Eric Flint's Blog, page 215

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 05

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 05

Chapter 5.

“You sure it’s safe there, Sergeant?”

“Sure I’m sure,” he answered, focusing again at the indicator in his retinal display. “The 300M’s got real good shielding. Barely above background levels outside the shell, even when operating. Right now she’s down, so the only way it’d be dangerous is if I cracked the shell open and she was still hot inside. I only see about twenty-five service hours indicated on the system, so the lining’s probably still safe enough to use as dinnerware. Stop worrying.”

He was, of course, exaggerating a tad. After twenty-five hours of operating fusion under the Cavan-Ares design – derived from the original units found on Ceres, way back when – the interior of the fusion reactor was not going to be something you wanted to spend much time with, even with supposedly-aneutronic fusion going on. But the exterior was, indeed, just about stone-cold dead.

Tavana’s head appeared in the hatch above him. “You’ve got data from the system?”

“Don’t get excited yet, Tav. The exterior indicators and tracking recorders are about as dead-simple as anything gets. It’s the complex stuff we need to worry about.”

“And the simple things like the harvest-fusion loops.”

“And those, yeah, but I’m pretty hopeful they’re okay.”

He managed to keep from muttering “they’d better be”, but he was thinking it. The keys to the modern fusion reactor were the resonant magnetic loops that first generated a fusion reaction that then triggered a powerful magnetic surge that could be harvested as power – power sufficient to maintain the reaction AND provide external energy.

It was in a vague way analogous to the way an old diesel engine worked – mechanical movement compressing air-fuel mixture to explosive levels, causing the same mechanical components to move along constrained paths which allowed part of that mechanical energy to be sent off to do more useful work while the rest of it was devoted to triggering another explosion. Except that it was a lot more complicated than that, of course, and involved magnetic fields, electromagnetic power generation, and a hell of a lot of energy with very specific timing and conditions required.

Still, he was pretty sure the coils themselves should be okay. They were made to carry massive energies, so even the rad pulse shouldn’t have caused significant EMP from their point of view, and the shielding around the reactor should have minimized any chance for radiation of significant levels to reach the more delicate interior components.

That leaves the exterior control components. Sergeant Campbell inverted his body and managed, just barely, to squeeze in past a narrow-clearance bulkhead. The space beyond was none too large, but at least he could turn around in it. Set at the base of the large, steel-gray fluted sphere was a small, solid console. “Tavana, I’m at the built-in calibration and test panel.”

“Good. Any lights?”

“All red or dead black.”

“Merde.” That seemed to be the boy’s favorite curse; he figured there could be worse.

“Don’t get discouraged yet. Lemme think a minute.” He went back through his memories to his prior work on the 300M. “Right, as I recall, this thing’s going to be pretty much dark unless it’s getting control signals from the outside, or unless I override it; this panel’s not supposed to be operational when the reactor’s installed.”

“So there’s a gap in the control signals from the main console or central computer to here?”

“Given that we haven’t managed to get the main systems back up yet, I’d say there’s a gap. But that means that this thing’s having something like the problem the airlock had; something didn’t shut down like normal, so the local panel still thinks it’s under shuttle control.”

“How’s the reserve restart coils, Sergeant?” asked Xander from somewhere up above.

“Can’t check that yet.”

“Without them we’re screwed, though.” Tavana’s voice was grim.

“Don’t go borrowing trouble from the future, son; it’ll get here on its own. Tavana, how the heck do I disconnect this bad boy? This thing’s linkages don’t look anything like the ones they used for the colony 300M I maintained.”

Tavana projected an animation of the disassembly. Oh, that’s gonna be fun. Here we are sailing the stars, and engineers still gotta put connectors where they’re gonna bash my knuckles trying to turn them. “How’s the inventory check goin’?” he asked as he got his Shapetool to configure into the right wrench design.

“Pretty good, Sergeant. The heavy equipment isn’t very exciting for us, but we’ve got a couple cases of field rations in assorted types, spare power packs in about five standard sizes, crates of hand tools – mostly for field work, not electronics or anything like that, though – those medical supplies that were part of Dr. Kimei’s shipment, hunting supplies, some camping or survival gear of assorted types, three big crates that I don’t recognize – they’re stamped ICS-GIS-S-C-178, though.”

Campbell managed to get the first connector turning, then felt a faint grin on his face. “Well, a lot of stuff Tantalus is gonna miss if we don’t get there, that’s for sure. Don’t know how much of it’s that useful for us sitting here in interstellar space. Those three crates… ow! Blasted stupid f…” he cut himself off before he started swearing, “f…reaking idiot designers… as I was saying, those three crates are comm satellites for idiots, so to speak – basically just kick ’em out the door and they do the rest, work with almost all omnis on the ground. Low orbit stuff, but still good. I’m most interested in the food and medical supplies. That’s what makes me happy.”

Xander pinged him privately. “Thinking of the Lieutenant, sir?”

He saw no reason to deny it. “I told her we’d pick her up if we could. Of course, first we gotta get this tub moving again.”

One off. Four more to go. The name “Kimei” reminded him of his youngest pupil; he wondered if Sakura was all right. He hoped so, but he remembered the flashes of light as the field instability had chewed up Outward Initiative‘s hab ring, and he thought the first loss might have been awfully close to LS-5, the Kimei’s assigned boat. God help them if they’re in the same fix we are. “Any electronics or optronics components?”

“None in the cargo, sir,” Maddox said cheerfully, “at least nothing marked that way. But I did get the rear service closet open and there’s a bunch of spare modules for various systems in there.”

“Excellent. Maybe we’ll be able to get through this after all.” It was going easier now that he’d figured out the technique; fasteners two and three were loose. “Well, I’m almost set with this interface. What’s the deal with the actual power junctions?”

“Standard, Sergeant,” Tav answered. “You’re not touching any major power stuff there, it’s all going out from the top or bottom of the main casing.”

“Good. While I’m doing these last couple, I want you and Franky –” a sound of protest from above. “Francisco to go pull every breaker unit you can. If we get a restart, we don’t know how the systems are going to react, and the last thing we need is something screwing up because it wasn’t ready for the power.”

“On it, Sergeant!”

Good kids. He could’ve gotten stuck with far worse, he mused as he managed to finally get the last fastener to let go. He checked the diagram again, undid the latches, then pulled.

The short cable slid out of its slot and away from the base of the console. Instantly Samuel Campbell saw several lights turn green. “That’s got it!”

“Can you restart?” Tavana’s voice was tense, and he could sense the others hanging on his words.

“Hold your horses, kids. First I want confirmation you’ve pulled all the breakers.”

“Almost done. The one for the pilot’s panel was hard to reach, but we’re… all right, that one’s up and locked.”

“Is everyone clear? I don’t expect any stupid Hollywood spark effects or anything, but I want you all clear of those areas anyway.”

“Hold on… come on, Francisco, over here… Yes, we’re all clear.”

He looked down at the panel. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t much to do. The bottom green light showed that the integrity of the restart coils was good and they were still holding the charge; to continue the shaky analogy, that meant that the starter motor was still there and hooked to the battery. The second green light showed that the fuel supply – purified boron-11 and pure hydrogen – was intact and ready.

The third indicated readiness for start; all of the internal circuitry, then, was okay – or thought it was okay. Given the way things had happened, he wasn’t sure he trusted that cheerful green glow, but on the other hand, what choice did he have? None of the heavy equipment stored in the hold was going to be running on a reactor – almost certainly all of it on superconductor storage batteries – and there weren’t any other alternative power sources.

“All right, everyone… cross everything you’ve got two of, I’m about to initiate restart.”

He unlocked the manual start control, poised his finger over it, and said a little prayer to whoever might be listening. Then his finger stabbed down.

Almost instantly a throbbing hum came from the casing – faint, almost subliminal, but definitely there – and the panel’s lights all came on. Two showed red – the external control connection and the disconnection through the breakers of all external systems – but everything else was a wonderful, wonderful green. “Restart successful! We have power, kids!”

The cheer that followed sounded like a lot more than just four boys, and he joined in. “Now no one touch the breakers yet. I want to do that in order. Tav, what do you think would happen if I hooked up the control harness now?”

Tav was silent for several minutes, but Campbell was patient. There was no reason to pressure anyone here and now.

“After looking at the manuals, I think the worst that would happen is that the reactor would think it still wasn’t connected – if none of the systems outside make contact. The control linkages don’t carry dangerous voltages so there shouldn’t be any major consequences even if the whole set of linkages is messed up.”

“All right, then, I’m going to hook that up first. If we can establish control or – if we’re lucky – trigger a restart in the core systems, we’ll be in a lot better condition.”

After a few minutes jockeying it back into its tight position, the control harness linkage slid suddenly into place and locked. “Okay, Tav, throw the connecting breaker for the controls up there at the pilot’s position. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Lights suddenly appeared, not on the console, but in the air, projected by his omni through his retinal display. They weren’t all green – far, far from it – but they were status lights showing that the controls weren’t all dead. “We’re on!” he heard Francisco shout excitedly.

“Looks like we are, at that.” He put away his Shapetool. “Okay, kids, I’m getting out of this box and stretching for a few minutes. Then we’ll see if we can’t get everything else running and start heading for home!”

 

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 44

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 44

“So you did,” Daniel agreed. The door didn’t have an external latch, but there was a large button on the right side of the console. Repeated use had worn the button’s cream enamel finish through to the black base.

Daniel leaned over and pushed the button. The door opened outward.

“Hey!” said the clerk, loudly enough to alert the dozing guard. Daniel and Hogg sauntered through without anything more serious happening before the door closed behind them.

“Good afternoon, Minister,” Daniel said as Robin looked up from the flat-screen display facing him at an angle on his desk. “I’m here as you directed.”

Walters rose from his console, then sat back again. Robin made a sour face, but he gestured and said, “Yes, take a seat, Leary.”

Walters eyed Hogg doubtfully, probably wondering what Hogg intended to do. Daniel wondered also as he took one of the chairs in front of the large desk, but Hogg remained at the back of the room.

