t conform to the basic physical requirements of a classic Earth-to-space beanstalk. For one thing”—Harry drew an additional line past Colonial Station to the end of the page—“Colonial Station shouldn’t be at the
end
of the beanstalk. For reasons that have to do with mass balance and orbital dynamics, there should be additional cable extending tens of thousands of miles past Colonial Station. Without this counterbalance, any beanstalk should be inherently unstable and dangerous.”

“And you’re saying this one isn’t,” I said.

“Not only is
not
unstable, it’s probably the safest way to travel that’s ever been devised,” Harry said. “The beanstalk has been in continuous operation for over a century. It’s the only point of departure for colonists. There’s never been an accident due to instability or matériel failure, which would be related to instability. There was the famous beanstalk bombing forty years ago, but that was sabotage, unrelated to the physical structure of the beanstalk itself. The beanstalk itself is admirably stable and has been since it was built. But according to basic physics, it shouldn’t be.”

“So what is keeping it up?” Jesse said.

Harry smiled again. “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it.”

“You mean you don’t know?” Jesse asked.

“
I
don’t know,” Harry admitted. “But that in itself should be no cause for alarm, since I am—or was—merely a high school physics teacher. However, as far as I know, no one
else
has much of a clue how it works, either. On Earth, I mean. Obviously the Colonial Union knows.”

“Well, how can that be?” I asked. “It’s been here for a century, for God’s sake. No one’s bothered to figure out how it actually works?”

“I didn’t say
that,
” Harry said. “Of course they’ve been trying. And it’s not like it’s been a secret all these years. When the beanstalk was being built, there were demands by governments and the press to know how it worked. The CU essentially said ‘figure it out,’ and that was that. In physics circles, people have been trying to solve it ever since. It’s called ‘The Beanstalk Problem.’”

“Not a very original title,” I said.

“Well, physicists save their imagination for other things.” Harry chuckled. “The point is, it
hasn’t
been solved, primarily for two reasons. The first is that it’s incredibly complicated—I’ve pointed out the mass issues, but then there are other issues like cable strength, beanstalk oscillations brought on by storms and other atmospheric phenomena, and even an issue about how cables are supposed to taper. Any of these is massively difficult to solve in the real world; trying to figure them all out at once is impossible.”

“What’s the second reason?” Jesse asked.

“The second reason is that there’s no reason to. Even if we did figure out how to build one of these things, we couldn’t
afford
to build it.” Harry leaned back. “Just before I was a teacher, I worked for General Electric’s civil engineering department. We were working on the SubAtlantic rail line at the time, and one of my jobs was to go through old projects and project proposals to see if any of the technology or practices had application to the SubAtlantic project. Sort of a hail-Mary attempt to see if we could do anything to bring down costs.”

“General Electric bankrupted itself on that, didn’t they?” I asked.

“Now you know why they wanted to bring down costs,” Harry said. “And why I became a teacher. General Electric couldn’t afford me, or much of anyone else, right after that. Anyway, I’m going through old proposals and reports and I get into some classified stuff, and one of the reports is for a beanstalk. General Electric had been hired by the U.S. Government for a third-party feasibility study on building a beanstalk in the Western Hemisphere; they wanted to clear out a hole in the Amazon the size of Delaware and stick it right on the equator.

“General Electric told them to forget it. The proposal said that even assuming some major technological breakthroughs—most of which
still
haven’t happened, and none of which approach the technology that has to be involved with
this
beanstalk—the budget for the beanstalk would be
three times
the annual gross national product of the United States economy. That’s assuming that the project did not run over budget, which of course it almost certainly would have. Now, this was twenty years ago, and the report I saw was a decade old even then. But I don’t expect that the costs have gone down very much since then. So no new beanstalks—there are cheaper ways of getting people and material into orbit.
Much
cheaper.”

Harry leaned forward again. “Which leads to two obvious questions: How did the Colonial Union manage to create
this
technological monstrosity, and why did they bother with it at all?”

“Well, obviously, the Colonial Union is more technologically advanced than we are here on Earth,” Jesse said.

