The Sunspacers Trilogy (9 page)
She shook her head. “Eventually, that’s the way it will be. But in the meantime multinational companies are dying. Politicians are losing their bases of power and influence. No one minds the world being richer and people living better. It’s the loss of power that hurts most. Whole worlds are being built out here that don’t owe to Earthside politicians.”
I shrugged. “More adaptable leaders will win out. It’ll even out.” I was sounding a bit like Morey, and I didn’t like it.
“Right. Earth won’t really suffer economic hardship. It’s what happens in the transition that’s worrying many of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“The people who came out here worked hard, Joe. They built the industrial centers on Luna, Mercury, Mars, and the Asteroids. But they didn’t have any real say about their lives until they had something to bargain with, in the form of deliverable energy and resources. Then the politicians lined up for power positions in Earth Authority, which gave them their base for local national power. And then it occurred to the home world that it wouldn’t do to let the various Sunspace Settlements get too self-sufficient. Big decisions are still made by Earth Authority, no matter how many representatives from Sunspace sit in.”
“But from what I know, the Mercury situation is the only real complaint.…”
“That’s enough! Do you know what’s going on out there?”
“Well, I’ve heard it’s bad.…”
She was quiet suddenly.
“I’m very interested, Linda.”
She smiled. “Sorry to shout. You’re right, the Sunspace Settlers are doing very well—so well that Earth is recognizing their importance. But that’s what makes the Mercury problem so intolerable, by comparison.”
“Were you born here?” I asked.
“No, but I grew up here. My parents brought my brother and me from New Zealand when we were babies. Both our parents died in a shuttle accident when we were in high school.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling inadequate.
Linda was looking at the floor. “Kik dropped out of school and apprenticed himself so we could stay, but I think he wanted to leave school and work in a trade anyway. We’re on our own now, so he could go back, but I think he’s one of those people who can’t appreciate it until they’re older.”
I wondered if I was the same.
“We’re different,” she continued, “but we’re very close. He looked out for me. I hope I get a chance to help him someday.”
“What are you studying?” I asked, trying not to think about myself.
“Economics and metallurgy. Materials synthesis in general. I want to help make decisions out here one day.” She got up and sat down next to me. “Sorry I shouted, she said again, “but I like you, and I can’t stand people I like being … well, confused.”
“I wanted to know.”
She leaned against me. I slipped my arm around her slender waist, and she looked at me suddenly, her eyes wide, face slightly flushed. We wanted each other, and we both knew it.
We kissed, and I felt the tension between us drain away. Her body seemed soft and firm at the same time.
“Good?” she asked after a while, her warm breath tickling my nose.
“Hmmmmmm,” I said, looking forward to the rest of the evening.
“One kiss and your mind crumbles,” she whispered, smiling radiantly.
I laughed, and she kissed me fiercely.
My phone buzzed.
“Probably my roommate, checking to see if the room is free.” I struggled to the desk and opened the line, but not the picture.
“Hello?” I said.
“Joe? Eva and I are on a conference link,” Dad answered after the three-second silence.
I sat down.
“Where’s your pic?” Mom asked cheerfully.
“Busted, I guess, but I hear you fine.”
“How’s it going?” Dad said.
“Good. How are you two doing?” I couldn’t think of what else to say. Linda got up and left the room as I waited.
“Have you guests?” Mom asked. “We’ve disturbed you.”
“No—no, I was only studying.”
Silence.
“On Friday night?” Dad said. “Has the term started?” He should have known that classes started on Monday.
“Just looking over course books, actually.”
As I waited for the silence to pass, it occurred to me that the call had disturbed Linda somehow, that she had not left just to let me talk in private.
“That’s very good,” Mom said, trying to sound caring. I resented the effort.
“Are you there, son?”
“Yes, Dad, I’m here.” I opened the visual and saw their faces on the split screen. They tried to look cheerful as my picture reached them.
“There you are,” Dad said. “You look good. No doubts, I see.”
“I’m glad,” Mom added.