“I’ve been very pleased with the progress the Nabis Contingent has been making, Minister,” Daniel said, “and I hope you are too.”

“Yes indeed, Leary,” Robin said. He tapped his display repeatedly with a light pen. “Major Berners gave me a quick account of your recent training mission. It shows real initiative and an ability to work with material which must be well beneath the level you’re accustomed to on Cinnabar.”

“Actually, sir,” Daniel said, leaning forward slightly, “the Nabies were solid personnel, very solid. All we cadre did was to show them what they were capable of doing. Ah, and working with the officers some to bring ’em up to speed.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be modest,” Robin said, turning from his display to flash Daniel a bright, false smile. “President Menandros has decided to greatly increase your responsibilities. He’s made you Governor of Nabis, reporting directly to him.”

Are you out of your bloody mind?

For a moment Daniel thought the words had come out of his mouth. They hadn’t, but Robin probably read them in his face.

“Your Excellency…” Daniel said. He closed his eyes for a moment to visualize his next words. Opening them he continued, “Sir, look. My father was the most powerful politician on Cinnabar; he’s still pretty bloody important. My sister Deirdre gives every sign of following him into the Senate, and I’ve never known her to play a game that she didn’t win at.”

Daniel had straightened when Robin pronounced his exile to a backwater. Now he leaned forward again and said earnestly, “Sir, if I wanted to get into politics, I’d go home and join the family firm! But I didn’t, I wanted to be a naval officer and I’m a bloody good one. Put me in charge of ships. Or better, put me in charge of your navy, and I’ll show you what I can do!”

“Captain Leary, I’m sure you’re a very important man in Cinnabar space,” Robin said, his voice rising. “But here in the Tarbell Stars, we’re under the rule of President Menandros, and it’s his decision –”

“President Bloody Nonsense!” Daniel said, rising to his feet. “Look, everybody knows you call the shots. Menandros probably knows if he’s got two brain cells to spare for any serious thinking! That’s fine, but –”

“That’s enough!” Robin said as he stood. He crossed his arms before him. Walters had gotten up also and was edging closer to Daniel from the side. If he tries to jump me, I’ll break his face.

Hogg, glimpsed in the polished metal surface of the side of the desk, remained by the door; nothing in the present situation required him to intervene. Though Hogg acted the simple hayseed, he had a very sophisticated grasp of urban society. He wasn’t going to precipitate a brawl which could not have a good result.

The door from the waiting room opened. The clerk outside was babbling something in a high-pitched voice. Walters turned to the disturbance, and Daniel glanced over his shoulder.

A heavy-set balding man in a blue servant’s uniform had entered. A tall man and a short one, both in business suits, were behind him.

“Dumouret, what in bloody hell are you doing here?” Robin shouted.

“Minister,” Dumouret said, “I’m very sorry to disturb you, but the President –”

The short civilian shot Hogg in the chest. Hogg flew into the wall behind him, thrown when his legs spasmed.

The shooter’s tunic pocket was smoldering, ignited by the vaporized aluminum driving band of the slug fired from inside it. The taller civilian was taking a sub-machine gun out of his briefcase.

Daniel grabbed Dumouret by wrist and thigh. He pitched the butler into the tall man, who in turn bumped the shooter off balance. Walters had frozen for a moment with his mouth open, but now he lunged at the shooter.

The pistol was now clear of short man’s burning pocket, and he shot Walters twice through the breastbone. He pivoted toward Daniel, who tripped over Dumouret’s flailing legs.

The shooter sprawled forward though he continued to turn. There was a fleck of blood on his right temple and a long bloody crease at the top of his head where the second pellet had gone a little high.

The taller man had risen to a kneeling position. At the crackle of Tovera’s sub-machine gun, he collapsed again over his own weapon.

The door to the rear entrance hit the wall and began to swing closed again behind Adele and her servant. Robin peeked up from behind the desk where he had dropped to shelter.

The air stank of ozone and feces and fear. Also of blood: Walters lay on his back. He had stopped bleeding, but the tunic of his white uniform was a crimson which would darken as it dried. His eyes were open and his lips drawn back in a grimace of horror.

Daniel tried to get to his feet, then fell onto all fours and crawled toward where Hogg lay. He felt icy inside. He wondered if he’d been physically injured.

“Do we need the butler?” Tovera said. Daniel heard all sounds through a thumping that seemed to be synchronized with his heartbeat.

“Not really,” said Adele, “but he’s no –”

The burst from Tovera’s little sub-machine gun cut off the next words. It sounded like an electrical fault. Dumouret had been curled in a ball. He twitched, and all his muscles relaxed.

The man with the pistol had fallen over Hogg’s body. Daniel felt his strength return. He stood up, hauling the dead shooter with him, and hurled him out of the way.

Hogg’s lips were moving slightly. There were bubbles of spit on them. He wasn’t bleeding, neither from mouth or chest, but something had blasted a hole in the left side of his tunic on a level with his heart.

Daniel reached into the outer right side-pocket of Hogg’s tunic and brought out the knife that Hogg kept there. He snicked the blade open, then plucked the collar of Hogg’s shirt away from the skin and ripped the garment down to the belt, baring his chest.

The skin was unbroken but there was a welt the size of Daniel’s spread hand at the point the hole had been blown in the tunic. It was fiery red and already swelling.

Hogg’s eyes focused on Daniel. “I hope somebody got the bastard who shot me,” he said in a rusty whisper.

“Is there a Medicomp in this building?” Daniel bellowed into the noise and confusion. Hogg winced with every breath, but he was breathing. “Adele, alert the Sissie! I want a stretcher team here soonest!”

Leaning close to Hogg again, Daniel said, “Adele handled that problem. I think Tovera took care of his partner, but anyway it’s taken care of.”

Daniel slit the left side of Hogg’s tunic and drew the pistol from the built-in holster concealed there. The slug had struck the receiver like a sledge hammer, almost severing the barrel from the butt and magazine.

“The bastard suckered me, played me for a right sap,” Hogg said, tensing against the pain but getting the words out without gasping. “If the Mistress fixed him, he won’t be doing it again, though.”

He laughed, punctuated by spasms of pain.

“There’s a Medicomp in the next room to the left,” Adele said, squatting to put her head on a level with Daniel’s.

“There’s a stretcher there too,” said Robin. “I thought, well, I’d as soon there was a facility close to my office.”

“I can bloody walk,” Hogg said, but he wasn’t trying to get up.

“You’ll do what your master bloody says, Hogg!” Daniel said. There might be internal bleeding; there were certainly cracked ribs.

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 20

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 20

Caitlin let the rest of her questions die. There was no sound in the command deck. Everyone was observing the launch.

The penetrator missile started out slowly, as Flue had said it would. There was a blue glow from the aft end, which seemed to fluctuate a bit as it maneuvered toward the planet. Maybe a quarter hour or so went by silently until the missile seemed to stop in one place and hover for a moment. For some reason Caitlyn was reminded of a hummingbird, which brought a smile to her face.

Suddenly the blue glow brightened almost ten-fold, and the missile began moving again. Within seconds it was obviously hurtling along at multiples of its previous speeds. The missile almost disappeared from the external view until the camera adjusted, and the camera on the missile began to show some signs of vibration as it plunged into the atmosphere.

The target dome swelled almost as if it was a ball thrown at Caitlin’s face. Within seconds, it filled the entire frame of view of the missile’s camera.

The missile’s side of the display went dark. Caitlin wrenched her eyes to the external view. She didn’t see the missile penetrate, but she did see the hole made by the missile when it penetrated the dome.

For another couple of seconds nothing happened. Then the dome seemed to jump. Cracks appeared in the dome material, and pieces of it fell inside. A large dust plume blew out of the holes.

It was surreal to watch the destruction in silence. Caitlin kept expecting to hear an earth-shattering kaboom, or a really long roll of thunder, or something. Nothing. Only destruction and upheaval in deafness. The Jao said nothing. Even the humans in the command deck remained silent.

The view screen split into three feeds: one remaining on the dome, and two more providing the same feeds as at first, only with a different missile. The drill was repeated.

This time Caitlin focused on the dome feed, and she was rewarded with a glimpse of the streak of the second missile as it penetrated the dome. As with the first, it punched straight through, followed by a second or two of no visible reaction, and finally the ground jumping under the dome. This time the dome collapsed altogether, and the dust plume was much larger.

Again the view screen reset with the three feeds as Vercingetorix’s third penetrator was launched. Again Caitlin was rewarded with the glimpse of the missile streaking to the impact. But this time, since the dome was gone, when the nuclear charge blew the watchers could see massive amounts of debris tossed into the sky, and now great holes were seen to be opening up beneath the remains of the Ekhat base. Much of the rubble and remnants of structures were collapsing and sliding into the holes.

After a few minutes, the dust plumes and rubble slides had stopped. The Ekhat base looked like nothing much more than a large gravel heap, with an occasional boulder scattered throughout.

One of the humans on the command deck began clapping. He was quickly joined by others. In a moment, they were all standing and clapping and cheering. Including Caitlin. Paybacks for China. Her mind visualized white Ekhat blood dripping from some of the stones and soaking into the dirt of the planet that the Ekhat had sterilized. That didn’t bother her at all.

The Jao, of course, just shook their heads and adopted various postures like disdain-for-foolishness, or what might be expressed as glad-that’s-done. But here and there on the command deck, Caitlin caught glimpses of joy-at-judgment, and Wrot was standing with a blatant sly-enjoyment-at-another’s-doom.

Dannet, of course, was in her usual seemingly effortless neutral. The Fleet Commander had turned and was facing Caitlin, seemingly waiting for Caitlin to notice her. When she caught Caitlin’s eyes, she spoke.

“This task is completed, Director Kralik. What are your directives for our next task?”

Chapter 8

At that moment, something crystallized in Caitlin’s mind; something that she realized had been growing for some time.

