Transcendence (28 page)

Inside, Clarisse lay secured in the Coordinator’s unit, a couch with powerful buffers and amps and a dedicated server. The tiny room was essentially a sensory-deprivation tank, shutting out all physical stimuli. She could barely feel the interactive-gel beneath and all around her, and no sound or other sense of the ship was transmitted to her, except via 3VRDs. She struggled heroically to keep down any and all emotions. Now was the time for organization, not for the good hate.

The craft was nearly fully awake now; all its systems were flashing online in her controls overlay. Good, good. It hadn’t suffered measurably in its decades of mothballing. Her splice itself showed the dirtside pov.

Already, 20 or so smaller vessels were assembled nearby, and others rose from the clouds, materializing like ghosts. Few of them were really battleworthy, but, operating together, they could destroy merchantmen and individual EarthCo warcraft without having to reveal the destroyer. A couple of the last to leave would stop past Triton on their way, to complete the work she had begun on the EarthCo warship
Bounty
. Most important, this force would be the initial wave which would propagate broader and higher as it progressed Solward.

Neptunekaisha would be left without a defense fleet, but what use had it seen in the past decades? None. The hunters and mines had effectively protected NKK’s interests at Neptunekaisha during three separate attacks, and would continue to do so through the war, even if needed again. And this was now war, even if not yet declared. EarthCo would learn soon enough—though perhaps not soon enough to prepare.

The mines and hunters would provide a fine fortification against attack. She had already submitted an order for more, better defenses, to cover contingencies. Coordinating Officer Hang would take care of manning the fortress. She felt proud of the speed and organization she had displayed since the
Bounty
had given her the opportunity she had awaited so long. Of course, all this was only the enactment of a well-thought-out plan.

Everything was covered. The gears were engaged. The motor of revenge was about to fire.

The last go-light on her overlay signaled the
Sigwa
’s readiness. Clarisse flicked a new set of overlays—these were assembled in 3D layering so that all were visible and accessible simultaneously—that connected her to the other craft. The two big tankers she had appropriated over Shen-lin’s complaints both stood ready. The cargohull, packed with missiles and other supplies, had been ready for several minutes. The most critical escorts were ready.

She initialized the magnetic accelerators, trained on her little fleet from a worldwide ring of generators buried in the clouds.

“
Launch when ready,” she said over the scramble-line, “staggered formation, staggered acceleration. One through six, I have your helms. We launch in ten, nine, eight. . .”

An audible bump penetrated the Coordinator’s unit, accompanied by a gentle, generalized pressure and an undamped kinesthesia that told Clarisse the
Sigwa
was underway. Her dirtside pov didn’t seem to change except for the ships rising from the cloud-tops, which seemed to accelerate away from her faster and faster. Then the sunward limb of Neptune flashed into view, individual cloudbanks barely more than a blur. Sol himself shone as a gold coin set against the black tapestry of her rocketship sea.

Once again Clarisse’s pov plunged into darkness as the accelerators whipped her ship around the world. Now she could not identify any surface detail or single craft.

A second bump, followed immediately with an even greater pressure as the great rocket engine ignited at the programmed 3
g
s. All her tied-in escorts, including the cargohull and two tankers, had been accelerated and had launched as expected, though mostly at much lower thrust. She flicked on the forward pov.

At last, the sun sat still. Even so, only at high magnifications could she identify the spark of light—now far to the edge of her pov—which the fleet would meet in a few months: Jupiter, the greatest of gas giants, a world and satellite system still largely possessed by EarthCo. If all went as planned, she should arrive simultaneously with or shortly after Sotoi Guntai forces from Saturn and Uranus, and perhaps even from the NKK-protected Greater Asteroids.

And there she halted her projections. Now, after having learned—during her term at Neptunekaisha—the power of delayed gratification, she would not forget that lesson. She would not fall prey to those predators of the mind, haste and rigid expectation. Earlier in life—during her flight from Russia to Bangkok—she had learned that haste and expectation can be worse enemies than procrastination. She had learned that following a plan while also being capable of quickly changing it were the survival skills necessary in modern warfare.

Clarisse checked all her ship’s systems, then those of her escorts. All within normal operating parameters. Only two old fighters that had been serving as crew transport and recreation craft were keeping abreast of her. But the rest were not far behind. The tankers and cargohull would arrive at Jupiter only a few days later.

She shut down her external camera splice and spliced in a sleepy-dreamer program. All would take care of itself in due time. If she was needed, the ship would wake her.

Neptunekaisha Coordinator of Protection Clarisse Poinsettia Chang, at last Captain Clarisse Poinsettia Chang, began to drift away to the songs of water and wind and forest creatures. Slowly, she became the river Volga. She flowed into the future, renewed, changed, flowing toward a definite confluence for the first time in her life. She was needed, and took great, drowsy satisfaction in that. She slept well, occasionally reassured and briefed by subconscious feed.

The needleship
Sigwa
plunged toward Jupiter upon a lance of flame, shrouded in stars and obsidian night, burdened with the weight of a lone woman.

Mrs. Pehr Jackson, as Susahn liked to be called, spent this day not unlike every other day in her 32 years.

In a large but not ostentatious townhouse on the outskirts of St. Louis, she slept. Mechanized lawnkeepers replanted wilted flowers, trimmed the grass, maintained the tall concrete wall that surrounded the three side-by-side townhouses and two acres of yard.

Her amplified dreams had been recorded into free space on her apartment’s server, and when her body refused to sleep any longer, she sorted through them and chose one to dream again. All this without opening her eyes, therefore maintaining the reality of the dreamworld.