“Obviously,” Harry said. “But why? Colonists are human, after all. Not only that, but since the colonies specifically recruit from impoverished countries with population problems, colonists tend to be poorly educated. Once they get to their new homes, you have to assume they’re spending more time staying alive than they are thinking up creative ways to build beanstalks. And the primary technology that allowed interstellar colonization is the skip drive, which was developed right here on Earth, and which has been substantially unimproved for more than a century. So on the face of it, there’s no reason why the colonists should be any more technologically advanced than we are.”

Something suddenly clicked in my head. “Unless they cheat,” I said.

Harry grinned. “Exactly. That’s what I think, too.”

Jesse looked at me, and then Harry. “I’m not following you two,” she said.

“They cheat,” I said. “Look, on Earth, we’re bottled up. We only learn from ourselves—we make discoveries and refine technology all the time, but it’s slow, because we do all the work ourselves. But up there—”

“Up there humans meet other intelligent species,” Harry said. “Some of which almost certainly have technology more advanced than ours. We either take it in trade or reverse engineer it and find out how it works. It’s much easier to figure out how something works when you’ve got something to work from than it is to figure it out on your own.”

“That’s what makes it cheating,” I said. “The CU is reading off someone else’s notes.”

“Well, why doesn’t the Colonial Union share what it’s discovered with us?” Jesse asked. “What’s the point of keeping it to themselves?”

“Maybe they think that what we don’t know can’t hurt us,” I said.

“Or it’s something else entirely,” Harry said, and waved toward the window, where the beanstalk cables slid by. “This beanstalk isn’t here because it’s the easiest way to get people to Colonial Station, you know. It’s here because it’s one of the most
difficult
—in fact, the
most
expensive,
most
technologically complex and
most
politically intimidating way to do it. Its very presence is a reminder that the CU is literally light-years ahead of anything humans can do here.”

“I’ve never found it intimidating,” Jesse said. “I really never thought about it much at all.”

“The message isn’t aimed at you,” Harry said. “If you were President of the United States, however, you’d think of it differently. After all, the CU keeps us all here on Earth. There’s no space travel except what the CU allows through colonization or enlistment. Political leaders are always under pressure to buck the CU and get their people to the stars. But the beanstalk is a constant reminder. It says, ‘Until you can make one of these, don’t even
think
of challenging us.’ And the beanstalk is the only technology the CU has decided to show us. Think about what they
haven’t
let us know about. I can guarantee you the U.S. President has. And that it keeps him and every other leader on the planet in line.”

“None of this is making me feel friendly toward the Colonial Union,” Jesse said.

“It doesn’t have to be sinister,” Harry said. “It could be that the CU is trying to protect Earth. The universe is a big place. Maybe we’re not in the best neighborhood.”

“Harry, were you always this paranoid,” I asked, “or was this something that crept up on you as you got older?”

“How do you think I made it to seventy-five?” Harry said, and grinned. “Anyway, I don’t have any problems with the CU being much more technologically advanced. It’s about to work to my advantage.” He held up an arm. “Look at this thing,” he said. “It’s flabby and old and not in very good shape. Somehow, the Colonial Defense Forces are going to take this arm—and the rest of me—and whip it into fighting shape. And do you know how?”

“No,” I said. Jesse shook her head.

“Neither do I,” Harry said, and let his arm down with a
plop
onto the table. “I have
no
idea how they’ll make it work. What’s more, it’s likely that I can’t even
imagine
how they’ll do it—if we assume that we’ve been held in a state of technological infancy by the CU, trying to explain it to me now would be like trying to explain this beanstalk platform to someone who’s never seen a mode of transportation more complex than a horse and buggy. But they’ve obviously made it work. Otherwise, why would they recruit seventy-five-year-olds? The universe isn’t going to be conquered by legions of geriatrics. No offense,” he added quickly.

“None taken,” Jesse said, and smiled.

“Lady and gentleman,” Harry said, looking at the both of us, “we may think we have some idea of what we’re getting into, but I don’t think we have the first clue. This beanstalk exists to tell us that much. It’s bigger and stranger than we can imagine—and it’s just the first part of this journey. What comes next is going to be even bigger and stranger. Prepare yourself as best you can.”