“Fleet Commander Dannet . . .”

“Yes, Director Kralik?” Dannet had looked away for a moment, but her head swiveled back to face Caitlin. Her eyes were green, but her posture was very neutral. Not even one of her whiskers twitched.

“The fleet will return to Ares Base as soon as any emergency repairs are completed.”

“As you instruct, Director.” Caitlin listened, but found no trace of irony or sarcasm in the fleet commander’s voice. Her angles were now expressing dutiful-compliance; her eyes were fading to black. Caitlin suspected that Dannet may not be happy with the command, but she still respected who had oudh in this mission. Even if it was a human.

****

The Ban Chao’s captain had brought the great craft to a halt some distance away from where the remnants of the World Harvester tumbled slowly through space. In his harness, Tully was drenched in sweat. He clutched his weapon even though the battle was over, there was no one left to fight, and they were safe–for the moment. Knowing that, though, and actually feeling it down in his marrow were two separate matters. He wasn’t sure his heart rate would ever ease back down to normal.

They had raided a freaking Ekhat Death Star! Or at least, that’s what it felt like. As of yet, he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around that fact.

“Shit!” he said as he flipped his face-shield open. “I don’t want to do that again anytime soon!” The faces of the six he’d lost from his command were burned behind his eyes. He was going to be seeing them in his sleep for months, he was sure.

Tully had been one of the last of the jinau to re-board the ship. Ahead of him he could see the troopers splitting up to head for their quarters, shrugging off their harnesses and starting to peel off parts of their suits. They were good protection, but the suits did get a little hot and gamey after a while.

“Do you know where we’re going next, Colonel?” a gangly youth with shaggy black hair and a private’s single stripe asked. One of his front teeth was broken. Tully cudgeled his memory for the boy’s name.

Willis, he realized, Willis Ciappa, recruited out of the one of the last of the rebel enclaves in the Appalachian Mountains.

“Not yet, Ciappa,” Tully replied. “When I know, you’ll know. We’ll be leaving as soon as some repairs are done, though.”

“What if the Ekhat follow us?” another soldier said, this one a broad-shouldered sandy-haired female built like a truck.

“Frame travel doesn’t work like that,” he said, having had the same worries himself and secured an explanation some time ago. “It doesn’t leave any kind of trail to follow. We would have had to tell them where we were going.”

A nearby sergeant, one of the ones that General Kralik had provided, snorted. “Like that would happen!” Cold Bear, Tully’s mind prompted him with the name. Joe Cold Bear, from North Dakota. He’d been one of Ed Kralik’s original jinau troops, and the general had passed him on to Tully when he gave him his colonel’s eagles.

The Ban Chao shuddered. Tully staggered, regained his balance, then tried to think about anything but the amount of damage they’d taken. “I’m going to check on the prisoners.”

Ciappa shuddered. “They’re a right despicable bunch,” he said. “Serving the Ekhat like that. I’d rather be dead.”

“They never had a choice,” Tully said. “Just like we humans didn’t have a choice once the Jao defeated us. They’re victims, not collaborators.”

“Hard to tell the difference sometimes,” Ciappa muttered.

Tully caught the sergeant’s eye and jerked his head. Cold Bear pushed the private toward their company quarters. “Private, go clean your weapon, go clean your suit, and for God’s sake, go take a shower.”

The sergeant led the protesting trooper away. Tully remembered thinking a lot of things himself about the Jao and the conquest when he was growing up in a rebel camp. Many (though not all) of those things turned out not to be true. Ciappa was just going to have to learn through experience. He’d signed up for this adventure; now he was having to live it.

Tully’s stomach crawled as he made his way through the narrow hallways toward the Holding Area, which had been specially designed for prisoners. Supposedly it was secure enough to contain even an Ekhat, though Tully knew even if they caught one, it would just kill itself the first chance it got if they didn’t drastically restrain it. The one they’d captured in the Valeron boarding action hadn’t lasted long, despite all its limbs being burned off by lasers during the action. They’d gotten it back to Earth, but only barely. Tully hadn’t gotten a straight story yet on how it had died; only some wildly contradictory and usually gory rumors. The freaking Ekhat were crazy enough that it may have eaten itself, for all he knew.

The Ban Chao’s massively armored hull was reportedly compromised in a dozen places, but its highly trained damage control squads were already on it. He heard banging and swearing in external compartments as he moved along. From what he’d heard over the com net, though, the damage was relatively minor, especially considering that they’d rammed a freaking dreadnought!

 

Through Fire – Snippet 20

Through Fire – Snippet 20

“But then, what good does it do me?” I asked. “I thought you’d said I’d have to speak the local patois.”

“Well, alors,” he said, sounding very much like Simon. “It is the local patois. By which I mean, it is mostly Glaish, with a local overlay. If we give you the vocabulary to understand the overlay, all we need to do on your part is give you an accent, when you answer. You don’t need to speak the patois. Some people never do. Some people rarely. But you do need to understand it, and that’s easy. It is a list of words. You’ll understand the words when you hear them.”

“And it will vanish from my mind?”

A quick smile. “Like Cinderella’s dress, which is why this isn’t used for long-term learning, for things people need. Well, it’s not really used by anyone but the Usaian forces just now, but to the extent it could be used by everyone, after the revolution triumphs, and when science will be set free, it still can’t be used for long-term learning. The brain returns to its normal state.”

“So… How long do I have?”

He shrugged. “A month. Two. Who knows? Each brain is different. So… expediency and speed, highly recommended, yes?”

I nodded doubtfully, while he led me to a chair, sat me down on it, and put something that looked like a knit silver hat on me. Then he turned on an apparatus.

I can’t describe what followed, any more than I can describe the contents of a dream, after waking. It partook that same nature of a dream, or at least of what one remembers of a dream once one awakes. Images and faces and sounds seemed to come out of somewhere, suddenly, with no preparation. Things happened. Most of them not physical things. Not things I could describe. At one point, there was a feeling of falling.

And then — he was removing the helmet. I stood up. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a stranger, standing, before turning around to look and realizing it was a mirror. The stranger in the mirror turned, too, and stared at me with brown eyes.

“Not bad, is it?” Royce Allard said, a hint of pride in his voice. “You will do. You will pass.”

“Certainly I will pass,” I said. And then I realized I’d said it with an accent like Simon’s. And that Allard had spoken in a language that included at least two French words, and one whose provenance I couldn’t identify.

I blinked at him, and he chuckled. “It will do,” he said. “It is better than I thought I could do without a staff. And now, we should get you something to wear and your equipment, because if you leave soon, you should be able to approach Liberte in the dark of night. This will not help you against military defenses, but it’s not the military you should be afraid of.”

“The Sans Culottes are the military, aren’t they?” I said.

He shook his head. “Some of them. Some of them are trained and might rise to that description, but most of them, really, are just … a barely trained rabble. Certainly not well equipped. But even so, I think your greatest danger, in Liberte proper, is from people rendered hysterical by fear.”

“Fear of what?” I asked.

We were standing in the middle of his laboratory-like beauty parlor. I stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, and saw him reflected in the glass behind me. Taller than I. Probably around forty years old, with his reddish brown hair starting to recede and at this point in time doing nothing more than giving the impression he had an abnormally tall forehead. His clever-monkey eyes looked at me in the mirror. “I was a sans culottes once, you know. Then there was… a moment, an experience.” He seemed to be weighing what and how much to tell me. His eyes narrowed. “I was raised as a Sans Culottes, you understand. Just like Martha,” he gestured towards her, and I realized she was still there. She’d been so quiet through the whole procedure that I’d forgotten her, or as near it as it was possible. “Just like Martha was raised Usaian. You don’t question it. I had training, and times of practicing for the revolution. And then, one day, while out with a group of young partisans like me, they found out something… different about me. The results were not pleasant. I was brought before the authorities on the principle that I was not equal. I did not wish to be equal. I was not trying to submerge myself to the whole, to be a good member of the unit. At the time, I had a friend who was Usaian, from one of the devout families. I… ah… converted, and eventually moved to Olympus to carry on my daylight occupation as a clothing designer.”

Beyond his hesitations, I could feel the lacunae in what he told, but I was momentarily diverted from wondering by the idea that someone who looked like he should carry stones for a living had made a living designing dresses — presumably — for fashionable women.

“That is the culture of the sans Culottes,” he said. “And there are a lot of them in all French speaking territories. They want to be equal. Really equal. Which is a good thing to aim for if you can, I suppose, but it means that sometimes you can’t be equal. Like Simon can’t be equal. And now that it’s been revealed that there are people among them who can’t be made equal, they will be afraid. Afraid, more than anything,” he said, “of the brittleness of their beliefs. The Good Men ruled for centuries, you see, on the understanding that they were superior. Denying that and destroying that belief was part of what the sans-Culottes were about. But then, when it’s revealed they really are superior, superior at a physical and mental level… Well! What is to stop people from binding themselves in subjection to these people once more; from wanting to be taken care of?”

“But,” I said. “Just because you’re faster or stronger, or even smarter, it doesn’t mean you make a better ruler.” I thought back to the man from whose genes I’d been built. By all accounts, he was faster, stronger and smarter, not just than the normal run of humanity, but than his own kind. “The way the early Mules ruled was no recommendation.”

“Yes,” he said. “But you’re talking reality.” His eyes looked grave in the mirror. “That’s not what we’re dealing in, you understand. My entire work, the daylight one, and the hidden one, requires me to be aware of what people think and believe that is not openly mentioned or openly spoken of. Humanity will undoubtedly always believe that someone very smart — smarter than they think they can hope to be, someone born endowed with gifts they can’t have, can only have one of two purposes towards them: to protect them or to harm them. And they in turn just want such people to go away. Those who are liberty-inclined because they fear that other people will submit to the superior men and the other people because, having endured the tyrannical rule of those people, they’re afraid of being subjected to it again, and being too weak to throw it off once more. The only way they can feel free is to kill those people; to make them stop existing and as if they’d never existed.”