“Tell you what,” Dad said. “One or both of us will try to call at least once a week.”
“I’ll be here.” One, two, three.
“Take care,” Mom said as the picture faded.
I got up and went to the door, thinking that Linda was waiting outside. I stepped out and looked in both directions, but the hallway was empty.
“Linda,” I said loudly, hoping that she had simply gone for a walk around the turn. There was no answer. I went looking for her, but it was obvious after a moment that she had left.
I was angry when I returned to the room, but not at Linda. My parents had called me to say nothing important, and had ruined my evening at the same time. Actually, I was as much puzzled as angry. Was I such bad company that Linda had taken the chance to get away?
Classes
I walked around the campus circles that Saturday. My weight dropped slightly as I wandered away from the center line of the equator, but I couldn’t really feel the difference until I had gone a ways and come back. I looked at a lot of buildings, tennis courts, and swimming pools. The crystal-clear openness of Bernal’s inner space was a wonder that could not be worn out.
Once in a while I saw a sign:
NO CHILDREN PAST POINT C
Only adults were permitted to live in the lower-g regions around the poles. Children needed something close to Earth gravity to grow normally, especially if they ever wanted to return to Earth. Kids were common in the rural toruses, which were outside the sphere and free of changes in gravity. Child monitors routinely returned children who escaped into low-g zones.
The campus seemed deserted. Everyone was resting up from the partying of the night before and getting ready for tonight’s socializing. I sympathized with Morey and wished that it were Monday, even though I knew that for most students it was just a way of building up motivation for schoolwork. Morey didn’t need it, apparently, and I was in no mood, after Linda, to start something that might distract me from my resolve to give college a long, hard shot.
I sat around in the student-center lounge, listening to more about Mercury on the news holos. A strike by the miners would cut off the flow of metals into Earth’s industrial space, with serious consequences for the quality of life on Earth itself. The commentator also claimed that the Near Earth Space Habitats would also suffer to some degree, but I wondered if this was an attempt to shift the sympathies of a portion of the Sunspacers away from Mercury’s mining community. It was true that Bernal and the other habitats needed rare metals and structural components to keep up their maintenance, but I couldn’t believe that shortages would be life threatening. Another commentator pointed out that the habitats were well stocked with maintenance supplies. The profits of many companies would drop, however. No one really thought that would be a good thing, but the Sunspacers were willing to sacrifice to help their sister community.
I got up after a while and walked back toward the dorm, wondering about Linda. I wanted to call her, but why should I put her on the spot? If she wanted to see me again, she would call and explain why she had disappeared, or she would ignore me. I couldn’t believe that she had been faking her attraction for me. There had to be other reasons. I would have to wait and see.
The small amphitheater was crowded on Monday morning. I found an aisle seat in the back row.
The room quieted at 9:01. My empty stomach rumbled gently, and I wondered if it was going to detect coriolis acceleration after all.
“I’m Gordon Vidich,” the Physics 1 professor said in a rich bass. He was middle-sized, black hair combed straight back, looking like glossy paint from where I sat. “Most of you are preparing for a science career. How many physicists?” Half the hands shot up, most of them belonging to women. I figured I could become a physicist even if I didn’t raise my hand. “A few pet peeves,” he continued. “I know that you’re in love with the mystery of the universe, with what’s out there as well as with the bit of you that’s curious about it. Existence is ultimately mysterious, but we do know a lot, short of final answers. Speculate, but
please
show me
always
that you know the difference between the assemblage of facts we call a theory and speculations that may or may not contain a few sparse facts. I want to see in you
a habit of mind
that will always pit theory and speculation against
some
kind of experimental experience.” I pictured him peeling off his thin layer of black hair and tossing it to the class as his concluding point. “If the experiment can’t be done,” he continued, “wait until it can. Don’t build careers on its
imagined
income.” No one laughed at his bad substitution of income for outcome. “We had a lot of imaginary science at the turn of the century, until the public couldn’t tell crackpots and popularizers from honest scientists. Anyone might
guess
the nature of the universe, or even the outcome of an experiment. The number of answers is always limited. But that does no good unless a mathematically expressed experiment pulls your answer out of the realm of possible worlds into our own.” He seemed to be trying to look up at his bushy eyebrows. “Clear?”