“How dramatic,” Jesse said dryly. “I don’t know how to prepare myself after a statement like that.”

“I do,” I said, and scooted over to get out of the booth. “I’m going to go pee. If the universe is bigger and stranger than I can imagine, it’s best to meet it with an empty bladder.”

“Spoken like a true Boy Scout,” Harry said.

“A Boy Scout wouldn’t need to pee as much as I do,” I said.

“Sure he would,” Harry said. “Just give him sixty years.”

“I don’t know about you two,” Jesse was saying to me and Harry, “but so far this really isn’t what I expected the army to be.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “Here, have another donut.”

“I don’t need another donut,” she said, taking the donut anyway. “What I need is some sleep.”

I knew what she meant. It had been more than eighteen hours since I left home, nearly all of it consumed with travel. I was ready for a nap. Instead I was sitting in the huge mess hall of an interstellar cruiser, having coffee and donuts with about a thousand other recruits, waiting for someone to come and tell us what we were supposed to do next.
That
part, at least, was pretty much like the military I expected.

The rush and wait began on arrival. As soon as we got off the beanstalk platform, we were greeted by two Colonial Union apparatchiks. They informed us that we were the last recruits expected for a ship that was leaving soon, so could we please follow them quickly so that everything could stay on schedule. Then one took the lead and one went to the rear and they effectively and rather insultingly herded several dozen senior citizens across the entire station to our ship, the CDFS
Henry Hudson.

Jesse and Harry were clearly disappointed at the rush job, as was I. Colonial Station was huge—over a mile in diameter (1800 meters, actually, and I suspected that after seventy-five years of life, I would finally have to start getting used to the metric system) and served as the sole port of transport for recruits and colonists alike. Being herded across it without being able to stop and take it in was like being five years old and being hustled through a toy store at Christmas time by a harried parent. I felt like plopping down on the floor and having a tantrum until I got my way. I was unfortunately too old (or alternately, not nearly old enough) to get away with that sort of behavior.

What I did see on our speedy trek was a tantalizing appetizer. As our apparatchiks poked and prodded us along, we passed a huge holding bay filled to capacity with what I would guess were Pakistanis or Muslim Indians. Most were waiting patiently to gain entrance to shuttles that would take them to an immense colony transport ship, one of which was visible in the distance, floating outside the window. Others could be seen arguing with CU officials about one thing or another in accented English, comforting children who were clearly bored, or digging through their belongings for something to eat. In one corner, a group of men were kneeling on a carpeted area of the bay and praying. I wondered briefly how they had determined where Mecca was from twenty-three thousand miles up, and then we were pushed forward and I lost sight of them.

Jesse tugged on my sleeve and pointed to our right. In a small mess area, I caught a glimpse of something tentacled and blue, holding a martini. I alerted Harry; he was so intrigued that he went back and looked, much to the consternation of the trailing apparatchik. She shooed Harry back into the herd with a sour look on her face. Harry, on the other hand, was grinning like a fool. “A Gehaar,” he said. “It was eating a buffalo wing when I looked in.
Disgusting.
” Then he giggled. The Gehaar were one of the first intelligent aliens humans encountered, in the days before the Colonial Union established its monopoly on space travel. Nice enough people, but they ate by injecting their food with acid from dozens of thin head tentacles and then noisily slurping the resulting goop into an orifice. Messy.

Harry didn’t care. He’d spotted his first live alien.

Our meander reached its conclusion as we approached a holding bay with the words
“Henry Hudson/CDF Recruits”
glowing from a flight display. Our group gratefully took seats while our apparatchiks went to talk with some other Colonials waiting by the shuttle gate door. Harry, who was clearly showing a tendency toward curiosity, wandered over to the bay window to look at our ship. Jesse and I wearily got up and followed him. A small informational monitor at the window helped us find it among the other traffic.

The
Henry Hudson
was not actually docked at the gate, of course; it’s hard to make a hundred-thousand-metric-ton interstellar spacecraft move daintily in tandem with a revolving space station. As with the colony transports, it maintained a reasonable distance while supplies, passengers and crew were transported back and forth by rather more manageable shuttles and barges. The
Hudson
itself was stationed a few miles out and above the station, not the massive, unesthetically functional spoked-wheel design of the colony transports, but sleeker, flatter and, importantly, not at all cylindrical or wheel-shaped. I mentioned this to Harry, who nodded. “Full-time artificial gravity,” he said. “And stable over a large field. Very impressive.”