“But I am one of those people,” I said.

His eyes went very serious. He’d been talking to me, somewhat in the way an adult speaks with a child, with the same assumption of amusement in his eyes and voice. But now his eyes went very serious, and he looked at me with a mix of something that might be worry or perhaps pity. “I know,” he said.

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 35

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 35

Chapter 5

Dr. Phil’s Piles

Saturday December 7, 1624, Basel

Phillip chewed at his mustache as he read the letter from his landlord’s lawyer. Bad news came in threes. On Thursday his friend Professor Gaspard Bauhin died. Today he had been served notice that his lease would not be renewed. He didn’t want to image what the third event would be.

He slowly turned; staring at the various aspects of the laboratory he’d been using for the last thirty months. It had started to feel like home, and had collected the detritus of living a home usually accumulated. Did he really want to go through the experience of moving everything to a new laboratory, or should he take this as a sign that it was time to leave Basel?

He was busy contemplating his future when, after a perfunctory knock on the door, Jean Bauhin walked in. The sight of the youth in his laboratory so soon after his father’s death didn’t bode well. “How are you?” Phillip asked

“Surviving,” Jean said. He stood back and looked at Phillip; his eyes failing to maintain eye contact.

“Do you have more bad news?” Phillip asked.

“More? Oh, you mean in addition to Papa?” Tears started to form in Jeans eyes, and he let them fall.

Phillip passed him a clean handkerchief and pulled out the letter from his landlord and offered it to Jean. “I’ve been given notice that my lease won’t be renewed.”

Jean snorted vigorously into the handkerchief. “That didn’t take them long,” he said as he wiped his nose.

“What didn’t take who long?” Phillip asked.

Jean gave Phillip a grim smile. “There are people at the university who are scared of you.”

Phillip’s brows shot up. “Scared? Of me?” he asked, pointing to his chest. “Why would anyone be scared of me?”

“Because you manage to show them up,” Jean said.

Phillip still didn’t understand. “Show who up?”

“Doctors like Dr. Laurent.”

Phillip blew a snort of contempt. “Who worries about a man of his poor talent?” he asked.

“There are people who respect Dr. Laurent, Dr. Gribbleflotz, and they remember what you did to him a couple of years ago.”

“All I did was show his paying customers the correct way to conduct an amputation.” Phillip started pacing. “It’s just like Padua. People like Professor Fabricius would hold demonstrations where they pontificated on their favorite topic, which had little to do with the knowledge the examiners were going to test the students on. Phillip smiled at Jean. “Really, I was doing the university a favor.”

Jean nodded, but there was still a sign of worry on his face. “Dr. Laurent and his followers have managed to engage Professor Stupanus in the proposal to ban all private dissections.”

That was bad news. Professor Emmanuel Stupanus’s inaugural lecture when he joined the University of Basel faculty had been entitled De fraudibus Paracelsistarum, and from what Phillip had heard, the man’s opinion of anyone who claimed to follow the Paracelsian school of thought hadn’t improved. “Maybe it is time for me to move on,” he mumbled.

“Are you thinking of leaving?” Jean asked.

Phillip nodded. “I miss your father and our discussions, especially his ideas of how to classify botanical discoveries. There’s nothing here for me now.”

“Where will you go?”

Phillip smiled. “Give me a chance. I’ve only just now decided to leave. For now I think I’ll take a barge down the Rhine.”

February 1625

The trip down the Rhine turned into a trip down the Waal and eventually Phillip found himself in Dordrecht, in the United Providences. He’d barely landed his baggage when a colleague from his days in the service of the counts of Nassau-Siegen discovered him.

“Phillip, how have you been?” Wilhelm Dorschner asked as he approached and hugged Phillip.

“Okay. And yourself?”

“I can’t complain.” Wilhelm put on a smile. “After Gradisca I went north and joined the forces of Ernst von Mansfeld. I’m still with him.”

Phillip recognized the name and winced. “Were you at Wimpfen?” he asked, naming the 1622 battle which von Mansfeld had lost.

Wilhelm nodded. “We were holding our ground,” he sighed and dropped his head, “until a cannon shot hit the magazine and . . .” He shook his head again. “I was lucky to get away unhurt.”

“So you’ve been in the United Provinces since then?” Phillip asked.

“Sort of,” Wilhelm said. “We’ve just recently crossed from Dover with an army to relieve Breda, which has been besieged since August. If you’re looking for a position, I’m sure they’ll be happy to take you on.”

Phillip hesitated. He had a supply of maggot extract that he was simply dying to try out, and a siege would be an ideal situation in which to test his new treatments. One tended to stay in one place, and few if any of the casualties that passed through his hands would have family who were likely to interfere with his experiments.

“We need you, Phillip. We are almost seven thousand soldiers, and only a handful of physicians.”

Phillip had to smile. It seemed his opportunities to experiment would be even greater than he’d thought.

****

The campaign produced a lot of work for Phillip and his colleagues. The only way for Sir Horace Vere and his seven thousand Englishmen to approach the siege lines was along a network of causeways. After a short engagement they managed to capture a redoubt, but the resulting Spanish counterattack forced Sir Horace to retreat, taking heavy casualties.

His work didn’t end there as, with Sir Horace’s attempt to break the siege failing, the siege lasted another four months. When in June of 1625 Breda finally surrendered only about half the original seven thousand man garrison survived, including about six hundred Englishmen. Phillip accompanied the English wounded when they were repatriated back to England, where he stayed with them for a year while he improved his English before taking to the road and working his way north, stopping in villages as he passed to offer his professional services or to learn medical uses of plants from the locals. It was thus that he finally ended up near Kingston upon Hull, known locally simply as Hull.

May 1630, Anlaby, 3 miles west of Kingston upon Hull, England

Phillip paid the messenger from the book shop he patronized in Hull for the letter and package he’d delivered and retired back into his laboratory to inspect them. He laid the post on his work bench and washed the grease from the spit-roasted duck he had been eating from his hands before hunting out his letter opener.

The letter was from his old colleague from the Dalmatian expedition. Michael Weitnauer was in Jena, working at the university’s botanical gardens, and he wrote that he had hopes of being put in charge of the facility. His letter went on to describe some of the changes he wanted to make. Phillip could only feel that Jena would be well served by employing Michael as the director of the botanical garden.

He laid down Michael’s letter and picked up the package. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Phillip carefully untied the string and added it to the ball of string he was creating from short lengths he saved. Then he carefully opened the brown paper wrapping to reveal a brand new copy of Dr. William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis. It was bound in human skin, just like his copy of Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, which probably explained why it had taken so long to arrive. He placed the manuscript to one side while her folded up the wrapping paper and put it into a drawer for use at some later date. Only then did his eyes turn to his new book.

At a mere seventy-two pages, including illustrations, Phillip didn’t think it would take him long to skim through the manuscript. That meant he could probably afford to look at it while his laborant ground green vitriol, because, he thought, not even Robert could get into trouble doing that.

He was wrong. It wasn’t that he was wrong thinking Robert couldn’t get into trouble grinding green vitriol, he was wrong in assuming that he could afford to read the manuscript instead of closely monitoring what Robert got up to. The youngster was the latest of a line of hopefuls he’d tried as assistants, and Phillip was having trouble repressing his delusions of grandeur.

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 19

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 19

Chapter 7

The World Harvester was lying naked in space, helpless before the fleet. That didn’t stop the lasers of the three battleships from carving it into pieces, helped along by a variety of explosions from within. It wasn’t long before a last titanic explosion broke the ship into three unequal pieces that slowly spun away from each other.

“Subordinate ships, guard the remains of the World Harvester,” Dannet ordered. “Support ships and Vercingetorix, rejoin the fleet.”

Caitlin unstrapped from her seat and got to her feet. For a moment, she felt light-headed, but it passed.

“So when will we be ready to leave this system?” she asked Dannet.

The Fleet Commander turned to face her. “Not yet, Director Kralik. The fleet still has one task remaining.”

Caitlin was surprised. She’d figured that since the Ekhat ships were destroyed, they could leave. “And that is?”

Dannet waved a hand at the main view screen, where the image of a planet was on display. “To make sure there are no Ekhat left in the system.” She turned to the communications officer. “Battleships take formation Gamma Rho again, head for that planet, prepare for bombardment.”

Caitlin shook her head for a moment, as if to settle her brain. The thought that there was still fighting to do had definitely caught her off guard. She walked over to stand next to Lieutenant Vaughan’s station.

“There are Ekhat on that planet?” she asked quietly.

“Looks like it,” the Welshman replied. “Sensors show something that might be either a small city or a mid-sized military post by our standards.”

“Damn,” Caitlin muttered.

It took some time for the fleet to close on the planet, but well before they arrived in orbit Lexington’s sensors confirmed first of all that the planet was another that had been stripped almost to bedrock by Ekhat sterilizations, and second that there was some kind of Ekhat facility or post under a dome near the shore of a lifeless sea.

Dannet looked over to her aide. “Can Vercingetorix launch its bombardment weapons?” The Fleet Commander was not one to indulge in the Terran “humanization” of tools; ships were “it”, not “she” to Dannet.

Vaughan touched a pad on his console. “They report no damage to those weapons systems.”

Dannet turned to the communications officer. “Orders to Vercingetorix: launch all bombardment weapons at the Ekhat base. Orders to Arjuna: prepare to launch bombardment weapons; wait for my order.”

Caitlin leaned over to Vaughan. “Is the Fleet Commander going to order the ships to gather plasma balls from the sun?”

“No,” Vaughan hissed back.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a stupid weapon.”

Both Wrot and Dannet glanced over at them. Vaughan gave a quick cutting motion with his hand, and returned his full attention to his panel.

Caitlin stepped back by her bodyguards, just that little bit miffed. “If it’s so stupid a weapon,” she muttered, “why do the Ekhat use it?”

“Because they are unsane,” Tamt volunteered. “Everyone knows that.”

“But that doesn’t mean they’re stupid,” Caitlin replied. “Why would they use a stupid weapon?”