Heads nodded.
“You must go on your knees,” he shouted, “before the universe of facts, as you weave them into theories!”
I tingled from the projected energy of his spoon-feeding.
“Give your name when you speak,” he followed up softly. “If I forget, it will be because you have failed to say anything interesting.”
Uneasy laughter.
“Tell me the difference between gravity and centrifugal force.”
“Christopher Van Cott,” a voice said from the front row. “Gravity’s a field, like magnetism. Centrifugal force is a product of acceleration.” Vidich shrugged. “Vague terms, field and force. Why
should
there be a difference at all?”
An auburn-haired girl stood up in the third row, the same one who had gotten the better of Van Cott at orientation. “Rosalie Allport. The more general a question, the less likely it can be answered in a scientific theory. Why is a question that may or may not one day be answered, depending on how specific a chain of lesser answers we can construct.”
“Good!”
Van Cott snorted.
Vidich glared at him. “That’s all for now. I wouldn’t want any of you to miss the beautiful day outside.”
It took a moment for the class to laugh.
Chemistry 1 started at 10: 15.
Tall, big boned, and blond, Helga Akhmatova spoke in British tones as she glided back and forth, very relaxed in a loose tweed coverall.
“Chemistry’s link to other sciences,” she said, “its sharing of problems, has only increased with time. Physics is fundamental, of course, followed by chemistry and biology. Then we gaze across a great abyss to psychology and the social sciences. Crude divisions, admittedly, and the abyss is not all that empty. But if you can imagine a bridge of special, connecting areas, then you can get a feeling for how a complex universe, with things like persons and nations, is built up, layer by layer, out of fundamentals which themselves do not have the properties to be found at higher levels. Chemistry is one of the first hierarchies of complexity in the slow climb toward a unified science of nature.” She paused and smiled. “I
suggest
that you grasp problems as you can and work from there to other things, going back only when you must. Don’t be afraid of gaps. Fill them in or learn to live with them.” She smiled again. “You will all do well enough, I expect.”
She made me believe every word. I realized, with some uneasiness, that what she had said applied also to self-knowledge. What was the use, then, if we could never know ourselves completely?
Morey and I sat together in Astronomies, which began at 11: 10.
“I’m Muhammad Azap,” the tall, slightly plump professor said, closing his mouth as if to trap the “p.” He scratched his fine brown hair. “I’ll assume that nothing escapes you. Wing it if you wish. Maybe something interesting has got your attention. Who knows? As long as you remedy weaknesses before term’s end.” He was spooky, but I liked him.
He turned sideways, as if trying to disappear. “Eight different astronomies from now until May, from visual to gravity-lens observations. What’s the difference between astronomy last century and now? Don’t say there are more kinds of astronomy, or that you have to know more physics.”
“It’s become more of an experimental science,” Rosalie Allport said softly, “as we’ve moved out into Sunspace.”
Azap nodded. “Astronomy will become a completely experimental science when human beings and their instruments can go anywhere in the known universe.” He looked at us as if he had delivered himself of a great truth. “Tomorrow the hard stuff. Go to lunch.”
Morey shook his head as we stood up. “A loon, but I like him.”
“He must be good to be here,” I said.
Linda came up the aisle with Jake LeStrange. I tensed, but they didn’t notice me. Then Rosalie Allport came by, and I had a chance to see more than her back for a change. Her hair was tied in a short ponytail. She had clear brown eyes and full but delicate lips. I stared. She smiled and looked away.
“Come on, let’s go,” Morey said, nudging me a bit too hard.
I turned and looked at him. He smiled. “I can see how you’re going to waste your time.”
Human Development A, at 1:10, sounded like a course to housebreak scientific types, to give them culture and couth, as Morey put it.