Live Free or Die, Second Edition, page 16
“What does the name mean?” Tyler asked as the cab pulled into one of the transport…elevators?
“Big Nice Hotel,” the cab replied.
“In Glatun?”
“Oh, no. Course not. That’s in Ogutorjatedocifazhidujon…That’s enough. They’re sort of this arm’s main hospitality race. Call ’em the Ogut.”
“Oh,” Tyler said. “We really don’t know much about the species in this region. We got an initial download from the first Glatun we encountered but it’s so large and so poorly indexed… Google’s still working on it.”
“You need to get some plants,” the cab said.
“I just did,” Tyler said. “I’m still trying to figure out how to use them.”
“You’ll get used to it,” the cab said as the door to the…transport box? opened. It whisked out into a corridor that was well lit and lined with what looked to be upscale shops. Well-dressed Glatun and a variety of other species more or less packed it. The cab had to move slowly.
In about three minutes they pulled up before an ornate façade resembling, of all things, the front of a tomb.
“The Ghoz,” the cab said. “That’s three credits.”
“Authorized,” Tyler said. The canopy popped down and he climbed out. “I guess if I call for a cab, I’m probably going to get you. Which is fine.”
“As long as I’m available and not too far off,” the cab said. “Have a nice day, Mr. Vernon.”
Two of the big sauroids, in a sort of quasi-military uniform, flanked the double doors of the hotel. Tyler contemplated them for a second and the word “Rangora” flashed into his head. He instantly knew the general outline of their territory in the galaxy and, as he probed a bit more, their strategic relationship, competitive neutrality, with the Glatun. They were considered slightly less technologically advanced, aggressive and expansionistic. Individually, within the Glatun Federation, they tended to work in menial jobs that required more strength than smarts.
“Do you need help with your bags, sir?” one of the Rangora asked.
“Uh, no,” Tyler said. “They were sent ahead.”
He’d had to send more than bags. There were no foods known in the Federation that humans could consume. Since the “milk run” Gorku Corporation freighter only ran once every thirty-two days, he had to be prepared to stay a long time, so he’d included in cold storage three months’ rations. Since the Glatun could, somehow, inhibit any degradation in organic materials, “rations” meant a very choice selection of foods. He wouldn’t be surviving on MREs but he would have to cook for himself. That was okay, though, ’cause he was a pretty good cook.
He was planning on being on Glalkod station for some time. He had to get more information about the Glatun before he could progress to the next stage of his plans. Earth needed Glatun technology, but he wanted to figure out how to learn Glatun technology. He didn’t want Earth constantly dependent on the Glatun. The close call over maple syrup had convinced him that Earth needed to be technologically and strategically independent of the Glatun to the greatest possible extent. Not to mention he was looking forward to kicking some Horvath butt.
The same thought had occurred to most Earth governments. But the fact was, until there was more to trade with the rest of the Galaxy, he was in the strange position of having more available credit to do something about the disparity than any five Earth governments. And since most of it was banked and traded off-planet, it was remarkably hard to tax.
If he had the choice of turning over his credit balance to Washington to do something or doing it himself… He’d take his chances.
“Checking in, sir?” the Rangora asked, opening the door.
“Yes,” Tyler said. He thought “Ten credit tip” and the Rangora tipped his helmet at him.
“Thank you much, sir.”
“No problem,” Tyler said, walking through the doors.
“Mr. Vernon. A pleasure to have you in the house.”
The speaker was a meter-long caterpillar. That was about as far as Tyler could get. Unlike caterpillars it had large, mobile, antennae. But it was still more or less caterpillar shaped, its skin patterned in a wild array of colors. I’m talking to a psychedelic caterpillar.
“Yes I am, Mr.…?”
“Chuphosh Yaph Mufup Phexigh Chugh Thogab Neyuch Peh Toshash Ghutoch Zizh Lhinosh,” the caterpillar said. “Most sophonts call me Chup. Welcome.”