“Lieutenant Vaughan?” Dannet pronounced.

“Sir?”

“Provide an explanation to Director Kralik, so she will cease fretting.”

Caitlin felt her face getting hot as she flushed. Vaughan beckoned to her, so he wouldn’t have to leave his console. She stalked over, trailed by Tamt and Captain Miller.

“Sorry to have my stupid question interrupting your work, Lieutenant, but I really would like to understand why the Ekhat would use a stupid weapon.”

“It’s not a stupid question,” Vaughan said, touching a couple of pads on his console before he looked up at her, “and the short answer is nobody knows. Everyone blames it on the Ekhat being crazy, but really, nobody knows for sure.”

“So why is it a stupid weapon?”

“It’s a terror weapon,” the Welshman said, “and like many terror weapons, it’s very inefficient. The plasma ball that landed on China did a lot of damage, granted. But all the post-strike analyses that’ve been done in the last couple of years indicate that the damned thing almost missed.”

“Missed its target?”

“No,” Vaughan replied, “missed the earth.”

Caitlin’s jaw dropped.

“Really,” Vaughan maintained. “Combining our records with what we can collect from the Jao, it looks like the ball was probably taken from as deep in the sun as the Ekhat can extend their shields, probably down to the level where the plasma is near the density of molten iron. Then they pulled out a ball of somewhere around ninety kilometers diameter, and they trundled that off to the planet they wanted to bombard–in this case, Earth.

“Each ball had so much mass, they could barely contain it in their shields, and they could barely move it with their ships. Ekhat ships are not inferior to the ships the Jao had at the time they attacked us. Didn’t you wonder why it took so long for the Ekhat ship to arrive at Earth, when the Jao ships could make the trip faster? As it is, one ship overstrained its systems, lost shield containment and was vaporized by its own plasma ball. If we’d had the Lexington in service back then, the second ship probably would never have made it close to earth. It was moving slow enough that the kinetic weapons should have punished it to the point where the same thing would have happened to it.”

“No one ever pointed that out to me before,” Caitlin said. “What else didn’t they tell me?”

“It gets crazier,” Flue said. “The Ekhat don’t have a way to aim a plasma ball.”

“What?” Caitlin exclaimed. “That’s crazy!”

“What I said,” Flue grinned. “They carry the ball along until they’re near the planet they’re attacking. In our case, they were just inside the stratosphere. Then they drop the shields around the ball and take their ship someplace else, leaving the ball to fall and land wherever. Our damage was bad enough, but if they had waited longer to release the ball, the destruction would have been much greater and more widespread. The plasma lost a lot of energy just spreading out and interacting with the atmosphere before it hit the ground.”

“You said they almost missed.”

“Yes.” Vaughan sobered. “They actually came in at a slight angle, and like I said, they let the ball loose higher than would have been optimum. It was almost an ocean strike because of that, and if it had been even a few more degrees off of vertical, it might well have just roared through the atmosphere and back into space. Either one of those would have really messed up the wind and weather patterns, maybe even more than the land strike actually did, but they wouldn’t have done the damage that really happened.”

“So it’s a stupid weapon because they can barely control it and they can’t aim it well,” Caitlin said.

“Correct. They could have done as much damage with a handful of hydrogen bombs or a couple of big asteroid bolides, easier and with greater precision.”

“So they’re crazy.”

Flue nodded with another grin.

“So what are we going to use instead?”

The Welshman turned and touched a couple of pads on his console. A display lit up.

“That,” he said, pointing to the display.

Caitlin looked at the picture. “A missile?”

“No,” Flue said. “That is a super-penetrator. Twenty meters long, two meters in diameter, titanium shell, a mass of depleted uranium at the head of it, followed by a tactical nuclear or sub-nuclear charge, and powered by the smallest of the Jao space drives that we’ve yet been able to build. It’s also got some rudimentary shield capability, but given its designed use, that’s not so much of a big thing.”

“Wow,” Caitlin said, as Caewithe Miller gave a low whistle beside her. “So when did we get those?”

“They’ve been under development for a long time; since right after the conquest. In secret, of course. That was all wishful thinking, naturally, but even among the techies there were some die-hard rebels. But when Aille became governor and the R&D firms got access to the Jao tech-base, the plans got pulled out, dusted off, and updated. There was one test on a sizable asteroid with a sub-nuclear charge, which created a cloud of fast moving gravel, then it went to production. They had a dozen ready for us right before the fleet began searching.” He shrugged. “It was one of those ‘just in case’ weapons, and although no one, Dannet included, expected to need them, no officer worth his paycheck is ever going to turn down an available weapon.”

Flue’s head twitched, then he touched a console control and looked up at the main view screen. “And now we get to see it in action.”

Caitlin focused on the screen, which had split to show two different pictures. “What’s this showing me?”

“One is a feed from a camera on the penetrator itself, and the other is from a camera on one of the ships,” Flue replied. Both pictures began to change as the penetrator began to move. “It’s designed to start out slowly, then kick into high gear when the on-board sensors get a good lock on the defined target and the most direct path to it.”

 

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 04

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 04

Chapter 4.

“What next, Sergeant?” Xander asked as they put the wrappers from the ration packs into the disposal.

“Yeah, that’s the question, isn’t it?” Sergeant Campbell glanced around the shuttle’s cabin. “What do you think, son?”

“I think you’re probably better qualified to answer –”

“Damned right I am, son, but in this situation we all need to learn to be qualified. We’re in an emergency like none of us ever expected to deal with, and something could happen to me any time, or to any of you. So I ask you, what do you think is next?”

Xander understood now. He doesn’t want us just letting him boss us around; he wants us doing the thinking with him. “Well… I think there’s at least two things we could work on right now. Technically… even if all the other systems were working, the vital ones – the drives – need reliable power. That means the first thing we have to do there is get the reactor back online.”

Samuel Campbell nodded slowly. “Sounds reasonable to me. What’s the other thing?”

“Find out where we are – if there’s an inhabited star anywhere near us. If we get the drives working, we’ll need somewhere to go.”

“Spot-on, son.”

The approval in the older man’s voice warmed Xander, and he saw Maddox grin. “But… where’s access to the reactor?”

Tavana gestured to the back. “Through the main cargo hold and down. So first we have to get the cargo hold door unlocked.”

“We can do that together,” Maddox said confidently. “Right, Sergeant?”

“Sounds good to me,” the Sergeant said.

“Which is good,” Xander said slowly, “because I think you’re probably the only one of us who might be able to tell us where we are. You’re not just a pilot, you’re trained as a navigator, right?”

“Spot-on. I’ve done a lot of things in my time, but yes indeed, flying things both fast and slow, that’s what I do best. I’ve got the star maps stored in my omni; I think I can get us at least a reasonable guess, since I know where we should have been when we were dumped off.”

“Okay, then, Sergeant, I say you work on finding our position, Maddox and Tavana work on getting the cargo door open, and me and Frank… Francisco will check out the other systems that I can access and see if we can get some more details on what LS-88 has for us.”

“As the old-timers sometimes say, make it so,” the Sergeant said, and moved over to the pilot’s seat.

Francisco came to join Xander; the startlingly red-headed, dark-skinned Mexican boy looked up at him with a worried expression. “You’re just pretending I can help,” he said bluntly.

Xander remembered similar situations with Maddox and how he’d handled them – or not. Try to learn from the right and wrong I did with him. He grinned down at Francisco. “Well, not pretending, no. I know what you’re good at is more the artistic stuff. But like the Sergeant says, we’ve all got to learn, and I know you can learn whatever you need to. So we’re going to check out all the systems that I know anything about while they do the top priority work.”

“Do… do you think… we’ll ever get home?”

The little boy’s tone sounded even more lonely and scared in the original Spanish, which Xander could hear under the running translation from his omni. He reached out and hugged the little boy to him. “I won’t lie and say I know we will. But I know we’ll do our best, and Sergeant Campbell’s best is damn scary good.”

Francisco managed a giggle. “He’s a scary man.”

“But a good one. Look, Francisco, I’m almost as much a fish out of water as you are here. I’m a mechanical engineer, and honestly, if we had major mechanical problems on LS-88, we’d be screwed. So we’re both just doing some make-work right now while the others get stuff done. But that’s better than doing nothing.”

“Okay.”

He moved over near the pilot’s console, which with its deployed manual controls and displays was the only one with useful data; careful not to get in the Sergeant’s way, he studied the indicators he could. “Okay, let’s go look at the airlock,” he said to Francisco. “If anyone has to go in or out, we’ll need that working.”

“Sounds good to me,” the Sergeant said. “Be warned, everyone; I’m gonna tumble this bird – slowly – a few times over the next hour or so. I’ll warn you with each burn, of course. I’m doing this to get a good look in all directions of the stars.”

“Understood, Sergeant. C’mon, Francisco.”

The little boy made his way over to the airlock panel. “How’s it supposed to work?”

Xander made sure they were both clipped on. “Pretty simple, really. The thing that keeps that door tight closed is the pressure inside here compared to the pressure outside. If we could flood that little room – the airlock – with air of the same pressure, we could open this door, and go into the airlock. Then with the door closed, you pump the air out again and then you can open the second door and be outside in space.”

“Hold on,” came the Sergeant’s voice. “Rotation burn in three, two, one… now!”

The two of them gripped and held, but the rotation was very slow; with their anti-vertigo settings still active in their nanos, it didn’t bother anyone.

“Air pressure?” Francisco said, puzzled. “The air doesn’t push on me when it’s still.”

“Actually, it does, so evenly across every square centimeter of your body that you don’t feel it; your body’s pushing out with exactly the same force – about a hundred kilopascals, roughly, or a little less here – so your body doesn’t squish in or out. But on the other side of that door, there’s basically nothing, so there’s literally tons of pressure holding that door shut. You could get a crowbar and have all of us try to pry that door open and all we’d do is bend the crowbar. But equalize the pressure and it’d open just as easy as anything.”