“I thought we were using artificial gravity on the way up,” Jesse said.

“We were,” Harry said. “The beanstalk platform’s gravity generators were increasing their output the higher up we went.”

“So what’s so different about a spaceship using artificial gravity?” Jesse asked.

“It’s just extremely difficult,” Harry said. “It takes an enormous amount of energy to create a gravitational field, and the amount of energy you have to put out increases exponentially with the radius of the field. They probably cheated by creating multiple, smaller fields instead of one larger field. But even that way, creating the fields in our beanstalk platform probably took more energy than it took to light your hometown for a month.”

“I don’t know about that,” Jesse said. “I’m from San Antonio.”

“Fine.
His
hometown, then,” Harry said, jerking a thumb toward me. “Point is, it’s an incredibly wasteful use of energy, and in most situations where artificial gravity is required, it’s simpler and
much
less expensive just to create a wheel, spin it and let that stick people and things to the inside rim. Once you’ve spun up, you only need to put minimal additional energy into the system to compensate for friction. As opposed to creating an artificial gravity field, which needs a constant and significant output of energy.”

He pointed to the
Henry Hudson.
“Look, there’s a shuttle next to the
Hudson.
Using that as a scale, I’m guessing the
Hudson
is 800 feet long, 200 feet wide and about 150 feet deep. Creating a single artificial gravity field around
that
baby would definitely dim the lights in San Antonio. Even multiple fields would be an amazing drain on power. So either they have a power source that can keep the gravity on and still run all the ship’s other systems, like propulsion and life support, or they’ve found a new, low-energy way to create gravity.”

“It’s probably not cheap,” I said, and pointed to a colony transport to the right of the
Henry Hudson.
“Look at the colony ship. It’s a wheel. And Colonial Station is spinning, too.”

“The colonies are saving their best technology for the military,” Jesse said. “And
this
ship is just being used to pick up new recruits. I think you’re right, Harry. We have no idea what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Harry grinned, and turned back to look at the
Henry Hudson,
lazily circling as Colonial Station turned. “I love it when people come around to my way of thinking.”

Our apparatchiks presently herded us up again and got us in line to board the shuttle. We presented our identity cards to the CU official at the shuttle gate, who entered us on a list while a counterpart presented us with a personal data assistant. “Thanks for being on Earth, here’s a lovely parting gift,” I said to him. He didn’t seem to get it.

The shuttles did not come equipped with artificial gravity. Our apparatchiks harnessed us in and warned us that under no circumstances were we to try to unlock ourselves; to make sure that the more claustrophobic of us didn’t do just that, the locks on the harnesses would not be under our control during the flight. So that solved that problem. The apparatchiks also passed out plastic hairnets to anyone with hair long enough to warrant them; in free fall, long hair apparently goes everywhere.

If anyone felt nauseated, we were told, they were to use the vomit bags in the side pocket of their seats. Our apparatchiks stressed the importance of not waiting until the last second to use the vomit bags. In weightlessness, vomit would float around and irritate the other passengers, making the original vomiter very unpopular for the rest of the flight and possibly the rest of his or her military career. This was followed by a rustling sound as several of our number readied themselves. The woman next to me clutched her vomit bag tightly. I mentally prepared myself for the worst.

There was no vomit, thankfully, and the ride to the
Henry Hudson
was pretty smooth; after the initial
shit, I’m falling
signal my brain shot out when the gravity gave way, it was more like a gentle, extended roller-coaster ride. We made it to the ship in about five minutes; there was a minute or two of docking negotiations as a shuttle bay door irised open, accepted the shuttle, and closed again. This was followed by another few minutes of waiting as air was pumped back into the bay. Then a slight tingle, and the sudden reappearance of weight; the artificial gravity had kicked in.