“Thank you,” Tyler said.
“Your room has been prepared,” Chup said. “If you would follow me?”
The main lobby was large and ornate. Tyler wasn’t sure what most of the metals, woods and cloth were, but they looked expensive.
When he’d gone on the hypernet he’d searched for a good hotel on Glalkod station that could handle multiple species. He’d apparently found more than good. He wasn’t sure he wanted the expense of staying somewhere like this for as long as he contemplated staying. He could afford it, but he had a lot of stuff to buy and no real idea of the costs.
Chup led him to what Tyler figured was an elevator. There was the usual absolute lack of sense of movement and it opened on a large room.
“Four rooms,” Chup said. “Bedroom, bathing room, sitting room, kitchen. Adjustable grav beds. Extensible grav bed in the couch in case you entertain company. Usual suite of entertainment devices.”
“I’m still learning how to use implants,” Tyler said, walking across what he presumed was the sitting room to what could be either the bathroom or the bedroom. As he half expected, the door didn’t open.
“Why don’t I just leave all the doors open until you’re more comfortable,” Chup said, dilating the door.
The room was a bedroom. And it looked about like any hotel bedroom he’d ever seen except for the bed which was…
“That’s sort of odd,” Tyler said.
The bed appeared to be two pieces of glass suspended in midair.
“I’m sure you will find it quite comfortable,” Chup said. “It’s adjusted to your surface gravity. The lighting is adjusted to near natural sunlight. And while we had a bit of trouble with some of your bathing arrangements, I think you’ll find those in order. Furthermore, we have a cookbot programmed with a variety of Earth dishes if you prefer to use room service or visit one of our several first quality dining facilities.”
“Thank you,” Tyler said.
“We aim to please,” the caterpillar said. “We admit that learning the needs of a new species is always challenging, but we do our level best. We were unable to successfully design concubine bots but…”
“No problem,” Tyler said, thinking “High tip.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Vernon,” the caterpillar said. “If there’s anything else?”
“Not that I can think of right now,” Tyler said. “I’ll just…relax.”
“Since you are still getting acquainted with your implants and the conditions,” Chup said, “I can set our AI to monitor. That way if you need anything you can simply ask. Nothing, of course, will be released about such monitoring. We are very strict about our guests’ privacy.”
“Please,” Tyler said.
“And I will leave you to your relaxation,” the caterpillar said, wriggling out of the room.
TWO
Tyler stretched out on the oddly shaped but surprisingly comfortable couch and intertwined his fingers behind his head. Since getting on the tramp freighter in Manchester twenty hours ago he hadn’t really had a chance to relax.
Manchester, New Hampshire, was coming on to being Earth’s biggest spaceport, much to everyone’s surprise. Unlike Burlington, it had suffered little damage in the war and was central to several major maple production areas. Since Earth was still only trading maple syrup, that meant that was where the traders landed.
The Horvath had geeked to giving up the maple syrup but they were bound and determined, to the point of battle, to hold on to the heavy metal mines in Russia and South Africa. The Canadian production areas overlapped the maple regions so production from that area was still under negotiation. And they’d raised the subject of the metals Tyler’s company was starting to extract from asteroids. Their position was that they owned all heavy metals in the Sol System. Since sovereignty can be defined, at bottom, as “might makes right,” they were standing on firm legal ground. Tyler’s position was that they owned it as long as they could keep it. He intended to end that condition very soon.
He decided it was about time to figure out this implant thing and just thought about the Horvath.
Instantly, information started flooding in. It wasn’t overwhelming but it was complete and organized more or less as he needed it. He realized that the system was not only responding to his forefront thoughts but lower-level concepts. The information, since he was mostly worried about the Horvath as a threat, was concentrated around their strategic position in the galactic region, military and industrial capability and resources. It was neither more than he could absorb nor was it scattered. He wasn’t even sure exactly where the information was coming from. He could see why Earth’s firewalls would look a bit like “looking through an open window.” You just thought about what you wanted to know and there it was.