“So why wouldn’t it work before?”

“Radiation pulse disrupted the circuits that control most of our systems. Plus the tube being connected made some of the sensors think we were still docked, which cut in other safety interlocks.”

“So the only way to open the airlock is if the circuits are working?”

“Well, no, there’s a set of manual controls.” He indicated a couple of buttons and a wheel set into the wall, then they both held on as the Sergeant tumbled LS-88 again. He pushed the green – which was the “flood” control actuator – but it felt flat and inactive. “But they’re not active, and I don’t know why, at least not yet.”

The little boy floated up and looked into the little airlock. “That’s a small room.”

“Smaller the better for getting in and out. You can’t recover a hundred percent of the air you put in, so you’re always losing some, so the smaller the room, the less you lose.”

Xander studied the controls, wishing he had been an electrical engineer instead. “Hey, Tavana, how’re you guys coming?”

“This door, it is not as easy to trick as the air circulation,” Tavana answered. “Everyone has reason to want to keep the environmentals running, but going to the cargo, not everyone is supposed to go there.”

“I got a kinda stupid idea here and I wanted to run it by you.”

“Okay, let me hear it while I think about how to get the cargo door open.”

“Electronic controls are the default even for the airlock, right?”

“Oui. We have manual backups, but the electronics and photonics run everything normally.”

“Well, we never really lost power, even though the reactor went down, and the sensing and analysis circuits got kinda fried, right, which is why I can’t just toggle the manual on and off?”

“Right. What are you asking?”

“I guess… look, is there a way I could cut the power to the airlock? Make it think the whole ship lost power? Maybe that would trigger the interlocks and let me use the manual controls?”

Tavana paused for a minute, during which Sergeant Campbell sent LS-88 on another leisurely spin; then Xander heard a chuckle. “The brute force approach, eh? It might work. Hey, Maddox, see if you can get my TechTool to extrude the control contacts for these parts here, while I look at the circuits to the airlock?”

“Sure!”

A few minutes later, Xander saw areas of the wall highlighted in red in his omni display. “See that, Xander?”

“Yeah!”

“See if you can get any of those three panels unlocked and open.”

He sent Francisco to work on the closest indicated area while he moved to the other two. In a minute, Francisco gave a triumphant yell as he got the recessed panel to slide open.

“Good work, Franky!”

Francisco was so proud of his success that he didn’t object to the use of the nickname. “So what do we do in here?”

“See those cables? I’m highlighting one. If you pull that cable out of its connectors, you should cut power to the airlock controls. If your idea works, it’ll unlock the manuals. It’s a SSJ standard connector.”

“SSJ?”

Tavana audibly restrained a sigh. “Secure Superconducting Junction connector. Like old-style BNC, it’s a push and twist to unlock.”

“Got it.” He looked at Francisco. “Wanna be the one to try?”

“Can I?”

“Just be careful. Grab that part, push it toward the other part as hard as you can, and then turn it towards you like unscrewing a jar top.”

Francisco reached in and managed, with difficulty, to grasp the connector. His fingers weren’t quite strong enough to manipulate the cable end himself, so Xander ended up helping him a little.

Even from where they were, Xander heard a sharp clack! from near the airlock. Tense but hopeful, he floated himself up to the manual controls and pushed in the green button; this time the button sank in and clicked satisfyingly, engaging a physical relay. Feeling hope rising, he turned the wheel slowly.

The sound of air flooding the compartment became swiftly audible. “Yes!”

“Great, son. Can you reverse it?”

“Umm… I don’t think so. The manual system assumes that you’ve got minimal power, so it’s not trying for recovery; it’ll dump the flooded atmosphere out through the valves.”

“You didn’t let it flood all the way, did you?”

“No, sir.”

“Good for now. I think we can reasonably assume it’ll work now, and no point in wasting the air we put into it. Leave it that way, in case we have to use it. Later we’ll see if we can get the powered systems working so it’s not going to waste our atmosphere. Tavana, when you got the environmentals tripped, did you get a look at our reserves?”

“We’re good, sir. None of them got released in the accident, and we were fully supplied, so we’ve got months of air, at least, even if the recyclers don’t do so well.”

“Good.”

“How about you, Sergeant? Any luck?”

“Wouldn’t say it’s so much luck as good preparation, son, but yes, I know where we are. And I’ve got myself quite a puzzle, too.”

The others turned to look at Campbell. “What sort of puzzle, sir?”

“Take a look here.”

A starfield shimmered into view in front of them, scattered pinpoints of brilliance dusted across the blackness of space. “See, that’s the projected perspective view for the area of space I thought we were in, taken from the files I’ve got onboard.”

“Doesn’t it fit?”

“Fits perfectly… with one little exception.”

The starfield blinked, and a brilliant point of light blazed out in the middle of the darkness. The point faded, then reappeared. “I’m toggling back and forth between the projection and what I actually got from scanning the starfield.”

“There’s… another star there.”

“Which shouldn’t be there at all, yes. And judging by the brightness and all, I’d guess it’s the closest star to us. Not in the catalogs, and there shouldn’t be anything this close to Earth that isn’t in the catalogs. Last I knew they were done even with the brown dwarfs and well into categorizing the rogue planets in the region.”

“How close do you think it is?”

Sergeant Campbell shrugged, running a hand through his graying hair. “Hard to say for certain, son; don’t know what the spectral type is, and that makes a huge difference. But if I had to guess, it’s less than a light-year off. If I get the color right, it’s possibly a G-type star. Nearest colony, though, is Orado – and that’s about ten lightyears off.”

Xander nodded. “Well, that’s not TOO bad, if we can get the Trapdoor running. That’d be, what, about two months, maybe?”

Samuel Campbell’s face looked a lot more grim all of a sudden, and Xander felt a chill. “Not quite, son. That’d be true for Outward Initiative, probably a bit less than two months, but these lifeboats can’t keep the Trapdoor running all-out constantly; figure it’s about a third the speed of a regular Trapdoor, on average, so you’re looking more at six months. If everything works perfectly, and honestly, I’m not sure it will. But that’ll be more on Tavana and me later on, once we get power up and running.”

Six months. That was a long time to live in this little shuttle… and it was six months added on to the time it would take to repair things. “But we can’t just go to some other star, sir.”

Sergeant Campbell grunted. “Not unless we have no choice, no. We don’t know there’s anything livable there, even if it is a G-type star. But I’ll tell you, it’s a mystery… and mysteries make me uncomfortable until I get answers to them.”

Maddox was looking at the Sergeant wide-eyed. “Sergeant… you don’t think… something from that star caused our accident?”

Campbell stared at Maddox a moment, then burst out laughing. After a moment, he got himself under control. “Sorry, Maddox. No, no, I don’t think that. Sorry if I sounded too melodramatic there. I think what happened to Outward Initiative was just an accident, field instability that rippled around the outside of the hab ring. I doubt that star had anything to do with it. I’m just saying that stars don’t just appear out of nothing, and so I really, really want to know how this one managed that trick.”

He looked back at the front screen. “But that’ll be a question for someone else to answer, I’m afraid. We have to get ourselves somewhere safe first; Outward Initiative will probably already have gotten there, since it’s the closest colony, and I’ll bet the answer will already be obvious.” He leaned back. “But no point in even worrying about it until we get the reactor back, eh?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Tavana said. “And I think I’m going to need your help just to get through this door. What was your clearance on Outward Initiative?”

“Full security clearance, secondary command clearance. You need my biometrics?”

“Yes, sir. I hope it’s still got all the data loaded in the onboard memory, so it’ll recognize you. Maddox and I, we’ve got the TechTool configured to act as a simple security gateway but we can’t fake the door out.”

“No, they definitely did not want the average Joe being able to walk into the cargo holds. Lot of stuff in there that’s very valuable… and some of it’s real delicate.” Campbell levered himself out of the pilot seat and pushed off to come to a quick rest near the rear door. “All right, let’s give it a try.”

“Hold it here – careful, the probes are very thin, do not break or bend them! Then look directly into the flat surface there.”

The TechTool blinked swiftly, projecting a faint laser beam against Sergeant Campbell’s face.

Abruptly the door swung outward.

“YES!”

“Well, now, good work there, all of you!” Campbell was grinning like the rest of them. “Now we can get to the cargo… and find the access to the reactor. Let’s get a move on!”

 

Through Fire – Snippet 19

Through Fire – Snippet 19

She opened the door, stuck her head in and said something. The voice that answered her spoke too low for me to understand the words, but it reminded me of Simon’s voice. Not in timbre or tone, but in some indefinable way. Indefinable, that is, until I met Royce Allard.

Martha led me into a room that looked like a laboratory’s offspring by a styling parlor. There were machines and screens, mirrors and vials, and then there were chairs, set in front of what were clearly vanities of some sort, if vanities were really serious and high tech.

Royce — introduced that way by Martha — was a large man, built on the mold of Lucius or Alexis. He had blunt features, a shock of reddish-brown hair, arms that looked like he lifted weights at his job every day, and eyes like a shrewd monkey. Which might sound unkind, but isn’t. Just like the eyes of a monkey can look out of place, staring out of incongruous features, so too Royce Allard’s eyes looked incongruous, much too bright and intent for his blunt features. He looked at me, and his eyebrows went up a little. Then his hands went to the side of his waist, and then he spoke and I understood why he reminded me of Simon. He had the same accent, which wasn’t quite like a French accent in historic casts, but was close enough. “You want her to pass unnoticed in Liberte?” he asked Martha, and sighed. “Wouldn’t you want me to do something easier, like, say, hide a full-grown elephant in my armpit?”

I frowned. “I’m not an elephant,” I said. One thing is not to wish to take offense, and another to remain quiet while people around you are acting like mental patients.

He smiled. “Indeed not. And that’s the problem. Most people, male or female, will see you and remember you.” He shrugged. “Well! This will be a challenge. I always hear it’s important to have a challenge, so one doesn’t grow stale. When I finish this work, I’ll be so fresh I might as well be a beginner again.”

