CHAPTER 7
"The emitted particles have a thermal spectrum corresponding to a temperature that increases rapidly as the mass of the black hole decreases. For a black hole with the mass of the Sun the temperature is only about a ten-millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The thermal radiation leaving a black hole with that temperature would be completely swamped by the general background level of radiation in the universe. On the other hand, a black hole with a mass of a billion tons would release energy at the rate of 6,000 megawatts, equivalent to the output of six large nuclear power plants."
—Stephen Hawking
The builders, caretakers, and first inhabitants of the harvesters worked around the clock, without thought of rest. Bey Wolf was beginning to wonder if the human occupants were expected to follow the same schedule.
When the conference with Cinnabar Baker was over, he had been settled into a huge but pleasant set of rooms complete with form-change unit and extended library access. Leo Manx, who had taken him there, pointed out that the quarters provided a fortieth of a g sleeping environment. He obviously expected Wolf to be delighted. Bey, knowing that the source of the local gravitational field could only be a power kernel no more than thirty meters below his feet, was not pleased. The triple shielding on a Kerr-Newman black hole had never failed—yet—but according to Sylvia Fernald, several in Cloudland had recently come close. At thirty meters, a few gigawatts of hard radiation would not just kill him, it would dissolve him, melt his flesh from his bones before he knew what was happening.
Bey was tired by the journey and the novelty of the harvester, and glutted with new information. He wanted to he down for a while and digest what he had learned, but Leo Manx showed no signs of leaving.
"Sylvia Fernald and Aybee Smith will both be excellent colleagues," he said. He had stretched himself out on Bey's bed, just lengthy enough for him, and closed his eyes. "But there are things about them that you should know before we begin. Aybee is extremely able but a little immature."
The bed was apparently very comfortable. Bey coveted it. "He's just a kid."
"Exactly. Nineteen years old, but more knowledgeable and scientifically creative than anyone else in the Outer System. You may rely on him for science, but not for judgment."
"I'll remember. What about Sylvia Fernald?"
"She is more mature and also more complex. Her judgment on some of the subjects we discussed today may not be sound."
"Fifty-five years old?"
Manx lifted his head from the bed to stare at Wolf. "Fifty-six, as I recall. Are you able to do that with anyone?"
"I don't know. Probably. I've had lots of form-change experience. Why is she suspect?"
"You saw the list of names of people who died or disappeared. One of them, Paul Chu, was Sylvia's consort for many years. I believe they planned to become parents. But he vanished without a trace six months ago on a routine trip to the edge of the Halo."
"The Halo again."
"I know. I have had the same thought But without evidence . . ."
"We'll have to look for evidence."
"Certainly." Manx lay silent, eyes closed, for another minute or two. He sighed. "You know, I was originally very doubtful about my trip to Earth, but it was a very good idea. Before I went, I always suspected that deep inside I was by nature an Earthman. Your history is so fascinating, and Earth is the origin of all the worthwhile cultures and arts. But not until I had made a journey there for myself did I realize that it was not for me. It was not home. This is home." He patted the bed and lapsed into another and longer silence.
"I think I'll have a sign made for that far wall," Bey said at last.
"Indeed?"
"Yes. It will say, 'If you have nothing to do, please don't do it here.'"
Manx frowned and opened his eyes. "You wish for privacy?"
"I wish for sleep."
Manx sat up reluctantly. "Very well. Then I will leave. But I must mention one other matter of importance to you. I have completed my analysis of your own difficulties."
Fatigue changed to a tingle of anticipation. "The hallucinations? You think you can stop them?"
"No. On the contrary, I am sure I cannot. Because I am convinced that what you have been seeing are not the distorted constructs of your brain. They have been imposed from without."
"That's impossible. I've been in situations where I saw that Red Man, and there were other people watching the same broadcast. They saw nothing. I've seen him on a recorded program, too, then played the same program through a second time. He didn't reappear. And anyway, why would anyone want to make me crazy?"
"I don't know. However, I believe that if we can answer the first problem, of method, we will have gone far toward answering the second one, of intention. And an induced effect is a technological problem, not a psychological one. That offers us recourse. I propose to present the idea at once to Apollo Smith. If I know Aybee, it will intrigue him." He levered himself off the bed, sighed, and nodded to Bey. "And so to bed. Sleep well."
Which, of course, Leo Manx had now made out of the question. Bey turned off the light and lay on the bed, but he no longer felt sleepy. Induced effects, he thought. He had considered that idea when the Dancing Man had first appeared, but he had dropped it for two good reasons: he could not see how it might be done, and he could not imagine why anyone would want to do it.
After five useless minutes, during which he again concluded that he knew of no way to turn Leo Manx's opinions to useful facts, Bey rose, dumped his clothes into the service hopper, and went through to the shower room. It was sinfully big, the size of a five-person apartment on Earth; no wonder Leo Manx had been crowded there. After a minute of juggling with unfamiliar controls, Bey ran the water as hot as he could stand, then accidentally switched it to an icy downpour. He jumped out of the spray with a scream and turned on the hot air.