“Wow,” Tyler muttered. “I’ve got to get rid of my Google stock.”
As he examined particular bits of information, more would become accessible. He delved, for a while, into Horvath reproduction habits and cultural implications. Horvath had two sexes, male/female, more or less corresponding to standard Terran form even if their basic physiology was completely different. They did look a bit like squids, though. The females laid a single egg in a nest which was then fertilized by a selected male. Gestation was six months. The nest was kept by the male; the female laid and left. After birth the young were moved to a crèche where they went through a series of moltings over twenty years and then were released as adults. Males, almost invariably unrelated biologically, did most of the rearing. Robots were replacing them as the Horvath advanced. Child-rearing was not high on the list of Horvath jobs.
Interested, he jumped over to the Glatun and received the shock of his life. One of the big questions on Earth about the Glatun was pronouns. Generally, the Glatun were referred to by male pronouns. But it had been noted, quietly, that they didn’t seem to have appropriate reproductive parts. And they responded perfectly well to neutral gender terms such as “it.”
What he found out, quickly, was that they were all three. Or, rather, the Glatun with which people dealt were hosts to both. Male and female Glatun were nonsentient parasites that existed within a brood pouch on the Glatun sentient neuters. More or less on command they would reproduce, the female releasing an egg and the male fertilizing it. Then the offspring would be raised in the pouch. If it was male or female it would stay there, more or less turned off, until a ceremony where it would be transferred to a young neuter. If a neuter, it would be raised to a certain size, released from the pouch, then raised to adulthood by its “parent” neuter.
“Okay, that’s bizarre,” Tyler muttered.
He decided to examine the Glatun a bit more and received another shock.
The Glatun were one of the older species in the area, having been contacted by the Ormatur through the new Glatun gate nearly thirty thousand years ago. At the time there were very few sophont races in the immediate star systems, and over a period of about six thousand years the Glatun had spread out and absorbed the thirty-two systems that made up the Glatun Federation. Along the way they had encountered four other sophont races and more or less absorbed them into the Federation. They also had encountered some that resisted absorption but had become trade partners.
At this point, the Glatun Federation sat as the nexus of trade between fourteen different races, some of them having, in turn, expanded widely. They were rich even by Galactic standards, and with riches came problems. They had a permanent unemployed underclass approaching thirty percent, their military was paltry for their size, absorbing less than point zero three percent of their GDP, and their trade imbalance was becoming astronomical.
“They’re eating their seed corn,” Tyler muttered. “You can afford to be the French if you’ve got a great big buddy to take care of you, but…”
Tyler took a look at their strategic situation and nearly had a heart attack. They were bordered by nine “expansionistic” groups. Of course, Earth and the Horvath, neither actually strategically dangerous, were included. But the Rangora, Ogut, Barche and Ananancauimor each had military forces that, in sheer number, dwarfed the Glatun. They were all technologically inferior, but…
“Quantity has a quality of its own,” Tyler muttered. He wasn’t sure that Earth hadn’t hitched itself to a falling star.
Speaking of military technology…
Primary ship weapons were fusion-pumped visible light, X-ray and gamma ray lasers. Secondary weapons were high-acceleration missiles using either kinetic or fusion-pumped laser warheads. A relatively new weapon on the scene was the gravity gun, which could disrupt ships’ shields and cause massive damage. However, it was relatively short range and of limited utility. It also required truly massive amounts of power, so it was only found in capital ships.