He led me to a chair and sat me down. The work he did involved a lot of machines, both for measuring things and for changing things. I wish I could tell you precisely what he did, but the truth is, I couldn’t even follow it. He worked silently, and all I can tell you is that at some point semi-permanent caps went on my teeth, which changed their shape, and that something of the same sort went inside my cheeks, which changed the shape of my mouth and my features. And yet, none of it was permanent, and none of it felt any different once it was in.

All right, maybe the teeth. I kept getting the persistent and unshakeable feeling that my teeth were too long for my mouth, but I couldn’t tell which parts of them were different.

My eye color was changed too. Not lenses. There was something injected. There was something injected at various portions of the procedure into various parts of my features, and I can’t tell you exactly where or what it did.

At one point I asked if the makeup would survive bathing, and Royce shook his head, which alarmed me, but then he said, “Not makeup, as such, understand. It is subcutaneous. It will be absorbed, in a couple of weeks. Earlier if I remove it. But until then, you are completely safe in your new appearance, safe through immersion and baths, and exposure to sun and anything. Your new appearance is your new appearance, impervious to all the things your normal appearance is.”

When it was all done, he stood me in front of the mirror. I still looked like myself, though my hair was a reddish shade of brown, and my features were…

It’s hard to explain. They hadn’t so much changed as been made unmemorable. The changes were small, save for the coloration — both my skin and my eyebrows and eyelashes were darker, and my eyes were now brown — but I no longer looked like Boticelli’s Venus. I looked similar enough that someone would say “Oh, you remind me of,” if he were very well educated and had spent a lot of time staring at me. Still, I didn’t look like I’d been made to order.

The point was that no one, male or female, would spend a lot of time staring at me. I looked like someone who could pass unnoticed in the street. I’d have passed myself on the street without noticing.

“The important thing,” Royce said, “and the difficult one is to change the way you move.”

I turned around and the stranger in the mirror turned around too, to face him. “The way I move? Why? Is that particularly memorable?”

He seemed to struggle for words. “Oh,” he said. “Well… yes. Or rather, it’s not memorable. No one is going to tell you he really likes or dislikes the way you move. It’s just… odd.”

“No one ever commented on it,” I said, frowning at him.

He smiled. When he smiled, he looked like a different person, and a much nicer one. “No, I imagine not. No one would notice it in your world, because it would be the normal way to move, or at least close enough. And here, on Earth, everyone knows you’re a stranger, so they would expect you to move and act like a stranger. But if you want to pass unnoticed, something will need to be done. People won’t know what makes them notice you, or what makes them sure you’re not from Liberte, but they will know — they will be able to have you followed and that’s the difference between your surviving and not–potentially. And then there’s the patois, but fortunately we have recordings for that.”

“Recordings?”

“Neural recordings,” he said. “Of the movements, too, but that’s harder to upload.”

“You’re going to upload things to my brain?” I blinked at him. I was used to the science on Earth being behind what we did on Eden. There was a reason for it. They had outlawed most experimentation and research after the Turmoils. Supposedly they’d only outlawed new biological research, but in fact all sorts of technical research and even incidental discoveries had been hidden and never hit the public consciousness. The reason for it was that the Good Men had liked society stable. Nothing destabilizes society like new knowledge and new gadgets and new inventions. They’d sold themselves to the people of Earth as bringing stability. And they had. Three hundred years of stability. Even if it required stagnation and massive deaths by attrition and neglect.

But even on Eden we didn’t have any way to access our neurons, bypassing the conscious act of learning to upload knowledge or training into the brain. “When I was in training,” I told him, “I often wished that there were some way to just upload all the knowledge directly to the brain, without my having to work at it.”

He chuckled. “Well, there isn’t. This isn’t it. It’s not knowledge of that type. I can’t use neural upload to teach you the multiplication tables, for example, but I can put it in your head so that if you’re prompted to answer two times two, your lips will say four. Does that make sense? Consciously you won’t know it, until you hear yourself say it. It is a lousy way to learn anything, because it will only apply in certain situations, and there will be no… control on your part. No…” he translated his verbal hesitation into a flourishing gesture midair with his right hand. “No way to use that knowledge, but the way that was imprinted. Also, it doesn’t last. It used to be believed, back in the dark ages around the twenty-first century, that eventually this mode of learning would replace traditional learning, that people would buy knowledge packs, and have it uploaded to their minds, as though they were a sort of meat computer. But it doesn’t work that way long term. Sure, if you absolutely need to speak a language for a week or so, we can upload some basic vocabulary, but you’ll speak it with atrocious grammar, unless you respond with a learned sentence to another learned sentence. You’ll be a clever parrot, not a real speaker of the language.”

 

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 43

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 43

Cazelet began to laugh. He overbalanced and would have fallen had he not grabbed the pole of a floor lamp to brace himself.

“Adele,” he said through gulps of air. “I knew that there was more going on than a contract to provide military assistance to a cluster in the back of beyond, but I didn’t expect…”

He began laughing again.

Adele allowed herself a slight smile. This wasn’t the reaction she had expected, but it was apparently a very good result.

“Yes,” she said. “It is an incongruous situation, one which you’re now an active part of. You may have believed that I brought you off the ship to entertain you. In fact, I want someone to provide this necessary support to our mission.”

“You think that I’m a cripple but that I can do this?” Cazelet said with sudden harshness.

“The mistress knows that you’re a cripple,” said Tovera. She had just placed fresh flowers on the table. “And if she didn’t think you could handle the job, she wouldn’t have told you to do it.”

His mood swings are probably because of the injury and the medications he’s on, Adele thought. At least he didn’t behave this way in the past.

“Yes,” she said aloud. “Tovera’s analysis is correct. The choice was between you and Cory, and your injury reduces your present capacity for normal shipboard duties.”

Cazelet’s expression went from anger to a hard blankness for a moment. Then he grinned and said, “Yes, and besides I’ll never be the astrogator that Tom Cory is. Show me my station.”

“Downstairs, I’m afraid,” Adele said, leading the way. “No doubt the exercise will be good for your leg.”

If Rene thought I was going to tell him that he isn’t physically impaired, he’s been damaged more seriously than I believed, Adele thought. She hoped it was a temporary aberration. She didn’t exactly depend on Cazelet, but he was an asset to her and to her RCN family.

Her smile was mostly in her mind. Besides, I like him as a person.

Adele set Cazelet to reading in, starting with the files which Major Grozhinski had provided. Cazelet was starting from scratch, so it would be days or weeks before he had the full background. He was quick, however; and, having grown up and worked in the Alliance he had an instinctive grasp of structures which would be only words to Cory.

The hardened communications room was really intended for solo use, but the console had a junior position on the back like the striker’s seat of warship consoles. Adele put Rene there and used the primary display to catch up on traffic which had arrived during her absence on Benjamin.

The 5th Bureau normally communicated with its Residencies using commercial vessels travelling to the desired location. Encrypted messages were implanted in ships’ astrogation consoles, generally without the crews or owners being informed. When a ship reached its destination, the message was transmitted to the Residency there.

Communications were therefore uncertain as to time and even arrival: a tramp freighter might change its planned course for any reason or none. From Adele’s experience, informing merchant captains that they were carrying government messages would not appreciably increase the likelihood that they would be delivered in a timely manner. Important information was sent in multiple copies.

Adele had sent her warning that the Peltry Resident had to be replaced to three separate worlds where the 5th Bureau presence was major enough to rate a courier missile. Even so there was no telling when the message would get to where it was supposed to go.

Hundreds of messages were in the console’s suspense file. Many of them involved Mignouri’s personal business, importing high-end office equipment from Pleasaunce and bypassing Alliance export tariffs.

Adele grimaced. That was grounds for dismissal, which in the 5th Bureau meant execution. She could not fathom what made Mignouri think that the profit justified the risk, but human beings made a great number of choices which struck Adele as the next thing to insanity.

Having scanned the message traffic, Adele checked on the surveillance of Dumouret. Realizing that this was something non-standard which Cazelet should keep on top of, she said, “Rene, echo my display and note the path. Dumouret is President Menandros’ butler and an agent of the Upholders. There are cameras in his office and living quarters in the palace, but the audio leaves something to be desired.”

Dumouret’s office was empty at present. Adele ran the recording back so that Cazelet could see the butler’s appearance. He appeared as he was walking out with two unfamiliar men, apparently taking them somewhere.

“His outfit must be a uniform,” Adele said. “He wore the same red-piped blue suit when I met him.”

“Let me see those men again,” Tovera said from over Adele’s shoulder. Her voice was sharp.

Adele locked on them and ran a facial recognition program. This was linked to the harbor database — a 5th Bureau system, not something she had put in place since she arrived.

“They’re listed as citizens of Danziger,” she said. “They arrived from there today on the freighter Dubrovnic.”

Danziger was outside the Tarbell Stars but due to good connections in the Matrix had become a major transshipment point. Freighters broke bulk here for distribution throughout the cluster.

“Run them through the Bureau database,” Tovera said. “I don’t recognize them, but I recognize the type.”

Adele did a separate search, wondering as she did whether she should have integrated the 5th Bureau files into the general database. No, because they include Mistress Sand’s information as well as what Grozhinski provided. I won’t put Cinnabar data on the Residency system because I may die before I can wipe it.

“The one calling himself Sadler is from Maintenance Section C on Pleasaunce,” Adele said. “I don’t find the one calling himself Scroggs.”

“They’re killers,” Tovera said. “I was Section C.”

“Tovera, let’s see if we can get to President Menandros before they do,” Adele said, swinging off the console’s seat and heading for the stairs. Tovera was right behind.

“Cazelet, alert both ships for lift-off!” Adele called over her shoulder. “All liberty is cancelled!”

She had no authority to give orders. Fortunately, Daniel cared as little about that in a crisis as Adele herself did.