As soon as he was dry he realized he had made another mistake. The only clothes offered by the dispenser were more of the pale yellow one-piece suits, too long and too narrow for his body. His own clothes had been eaten by the service hopper, and he could find no sign of shoes anywhere.
Finally he stuffed himself into one of the suits and managed to engage the fasteners. Looking at himself in the mirror was an unwise decision, but he suspected he was already as ugly as he could get by Cloudland standards. Bey left his quarters barefoot and headed along a corridor that spiraled slowly away from the kernel. He had no idea where he was going, but he felt confident that he could find his way home. There was not likely to be another kernel in the interior of the harvester, and as long as he followed the kernel's gravity gradients "up" and "down," he could not get lost.
After a few minutes of wandering he found himself in a broad accordion-pleated passage that was pouched and folded like the alimentary canal of some giant beast. That similarity went beyond appearances. Bey knew that the harvesters prowled the Oort Cloud, seeking bodies high in volatiles and complex organic materials. Once found, they were ingested by the comet-sized maw of the harvester for transfer to the interior. They were heated with energy extracted from the power kernel, thawed, and dropped into the internal lake-sized vats, to be stirred and aerated by jets of carbon dioxide and oxygen. In that enzyme-seeded brew, the prebiotic molecules of the fragments—porphyrins, carotenoids, polypeptides, and cellulose—were converted to edible fats, starches, sugars, and proteins.
Bey stood by a viewing port and peered into a bubbling sea of pale yellow-green. Close by him, there was a shudder of moving machinery. A great valve had opened. Hundreds of thousands of tons of broth went streaming along helical cooling tubes, on the way to extraction of water, chlorophylls, and yeasts. This batch was near its final stages. Most of the final product would be compressed, packaged into spaceproof containers, and launched on the long journey to the Inner System. The harvesters fed the population of the Cloud itself, but more important, their products were essential to the survival of everyone closer to the Sun. The same food products were the working capital that funded the outflow of technology and finished goods from the teeming Inner System.
And if there were a war or an embargo? As Bey left that enormous production plant, he could not help wondering what would happen if the supply line failed.
At first, nothing would be noticed at the destination. The payloads were transported to the Inner System at only a fraction of a g acceleration, so they took a long time to get there. There would be food in the pipeline of the delivery system for at least ten years, even if the supply from the harvesters were cut off at once. But then the Inner System would be in real trouble—as much trouble as the Cloud would suffer if the Inner System were one day to cut off the supply of power kernels or refuse to ship out manufactured goods. With such total interdependency of the two groups, any talk of war or of breakdown of commerce between them seemed ludicrous. And yet Bey knew that such talk was growing more and more common, more and more strident.
He had followed the local gravity vector downward and was almost back at his quarters. But the thought of the Kernel Ring led him to keep going, descending a steep staircase that dropped toward the kernel itself. Within fifteen meters he found himself on a black, seamless sphere with no visible entry points. He was standing in a thirtieth of a g field on the first of the three kernel shields. Nothing organic would survive for a millisecond on the other side of it. Twenty meters or less beneath his feet was the kernel itself, a rapidly rotating black hole held in position by its own electric charge. This one would mass a couple of billion tons. It served as the power source for one whole sphere of the harvester. Streams of subnuclear particles passed through the kernel's ergosphere, slightly slowed the kernel's rotation, and emerged with their own energy vastly increased.
The power provided by a kernel was large but finite. After maybe twenty years, its angular momentum and rotational energy would be depleted. A "spun-down" black hole with no rotation would continue to radiate according to the Hawking evaporative process, but that energy was far less controlled and useful. It was even a nuisance, since the monitor sensors within the shield needed multiple signal redundancy to assure error-free messages to the outside. A spent kernel was a useless kernel. It had to be "spun up" again to high angular momentum from some other source, or replaced by a new one from the Kernel Ring.
And if the Kernel Ring became inaccessible? Then the Cloudlanders would starve for energy, as surely as the Inner System would starve for lack of Cloudland food supplies. And yet the Kernel Ring was the least controlled part of the whole system, and it was not clear who had the most rights to it. Was it the Podders, the Halo's migrant spacefarers who lived within their spacesuits? Or maybe it was Black Ransome, waging war against both Cloudlanders and Sunhuggers from the mystery hideaway of Ransome's Hole.
Bey found the train of thought leading him again to Mary. Was she in the Kernel Ring, as Leo Manx insisted? Or was she to be found somewhere here, in the unthinkably big volume of the Cloud? If so, the Cloud's central library system might help him locate her. Assuming that he wanted to.
"Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part. Nay, I have done, you get no more of me." Mary's last message had asked him not to look for her, but in typically Mary terms. She had left an opening for ambiguity. Bey turned to head back for the stairs, thinking that if he started to learn the library access system, he would never get to sleep.
He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he almost walked into the three strangers.
There were two men and a woman. Wolf had time for no more than a quick look at them—again, no eyebrows, and suddenly that made sense; perspiration would not trickle down foreheads in zero g—then they were advancing on him.