The shuttle bay door opened and a wholly new apparatchik appeared. “Welcome to the CDFS
Henry Hudson,
” she said. “Please unlatch yourselves, gather your belongings, and follow the lighted path out of the shuttle bay. The air will be pumped out of this bay in precisely seven minutes—to launch this shuttle and allow another shuttle to dock—so please be quick.”

We were all surprisingly quick.

We were then led to the massive
Henry Hudson
mess hall, where we were invited to have some coffee and donuts and to relax. An official would be along to explain things. While we were waiting, the mess hall had begun to fill up with other recruits who had presumably boarded before us; after an hour there were hundreds of us milling about. I had never seen so many old people in one place at one time. Neither had Harry. “It’s like Wednesday morning at the world’s biggest Denny’s,” he said, and then got himself more coffee.

Just about the time that my bladder was informing me that I had overdone it with the coffee, a distinguished-looking gentleman in Colonial diplomatic blues entered the mess hall and made his way toward the front of the room. The noise level in the room began to subside; you could tell that people were relieved that someone was finally there to tell them what the hell was going on.

The man stood there for a few minutes until the room was silent. “Greetings,” he said, and we all jumped. He must have had a body mike; his voice was coming through speakers in the wall. “I’m Sam Campbell, Colonial Union adjunct for the Colonial Defense Forces. Although technically speaking I am not a member of the Colonial Defense Forces, I have been empowered by the CDF to manage your orientation on its behalf, so for the next few days, you can consider me your superior officer. Now, I know many of you have just arrived on the last shuttle and are anxious to get some rest; others have been on ship for up to a day and are equally anxious to know what comes next. For the sake of both groups, I will be brief.

“In about an hour, the CDFS
Henry Hudson
will break orbit and ready for her initial skip to the Phoenix system, where we stop briefly to pick up additional supplies before we head to Beta Pyxis III, where you will begin your training. Don’t worry, I don’t expect any of this to mean anything to you now. What you need to know is that it will take us a little more than two days to get to our initial skip point, and during that time, you will be undergoing a series of mental and physical evaluations at the hands of my staff. Your schedule is now being downloaded into your PDA. Please review it at your convenience. Your PDA can also direct you to every place you need to go, so you should never worry about getting lost. Those of you who have just arrived on the
Henry Hudson
will also find your stateroom assignments on your PDA.

“Other than finding your way to your staterooms, nothing is expected of you this evening. Many of you have been traveling for quite a while, and we want you to be rested for tomorrow’s evaluations. Speaking of which, now is a good time to get you onto ship’s time, which is on Colonial Universal Standard Time. It is now”—he checked his watch—“2138 Colonial. Your PDA is set for ship time. Your day begins tomorrow with breakfast mess from 0600 to 0730, followed by a physical evaluation and enhancement. Breakfast mess is not mandatory—you’re not on military schedule yet—but you’ll be having a long day tomorrow, so I do strongly suggest you attend.

“If you have any questions, your PDA can port into the
Henry Hudson
information system and use the AI interface to assist you; just use your stylus to write the question or speak it into your PDA’s microphone. You will also find Colonial Union staff on each stateroom deck; please don’t hesitate to ask them for assistance. Based on your personal information, our medical staff is already aware of any issues or needs you may have, and may have made appointments to see you this evening in your staterooms. Check your PDA. You may also visit sick bay at your convenience. This mess hall will be open all night tonight, but will begin normal operating hours as of tomorrow. Again, check your PDA for times and menus. Finally, as of tomorrow you should all be wearing CDF recruit gear; it is now being delivered to your staterooms.”

Campbell stopped for a second and gave us all what I think he thought was a significant stare. “On behalf of the Colonial Union and the Colonial Defense Forces, I welcome you as new citizens and our newest defenders. God bless you all and keep you safe in what’s to come.

“Incidentally, if you want to watch while we break orbit, we will be porting the video into our observation deck theater. The theater is quite large and can accommodate all recruits, so don’t worry about seating. The
Henry Hudson
makes excellent speed, so by breakfast tomorrow the Earth will be a very small disk, and by dinner, nothing more than a bright point in the sky. This will probably be your last chance to see what was your homeworld. If that means something to you, I suggest you drop by.”