At the back of her mind Adele wondered if Menandros’ death would really be such a bad thing for the Tarbell Stars. It would disrupt the government, however, and anyway the Upholders seemed to think that it would be bad for the government. If Adele had had time to consider the effects and side-effects she might come to a different conclusion, but for now she would go with blocking the plans of her enemies.

Adele got into the passenger compartment because the limousine had only a seat for the driver in front. As she started to swing the door closed, Cazelet called from the doorway, “Adele! On the external security system, they’re heading for the Ministry of War!”

Daniel is meeting Christopher Robin about…now.

“To the back entrance!” Adele said as Tovera switched on the motors. The limousine took off the left gatepost as Tovera backed into the street.

* * *

The waiting room of the Minister of War was scarcely bigger than Robin’s office. Daniel had passed through it when he left the Minister after their first meeting, but he couldn’t have described it from that experience.

Thirty-odd straight chairs stood in rows with a center aisle that wasn’t quite straight. Most of the chairs were occupied, but only a few of those waiting to see Robin wore uniforms. Most of the others had the look of salesmen of one sort or another. Wars were always good opportunities to dispose of unwanted merchandise.

The floor was littered and the walls hadn’t been washed in too long. It wasn’t an impressive sight to someone who had spent long hours in the Navy House waiting room in Xenos.

Daniel walked up to the front where a middle-aged male clerk sat at a console beside the door to the inner office. A soldier had pulled a chair nearby from the front row. He sat on it, his carbine leaning against the wall.

“I’m Captain Leary,” Daniel said pleasantly. “The Minister of War requested to see me at four pm today. I seem to be two minutes early.”

The clerk looked up. “Take a seat,” he said. “I’ll tell you if the Minister wants to see you.”

Still smiling, Daniel said, “May I ask who Minister Robin is with at present?”

“He’s busy and that’s all you need to know,” the clerk said. “I told you to take a seat!”

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 34

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 34

“I believe Herr Schaub died of poisoning,” Phillip said. He had intended qualifying the statement, but the man who’d since been identified as the dead man’s younger brother exploded.

“You agree that she poisoned Ludwig,” Heinrich Schaub shouted, waving an accusing finger towards a white-faced Maria.

“You’re supposed to be proving that my daughter didn’t poison Ludwig,” Maria’s father shouted at Phillip.

Phillip hastened to reclaim the situation. He held up his hands and called on everyone to “please calm down.”

Naturally, in such a charged environment, such a plea went unheeded, until Professor Bauhin added his weight to the request.

“Please, I’m sure Dr. Gribbleflotz will explain if only everyone would calm down.” Gaspard cast speaking looks at the counselors for the families, who took the hint. A couple of minutes later the room was silent and everyone was looking intently at Phillip.

“As I was saying,” Phillip reiterated. “I suspect that Herr Schaub died from the ingestion of poison.” Members of the Schaub family started smiling while the Beck family frowned. “However,” Phillip continued, “rather than being poisoned by his wife, I believe he died of a self-administered overdose . . .”

“My brother did not commit suicide,” Heinrich shouted.

Phillip winced at the volume Heinrich was directing at him. “I didn’t mean to imply that it was suicide, Herr Schaub. If we can just wait to see what happens with the rabbits, I will be able to explain everything.”

The combined parties settled down to watch the two rabbits. Initially not much happened, but after about a quarter of an hour the rabbits started to display signs that they were suffering pain. Then, as more time passed, blisters started to appear on their shaved flanks.

“Professor Bauhin, if you would please examine the rabbits and tell everyone what you see,” Phillip said.

Gaspard picked up each rabbit in turn, displaying the shaved and blistering flanks to the audience. “I see blisters in the areas where Dr. Gribbleflotz smeared tissue from Ludwig’s kidney.” He turned to the two counselors. “Wouldn’t you agree?’ he asked them. Both men nodded.

“Thank you,” Phillip said as he rubbed his hands together. He smiled benevolently at his audience — he so loved being proven right. “With this evidence, I am confident that Herr Schaub died after ingesting powdered Cantharis beetle,” Phillip saw the blank looks being sent his way and quickly elaborated, “more commonly known as Spanish Fly.”

“But that’s not a poison. Ludwig’s been taking that for years,” Heinrich protested.

“Then he has been very lucky for years, Herr Schaub,” Phillip said. “I’ve seen horses that have died after eating feed that has been contaminated with the Cantharis beetle.” That was a slight exaggeration. In his life he’d seen exactly one horse that had died from eating contaminated feed, but they didn’t need to know that. “The powder of the Cantharis beetle is actually a poison. However, as Paracelsus himself said, a little poison can be good for you.” He gave a wry smile. “There are a number of conditions where a little of the powder is supposed to be beneficial, unfortunately, a little too much can kill you.”

Phillip turned to Captain Brückner. “I expect that somewhere in his rooms is Herr Schaub’s supply of ‘Spanish Fly’. Could you see if you can find it?”

Captain Brückner nodded.

“Do you know what you’re looking for?” Phillip asked.

“A sort of brown powder with iridescent reflections,” Captain Brückner said as he gestured to Sergeant Schweitzer. The two of them, with the two counselors and members of both families in tow, headed back to Ludwig’s bedroom.

“What made you think Ludwig died of Cantharis poisoning?” Gaspard asked after the procession had left, leaving only a handful of people in the kitchen.

Phillip gestured towards the body still lying on the kitchen table. “A man of his age and constitution is likely to feel the need for an aphrodisiac when marrying a much younger woman. If we add that situation to the presence of blood in his urine, I was sure we were looking at Cantharis poisoning.”

“But Heinrich insists his brother has taken Spanish Fly for years with no ill effect,” Gaspard said.

Phillip shrugged. “As I said before, he’s been extremely lucky. I’ve extracted the essence of Cantharis from a variety of Cantharis beetles over time, and one thing I have discovered is, the amount of the essence present in a sample can vary from as little as half a part per hundred by weight in older female beetles to up to six parts per hundred in males. And if you are selective in what parts of the beetle you take, the legs and thorax can contain up to twelve parts per hundred.”

“So that’s why you want Ludwig’s supply of Spanish Fly. You want to check to see how strong it is.”

Phillip nodded. “Usually the powder is a random mixture of male and female beetles. If the ratio is about equal, the active essence of Cantharis makes up less than two parts per hundred.”

“But if the ratio starts to favor the male beetles, that particular dose of Spanish Fly can be stronger than normal.”

“Or if there is a surplus of the larger female beetles it can drop. The amount of essence of Cantharis in any given dose of Spanish fly can vary from as little as one part per hundred to as much as six parts per hundred.”

Gaspard whistled. “And the person buying it has absolutely no idea how strong it’s going to be!”

Philip nodded. “Like I said, Herr Schaub’s been extremely lucky.”

“Up until now,” Gaspard added with a smile.

“Yes, up until now,” Phillip agreed. “He probably purchased a fresh supply so he could be sure of performing for his new bride, and just to be doubly sure, exceeded his normal dosage.”

“Resulting in the overdose that killed him. Congratulations, Phillip,” Gaspard said as he held out his hand. “It’s been a pleasure working with you, Phillip.”

“We haven’t checked the strength of Herr Schaub’s supply of Spanish Fly yet,” Phillip protested.

“I’m sure we’ll find it is somewhat over two parts per hundred,” Gaspard said.

****

Phillip was still in the kitchen in Ludwig Schaub’s house, but now he was carefully weighing the amount of essence of Cantharis he’d extracted from a one hundred grain sample of the Spanish Fly they’d found in Ludwig’s room.

He gently brushed the white powder he’d isolated into the pan of his apothecary’s scales and weighed it. “Just over five grains,” he announced to his audience.

“What does that mean?” Dr. Cludius asked.

“It means that the Spanish Fly Ludwig took in preparation for his wedding night was more than double the normal strength one would expect,” Gaspard said. He turned to Captain Brückner. “You need to contact Ludwig’s supplier and warn him that his powdered Spanish Fly is stronger than normal.”

“I will do that,” Captain Brückner said. He turned to Philip. “Would you be willing to conduct a similar test on any Spanish Fly powder the man might have?”

Phillip nodded.

“That’s it?” Heinrich protested. He pointed at Phillip. “That man produces some white powder and claims that it’s what killed my brother, and you just believe him?”

Captain Brückner turned to Phillip. “Can you prove that white powder is poisonous?” he asked.

“Sure,” Philip said. “Just let me mix it with some water and Herr Schaub here can drink it.”

Captain Bruckner smothered a grin. “Maybe you could feed it to one of the rabbits?”

Phillip looked at rabbits in the basket. “They aren’t stupid enough to eat or drink enough of it to kill them.”

“Are you calling my brother stupid?” Heinrich demanded.

Phillip really wanted to say yes, but warning glances from both Captain Brückner and Gaspard stopped him. Instead he considered the problem of getting a rabbit to ingest the poison. “I could try pouring it down its throat.”

“Please do that,” Captain Brückner said.

Phillip dissolved a quarter of the powder in a little warm water and with the assistance of one of the kitchen hands, poured it down the rabbit’s throat. He put it back in the basket and stood back to watch.

****

Naturally, the rabbit died, and as a result the death of Ludwig Schaub was recorded as an accidental death. That allowed Maria Beck to collect her full entitlement as Ludwig Schaub’s widow, much to the distress of his family. Maria took her inheritance and moved out of Basel, taking Katarina and Peter with her. Katarina’s departure left Johann distraught for a while, but he soon found a new target for his affections.

Captain Brückner warned the apothecary that his Spanish Fly was unusually strong, and quite naturally, the apothecary used that information to promote sales of his especially strong aphrodisiac. Public announcements were made about the risks of using Spanish Fly, and demand for the aphrodisiac jumped, as did the number of deaths associated with its use.

Phillip also suffered as a result of the case. Previously a bit of a nonentity in Basel outside the small community of alchemists, Phillip suddenly found himself the center of attention amongst a certain stratum of society — the middle level merchant class — and had more requests for his professional services as a physician than he wanted to handle.