"What the devil are you doing here?" The shorter of the men spoke loudly and angrily. He came close and glared down from his superior height.
"I'm sorry," Bey began. "I didn't know the kernel level was restricted territory. I was about to—"
"The kernel level!" The man turned to his companions. "Just like a Snugger, he doesn't understand what you say to him."
The woman stepped forward. "We're not talking about the kernel. You don't belong on the harvester—or anywhere in our system. You get back to your own stinking kind."
The other man did not speak, but he stepped to Wolf's side and jabbed him painfully in the ribs with a bony elbow. At the same moment the woman trod on Bey's bare instep with a hard-soled shoe.
"Hold it, now—" Bey took a step backward. They were in a low-g field, which favored the Cloudlanders, but Bey was sure that if he had to defend himself he could do it very well. He could break any of those thin limbs between his hands, and their feeble muscles had probably done as much as they could to hurt him. But he did not want to fight back—not when he had no idea who or why. He lifted his arm as though to strike at the man in front of him, then lunged for the staircase instead.
He was all the way up before they had even turned to pursue. At the top he slammed the door in position and raced off along the corridor. On the threshold of his own quarters, he ran into a tall figure coming out. Bey braked as hard as he could, but there was still contact. The man gave a grunt of surprise and went sailing away through the air, bouncing off the wall and then falling face down across the bed.
"Hey! What the hell!"
Bey recognized the complaining voice. It was Apollo Belvedere Smith. He went across and helped him sit up.
Aybee rubbed his midriff. "What's all that about?"
"I was going to ask you the same. I was running away from three of your people. I've no idea who they are, but they tried to start a fight."
"Oh, yeah. I came here to warn you not to leave your quarters. Close the door, Wolfman, and lock it."
"Why? What the devil's going on here?"
"You're the man they love to hate." Aybee stood up and began to wander around the room. "You didn't hear the newscast, right?"
"I've been looking at the inside of the harvester."
"Yeah." Aybee was still scowling, but that was apparently his natural expression. "You know something? Most people are real idiots."
"Not true. By definition, most people are average."
That earned a quick grin. "Y'know what I mean. They're animals. Last few days there's been more growling and scowling between government here and government in the Inner System than you'd believe. So in comes news a couple of hours ago from the far side of the Cloud. Bad deal. A whole harvester destroyed, blown apart, thirty thousand people dead. Power plant went blooey. And newsword is that you Sunhuggers did it."
"Nonsense. The Inner System would never destroy a harvester. We need that food."
"Hey, I never said I believed it, did I? It's like I said—people here are dumb. They see somebody looks like you—" Aybee paused to give Bey a detailed inspection, then shook his head and went on "—they hate him. You're not safe here now."
"That's Cinnabar Baker's problem. If she wants me to be useful, she'll have to find a way to give me working space."
The answering grin was even less pleasant than usual. "No worries. You'll get work space, Wolfman. The other thing on the news is just your line. Form-change foul-ups on the Sagdeyev space farm, a day from here. You and Sylv'll be heading there, see what you can sort out."
"You won't be going?" Bey wanted to know how important the problem was in Cinnabar Baker's mind.
"Don't think so. Not 'less you need me. Sylv can handle it. She's no dummy, and she's reliable. You'll like working with her."
It was probably the highest level of praise that Aybee offered to anyone. Bey nodded. "I have the same feeling. We'll get on together."
"Mind you, she's no good at real science. She comes to me for that."
"You're too modest."
"Mebbe I am." Aybee was examining Bey with a look of clinical curiosity. "Mind if I ask you a personal question?"
"Probably."
"Do you have hair like that all over? I mean, it must drive you crazy."
Bey held up his hand to show Aybee the open palm.
"Okay you know what I meant." Aybee grinned. "You think I'm a smart-ass, don't you?"
"Not at all. Fifty years ago, I was just like you. Brighter than fusion. I'm amazed how much smarter other people are these days."
"Senile decay?"
"Hang in for a little while. Your turn will come."
Aybee scowled. "Hey, Wolfman, don't say that. That's too true to be funny. Top mathematicians and physicists do their real stuff before they're twenty-five. After that they're just hacking. I've only got six years left, then it's all downhill for the next hundred years. How's it feel to be real old?"
"I'll let you know when I am."
"Sylv says you're pretty well along—after the meeting she got Manx to let her peek at your personal records. She's nosy. She tells me you been seeing things, and you don't know how you could have been fed 'em. And the Manxman thinks I could help. Tell me more."
"Not tonight, Josephine."
"Who?"
"Somebody even older than me." Bey advanced slowly on Aybee. "Shoo. You're leaving now. I'm going to throw you out—literally, if I have to. Catch me in the morning; I'll tell you all you want to know about me. Even how I grow hair."
"Sure." Aybee headed for the doorway. "I guess old people need lots of sleep."
"I guess we do." Wolf closed and locked the door after him. If any more visitors were on their way tonight, they would have to break it down. He sat on the bed and considered Apollo Belvedere Smith.
Aybee was young, arrogant, opinionated, brash, and insensitive.
Bey liked him very much.