As usual, the waking dream was unsatisfying: Dreams never recorded with quite the same wonder as her sleeping self thought they had. Also, since dreams ran faster than realtime, the computer had to edit and restructure them so a conscious person could re-experience them. So even dreams didn’t have the power to satiate her unidentifiable longing.

When physical hunger began to distract her from the replay, Susahn opened a feedback BW to send a message to her husband, the famous Pehr Jackson of
Lone Ship Bounty
fame. She spliced in a subscription to a glorious drama set on and below the blazing surface of Mercury before opening her eyes. And then, because her own voice narrating the contents of her favorite dream and the many faces arguing about love and loss on Mercury couldn’t satisfy her intangible need, she opened an option box and requested an editor’s subscription. The familiar man’s smiling face appeared overlaid on the drama. Now she at least began to forget her dissatisfaction.

“
What sort of genre are you interested in, Mrs. Pehr Jackson?” the AI animation of a real editor asked. Perhaps, this time, this is actually my editor intheflesh, she thought. Well, perhaps not entirely intheflesh, but at least live on the other end of the BW. He wore a comfortable old sweater and cotton pants and his long hair was neatly braided.

“
Something artsy and deep,” she answered, giggling like a girl as she entered the familiar white ceramic of the kitchen.

The editor grinned and nodded. “Ah, you’re feeling like a connoisseur this morning, eh Susahn? Well, how about a monopera? One in particular is just now beginning to fragment, guaranteed not to survive the night.”

“
Oh, that sounds wonderful, Marty,” she responded, feeling lucky all of a sudden. He knew her well, always recommending a good piece of music when the choice was his. Maybe this is what she needed. If she hadn’t called up the editor, she’d never have known about this dying monopera, and, missing it, how could she have faced her friends like an ignorant child? Susahn made a mental note to remember to check the editor every morning from now on, and set the note to recite the moment she woke.

“
Shall I subscribe you until its end?” he asked.

“
Yes. Yes, Marty, I want to be there until . . . until it’s nothing but ashes.”

“
That’s a very nice line, Susahn,” he said with a knowing smile. “Perhaps you’re working on a new song? Perhaps you’d like to submit something new for my consideration?”

“
Oh, I don’t think so.” She blushed. “Not now. Maybe tomorrow? That is, if the monopera inspires me.”

“
Whenever you’re ready, you know my callcode,” he said. “There, now you’re subscribed to the monopera,
Commutatis
. Do you need anything else?”

“
No, thank you, Marty.”

“
Enjoy!” he said, and disappeared.

Susahn hurriedly shut down everything but the monopera, but set it to visual and audio only, so she could eat her breakfast. Once, she had tapped into an artsong—using her fivesen enhancement program—and had lost a full day before absolute exhaustion had dragged her away from the rolling colors and synchronized music. She had become a bassoon, but more than a bassoon; she had become roses and notes and nectar, silk on her own skin and perfume in her own nostrils, chords swelling in her own ears, sweetmeats melting on her own tongue. But not yet, not until she had fortified her body to last out the monopera.

So she poured herself a glass of high-fiber, high-nutrition liquimeal and programmed it to taste like seven courses of a gourmet breakfast. She even programmed it to look like those seven courses. None of the programming required any knowledge on her part besides how to select highlighted buttons in her option box; this was all part of her server’s resident memory, freely accessible once she purchased the program in the first place.

A grand old orchestra hall filled her splice pov, rich dark wood rising for a hundred meters like the inside of an oyster to a crystal-laced ceiling glowing with luminescent clouds that alternately hid and revealed the jeweled articulation. She moved in syncopation with the rhythm of the music as literally thousands of instruments and their players, along with hundreds of vocalists, spread across a stage perhaps 200 meters round. It was shaped like a bowl so one could see everything from any point on the parquet floor. A spiraling balcony encircled the stage, rising up and up into the clouds, allowing subscribers to watch from multiple vantage-points. An unobtrusive option box displayed several alternative povs, from musician to vocalist to any number of immaterial povs. It also allowed for altering the hall in various ways to enhance the experience, such as bringing down the clouds so that they took the form of the music, the music the form of the clouds, dancing and cloaking the subscriber as if her senses were all rearranged. . . .

Susahn sighed sharply as she realized the ephemeral finger in her head had selected that last option, and she willed herself to shut it down, at least until after breakfast. Soon, she finished eating, and dropped the glass into the cleaning-chute. As usual after breakfast, she called a friend to share morning coffee with her.

“
Liza?” she asked when her friend’s 3VRD didn’t materialize immediately. A second later, a beautiful, slim woman in her 30s appeared in the Jackson kitchen. Her dark hair was woven in a thick halo around her head—as was all the curr among the artistes in Susahn’s circle of friends—and was cloaked in a translucent robe Susahn hadn’t seen before. Suddenly, she felt retro and inelegant, and hurriedly selected a fashion BW; a few moments later, with the help of a fashionmate, her 3VRD was updated and a new set of curr dresses were on their way to her home, in case she needed her intheflesh appearance to match her 3VRD. All this, and less than a second had passed since her friend appeared.

“
What’s on, Susahn,” the woman said, her face friendly but unsmiling. Susahn worried momentarily if Liza had seen the abrupt wardrobe shift.

“
I’m on a monopera BW, this one—” and Susahn had her server feed the technical details to Liza’s server, which put it in her option box—a thousand kilometers away. “It’s entitled,
Commutatis
, and guaranteed to end today. You—”