“No unobtainium,” Tyler said. “Good. And speaking of power and drive systems…”
He got confused almost immediately. The primary power system was a helium-3 driven… Well, it was a matter conversion plant, not a fusion plant. Still required He-3 to keep it from producing radiation. It converted matter to plasma and electricity. And then it did…something with the plasma and got more electricity and less plasma, somehow converting the neutrons and protons of the plasma to electrons? How? The last of the plasma could be used for…
Tyler realized his basic science background was kicking out information that was contradictory to background and gave up. Let the big brains figure it out. But it needed…Ah, hah! Heavy metals, primarily in the platinum group! That was the reason the Horvath were so hot for platinums. The power systems were thick spheres composed entirely of metals from the platinum groups. The drive system of a freighter the size of Wathaet’s was…half a terawatt? That couldn’t be right. He checked. That was right.
Earth produced four terawatts a year of power worldwide. The entire eastern U.S. power grid could be driven by a ball of osmium six feet across.
Inertial control was induced by spinning plates of… Brain lock. Brain lock. These people obviously had some theory that contradicted most of what he thought he knew. The grav plates looked doable. They required some exotic metals but that was what orbital mining was for. Scratch that. Basically beryllium bronze with a touch of lanthanides and platinums. Pretty much all of that was available on Earth. You needed grav plates to make grav plates, though. How’d somebody make the first ones?
The drive system was a function of grav plates. Drives generated…pressor beams? That pushed on what? Generated mass points?
“SAN check,” Tyler muttered, sitting up and pulling out of the welter of information. “I feel like the WWII Air Force general that said that jets couldn’t work because they didn’t have anything to push. I think these guys have rediscovered Newton’s aether. I need to get somebody smarter than me a set of plants and some free time.”
For right now, though, what he wanted was a ship. The problem being, then he’d need a captain and an engineer. And one ship wasn’t going to do.
What he needed was Boeing able to make ships.
He’d brought a laptop with 400 petabytes of atacirc installed. Surely that would be enough to fill in the basics?
Barely. And he needed a fabber to make grav plates so you could make a larger factory to make bigger grav plates. And he was going to need people who actually understood this stuff.
And a ship drive. They looked tough to make.
Did this place have eBay? He spotted a reference in the grav plate system information to a vender called Pangalactic Nihukow, which produced grav fabbers, and probed on that.
“PANGALACTIC NIHUKOW! PANGALACTIC NIHUKOW!
“PANGALACTIC NIHUKOW! PANGALACTIC NIHUKOW!”
“OW!” Tyler muttered. The answer was: Yes. You could go shopping. If you could figure out how to ignore the commercials. Flashing banner ads on a screen were bad enough. Flashing, screaming banner ads in your brain were another matter. He just rode the tide for a while, trying not to whimper.
“Right,” he said, pulling out of the ad flood. “I’m going to need more blood sugar to handle this. AI?”
“Mr. Vernon?” a voice said.
“Do you have a name that is less than five syllables?”
“You may call me Isna, Mr. Vernon.”
“Isna, I had some Terra foodstuffs sent along,” Tyler said. “Is the serverbot really programmed to produce Terran foods? And what’s available?”
“Over six hundred and twenty-eight thousand recipes have been obtained from the Terran information net,” Isna said. “With the available foodstuffs, using substitutions, two hundred and forty-seven thousand possible combinations are available.”
“I didn’t bring that large a range of materials,” Tyler protested.
“Yes, you did,” Isna said. “You even brought a full range of spices.”
“Damn,” Tyler said, thinking about it. He’d delegated the foodstuffs to one of his assistants. Find a chef and tell him to send along everything he’d want if he was going to be stuck on an alien planet for three months. “Do you think the bot could lower itself to doing some spaghetti? We’ll start there.”
“There are six thousand…”
“Spaghetti with meat sauce,” Tyler said.
“Four hundred and…”
“Spaghetti with meat sauce,” Tyler said, his mouth starting to salivate. “Bit more tangy than sweet. Heavy on the meat. Heavy on the oregano. Pick a recipe that’s along those lines. Thin spaghetti noodles. Chianti or the closest approximation to accompany. And can I get a Coke?”
“Your supply of Coca-Cola, since it is toxic to Glatun systems, is still in customs hold. It should be released in a few days’ time.”
“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”
